by Penny Jordan
He had done it quite kindly and gently, but she could still remember how humiliated she had felt when, flushed with success and proud of what she had done, she had suggested they give a small dinner party to show off their home.
‘Darling, it’s impossible,’ Nick had told her. ‘Don’t you see… anyone we invite could be a potential client? One look at what you’ve done to this place and they’re going to wonder if my professional skills are as amateurish as your homemaking ones.’
His criticism, although perhaps justified, had taken from her all the pleasure and sense of achievement she had felt in what she had done, and when three weeks later Nick had suddenly announced that he had booked a firm of decorators to come and repaint the whole house she had quietly kept to herself her disappointment over the effect of the no doubt practical but very plain woodchip paper with which every internal wall had been covered.
It was obviously Nick’s choice and no doubt he was right when he explained that it looked far better than what she had done.
After that it had never seemed to Fern that the house was really her home; only the kitchen was her domain, and she had tried to make it as cheerful and warm as she could, even though she could tell from Nick’s face that he did not approve of the bowls of spring bulbs; the flowers from the garden, the soft yellow paint and the pretty curtains and chair covers she had made for the room.
From the outside the house looked neat and well cared for, just like all the others in the cul-de-sac, but inside it was empty and desolate of all that made a house a proper home, Fern reflected sadly as she turned into the road into town, her footsteps automatically slowing down slightly as she studied the view in front of her.
It didn’t matter how many times she walked down here, or how familiar the view before her was; she always felt a fresh surge of pleasure at what she saw.
The town had originally been an important stopping-off point for stage-coaches and other carriage traffic, a vital link with the main arterial routes of the day, and although now modern roads and motorways had turned the town into a quiet backwater, bypassing it, the signs of its thriving, bustling past were clearly visible in its architecture.
One side of the town square was still dominated by the coaching inn which was said to date back to the fifteenth century, although its present exterior was that of a late Tudor building, herringbone-patterned brick insets between the beams replacing the original wattle and daub. Adjacent to it ran a line of similar buildings, once private homes, now mainly shops and offices. Next to them was the church crafted in local stone, its spire reaching up dizzyingly towards the sky.
There was a local legend that the original bells had been melted down at the time of the Civil War to make weapons and armour, but as far as Fern knew this had never actually been substantiated.
Like looking at the rings of a tree to discover its age, the various stages of the town’s growth could be seen in the different styles of its architecture.
The third side of the square was lined with handsome Georgian town houses, originally the property of the wealthy tradesmen who had made their homes in the town, drawn there by the business generated from the coaching traffic.
Adam’s office was in one of those buildings, beautifully renovated and lovingly restored to all its original elegance.
When it came to his work, no detail was too small to escape Adam’s careful attention. Even the paint for the walls had had to be specially mixed to an old-fashioned recipe.
It had been Lord Stanton who had unearthed in his library an estimate and recipe for paint originally supplied for the new wing of the hall which had been built at the same time as the houses and by the same builder who had been responsible for the pretty Nash-type terrace of houses in Avondale.
As she crossed the square, heading for the church, and the surgery, Fern deliberately took the longer way round so that she wouldn’t have to walk past Adam’s office. The sun glinted on the leaded windows of the coaching inn, highlighting the uneven thickness of the old-fashioned glass, and picking out the detail on the pargeting decorating the upper storey of the building next to it.
In the centre of the square stood an open-arched two-storey stone building, a relic of the days when the town had marked one of the stopping-off places for drovers taking their flocks from one part of the country to another.
On a clear day from the top of the church tower it was possible to see out over the Bristol Channel to the west and to the spire of Salisbury cathedral to the southeast.
It had been Adam’s gentle coercion of the local authorities, supported by Lord Stanton, that had been responsible for the removal of the square’s tarmac road surface and the uncovering and restoration of the original cobbles which lay beneath it.
Adam’s family had lived in the town since the late sixteenth century. Wheelwrights originally, they had prospered during the days of coach travel.
Fern had never met either Nick’s mother or Adam’s father, both of whom had been killed in a road accident a couple of years prior to her knowing the stepbrothers. However, while Adam had always spoken warmly of both Nick’s mother as well as his own parents, Nick rarely mentioned his family at all.
Fern knew that Nick’s father had deserted his wife and small son when Nick was barely three years old—Adam had told her that—but when she had once gently tried to sympathise with Nick over his father’s defection he had rounded angrily on her.
Fern also knew from comments other people had made that Adam’s father, like Adam himself, had been very highly thought of locally, and had been a very generous benefactor to local charities.
He had also been very good to Nick, treating him if anything more indulgently than he had his own son.
Fern remembered how surprised she had been when she first met Nick to discover that the expensive car he had been driving—far more expensive than the car Adam drove—had been a present to him from Adam’s father.
The money Nick had used to set himself up in business had also come from Adam’s father, via a legacy left to him in the older man’s will, but despite this Nick seemed to begrudge the fact that Adam had inherited a far larger proportion of his father’s wealth than Nick himself had done.
