by Penny Jordan
‘Ah, yes… pity… I was going to suggest you join me for lunch. I’m seeing Harry Turner, the bank’s regional director, and I thought it would give you an opportunity to do a bit of networking.’
Deborah shook her head with genuine regret, half hoping he would suggest that she give the crematorium a miss, but he didn’t. If he had done, would she have told Mark the truth or would she have let him assume that she had not gone because he had not wanted her to? She frowned. Why should she need to employ such deceit? She and Mark had always been totally honest with one another.
Mark saw Ryan leaving Deborah’s office. He had been on his way there himself to apologise for his surliness this morning, but now he abruptly changed his mind.
He had never liked Ryan; he admitted that freely. There was something about the man, about his attitude to life and to other people, that irked him. Ryan, while paying lip-service to the views and opinions of others, nevertheless still managed to betray an arrogance and lack of consideration for any viewpoint but his own which left Mark breathless… and envious?
No, of course not. But he was aware that in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of his peers here at work, according to the ancient code of male approval he would be judged inferior to Ryan.
Ryan was a swaggering, macho buccaneer of a man who, despite the fact that modern conditioning demanded that his male peers disapprove of him for those traits, still, because of those very characteristics, secretly appealed to a part of the male instinct.
And the female? Did Deborah perhaps secretly despise him and wish he were more like Ryan?
Mark frowned. Was it really Deborah’s contempt that he feared, or his own? Was it in her eyes that he feared comparison with Ryan, or his?
His thoughts were too uncomfortable to pursue; they opened up a vein of insecurity and weakness within himself from which he instinctively retreated.
As he walked back into his own office he almost bumped into the girl coming out. He frowned as she dimpled a smile at him, wondering who she was. She had a small, curvy figure and the confidence to show it off, amusement lightening her eyes as she saw him studying her.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised wryly.
‘Don’t be,’ she responded unexpectedly. ‘I was enjoying it.’
She had gone before he could make any further retort, the scent of her perfume lingering behind her.
* * *
‘A computer? And just how the hell are we supposed to afford that?’
Sally gave an exasperated sigh as she heard the anger in Joel’s voice, intervening, ‘Don’t bother your dad with that now, love. We’ll talk about it later.’
She waited until Paul had left the kitchen before turning to Joel and asserting, ‘There was no need to be like that with him. He was only asking. Have you heard anything yet about the factory?’
‘If I had, don’t you think I’d have told you?’ he responded irritably.
Sally gritted her teeth. She knew how worried he was, but didn’t he realise how difficult he was making it for her… for all of them… with his moodiness and bad temper? It wasn’t their fault that he might be going to lose his job.
Guiltily she looked away from him. She had tried to be sympathetic, but she had her own problems. Sister was pressuring her to work more hours on a regular basis but she was already overstretched, trying to keep things organised at home and working as well. And Joel didn’t help.
‘Do you have to leave your things all over the place?’ she demanded crossly now as she glared at the jacket he had dropped carelessly on the table.
‘It wouldn’t be there if Paul hadn’t stopped me to pester me about his damned computer,’ Joel growled back. ‘It would be on my back and I’d have been out from under your feet. It’s really good to know how much I’m wanted in my own home.’
‘Well, it’s your own fault,’ Sally responded defensively. ‘If you weren’t so bad-tempered all the time, snapping at the kids for no reason, behaving like…’
‘Like what?’ he challenged her. ‘Like a man who’s about to lose his job and doesn’t know where the hell his next wage packet is coming from or if there’s going to be one?’
‘You don’t know yet that you will be made redundant,’ Sally protested, ‘and besides…’
‘Besides what?’
She took a deep breath. She hadn’t meant to tell him like this; she knew how he felt about her working even part-time.
‘Sister wants me to work full-time… It would mean a lot more money, Joel,’ she told him quickly before he could say anything. ‘Not enough to cover your wages, I know, but if we cut back on things…’
‘Cut back? I’ve got a better idea,’ Joel told her, white-faced. ‘Why don’t I just get myself out of here completely, then you could make a real saving? It isn’t as though you need me any more, is it? Not now that Sister wants you to work full-time. Not if I’m not in work.’
Sally felt irritation explode inside her. She hadn’t got time for this, for listening to Joel felling sorry for himself, she had the washing to do, and the ironing from the last load, and she wanted to do the supermarket shopping before she went to work; the last thing she needed was Joel having a tantrum. She hadn’t got time to quarrel with him about it either. Not the time, nor the inclination, and certainly not the energy.
‘You’re going to be late for work,’ she told him grimly instead.
She turned her back on him as he reached for his jacket, tensing as she felt him move towards her. A part of her wanted to turn round and lift her face for his goodbye kiss, but another part of her, the angry, resentful part, wouldn’t let her. She was tired of being the one to compromise, who always gave way for the sake for peace. She knew he was worried about his job—she was worried too—but taking it out on the kids wasn’t fair on them.
