Oceans Of Regret

William Paley

Description

A woman carries a baby girl through an East European revolution to safety in the UK; the mother dead, the father badly injured and presumed dead. She forms a strong bond with the child unaware that the father lives and is thereby able to observe and fund her care from a distance.After a lifetime of misgiving, he meets his adult daughter but cannot confess his relationship for fear of alienating her and disturbing her love for her stepmother for whom he has a high regard and therefore continues his benevolence unable to dismiss his dilemma.Anxieties and regrets for a life blighted by the consequences of flawed decisions are resolved by the love of friends and family, which triumphs over the mistakes of the past.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 06 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839521577
• Langue: English

Extrait

Oceans of Regret
Too late, remorse. Too late, reform.
Oceans of Regret
Too late, remorse. Too late, reform.
William Paley
First published 2020
Copyright © David William Paley 2020
The right of David William Paley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and
The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-156-0 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-157-7
Cover design by Andrew Prescott Internal design by Jenny Watson Design
Printed and bound in the UK

This book is printed on FSC certified paper
Also by William Paley
Fiction
The Magic Canopy
Four Ways to Keep a Secret
Poetry
Visions and Illusions
Anthologies in Kindle format
Original texts with English translations
101 French Poems
150 German Poems
Dedication
To Sarah and Amy
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Chapter 1
Some are born to silver spoons, others to fortunes lost; but most are born to tread the stairs of life, some to drown in a lake of tears. Jane Temple was one such among the legions of that happy breed troubled neither by the cupboard bare nor by expectations posed and with no desire to float on silent seas. She had led an uneventful life in the cosy London suburb where she had grown up but had achieved mediocre results at school that fell somewhat below her ambitions and, newly released from her schooldays, had emerged into the pool of unemployed. She joined what few friends she had in shop work and, having been noticed as a diligent assistant and timekeeper in the department store to which she had graduated after her first two years, joined the clerical team on the top floor. The slight pay rise it offered gave her a little more confidence to explore the world outside her limited experience and to take a flat with her old classmate, Susan. She it was who decided that they should attend evening classes for typewriting lessons and, later, when that had concluded satisfactorily, to attend a secretarial course together.
They had always had a close friendship and now, with the confidence of having attained skills that emboldened them to venture into the bright lights of weekend entertainment, became avid cinema and theatre visitors where they sought frequent escapes from the mediocrity of their lives. Jane’s new competency in typing, however, drew her onwards to new pursuits that led her to enrol for more ambitious activities at evening classes which enabled her to graduate with qualifications that brought more management attention.
One evening, Susan told Jane of her meeting a young man in the art school who was hoping to enter the publishing industry.
“He’s called Charles. Sounds really smart, doesn’t it? I said I’d help out on the typing side if he wanted and I set out a proof for an interview he had. There! My first typing job! Not really a job. He can’t pay me anything but it’s all experience and he’s quite good-looking.”
“I suppose that makes it a bit more exciting,” Jane replied. “But don’t get any ideas about leaving here. It’s nice sharing a flat.”
“Don’t worry about that. He’s concentrating on self-improvement just like we are but I might get him to take me out, somewhere.”
Jane began to wonder whether one thing would lead to another and she would be left to live in the flat, alone, but a few years passed and they remained together. Happier now and a little more mature, she joined clubs, herself, engaged with people more educated than she, but with whom she could hold her own in conversation and debate, and applied for a passport to spend a long weekend in Paris. She passed into her twenties with a higher level of self-confidence that gave her an awareness of her attributes but which were not unobserved by admirers.
One Sunday evening, Susan returned from a night away, somewhere, and announced to Jane with a broad smile, “Guess what! Sex has reared its ugly head at last. I was enticed by a millionaire in the making who wanted to celebrate his new job. He took me to his flat and we flung our inhibitions to the winds.”
“A millionaire!”
