by Penny Jordan
CHAPTER THREE
‘IF DAD’S really dead does that mean that we can come home and live with you and go to school there?’ Daniel said to her.
Philippa closed her eyes as she felt the weakening rush of relief surge inside her. All the way on the drive up here to their school she had been worrying about the boys’ reaction to Andrew’s death, but now as she stood with her arms around both of them, her face resting protectively against Daniel’s head, she was forced to recognise that the distance and uninterest with which Andrew had always treated his sons was reciprocated in their calm acceptance of his death.
She had gently urged Andrew repeatedly to spend more time with them, to involve himself more in their lives, but he had dismissed her fears about the gulf she could see between them as typical feminine over-reaction.
‘Boarding-school will be good for them,’ he had insisted. ‘It will teach them how to be men. You’re too soft with them. Always kissing and cuddling them.’ The rest of the family had supported his decision.
‘Boys need discipline,’ her elder brother had told her, adding disapprovingly, ‘You’re far too over-indulgent with your two, Philippa. If you’re not careful you’re going to turn them into a pair of——’
‘Of what?’ she had challenged him quietly. ‘A pair of caring, compassionate human beings?’
She had regretted her outburst later, especially when she had walked past the open study door and heard Robert telling her husband, ‘That’s the trouble with Philippa; she’s always been inclined to be over-emotional; but then that’s women for you, bless ‘em.’
The condescension in her brother’s voice had made her grit her teeth, but years of being told as a child that girls did not argue or lose their tempers, and that pretty girls like her should be grateful for the fact that they were pretty and not go spoiling themselves by being aggressive and argumentative, had had their effect.
She often wondered what her parents would have said if she had ever turned round and told them that she would cheerfully have traded in her prettiness for the opportunity to be allowed all the privileges of self-expression and self-determination that her brothers possessed. That her blonde hair and blue eyes, her small heart-shaped face with its full-lipped soft mouth, her slender feminine figure and the fact that by some alchemic fusing and mixing of genes she had been given a set of features that combined to make her look both youthful and yet at the same time alluring were not in fact assets which she prized but a burden to her. People reacted to the way she looked, not the person she was, and she found this just as distressing; it made her feel just as vulnerable and undervalued as it would have done a girl who was her complete physical opposite. People only saw her prettiness; they did not see her; they did not, she suspected, want to see her. It had been her father who had been the strictest at forcing on her the role model of pretty, compliant daughter, praising her when friends and family commented on the way she looked and curtly reprimanding her when her behaviour did not conform to that visual image of sweet docility.
‘Oxford… are they out of their minds?’ her father had demanded when the head of the small all-girls’ school she had attended had written to him suggesting that she felt that it might be worth while, that with a little extra coaching she believed that Philippa could win a place there.
And after that Philippa had found that the precious time she had needed for that extra study was somehow whittled away with family duties she wasn’t allowed to evade.
There were other limitations imposed on her as well. Her father did not approve of girls or women who were self-confident and noisy, women who held opinions and freely voiced them, women who took charge of their own lives.
Philippa had felt very angry sometimes when she was growing up, not just with her father but with her mother as well, who stood by her husband and agreed with everything he said.
Philippa had realised even before her younger son’s birth that her marriage had been a mistake, an escape from her family which inevitably had been no escape at all, but simply a deeper entrenchment in the role her father had already cast for her. But by then it had been too late to do anything about it. She had her sons to consider and she was determined that somehow she would provide them with the happy, secure, enriching childhood she herself had been denied. And for boys especially a father was an important, an essential part of that childhood.
Now, as she realised how little emotional effect the news of their father’s death was actually having on them, she wondered if perhaps after all she might have been wrong, and that maybe if she had been strong enough to brave the avalanche of family disapproval a separation from Andrew would have caused she might have found that not just she, but the boys as well would have had easier, happier lives.
Because there was no getting away from it: life with Andrew had not been easy. Materially comfortable, yes; easy, no, and happy—never.
And yet she had married him willingly enough.
Yes, willingly, but lovingly… She flinched a little. She had believed she loved him at the time… had wanted to love him, had looked upon marriage to him as a secure haven after the pain, the agonising misery of…
‘Can we come home with you now, today, Mum?’
Philippa pushed aside her own painful thoughts and smiled at her elder son. ‘No, I’m afraid not, Rory.’
Much as she would have loved to have the comfort of them at home with her, she did not want them exposed to all the gossip and speculation that Andrew’s suicide had caused locally. Their fees were paid until the end of the current year and she had already decided that it would be best if they remain here until then. That would give her time to sort things out at home.
She had rung Robert almost immediately after the police had left that fateful morning. He had been in a meeting, his secretary had informed her, but she had rung back later to say that Robert would ring her that evening.
He was going to the factory today, but had already complained to her that he was a very busy man, with his own business to run and that he could ill afford to take time off to sort out the mess his brother-in-law had made of his life.
