Later, changed and with her black cashmere wrap protecting her from the chilly October night, Ellie walked arm in arm with Oliver the short distance to the hotel for dinner, to join Jill who had gone on ahead.
‘Have you told Dad about me?’ she asked.
‘No, not for the moment. I spoke to Alison and she agreed. He’ll do what he always does, just clam up. She said she would get him to ring when you get back to London.’
‘Is she okay?’ asked Ellie anxiously. Like Oliver, she might not feel at ease in her stepmother’s company but she cared about her and knew that she would be feeling equally wretched about Ellie losing her job. And Alison had yet to break to their father the threat of Linton’s Field being sold to Theo Stirling.
‘Practical about it,’ replied Oliver. ‘Just doesn’t want Dad upset — not before his next exhibition. I think she’s right, although I’m not sure Jill agrees.’
John Carter had been as pleased with his daughter-in-law as Ellie had been to have her as a sister-in-law, and had been genuinely sorry to miss his son’s wedding. An invitation to paint in Spain staying at a friend’s villa, he explained, which was impossible to repeat because of the light at that time of the year, clashed with the date for their registery office wedding. It was in this, Ellie privately thought, that the coolness which Jill often displayed to her father-in-law had its roots.
Over dinner the chance for Ellie to broach the subject with Jill came up quite unexpectedly while Oliver had gone to take a phone call from Alison.
‘I don’t dislike him at all,’ Jill said frankly. ‘As a matter of fact I find him marvellous company; he’s so charming and still so attractive. But you know...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘No, go on,’ insisted Ellie. ‘Know what?’
‘Well, has it ever occurred to either of you, that your father is an emotionally irresponsible man? No, I can see it hasn’t,’ Jill said, taking in Ellie’s astounded face.
‘Dad? Irresponsible? How can you say that?’ said Ellie in bewilderment. ‘He really loves me and Oliver and he’d be lost without Alison and when he speaks about you and the children, honestly, he practically cries with love.’
‘I know,’ said Jill patiently. ‘But don’t you see, it’s all about himself. He’s aware only of what we are all doing for him. It never occurs to him to do something for anyone else. He never wonders if you or Oliver are happy, or if Alison is. When was the last time he rang to ask you down to Devon? Or took Alison on holiday?’
‘But that’s just Dad,’ protested Ellie loyally, pushing aside the all-too-vividly recalled disappointment she had felt last time she had rung to arrange a visit. ‘He’s an artist. He’s vague. He forgets, that’s all.’
‘Hmm,’ said Jill. ‘Well, maybe. But you’ll never find out because you and Oliver keep in touch with him the whole time. You two give out the real love.’
It was true her father never rang her, but then Ellie always phoned him once a week. It had become a habit, and one she had started. Most years she got down to Devon for a couple of visits, sometimes Christmas if Dad didn’t have to go abroad to paint. And as for Alison not having a holiday, she went on at least one trip a year with Dad to look after him, if he wasn’t staying with friends.
Voicing this aloud, she found her voice fading away. Put like that it did sound as though Alison got a raw deal.
‘Well, Dad wouldn’t have married her if he hadn’t loved her,’ she said almost sulkily.
Jill laughed and spooned some sugar into her coffee.
‘Wouldn’t he? My dear girl, grow up a bit. Don’t you see? He loves Alison because she solves his problems. That’s all. She solved Delcourt the first time around... all right, all right... Aunt Belle never set foot in the place again, but Alison grabbed the one chance she had of getting John, and good luck to her.
‘Rent out the rooms or the open road was staring John in the face. She took all the responsibility for converting this into those dreadful bedsits, but really John could have stopped it if he had wanted to. But he didn’t, did he?’ Jill stopped. Sighed. ‘Sorry, love, shouldn’t have said it, should I? But Alison would have had your father on any terms. If circumstances had been different, he wouldn’t have looked at her twice. Alison offered a way out of all your troubles and he took it.’
Jill paused and looked thoughtfully at her sister-in-law, who was drawing patterns on the snowy white table cloth with the end of a spoon, her cheek resting in the palm of her hand.
