Sally Wentworth - A Very Public Affair

‘Perfectly clear,’ Clare answered shortly, her colour rising. Tugging her arm free, she headed towards the stairs.

Watching her, seeing the injured set of her shoulders, Jack gave an inner groan. ‘Look, I didn’t mean...’ But she was already running down the stairs.

The sleep had done him little good; for the rest of that day he kept dozing in the chair and jerking awake. In the afternoon his father’s breathing seemed to have eased a little and Jack looked at him hopefully, wondering if, against all the odds, he would recover. Towards evening, hardly able to keep his eyes open, Jack went down to the kitchen to make himself a drink. Clare, reading in her room, heard him go, and return some ten minutes later. Then came the most terrible sound—a great cry of anguish followed by, ‘No! No! Oh, God, no!’

Leaping up, she ran out onto the landing. Jack came slowly out of his father’s room, his face completely white and rigid with shock.

‘What is it? What’s happ—?’ Clare suddenly realised, and her heart filled with sympathy for Jack.

His voice slurred, unnatural, he said, ‘He’s dead.’

Clare reached out a tentative hand of comfort but he didn’t even see it. Brushing past her, Jack went down the stairs and into the study where he’d left his mobile phone. Even though he had expected this, the shock was so great that his mind was refusing to really take in what had happened, to accept the finality of it. It was as if that part of his mind and all the emotions that it would evoke had been blanked off, and he was concentrating entirely on practical things. With a hand that visibly shook, Jack called the doctor and told him.

‘There’s a snow plough in the village now,’ Jack was told. ‘I’ll get the driver to come up your lane and I’ll follow with an ambulance. They’ve already cleared most of the road, so it shouldn’t take too long.’

But it was over three hours before they heard a noise outside and saw the lights of the vehicles. Jack spent the time pacing the floor in the hall, just striding up and down, refusing to think, to feel, while Clare stayed quietly in the kitchen out of the way, sensing that he needed to be alone. The doctor, looking tired out, dealt quickly with the formalities. Old Mr Straker’s body was taken away in the ambulance and then Jack and Clare were alone again in the silent house.

Jack had gone up with the doctor to his father’s room and hadn’t come down. After a while Clare went upstairs and got ready for bed, but as she came out of the bathroom she heard what sounded like a groan, and stood irresolutely on the landing.

Inside the room Jack stared down at the empty bed, the mental padlocks he had put on his mind slowly dissolving as he at last began to accept his father’s death. And, because he had held back his feelings with such iron will-power and determination for all these hours, his feelings completely overwhelmed him as he relaxed. He was consumed by a tidal wave of grief that robbed him of all self-control. He went out of the room, staggering, holding onto the door jamb as if his legs wouldn’t support him.

Clare saw that his arm was up across his face and he looked to be in deep distress. Going to him, she took his arm and he leaned heavily on her. ‘I wasn’t there!’ he exclaimed brokenly, anger and guilt adding to his grief. ‘All these hours—and yet I wasn’t there when he went, when he needed me.’ Swinging away from her he leaned his head against the wall, beating at it with his clenched fists. ‘There was still so much to say. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t wake,’ Clare soothed. She shut the door of the room and tried to pull Jack away. He let her lead him. His body was shaking not only from grief but from utter exhaustion, she saw. ‘You’re so tired; you must sleep now.’

The bed in his own room wasn’t made up so she guided him into hers. He was still muttering incoherently and shaking his head from side to side in deep grief, blaming himself for going downstairs. ‘I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have left him.’

‘You weren’t to know.’

She sat him on the bed and bent to pull off his shoes, tried to push him back onto the pillow. But he got agitatedly to his feet and strode up and down the small room as if he were in a prison cell. Then abruptly he sat down again, his head in his hands.

Words were a waste of time; it was too soon for them, Clare realised. So she sat down next to him and put comforting arms round his shoulders. His body was shaking and for a while he couldn’t control his grief—the terrible pain of it, the dreadful fatigue that left him without the strength to hide it.

Somehow it didn’t feel strange, holding him like this. Jack was still virtually a stranger, and yet she knew exactly what he was going through—understood all the raw emotion that engulfed him. It didn’t seem at all incongruous that her slight strength should support him, that he should lean against her while he went through these first terrible spasms of ache and loss.

Clare went on holding him for what seemed a long time, but eventually his trembling eased a little and he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and lifted his head. Clare went to move away but he turned within her arms. His eyes, dark and still wide with shock, held hers. She was wearing just an old shirt that she’d found in a drawer, a man’s, much too big for her and coming down to her knees. Jack, his face intense, reached out to touch it at the neck.

‘This was his.’

‘Yes.’ She tried to say sorry, thinking that he was offended by it, but the words died in her throat as she looked into his eyes and began to understand even more.

Slowly he ran his fingers down over her breast. ‘You’re so alive,’ he said huskily, his voice strained. ‘So alive.’

Clare caught her breath at his touch. Instinctively she knew what he wanted—and why. His father’s death had made him realise his own vulnerability, how precarious life was. He needed to be close—very close—to someone, to convince himself that life could go on. For a long moment she looked deeply into the intense grey eyes that held hers, then stood up and slowly lifted the shirt, pulled it over her head and stood before him in all the beauty of her naked youth.

Jack groaned as he looked at her, a sound almost of agony, then reached out a trembling hand to touch her waist, her thighs. ‘Are you sure? Oh, God, are you sure?’

For answer she leant forward and placed her lips against his.

The trembling in his body was so strong that she could feel it even in this light touch. For a moment he just let her kiss him, but then Jack surged to his feet, his hand behind her head, his mouth taking hers now in urgent need. Still kissing her, making small, animal sounds against her mouth, he somehow dragged off his clothes until he, too, was naked. He touched her breasts and ran kisses down her throat as she arched her neck, wanting him now. Bending her back against his arm, he let his other hand run free over her, glorying in her living warmth, the velvet softness of her skin.

Jack’s need for her was dreadful, the deepest hunger he’d ever known, an ache so bad that he could scarcely bear the pain of it. He needed to shut out the pictures in his mind, to experience the joy, the certainty of sexual fulfilment—to convince himself that life was still sweet. He needed it so badly that nothing else mattered, not conscience, convention, not even common sense.

In the young, pliant body in his arms he knew he would find solace, would assuage the devils of guilt and grief that haunted his mind. His hot, unsteady hands pulled her close to him so that he could hold her against his length, feel the heat of her. He heard her gasp when he put his hands low on her hips and held her against his growing manhood. That excited him unbearably. He wound his hand in her long dark hair and took her mouth again, letting passion have free rein. She was excited now, he could feel it in the heat of her skin, hear it in her gasping breath. Her hands were on him, as eager as his own.