Читать книгу Worthy Of Marriage - Anne Weale - Страница 9

LUCIA was woken by birdsong.

She lay listening to what she realised must be the dawn chorus as heard in the depths of the country. Compared with the twitterings at first light of suburban and city birds, it was like someone whose only experience of choral music had been a small school choir hearing, for the first time, the chorus of a grand opera company. After a while it died down and she drifted back to sleep until something else woke her. This time the room was full of sunlight and Mrs Bradley was bringing in a breakfast tray.

‘Mrs Calderwood thinks you should take it easy for a few days,’ said the housekeeper, after they had exchanged good mornings. ‘She’ll be up to see you presently. You can eat eggs, I hope?’

‘I can eat anything,’ Lucia assured her.

After the housekeeper had gone, she nipped out of bed to brush her teeth before drinking some of the chilled orange juice. Under the silver-plated dome with a handle on the top was a perfectly poached egg, with the deep orange yolk only produced by hens who could peck where they pleased, on a thick slice of toasted brown bread. Several more slices of toast were swathed in a thick napkin inside a basket, next to a little dish filled with curls of butter and a glass pot of thick-cut marmalade that, like the bread, looked home-made.

After months of enduring the horrible breakfasts in prison, Lucia relished every mouthful. She was pouring the last of the tea into her cup when there was a tap on the door and Rosemary appeared.

‘Good morning. What sort of night did you have?’

‘Wonderful, thank you.’

‘Good. I’m told that coming out of prison is like being discharged from hospital after a major operation. It’s best to take things rather slowly…re-adapt at a leisurely pace. I thought this morning we’d take the dogs for a walk. They belong to my eldest daughter Julia and her husband. They’re visiting a game reserve in Africa. Leaving the dogs with me is preferable to boarding them in kennels.’

Later, while they were walking an elderly golden retriever and two energetic Jack Russells, she said, ‘Perhaps you’ve wondered why I didn’t visit you in prison to introduce myself before you came here?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ said Lucia.

‘I felt it might be an intrusion on the short time you were allowed to see people you knew,’ Rosemary explained. ‘Also I felt it would be difficult to make friends in those circumstances.’

‘It would have been,’ Lucia agreed.

She did not reveal that she had had no visitors. Some of the people who might have come to see her lived too far away. After giving up her last job to take care of her father during his long illness, she had lost touch with former colleagues. In their twenties, most people had too much going on in their own lives to bother with colleagues who had either been ‘let go’ or had dropped out for other reasons. Anyway, from what she had seen, visits from family members and friends could be more upsetting than pleasurable.

But she didn’t want to think about what she had learned in prison. She wanted to put it behind her and get to grips with the future.

‘These painting trips you mentioned yesterday…where are you thinking of going?’ she asked.

‘I thought we might start with the Channel Islands before going further afield. Years ago, when the girls were small, we shared a house on Sark with some friends who also had young children. We took it for a month. Our husbands came over to join us at the weekends. Other years we went to France. Do you speak French, Lucia?’

‘Not very much, I’m afraid.’

‘Never mind. It’s not important. I’m not a linguist myself, nor was my husband. I don’t know where Grey gets his gift of tongues from.’

‘Does he need them for his work?’

‘Not specifically, but languages are always an asset. He does travel a lot, both for business and pleasure.’

In his spacious office on the top floor of a riverside tower block in London, Grey was pacing the thick carpet and thinking about the girl who, forty-eight hours ago, had still been locked up, and today was being cosseted by his mother, an expert at pampering anyone whom she considered needed it.

There were other things that he ought to be giving his mind and, normally, he kept his life neatly compartmentalised, focussing his whole attention on the compartment he was in. Right now that was the property business started by his grandfather, developed and expanded by his father, and now directed by himself.

But instead of being able to concentrate on matters pertaining to a major expansion, he was fidgeted by a strong hunch that, unless he found a way to get rid of her, that girl was going to cause trouble.

After pressing the bell for his personal assistant, he took another turn around the room.

When, notepad in hand, she appeared in the doorway, he said, ‘Bring me the file on that court case I was involved in, would you, Alice? And I want to speak to my sister Jenny, if you can get her.’

Alice nodded and withdrew. A few moments later she reappeared with a black ring-binder and placed it on his desk.

He was leafing through the collection of press clippings, each one in a plastic pocket labelled with the date and source, when one of his telephones rang. He picked it up. ‘Yes?’

‘I have Mrs Wentworth on the line, Mr Calderwood.’

‘Put her on, please. Hello, Jenny. How are you?’ He listened to her reply, then said, ‘Are you free this weekend? Splendid. Then call Mum and invite yourself to lunch on Sunday, will you? I’d like your opinion on her latest lame duck.’

The news that Rosemary’s youngest daughter was coming to lunch made Lucia a little nervous, but she knew that meeting people was something she must get used to.

