Hold the Dream

  Tears sprang into her eyes, induced by the fear, the shock, the revulsion and the pain as he pushed his hand harder between her legs. He stopped kissing her at last, drew back for breath.

  Paula opened her mouth and began to scream.

  Ross was jarred from his exploration of her body and he sat up swiftly, looked down into her tearstained face, and clamped one hand over her mouth.

  ‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘You know you like this, you bitch. Don’t play the innocent with me. You’ve been getting it from Shane O’Neill for months. Now it’s old Ross’s turn.’

  He laughed loudly and Paula realized that he was very drunk. She struggled, moving under him violently, easing herself to the edge of the sofa.

  To pull her back he had to remove his hand from her mouth. The minute he did she began to scream again. Once more he covered her face with his large hand, wrapped one of his heavy legs around her body, and pinioned her under him. ‘You’ve been playing the grieving widow with me far too long, Paula,’ he gasped, his glazed eyes roving over her lasciviously. His lust was mounting by the minute, inflamed by the fight she was putting up. It brought a flushed and congested look to his face. ‘Come on, let’s go to the bedroom,’ he mumbled, his words slurred. ‘You know you want to screw me.’

  Paula had been waiting for the right moment, and now she endeavoured to nod her head, as if acquiescing to this suggestion. She acknowledged him with her eyes, softening her gaze.

  ‘No more screaming,’ he muttered. ‘Okay?’

  She nodded again.

  He took his hand away from her mouth and leaned into her as if to kiss her.

  Paula whispered, ‘I thought you wanted to go into the bedroom?’

  He grinned at her drunkenly. ‘That’s the idea, baby.’

  ‘What are we waiting for?’

  Still grinning he got up off the sofa. Before Paula had a chance to do the same he bent down, took hold of her arms and pulled her to her feet.

  She did not dare struggle, knowing his great strength. She would have to pick the right moment to flee. She swallowed as he dragged her to him and nestled his face against her hair. ‘You’re going to have to tell me everything liddle old Shane did to excite you, baby. Whatever old Shane can do, Ross can do better. And then some, baby.’

  Swallowing her disgust and fear, summoning all of her strength, Paula pushed him away from her. Drunk, believing she was playing along with him, Ross was taken by surprise. He lost his balance, staggered back, and flopped down on the sofa.

  Paula reached for her solid gold evening bag on the coffee table and swung around.

  He was far too fast for her and grabbed her again. They struggled in the middle of the room. She kicked his shin and he yelled in pain, instantly loosened his grip on her. Finally she was able to pull away from him.

  Ross snatched at her dress. The cowl collar ripped under his hand.

  Paula kicked him again as he took a step towards her, his expression threatening, and then in a swift movement she raised her hand and smashed the heavy gold bag into his face with all her might.

  He cried out in pain as the precious metal struck his cheek and backed off, stumbling against the Chinese coffee table immediately behind him. He went sprawling on the floor. ‘You bitch!’ he screamed, bringing his hands to his bleeding face.

  Gasping for breath, shaking and terrified, Paula dashed into the foyer. The Chinese rug skidded under her but she recovered her balance, hitting her face against the edge of the tall cabinet as she did. But ignoring the stab of pain she flew to the door, jerked it open and banged it after her as she ran out. She pressed the button for the lift, cowering against the wall, praying he would not follow her.

  Tears rushed to her eyes as she fiddled with the collar of her torn dress. She pushed them back, attempted to compose herself. When the doors rolled open she almost fell into the car, avoided the curious glance of the uniformed operator. She moved further back, retreated into the shadow, opened her bag and took out her compact. She ran the powder puff over her face and then smoothed her hand over her hair, aware of her dishevelled appearance.

  Within seconds she was stepping out into the marble lobby of the building, hurrying across it at her fastest pace, and then hailing a cab on Park Avenue.

  CHAPTER 55

  Paula somehow managed to keep a grip on herself until she reached the Fifth Avenue apartment.

  After letting herself in quietly, she tiptoed upstairs, not wishing Ann, the housekeeper, to see her in this terrible state.

  She slipped into her bedroom, locked the heavy carvedwood door and leaned against it, finally beginning to breathe a little easier. Her body was taut, rigid still with the fear that had swamped her when Ross Nelson had so unexpectedly launched his physical attack on her.

  Eventually she found the strength to move forward on her trembling legs, and her hands shook as she unzipped her ruined dress and pulled it up over her head and discarded it. Once she had removed her underwear and her ripped stockings, she stumbled blindly into the bathroom.

  Paula stood in the shower stall for ten minutes, soaping herself over and over again, letting the hot steaming water sluice down over her body. She felt battered and unclean, had the urgent need to erase the smell of him, the touch of him.

  When at last she stepped out and looked at herself in the mirrored side wall, she saw that her body was bright pink, red in parts as if she had scalded herself, damaged the skin. But at least she felt cleaned of Ross Nelson. Pulling on a towelling robe without bothering to dry herself, she went over to the washbasin and peered at her face in the mirror. Her cheekbone was bruised where she had struck it against the cabinet. It would be black and blue tomorrow.

  She continued to stare at herself.

