The Chain Garden by Jane Jackson Page B

against his cheek.
    ‘I’m covered in paint,’ she warned.
    ‘I don’t care.’ As he drew her hand down his face so he could kiss her palm she felt the roughness of beard stubble. ‘Just touching you makes me feel better.’ He let her hand fall but kept hold of it as he studied her. ‘You’re wearing glasses. When did you get those?’
    ‘Last week.’ Pulling them off, she rested her head against his. Not now. Not yet. ‘I need a little help for close work. It’s one of the hazards of growing older.’
    Henry’s arms enfolded her, pulling her against him. His body, strong and stocky, was as familiar to her as her own. ‘You’ll never be old. You’re still as beautiful as the day I first saw you.’ He buried his face in her hair. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you to give me strength.’
    ‘You’ll always have me, Henry.’
    ‘Let’s go inside.’ He kissed her temple. ‘I want to hear what you’ve been doing.’
    She thought of the letter from Hal. Maybe she would show him later. ‘Grace came by. I’m going to help at the fair.’
    Holding hands they crossed the grass to the door. ‘You’re never going to run a stall? That would put the old biddies in a flutter.’
    ‘Not a stall. I had a better idea.’ She led the way into the living room and he closed the door behind them.
    As he entered the long greenhouse and inhaled the smell of warm moist earth and vegetation, Bryce was bombarded with memories. Richard and Percy were in the top section of the main shrubbery checking the formation of roots on plants they wanted to propagate by layering. He should have been with them, but hadn’t the strength or the will to resume the role he had played in the past: the cheerful wise-cracker, always ready with a quip. Soon they would ask what was wrong. How could he tell them? He couldn’t tell anyone. To put off the moment he had volunteered to remain behind and pot up cuttings.
    While he worked he searched desperately for a way out of the prison to which he had returned.
    What if he hadn’t fallen ill with fever while he and Tarun were on a week-long trip to the edge of the glacier? What if – within arm’s reach of death – he hadn’t experienced a man’s tenderness and physical affection for the first time?
    Tarun’s touch had been sweet water to the arid desert of his soul. Would life have been easier if none of it had happened? He would not now ache and grieve. Nor would he have known a love that had brought him incomparable joy.
    Though others might call it depraved, for the first time in his life he had felt at peace with himself. Doubt, shame, the fear that he alone in the world was out of step, had dissolved like mist in the clean mountain air.
    Until Tarun he had never known gentleness from anyone except Grace. His mother’s ill health had forced her children to keep their distance. The closest his father had ever come to demonstrating physical affection was a firm handshake.
    For as long as he could remember, manliness had been held up as the ultimate goal, the achievement for which a boy should strive. Terrified that he was different, not normal, he had hurled himself into activities that would prove to himself and his father that he was indeed a real man.
    It was a bitter irony that he had succeeded so well. He could hunt, shoot, fish and wrestle with the best. Yet the greater his father’s pride, the greater his fear of being found out. Since his return the strain – worse now because he had lived a different life, had loved and been loved – had grown so bad he had even begun to wonder if living with the truth might not be easier.
    Easier for whom? His father? Whose cherished illusions and pride in his son would explode in his face? Who would be mocked and pitied, gossip-fodder for people not fit to lick his boots? What of the effect on his mother’s already precarious health: the future prospects of Richard, Grace and Zoe? Which family would want to marry