Читать книгу This Is My Child - Lucy Gordon, Lucy Gordon - Страница 8

The room that Melanie had been allocated was right next to David’s. It was spacious and pleasant, and Brenda, the middle-aged housekeeper, had made it spotless.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Miss,” she said as she showed Melanie the room. “I’ve had all I can take of that child. He’s a right little devil. He’s rude and awkward, shuts himself in his room for hours at a time, and when he does come out, half the time he won’t talk.”

“Perhaps he’s got nothing to say,” Melanie observed, disliking Brenda.

“Humph! Last week all my dusters went missing. Every single one. He’d hidden them under his bed, just for the fun of watching me chasing around.”

Melanie laughed. “That doesn’t sound so very wicked, just normal childish mischief.”

“And there’s the staring.”

“What do you mean?”

“He stares at you as though he could see right through you. Just stares on and on. It’s unnerving.”

“Does he have any friends?”

“Not anymore. He made some at school, I think, but since he became a thief—”

“Don’t call him a thief,” Melanie said quickly.

“What else do you call a kid who steals? You do know he steals, don’t you?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang labels around a child’s neck,” Melanie said firmly.

Brenda shrugged. “Please yourself. But be sure to hide your things away.”

A shadow darkened the door. Melanie looked up to see Giles. “When you’ve finished settling in, Miss Haynes, perhaps you’d come down to my office.”

He departed without waiting for an answer. Melanie went down a few moments later and found him regarding her dispassionately. “Perhaps I should make it plain at the outset that your duties will not include listening to Brenda slandering my son,” he snapped.

“I think my duties include anything that will help David,” she said calmly. “And first of all that means learning all I can about his problems.”

“I can tell you everything you need to know.”

“Can you? There’s probably a lot about him you don’t know. Why not let me approach him my own way?”

He considered her thoughtfully. “Very well,” he said at last in a dismissive voice. “But I don’t want to overhear any more conversations like that.”

She was turning away, confirmed in her poor opinion of him, when he stopped her. “Miss Haynes…” There was an uncertain note in his voice that took her by surprise.

“Yes?”

“Those dusters—it was just childish mischief, wasn’t it? The sort of thing any boy of his age might do.” He was almost pleading.

“Exactly the sort of thing I did when I was a child. I told you I was the black sheep. Can you tell me where to find David?”

“In the garden.”

The garden was huge and could have been an enchanted place for a crowd of children, but it dwarfed one solitary little boy. David was sitting on a log, absently tossing sticks. Melanie was sure he detected her approach, but he refused to raise his head as she crossed the grass toward him.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully.

He continued tossing twigs, ignoring her presence.

“Do you remember me?” she persisted.

At last he raised his head to look at her silently, and she understood what Brenda had meant about his staring. “My name’s Melanie,” she said. “And I know you’re David. It’s nice to meet you properly at last.” A sudden impulse made her put out her hand, and she said, “How do you do?” as she would have done with an adult.

After watching her carefully for a moment, he took her hand. “How do you do?” he said politely.

“Has your father told you very much about me?” she asked, feeling her way by inches.

“Yes. He says it’ll be like having Mommy back, but it won’t.”

On the last words his voice rose to a sudden shout that made her flinch. She stared at him, appalled. For a moment the mask had cracked, giving her a glimpse of the rage and misery that boiled beneath. “Of course it won’t,” she said quickly. “Daddy didn’t mean that I could take Mommy’s place.” It hurt to speak of Zena as his mother but she had no time for her own feelings now. “He just meant that I’d be here if you ever needed me.”

“I don’t need you,” he said coldly. “I don’t need anyone. I don’t need Mommy or Daddy, or you or anyone.” Again there was that unnerving shout, coming out of nowhere.

“Well, perhaps you don’t,” she said, as if giving the matter serious consideration. “But maybe Daddy needs you. Have you thought of that?”

He shook his head. “Daddy doesn’t need me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m bad.”

The bald statement brought tears to her eyes. She fought them back. “Don’t call yourself bad. It isn’t true.”

“Yes, it is. Everyone says so.”

