Authors: Stella Whitelaw
“Mr. Morgan,” she said. “What a coincidence.”
“Coincidence?” He looked at her vaguely, as if barely able to recognise who she was.
“Yes, coincidence. What a coincidence meeting you here.”
“Not really,” he said, looking at the view over her shoulder. “I live here.”
“No, you don’t. You live in London. You’ve got a flat. I remember you telling me.”
“My dear girl, I ought to know where I live and at present I live over there.”
He took her arm in a forceful manner and turned her in the direction of the farthest side of the mouth of the river. Two small houses perched on the lower cliff edge. One day there would be a rock fall and the cottages would go. They had already lost their gardens to the sea.
“The old coastguard cottages?”
“I’ve rented the empty one for a few months. I need somewhere quiet to write my play but near enough to London if there’s a meeting. My flat is being redecorated and they are modernising the lift. I couldn’t wait to get away. I moved in yesterday.”
“But why here?”
“I turned the car due south and drove. This suits me. I can get to London easily.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get all the peace and quiet you need down here,” said Reah, making as if to continue her walk.
“Hold on, Reah,” he said, catching her arm. “Don’t you want to say anything else?”
Reah looked at him blankly.
“Don’t you owe me an apology? I waited a whole hour.”
“I’m sorry,” said Reah. “I couldn’t telephone you. Miss Hardcastle broke her wrist and I had to stay with her.”
“Of course.”
He dropped her arm and jogged a few yards down the path. Reah hesitated. Alarm bells were ringing in her head, and she had the feeling that if she let him go, she would regret it for the rest of her life.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“I’m not a school teacher. I didn’t ask for a four page essay on why you didn’t turn up. I write plays that have to be forty-nine minutes and thirty seconds long. I thought your explanation was adequate.”
He came level with her, eyes narrowed against the glare of the sea; she could not tell the expression.
“Where’s your hat?” he asked.
The question took Reah totally by surprise. He remembered her old Trilby, guessed why she wore it. How could he understand the depth of her grief when he had himself added to her distress? They had to clear the air between them. It was time he knew who she was.
She studied his face intently, trying to see answers in his dark eyes, the tiny mole, the sensitive mouth, the blowing hair.
“I suppose you’ve no food if you’ve just moved in.”
“No. Shopping was next on my list.”
“I can offer an omelet and green salad.”
“A gastronomic delight,” he said with a gleam. “I’ll get a bottle of wine from the pub.”
It was a strange feeling showing Ewart into the cottage, knowing that it would mean a confrontation. Now he would understand her anger. He looked round the comfortable room approvingly, then his gaze was riveted to the row of silver cups and photographs of her father. He walked straight to them.
“Stanford Lawrence,” he breathed.
There was a colour photograph of Captain Lawrence in naval uniform, his cap tucked under one arm, his red hair streaked with grey, eyes fearless and penetratingly honest. Reah’s eyes.
“Your father was Stanford Lawrence, the lone yachtsman?” He could not keep the astonishment and awe out of his voice.
“Yes, you’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”
“Of course, who hasn’t? Why didn’t you tell me, Reah? Stanford Lawrence…what a man. So Leslie Lawrence is your brother?”
“No,” said Reah, with an inexpressible feeling of sadness. “Leslie Lawrence is not my brother. I don’t have a brother. I’m Lesley Lawrence. My father christened me for the son he never had. Reah is my middle name and everyone calls me Reah. The newspapers got it wrong, but there was no point in correcting their story. My father was dead. What did it matter whether he had a son or a daughter?”
Ewart groaned, his hand to his forehead. “My God, no wonder you hate me. I understand now. I could never fathom why you disliked me so much. I know I’ve got a wicked sarcastic streak, but what had I done? We would be getting on well, then suddenly it was like a curtain coming down. You just shut off from me, and there was no way of getting through to you. It was driving me mad. I can only say that I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”
“No, I can’t,” Reah cried with a rush of indignation. “I can’t forgive that way you hounded me, day and night, all those letters and phone calls. How could you be so callous? My father had only been dead a few days and you were already offering me money for his story.”
He caught her hand in a tight grip. “I know it must seem heartless to you, Reah, but truly time was important. I had admired your father for years. His war record, those long voyages alone, the time he drifted for days 4,000 miles from Cape Town without any provisions…I wanted to write about him. I didn’t want anyone else to get there before me and get the rights to his story.”
Reah’s anger spilled over. “He wasn’t a story,” she shouted. “He was a person, a man! You don’t sell a person. You don’t sell your dead father. How could you, when I was so distraught, so upset? All I got was letter after letter, insisting that I should do this, or do that.”
Ewart linked his arms loosely round her waist. She arched away from him but he was like a rock.
“I didn’t know it was as bad as that, Reah. My agent had no instructions to bully you.”
“Your agent?”
“Yes. I wasn’t writing to you. It was my agent. I have an agent who sells my work, gets work for me. I asked him to get the rights from Stanford Lawrence’s son—Leslie Lawrence.” He paused thinking back to the actual moment. “I remember saying something like I wanted to do the play at all costs, but I meant at all costs to myself. I had so much on my plate, but I would do it even if it meant giving up something else, working day and night. He must have taken it to mean to get the rights at all costs. Perhaps that’s why he was so insistent.”
He touched her chin with the merest thread of a caress. Reah felt the burden of hatred roll of her shoulders. She believed him.
“What about the phone call in the middle of the night?” she faltered, but the anger had gone out of her voice.
“My agent told me that you were refusing to answer our letters. I was desperate. So I telephoned. Unfortunately I was in New York and forgot it was after midnight. I seem to remember you hung up on me.” He chuckled.