Fern remembered how shocked she had been the first time she had heard Nick voice this resentment, but then she had reminded herself that, bearing in mind the defection of his own father, it was perhaps understandable that Nick should react so badly, perhaps super-sensitively and totally erroneously seeing in Adam’s father’s willing of the larger part of his fortune to his natural son a rejection of Nick, his stepson.
And yet Fern had also heard Nick saying disarmingly how uncomfortable he had sometimes felt about the fact that Adam’s father had seemed to relate far better to him than he had done to Adam himself.
‘I think he felt more in tune with me than he did with Adam. Adam, worthy though he is, can be a bit lacking in humour at times.’
Fern had been surprised by this comment, since she had thought that Adam had an excellent sense of humour, rather dry and subtle perhaps, but he was an extremely perceptive and aware man, who made generous allowances for the vulnerability and frailties of others.
Was it perhaps because Nick had felt he was closer to Adam’s father than Adam was himself that he had been so resentful of the fact that Adam had been left the larger portion of his wealth?
Nick had, after all, been the sole beneficiary of his mother’s admittedly much more modest estate.
Fern carefully kept as much distance between herself and Adam’s office as she could; was it really necessary for her heart to start thumping so furiously fast just at the mere thought that she might see him? Miserably she deliberately looked in the opposite direction, refusing to give in to the temptation to turn her head and see if that faint shadow she could see at one of the windows really was Adam.
Adam… She shivered convulsively, acknowledging how stupidly weak she was. Just mentally saying his name had such a powerful effect on
her senses that she was half afraid she had said it out loud.
It was a relief to walk into the surgery and escape.
‘Ah, good, there you are,’ Roberta announced as she saw her. ‘The stuff’s already across at the church hall. I was just beginning to wonder if you weren’t going to make it.’
‘I left a little bit later than I planned,’ Fern apologised as they crossed the narrow cobbled street separating the surgery from the church hall.
‘Just look at all this stuff,’ Roberta groaned after they had let themselves in and were standing surveying the bagged bundles heaped in the middle of the room. ‘Heavens, these don’t even look as though they’ve been worn,’ she commented as she tackled the nearest of the bags, holding up a couple of dresses for Fern’s inspection. ‘These came from Amanda Bryant and they probably cost more than I spend on my wardrobe in a whole year… much more,’ she added ruefully as Fern leaned forward to inspect the labels. ‘I think I remember Amanda wearing this one for last year’s vicarage garden party.’
‘It is very striking,’ Fern acknowledged.
Amanda Bryant and her husband Edward had been their fellow guests at Venice’s dinner party, a very wealthy and flamboyant local couple who had made a good deal of money from a variety of shrewd investments. There were certain staid members of the local community who tended to disapprove of them, but Fern liked them both. Amanda made her laugh with her robust good-natured humour, and her very genuine and down-to-earth enjoyment of their new-found wealth. They were not in the least pretentious and their annual summer barbecue was one of the best attended and most popular local events, probably second only in popularity to Lord Stanton’s New Year’s Eve ball, ranking there with the river race which Adam organised each year to raise money for charity.
‘Venice has given us masses of stuff as well. All of it designer-label by the looks of it and hardly worn. I only wish I were a smaller size,’ Roberta added wistfully. ‘There’s a suit here that would fit you perfectly, Fern,’ she added, eyeing her own plump figure with resignation. ‘It’s just your colouring.’
Fern could feel the tension crawling down her spine; revulsion at the thought of wearing something that Venice herself might have worn when she was with Nick… In her mind’s eye, Fern could see Nick removing it from the other woman’s body… touching her… caressing her…
She felt no sexual or emotional jealousy at the scene she had mentally conjured up, only a deadening sense of futility and despair.
Was it for this that she had spent the last two years of her life desperately trying to piece together her marriage… to convince herself that in staying in it she had made the right, the only decision… that ultimately what she was enduring would prove worthwhile once she and Nick were through the turbulence of these painful years; that ultimately the need he said he had for her would… must conjure up an answering spark within her, that would allow her to cease searching hopelessly for whatever it was that had drawn her to him in the first place and make her believe that she loved him?
Without turning round to see what Roberta was showing her, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I’m not really the type for drop-dead glamour outfits. They’re not really my style.’
As she watched her, Roberta repressed a small sigh. Fern might not have Venice’s extrovert vibrant personality, but she had a marvellously slender and supple figure, a femininity which shone through the dullness of her clothes, a serenity and tranquillity which drew others to her in need of the gentle warmth of her personality.
She had a very pretty face as well, and as for her hair!
Roberta’s own husband, a pragmatic and very down-to-earth Scot, had once confessed to Roberta that he was never able to look at Fern’s hair without wondering if it felt as sensually warm and silkily luxurious to touch as it did to look at.