Mercifully memory came to her rescue. “I was bad, too,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “One of my teachers told my parents I was on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent.”

“What’s a ju…ju…?”

“Juvenile delinquent? Someone who causes chaos. I did things that made that duster trick look like nothing.”

“Brenda was really mad,” he said with satisfaction.

“Yes, it’s no fun if they don’t get mad,” she agreed.

A glimmer of appreciation appeared in his eyes. “What sort of things did you used to do?”

“There was a boy in my class who used to bully anyone smaller than himself,” she recalled. “He made people’s lives a misery. I sat behind him one day and painted his hair with glue.” She chuckled. “It wouldn’t wash out. He had to cut the hair off. Of course his parents complained to mine, and I was in trouble. But it was worth it. There’s a lot of fun to be had with sticky stuff.”

He didn’t answer this, but she was pleased to notice that he was looking more cheerful. When she asked him to show her around the garden he got up at once. He was knowledgeable for a boy of his age, and talked to her about his surroundings in a way that made her start to feel hopeful.

But her mood was short-lived. After lunch she had to return to her old flat to collect a bag she’d overlooked. Brenda agreed to look after David and take him shopping with her. David too seemed happy to go shopping, which puzzled Melanie slightly, as it seemed odd for this activity to appeal to a small boy.

But she returned to find a message that she was to see Giles immediately. In his study he turned exasperated eyes on her. “You’ve only been here a day,” he snapped, “and already you’ve shown David new ways to make life hideous for the rest of us.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said blankly.

“It was you who told him how much ‘fun’ could be had with ‘sticky stuff,’ wasn’t it?”

“Oh, heavens! What’s he done?”

“Ask Brenda.”

“He didn’t glue her hair, did he?” Melanie asked, horrified.

“Not her hair. Her purse. She went to pay the paper bill and found her purse stuck solid.”

Melanie gasped and caught her lip between her teeth. “That was wrong of him, of course,” she said in a shaking voice. “Very naughty.”

“Then you can be the one to tell him so.”

“I’m sure you’ve already told him.”

“But he needs to hear it from you, since you seem to be his partner in crime,” Giles said grimly.

“David!” She’d spied him lurking in the hall, and called to him. He came nearer, watching her closely, as though waiting for the storm. “Come here, you wretch,” she said cheerfully. “Now see what you’ve done to me.”

“But you said—”

“I did it to a boy in school who’d been bullying people. He was a fair target. Brenda isn’t. It wasn’t kind of you to make her life hard. Come on, let’s go and tell her you’re sorry.”

“But I’m not sorry,” he said innocently.

“Then fake it,” she told him, leading him away with a hand on his shoulder.

Brenda greeted them frostily but received David’s mumbled apology in astonishment. “And I’m sorry, too,” Melanie said before the housekeeper could recover. “I put the idea into his head, but I didn’t mean to. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

They came out of the kitchen to find Giles in the hall. “I only came home to get my things,” he explained. “I have to fly to New York. The plane leaves in a couple of hours.” He was shrugging on his coat as he spoke, and Melanie saw his bags standing by the front door. “It’s lucky you’re here or I’d have had a problem about leaving.”

“Will you be away for long?” she asked.

“I’ve no idea, but it’ll give you a chance to get to know David. You’re in sole charge.” He turned to David. “I’ve got to go now, son. You’ll behave yourself, won’t you? Don’t give Miss Haynes any trouble. I shall expect good reports of you when I return.”

To hell with good reports, Melanie thought crossly. Tell him you’ll miss him.

David hadn’t spoken. He stood next to Melanie in silence, but as Giles headed for the door he suddenly dashed forward and clasped his father, hiding his face against him. Melanie tensed, ready to hate Giles if he pushed his son away, but he didn’t. To her surprise he dropped onto one knee and put an arm around David. “Hey, come on now,” he said in a rallying voice. “It’s not for long.” David didn’t answer in words but his arms went around his father’s neck. “It’s all right, son,” Giles said in a softer voice than Melanie had heard him use before. “I’m coming back.”