It was when Mrs Calderwood added, ‘And Grey is coming too,’ that her nervousness moved up a gear, though she hoped her face didn’t show it.

‘Does he visit you often?’ she asked.

‘As often as he can…but he’s very busy,’ his mother replied. ‘Jenny’s husband, Tom, is more laid-back than Grey. He’s an architect in a partnership. That isn’t always plain sailing, but it’s nothing like as onerous as the burden on Grey. In these tough, competitive times, having to make decisions that affect a very large work-force is a massive responsibility. It’s what brought on my husband’s health problems. But Grey keeps himself fit. Robert used to play golf, but I don’t think that was as good for him as the swimming and fencing and work-outs that Grey goes in for.’

‘What is his business?’ Lucia asked.

‘His grandfather was a builder. He never made very much money from the business but he put what money he had into buying land on the outskirts of towns. You may not have heard of a Hollywood film star and comedian called Bob Hope, but he was very famous in his day. He was my father-in-law’s favourite star, and somewhere he had read that Bob Hope put most of his earnings from movies into buying up land on the outskirts of American towns. So my father-in-law did the same thing. He didn’t benefit from it but Robert, my husband, did. It enabled him to expand the business in all sorts of directions. By the time Grey left university, it was one of the largest private companies in the country.’

Lucia had already learned that the Calderwoods had almost despaired of having a son. As well as having three daughters, Rosemary had had two miscarriages. Then, aged thirty-four, she had conceived again. She had had to spend most of her sixth pregnancy in bed but, at the end of it, had produced the longed-for male child.

With doting parents and three older sisters, Grey must have been spoiled rotten from birth, was Lucia’s conclusion.

She wondered why he wasn’t married. The possibility that he might not be heterosexual had occurred to her but been dismissed. In her working life, as a commercial artist, she had met a lot of gay men. Sometimes it was difficult, on slight acquaintance, to tell their orientation. But none gave off the kind of vibes that Grey did. She was certain all his sexual relationships were with women, and that they had been and would always be the most gorgeous chicks available. With his looks and position and money, why would he ever settle for anything less than a combination of glamour and intelligence?

On Sunday morning Rosemary went to church in the nearby village. She asked if Lucia would like to go with her but did not appear to mind when she declined. Although it was unlikely that anyone attending morning service in the small parish church would recognise her from newspaper pictures published months ago, Lucia wasn’t ready to face the world yet. The family lunch party was enough of an ordeal for one day.

Since her arrival she had washed and ironed the jeans, shirt and sweater she had worn to come here. Today she was wearing her own things in preference to those that Rosemary kindly lent her. Her other clothes, like the rest of her possessions, were in storage. Not that she had a lot of stuff. Only clothes and books and her painting things.

Mrs Calderwood had not returned from church and Lucia was in the dining room, making herself useful by laying the table according to Mrs Bradley’s directions, when she saw a car in the drive. As it drew up in front of the house, she recognised it as a Jaguar, the make her father would have liked to own had he had enough money. The driver was Grey.

He got out but instead of turning towards the house, he stood facing the garden, stretching his arms and then flexing his broad shoulders. Today he was casually dressed in chinos and a blue shirt with the sleeves folded to mid-forearm.

Before he could turn and catch her watching him, she withdrew to the inner end of the room where he wouldn’t see her.

Instead of heading for the front door, he went round the side of the house and a short time later she heard him speaking to the housekeeper on the other side of the door that led to the kitchen. It was a thick door and she couldn’t hear their conversation, only the two voices, one deeper and more resonant than the other.

Then the connecting door opened and he walked into the dining room, making her spine prickle with apprehension.

Mustering her self-possession, she said politely, ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning. When you’ve finished in here, I’d like to talk to you. Braddy’s making me some coffee. I’ll be on the terrace.’

Taking her compliance for granted, he withdrew.

Wondering what she was going to hear, Lucia completed her task. She had chosen and arranged the flowers in containers from a large selection on the shelves of what had once been a scullery.

‘Small, low arrangements please, Lucia,’ Mrs Calderwood had said, before leaving for church. ‘We want to be able to see each other.’

From a variety of possibilities, Lucia had chosen hem-stitched linen place mats in a colour to tone with the flowers. Beneath them were heat-proof pads and, on three sides, mellow Georgian silver knives, forks and spoons. The side plates were antique Spode bone china, the large folded napkins linen in a colour to tone with the mats. The fine sheen of the table’s surface reflected everything on it in a way that made her long to paint it.

Grey was standing up, drinking coffee from a yellow mug, when she joined him.

‘Have you had coffee?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thank you…earlier.’

He gestured for her to sit down then seated himself in a chair at right angles to hers.