“Well, not exactly. But someone who could talk a girl into any depravity. Charles! Remember him? It was terrific. He said he couldn’t leave me alone now and the feeling’s mutual.”
“Good heavens! I hope you don’t want to move out.”
“He did say I should move in with him, but I told him not to be too hasty. A girl’s got her pride, I said, but, between you and me, I’ll probably forget that pretty soon. He’s very persuasive and I’ll probably wither under the fire. I don’t want to play ‘hard to get’ for too long. You never know, he might find somebody else in the meantime. That’s a bit of a risk; he’s really nice and I won’t mind surrendering to his charms.”
Susan withstood the barrage for two months but then announced her engagement and moved in with Charles. Jane maintained her contact with her and attended her wedding later that year only to return to the emptiness of her flat, thinking that she should somehow also sacrifice herself upon the altar of matrimony. Susan was deliriously happy and she and Charles certainly made a good couple. No suitable candidate was immediately in prospect for Jane but a new member appeared a few months later, a desirable young man named Grant Ledworth, a very personable estate agent, new to the district, who led her to accept his attentions and, within a year, his proposal. Given his connections, they had even found a house where they could live the life she had always wanted: married woman, housewife and perhaps mother—but that would come later, they decided. Modest though the house may be, it was a sign that Jane had finally cast off any inferiorities with which she had been burdened, and their joint attempts at modification and redecoration brought the delight of spending rather than scrimping.
The new kitchen and bathroom were their first targets, and the subsequent choosing of wall coverings and curtains was a delight. After two years they could relax a little and look forward to a more settled life and one where Jane could do more than exchange morning coffee meetings with her next-door neighbour, Doris, formerly a civil servant in mid-level recruitment, but now a widow of several years who would be ideal as a childminder, she thought.
Grant had other ideas, however, tending to close down all discussion of children and generally becoming more silent than before. Conversation became halting and was confined to mundane tasks of the daily round. “We don’t go out much anymore,” Jane protested.
“I’m too tired,” Grant countered. “Anyway, there’s not much to do these days. I don’t really fancy doing the sorts of things we used to do.”
“Too tired!” Jane exclaimed. “We don’t even go to the cinema now. That wouldn’t be too tiring. You’re not even thirty. What will you be like when you’re forty?”
“Even more shrivelled up than I am now,” he replied without a trace of humour.
Jane fumed inwardly at her ambitions thwarted, almost non-existent entertainment and Grant’s increasingly morose silence that she detected. Even in bed they lay a thousand miles apart.
When she eventually asked him what was wrong, he replied, “Things are a bit difficult at work, these days. They want more sales but the market is what determines that. I can’t force people to do deals on major investments.”
That placated her for a while but they continued to drift on a sea of unrewarded ambitions. Several months passed without relief from a growing tension.
“Grant. Something’s wrong. What’s happened?”
Grant was silent for a moment but then blurted out, “I’ve found somebody else. Things haven’t gone right for some time. I want to start again.”
Jane stared at him in horror. Her blissful world had collapsed in a sentence. “What! Somebody else! What do you mean?”
Grant was shamefaced but, now that he had admitted it, blundered on. “I wanted to tell you before. The fact is it’s not working here. We shouldn’t have done it. At least I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I’ve met somebody else. I can’t carry on here with you. It’s just living a sham.”
“After all that we’ve done together! All the sacrifices we’ve made! All the work on the house! A sham? Not for me, it wasn’t. We could start a family, have a totally new life.”
“It won’t work. Let’s get a divorce and start again.”
“Divorce! No! We’ve been married for only three years!”
“It won’t work,” he said again. “I’ll make it easy for you. I shan’t make any demands. I’ll pay for everything.”
“Except for the damage you cause. Just so you can take up with some new woman. I suppose you’ve been having plenty of sex on the side. No wonder you’ve been too tired to go out. Exhausted probably.”
“Jane, it’s best if we don’t make it too hard for each other. It’s better for me to leave now.”
Jane covered her face. “Get out, then. Why should I care? It won’t make much difference. You go and spend another couple of years with her and then move on to the next one.”
Grant silently packed his cases whilst Jane remained devoid of expression but in a turmoil of rage and emotion until Grant returned. “Well. Goodbye, then. I’ve left a hundred pounds to be going on with. We can sort out fina