To Love Again

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

It is six months since the death of her fiancé Christopher, but Helen still feels the world contains very little that is worth living for. She thinks of herself as a one-man girl - until she meets Peter Farrington, the very image of Christopher - and realizes she can love again. But Helen stills has little chance of happiness. For although Peter seems to feel the same way about her, he is engaged to someone else...

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

IT did not seem to be any good trying to avoid the thought of Christopher. Always she remembered him; it seemed as though the world conspired against her to make her remember. Where-ever she went, she had at some time been there with him. The music she heard, they had listened to together. When she read a new book, some stray word or paragraph called to mind a remark of his; or she wanted him to read and discuss it. In the cinema, there was bound to be a film which contained an incident with her—or an actor who reminded her of Chris.

Always together, Helen and Christopher, always planning for their future. Poor, both struggling artists—but so rich in their love and their enthusiasms. The shared jokes, the mutual understanding, the friends they had made and who were for the most part as impecunious and hardworking as themselves—all these had vanished with the death of Christopher.

She was thinking about him now as she walked with her uncle into the ‘Ritz’ for lunch.

Actually, it was Helen’s birthday lunch. She was twenty-two today. It meant nothing to her. But Uncle George insisted upon what he called ‘a little beano’ and she had come so as not to disappoint him.

When she sat down to table with her uncle, loosened her coat and took off her gloves, she tried to smile and be cheerful. Dear old Uncle George was such a pet. Like a father to her. She had made her home with him and Aunt Mary for the last five years.

They wanted her to go on living with them but she could not do it. They were not well off. Mr. Shaw was a retired Civil Servant with small private means which were deteriorating steadily through increased taxation. She, Helen, was over twenty-one now and must earn her own living. With her uncle’s help she had taken up the training she had always longed for in the School of Art. But since Christopher’s death she seemed to have lost all interest in it. Indeed, she shrank from all things artistic. Beautiful paintings, lovely music—those were the joys she had shared with him. She could no longer enjoy them without him.

Everybody had been very kind—all her friends tried to induce her to carry on with her art, but now that Christopher was not here to advise or share in it, she seemed to have no desire to continue her career.

It was six months since Christopher had died. Three months of the six she had spent in Sussex with Lady Pilgrim, Chris’s mother, who was as broken-hearted as herself. The other three she had spent in trying to take up the threads of her old life, but had dismally failed. Now she was looking for a job. Everybody said that she needed hard work; that Time and. Work were the best antidotes for a sorrow such as hers.

She heard her uncle saying:

“I must confess the birthday girl is looking very nice today. A pity she has only got her old uncle with her, eh?”

He had meant to be flattering and kind but it only gave Helen a pang. Of course! Christopher should have been there. And she would have been his wife by now.

She had tried so hard not to feel bitter against the fate which had robbed her of the one man who had seemed right for her. But bitterness was in her very soul today as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror behind their table.

‘The birthday girl’ was looking very nice, was she? Perhaps! She was wearing a new grey-blue tweed with a crisp white pleated blouse and a blue-grey felt with a feather in it on the ash-blonde head which Christopher had adored. She had never cut her hair but wore it in a shining loop in the nape of her neck. She had grown thin since he died. And she was very pale. The large dark grey eyes with their long dark lashes were a little sunken. She knew that she had been beautiful and gay when Christopher was with her Today she felt plain and dull. Her aunt had accused her, recently, of letting herself go—of becoming apathetic. Helen supposed that was true; there was only one thing to do, work; not dabble about with art but take a job quite unconnected with it.

What could she do.

Her gaze wandered around the room and was suddenly caught and held by a party at the adjoining table. A strange trio. An elegant woman—still a girl in her late twenties perhaps, or early thirties—exquisitely dressed—a smart man-about-town, rather large, inclined to stoutness. He had a small dark moustache, and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. Between them, looking most incongruous with the smart pair and in a place like the ‘Ritz’, sat a small thin girl, aged, perhaps, ten or eleven. It was the little girl who captured Helen’s full attention.