“You bet I did. I didn’t want to speak to you. And I never wanted to mention the subject again. That’s why I never told you who my father was,” said Reah, her eyes bright with tears. “This afternoon on the cliff, I had a k-kind of message. The sea was glittering and it was like Morse code…I thought about how I had lost my father and…and…”
“No more,” he said gently, rocking her in his arms. “How very hard this had been for you. To bear alone. But you’re not alone any more. I am here.”
He was touching her face with infinite tenderness, tracing the high line of her cheek bone, down to the soft trembling curves of her mouth. Reah felt herself yearning for his touch. He was bringing her alive.
“Your father was one of the bravest men of his time. Take comfort from that; strength, determination, will-power. All his qualities.”
She nodded. “He was on the North Atlantic run at the beginning of the war, an escort destroyer on convoy duty. He survived all that. Then the lonely long-haul sailing with so much danger every day. And he dies in a sudden squall off Shoreham. It doesn’t seem possible that he should live through so much then perish in some freak weather.”
He heard the racking pain in her voice. It was unanswerable.
“I don’t know the right words,” he said. “I don’t think they exist. But from what I’ve read about your father, I’m sure that a sudden squall was a preferable end to months in hospital or the inactivity of an old people’s home.”
“It was a new sailing boat,” Reah went on. “It was a new design and he called it
Reah
. His enthusiasm for the boat was like an extension of loving me. I feel responsible…” Her voice trailed away.
He pulled her roughly to him, his hands thrust through her hair, his cheek against her head. She could feel his body iron hard against her softer, yielding flesh.
“Reah, Reah. You must start living. Your thoughts are dominated by the past. Life is what’s important. Life like this.”
His voice was husky as his mouth came down on her lips, till her neck ached with the pressure. She was living for his touch, returning his ardent kisses; her body hungered for him. All her old anger turned into a melting desire.
His fingers traced the fine line of her jaw, down her neck to the small hollow of her throat. He was bringing her alive with a gentleness that belied all the toughness of the man she once hated.
Ewart put his arms under her knees and lifted her up into his arms. She felt her heart beating suffocatingly.
“I don’t think I can carry you up those narrow stairs,” he said against her hair. “But that couch looks like heaven.”
He laid her gently on the cushions, twining his arms round her and turning her face so that he could reach her lips. She wanted him so dreadfully; all sense had left her. She could no longer think coherently. All she wanted was to be loved and loved by Ewart, even if it was only this once.
“Love me, love me…” she murmured wildly.
She felt him push her away. There was air between them where before their bodies had been so close.
He brushed her forehead with his cheek, lightly, softly.
“Not yet, little one,” he said. “That was just a taste of things to come. I promise you.” He looked deeply into her eyes as he repeated those words. “I promise you, Reah. One day I will love you as no man has ever loved a woman.”
Chapter Eight
Supper was pleasant. Both Reah and Ewart were relieved from making a commitment they were not yet ready to make.
Afterwards Ewart insisted that he saw her sketches.
“I’ve already prepared the treatment,” he said. “That’s planning the number of scenes. Every time there’s a change of location, it means a new scene number, even if the shot is only a few seconds long.”
Reah felt a thrill of excitement. “And you plan to use my sketches to link the scenes?”
“I want a build up of tension leading to the disaster of the flood. Your little sketches stop the action, ask a question, make a statement, giving the viewer glimpses of what’s at stake.”
“Have you started the writing?”
He shook his head. “It was hopeless. Pneumatic drills, hammering, the phone. I had to get away. I need a few weeks alone, to work like fury, to write it all in one concentrated effort.”
He left early, giving Reah a friendly kiss on the cheek as if those moments of passion had never been. She watched him walk away as she had so many times.
She collected up the remainder of her sketches from the floor and put them away. Ewart had taken what he wanted. A cheque would arrive through the post. She would have her central heating before the winter came.
Her head was beginning to ache. She knew it was tension. She had never expected to see Ewart again; now he would be living almost on her doorstep.
Suddenly she remembered the package of Ewart’s clothes, laundered, pressed and ready for return. She ran to the cottage door and called into the dark.
“Ewart, Ewart, come back.”
But he was already out of earshot.
That night she could not sleep, remembering Ewart’s warm body against her and his passionate kisses. She waited for morning to come, knowing that work was the only way to erase him from her mind.
The Autumn term started and Reah went back to college.
“Are you all right, Reah?” Miss Hardcastle’s broken wrist was still in plaster, cradled in a sling made from a folded silk scarf. She was carrying an awkward pile of registers under her good arm.
“Let me take those,” said Reah. “Where to?”
“My office. How do you like your new classes?”
“Fine. Quite a mixed bunch this year but I’m sure they’ll soon shape up. And I want to try out some new ideas—if you don’t mind, Miss Hardcastle?”
“You know I don’t interfere with your department. As long as you are not planning a series of murals on the conference hall walls.”
“What a good idea,” said Reah with a twinkle. “I hadn’t thought of that.
Southdean through the Ages—something like that?”
“I think it might take some explaining to the governors.”
It was dusk before Reah left college and was able to take the package of Ewart’s clothes down to the coastguard’s cottage. She walked along the Cuckmere river path, the wild fowl and migrating birds flocking for the night on the islands. The sea was pounding the shingle beach, the ozone fresh and invigorating.
She would hand him the package and the cheque to cover her debts, then retreat quickly. He would not want to be disturbed.
As she climbed the stony path to the red brick and stone cottage, she was unprepared for what she was about to see.