Anne Mather - Castles Of Sand

‘Well?’ he was asking now. ‘I am right, aren’t I? It’s the boy Gauthier who’s upset you. Why? What’s he to you? Do you know him? Do you know his family? Ashley, I mean to find out, so you might as well be honest with me.’

Ashley inclined her head. ‘He’s my son,’ she said simply, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Hussein— Andrew —Gauthier is my son.’

Malcolm’s astonishment was not contrived. A look of stunned disbelief crossed his features and remained there. He was evidently shaken, and who could blame him? she thought bleakly. She had never, at any time, mentioned that she had had a child.

‘Don’t you think that statement deserves some explanation?’ he ventured at last, thrusting his pipe back into his pocket with somewhat unsteady haste. ‘You told me you’d been married, that your husband was dead. But—but not that—that there were children!’

‘There were no children ,’ retorted Ashley wearily. ‘Only one child. And—and as I never saw him, I never felt as if he was mine.’

‘But you must have done!’ Malcolm stared at her. ‘Ashley, a woman always cares about her children.’

‘Not all women,’ corrected Ashley tautly, controlling her emotions with great difficulty. ‘But you’re right about me, as it happens. I did care. At least, in the beginning.’

Malcolm shook his head. ‘You mean to tell me you’ve never even seen this boy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But how—why? How did it happen?’

Ashley sighed. ‘It’s a long story, Malcolm—–’

‘And don’t you think I deserve to hear it?’

Ashley pressed her lips together. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps you do—I don’t know. Oh, Malcolm, what am I going to do?’

Malcolm got up from his chair and came round to her, perching on the side of his desk and looking down at her with compassionate eyes. ‘I meant what I said, you know. A trouble shared can help one to see it in its right perspective. Perhaps if you talked to me—–’

‘I can’t teach my own son!’ declared Ashley emotively. ‘I can’t, Malcolm. I can’t!’

‘I see there’s a problem,’ said Malcolm levelly, but as she would have protested again, he held up one hand. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Hear me out. This is something we have to talk about.’

Ashley made a helpless gesture. ‘What is there to say? It’s an impossible situation.’

‘First of all, I want you to tell me why you haven’t seen—Hussein—all these years.’ He frowned. ‘And why you added the name Andrew. I don’t recall the boy having that name.’

‘He doesn’t.’ Ashley moved her shoulders wearily. ‘That was my name for him. I called him Andrew. I—I refused to have a son of mine with only an Arab name.’

Malcolm nodded. ‘All right, I understand that. But I had no idea your husband was an Arab. I imagined he was someone you’d met in England.’

‘I did meet him in England,’ said Ashley flatly. ‘I—I met his brother at—at the home of a girl I got to know at university. And—and through him, I got to know Hassan.’

‘I see.’ Malcolm digested this. ‘So you know his family?’

‘I—knew his brother,’ Ashley corrected tightly.

Malcolm sighed. ‘Yet you were married. You had a child!’

‘I lived in London,’ Ashley explained. ‘Hassan had been working here before we got married.’

‘Of course.’ Malcolm slapped his hand to his knee. ‘The Gauthiers are in oil and shipping, aren’t they?’ He gave her a strange look. ‘Ashley, did you realise what a wealthy family you were marrying into?’

Ashley’s long lashes veiled her expression. ‘Yes, I realised it,’ she replied dully. ‘You might say—that was why I married Hassan.’

‘Ashley!’

‘Well—–’ she tilted her gaze up to him, her green eyes dark and haunted, ‘I wouldn’t be the first girl to admit that. It’s true. I was pregnant, you see.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ Malcolm made a sound of sympathy. ‘And you were—how old?’

‘Eighteen,’ she answered blankly. ‘In my first year at the college.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘I was very naïve.’

Malcolm hesitated. ‘But he did marry you. Some men—well, you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ashley assented, ‘I know what you mean. But Hassan—always got what he wanted, and he wanted me.’

She said it without conceit, and Malcolm watched her closely. ‘You’re still bitter.’

Ashley’s smile was self-derisive. ‘Yes.’

‘Your husband dying so soon after the wedding—that must have been a great shock to you.’

Ashley’s expression hardened. ‘Yes.’

‘They—his family—they wouldn’t let you keep the boy?’

Ashley bent her head. ‘I’d really rather not talk about it.’

‘Which means I’m right, doesn’t it?’

‘Malcolm, you don’t understand.’

‘What don’t I understand?’

Ashley sighed. ‘Hassan died the day after the wedding—–’

‘So?’

‘—–and his family blamed me!’

Malcolm stared at her. ‘Why?’

Ashley turned her head away. ‘Oh, Malcolm, don’t make me go into all the details. Let it be enough that they thought they had grounds for thinking that.’

‘But it wasn’t true?’

Ashley looked at him with tortured eyes. ‘No, it wasn’t true.’

‘And later, when they found out you were pregnant?’

Ashley hunched her shoulders. ‘We were estranged. I’d gone back to college. When—when—Hassan’s brother found out, he gave me a choice of alternatives.’ Her lips twisted. ‘Either I handed over the child when he was born, and allowed them to bring him up in the way he deserved, or he would wait until the child was older and then fight for him through the courts.’ She expelled her breath unsteadily. ‘I wanted to do that, to keep him, and care for him, but how could I? I had no money of my own, and I wanted nothing from the Gauthiers. And—and I knew Alain meant what he said. He would have taken Andrew from me, by one means or another.’ She bit hard on her lips to prevent them from trembling, then added tautly: ‘You read about these things every day. Babies, children—snatched from this country, and taken to live with their fathers in some foreign place. Alain could have done that, he would have done that, I know. And how much harder it would have been for me to lose him after I’d learned to love him …’

She avoided Malcolm’s eyes as she said this. There were other reasons why she had let the boy go, but she had no intention of revealing them. She had told him too much already, more that she had told anyone, except the Armstrongs, without whom she might never have recovered from that traumatic experience. But it had been over. There had even been days when she had not thought about him at all. And now to find she was not to be allowed to forget it was the cruellest blow of all.

‘Alain?’ said Malcolm now. ‘This, I assume, is Hassan’s brother.’

‘Yes.’

‘But their names are dissimilar. And Gauthier—that’s not an Arab name.

‘No.’ Ashley cleared her throat again. ‘There’s—there’s French ancestry somewhere in their history, and—and Alain’s mother was French, actually. She—she was his father’s second wife.’

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean your husband and his brother had different mothers?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Hassan—your husband—his mother died?’

‘No.’ Ashley spoke tautly. ‘So far as I know, she’s still alive. Prince—Prince Ahmed is a Moslem.’

Malcolm was amazed. ‘I see.’

Ashley had had enough of this. Pushing back her chair, she got to her feet, moving away from Malcolm and stiffening her spine. ‘So you see,’ she said, endeavouring to speak calmly, ‘my remaining here is—is quite out of the question. I shall look—–’