She wore school-uniform, dark green, the felt hat bearing a green and yellow band. The cream-coloured shirt and striped tie looked fairly new and so did the blazer.

She was not a pretty child. She had carroty hair, done in two short plaits, and a gold band across her teeth. She had bony wrists and hands. Her shoulders were hunched in a dejected attitude. What struck Helen most forcibly was the fact that the child was crying.

Quite quietly but desolately, she was crying, and every now and then lifted a crumpled handkerchief to wipe away the tears. She ate nothing. Once or twice Helen saw the woman lean forward and put her hand on the child’s arm as though to comfort her. She heard her saying:

“Patty, darling, do try to cheer up and eat something. You had no breakfast. You will only be sick in the train if you don’t put something in your little inside.”

Bright words spoken in a bright voice. But the child shook her head and whispered, “No, thank you.” And the plate before her remained untouched.

The woman, obviously the mother, then abandoned her efforts to console, and entered into a conversation with the man who looked to Helen bad-tempered and made little response other than a few nods and grunts. He did not address the child. She did not look at him. Just now and again she cast a brief heart-rending look at her mother.

Helen found herself becoming immensely interested, and deeply sorry for the child. It was September. Schools were reopening. Yes, of course, the poor little thing was going back to school this afternoon and this was the last lunch. How well Helen remembered her own school days and what torture they had been. She needed no imagination to realize what this child was enduring. Helen had always suffered in the same way but it seemed that so few parents realized what their children went through in this way. ‘It is good for a kid to go to school’ they said—‘children need discipline away from home’—and so on. But Helen and Christopher had agreed that their children should never be made to go to boarding-school—never forced to break their hearts like this child, Patty, at the next table.

She leaned across to her uncle and began to talk to him about it. Mr. Shaw looked over his glasses and nodded.

“Yes, it is hard,” he agreed, “what a poor little thing the girlie is. The mother is a handsome creature. Is that the father, do you suppose?”

Helen had not quite made up her mind about the man—but the more she watched the more she became convinced that he could not be Patty’s father. She in no way resembled him and he would surely, if she were his own daughter, have joked with her or endeavoured in some way to dry her tears. But he ignored her and kept looking at his wrist-watch.

Helen had a very vivid imagination and let it run riot. She decided that he was Patty’s stepfather, and that the woman was trying to conciliate him and that the child was not wanted really by either of them.

She heard her speak more firmly to Patty.

“You really must make an effort to stop crying, darling. After all, the term will soon pass. It is only three months to Christmas.”

The child nodded and said nothing, but pressed her handkerchief against her lips. Helen was filled with compassion. She knew how long three months could be in the life of a child. She could almost hear Patty ticking off the days and weeks. Three months more. Twelve weeks. Ninety-two days—and so into hours and minutes until the stretch of time became longer and more unbearable.

Helen longed to move to the side of the desolate figure in the ugly uniform and put her arms around it, and give Patty all the warmth of her deep understanding. She herself had been hurt so badly lately—she could not bear to see another hurt—watch a small girl being assailed by the pangs of homesickness even before she left her mother’s side. Suddenly the child got up. Helen heard her mother say:

“Yes, dear, that’s right—you run along and wash your face and I’ll join you in a moment. Nigel and I will finish our coffee first.”

‘So I am right,’ thought Helen, ‘she speaks of the man as Nigel. He is not Patty’s father.’

She saw the figure of the little girl walking forlornly through the big restaurant and was suddenly seized by an impulse to follow—to speak to her——

She murmured an excuse to her uncle, took her coat over her arm and stood up.

A moment later she was in the warm softly lit ladies’ room where Patty, hat off, was dabbing cold water against her swollen eyes.

Helen made pretence at washing her own hands, then glanced at the child and said:

“I do hate big crowded places to eat in—don’t you?”

Patty looked up. For a moment a pair of red-rimmed mournful blue eyes with sandy lashes regarded the fair, slender girl doubtfully. Then she muttered:

“Yes, I do.”

“On a sunny day like this, it would have been nice to have a picnic, wouldn’t it?”

Patty went on regarding this stranger with a child’s natural suspicion and reserve.

