A Perfect Marriage (23 page)

After he'd brought her dinner, an unambitious chicken soup from a packet and a pile of toast, with fresh fruit to follow, she asked him, "Are you and Kate ... living together?"

"No." The bald monosyllable seemed designed to stifle any further questions.

Carefully casual, she said, "I thought you would be by now."

"We don't want to rush things."

For Kate's sake, Celine surmised. Perhaps Kate was less certain than Max of her feelings. Slowly tearing apart a piece of unwanted toast, she said, "I suppose there's no hurry. You can't marry her until you divorce me." She dropped the mangled pieces of toast back on the plate.

"No." He bit off the word. "Have you finished with that?"

"Yes, thank you." She let him take the tray. "I'd like to go downstairs."

He paused in the doorway. "Wait until I come back."

She didn't feel at all unwell now, but she waited, and he stayed at her side until she reached the lounge and sat on the sofa. Max made coffee and they watched the TV news and then a wildlife programme that they'd seldom missed, and a thriller serial. It was, Celine thought, like so many Sunday

  
 
evenings
they'd spent at home. Unexciting, she supposed, but comfortable.

But on those other evenings she hadn't found her attention straying from the screen to Max's face, her eyes studying the exact slope of his nose, the jut of his chin,
the
firm contours of his mouth, with longing.

You didn't know what you had until you'd lost it, she told herself as the credits rolled up the screen.

"Anything else you'd like to see?"
Max enquired, wait ing for her to shake her head before he switched off the set.
"Maybe the current affairs programme later," she said.

"Do you want to stay for it?"

"I'm staying the night," he said.

"Oh, but-"

"I'm not leaving you alone," he told her.
"Supposing you get sick or faint in the night?
Don't worry," he added, "I'll sleep in the spare room-but leave your door ajar in case you need me."

Celine opened her mouth and shut it again. Why argue when she knew she'd lose? And why argue when she didn't really want to? At times she'd been bitterly hurt and angry, as she knew she had every right to be-even Max
himself
acknowledged that. But tonight she was very tired and in need
of
care and solace. It felt nice that Max was prepared to give it to her.

Chapter 11

Celine opened her eyes on darkness. For some time she'd been experiencing discomfort, half waking and then dozing.

She'd gone to bed soon after nine-thirty, Max watchfully taking the stairs at her elbow although she'd assured him she felt perfectly fine. She hadn't slept for some time though, listening to the muted sounds of him preparing for bed in the guest room. He'd kept the light on for a while, the warm glow just visible through her obediently opened door. But long after he'd turned it off she had lain tense and rigid, fighting a desire to go to him, slip into bed beside him and ask him to make love to her.

The longing was almost a physical pain, and when she finally drifted into sleep she'd dreamed that Max was beside her, taking her in his arms, loving her...

She couldn't see her watch, but it must be well after midnight. The house was silent. Celine sighed. It was no use trying to go back to sleep now, she needed to use the bathroom. Reluctantly she pushed back the covers.

  
 
When she switched off the bathroom light and came back into the room it was very dark, and she didn't see Max standing there until she cannoned into him, with a little scream of fright.

"It's all right," he said. "It's only me."

He had his hands on her arms, and hers were flattened on his bare chest, her cheek resting on his shoulder. She inhaled his familiar male scent, and instinctively relaxed against him. "Max!"

Through the thin nightgown she wore the heat of his body warmed hers. His breath stirred her hair. "Sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to scare you. I heard the water running and thought you might have been sick."

"Not this time." She didn't want to move, and as his hands loosened she instinctively slid her arms about his waist, realising with a slight shock that he was wearing nothing but a skimpy pair of underpants. "Max," she breathed. Memories of her erotic dream floated into her mind. Maybe she was still dreaming ... because she felt a stirring of his body, heard him catch his breath.

She let her hands wander down, smoothing the taut male flanks, and pressed her mouth to his skin.

"Celine!"
His hands tightening cruelly on her shoulders, he pushed her away, putting a foot of space between them. He was breathing hard. "Wake up, Celine
, "
he said harshly. "You don't want this."

She wasn't asleep. She was burningly, tinglingly awake, and alive in a way she hadn't been for some time. "Yes, I do," she said. "And so do you."

He took a deep, shuddering breath and let her go, taking a step back. "Don't mistake a normal reflex for something it isn't," he said.

That hurt. Oh, it hurt. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out. "Are you sure that isn't what you've been doing?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that maybe you mistook a normal, passing attraction to a pretty girl for something more serious."

"I won't discuss my relationship with Kate, Celine." He sounded very remote.

"Are you afraid there might be some truth in what I'm saying?"

"I just don't think it's an appropriate subject for us to get into."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!"
Furious and mortified at his rebuff, she was hot and shaking. "You've broken up our marriage because of her, discarded everything we had for the last twelve years, and we're not supposed to discuss it? This does happen to affect me, you know. It's my marriage that's being thrown on the dust heap! So don't you tell me it's inappropriate to discuss it with
me!
"

"You may have a point," Max conceded stolidly, "but this is hardly the time or place."

She supposed he felt at a disadvantage, standing almost naked in her-their bedroom.

"Anyway," he added, "you ought to get back into bed."

"You wouldn't care to join me?" she asked with a degree of sarcasm as she moved towards it.

His voice was strained as he said, "You don't really mean that."

"You know, I never realised," she said, getting under the sheet, "how omniscient you are, Max. You know what I really don't want, and what I really don't mean-next you'll be telling me what I really don't feel. Go on, why don't you?" she goaded him. "Tell me I don't feel hurt, or humiliated, belittled or betrayed. I don't feel that I've wasted twelve years of my life on something that was never what I thought it was. I don't feel anything that you don't want me to feel, anything that will make you uncomfortable."