‘It’s the kind of hair that makes a man want to reach out and…’
He had stopped there looking slightly shame-faced and sheepish, while Roberta raised her eyebrows and commanded drily, ‘Go on!’
He had not done so, of course; there had been no need, and neither had Roberta been annoyed or jealous. She knew him far too well, and Fern as well. Now, if it had been Venice they had been discussing… There was a woman who would enjoy nothing more than the challenge of taking another woman’s man. Fern, on the other hand…
‘There are one or two children’s outfits here,’ Fern commented, interrupting her train of thought.
‘We’ll keep them separate from the rest,’ Roberta told her, ‘although I don’t think there will be very many. Most mothers these days seem to operate their own exchange system.’
‘Well, it does make sense,’ Fern pointed out. ‘Children’s things are very expensive and often they’re not in them long enough to wear them out.’
‘Mmm… it’s all very different from when mine were young,’ Roberta agreed. ‘These days it’s all designer trainers and the right kind of jeans virtually from the moment they can speak.’
Even with only a very short break for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, it took them until well into the afternoon to work their way through all the clothes which had been donated.
Fern’s knees ached from the draught coming in under the church hall’s ill-fitting doors when she eventually got to her feet. Outside the sun was still shining although it was chilly now inside the hall.
Nick had said that he wanted to leave at five, which meant that he would arrive at his London hotel in good time for dinner.
He hadn’t told her where he would be staying, though. Fern frowned as she remembered how tense and on edge he had been earlier… how irritable with her.
After she had left Roberta and started to walk home, she wondered tiredly why it was that she and Nick just could not seem to grow closer to one another. It was after all what they both wanted.
Was it? a small bitter voice demanded. If it was, why was Nick paying so much attention to Venice?
She was one of his clients, Fern reminded herself firmly, and Nick was after all human and a man. It was only natural that he should be aware of Venice as a woman. What man would not be?
But Adam had not looked at Venice with the same barely concealed sexual interest that she had seen in Nick’s eyes…
She tensed briefly, fighting off the wave of emotion she could feel threatening her.
As she had done on her arrival, she carefully skirted Adam’s office, keeping her head averted as she hurried past it on the opposite side of the square, increasing her walking pace as she left the town behind her.
If she didn’t linger too long, she just about had enough time to take in one of her favourite detours, to enjoy a special piece of self-indulgence. After all, if Nick was right, she wasn’t going to be able to do so for much longer, she reflected.
Broughton House lay on the outskirts of the town, close enough to her own house for her to be able to turn off into the quiet lane which led to it.
The railway which had led to the erection of their own small cul-de-sac had also heralded the end of the town’s busy prosperity, preserving it as it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century virtually so that it remained compact and neat, without the urban sprawl which had overtaken so many other towns.
Although it was less than a mile from the town, Broughton House was still surrounded by fields, with an outlook over open countryside, the builder having cleverly sited it so that the side overlooking the town had the least number of windows.
It had originally been built by a wealthy merchant, a ‘nabob’ returning from India, who, disdaining the existing properties, had commissioned himself a new one in the countryside surrounding the place which had been his original birthplace.
The grounds, which covered an area of almost four acres, had become overgrown during the last eighteen months or so of Mrs Broughton’s life, but Fern liked the soft wildness of the over-long grass with its sprinkling of spring bulbs; the moss which coated the paths and the general air of what to others mig
ht be neglect but to her gave the place more a sense of somehow sleeping mysteriously, waiting for the magical touch of an owner who would love it to restore it to its original splendour, but these were thoughts she kept to herself, knowing how derisive Nick would be were she to voice them to him.
As she walked through the formal rose garden, bare now at this time of year, she paused to watch the young heron standing on the mossy edge of the round goldfish pond.
Somewhere within its depths lurked a dozen or more fat lazy goldfish, but Fern suspected they were far too wise and knowing to risk surfacing in such cool weather, and that the young marauder for all his bravura would have a disappointing wait for his dinner.
Through the rhododendron bushes now gone wild and desperately in need of some attention Fern could see the house itself, but today the house wasn’t her destination.
Instead she turned away from it, finding her way through what had once been an attractively planted shrubbery.
Alongside the neglected path there flowered remnants of what must once have been a two- to three-foot-deep ribbon of spring bulbs naturalised in grass.
Today these survived only in broken patches and clumps.
It took Fern almost ten minutes to force her way through the tangled undergrowth obscuring the pathway to the small bowl-shaped enclosure at the centre of the shrubbery.
The stone seat set back from its rim was encrusted with lichen, the lion masks of the seat pedestals and arms badly weathered.
Today, at this time of the year, all that could be seen in the bowl were the emergent shoots of the lilies which when in flower filled the bowl with band after band of massed drifts of flowers in rings of colour from palest cream to deepest gold and from lightest blue to almost purple.
It was Mrs Broughton herself who had first brought her to this spot and told her its history, explaining to her how her husband’s grandmother had had the bowl made and planted, having fallen in love with the same design but on a much grander scale on a visit to America.