“Yes, it would,” she said, and sighed a little.

“Going back to school?”

As Helen asked the question she saw Patty’s thin hands clench.

“Yes.”

Helen made no attempt to glorify school life. As one child to another, she said:

“It’s rotten, isn’t it! It makes one feel quite sick, going back. Nobody ever understood why I cried so much before term started.”

Then a new look—one of relief—crossed Patty’s face.

“Nobody understands why I cry, either,” she said, “and it makes me feel sick. That’s why I couldn’t eat my lunch.”

“Is it a nice school?” asked Helen, “I mean as nice as school can be.”

“No, it is horrid,” Patty muttered.

“So was mine,” said Helen with a grimace, “but they kept telling me how nice it was and how good for me, and how lucky I was to be there.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Patty and dropped the towel and drew nearer to Helen, drawn now as though by a magnet; elated by so much understanding. “That’s what they keep saying to me. At least Mummy does and Uncle Nigel agrees. I think Uncle Nigel made Mummy send me there.”

Helen put an arm lightly around the child’s thin shoulders (the blazer was too big for her).

“Where is your horrid old school?” she smiled.

“Bexhill,” she answered. “And it’s called ‘St. Cyprian’s’.”

And suddenly Patty’s reserve broke down. A torrent of words rushed out. It was as though she felt, intuitively, that she could trust Helen. She told her that her name was Patricia Wade. Daddy used to call her Patty. Daddy was marvellous. He was a doctor, and they lived in the country which Patty adored, and she had adored her father. But, young as he was, something went wrong with his heart a year ago and he had died. Since then, Patty’s home life had changed. The old home was sold up. Mummy took a flat in London; then Uncle Nigel came into the picture. His name was Mr. Cressland. He was not really her uncle but a friend of Mummy’s. Now Mummy said that she was going to marry him. Daddy had promised that she, Patty, should never go to boarding-school. But Uncle Nigel had persuaded Mummy to send her to one. It was going to be awful because he was going to try and take Daddy’s place. He did not like her, either. She knew he didn’t. Once she had even heard Mummy telling him to be nicer to her.

Helen listened. It was a tragic little story and more than ever she yearned to comfort the child. She let Patty talk until she had got it all off her chest. Then Helen said gravely:

“Never mind, Patty. It may not be as bad as you think and Christmas is coming.”

“But Daddy won’t be here,” said Patty.

Helen could hardly look at the child’s woebegone face. How well she understood the feeling of sick despair, when you had to face a Christmas without the person you loved most in the world.

Patty was adding:

“Next hols, Mummy wants me to have a sort of holiday governess; someone to look after me, because Mummy will want to be more with Uncle Nigel”—the lower lip quivered—“I suppose he will be living with us, then.”

Helen deliberately avoided discussion of this. She pressed Patty’s hand.

“Perhaps the governess will be very nice.”

Patty regarded Helen with a new look of friendship and confidence.

“Oh, I wish it could be someone like you—oh, can’t you come and be my holiday governess …?” Then she gave a little laugh and stared at the ground, adding: “I suppose that’s awfully silly. I don’t even know your name.”

“My name is Helen Shaw and I am like you—I have lost someone I love very much and I don’t look forward very much to Christmas, either.”

The little girl’s hot thin hand squeezed hers convulsively.

“Oh, don’t you? How simply rotten! I say, do come and look after me. It would be simply terrific. Oh, do!”

The words gave Helen a slight jolt. She had never for a moment thought of doing a job like that. Yet she wondered suddenly, why not? She loved children. It wouldn’t be at all disagreeable for her to have to look after someone like Patty.

At that moment Patty’s mother came hurrying into the room.

“Are you ready, darling …?” she began. Then paused as she saw the fair girl in the grey tweeds holding Patty’s hand. Helen rather shyly smiled at the older woman.

“I hope you don’t mind—Patty and I have been having a talk.”

Mrs. Wade smiled. And that smile bred in Helen an immediate and instinctive dislike of Patty’s mother. It was so artificial. Like the high-pitched voice, it had a glittering quality; like the woman herself for she was glittering too, exquisitely dressed in a black and white ensemble, with a little Persian lamb cape to which was pinned a large exotic orchid. In time to come, Helen was to associate Rita Wade with orchids, or some other expensive flower.

