Crescendo Page 8

Gideon was silent. 'Tomorrow?'

  'I wish I could,' Marina said on a sigh. 'But I'm rehearsing—did I tell you I'm playing for a lieder performance? Accompanying a girl with the most fantastic voice. I'm sure she's going places. You like lieder, don't you?'

  'What's wrong, Marina?' Gideon asked abruptly.

  She bit her lip. 'What do you mean?' Her laughter was false and she knew he must hear that. 'Nothing. I really would have loved to see y6u. Oh, that's the bell—I must go, I'm afraid. Goodbye, Gideon.'

  She put the phone down as though it had burnt her and leaned her face on the glass of the booth in the students' hall. After a moment she pulled her­self together and managed to make light conversa­tion with the group who were talking nearby, mar­velling that the anguish she felt did not show on her face.

  Two days later she and Paul were queueing for gallery tickets to see a West End play when Gideon walked past with Diana Grenoby. Marina' did not look round at him, but she heard the deep dark tone of his voice just behind her and Diana Grenoby's answering laughter.

  It was ironic, she thought, seated in the front row of the gallery beside Paul and aware that Gideon was in a box opposite with the dark sleek head of Diana beside him. The situation was sym­bolic of their positions in life and it escaped her why Gideon had ever bothered to see her at all, even on the casual, friendly level on which their re­lationship had existed.

  After the play when the lights went up Paul guided her up the steep stairs to the back of the gallery, his arm lightly round her waist. She was so weary of pain that she leant her head on his shoulder and felt his arm tighten.

  'You look tired,' Paul said in concern. 'You work too hard—you always have. Everyone says you should relax more. There's no doubt in anyone's mind where you're going, so why the need to strain to get there?'

  'Why, indeed?' she said wryly, without comment­ing on the compliment. Her teachers had made it plain that they, too, expected her to do well. She was burdened with Grandie's reputation, with his dreams for her, with the demands of other people's high expectations. She had worked obsessively ever since she got to college and the pain which Gideon had caused her had nagged inside her all the time, weakening her.

  Paul was a very serious young man and he had become fond of her. When the holidays began she took him back to stay with Grandie. They had a lot of fun that spring, walking along the beach, paddling in the chill water, throwing stones across the waves so that they skipped and bounced with little splashes, giving mock concerts to Grandie. playing like music hall artists to him, so that he laughed and rocked in his chair.

  Gideon did not get in touch with her again, but later in the summer he sent her two tickets for one of his London concerts with a brief and distant little note.

  She took Paul. They had excellent seats with a clear view of Gideon. Marina stared at him as he played, seeing a new fine tension to his hard face, hearing a change in his music. Gideon was dig­ging below the surface now. Grandie should have heard it, she thought. The polish and brilliant technique were still there, but there was a new feeling in the playing. It was a change reflected in his body. When he took his applause he was obvi­ously thinner. He had never been less than fit, but now his bones showed through the brown skin, the harshness of them taut.

  As he straightened from a deep bow with the en­thusiasm roaring around him undiminished, his black eyes slid briefly to where Marina sat. She was sitting there with her eyes riveted on him and for a second their eyes met. Feeling flashed across the hall between them. She had never seen it in his eyes be­fore, but now she saw it and her heart stopped.

  Gideon had looked at her hungrily with the eyes of a frustrated lover, and she was trembling as he walked from the platform.

  She had to leave with Paul, trying to control her­self, trying to appear normal while every particle of her mind and body wras overthrown with the realisation of what she had glimpsed so briefly in Gideon's eyes.

  She did not know what to do. She couldn't sleep, couldn't work. Had she imagined it? Was it all in her own mind?

  She came down the steps of the college at five o'clock next day and Gideon straightened from the wall and looked at her. He didn't say a word, but her heart began to beat fiercely and she was totally unaware of the people behind her streaming out of the door; staring as they recognised Gideon and then Marina and buzzing with curiosity.

