Instant Father

he screamed and screamed, but there was no sound.

But suddenly the suffocating silence was broken by the most beautiful, gentle voice he’d ever heard. Hands held him and he awoke to find himself staring, wild-eyed, into Norah’s face, clutching her as if she were his lifeline. And she was. He saw it now. He could see everything now.

“Gavin,” she said, shaking him to make him awaken properly. “Gavin, it’s all right. I’m here.” Then, as he continued to stare at her with a ghastly face, she pulled him against her and enfolded him in her arms, stroking his tousled hair and laying her cheek against him. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m here.”

“Thank God you are,” he said hoarsely. His face was pressed against her bare skin and he could breathe in the scent of feminine warmth and sweetness. Yet he was hardly aware of sexual provocation, only the ineffable bliss of being comforted.

“It must have been a terrible dream,” she murmured, “and you seem to have it so often.”

“How do you know?”

“I hear you. You cry out in your sleep almost every night. Tonight it was louder than usual. That’s why I came in.”

Once it would have appalled him to know she’d heard him crying out in his sleep. Now he only felt relief that she understood without explanations. “What was the dream about?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I wake up in a terrible state, full of fear and dread, and not knowing why.”

“If you could only remember, we might fight it together,” she sighed.

He grew still, trying to absorb this novel idea. Fighting was something he’d always done alone. His idea of “together” had been with Liz or Peter, two people he’d wanted to protect. The ideas of enlisting them on his side in the fight had simply never occurred to him. Now it seemed so obvious; as obvious as the fact that there was no one he wanted fighting for him more than Norah. “Together,” he murmured longingly. “If only we could.”

“We can. It’s not so hard.”

“It is for me,” he said with difficulty.

“Yes. For you. But we could still manage it, if we knew what you were afraid of.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say the old instinctive words, that he wasn’t afraid of anything. But that wouldn’t do, not here and now, now with this deeply honest woman. “I don’t know what I’m afraid of,” he said at last. “I’ve hidden it too deep. I’m-afraid to find it.”

“Why?” she probed gently. “Why are you afraid to find it?”

“Because it might be more than I could bear.” A shudder went through him. “Unless-unless you were there.”

“I’m here,” she said softly, stroking his hair. “I’ll always be here.”

As she spoke, he had a sudden brief vision of another nightmare-the nightmare of losing her, as though the things they would say now would lead irresistibly to their separation. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over now. The dream’s gone. We can’t drag it back, and we don’t need to.”

The words were hollow and false to his own ears, and he could only guess how they seemed to her. She didn’t answer, but drew back and looked him full in the face. Her eyes were kind, but full of disappointment, as though she’d found him a coward. “It’s all right,” he said desperately.

“If you say so.”

He held her tightly, as if to stop her going, while his thoughts whirled in torment. At last he asked, “Could you ever make out what I said?”

“Not in the past. It was just indistinct shouting. But tonight you were clearly saying, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.’ You kept shouting it over and over again. Does it mean anything?”

He told himself it didn’t mean a thing, but the wall of denial was starting to crumble, and through the cracks he could see the thing he’d hidden from all these years. He could see a little boy, just six years old, dragged screaming from his mother. The child’s sobs and cries tore into Gavin, and his desperate pleading to stay with the only person he loved made him cover his ears. But nothing could shut out the terrible sound because it was inside him, in the childhood self that still inhabited his man’s body. It had always been there, and it always would be.

“Yes,” he said at last. “It means something. When my mother left my father, she took me with her. We were happy. I loved her and she-she loved me. But my father persuaded the court that she was an unfit mother and he came after us armed with an order. He made me go with him. I didn’t want to. I begged and pleaded to stay with my mother, but he dragged me away by force-”

He shuddered and her arms tightened around him in a fierce, protective embrace. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

“I never saw her again,” Gavin said in a bleak voice. “She died soon after.”

This time Norah couldn’t say anything. She could only rock gently back and forth, trying to comfort the unhappy child through the man in whom he still lived. Norah disapproved of violence, but when she considered William, who’d wreaked such devastation on the man in her arms, her thoughts were savage.

“And that was the dream?” she asked gently.

“Yes. I’ve blotted the truth out all my life, because it was the only way I could survive. I remember feeling so helpless. My life could be turned upside down without any reference to my feelings, and there was nothing I could do about it. I swore I’d never be helpless again as long as I lived.”

“So that’s why-?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m the way I am-overbearing, brutal-”

“No, not brutal,” she said quickly. “I thought so once, but I know better now.”

“I hope you’re right. Not that it helps to know that now.”

“It always helps to know the truth about yourself.”

“Maybe. It’s too soon for me to see how that could be. All I know is that suppressing it hasn’t worked. Recently, it’s started to come back to the surface. I guess we both know why.”

“Why do you think?” Norah asked cautiously. In her heart she knew the answer, but she was breathless with hope at the way Gavin was learning understanding, and she wanted to know how far he’d gone.

“Because of Peter,” he answered. “My father tried for years to turn me into an extension of himself-”

“But he hasn’t managed it,” she couldn’t resist breaking in. “You seem like him on the surface, but underneath you’re more generous and unselfish than he could ever be.”

“I don’t know. I only know that he came frighteningly close to succeeding. I told Peter that he had to learn to fight the world like a man, and then I had the strangest sensation. It was because my father used those very words to me. I’d better face the worst now. I’ve turned into him-a man who’s unfit to care for a child.”

“Gavin, you’re being too hard on yourself-”

“Perhaps it’s time I was a little hard on myself. How many times have I told you that Peter had to come with me because he was mine, without thinking of his feelings? No wonder he turned away from me in fear. He feels about me the way I’ve always felt about my father, and that’s the worst thing of all. That’s the thing I’ve got to put right.”

He raised his head and looked her in the eyes. His face was ravaged. “I came so close to repeating history, didn’t I? I nearly damaged him as I was damaged. But I won’t let it happen. I have to stop it now.”

“How?” she asked.

“By leaving, going a long way away, where he’ll forget me.”

“Gavin, that’s not the way,” she said quickly.

“It’s the only way. I have to break the cycle and let him be free of me. I’m going to leave him with you.”

“No.” The cry broke from her. “You mustn’t go. Not now.”

He looked at her intently in the dim light. “Not now?” he asked tentatively.

She didn’t answer in words, but the truth was in her eyes. He no longer had any defenses against his feelings, and for almost the first time in his life he did what his instincts were telling him to do, without question, without fear, with nothing but an overwhelming need. Drawing her to him slowly he laid his lips on hers, and immediately felt a deep peace invade him, body and soul.

She melted against him, kissing him back with ardor and some other quality, something he hardly dared to hope was love. But as they held each other and the peace possessed him completely, he knew what it was that united them. It was bitter to discover the sweet truth when he had to leave her, but he had no regrets. If he had to live a