  Her blue eyes were dark, almost black, and they held the look of a wild hunted deer, were wide with fright and shock. She squeezed them tightly shut, wanting to forget what had happened to her only a short while ago. But she could not and she lifted her lids. His lustful face danced before her eyes, was reflected in the mirror, as if he was standing behind her in the bathroom. Paula shuddered and gripped the edge of the sink as she remembered how his hands had wandered so roughly over her body, how his horrible wet mouth had slobbered against hers, how his weight had trapped her under him. She had felt as though she was being suffocated.

  Anger blazed through her. Ross Nelson had virtually tried to rape her. That he had been dreadfully drunk was no excuse. There was no excuse for that unconscionable behaviour. He was a disgusting specimen of a man. The worst. He was not a man. He was an animal. The shuddering intensified. How violated, how damaged she was feeling!

  Nausea rose up in Paula. She began to vomit in the washbasin, retching until she had nothing left inside. The dry heaving continued for a while and then eventually subsided. Lifting her head, she wiped her streaming eyes and her sweating face with the damp flannel, then leaned her head against the cool tiles of the wall. Her head throbbed, her eyes ached and her muscles were sore from struggling with him, fighting him off.

  Blocking out the image of him, she closed her eyes, gulping air, calming herself as best she could, and when she was steadier on her legs she moved away from the washbasin and blundered back into the bedroom. She lay down on the bed.

  It was only then that Paula Fairley fell apart.

  Quite suddenly she was gripped by an internal shaking and then her whole body began to shake as if she had palsy. She pulled the eiderdown up over her. Her teeth began to chatter and she shivered as icy chills swept through her. Clutching at the pillow, she buried her face in it and she began to sob as if her heart was breaking.

  Paula cried without restraint for the next hour.

  And all of the pain and sorrow she had suppressed since the tragic deaths of her father, Jim, and Maggie broke free at last.

  Her terrible grief overwhelmed her, but she let it wash over her, envelope her completely, gave herself up to it, recognizing finally that it had been wrong and fooli
sh of her to bottle it up inside. But she had not known what else to do. She had had to be strong, so very strong for her mother and Alexander and her children. And so she had deliberately buried the grief. It had lain there dormant, yet it had gradually gnawed away at her, eating her alive, rendering her helpless in so many aspects of her life.

  As Paula Fairley wept the bitter tears she should have wept nine months ago, and had not, she began to experience a measure of ease, a genuine relief from the searing heartache and anguish that had engulfed her since the avalanche.

  When she had no more tears left inside her she lay quietly on the bed, her body limp and exhausted, her eyes red and swollen, wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

  Slowly, but with her usual intelligence and analytical powers, she began to sort out her muddled thoughts, sift through the painful memories, examine her emotional and physical frigidity with a new and stunning objectivity.

  It was as if the shock of Ross Nelson’s violent assault on her had cleared her brain, startled her out of her state of frozen containment. She started to see herself with new objectivity, and she knew with sudden sureness that the burdensome weight of her enormous guilt had crushed all feeling in her, all emotional response to others except her children. She had no reason to be guilty. She was not to blame for anything. Not one single thing.

  Shane was correct in everything he had said.

  How cruel she had been to him, inflicting pain on him because her own pain had blinded her to the truth, to reality. Shane. She saw his face in her imagination, transferred it in her imagination to the ceiling. If only he were really here now. She longed to have the comfort and security of his strong arms around her, keeping her safe.

  Tears rushed into Paula’s eyes. She had sent him away, had been so wilful in her determination to tread her solitary lonely road, believing it to be the only road for her. She wondered if he would ever be able to forgive her.

  Ross Nelson’s hideous, grinning, drunken face nudged Shane’s to one side, obliterated him. Paula shuddered violently and sat up in bed. Fury ripped through her, momentarily, stunning her. He had tried to rape her. Never in her entire life had anything quite so disgusting happened to her. But then she had never been exposed to the harsher side of life. She had always been so protected. By Grandy. By her parents. By her large family. And by all that power and wealth. She did not know the streets, the hard world where other women had to live and fight and hold on to their sanity somehow, despite the burdens they had to carry, the punishment certain kinds of men made them endure.

  Certainly she had never been exposed to men – not men like Ross Nelson, who were exploitative, pursued their own ends relentlessly. There had only ever been Jim. He had been her first lover and then she had married him. If he had been selfish and self-involved, and he undoubtedly had, if he had been swept along by his own needs, most certainly he had never been violent with her. He had never really forced himself on her, not once in all the time they had been married.

  And then there had been Shane…theirs had been the grandest of passions, but physical desire had blended in with their deep abiding love, that love which he had said had grown out of their childhood affection and friendship. With Shane there had been a true bonding and on every level.

  The brutalizing experience she had suffered at the hands of Ross Nelson had been terrifying. It was the worst kind of violation a man could inflict on a woman – an invasion not only of the body but of the mind and the heart and the soul as well. It had been cruel, painful and humiliating. She realized how lucky she had been to escape before he had committed that final act and a small series of shivers rippled over her and her anger surfaced yet again.