"That's not fair, Celine!"

"7 don't feel fair!" she almost shouted at him. "You wanted a marriage that was friendly and pleasant and didn't make too many demands on you. You got it. Now you want something else, and you expect me to make the divorce pleasant and friendly, too. Well, it doesn't necessarily work like that, Max. Divorce is messy and wounding and heart-

  
 
breaking
. And I can't make it any other way for your convenience."

"You wanted that kind of marriage, too," he said accusingly. "Haven't you ever felt that you wanted something more?"

Not until now, Celine thought bleakly. Not until Max had found it-with someone else. "Why couldn't you have told me," she said, "if you were bored and restless? We've always talked about things. Couldn't you have talked about this?"

"I wasn't bored-or if I was, I didn't know it," he said, "until I met Kate. And I did try-I tried to bring some excitement, some variety, into our marriage. Remember the holiday we never had? Oh, I'm not blaming you, it was a collection of unfortunate circumstances, but the fact is we never did have that time away alone. Even that night that the night of the party, I told myself how lucky I was having a woman like
you, that
many men would have envied me. That marriage didn't need to be a collection of habits, it needn't be predictable. That we had good, exciting sex together and a lot more besides."

"The night you substituted me for Kate, you mean," Celine said bitingly.

He said, "It wasn't like that-"

"You told me that making love to me was a lie."

"In a way.
It's ... complicated. I admit that when I came home my mind was full of Kate. Then I saw you and ...I saw all that I was endangering, everything we'd built over the years of our marriage-even before. We've known each other so long.
Our marriage-you-were important to me.
I wanted to hold on to it. I thought if I made love to you I'd forget her."

"But you couldn't." Of course he couldn't, the girl was in the same workplace with him five days a week.

"For a little while I did. You were very passionate that night. More than you'd ever been."

Because that night his lovemaking had an edge, an extra dimension that she'd never known before.

"I thought we'd be all right," he said. "I wanted to take you away somewhere, make love and talk, perhaps find out new things about each other. But it didn't happen. You seemed uninterested. You liked your life as it was, and you'd filled it with a lot of things that didn't seem to leave any time for me. Oh, I know-" he added as she made a small sound of protest "- there was Dora, and your father. But even before that I didn't seem to be getting through to you. I suppose we'd lived on the surface for so long I could hardly expect you to head for deeper waters with me just because I was-discontented."

"You never said so," she said. "You might have told me."

"It wasn't easy to put into words.
A feeling that something was missing from my life-from our marriage.
Something that we'd never had. Something I was wanting, more and more."

"And that's what you've found with Kate?"

There was a long pause before he said quietly, "Yes."

That, Celine thought later, was the moment when she knew she had truly lost him. When she knew that despite Honoria's advice and her own feelings, she had to let Max go. Because with Kate he had found something he'd never found with her, that she would never, now, experience herself.

In discovering how much she loved him, she had sealed her own lonely fate. There was nothing she wanted more in the world at this moment than to embark with Max on that voyage of discovery, but now it was too late. He was committed to making the voyage with another woman. All he wanted from Celine was his freedom to make it. That was the only gift her love could give.

A great, hard lump in her throat almost choked her. Her eyes were burning and tearless. Into the silence, Max's voice said quietly, "Good night, Celine."

She couldn't answer him. The darkness shifted and she knew he was leaving the room, his bulk briefly
silhouetted ,
in the doorway, and then he silently returned to the other room. Faintly she thought she heard the bed creak as he lay

  
 
down
.
And after that, nothing.
She buried her face in the pillow and fiercely closed her eyes, willing sleep to come.

In the morning she kept herself aloof and composed. Max had brought her breakfast on a tray, remaining in the bedroom as a precaution while she showered, only taking the tray down when she was dressing.

"If you have time to drive me over to Dad's," she told him, "I'll bring my car back."

She must have looked better because he hardly demurred at all, only insisting on following her home again, "Just in case."

Once she'd garaged the car she went over to his, where he sat with the engine idling, and told him crisply, "Thanks for the help. I really don't need you now. You'd better go and make your peace with Kate."

R 'My peace?"

"You haven't seen much of her this weekend. She'll have missed you:'
Her
voice, she noted proudly, was perfectly steady and casual.

Max gave her a rather penetrating look and said, "Look after
yourself
."

"I will." Celine mustered a smile and stepped back, lifting a hand.
"'Bye."

When he'd left, she allowed the smile to fade and walked slowly up the steps and into the house, fighting a mood of black despair.

It isn't the end of the world, she told herself. But it felt like the end of hers.

It was Roland who finally took her to see a doctor. They had been walking around the office block, planning where partitions and cupboards and extra washrooms should go, and talking colour schemes, when she went suddenly pale and looked around for somewhere to sit down. The place was bare of furniture and she had to sink to the floor in the end, her back against a wall and her forehead resting on her raised knees while Roland knelt anxiously beside her.

 
When she was on her feet again, he refused to continue the tour, instead bundling her into his car and whisking her off to see his own G.P. whose surgery was close by.

Hovering in the waiting room, he took her arm when she came out and led her back to his car. "Anything serious?" he asked, his concerned brown eyes scanning her face.

Rather dazed, she was staring straight through the windscreen. After a moment she turned and gave him an absent smile of reassurance. "No. I'm probably a bit anaemic. He wants me to have some tests done, but I said I'd see my own doctor."

"Will you?" Roland looked at her sternly.

"Yes. I will. It's nice of you to bother, Roland. Really, there's nothing to worry about."

Nancy came to see her, admitting when Celine asked her point-blank that Max had urged her to do so. "I told him I wasn't sure you'd want me to come, but he made me promise, said you'd been off-colour and someone should keep an eye on you."