  There seemed to be nothing they could either of them find to say; there was too much to be said in words. Gideon took her to his flat for the first time and when they were alone he looked at her with that strange, fixed intensity and broke out: 'Why have you kept me away all these months? What's wrong? Why wouldn't you see me?'

  She stared at her feet, her neck bent in a wistful curve. 'Does it matter?'

  'Matter?' He rasped the word hoarsely. 'Don't you know it does?' He took a step and caught her shoulders, staring at her with that heat burning deep inside the black eyes. 'Who was that boy you were with? Is it him? Is he why you've shut me out?'

  She looked up in disbelief, her eyes wide in amazement, and saw his dark face flush slowly under her stare. He pivoted, shuddering, as though wrenched by feelings he could not control, and Marina watched the broad shoulders and couldn't believe what she knew she was seeing.

  'Are you in love with him?'

  He asked the question in a low, controlled voice, but every muscle in his body was tense. She could see a nerve leaping in his cheek as he stood with his back to her but his face in profile.

  She was torn by contradictory instincts. She could lie and let him believe she did not love him or she could tell him the truth and leave herself wide open to him.

  When she didn't answer, Gideon swerved to look at her in harsh probing and as their eyes met, Marina trembled. She didn't say a word, but Gideon drew a deep breath and his hands reached out for her. That first kiss told him all the things she had tried to hide from him. Even now, with her body shaking in his arms and her soft mouth totally responsive to the fierce hot possession of his, she was trying to fight down her love for him. Young as she was, she knew the danger of letting him see how vulnerable she was to him. Gideon wanted her— she knew that now. He was jealous of Paul and he hadn't hidden it from her. But Marina had spent too many hours watching him, thinking about him, not to know that Gideon was not yet capable of love as she knew it.

  That night it didn't matter, though. Gideon was on fire, and the flames licked into her blood and consumed her. She had no thought of denying him anything. He was gentle and tender, touching her with shaking hands, and moaning huskily as their bodies merged with a slow insistence which had been inevitable from the moment he touched her.

  The strained tautness had left his face as she lay dazedly in his arms later. He stroked her face and kissed her. Marina was not yet capable of thinking. She had abandoned herself to him knowing what she was doing and no longer caring that he might destroy her. She had fought her love for him, but she could not fight Gideon's desire for her.

  'Does this Paul mean anything?' he asked her abruptly, and she felt a weakness inside her at the unhidden jealousy. She shook her head.

  'Don't see him again.' He held her face between his hands and stared at her as if each time he saw her he could not quite believe she was real. 'I can't bear to see you with him.'

  She did not point out that she could not bear to see him with Diana "Grenoby. She did not say any­thing. Gideon had not said a word which might in­dicate that he loved her, even during the moments of their fierce lovemaking. She had learnt how to hide her feelings. Although she was aching with the pain she had suspected for so long that he would give her, she hid it now.

  Over the next few weeks they saw each other whenever they were both free. It was not often enough for Marina and although he did not say so she guessed it was not often enough for Gideon, either. When she was in his arms he was hotly de­manding. However intense their passion grew, though, he never gave her any reason to hope that she meant more to him than any ot
her woman who had lain in his bed. They made love in a heated silence which left her starving for a word, an ad­mission of love.

  He flew away to perform from time to time and often tried to persuade her to go with him, but she always refused. She would not let him treat her as his mistress in front of strangers or friends—their relationship was as yet a total secret and Marina felt sick at the idea of anyone else knowing.

  She did not know if he was still seeing Diana. He never mentioned her. Marina spent bitter moments wondering about that. When he was not in her bed, where was he?

  She went home to Basslea when the holidays next began. Grandie stared at her, his rough brows meeting, and she knew he could read the changes in her face which her relationship with Gideon had begun. All of the child left in her had gone. It was a woman who looked back at Grandie now, a woman eaten with passion and sadness she could not hide.