Ellie pushed her hand through her hair. Jill was right. Alison, sharp, intelligent, practical, without a fingernail of artistic talent in her body, would not have got a moment’s attention from John Carter if she had tried to make herself the centre of his life.
Aunt Belle made no secret of her contempt for Alison’s passion for John Carter. Her relationship with her brother-in-law, endured out of loyalty to her dead sister’s children, had done nothing to improve her disdain for his reckless disregard for paying bills.
Secretary to the principal of the local art college was one thing, she’d told Alison curtly, wife to an erratic, charming, feckless artist quite another. Particularly since he did not seem to be very concerned where or who he got his money from.
‘I might not be what he wanted,’ Ellie had heard Alison shout at Aunt Belle when that formidable lady had expressed undisguised scorn at the news of their forthcoming marriage. ‘But I promise you, I’m all he’ll ever need. And right now he needs me. Not you. That’ll do to start with.’
‘And finish,’ Aunt Belle had shot back bitterly. ‘Emily knew it, almost from the first. Thank God, she never lived to see any of this. I’m not saying my sister didn’t love him, but she would have known the truth — but you, you seem prepared to have him at any price. God, you astound me. And he...’
Ellie remembered her aunt’s despairing glance around her former home, the grace she remembered, the warmth all gone in a monument to the power of cowboy builders, do-it-yourself and a scandal that wouldn’t go away.
Ellie stared fixedly into the distance. The truth? That Dad didn’t love Alison? Why should that have upset Aunt Belle so much? That Alison had stood by her father when the Stirlings had wanted him run out of town? That was wrong? How could it be?
He wasn’t the first man to have sought comfort where it could be taken. Alison knew — had known from the start — the terms on which she got John Carter.
Ellie knew Jill was right. It was an uncomfortable feeling. A guilty feeling. She had never discussed her stepmother with her father and she couldn’t imagine such a conversation now. And to what purpose?
Instead she said: ‘But Alison does love Dad, and as long as she’s happy...’
‘Oh, sure,’ Jill said lightly. ‘That’s all that matters.’ But they both knew it wasn’t. Seeing Oliver returning, they dropped the subject.
‘That,’ said Ellie to Jill, discarding her napkin as Oliver sat down, ‘was superb. And I think you are truly wicked to make crème brûlée so good.’
Jill just smiled serenely.
‘Well, we’re going to try and make up for the ghastly time you’ve had with bloody Jerome. And how you can even think about Theo Stirling and our problems at a time like this, defeats me.’
‘Well, it hasn’t defeated me,’ smiled Ellie, hoping her face wasn’t betraying her. Think about Theo Stirling? She had done little else, until her own more pressing problems had engulfed her, but back on home ground, picking up the reins of her old life, all the force of the problems facing Oliver came rushing back.
Looking around the pretty hotel, it was hard to believe that in her father’s day, it had been almost a ruin. Ellie remembered as a small child coming back from boarding school to find the house a maze of newly erected corridors, the library subdivided into four rooms, thin plasterboard walls an incongruous sight alongside the splendour of Georgian panelling, a carved oak staircase and stone-flagged floors.
‘Did it upset you?’ asked Jill curiously, as Ellie reminded Oliver
of that quite unreal happening in their life.
Ellie wrinkled her nose, trying to remember. ‘If it had looked like this in the first place, it might have, but it didn’t so no, I don’t think it did,’ she said slowly. ‘I think I was just relieved that for once Dad wasn’t hiding from the bailiffs and for the first time ever the wing we went to live in was warm.’
Oliver grunted.
‘Didn’t last long though, did it?’ he said. ‘The warmth, I mean. Don’t you remember Aunt Belle’s rage when Dad spent all the money from the rents on that Lagonda and said we would all just have to wear our coats if it got too cold? Poor Aunt Belle. Can’t say I blame her. After all she and Mum had been brought up here. It must have been rotten seeing it all start to crumble, and that Lagonda was a daft thing to buy.’
