Cruel Legacy

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, not now…’

  Irritably Mark pushed her away and sat up in bed, reaching for the duvet, which had fallen away from his body, covering himself with it as he shrugged off her hand.

  ‘Mark!’ she protested.

  ‘Look, leave it, will you? I’m just not in the mood. For Christ’s sake, Deborah. What is it with you? I mean, I’m all for women taking the initiative now and again, but you… Hasn’t anyone ever told you that sometimes it’s more polite to wait to be asked?’

  Deborah stared at him, anger taking the place of her earlier desire. This wasn’t the first time recently that he had refused to make love. And he had certainly never said anything to her before about not wanting her to make the first move. Far from it.

  And to speak to her like that! He was making her feel like a… like a…

  Silently she got out of bed and went to shower and get dressed.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Mark apologised half an hour later. ‘I know I went a bit over the top, but——’

  ‘A bit?’ she interrupted him angrily. ‘Mark… you could have said something before… you could…’

  ‘Like what? Once you get going it’s like trying to stop an express train.’

  Deborah poured them both a cup of coffee and then she asked him quietly, ‘Mark, what did you mean when you said that I ought to wait to be asked? We’ve always both agreed that women have as much right to express their sexuality as men.’

  ‘Yes, but think about it the other way… I’m not…’ He shook his head and changed tack.

  ‘Something’s happened to us lately, Deb. I’m not sure what it is, but we’re just not the same people that we were. You always used to be sensitive… so aware… Think about it for yourself. God, twelve months ago we wouldn’t have even needed to be having this conversation.’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Deborah agreed bitterly. ‘Twelve months ago you’d have been only too glad to wake up and find me…’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, for Christ’s sake, but it does underline everything I’m trying to say. Twelve months ago you’d have known that I just wasn’t in the mood… Now…’ He gave a bitter shrug. ‘Now all that seems important is what you want, how you feel… You want sex and so I have to provide it whether I feel like it or not… I’m not bloody Ryan, Deborah… I can’t fuck to order.

  ‘Look,’ he said abruptly, ‘why don’t we get right away from here? Make a fresh start… go back to London even…?’

  Deborah put down her own coffee-cup.

  ‘You want me to give up my job… now, when——’

  ‘There you go again,’ Mark accused. ‘Your job… What I want is for us to get back to where we used to be. For us——’

  ‘For me to take a step down to accommodate your ego. That’s what you really want,’ Deborah asserted, her voice dangerously low. ‘This isn’t about sex… about us at all, is it, Mark? It’s about the fact that you just can’t cope with…’

  She shook her head, not able to bring herself even now to say the words. ‘What are you trying to do, Mark? Control me by refusing me sex, punish me because I’m successful and you’re not? Well, you’ve certainly succeeded,’ she told him quietly. ‘Not because you won’t have sex with me any more, though… after all, I can always get sex somewhere else, can’t I?’

  She saw from his face that she had hit a nerve, but it didn’t really bring her any satisfaction. Outwardly she knew she seemed calm and unmoved by what was happening, but inwardly she felt sick with despair and disbelief. Inwardly she felt as though her heart, her emotions were being ripped into a thousand agonising shards of sharp, tight pain.

  She had thought Mark loved her, really loved her, but in reality, he loved himself more; his own ego was more important to him than she was.

  Mark watched her angrily. First she made him feel like a complete failure as a man, professionally and sexually, and now she was trying to make him feel guilty into the bargain.

  ‘We can’t go on like this, Mark,’ he heard her saying.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, suddenly purposeful and aware of the only option that was now left open to him—the option he had been putting off taking for days, weeks now… but which was, he knew, now inevitable. ‘You don’t need me any more, Deb, and I don’t want you. It’s time we both accepted that and went our separate ways.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘KEEP it clean… sharp… make each stroke count,’ Joel shouted as he ran alongside the boy swimming the length of the pool.

  ‘They’re coming along nicely, Joel,’ the leisure centre’s manager praised him as he paused to watch the three boys climbing out of the water. ‘You make a good instructor.’

  ‘Thanks…’ Joel looked away from him to check on his pupils.

  Ian, the youngest of the three, was by far the fastest, but as yet he hadn’t got the rhythm’of his breathing quite right, and Joel wanted to have a word with him about it.

  ‘Have you ever thought of taking up something like this professionally?’ the other man asked him.

  Joel grimaced. ‘I’m a foreman, Neil, or at least I was… a working man.’