As he saw the rigidity of her back, Joel’s own face hardened. It seemed that no matter what he did these days he was always in the wrong, in the way, his presence not wanted or needed in bed or out of it.
Paul came into the kitchen after Joel had gone.
‘Everyone else at school’s got a computer,’ he began to grumble as he followed Sally round the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong with Dad, anyway?’
Sally put down the plates she was carrying to the sink and walked over to him. At thirteen he considered himself too big for hugs and kisses these days but right now he looked so forlorn, so young and vulnerable that she reacted instinctively, hugging him to her and ruffling the top of his hair.
He no longer had that baby, milky smell which had once been so familiar to her, so loved; now he smelled of trainers and school mingled with other strange, alien, youthful male scents which showed how quickly he was growing up and away from her.
She felt him wriggle protestingly in her arms. ‘Aw, Mum…’
‘Don’t worry about your dad,’ she told him. ‘He’s got a lot on his mind at the moment.’
* * *
Joel stopped the car three doors down from his own house and then reversed abruptly. He couldn’t go to work leaving things like that with Sally. Perhaps he had over-reacted, snapping at her like that and then quarrelling with her, but he couldn’t sleep properly for worrying about what would happen if he was made redundant. It was his role, his responsibility, his life function to support and protect his family, and if he couldn’t do that, then…
As he walked past the kitchen window he looked inside and saw Sally hugging Paul. He could see her love for their son in the soft curve of her mouth, its tenderness and warmth. How long was it since she had held him like that… since she had looked at him with love?
As he turned away from the door and headed back to his car he felt the angry pain burning inside him like bile.
Jealous of his own son. Sally had accused him of it often enough in the past. He had denied it, of course—he loved the children—but seeing her holding Paul like that had made him sharply aware of the contrast in the way she treated him and the way she opened to them.
&nbs
p; * * *
Deborah had timed her arrival at the crematorium to coincide with that of the last of the mourners, so that she could slip inside and sit at the back of the room without attracting any attention.
The first thing she noticed was how few people were actually there.
A small, very pretty blonde woman in black who was presumably the widow, an older couple beside her—her parents perhaps. Another couple, the tall man with a rather imposing and self-important manner, the woman at his side signalling by her body language that she considered herself above the proceedings, as she held herself slightly aloof from the others. She was dressed in a way that proclaimed her county origins; the Hermés scarf was plainly not a copy and neither were the immaculately polished loafers she was wearing. She looked the type to have sons at one of the better boarding schools and daughters who rode in gymkhanas and did a season working in Val d’Isére for a friend of a friend at one of the most exclusive chalets before marrying men who were something in the city with the right kind of county connections.
Without knowing why, Deborah instinctively disliked both of them.
There were a handful of other mourners, their numbers barely filling the front two rows of seats, and suddenly she felt not just out of place but guilty almost of the kind of tactless and distasteful rubbernecking she had always despised. Mark had been right. She should not be here. Quickly she turned round and hurried towards the door, slipping silently outside.
Ryan would laugh at her when he knew what she had done, mock her for her squeamishness, but as she looked at Andrew’s pale, fragile blonde widow she hadn’t been able to stop herself imagining how she would have felt in her shoes… the pain and anguish the woman must be experiencing… Had she known what her husband had intended to do? She could not have done, of course. How much greater then must be her pain and despair, her sense not just of loss, but also of having somehow failed him.
She got into her car, switching on the ignition. Suddenly all she wanted was to be at home with Mark. Just the two of them together, safe in their own private world where no one else, nothing else could intrude.
* * *
‘Just the local paper, thanks,’ Joel told the girl behind the counter in the newsagent’s as he handed over his money.
It was all over the factory that there was to be a big meeting with the bank and some firm of accountants on Monday morning. And then what? The spectre of redundancy hung heavily over him as he left the shop. He didn’t really know why he had bought the local rag—he already knew what he would find in the ‘situations vacant’ column, or rather what he would not find. This area, this town which had originally grown prosperous from the profits of the small local engineering firms which had supplied the car industry, now had no jobs for men like himself. The apprenticeship he had been so proud to get, the skills he had worked so hard to learn—what use were they to him now? A piece of machinery programmed by a computer had virtually made his skill obsolete.
As he paused in the street, turning to the ‘situations vacant’ page, the print blurred in front of his eyes. Part-time check-out girls for the local supermarket, newspaper-delivery boys and girls, auxiliary nursing aides at the hospital.
He grimaced as he read this last entry. Sally complained fiercely that he objected to her working, calling him old-fashioned and unfair, but it wasn’t her working that he minded but the fact that it was necessary. It hurt his pride that he no longer earned enough to support his own family, and it hurt him even more sensing that Sally found an enjoyment and pleasure in her work that she no longer seemed to find with him.
He folded the papers, his attention caught by the slow progression of a funeral cortège. His mouth twisted as he watched it.