  And yet his violence with her had shocked her into reality, brought her back to life, released the dam of her grief, destroyed the shell she had so carefully and deliberately built around her. But the carapace had cracked open and she was permitting herself to crawl out of it, to come back into the real world, to live again. Yes, she wanted to start afresh, to move forward, to put the past behind her, to look ahead to the future. Don’t look back, forge ahead, Emma had always said to her. And that was what she must now do.

  It was dawn when Paula finally fell asleep.

  She slept deeply, as if she had been drugged. Not once during the night did she awaken and sit up in sudden fear, crying out in terror as she felt herself being buried alive under tons of cold snow that brought with it icy death.

  The nightmare that had haunted her nights for so long had been exorcized, along with so many ghosts, so many troubled memories.

  When she arose the following morning, after only a few hours of rest, she discovered she felt lighter, freer. It seemed as if a great weight had been lifted and she recognized then that the guilt she had carried had started to dissolve. That too would disappear entirely…one day in the future.

  A new strength came into Paula as she dressed to go to the store on Fifth Avenue. And with that strength came a steadiness, a calmness, and a sure and thrusting knowledge that reached deep into her heart. She knew where she must go, what she must do, and as she stood in front of the mirror she nodded to herself. Her way was clear. She was about to set out on a new road.

  CHAPTER 56

  He sat on one of the ancient ruined walls of Middleham Castle, daydreaming on this warm Sunday afternoon in September.

  The high-flung canopy of the sky was a pewter colour, cloudy and overcast, presaging rain, despite the sun which was valiantly trying to push through. It finally emerged from behind the bank of cumulus and great rafts of brilliant silver light streamed across the heavens.

  Shane lifted his head, looked up, was struck at once by the supernatural quality of that blinding light. It seemed to emanate from some hidden source behind those wild implacable hills and it held a shimmering clarity, a pure radiance that was unearthly, made him catch his breath.

  His dark brooding eyes swept across the sky and then he glanced away, focused his attention on the ruined arch of Warwick’s once-great stronghold, his mind turning inward. He was lonely and alone and yet he knew within his heart that he would find a measure of peace here in Yorkshire. He had made a decision when he had flown home from New York with Winston, at the beginning of this past week.

  Shane O’Neill was going to end his long, self-imposed exile at last. There was too much pain in his life now to bring additional pain on himself and that he would surely continue to do if he persisted in exiling himself. When he was not travelling the world he would live here, surrounded by the beauty he had grown up with and which he so dearly loved. It was the one spot in this earth where he felt truly happy.

  It would be hard for him at first but he would manage somehow. He was a man, mature, intelligent, and he had always been strong. Somewhere he would find the courage to create a new life for himself without her. And he fully intended to live out that life here.

  War Lord was tethered nearby and he whinnied. Shane swung his head, looked about, expecting to see hikers or tourists. But he was still entirely alone. The ruined castle was deserted today and there was little sign of life, except for the occasional call of a kingfisher or a curlew, the gawk-gawk cry of a seagull which had flown in from the North Sea. His eyes lifted to the rolling moors, ranged up against the skyline, glorious today as the heather bloomed and rippling below were the lush green slopes of the Dales.

  Shane sat there for a long time, feasting his eyes on the landscape, enjoying its stunning beauty. The grandeur and majesty of this place never failed to touch his Celtic soul which was so attuned to nature.

  Suddenly he blinked, lifted his hand to shade his eyes. He saw a speck moving across the line of the hills coming steadily down the bridlepath, heading in the direction of the Castle.

  When the lone horse and rider drew closer he stiffened on the wall and stared ahead, focusing his vision.

  The rider was a young woman. She trotted at a brisk pace, handled the horse beautifully, showing great equestrian skill. Her long dar
k hair was blowing in the light breeze, streaming out behind a pale intense face.

  In the passing of a moment he felt his heart leap and begin to clatter abnormally against his rib cage. The rider was spurring the horse forward. He recognized his own mare, Celtic Maiden, and he knew that girl, so clearly visible in that shimmering Northern light that washed the sky and the hills and the castle walls with its penetrating radiance.

  It was his dreamlike child of his childhood dreams…riding through the dreamlike landscape of his childhood dreams…riding through the sunlight and the shadow…drawing nearer…nearer…nearer…raising her hand in greeting. His dreamlike child of his childhood dreams was coming to him…at last. But she had grown to womanhood now…as he was a man now…she was the dreamlike woman he loved, had always loved, would always love until the day he died.

  The thud of the hooves on the rich dark earth drowned out the clattering of his heart. Slowly, disbelievingly, he rose from the wall, his eyes full of questions. But his face was still and without expression.

  She swung down out of the saddle lightly, threw the reins over the tree stump where War Lord was tethered, took a step towards him and stopped.

  ‘I thought you were in New York,’ Shane heard his voice say. He was surprised he sounded so controlled, so normal.

  ‘I took the overnight flight from Kennedy to Manchester on Friday. Tilson picked me up yesterday and drove me back home…to Pennistone Royal.’

  ‘I see.’ Shane stepped back involuntarily, sat down on the wall, feeling weak.

  She joined him on the old greystone wall and studied him for a long moment.