It was Ellie’s turn to laugh.
‘That didn’t last long either. Just long enough to drive Aunt Belle to the station and me back to school. Thank God for Alison.’
Their reminiscences were brought to a halt by Jill who, Ellie noticed, had not looked all that amused by these revelations.
‘Sorry, Jill,’ she said with a faint grin of guilt. ‘Boring for you.’
‘No, just sad, really. Quite a character, your father. However, I would hate to see Delcourt move out of Oliver’s hands, just because Stirling wants a strip of land for God knows what, wouldn’t you?’
She didn’t need an answer. Oliver’s face was grim.
‘Although he clearly isn’t going to give in without a fight,’ he said, draining his coffee. ‘But then neither are we. And you still haven’t told us your full story, Ellie.’
It seemed so long ago that all this had started but it was barely a little over three months, and a month since Ellie had last discussed it all with Oliver and Jill. So much had happened. She hardly knew where to begin.
But begin she did. An hour slid by before she finished by telling them of the extraordinary wall of silence surrounding Theo Stirling, with the exception of the husky-voiced woman who she was convinced was Lady Caroline Granger, even if she was pretending not to be.
‘She is the only one who is on record as feeling bitter towards him. Also the kind of information she’s got could only come from someone who had got close to him. And she knew all those people well enough to feel confident they would back what she said.
‘I can’t make him out though,’ continued Ellie, stirring her coffee. ‘If you were to meet him, he’d be charming and courteous, with a marvellous sense of humour. But then when I saw him at his office, I said something that he disliked and he was as hard as nails, totally unrelenting, indifferent...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Oh, ho,’ said Jill, raising an eyebrow. ‘Methinks you are not indifferent to him either.’
‘Oh, honestly, Jill, you do talk such rubbish sometimes,’ muttered Ellie, crossly aware that she was blushing. ‘Getting those phone calls was a lucky break. Or it seemed like it at the time. But now I have nowhere to use the information, so for the moment until I can come about again, I’ll have to think of some other threat to use against him. Any ideas?’
Her remark was lightly delivered, and she didn’t catch the uncertain look that passed between her brother and his wife.
Oliver frowned and stirred his second cup of coffee, looking hesitantly at his sister. He could tell, from the dark circles under her eyes and the tired tone of her voice, that she had been through the mill.
‘What is it?’ Ellie asked, seeing him looking at her, as though he didn’t quite know her. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Abruptly he replaced his coffee cup in the saucer. Something about her seemed to make up his mind for him and leaning forward, he began speaking, carefully, as though fearful that he might say something to upset her.
‘I’ve been thinking, Ellie. Suppose the site is to be used for building a factory of some sort. Although it might provide work locally, it’s too far away from bus routes and train stations to make it a serious option for anyone without a car. I’m willing to bet that this community would hate to see a wildlife reserve being wiped out for very few jobs. What if we were to ask Joe McPhee if he would support a campaign preventing the land being used for anything else?’
Ellie leaned forward eagerly at the mention of Joe’s name. Her first job on the local paper before she had left for London had been working alongside Joe, then deputy editor and now editor.
‘Oliver, that’s a superb idea. I was going to drop in to see him anyway, I’ll ring him tomorrow.’
‘Even better,’ grinned Oliver, who was imbued with the same fighting spirit as his younger sister. ‘He’s joining us for a drink later. Couldn’t make dinner — and besides we wanted you to ourselves on your first evening — but he’s sworn to secrecy and thinks it would make a first-class story, not to mention a real environmental campaign that would get attention.’
Ellie looked admiringly at her brother and felt a pang of conscience. Instead of wrestling with her confused feelings for Theo Stirling and drowning in self-pity, she should have been using that energy to do something positive... no, meaningless word, stupid word. Something... constructive. That was it.
‘I’m pretty confident,’ Oliver was saying, ‘that unless you or I mention the name Stirling, no-one at this stage will know he’s even involved. All we need say is that we have had it confirmed that redevelopment of the land is on the cards.’