Then he enfolded David in a fierce hug, burying his face in the child’s soft fair hair. When he emerged, his voice was a little husky, but that might have been the effect of being half strangled. “Goodbye,” he said quickly, and went away, leaving Melanie wondering just what sort of a man he really was.

Giles was away for a week, and it was a happier week than Melanie had known for a long time. She was in David’s company every day. It was she who took him to school, collected him, had tea with him, put him to bed. It was what she’d dreamed of for years, and at first it was enough.

She was free to slip into his room at night and watch him sleeping, hugging her joy to herself like a miser brooding over rediscovered gold. She’d often wondered how the reunion would be. Would her heart still recognize him as her son?

But all was well. On her side the bond held, true and strong, and along it streamed love as fierce and protective as the love he’d once drunk in with her milk. She instinctively knew that this was the child she’d held in her arms so long ago. When he wasn’t looking her way, she would watch him in secret, inwardly whispering words of wonder, “My son. My son.”

But as the days slipped past she knew that she hadn’t made the breakthrough she wanted. David spoke to her politely enough, but he didn’t give her the eager confidence she longed for, and she could sense that he was still wary of her. She was inching her way along, always alert to seize the moment that might bring them closer, but such moments were painfully slow in coming.

One morning she heard Brenda grumbling inside David’s room. “…think I’ve got nothing better to do than change sheets every day.”

“Is anything the matter?” Melanie asked, entering.

“He’s done it again,” Brenda declared bitterly. “Look at that!” She held up a sheet with a large damp place. “It’s time he pulled himself together instead of acting like a baby.”

David’s face was scarlet and he was fighting back the tears. Melanie put a hand on his shoulder. “Go down to the garden,” she suggested gently. “And don’t worry. It’s not important.”

She shut the door behind him and faced Brenda. “From now on if David is unlucky enough to wet his bed, you tell me and no one else. I won’t have him made to feel bad about it.”

Brenda was up in arms, her heavy face mottled with anger. “He’s not the only one who feels bad. It’s me who has to do the extra washing.”

“Aided by a state-of-the-art washing machine,” Melanie said, her temper rising. “If putting a few sheets in it is too much for you, I’ll do it. But the important thing is that you are to say nothing to David. Do you understand?”

Brenda seemed, about to argue but then fell silent, alarmed by a fierce gleam in Melanie’s eyes. She wasn’t to know that she was dealing with a tigress defending her cub. She only knew that something in the other woman’s look quelled her. She sniffed and hurried out of the room.

Melanie joined David in the garden and said, “Don’t worry about Brenda. She won’t bother you anymore.”

“I’m not a baby,” David said quickly.

“Of course you’re not.”

“But Daddy says I am,” he told her in a wobbly voice.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You leave Daddy to me.”

He looked at her in awe. Then a smile of gratitude and trust came over his face.

“Come on,” she said. “What are we going to do today?”

He slipped a hand in hers. “I’ve got a new computer game,” he said eagerly.

“Come on, then. Teach me.”

They spent the day cheerfully zapping each other on the screen. Like many children of his generation, David was at ease with computers and instructed Melanie with careful courtesy. One moment he was like a little old-fashioned gentleman, the next he was doubled up with excitement and laughter. But then he would grow suddenly quiet, as though all the computer games in the world couldn’t ease the crushing burden on his heart.

Late that evening the telephone rang. Melanie lifted the receiver in her bedroom and found herself talking to Giles.

“Is everything all right?” he said. “Is David behaving himself?”

“Perfectly. He’ll be thrilled that you called him. Just a moment.” She hurried out of her room to knock on David’s door. “He’s just coming,” she said when she returned to the phone.”

“Actually I didn’t—if you hadn’t run off so fast I could have told you that all I meant—” He sighed.

I know you weren’t going to talk to David, Melanie thought crossly. That’s why I called him before you could stop me.

David bounced in. “Is it really Daddy?”

“That’s right,” Melanie said brightly. She added, loud enough for Giles to hear, “He called especially to talk to you.”

“Hello, Daddy-Daddy-”

Listening to the child’s end of the conversation, Melanie formed the impression that Giles was laboring to keep going. He seemed to be questioning David about his behavior when he ought to have been saying how much he missed him. But David’s delight was touching.