  He thought of Sally’s sister as he was speaking. She had made very plain over the years the difference that lay between her husband’s career as a teacher and Joel’s ‘job’. ‘I don’t have the education… the qualifications…’

  ‘Maybe not, but there’s nothing to stop you getting them, is there?’ Neil Saunders asked him. ‘You’ve got a natural gift for dealing with kids, Joel—for teaching them…’

  It had been his pet scheme, this idea to utilise the skills and at the same time hopefully boost the morale of the unemployed people who attended the leisure centre under their special scheme by getting them involved on an unpaid basis with coaching others.

  He had had quite a struggle getting it past the committee, who had pointed out all the problems they could have with insurance and injury risks, but in the end he had got his way.

  His wife had teased him for being a crusader, but it gave him almost as big a kick to see how much it boosted the flagging self-confidence of the adults who joined the scheme as it did the kids who benefited from their help.

  Joel, though, was outstandingly good. He possessed that rare blending of patience and firmness which seemed to bring out the best in those he was coaching.

  ‘Think about it,’ he stressed now as Joel turned away from him and started to walk over to his pupils. ‘Oh, and by the way…’ He caught hold of Joel’s arm, detaining him. ‘They could do with a bit of help with the adult swimming classes if you’re interested?’

  ‘Yeah… anything else you’d like me to do in the rest of my spare time?’ Joel joked, but in reality he acknowledged that it felt good being told that he was wanted, that he was contributing something of value. It felt good having a purpose in life again, he admitted… having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. He had even found himself working on extra schedules for the boys when he was at home, going to the library and borrowing books so that he could pick up on any little tips to help him get the best out of them.

  At first he had been apprehensive that Tim Feathers, the professional swimming coach employed by the club, might not just resent his presence, but that he might also dismiss his efforts as a waste of time. However, to his relief and surprise, Tim had warmly welcomed his help.

  ‘If you can take over the juniors that will give me more time to spend coaching the seniors. We’re hoping to put a team in for a couple of the internationals this year. Of course, we’ve left it a bit late. The time to really start training them is when they first start to learn to swim.’

  It had been Tim who had suggested that he do a bit of reading up on some of the modern teaching methods. Tim’s method of teaching him had been to offer praise and encouragement rather than criticism, Joel had quickly realised, and it was a tactic he had immediately adopted into his own teaching programme.

  The start of the Easter school holid
ays had meant that the leisure centre was extremely busy, and, looking back, Joel was amazed that it was barely a fortnight since his meeting with Duncan and that first tentative suggestion that he become one of the centre’s volunteer workers.

  ‘I’m off for lunch in half an hour,’ Neil told him. ‘Fancy joining me?’

  Joel shook his head. ‘I’d like to, but I’ve got Paul, my son, with me and I promised him a game of snooker when I’d finished here.’

  Paul had been truculent and unresponsive at first when Joel had brought him down to the leisure centre with him.

  ‘Why can’t you stay here at home with him?’ Sally had demanded irritably when Paul had complained that he wanted to stay at home and watch a video instead of going with Joel.

  ‘Because I’ve already agreed to help them out at the centre, and besides, it will do him good to get a bit of exercise.’

  Sally’s face had hardened. ‘Oh, come off it, Joel,’ she had told him. ‘The only reason you want him there is because it suits you.’

  Unsaid, but there between them, had been the silent criticism that since she had to go out to work to support them it was his responsibility to take charge of the children during the school holidays. Cathy was at an age where she wanted to spend more time with her friends than with her family. Joel frowned, remembering the way Sally had snapped at him when he had commented that he felt that they might be allowing Cathy to grow up too fast.

  It had given him a shock to see her by accident in town with her friends, a mini-skirted bunch of alarmingly adult-looking young women, tossing their hair and pouting feigned uninterest in the comments of the boys watching them.

  ‘She’s fifteen, Sally,’ he had protested, uneasily aware of how very sexual she had looked with her long mane of hair and her make-up.

  ‘Exactly,’ Sally had retorted. ‘And at fifteen these days girls consider that they are grown-up… perhaps if you’d paid a bit more attention to her recently and a bit less feeling sorry for yourself you might have realised that. She’s not a fool, Joel.’

  ‘No, but I don’t want…’ He had shaken his head. How could he convey to Sally the way he had felt when he had seen… ?

  At first glance, not recognising his own daughter among the crowd of girls, he had done what any other man would have done, and turned his head to give them a second absently-appraising glance, amused by their studied pretence of uninterest in the boys watching them, aware of the burgeoning sexuality evident in their long hair and even longer legs.

