happy for me. I’ve got the most wonderful girl in the world.’
She wanted him, ached for him, and raged at the old-fashioned chivalry that made him refuse until they were married. She guessed that her youth preyed on his mind, but she knew too little of the world to respect his strength of will and consideration for her. She only felt that she wanted to be naked with him, make love to him, please him and be pleased by him. Her body was beautiful, but he would do nothing to claim her. It was insulting.
Since they had no money they spent their time together wandering in the park where the funfair had been. One day they took a boat out onto the lake. The weather was hot, and Andrew wore only a pair of shorts. She lay back blissfully and watched the sun turning his skin to gold as he pulled on the oars, making nothing of the task.
She thought of his strength, how she’d sensed it through his kisses, the movements of his hands, both tender and urgent. She knew he desired her and was fighting it. But how long could he hold out against his own feelings?
They pulled into a little island where they could picnic in a secluded spot under the trees. Afterwards she lay in the crook of his arm, listening to his heartbeat.
‘Do you love me?’ she whispered.
He raised himself, pushing her down onto the blanket and looking down on her. ‘How can you ask me that?’ he said in a quiet, serious voice. ‘Don’t you know by now how much I love you? Don’t you know that you fill the world for me?’
She reached up and touched his face with her fingertips, trying to smooth away the frown lines that hard work and study were already etching on his face. Slowly she worked her hands around to the back of his head and drew him down until his lips touched hers. Instantly she was afire, filled with need and longing. She pressed against him, kissing him back eagerly, fiercely, willing him to abandon himself to feeling and sensation.
To her delight she could sense it happening. He touched her like a man on the verge of losing control, caressing her face, her neck, her breasts through the thin cotton of her blouse. Where his fingers touched, his lips followed, burning her with their passion and satisfying her deeply. She gasped at the flickering of fire that went across her skin, making every inch of her newly aware.
She ran her hands over his bare back, feeling lean, hard muscles, sensing his strength. She wanted to kiss him everywhere.
He fumbled at the buttons of her blouse and she helped him, freeing her breasts to his adoring gaze. His lips against them sent shudders of delight through her, and then again when the tip of his tongue caressed one peaked nipple.
‘Andrew,’ she whispered, ‘darling, yes-please…’
He was fumbling at the waistband of her shorts, opening the button, drawing down the zipper, slipping his hand lovingly inside to where she was eager for him. In another few moments, she thought blissfully, she would know what love was really all about, and then-
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with shock. There was no desire on his face, only horror, like a man who’d awakened from a nightmare.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘Dear God, what am I doing?’ he said hoarsely. ‘I promised myself-’
He drew away and jumped to his feet. The next moment he’d taken to his heels and fled.
‘Andrew!’ she screamed.
But he kept on running as though the devil were after him. She buried her face in her hands, racked by sobs of frustration and rejection.
She was still weeping when he returned a few minutes later. The sight made him fling himself down beside her, taking her in his arms and murmuring words of love and tenderness.
‘Ellie, darling, forgive me. I never meant to make you cry, but I couldn’t go on,’ he said desperately.
‘But
‘Because I want you too much, can’t you understand that?’
‘No! How can you want me too much if you say you love me? It’s all a lie, isn’t it? You don’t really love me at all.’
He became angry. ‘Is that how love looks to you? A man has to grab you selfishly, take what he wants and to hell with you, before you can believe he loves you?’
‘But it wouldn’t be to hell with me because I want it too.’
‘What are you telling me? That I wouldn’t be the first?’ This was a new Andrew, his face dark with possessiveness. What was his was his.
‘No, I’m not saying that,’ she cried, losing her temper. ‘How dare you?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Ellie, please let’s not quarrel.’
‘If you loved me you’d want to make love to me,’ she wept.
‘And I do want to make love to you. Hell, if you knew how badly I want that! But not like this, out in the open where someone might come along. A quickie after lunch, as though you were some cheap floozie. I think better of you than that and you should think better of yourself.’
‘Stop preaching at me,’ she cried. ‘Everything I want is wrong according to you. You want to make me old before my time.’
‘I want to make you happy,’ he said miserably. ‘But I’m making a rotten job of it. Forgive me for hurting you.’
That was how it was between them. He was a hard, stubborn man, unshakeable in his resolve to do what he saw was right. She could break herself to bits against that rock. Yet the depth and intensity of his love were such that of the two it was he who was her slave, not the other way around. He wouldn’t yield, but he would be the first to apologise.
They made it up, after a fashion. But this time the reconciliation was different, tinged with caution. They had learned how they could hurt each other.
Jack Smith was still hanging around, ignoring Ellie’s engagement.
‘You won’t marry him,’ he told her once. ‘You want a bloke who knows how to enjoy life, like me.’
She was feeling especially sore with Andrew just then, for his stick-in-the-mud attitudes, and she smiled brilliantly at Jack, and didn’t deny.
After that he was often around, always available to escort her when Andrew was away working. One day Andrew turned up unexpectedly and found them having a drink together.
‘Don’t be stuffy,’ she cried, when he complained later.
‘Either you’re my girl or you’re not!’
‘Maybe I’m not if you’re going to put me on a ball and chain.’
‘He’s a bad lot, Ellie. Even you should be able to see that.’
‘What do you mean, even me?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, tell me.’
‘Someone without two thoughts to rub together,’ he snapped in one of his rare flares of temper.
‘Then I’m surprised you want to marry me.’
His face had softened. ‘Because I love you more than I can say. Sometimes I wish I didn’t, but I can’t help it.’
She too melted. ‘You don’t need to be jealous of Jack, honest.’
‘Jealous of that beefy idiot!’ he exploded. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
Perhaps they should have quarrelled properly and left it there. But a week later he arrived with plans.
‘I can get two weeks off in August, darling. It can be our honeymoon.’
‘But that’s next month,’ she gasped. Suddenly the socks and nappies had come awfully close, and she could almost see the prison bars.
Was that why she did it? How consciously did she decide to go out in the boat with Jack, to land on the same little island that she’d been with Andrew? Did she secretly know that Jack’s idea of a joke would be to push the boat out into the water, so that they were stranded?
Andrew arrived the day before their wedding to find her missing. How accusing his eyes were when she and Jack were finally rescued, after being on the island all night! She faced him in her mother’s house, defiant.
‘It was an accident, that’s all.’
