Alison Fraser - The Strength Of Desire

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Hope demanded in return.

‘Nothing, just…’ He hesitated for the first time, then switched to saying, ‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot. My fault, I admit. I misunderstood the situation.’

‘That’s all right.’ Hope was ready to forgive him. She didn’t want to be enemies with Jack’s family.

‘However,’ he continued in a serious vein, ‘I still feel you really should consider what you’re doing. You’re only seventeen. You’ve just lost your father. You’re vulnerable…’

‘I can take care of myself,’ Hope claimed, but not quite convincingly, as her fingers plucked agitatedly at the tablecloth.

‘Fine, take care of yourself,’ he echoed, stilling her hand with his. ‘Just don’t let Jack do it for you.’

He spoke with such force that Hope’s eyes flew to his. She met their steady grey gaze and for a moment saw the man behind the dispassionate mask. She sensed his strength, and was scared by his certainty. For a moment she almost listened to him, then Jack suddenly returned to the table.

‘Holding hands?’ Jack enquired, not quite casually, as he tried to assess the situation.

Hope flushed although she had nothing to feel guilty about. Not then. She hastily pulled her fingers from Guy’s grip.

He was unflustered, drawling to his brother, ‘Not exactly. I was just trying to persuade Hope that she was about to make the biggest mistake of her young life.’

‘By marrying me?’ Jack concluded, and laughed out loud when his brother nodded. ‘That’s what I love about my little brother. You can always trust him to be totally up front about things…Well, you’re wrong this time, Guy. Hope and I are going to make the distance. Just watch…’

‘Just watch.’ Hope shut her eyes as she recalled Jack’s words all those years ago. Guy had watched all right. He’d watched his words come true. He’d watched their marriage disintegrate. He’d…more than watched.

Hope caught the direction of her thoughts and put a brake on them. She wasn’t going down that road again.

She looked at her watch, and, realising she’d lost almost an hour, got up quickly to fix her face.

She’d just finished washing when Maxine announced her presence with the usual banging doors. She hadn’t time to put on make-up before her daughter tracked her down to the bathroom. For once Hope wished she’d taken a less liberal attitude on privacy.

Maxine walked in, took one look at her face and demanded, ‘What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.’

It sounded like an accusation, but then everything did at the moment with Maxine.

‘No…Well, actually, yes.’ Hope wished she’d rehearsed this speech. ‘It’s…it’s your father.’

‘My father? Don’t tell me—he’s dead,’ Maxine said, but purely for dramatic effect.

While Hope searched futilely for the right words, her face gave away the truth.

Maxine shook her head as if denying it, then started to back away from her.

‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Hope made to reach out a hand but her daughter kept backing away. ‘A car accident. I don’t know the details. It was on the radio. I’m sorry—-’

‘Well, I’m not!’ Maxine almost shouted at her. ‘And don’t expect me to cry! Just don’t…’

With that, Maxine turned and ran from the room.

Hope followed her daughter to her room. She found her face down on the bed, crying like a baby.

Hope sat down beside her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Maxine stiffened, then, turning on her back, sobbed out, ‘I don’t care. I hate him! I hate him!’

‘I know. I know. It’s all right,’ Hope said in comforting tones, and stroked strands of hair from her daughter’s tear-soaked face.

Maxine looked at her in utter misery, then accused, ‘It was your fault, all your fault!’

It hurt. Of course it hurt, but Hope did not retaliate. Maxine was right. The whole mess was her fault.

Hope contained her own feelings, but Maxine read the pain in her mother’s eyes, and hesitated between attack and remorse. In the end she sat up and threw her arms round Hope’s neck, and began crying again.

‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ she cried into her mother’s neck.

‘No, I know.’ Hope held her daughter and rocked her gently, as she had when Maxine was a baby.

But her thoughts were elsewhere. With another baby. A baby held briefly in her arms, all those years ago.

She remembered how much she’d wanted children, how she’d imagined being a mother would make her complete. She hadn’t questioned why she’d felt incomplete.

She’d also imagined Jack would be happy, too, but, of course, she’d been quite wrong…

‘You’re what?’ he had almost shouted at her when she’d told him.

The joy had drained from her face as she’d repeated, ‘I’m pregnant. Three months.’

She’d waited and waited. For a smile. A flicker of happiness. A gesture of concern. Anything other than Jack’s expression of utter dismay.

He’d recovered himself eventually, saying, ‘It’s a shock. I thought we’d have some time together. We agreed…’

‘I know.’ Hope nodded. They had agreed to take precautions, but something had gone wrong. ‘I didn’t plan it. I didn’t realise you’d mind so much.

‘It’s not that,’ Jack denied, although his lack of enthusiasm was almost palpable. He strode across to the drinks cabinet and fixed himself a stiff drink, before running on, ‘It just doesn’t fit in very well with our plans. My world tour starts in three months and won’t finish before the baby would be born…Perhaps we should wait.’

‘Wait?’ Hope echoed, confused. ‘Wait before you go on tour, you mean?’

‘No, that’s impossible. The tour can’t be cancelled,’ he told her firmly. ‘I just thought…Well, if you’re only three months along…’ He left the idea hanging there.

Hope caught it and her heart sank. ‘You think we should cancel the baby.’ She finally said the words aloud. They were like stones in her heart.

‘I’d hardly term it that,’ Jack said, ‘but, yes, I feel we should consider the alternatives…’

Perhaps Maxine was right. It really was her fault. If she’d listened to Jack, terminated that baby and waited for another, their marriage might have survived. But that baby had been real to her, a person even in the early stages of pregnancy. To terminate on a matter of convenience had been abhorrent to her.

‘Look, Maxine.’ She spoke quietly to her daughter now. ‘I realise you haven’t seen much of your father over the years, but, as I’ve explained before, it was never personal to you.’

‘I know—he didn’t like children.’ Maxine grossly simplified what Hope had actually told her over the years. “Then why did he come those times? Why did he bother?’

Hope had asked herself the same question many times. After ten years’ silence, Jack had turned up on impulse on her doorstep one afternoon, and been all charm to a daughter who, at ten, was already promising to be beautiful. With Hope’s blue eyes and wide, smiling mouth, Maxine still managed to look quite different, her features more defined and her hair a mass of thick black waves.

‘It would have been better if he’d never come,’ Maxine said now, her tears turned to anger as she scrambled off the bed and went to wash in the basin in her room.

Hope agreed with her, but at the time she’d been unable to control the situation. Jack had wanted a daughter, for a while at least, and Maxine had wanted a father. But Jack’s interest hadn’t, of course, lasted.

‘I’m sorry about the way things turned out, Maxine,’ Hope said gently, when her daughter finished drying her face.