At last he said, “Yes, Daddy, I’ll be good. Goodbye.”

“Back to bed now,” Melanie commanded with a laugh.

It took time to settle him down again. In his excitement at receiving his father’s call, he repeated everything that had been said a dozen times. But at last he snuggled down between the sheets and dropped off. Melanie crept out of the room but couldn’t resist returning an hour later. The moon, sliding between a crack in the curtains, touched David’s face, revealing a smile of blissful content that she had never seen before.

Melanie stood looking at that innocent smile for a long time, hating Giles Haverill with all her heart.

During weekdays, when David was at school, Melanie took the chance to explore the house. It had been built about sixty years earlier by the first Haverill to make money, and had a look of forbidding prosperity. The design was spacious but undistinguished, and the best part of the place was the huge garden. Someone had designed that garden with love, arranging trees and shrubs so that there were constant surprises and changes of view.

Downstairs the big piano tempted her. It was locked, but after a search she found the key on a hook behind the door of Giles’s office. Playing again was like rediscovering a lost friend. She sat there for so long that she was nearly late fetching David from school, and had to hurry. When she told him what had delayed her, he stared. “Daddy keeps the piano locked,” he said. “He stopped my lessons.”

“Why did he do that?” she asked gently.

He didn’t reply. His face was set in the rigid lines of misery she’d seen on the day she first saw him at school. “It was my own fault,” he said at last.

After tea she asked him to play for her. As soon as he started, she realized that he had a talent and confidence that were like her own at the same age. Listening to her child expressing himself through the gift that had always been hers, Melanie breathed a prayer of thanks. “You ought to be in the school concert,” she said when he’d finished.

“I was going to, but Daddy said no. He says if I can’t get my schoolwork right…it’s next week.” he finished miserably. “And everyone’s in it except me.”

Melanie drew a long breath and counted to ten to stop herself expressing her opinion of Giles in terms unsuitable for a child’s ears. “Let me hear it again,” she begged. “You do it so well.”

He gave her a smile, full of delight and a kind of wonder at receiving praise, and started again from the beginning. While she listened, Melanie’s mind was working furiously.

The following afternoon she sought out Mrs. Harris, the school music teacher, and found in her an ally. “Giles Haverill…” she said with concentrated loathing, then checked herself. “I’m sorry, I know he’s your employer—”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Melanie said. “I don’t like him, either. But he left me in charge of David and I’d like him to be in the concert. With any luck Mr. Haverill won’t even be back until it’s over.”

David’s joy, when she told him, was so great that she thought he would fling his arms about her. But the moment passed, and he retreated behind the barrier of caution with which he protected himself.

She began to practice the piece with him. She never had to tell him anything twice. These were their happiest times together. It was an effort not to reach out and stroke the shiny fair head bent earnestly over the piano. It was even harder not to gather him up in a hug. But the painful years had taught her patience. She must wait for that hug.

“Try it again,” she said one evening. “I love listening to you.”

He went through the piece easily, smiling at her as he mastered a tricky place, and she smiled back. They were sitting like that when Giles walked in.

“What’s this?” he asked quietly.

They both looked up quickly, and Melanie felt David flinch and move toward her. His lips moved in the word “Daddy!” but his voice was nervous.

Giles’s face was very pale, and his lips were set in a hard line. It seemed to Melanie that his face showed only anger. She didn’t know that he’d heard his son’s whispered word, seen him recoil, and felt as though something had struck him in the chest.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to me, son?” he asked.

David slipped obediently from the piano stool and went across to Giles, who went down on one knee to look him full in the face. David put his arms about his father, but it seemed to Melanie that he did so reluctantly. Giles felt it, too, and hardened himself against the hurt. When he arose his face was grim. “Who unlocked the piano?” he asked.

“I did,” Melanie said. “And I need to talk to you. I’ll come to your study when I’ve put David to bed.”

As they walked out of the room, he heard her saying, “Don’t worry, David. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

There was a protective note in her voice, Giles noted. She was protecting David against him.