They were cremating Andrew Ryecart today—that pale, fragile-looking little blonde in the front car must be his wife. She looked younger than he had expected. He felt the anger and bitterness swelling inside him as he stared at the car. It was all right for her. She would be financially secure; that sort always were. She would not be scanning the papers praying desperately for another job… any job just so long as it was a job. He was forty-four years old and the shadow of his father and the way he had lived his life, earning a few pounds here and there through a variety of casual jobs, not seeming to care about the contempt others held him in or how it might affect his family, hovered over him.
Joel had sworn that that would never happen to him; that his kids would always be able to hold their heads up high, that they would never know the humiliation he had known as a child, or the deprivations.
When his teacher had suggested putting him forward for the qualifying examination for a free place at a local independent school, his father had laughed out loud. A son of his, go to some posh private school?
‘You can forget it,’ he’d told Joel. ‘That’s not for the likes of us. Come sixteen you’ll want to be out earning, not wasting your time getting some fancy education.’
Joel seldom thought about that these days. What was the point? And besides, he had been happy… happy and content with his life until they had started having all these money problems, until Sally had started making him feel inferior to that brother-in-law of hers, with his posh job and his detached house.
Well, there was no way he would ever be able to give Sally anything like that. Not now… They’d be lucky to keep their existing roof over their heads if he was made redundant, even with Sally working full-time.
* * *
Philippa glanced idly out of the car window. There was a man standing on the side of the road, staring fiercely at her, his black hair ruffled by the sharp breeze. He had a hard, sharp-boned face, his body tall and lean, and just for a moment, although really there was no physical resemblance between them at all apart from the dark hair and the fact that they were both male, there was something so hard and angry in the way he was looking at her that her heart jerked in angry panic and she was momentarily thrown back into the past to another man and his anger.
Quickly she looked away, biting down hard on her bottom lip to stop it from trembling.
Michael, her second brother, lived in Edinburgh and couldn’t make it for the cremation. He had telephoned her the night before to apologise, explaining that he was committed to giving a presentation to the clients of the design company he worked for.
Philippa had reassured him that she understood. She had always been closer to Michael than she had to Robert. Three years younger than Robert and three years older than herself, Michael had been the ideal older brother, offering her comfort and sanctuary when the criticism of her parents and Robert had been too much for her.
She had missed him when he had left home to go to university and now that he was working quite a distance away, but, although they had always kept in touch, he and Andrew had never really hit it off.
* * *
Elizabeth saw the funeral cortège on her way back to the office after lunch.
She paused automatically and quietly by the side of the road, noting as she did so how few of the other pedestrians trudging down the street even glanced at the slow procession, never mind paid it the old traditional mark of motionless respect. Those who did were in the main like herself, offspring of a generation to whom strict observance of society’s conventions had been important.
As the cortège passed, leaving her free to cross the road, she gave a small shiver. Such sad things, funerals. Both she and Richard were fit and healthy and not old by any means at all, but not young any more either. She had her daughter and a grandchild, her work and some very good friends, but none of them could ever fill the space, the emptiness in her life that would come if she lost Richard. Physically he looked much closer to fifty than sixty, with a full head of hair and a lean, athletic body.
She smiled a little to herself, recalling just how athletic that body could be and just how much pleasure she still got from touching him and being touched by him in turn, but then he had always been a particularly tactile man, hugging and kis
sing his daughter and showing her physical affection, which had not been common at the time among their peers.
She remembered once seeing him reach out and fiercely hug one of his young male students when the boy had finally passed his examinations after two daunting failures. The boy had looked surprised and slightly embarrassed at first, but Elizabeth would never forget the look of pride and joy which had quickly followed. It had brought home how severe and hard the pressure was on boys to conform to their sexual stereotyping from a very young age. For a moment that young man had looked again like a small boy, thrilled by the acknowledgement and acclaim, the approval of a male parent.
She had often wondered if it was this side of his nature that made Richard such a skilled and almost intuitive surgeon. Although he was in every single way a very vigorously male man, there was also, she thought, a softening, warming mixture of some feminine instincts and emotions in his genes which in her eyes only served to underline and increase the effect of his masculinity.
* * *
Robert was making a speech. His voice was full-bodied and measured, grave, as befitted a person speaking of the dead. He was asking them to ignore Andrew’s weaknesses in the final months of his life and to think instead of the man he had been before he fell victim to the unfortunate circumstances which had led to his taking his own life. To listen to him, one would have thought he felt nothing but sympathy and compassion for Andrew, Philippa reflected as she watched him.
Was this really the same man who had told her that he couldn’t help her, that he couldn’t afford to be tainted by the relationship between them, who had betrayed so conclusively his own weakness of character; his own selfishness and instinct for self-preservation?
It surprised her a little how distant and divorced from the proceedings she actually felt, more as though she was merely a casual observer rather than Andrew’s widow, her feelings, her emotions numb and frozen. Would they, like thawed fingers and toes, start to ache with violent pain when that numbness wore off?