A Very Public Affair. Sally Wentworth
Читать онлайн книгу.
the floor in the hall, just striding up and down, refusing to think, to feel, while Clare stayed quietly in the kitchen out of the way, sensing that he needed to be alone. The doctor, looking tired out, dealt quickly with the formalities. Old Mr Straker’s body was taken away in the ambulance and then Jack and Clare were alone again in the silent house.
Jack had gone up with the doctor to his father’s room and hadn’t come down. After a while Clare went upstairs and got ready for bed, but as she came out of the bathroom she heard what sounded like a groan, and stood irresolutely on the landing.
Inside the room Jack stared down at the empty bed, the mental padlocks he had put on his mind slowly dissolving as he at last began to accept his father’s death. And, because he had held back his feelings with such iron will-power and determination for all these hours, his feelings completely overwhelmed him as he relaxed. He was consumed by a tidal wave of grief that robbed him of all self-control. He went out of the room, staggering, holding onto the door jamb as if his legs wouldn’t support him.
Clare saw that his arm was up across his face and he looked to be in deep distress. Going to him, she took his arm and he leaned heavily on her. ‘I wasn’t there!’ he exclaimed brokenly, anger and guilt adding to his grief. ‘All these hours—and yet I wasn’t there when he went, when he needed me.’ Swinging away from her he leaned his head against the wall, beating at it with his clenched fists. ‘There was still so much to say. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t wake,’ Clare soothed. She shut the door of the room and tried to pull Jack away. He let her lead him. His body was shaking not only from grief but from utter exhaustion, she saw. ‘You’re so tired; you must sleep now.’
The bed in his own room wasn’t made up so she guided him into hers. He was still muttering incoherently and shaking his head from side to side in deep grief, blaming himself for going downstairs. ‘I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have left him.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
She sat him on the bed and bent to pull off his shoes, tried to push him back onto the pillow. But he got agitatedly to his feet and strode up and down the small room as if he were in a prison cell. Then abruptly he sat down again, his head in his hands.
Words were a waste of time; it was too soon for them, Clare realised. So she sat down next to him and put comforting arms round his shoulders. His body was shaking and for a while he couldn’t control his grief—the terrible pain of it, the dreadful fatigue that left him without the strength to hide it.
Somehow it didn’t feel strange, holding him like this. Jack was still virtually a stranger, and yet she knew exactly what he was going through—understood all the raw emotion that engulfed him. It didn’t seem at all incongruous that her slight strength should support him, that he should lean against her while he went through these first terrible spasms of ache and loss.
Clare went on holding him for what seemed a long time, but eventually his trembling eased a little and he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and lifted his head. Clare went to move away but he turned within her arms. His eyes, dark and still wide with shock, held hers. She was wearing just an old shirt that she’d found in a drawer, a man’s, much too big for her and coming down to her knees. Jack, his face intense, reached out to touch it at the neck.
‘This was his.’
‘Yes.’ She tried to say sorry, thinking that he was offended by it, but the words died in her throat as she looked into his eyes and began to understand even more.
Slowly he ran his fingers down over her breast. ‘You’re so alive,’ he said huskily, his voice strained. ‘So alive.’
Clare caught her breath at his touch. Instinctively she knew what he wanted—and why. His father’s death had made him realise his own vulnerability, how precarious life was. He needed to be close—very close—to someone, to convince himself that life could go on. For a long moment she looked deeply into the intense grey eyes that held hers, then stood up and slowly lifted the shirt, pulled it over her head and stood before him in all the beauty of her naked youth.
Jack groaned as he looked at her, a sound almost of agony, then reached out a trembling hand to touch her waist, her thighs. ‘Are you sure? Oh, God, are you sure?’
For answer she leant forward and placed her lips against his.
The trembling in his body was so strong that she could feel it even in this light touch. For a moment he just let her kiss him, but then Jack surged to his feet, his hand behind her head, his mouth taking hers now in urgent need. Still kissing her, making small, animal sounds against her mouth, he somehow dragged off his clothes until he, too, was naked. He touched her breasts and ran kisses down her throat as she arched her neck, wanting him now. Bending her back against his arm, he let his other hand run free over her, glorying in her living warmth, the velvet softness of her skin.
Jack’s need for her was dreadful, the deepest hunger he’d ever known, an ache so bad that he could scarcely bear the pain of it. He needed to shut out the pictures in his mind, to experience the joy, the certainty of sexual fulfilment—to convince himself that life was still sweet. He needed it so badly that nothing else mattered, not conscience, convention, not even common sense.
In the young, pliant body in his arms he knew he would find solace, would assuage the devils of guilt and grief that haunted his mind. His hot, unsteady hands pulled her close to him so that he could hold her against his length, feel the heat of her. He heard her gasp when he put his hands low on her hips and held her against his growing manhood. That excited him unbearably. He wound his hand in her long dark hair and took her mouth again, letting passion have free rein. She was excited now, he could feel it in the heat of her skin, hear it in her gasping breath. Her hands were on him, as eager as his own.
With a cry, Jack swung her onto the bed. Her hair spread like a fan across the whiteness of the pillow. He saw her face below him, her features sharpened by desire, but it was the heart of her he wanted—the one place where he could find the peace and fulfilment he craved. So he took her, took her in desperate, driven hunger. No tender act of love this, but a savage need for reassurance to overcome the primitive age-long fear of mortality. And as excitement came, engulfed him, Jack wanted to shout out that he was alive—alive!
He fell asleep almost at once and slept long and deeply, held in Clare’s arms in the narrow bed. Some hours later he half woke, still too exhausted to be fully aware of his surroundings, but realised he was in bed and that the room was dark. He felt the woman beside him and without opening his eyes reached for her. She kissed him, murmured his name, used her hands and body to arouse him, then pushed him back and came over him, taking her own pleasure, her long cry of excitement filling the room.
When Jack finally woke it was to a feeling of immeasurable peace. He was alone in the room and sunshine, of all things, shafted through the window. For a little while he lay there, knowing that he had made love and savouring the wonderful feeling. But slowly, and then with sickening clarity, remembrance came. His father was dead—and he had taken Clare, the young girl who had foisted herself on him but nevertheless had had a right to be safe from him. At first he was appalled, not because he’d done such a thing with his father newly dead—the old man, he knew, would have been quite amused by it—but because he might have taken Clare against her will. But then he remembered that she had been a very eager participant and that guilt eased a little. But not his conscience. He should never have done it. There were no circumstances that justified what he’d done.
But Jack wasn’t the type to brood on the past, on what couldn’t be undone. Swiftly he got up, went to the bathroom and dressed, then ran downstairs.
Clare was in the kitchen. She was keyed up with excitement. Last night had been out of this world for her, a revelation of what sex, fantastic sex, could be like. She felt so good, so content and happy. She had never known that sex could make you feel like this—walking on air, wanting to laugh for no reason at all, to sing and dance around the room. Even if the sun hadn’t been shining it would still have been the most wonderful day.
When Jack finally came