‘You realise, of course, that the company’s virtually bankrupt,’ he had told her angrily when he had called round after the visit to Kilcoyne’s.
She hadn’t, although she had wondered, worried especially about the money Andrew had borrowed, but years of conditioning, of being subservient to the men in her life, had programmed her into not exposing emotions they did not want to handle, and so she had simply sat silently while Robert told her.
‘This whole mess really is most inconvenient. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for me—you do know that, don’t you? I’m putting myself forward for selection as our local parliamentary candidate and this whole unsavoury business is bound to reflect badly on me.
‘Of course it’s typical of Andrew; he always was a trifle melodramatic for my taste. He should never have bought Kilcoyne’s in the first place. I did try to warn him. You might have told me he was likely to do something like this.’
Philippa had stared at her brother, willing back the angry tears she could feel prickling her eyes as she swallowed down the huge swell of anger threatening to overwhelm her.
‘I didn’t know,’ she told him quietly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You must have had some inkling. You were his wife. An intelligent woman, or so you’ve always claimed. You must have guessed…’
‘I knew he was having financial problems, but he wouldn’t discuss them with me,’ she had told him woodenly.
‘The whole world and his wife knew he was having financial problems. I told him months ago that there was no point in panicking the way he was doing, letting everyone know that he couldn’t hold the business together. I warned you at the time against marrying him, Philippa,’ he had added critically, while Philippa had gritted her teeth and then said as slowly and quietly as she could,
‘No, you didn’t, Robert. You wanted me to marry him.
You said he would be a good husband for me.’
‘Rubbish… I never said any such thing.’ He’d given her an angry look. ‘Not that it matters now. What’s past is past, and what we have to do now is to get this whole mess cleaned up as quickly and quietly as possible.’
‘How?’ she had asked him.
He had shrugged impatiently and turned his back on her, walking over to look out of the French windows. ‘Well, the bank will have to be informed, of course, if they don’t know already, and after that it’s their problem…’
‘Their problem…’
He had swung round then, eyeing her irritably. ‘Oh, come on—you must have realised for yourself that the reason he killed himself was because of the business. I don’t know what the exact financial situation is, of course, and in my position I obviously can’t afford to get involved—not now. No, your best bet is to leave everything in the hands of the bank. They’ll do everything that’s necessary. Look, Philippa, there’s nothing I can do…’
Nothing you can do, or nothing you will do? she had asked herself after he had gone and she was mentally reviewing her brother’s assets: the huge house he and Lydia owned, the château in France they had bought three years ago which he constantly boasted had now practically trebled its value, not to mention the rental money it brought in from carefully vetted holidaymakers.
What would he have said if she had told him that it wasn’t his financial help she had actually wanted, but the help, the support, the sturdy male shoulder to lean femininely and weakly on as she had been conditioned to do since birth?
She had grimaced at herself as she passed the hall mirror.
What good were a pretty face and even prettier manners going to do her now?
And from the past, an echo of a pain she had long ago told herself she had never, ever felt, never mind forgotten, had come the taunting words to haunt her.
‘Yes, you’re pretty, Philippa, as pretty and prettily packaged as a little doll and just as insipid and lifeless. What I want is a real woman, a woman who laughs and cries, who sweats and screams when she makes love, who is a woman who thinks and feels… a woman who isn’t afraid to be a woman, who cares more about what goes on inside her head than on her face, a woman who thinks it’s more important to nourish her intellect than her skin—in plain fact, a woman full stop, and not a pretty cut-out cardboard doll.’
A woman who didn’t need a man to lean on and turn to… A woman who could stand alone… A woman such as she could never be… Had never been allowed to be.
* * *
‘So you’ll stay here at school until the end of term and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do,’ she told the boys now. She had already made up her mind that they would not attend the funeral. It was a farce to dress them up in black as her family would expect her to do, and to grieve for a father they had never really known, never mind loved.
They were her sons, she decided fiercely, her responsibility, and she would bring them up as she thought best; if that was not the way in which her family approved…
She saw the headmaster before she left, pleased to discover that he supported her decisions.
She was a very pretty woman, Henry Carter reflected as he watched her go. The first time he had met her she had been with her husband and the older man had completely overshadowed her. He had thought her pretty then, but docile and slightly boring. Today she had looked different—sharper, more alert, the substance of the woman she obviously was rather than merely a shadow of her husband.
He had never particularly liked the man and had wondered wryly if he had ever realised how much of his real personality and insecurity he betrayed to others with his hectoring manner and his need to ensure that others knew of and envied his material success.
Small wonder that he had felt unable to face life without the support and protection of that success. Henry Carter sighed slightly to himself, he might not have particularly liked him but he would nevertheless not have wished such a fate on him.
