knowledge that he was dead—executed in the Middle Eastern oil state of Azabia where he had been covering a revolutionary coup by the new government. ‘A spy for the Western powers’, the brief communiqué had stated. No further details had been given, and his body had not been returned. The Embassy could do nothing because they were themselves enduring a state of siege for some weeks following the coup, and were later evacuated.
But the report of Logan’s death had seemed more like an epilogue than the finale to the tragic farce that had been their marriage. The news had shattered her, yet their relationship had finished long before Logan ever left for Azabia. Over, she thought, her lips twisting painfully, almost before it had begun, in disillusionment on her side and contempt on his.
But even if things had been different, could such an ill-matched marriage ever have stood a chance? she wondered sadly.
Even on the first evening they had met, she had been aware of the gulf which yawned between them. Logan at thirty-four was a man of the world, cynical, knowledgeable and experienced. She had been a naïve schoolgirl, looking for a hero to Worship. Only Logan had no wish to be cast in the heroic mould. He’d made that clear from the beginning, but she wouldn’t listen. She’d been deaf to every hint, every warning except the clamouring of her own instincts, and they had played her false.
She had found it difficult to sleep that night after the party—the first of many sleepless nights. And she was being a fool, she told herself, as she viewed the shadows that sleeplessness had left under her eyes. So she had been kissed. So what? A lot of girls her age were already married, and mothers, not necessarily in that order. Just because she had spent the last few years at a school where even the most casual relationships with the opposite sex were frowned on it didn’t mean she had to make a big emotional deal out of one kiss.
She found herself wondering if she would have been doing all this heart-searching if she had been kissed by one of the young executives who had been discreetly clustering round prior to the awards presentation.
She sighed as she picked up a brush and began rather listlessly to stroke it down the length of her dark copper hair. The only way she could find out, it seemed, would be to allow herself to be taken out by one of U.P.G.’s bright young men and kissed so that she could compare notes. It was not a prospect that held any appeal for her at all.
What she really wanted, she thought quite calmly, was for Logan to kiss her again. She leaned forward, peering at herself intently in the dressing-table mirror, touching her fingers to the softness of her lips, and wondering why a girl’s mouth should be so vulnerable when a man’s was hard and bruising. She began to wish she had emulated many of her contemporaries at school, and had secret romances concealed at peril of expulsion from the staff. At least now, she would not feel so totally confused and at a loss. She knew all about her body’s biological processes, but very little about its emotional needs, which, she had begun to suspect, were far more complex.
She was quiet at breakfast, causing her father to enquire anxiously whether her headache was still persisting.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she assured him, pushing aside her boiled egg, untasted. ‘Daddy, I’ve been thinking. It’s time I started work—got myself a job.’
Sir Charles touched his table napkin to his lips and laid it to one side.
He said with a hint of impatience, ‘My dear Briony, I thought we agreed that you should spend this year at least working for me—learning how to run this house, and how to act as my hostess.’
‘That’s hardly a fulltime occupation,’ she protested. ‘And I have to find something to do.’ She picked up the silver pot and added more coffee to her cup. She said too casually, ‘My English marks were always good. I was wondering if I couldn’t become a journalist.’
She stole a swift glance at her father and saw his brows had drawn together in a thunderous frown.
‘You can’t be serious,’ he said at last.
‘Why not?’
‘If you need to be enlightened on the point, then I will do so. A newspaper office is no place for any woman, and particularly not for my daughter.’
‘But lots of women work on newspapers,’ she said. ‘Many of them work on your newspapers.’
‘Not at my wish,’ he said coldly. ‘But in these days of sex equality, it’s impossible to exercise any proper discrimination.’
‘Oh, Daddy!’ Briony suddenly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You really are appallingly prejudiced!’
‘Am I? Perhaps so, but I stand by every word I’ve said. Newspaper reporters are hard—the nature of the job they do makes them so, and whereas a degree of toughness and cynicism is acceptable and excusable in a man, it cannot be so in a girl.’ He folded his newspaper and rose to his feet. ‘I would not wish to see you losing your essential sensitivity, my dear, becoming coarse and uncaring in your attitude. I …’
‘Daddy,’ Briony cut in impatiently, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You’ve been in the newspaper business all your life, yet you give the impression that you hate it.’
‘Sometimes I do,’ her father said quietly. ‘Particularly I hate what it does to people. I’d hate what it might do to you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I must be going now. I have a full day ahead of me.’
And I have an empty one, she thought soberly, as the door closed behind him. She had not been altogether serious in her suggestion that she should become a journalist. It had been more of a passing thought, than a burning ambition, but the idea seemed to gain in attraction as she considered it. Besides, it was time she began to think for herself and plan her life. Many girls whose examination results had not nearly been as good as hers were starting at university, and in some ways she wished she had insisted on going too, but Sir Charles had been so emphatic that he wanted her at home, that it had seemed ungracious to persist. And at that time, the prospect of several more years in academic pursuits had not seemed very alluring.
But her father surely couldn’t expect her to spend all her time sitting round the house twiddling her thumbs. He knew perfectly well that all the real work was done by Mrs Lambert, with the assistance of a daily help, and that Briony’s place in the scheme of things was a supernumary one. Or did he think she was going to get married almost at once?
Unwillingly she found herself recalling what Logan Adair had said about her choice of a husband, and a sudden image rose in her mind of herself, white-gowned and bridal-veiled, walking up an aisle of a church to where a faceless man awaited her by the altar, waited for her to be handed over to him by her father—untouched by human hand or by life itself.
She felt an hysterical giggle rising in her throat at the thought. Could it be possible to allow oneself to be bored into matrimony—to exchange the dullness of one safe existence for another without even being tempted to taste the danger and adventure of real life?
She pushed her chair back abruptly and stood up. University would have been her first encounter with an unsheltered world, and she had been baulked of that. She could not afford to let another opportunity pass her by.
She would go round to the U.P.G. building and ask Hal Mackenzie of the Courier for a job. He had been very pleasant when she had met him the previous evening, she tried to bolster her confidence, and she had all the requisite qualifications on paper.
Besides, she thought not too hopefully, if she was successful in obtaining a job, however junior, on the most serious and influential paper in the group, perhaps her father would become resigned or even sympathetic to her aspirations. At least she would make him see she was not merely a cipher with no mind of her own. She had nothing to lose by trying.
But she was already on her way to the U.P.G. offices when the disturbing thought struck her that she might have a great deal to lose. That by deliberately seeking to place herself in close proximity to Logan Adair, she could well end up by losing her heart.
‘And I did,’ Briony thought in anguish, staring sightlessly