As she drew nearer Helen, Mrs. Wade brought with her a subtle perfume—the aroma of the Turkish cigarette held between nervous-looking fingers, very long with pointed, red-laquered nails. Helen decided that she must have a touch of Italian or Spanish blood because of the dark, heavily fringed eyes which were the only soft and beautiful thing in an oval face that was as flawless, but hard as chiselled marble. She put no colour on her cheeks. Only the thin lips were a scarlet line and betrayed a quick, nervous temper. She gave one the appearance of a woman who lived on her nerves. She wore a hat that spelled ‘Paris’, with a curled ostrich plume sweeping down to the slender neck. One could glimpse the Titian-red hair, which, Helen reflected, accounted for the reddish tinge in Patty’s. When she spoke to Helen she was charming, but Helen felt that there was no warmth beneath that charm and that it was merely a façade.

“How perfectly sweet of you to bother about my little girl. The poor angel is always so upset before going to school but once she gets there, she really adores it, don’t you, Patty?”

Patty remained silent but her hot moist fingers held more tightly on to Helen’s.

“We must hurry, Patty,” added. Mrs. Wade. “Nigel went to order a taxi; you mustn’t miss your train.”

Helen glanced at the child and noted the expression of despair which crossed her small face. Then Patty broke away from Helen and flung her arms around her mother.

“Oh, Mummy, I do wish this lady could look after me during the hols. It would be super! Mummy, please, couldn’t she?”

Helen began to murmur a protest:

“Patty, really …!”

“But Mummy, why couldn’t she? She’s simply marvellous and——”

“Just a moment, darling, hold on!” broke in her mother with a short laugh and put her powder compact back in her bag. Hastily she rouged her lips, and glanced in the mirror at Helen’s reflection. The girl was standing just beside her. Quite good-looking, she decided; lovely fair hair, otherwise ordinary. Too thin, a bit round-shouldered and badly dressed. What an awful felt hat! And cheap tweeds. But she had a nice voice and was obviously well educated. She wondered how Patty managed to pick her up, and to get so intimate in so short a time.

Really, children were very tactless and trying. She was awfully fond of poor little Patty but since Tommy died it had not been easy—without much money, and with a position to keep up, and having to pay the school bills and Patty’s clothes and her own. Of course, she knew in her heart that the child hated boarding-school and she felt an occasional pang of compunction, but what could she do? Everybody said it was good for Patty to go to school. It would be wrong for her to live in a London flat with no companion of her own age.

It never entered Rita Wade’s head to sacrifice her own inclinations towards a town life, and a good time, in order to keep her child in the country, which she could have done. Rita’s love of life and excitement was far too strong for that. To be a widow of thirty-four with a child of eleven was death to her, and she hated admitting that Patty was so old or that she, Rita, was more than twenty-nine.

Besides, there was Nigel—Nigel with whom she was so much in love and who had money and could give her everything that she wanted. She had had one or two battles with him over Patty. It was a bit trying that he so disliked children. She meant to do her utmost for her small daughter—but only up to a point. Beyond that point lay herself and her own selfish whims.

Certainly she had intended getting a holiday governess for Patty at the end of this term. She closed the big lizard bag which Nigel had sent her last time he was abroad, and turned to Helen.

“I’m afraid my daughter is a bit impulsive and embarrassing,” she said with a little laugh. “You really don’t know her?”

It was Patty who replied for Helen and with an excitement which made her small face look quite pretty. Helen could see that here was an ugly duckling who might eventually achieve some of her mother’s beauty.

“Oh, but I do know Miss Shaw quite well already, Mummy. We’ve had a terrific talk and I would adore her to live with us.”

Mrs. Wade laughed again, put an arm around Patty and glanced nervously at her wrist-watch.

“My sweet, how you do exaggerate! But really, we have no time to go into this now and I am quite sure Miss—er—Shaw is it?—has not the slightest wish to look after you, my poor poppet!”

