Payment In Love

She also knew now that love was something that wasn’t necessarily apportioned; and that it was something that grew rather than diminished when it was shared with others. Yes, she knew all these things now. Now, when it was too late.

She frowned and reached for her hooded duffel coat. It was cold outside. Snow threatened; she could smell it in the air.

Meg barked excitedly as she opened the door. At the back of the rectory garden was a stile and a footpath that led through the fields. It had been a clear, bright day, and as she climbed over the stile the fields lay spread out against a winter skyline, the sky that deep, dense dark blue that only occurred on very cold and clear winter evenings. The full moon illuminated the scene brilliantly, and her breath hung on the air in steamy puffballs of vapour. The sharpness of Meg’s yaps was intensified by the crystal clearness of the air, and far away a farm dog heard it and set up a bark in response.

From the copse Heather heard the unearthly cry of a dog fox, and Meg pricked up her ears. Some instincts never died, Heather acknowledged, shaking her head at the collie as she crouched, belly down, on the crisp frosted field.

It was just the right sort of evening for a brisk walk, the sort of evening she would normally have thoroughly enjoyed. She knew that her parents sometimes worried about her solitary state; her mother was constantly urging her to join in the village’s extremely varied social gatherings, but so far she had not experienced any desire to find a mate and settle down, and she knew herself well enough to accept that a string of casual relationships was not for her.

She was frightened of committing herself in a male-to-female relationship, she knew that. Her experiences of the intensity and depth of her capability for emotion had affected her in the same way a small child reacts to an accidental burn when faced with the threat of a real fire: she shied away, apprehensive and alarmed, remembering past pain.

The relationship between her parents, its stability and longevity, had spoiled her; she could not adopt the careless manner of her contemporaries towards the commitment of marriage, and she doubted that she would ever find a man who could and would commit himself to her with the wholeheartedness she knew that she would crave if she ever allowed herself to fall in love.

That being the case, she was better off not allowing herself to do so. The heady sixties with its laissez-faire attitude towards casual sex had gone, and in its place was a new awareness, a new carefulness about the use and abuse of the human body. One was no longer considered odd if one did not agree to go to bed with a man on a first date, and Heather preferred things that way.

She did date occasionally—boys, now adult, whom she’d known from school, men she met through her work—but so far there had been no one special in her life; no lover.

Frost crunched underfoot as she took the familiar path. Meg darted off to investigate a long empty rabbit burrow. This route was well known to both of them, and yet she always found something new about it, Heather acknowledged, her heavy thoughts dismissed momentarily as her artist’s eye was caught by the black and silver tracery of bare branches illuminated by the moon.

The weather men were predicting snow for Christmas. Maureen Anstey had commented wryly that the village children were delighted. Not so pleased were those members of the community whose jobs meant driving daily to Bath and Bristol. This part of the country was notorious for its heavy winter snowfalls, and the opening of the M4 had suddenly made it far more accessible to London-based businessmen looking for a country environment for their wives and families. A small influx of newcomers during the summer months had added to the population, but Heather wondered how many of them realised what they would have to face during the winter months.

Their coal-house was already stacked with fuel, the logs her father had cut only two weekends ago drying out; gas had been bought in ready for their annual power-cuts. She remembered how astonished Kyle had been by the depth of their snowfalls. He had come from London, where snow never lay for very long on the busy streets. Just momentarily she had felt superior to him but, as always, he had quickly turned the tables on her. She shivered and called to Meg.

She knew why Kyle Bennett was in her thoughts so much, of course; she had known from the first moment the specialist had told them that her father was going to need surgery and she had seen the fear and exhaustion on her mother’s face.

Things had not been going well for them businesswise recently. Too many shops were closing; too many small businesses going to the wall. It hadn’t helped, seeing all those huge signs plastered all over Bristol for Bennett Enterprises. Who would ever have thought that the scruffy-at-heel boy her parents had taken in would turn out to be such a successful businessman?

He was a millionaire several times over now, and with a life-style to match his wealth, if the popular Press was to be believed. And, knowing him as she did, Heather did believe it.

He had always liked the very best life had to offer, she remembered sourly. She only had to think of the succession of pouting would-be model girls he had brought home to show off to her parents. Glossy, expensive creatures who had made her feel clumsy and ugly, and she had seen in his eyes that he had known and enjoyed her discomfort.

It had always been like that between them. From the very first moment, they had recognised in each other a mortal enemy. She had never imagined then that she would be the one to vanquish him. She shivered, and not from the cold, remembering the price that had had to be paid for her victory. And she had not been the one to pay it. She swallowed hard against the lump of pain buried deep in her throat. Her parents never mentioned him, never referred to the events of that dreadful night, the night of her seventeenth birthday. They had never reproached or condemned, but she knew how they must feel. In demonstrating the strength of their love for her, they had also shown her a mirror-image of her own selfishness, an image reinforced by the counselling she had received while in hospital. She shuddered again, not wanting to recall those dark days and that stupid emotional teenage threat made out of jealousy and anger, without thought for its consequences.

Even now, the memory of how easily it could all have gone dreadfully wrong haunted her. She had been criminally stupid, selfishly determined to vanquish Kyle once and for all, to ruin his triumphant homecoming from Oxford, and to make her parents choose between them.

And she had succeeded, but at what price?

Never would she forget the reproach and fear in her father’s eyes when she’d woken up in her hospital room.

The indignity of having her stomach pumped out by the hospital staff had left her sore and exhausted, her brain not mentally capable of reasoning properly.

Her first croaked words had been, “Where’s Kyle?”