‘Where would you have gone if my mother hadn’t intervened? Presumably they don’t release you without checking that you have somewhere to go or money for food and lodging?’

‘I was planning to collect one of my suitcases and find a bed-and-breakfast place. The flat I was living in before was only rented.’

‘Where is your suitcase?’

‘There are two, but I would only have needed the one with my clothes and hair dryer and so on. I packed them and put them in storage while I was out on bail, between being arrested and sentenced. My lawyer expected a suspended sentence but I thought it was best to prepare for the worst.’

‘What does “in storage” mean?’

‘They’re in a furniture repository near where I used to live.’

He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Why not with friends or relations?’

‘I don’t have any close relations. Both my parents were only children. Two cases aren’t the sort of thing you dump on people unless they have a lot more room than any of the people I knew did. Your living quarters are probably much more spacious than most people’s, but would you want to be encumbered by someone else’s suitcases?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘It would depend on the strength of the friendship.’

‘My two closest friends weren’t around. One of them works in New York and the other is married to an Italian. They live in Milan.’

‘So you’re on your own?’

‘Yes, but that’s no big deal. Most people are on their own these days, Mr Calderwood. Large, close families like yours aren’t the norm any more. It’s mostly a “singles” world now.’

‘I know and I wish it weren’t,’ he said frowning. ‘The way things are going isn’t good for anyone. It’s not good for society as a whole and it plays hell with children’s lives. But it’s not my sex that’s to blame for the breakdown of family life. That’s down to your sex. It may still be a man’s world—just—but the direction it’s taking is a consequence of women’s initiatives.’

‘What do you mean?’

Before he could answer, the sound of the front bell could be heard through the open door that led from the terrace to the hall.

‘That’ll be my sister and her husband.’ He rose to go and let them in.

Wondering if Rosemary had told them her history, Lucia picked up his empty mug and took it to the kitchen. She would have liked to know what Grey would have replied if they hadn’t been interrupted, but it was unlikely he would resume the topic in the presence of the others and it wasn’t likely she would be alone with him again today.

She had rinsed out the mug and was drying it when Mrs Calderwood came through the dining room door. ‘I’m back. How are things going, Braddy?’

‘Everything’s under control.’

‘Good: I’ll get you your drink, introduce Lucia, and come back and make my special dressing for the starter.’ Beckoning Lucia to accompany her, Rosemary headed for the door leading to the rear of the hall.

As she had put on a dress to go to church, Lucia had worried that her jeans might be too informal for today’s lunch. To her relief, her benefactor’s daughter was also wearing jeans, though her top was recognisably one of a famous designer’s expensively beautiful knits and Lucia’s was a schoolboy-sized shirt she had found on the men’s rail in a charity shop.

Before Rosemary could introduce them, her daughter jumped up, put out her hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jenny…and you’re Mum’s unlikely-looking jailbird. Nice to meet you. This is my husband Tom.’

A thickset man with a receding hairline and kind blue eyes offered his hand. ‘Hello, Lucia. I’m an architect…married to a woman who prides herself on her outspokenness which is why some people cross the road when they see us coming. The first time we met she told me I stank of garlic.’

‘But I liked him so much that, despite the garlic, I kissed him goodnight…and he came back for more and here we are twenty years later,’ said Jenny, laughing. ‘What are you going to drink, Lucia? White wine?’—with a flourish of her own glass.

‘Yes, please.’

Grey was in the act of handing a Campari and soda to his mother. He glanced at Lucia. ‘Jenny likes her wine sweet. Would you rather have something dryer?’

At first she had been taken aback by Jenny’s immediate reference to her imprisonment. Now she was grateful to her for bringing it into the open so quickly, and to Tom for picking up what some would regard as his wife’s indiscretion and capping it in an amusing way. It was immediately obvious that they were very happy together.

‘What Jenny is drinking will be fine.’ Smiling at his sister, she said, ‘Drinking anything alcoholic is a major treat for me. There was some illicit alcohol available in prison—at a price—but I wasn’t desperate enough to risk it.’

‘Was there anyone like yourself in there? Anyone you could be friendly with?’

‘In prison, you’re grateful if anyone will be friendly with you,’ Lucia said quietly. But she knew it was next to impossible to make people who had never been there understand how it was ‘inside’.

Jenny started to ask something else but was stopped by her brother saying, ‘Don’t start grilling her, Jen.’ Putting a glass of wine into Lucia’s hand, he said, ‘My sister was once a journalist…more precisely a junior reporter on a small town weekly. It was going to lead to a glittering career in London, but she met Tom and changed her mind.’

‘And have never regretted it,’ said Jenny. ‘I enjoyed my three years on the Gazette, but I like being my own boss better. Now that the children are launched, I may try a spot of freelancing.’

‘Did you read the article in yesterday’s paper…?’ Tom took charge of the conversation and steered it in a more general direction.