  When Gideon walked in, Grandie knew at a glance. Alone with her, he asked her bitterly, 'Are you out of your mind? You know what he's like. Gideon's hard, as hard as nails. He'll get tired of you and leave you flat.'

  'I know,' she said with bitter irony.

  'Then why?' Grandie was incredulous at her resignation.

  'I love him,' Marina told him, and that silenced him..

  He said nothing to him, but he treated Gideon with icy hostility from that brief conversation. Marina was sorry that Grandie should be so hurt and angry, but she was aware that part of Grandie's anger was because Gideon was absorbing her energy, her spirit, and Grandie wanted all that to go into her music. Gideon was a threat to Grandie's dream for her.

  Walking along the cliffs with him, listening to him play in the evenings, she had time to think deeply about Gideon and to recognise his self- preservation in all his relationships. He surrounded himself with a wall of silence because he refused to risk all that love could mean.

  Had he ever loved Diana? Or anyone?

  Teasing her about the dolls he came close to the verge of real anger, telling her sharply that she was too old for such childish games, looking at them with hostile dark eyes, and she wondered if Gideon had ever been a child. He had been a prodigy at the age of seven: she knew that.

  Grandie had told her about his mother's pride and smothering adoration of him, painting a pic­ture of a small boy treated as a god and yet a play­thing, a status symbol for a ruthless woman.

  Gideon had to go to America soon after term began. That time he almost begged her to go with him, using coaxing, threats, argument. Marina fought his need to have her with him because she felt, instinctively, that she could not allow him to treat her as a possession. Gideon had to come to recognise her as a human being with dignity of her own.

  While he was away she realised she was pregnant. The shock sent her running back to Basslea and there Grandie looked at her with hatred, because she had destroyed his dreams for her. White-faced, she faced the ruin of all that they had both worked for and could find nothing to say to him.

  'He won't marry you!' Grandie had shouted.

  Marina did not need to be told that. Gideon had never breathed a word of marriage. He didn't love her; why should he marry her? She had walked into this with her eyes open. She would have to deal with it.

  Grandie suggested an abortion and she shrank. She could not destroy Gideon's child. Her misery touched Grandie at last and he softened. 'We'll manage, darling,' he said, patting her as if she were still a child. 'We'll manage.'

  She went to stay with friends of his who ran a home for handicapped children. Marina helped them and found some sort of solace in doing things for other people. It took her mind off her own misery—-her problems seemed less heavy compared to those she saw around her at the home.

  While she was there, Grandie wrote to tell her Gideon was looking for her. He had been to Basslea and Grandie had refused to tell him where she was or what she was doing. 'He'll have to be told,' Grandie said in the letter. 'He won't take no for an answer.'

  She wrote back, telling Grandie to let Gideon know the truth. 'But tell him I don't want to see him. I don't want anything from him. This is my problem, not his.'

  Gideon arrived two days later. Marina was in the garden with a little boy when he walked out towards her. The air was filled with the scent of newmown grass and Marina stood there, feeling sick. She had not wanted to face him, but now she could not avoid it.

  He looked down at her with those unreadable black eyes, his face harsh. 'Why did you try to keep it from me? How could you hide such a thing? I had the right to know.'

  'It's my problem,' she said quietly. The little boy stared at them and she looked at him, forcing a smile. 'Go in and find the others, Colin. I'll be in later.'

  He ran away in his ungainly stumble and Gideon said in a low, fierce voice, 'Your problem? It's my baby!'.

  'You don't want to get married or have respons­ibilities, do you, Gideon?' she asked with a pale smile. 'I knew that.'

  His hands hurt as they clamped down on her shoulders. He pulled her against his body and his cheek brushed her hair. 'That's beside the point. It's my baby.' His lips touched her cheek. 'Marry me, Marina. I want to marry you. I didn't—I admit that. But I don't want to loose you. I want you— and the baby. I want you as my wife.'

  She slackened in his arms, her body a weary cipher, and felt the burden .of the lonely weeks without him slipping away. She had forced herself to face life without him and now she wasn't going to have to, and relief and happiness made her faint.