And they had had the compassion and the love not to tell her then that he had gone.

It had all been so silly, her resentment of the fact that he’d chosen to return home on the very day of her birthday, and thus, in her eyes, taken the limelight from her. She had refused to get changed for the special birthday dinner her parents had organised at a local hotel, and instead had stayed upstairs in her room sulking, sure that her father at least would come up and coax her to go down.

But it had been Kyle who had come up to see her. A Kyle older and far more mature than she’d remembered from his last visit, almost twelve months ago. During his last year at Oxford he had worked during his holidays and so they had not seen him, and she had managed to persuade herself that he was gone from their lives for ever, even though he wrote and telephoned regularly every week.

He had been curt and derisive with her, sparing her nothing, making her see herself as a spoiled, petulant child, determined to make everyone dance to her bidding. She had hated him even more for that, because she had seen in his coolly deliberate criticism the seeds of the truth, and that had hurt.

She had reacted wildly, close to the point of tears at what she considered her parents’ betrayal of her in choosing to let him come up and torment her, when they should have sent him packing and spent the evening coaxing her out of her black mood.

‘If you have the slightest bit of feeling for your parents, you’ll get dressed and come downstairs right now,’ Kyle had told her, getting off her bed. ‘It’s time you grew up, Heather, and stopped trying to use emotional blackmail to get what you want. OK, so you and I are always going to be poles apart, but for your parents’ sake we should at least try to appear to get on.’

She had hated him for his calm, reasoned argument, for the realisation that he was showing more concern for her parents than she was herself; and all the nebulous and real fears she had experienced in the years since he had become an adopted member of her family had exploded inside her.

She’d refused to get dressed, and in the end her parents and Kyle had gone out without her.

Nearly demented with rage and jealousy that this should happen on her birthday, she had flown to the medicine cabinet and extracted a full bottle of aspirin.

She hadn’t really wanted to die, just to punish those who should have loved her more than they did Kyle … much more.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that Kyle had persuaded her parents to return home half-way through the meal, she would not be here today.

She’d been unconscious when they’d found her hysterical note. She had been rushed to hospital, and brought round by the unsympathetic and very angry hospital staff, who quite rightly felt that their time was far too valuable to be spent on one silly, jealous teenager, when there were so many other people in greater need of it.

She had said many bitter and angry things in her letter: accusing her parents of wishing she had been a boy, accusing Kyle of trying to steal their love away from her, and finally saying that, since she wasn’t wanted or loved, she might as well end her life.

During the counselling she had received after her release from hospital, she had come to understand that it had not been Kyle she had hated so much as the threat she’d thought he represented; and that it was her own nature that was responsible for her feelings, rather than anything he had done.

She had been angry and resentful at these assertions, and then later, when she had come to understand the reality of them, very penitent. But by then it was too late. Kyle had disappeared, leaving only a note saying that in the circumstances, although he would always love and be grateful to them, he felt it would be as well if he didn’t see her parents again.

His absence was never mentioned, but Heather knew how much her parents missed him. Her mother could have leaned on Kyle’s strength, while her father could have turned to him for financial advice. If only …

But life wasn’t a fairy story. It wasn’t possible to simply close one’s eyes and wish.

There was another way, though. Her mouth went dry at the very thought of it. It had been in her mind since her father had first been taken ill. She kept trying to dismiss it, to find another way out of her dilemma, but deep down inside she knew there was no other way.

Call it reparation for an old wrong, call it a test she had to face before being able to call herself fully adult, call it what you liked, it all boiled down to the same thing.

She had to go and see Kyle; she had to ask for his help on her parents’ behalf. She had to humble and abase herself before him; she had to have his help.

She was out for longer than she had intended, and when she got back the phone was ringing again. She raced to answer it, tensing as she heard her mother’s familiar but anxious voice.

‘It’s all right, darling. There’s not been any change. Your father is still holding his own, but Mr Frazer has confirmed that he will have to have an operation. There’s one surgeon in particular who’s highly skilled in this particular surgery, but he’s very much in demand. He’s in New York at the moment, apparently, but he’s due back at the end of the week. I’ve told Mr Frazer that we can’t possibly afford a private operation, but he’s asked me to talk to Mr Edmondson anyway. If only your father hadn’t had to let his medical insurance lapse.’

Heather clutched the receiver, echoing her mother’s thoughts, but money had been so tight this last year. She wondered if her mother knew about the bank mortgage her father had taken out on the house so that he would have some capital to inject into the business. The bank was already pressing for its payment, and once they knew her father was ill …

She shivered inwardly. Added stress at this particular moment in time was the very last thing her parents needed. She couldn’t forget that, when she’d found her father, he had been slumped across his desk where he had been studying a depressingly long list of outstanding debts.

‘I’m going to stay here tonight. The hospital has found me a room for as long as I need one. How are you … are you coping?’

How like her mother to be concerned for her, Heather reflected. How on earth had she ever managed to convince herself that her parents didn’t care? All right, so maybe they would both have loved another child, especially a boy. They had loved Kyle, she acknowledged that, but their love for him had never diminished their love for her, although she herself had been too jealous and angry to see that.

‘I’m fine. I’m working on the decorations for the church hall. I’ll have to go to our suppliers tomorrow, I’ve run out of some stuff I need,’ she added on sudden impulse. ‘I’ll be out for most of the day, so don’t worry if you can’t reach me.’

‘Well, just be careful if you’re driving,’ her mother warned her, accepting her lie at face value. ‘They’re forecasting heavy frost for tonight, with snowfalls in the morning.’