In his study he poured himself a stiff brandy and waited for her, not at all relishing the way she’d taken the initiative in this meeting. It occurred to him that he disliked this woman. When she appeared, her face bore none of the unease he was used to seeing in his subordinates when they presented themselves for criticism. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “How dared you encourage him to defy me!”

“And how dared you break that child’s heart by denying him one of the few comforts he has!” she flung back. “How could you be so cruel, so callous?”

“I have good reasons for what I do—”

“There are no good reasons for hurting an eight-yearold child,” she said firmly.

He paused to take a long breath, but before he could hurl his anger and bitterness at her he was swamped by weariness. He sat down abruptly and closed his eyes, and the words that came out of his mouth, much against his will, were, “I haven’t slept for forty-eight hours.” He pulled himself forcibly together. “I don’t know what David’s told you—”

“The truth. He’s a very honest boy. He says you stopped his lessons because he got behind at school. Naturally he blames himself.”

“Why naturally?”

“Because he blames himself for everything that happens. Didn’t you know that?”

He shook his head, dumbly. He had a great longing to close his eyes.

“He told me how you’d pulled him out of the concert, too,” Melanie said. “I was astonished. I’d have thought you would seize the chance to boost David’s confidence, and give him an hour of happiness that will help him cope with the past dreadful year.”

“I see. So what did you do, Miss Haynes? For I feel very sure that you did something.”

“I put him back in the concert. He’s so happy about it that for the last two nights he hasn’t even wet his bed. And that’s made him even happier. But of course you can always go up and tell him that it’s all off.”

He eyed her shrewdly. “You’re a very clever woman.”

“Are you going to do that—and break his heart?”

“Of all the disgracefully loaded questions—!” he exploded. “Look, if I agree to this concert, there must be no more encouraging him to defy me. We have to lay down some ground rules, and you must abide by them. I’m glad you and David seem to get along well, but he’s my son, not yours. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly,” she said in a colorless voice.

“Very well. Now we’ve got that clear, he can do the concert.”

“And you’ll be there?”

“What?”

“It’s a pity that we can’t tell him you rushed home on purpose to see him, but it’s a bit late for that now. Never mind, we’ll have to make the best of it.”

“Good of you,” he said shortly. But irony was lost on her, he realized. “It’s out of the question. I’m behind on my appointments because I’ve been away. I can’t take an evening off. Is David’s life really going to be blighted if I don’t come to listen to him playing the piano in a drafty school hall?”

“His life will be blighted if you don’t show him that he’s vitally important to you.”

“I do that every day—”

“Not in ways that mean anything to him. He’s eight. He doesn’t care that you’re out there building an industrial empire, but he does care that you treat his big moment as though it mattered. Weren’t you ever in a school performance?”

“For pity’s sake! I don’t recall my parents turning out to my school functions. It hasn’t damaged me.”

She looked at him levelly. “Well, you know best about that, of course.”

He took a deep breath. “What’s the exact date? I’m too jet-lagged to work it out.”

She told him, crossing her fingers for the miracle. But it didn’t come. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s a banquet on that night—it’s what I came back for—I’m making a speech—there are going to be government ministers there—for heaven’s sake, surely you can understand?” His voice rose in irritation.

“Of course,” she said crisply. “I understand perfectly. So will David. Good night, Mr. Haverill.”

When she’d gone, he sat staring into space, a prey to turbulent emotions. Pictures danced before him—David sitting at the piano, his head close to that woman, exchanging smiles with her. His flinching at the sight of his father. It had been a mistake to let her into the house. He’d known that on the day they met. She’d stood there in the bay of the window, with the light falling on her lovely face and deep, mysterious eyes, and he’d been filled with alarm. He didn’t know why he should be afraid of this young woman, who seemed to have an immediate empathy with David. After all, that was what he’d hoped for when he hired her. But he had the feeling of having released a genie that had got far beyond his control. And tonight, when he’d seen David turn to her, seeking refuge from his own father, he’d known that by some mysterious process she was stealing his son.

He passed a hand over his eyes, wishing his head didn’t ache so.