Tug Of Love. Penny Jordan
was too young to think of committing her life to someone she had only known a matter of a handful of months.
She was over eighteen, and her parents could not stop them from marrying, she had pointed out defiantly.
What about university? her parents had countered. What about her future?
James was her future, she had told them.
Even James himself suggested tentatively that it might be better if they were to wait, but she immediately burst into tears, accusing him of not wanting her. He had taken hold of her to comfort her, and within seconds she was clinging eagerly to him.
It had been after the first time they had made love and she had confessed to him that, despite her promise to do so, she had still not asked her doctor for a prescription for the contraceptive pill that James had insisted on not just making her an appointment at the family planning clinic, but on going there with her. A baby at this stage in their relationship, or indeed for several years after they were married, was simply not feasible, he had told her.
‘You’re so very young,’ he had groaned when he saw her face. ‘Sometimes I think your parents are right and that we should wait, but I want you so much…’
They had been married two months later, much against the wishes of her parents, a quiet church ceremony because she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to be James’s wife.
They had bought a small sturdy stone-built cottage on the outskirts of the town, and for a while, for a very short while, Win had been blissfully happy. James was a tender, considerate lover, gradually allowing her to discover her sexuality, and it was only years later, long after their divorce, that she actually realised how much he himself must have been holding himself back.
He had been unselfish and loving to her then, cherishing her, loving her, laughing when she burned his meals and he had to iron his own shirts. When flushed with mortification and shame, she had asked him if he regretted marrying her, he had taken her in his arms and told her that it wasn’t her housewifely skills he had married her for.
‘Besides,’ he had whispered against her mouth, ‘after Christmas you’ll be starting college, and you won’t have time for ironing and cooking then.’
That had been a bone of contention between them. Win had been quite content to be his wife, wanting nothing more, but he had insisted that, while she might have given up her chance to go to university, that did not mean she could not take a degree course here at home.
‘What do I need a degree for now?’ she had asked him. ‘I don’t want a career. Just you and our children.’
James had looked at her seriously.
‘You’re so young, Win,’ he had told her. ‘You think that now, but one day…’
They had argued about it, but he had been insistent, and then had come her flu and Charlie’s conception.
Had it been because she had known how he would feel that she had deliberately kept back the news for as long as she could?
When she had finally broken the news to him, at first he had been shocked and angry. Through her tears she had watched him pacing their sit-ting-room as he told her, ‘It’s too soon, Win. We still hardly know one another.’
And she had discovered over the months that followed how little she knew him.
He had changed his job, getting one that paid far more money in the city, so that consequently she hardly ever saw him.
Her family, to whom she turned for sympathy and company, seemed to share James’s view that her pregnancy was something that should simply not have happened so early on in their marriage.
‘Of course I shan’t be able to go to college now,’ she had said to James, and had winced as she saw the look in his eyes. It was almost as though he had thought she had deliberately got pregnant so that she wouldn’t have to go to college.
The first rifts in their relationship had begun.
And then had come the evening James had told her they had to attend a company function. She had been seven months pregnant at the time and feeling acutely uncomfortable; perhaps because she was so small, with her pregnancy, she had become very large, the slowing down of her body irritating and hampering her.
They had ceased making love. Win had been so angry with James when he had not welcomed the news of her pregnancy that when he attempted to touch her she had pushed him away, and now he no longer tried to touch her. She ached for him to do so, but pride wouldn’t allow her to find the words to tell him, and a small festering worm of misery suggested to her that perhaps he no longer wanted to make love to her now that she was pregnant and so enormous.
And then, at his new firm’s annual dinner dance, she had seen the way Tara Simons was looking at him, the way she stood far too close to him, angling her body, her slim, supple, unpregnant body against his; the way she deliberately excluded Win from the conversation, the way she subtly put Win down by mentioning her qualifications, talking enthusiastically to James about their work, a subject which excluded Win completely. She knew little or nothing about computer software.
Win’s woman’s instinct had told her immediately that Tara wanted James, and just as immediately she had suspected that despite his disclaimers James did find her attractive. How could he not do so? Tara was tall, a redhead, with long catlike-green eyes and a sensuality that even Win could see.
The rifts between them widened and hardened. James took to sleeping in the spare room—so as not to disturb her, he told her when she managed to force herself to question him about it.
Her mother had called round unexpectedly one day when Win was on her own. It was a Saturday morning, and James had announced that he had to go into the office. Win had rung him there when she realised he hadn’t said what time he would be back, and had dropped the receiver as though it burned when Tara answered the call.
‘Win! My dear, are you all right?’ her mother had asked her anxiously as Win opened the door to her.
Win had suddenly seen herself, from her mother’s expression, as her mother had been seeing her—her hair unwashed and untidy, the smock she was wearing grubby and unironed, her face unmade-up and puffy from her pregnancy.
Her mother’s frown had deepened when she saw the untidy state of the sitting-room, and the washing up piled in the kitchen.
She knew how untidy and unappealing everything looked, including her, Win admitted to herself, but she was so tired all the time, and besides, what was the point? James was never there, and when he was…When he was, it seemed to her that he didn’t want to be with her. She saw the way he looked at her sometimes, frowning as he studied her, no doubt wondering why on earth he had married her, she thought miserably.
No doubt he would have preferred to be married to someone like Tara—someone who was far too clever to become accidentally pregnant, someone who, like him, had been to university, who had a career. Well, she could have gone to university as well if she hadn’t met him.
She had seen two of her old schoolfriends in town the other day, and they had been astonished to see that she was pregnant—astonished and pitying.
With her mother’s help, she got the house tidy and washed her hair. Her back ached so much that she was tempted to have it cut short, but James had once told her that he loved its thick length, as he wound it around her throat and kissed her through it.
Tears blurred her eyes. What had happened to them, to their love?
It had been gone four o’clock in the afternoon when James came home. Win had seen the relief, the pleasure almost in his eyes when he took in the tidy house and her cleanly washed hair. He had come towards her, putting his arms around her, nuzzling her ear, and that had been when she had smelled the strong perfume on him. She had become acutely conscious of different smells during her pregnancy, and there was no mistaking this one. It was Tara’s.
She had pushed him away from