Patty had turned such beseeching eyes to Helen that the girl found it impossible to wipe away that new touching look of pleasure and eagerness.

Without a second thought, she turned to Mrs. Wade and said:

“I might like it. … Actually, I am looking for a job of some kind. I am devoted to children. Of course I know I am a complete stranger to you and this is most unorthodox but I could give you plenty of references, and if you like to see me when you are less busy. …”

She broke off, a little flushed, and astonished by her own temerity.

Then Patty confirmed it by a torrent of beseeching words, hugging her mother who eventually extricated herself from the child’s arms, laughed quite good-naturedly, opened her bag, found a card and handed it to Helen.

“Well, well, we’ll see, darling. That is my address if you’d like to drop in tomorrow morning before eleven—Miss—er—Shaw. Patty seems to have taken such a violent fancy to you. We might as well meet.”

Helen smiled and put the card into her own bag.

“I would like to come and talk things over with you, Mrs. Wade.”

Then Patty flung herself into Helen’s arms. She whispered: “Oh, Miss Shaw, promise you’ll go and see Mummy. I shan’t mind the term nearly so much if I feel you will be at home for Christmas.”

Helen kissed the flushed little face and felt her eyelids stinging with a strange emotion of mingled tenderness and compassion. It struck her forcibly that Patty must lack all real understanding and human contact in her young life if she could feel so strongly about a stranger who had only given her a few encouraging words.

IT was Mrs. Wade herself who opened the door of her flat to Helen, just before half past ten that next morning. Helen had entered the handsome block of flats in Knightsbridge feeling slightly foolish; the whole thing was ridiculous after such a brief meeting with a weeping schoolgirl to apply for a job as her holiday governess! And yet—all night she had been haunted by the memory of Patty … seated between those two at the ‘Ritz’; the glittering mother and the sulky man-about-town … silently weeping. And she could not forget her promise to Patty.

Patty’s mother, dressed in a dark green tailored ensemble this morning, was looking tired and cross, but greeted Helen quite affably.

“Oh, it’s you—Miss—er—Shaw—do come in. So you didn’t forget my funny little daughter’s suggestion!”

“No,” said Helen. “I didn’t forget!”

Mrs. Wade guided her into a sitting-room in which there was none of the pale light of the dull autumn morning. All the electric lamps were switched on. It was one of Rita’s habits—to live with all the lights and fires full on. The place struck Helen as being unbearably hot.

“I’m never warm …” Rita stated, as she motioned Helen to a chair and rubbed her thin long fingers together and offered Helen a cigarette which she refused. Rita lit one for herself and began to talk rapidly—about Patty, her husband’s death, her subsequent difficulties and her impending marriage.

“You’ll quite understand, Miss Shaw—Nigel—Mr. Cressland—is very sweet with Patty but naturally he won’t want her always with us and I anticipate being married again next month.”

Helen nodded. So far she had not put a word in but listened attentively. But she thought:

‘Nigel is not sweet with Patty! He resents her. And she, this woman, is fighting between her natural affection for her own child and her passion for the man. How awful!’

Rita talked on; she was flying to Paris—should be leaving the day after tomorrow, to buy her trousseau. She used to have a first-rate maid, a half-Swiss girl named Louisa, who looked after her, and mended for her and Patty, too, in the holidays, and did the breakfast (they ate most of their other meals out—there was a restaurant in the building) but now that beastly Louisa had walked out on her last night at a moment’s notice—obviously been offered more money by someone else. She was left in the lurch—just when she was most busy, and she hated leaving the flat empty while she was away—she liked someone to stay here, to look after things.

A torrent of words poured from Rita’s lips, her hands clenching and unclenching nervously, the long fingers flicking the cigarette ash on to the carpet. Helen continued to listen and learn. Several things struck her; mainly what a dreadful life it would be for Patty alone here, in this overheated and artificially lighted apartment. It was full of soft thick carpets, painted furniture, everything modern and expensive. The cocktail cabinet, the radio-gramophone, the off-white walls and chair covers, the satin cushions and curtains, the frilly net, excluding all possible views of the. . .