Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
followed by flurries of other visitors, from the hospital padre who came with the hospital choir to sing carols, to the consultants, some of them with their wives and children. The smaller children were obviously bored and ran up and down the ward, sliding on the polished floor. After the doctors came a television crew, to film the bomb victims’ Christmas celebrations.
At what felt to Steve like just after breakfast, but was in fact the dot of noon, the Christmas dinner was wheeled in. The accident unit consultant carved the turkey from a trolley in the middle of the ward and the nurses swished to and fro with plates. They brought wine too, from Steve’s impromptu cellar, to add to the glow from the morning’s surreptitious consumption. After his dinner the old newsvendor lay back against his pillows with a smile of beatific contentment and fell noisily asleep.
At the start of the afternoon visiting the families came trooping in one after the other, wives and children and grandparents, to make a rowdy circle round each of the beds.
When he heard the click, click of very high heels Steve knew who it was before he looked up.
Cass was wearing the fur coat she had bought on an assignment in Rome. The pelts had been shaved and clipped and dyed until they looked nothing like fur at all, and they were only reminiscent of animals because of the tails that swung like tassels at the shoulders. A fur hat was tilted down over her eyes so that almost nothing was visible of her face except her scarlet lipstick. Cass had adopted her dressed-up look, as striking and as unreal as a magazine cover. Her entrance had an electrifying effect. The family parties turned round to stare for a long minute. Cass stood beside Steve’s bed and looked down at him.
‘Hello.’
‘Cass,’ he said. ‘And on Christmas Day, too.’ He was trying to remember the last time he had seen her, but he couldn’t. Months ago, now. How many months?
Cass shrugged off her furs. She was wearing a tube of cream-coloured cashmere underneath it. It looked as smooth and silky as the pelt of a Siamese cat, emphasizing her resemblance to one. Steve knew that her eyes had the same intriguing smoky depth as a cat’s because Cass was short-sighted, and too vain to wear spectacles.
‘You look well,’ he said, and caught himself smiling inwardly at the bathetic understatement. Cass was, as always, perfectly beautiful.
‘That’s more than I can say for you.’
‘Thanks.’
She swayed forward and sat on the edge of the bed. Her legs under the short knitted hemline were very long and smooth in pale stockings.
‘Oh, darling, I didn’t mean that. I meant that it looks as though it was grim.’
‘It’s all right. I know what you meant.’
There it was, confronting them already, Steve thought. Their almost deliberate inability to understand the first thing about each other. It was hard to believe that this pretty girl with her wide, unfocused eyes had ever been his wife.
She looked around now, and shivered a little. ‘Ugh. I hate hospitals. How are you bearing it?’
‘Oh, I can bear it. I lie here and listen to people talking. Watch the nurses. There’s one very watchable redhead. I think, and sleep. There are worse things.’
Cass laughed and re-crossed her legs. ‘I can’t think of very many. Poor love.’
Steve was thinking that he found her just as attractive in just the same way as when he had first met her. If she was lying down beside him he would run his hand from the hollow of her waist over the satiny hummock of her hips. He knew how she would sigh with satisfaction, her wide-set eyes fixed dreamily on his.
Steve shifted uncomfortably under the bedclothes, feeling the heavy weight of the plaster encasing his leg.
‘Is your leg hurting?’ Cass asked innocently.
‘No. Not my leg.’ She heard the note in his voice and she laughed, pleased with the effect she created. Yet he had hardly known her, Steve reflected. Any more than Cass had known him. Annie and he knew one another intimately, and he had done no more than hold her hand and cradle her head to try to comfort her.
Watching him, Cass asked sharply, ‘Has Vicky been in to see you?’
‘Vicky? Yes, she came the day before yesterday. When they lifted the next-of-kin-only restriction. She’s gone home to Norfolk for Christmas now.’
Cass pouted a little. ‘Why did you have to name Bob Jefferies as your next of kin? It made it look as if you didn’t have anyone else.’
Steve sighed. ‘I couldn’t have named you, my love, could I? We haven’t seen each other for months. I didn’t even know if you were in the country.’
‘I was here. I would have come right away.’ Cass picked up his hand and bent her head, looking at their laced fingers. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
After a moment Steve said, ‘No, I didn’t know. You were the one who left, remember?’
Cass turned her head further, so that a wing of creamy-blonde hair fell and hid her face. Further down the ward someone had turned on the radio. It was a recording of the Nine Lessons and Carols, and they heard the achingly high notes of a boy soprano.
‘Steve, I …’
He moved quickly, knowing that he couldn’t listen. He opened his hand and let her fingers fall back on to the bedcover.
‘Bob came. Bod did everything that was necessary, which wasn’t a lot.’
Cass turned her face squarely to him then, and he read the mixture of hurt and irritation in it. Just as there had always been, almost from the very beginning. ‘It’s no good, is it?’ she asked. He wanted to reach out and touch her then, but he knew that he shouldn’t do that either. There was no point in beginning again, because there was nowhere that he and Cass could go together.
‘No,’ Steve said at last, and the word fell into the stillness between them.
After a moment Cass looked up brightly. ‘Well. I’m not going to dash off at once, having come all the way in here. Let’s talk. What shall we talk about?’
‘Tell me what you’ve been doing.’
She launched into a spirited listing of her bookings and her travels to assignments. She had been to New York for six weeks, to Singapore, and to Rome and Sicily. She was busy and successful, and she was still moving in the same fashionable world that she and Steve had once moved in together. At last, however, she ran out of bright anecdotes and they looked at one another again in silence.
In a different voice Cass said abruptly, ‘You look so wretched. Why don’t you talk about what happened?’
‘It happened. I don’t remember all that much about it. Except that it hurt, and it was very dark.’
He longed to talk to Annie about it. No one else.
‘I saw the news pictures on television.’ Cass shuddered. ‘Before I knew you were there. There was someone trapped with you, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes. A woman. We talked, to keep each other company. It made it easier.’
It was impossible to say any more. Somehow Cass understood that.
‘I’m sorry,’ Steve said. ‘I’m very tired.’
She stood up at once and slung her fur coat over her shoulder so that the animals’ tails swished to and fro.
‘I know. I’ll go now. I didn’t even bring you a present, did I?’
Steve grinned crookedly at that. ‘No need. Everyone in the business has sent things. Half the stock of Harrods.’
Cass laughed. ‘I can imagine.’ It was the first completely natural note that they had struck between them, and they smiled at each other. Suddenly Cass leaned forward and kissed him, her hair falling against his cheek. Steve was reminded