‘I thought you said Stirling Industries used to employ dozens of local people,’ interjected Jill.
‘They did,’ said her husband. ‘But that was a long time ago and once the company moved on to make its headquarters in London, apart from the Stirling family being known around here, no-one actually worked for them anymore who would remember all that stuff about Dad unless they are reminded.’
‘All that’s left now,’ added Ellie, ‘is the house Theo’s grandfather bought all those years ago when he started the company down here. I’m not even sure if anyone goes there any more, are you, Oliver?’
Oliver signalled for the head waiter and asked him to let him know when Joe McPhee arrived.
‘It’s still owned by them but it’s been let out a lot. Americans on short term tours of duty wanting something uniquely English, Japanese businessmen, that kind of thing. But it’s been empty for a few months now.’
Any more that he knew on the subject was left unsaid when the head waiter arrived with Joe McPhee in tow.
‘Joe, how lovely to see you,’ exclaimed Ellie, kissing the short, grey-haired man on both cheeks.
‘You wouldn’t like to do that again?’ he joked. ‘This time so the whole restaurant can see.’
‘Now you see why I had to leave him,’ sighed Ellie. ‘The mad passion I felt for him couldn’t be contained in such a small office.’
Jill summoned more coffee and brandy and, after enquiries about mutual friends, it was Joe who leaned over and squeezed Ellie’s hand.
‘No use pretending I don’t know, because I do. And if I could afford you I would offer you your old job back tomorrow, even though I know you would say no.’
Ellie was touched. ‘Thanks, Joe. But I’d be such a nuisance. I’ve become even bossier, if that’s possible.’
He smiled disbelievingly. ‘Well, at least you can turn all that energy to good use. I’ve been hard at work getting some action going.’
All three of them looked expectantly at him.
‘I’ve asked Sandy Barlow at the local radio station to squeeze you in for an interview on his lunchtime news roundup tomorrow.’
‘Brilliant, Joe,’ said Oliver, while Jill looked delightedly at Ellie.
‘But I think you should do the interview, lassie,’ Joe said bluntly, as though he was expecting her to object. ‘You wouldn’t have to fake your commitment — and I take it you do still feel a strong commitment to the old place?’
Ellie looked squarely at him. She knew Joe was acutely aware just how far she had gone since the days when she’d trailed round
the county trying to elevate local news to the excitement level of national papers. What pained her was suddenly realizing why Oliver had looked so oddly at her and why Joe was being so defensive.
These good, kind, lovely people had felt nervous about asking for her help. They had not been at all confident that the comfort and warmth, which she had taken for granted, waiting for her back here in Willetts Green, would be forthcoming from her. Just how grand and superior had she become? What kind of person did they think she was? She didn’t want to confront the answer at all.
She simply nodded at Joe.
‘You don’t even need to ask, Joe. It’s the same as it ever was, only deeper. And if Oliver agrees, I’ll give it my best shot.’
Joe looked relieved, but just grunted and launched into the strategy he wanted her to adopt.
‘Just tell them about your childhood memories of the place, how you both have retained roots here, how dreadful it would be to desecrate the countryside. Then emphasize that you hope any would-be developer will stop and think about how irresponsible such a move would be — and how the local paper is supporting any move to prevent it.’
Delighted with this contribution from Joe, who, it must be said, could very shrewdly see a circulation-boosting story in the offing, they parted company, feeling more optimistic than they had for a long while.
‘And I must brush up on a few notes,’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t mind asking questions, it’s having to answer them that terrifies me.’
When she had been going through Theo’s press cuttings Ellie remembered reading that shares in his UK company were stable. The British end of the company, said the stock market analysts, ran smoothly and profitably and was weathering the recession as a direct result of shrewd and careful management.
What else had it said? Back in her room, having agreed to be at the local radio station by eleven thirty the following morning, and sitting propped up in a mound of soft white pillows, she searched quickly through the photocopies of the file that had become a permanent fixture on her desk and which she had unearthed that very morning from the boxes in the spare room.
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