The recession was biting deeply into the lives of the boys and the school, with fees unpaid and pupils leaving at the end of one term and not returning at the beginning of another without any explanation. So far Andrew had been their only suicide, but there were other tragedies that went just as deep even if they were far less public.
It occurred to him as he ushered Philippa to the door that almost as strong as his pity for her was his contempt for her late husband.
* * *
When she reached home Philippa parked the car and climbed out tiredly. Her body ached almost as though she had flu. It was probably delayed shock, she decided distantly; the doctor had warned her to expect it, even offering to prescribe medication to help her overcome it.
She had felt a fraud then, seeing herself through his eyes, a shocked, distraught wife abruptly made a widow by her husband’s own hand, her grief too heavy a burden for her to bear.
She had been shocked, yes, but her grief… where was that?
So far her emotions had been a mixture of disbelief and confusion, the woolliness with which they had clouded her brain occasionally splintered by lightning flashes of an anger so intense that she instinctively suppressed it.
The house felt cold. She had turned off the heating this morning when she’d left, economising. She had very little idea what personal financial assets Andrew had had.
Robert had seemed to think that she would be reasonably well provided for, but that did not allay her guilt and concern about what might happen to Andrew’s employees. According to Robert the company was virtually bankrupt.
That was something else she would have to do: see the bank. Robert had offered to go with her but after his refusal to help her with the far more worrying problems of the company she had curtly refused his offer.
In the kitchen she filled the kettle and plugged it in.
The hand-built waxed and limed wooden units and the gleaming scarlet Aga had cost the earth; the large square room with its sunny aspect and solid square table should have been the perfect family environment, the heart of their home, but in reality it was simply a showpiece for Andrew’s wealth. The only time the kitchen, the house, really felt like a home was when the boys were back from school.
She frowned as she made herself a mug of coffee. She had given up trying to change Andrew years ago, accepting that she would never have with him the kind of emotionally close and loving relationship she had dreamed of as a girl; she had in fact come to realise that such relationships were extremely rare.
And when she looked around her it seemed that very few of her female acquaintances had fared much better. Love, even the strongest and most passionate love, it seemed, eventually became tainted with familiarity and its accompanying disillusions.
She knew women who complained that their husbands bullied them, and women who complained that theirs were guilty of neglect. Women whose men wanted too much sex and those whose men wanted too little. Women whose men were unfaithful, sometimes with another woman, sometimes with a hobby or sport far more dearly loved than their marriage partner.
She had her sons and the life she had built up for herself and for them; the tepid sexual relationship she had had with Andrew had been infrequent and unexciting enough to cause her neither resentment nor pleasure—and besides she had not married him for sex.
Sex… No, she certainly hadn’t married him for that. Nor he her.
She had married him because…
Edgily she put down her coffee-cup and walked over to the answering machine, running back the tape and then playing it. There was a message from the funeral parlour and as she listened to it she wondered idly how long it had taken the speaker to develop that deeply sepulchral note to his voice. Which had come first, the voice or the job?
As she allowed her thoughts to wander she acknowledged that she was using them as a means of evading pursuing what she had been thinking earlier.
The second message was from the bank manager asking her to make an
appointment to call and see him, to discuss her own private affairs and those of the company. She frowned as she listened to it. Why would he want to see her about the company’s financial affairs? She knew nothing about them.
Perhaps it was just a formality.
The tape came to an end. She switched it off and almost immediately the phone rang. She picked up the receiver.
‘Philippa… it’s Mummy…’
Mummy. How falsely affectionate that small word was, making it sound as though the bond between them was close and loving. In reality Philippa doubted that her mother had ever allowed herself to love her. Like her father, her mother’s attitude had been that love was something which had to be earned. Love and approval had not been things which had been given freely or from the heart in her childhood home, and Philippa was bitterly conscious of this now as she caught the thread of disapproval running beneath the soft sweetness of her mother’s voice.
When Philippa had been growing up she had never been punished by smacks or harsh words as other children had been; that was not her parents’ way. An icy look, the quelling words, ‘Philippa, Daddy is very disappointed in you,’ and the withdrawal of her mother which accompanied the criticism had always been enough… More than enough to a child as sensitive as she had been, Philippa recognised, and her reactions to them were so deeply entrenched within her that just hearing that cold disapproval in her mother’s voice now was enough to make her clench her stomach muscles and grip the receiver as she fought to control the answering anger and pain churning resentfully inside her.
‘Robert has been telling us how foolish Andrew was. Your father and I had no idea he was behaving so recklessly. Your father’s very upset about it. No one here seems to have heard anything about it yet, but it’s bound to get out, and you know that he’s captain this year of the golf club——’
Philippa was trembling again. ‘I doubt that any of his golfing cronies are likely to hear about Andrew,’ she interrupted, trying to keep her voice as level and light as she could, but unable to resist the irony of adding, ‘And of course Andrew wasn’t Daddy’s son…’