  They were married at once and she moved into the London flat with him. Gideon seemed content with her permanent presence. When he had to go on tour again he took her with him. Their marriage seemed to be working. He looked for her as he be­gan to play each night and when he came off, drenched and exhausted but still wound up to the point of nervous tension, her calming hand and smile seemed to soothe him and help him to climb down from the peak which he had climbed during the performance.

  Once he apologised to her for having ruined her career. 'I could kick myself for my selfish stupidity! It should have occurred to me that you wouldn't have taken any precautions. I was just caught up in my own needs and I forgot yours. Darling, do you forgive me?'

  She would have forgiven him anything. His play­ing had improved enormously, all the critics agreed. He was playing with depth and feeling now and the beautiful professional gloss did not need to cover any lack of sensitivity.

  As her pregnancy advanced Marina looked a little tired and Gideon frowned over her pallor. 'This tour is too much for you. I think you should have a few weeks with Grandie to relax.'

  'What about you?' She knew now that Gideon needed her there after a performance. He looked for her with an eager glance as he came off and the dark eyes gleamed with pleasure when he saw her.

  'Never mind me,' he soothed, touching her cheek. 'You're such a tiny thing. I hate to see you look so tired. I'll hate being without you, but I'll bear it.'

  The tenderness and caring were in his smile, deep in his dark eyes. She saw them and was satis­fied, leaning her head on his strong body and know­ing he cared for her. He had not yet said 'I love you', but she thought: one day he will. Perhaps he doesn't even know yet. Marina was beginning to believe he did love her and it was worth all the pain he had made her suffer in the past.

  Gideon was oddly unaware, despite his sophistica­tion. He was a man who had learnt to be arrogant, certain of himself, his great gifts making him in­different to the feelings of others because as a young boy his mother had drummed it into him that he was 'different'. Marina had met her now and knew just what sort of woman she was—she had been met with cold, chilling dislike, the icy jealousy of one who resents someone else stepping into their place. It had not mattered because Gideon had long ago pushed his mother out of his life. Her possessive nature had made him defend himself by excluding her. But she had formed his character, all the same. Gideon had grown up worshipped and spoilt, given everything he wanted, taught to be­lieve that he could do just
as he chose without caring for the consequences.

  The hard glossy shell around him had been there for years. Marina believed it was cracking. Gideon had learnt to love, but he did not know that him­self even now.

  While she stayed with Grandie she had plenty of time to think about Gideon and to see that her advent in his life had begun a change in him. Feeling had begun to surge in him and it was com­ing out in his music. How deep that feeling went, Marina could not guess. Her own love for him made it possible for her to understand him without hating him for the selfish arrogance which had taken her without ever meaning to love her.

  Gideon came home from his tour and rang at once to say he would be coming to see her, but first he had a series of business matters to settle. He would come as soon as he could get away.

  Marina was disappointed that he wasn't coming at once, and Grandie laughed at her long face. 'Why not go up to London to him?' he suggested, and her eyes lit up.

  Gideon had not suggested that because he did not want her tired by the journey, she guessed. She kissed Grandie. Gideon would be as happy to see her as she was to see him, she thought.

  But she was wrong. When she let herself into their London flat she heard voices and as she opened the sitting-room door she felt a quiver of cold pre­monition before she even saw them.

  Gideon sat on the couch and Diana Grenoby was in his arms, her hands framing his face. They were kissing passionately.

  As the door opened they sprang apart and stared, and for a long moment Marina stared and stared, going so white her face lost every shred of life and colour. She felt herself falling down a deep dark well into a world which would mean nothing but misery for her from now on.

  She turned and ran out again and the lift was there with the door open. She saw Gideon running as the door closed. His voice came hoarsely to her, but she didn't look at him.

  London was in the grip of late homegoing traffic and she walked out of the building in a trance like a sleepwalker. She never even saw or heard the car she walked under.