  Surely when he was fifteen girls of that age had looked like girls, not… ? Did Sally realise how vulnerable Cathy was…? His heart had turned over as he’d watched one of the boys approaching her, all his protective paternal instincts rushing to the fore. He had only just managed to stop himself from going over to her to find out what was going on, who the boy was.

  It had, he admitted, shocked and disturbed him to realise that his daughter, his little girl, had somehow suddenly turned into a sexually attractive and vulnerable young woman.

  He had wanted to confide his anxiety to Sally, but instead of listening to him Sally had become angry, and she had been angry as well at the way he had reorganised the kitchen cupboards, claiming that it was impossible for her to find anything.

  ‘Instead of doing that, you could have gone round to Daphne’s and started on her decorating,’ she had complained.

  Well, her precious sister’s wallpapering was done now, Joel reflected grimly as he went to find Paul.

  They had arranged to meet in the leisure centre’s restaurant. He was with several other boys when Joel walked in. One of them was one of the boys Joel was coaching.

  ‘Still want to play snooker?’ he asked Paul as he reached them.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose I might as well,’ Paul agreed carelessly, but there was a slight swagger in his walk as he came over to join him, Joel noticed.

  ‘Are you going to Aunty Daphne’s this afternoon?’ Paul asked him later.

  ‘No,’ Joel told him. ‘I finished her wallpapering yesterday.’

  His face hardened as he remembered Sally’s sister’s comment when he had told her that the room was finished.

  ‘Mmm… doesn’t look too bad,’ she had told him critically. ‘Of course it’s a pity there wasn’t time for us to get a proper decorator in, especially since the wallpaper was so expensive. We had to order it specially, of course, and I particularly wanted the room finished this week. We’re having a dinner party; it’s our turn to entertain the headmaster and his wife to dinner… I shan’t embarrass you by offering you money, Joel. I know how touchy you can be. I’ll take Sally out and treat her to a nice lunch instead. She deserves a bit of spoiling, poor girl.’ Her mouth had pursed disapprovingly as she looked at Joel.

  ‘She’s working far too hard, you know. When I saw her the other day I thought that she looked as though she was the elder of the two of us, she looked so exhausted… but then I don’t suppose she has much option, poor girl, with you and the children to support.’

  Joel had managed to wait to vent his temper until he had left the house.

  ‘What the hell is she trying to make out, Sally?’ he had demanded later. ‘That I like being out of work… being dependent on you…?’

  ‘Oh, Joel, please… she’s my sister… Naturally she…’

  ‘Naturally she what? Naturally she thinks I’m a lazy sod who enjoys living off his wife… and is that what you think as well, Sal?’

  ‘Oh, Joel, please, not another argument,’ Sally had begged wearily.

  How could he explain to her, make her understand that he didn’t want to argue… he just wanted to put his side, to hear her say that she understood, that she knew how bad he felt, that she didn’t blame him for what had happened?

  Perhaps Neil had a point, he reflected later as he and Paul walked home. Perhaps it might be worth while thinking about taking some kind of course, getting some professional qualification.

  He was enjoying the time he spent at the centre; he liked coaching, the work he was doing, enjoyed watching his pupils’ confidence and skills improve. It gave him a real buzz, made him feel good… made him feel that there was some purpose in life. He lengthened his stride, suddenly eager to get home. Neil had given him a number to ring—the professional organisation who would be able to tell him about the options open to him if he took his advice and tried to get some professional qualifications.

  * * *

  ‘Brown bread,’ Paul complained when Joel called both his children down for their tea. ‘I don’t like brown bread. I want white.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Cathy demanded, poking suspiciously at the lasagne Joel had made. ‘It hasn’t got any meat in it, has it?’

  She was toying with the idea of becoming a vegetarian… when it suited her.

  ‘Nope,’ Joel assured her.

  The books he had borrowed from the library had all had sections in them on diet and he had been appalled, when he’d read the ingredients listed on the packets of some of the ready-made meals he had been buying, to see just how little nutrition some of them contained.

  Robustly ignoring Sally’s irritation, he had decided he could do better himself… much better.

  ‘Brown bread’s better for you,’ he told Paul. ‘And besides, it’s all there is…’

  Paul scowled, but he still ate the meal, Joel noticed, as did Cathy, even if she was picking suspiciously at it.

  ‘What’s for pudding?’ Paul asked him.

  ‘Fruit salad and yoghurt,’ he told him.

  He had bought the fruit cheaply from a market stall late on market day and he had felt quite proud of the meal he had produced. There was a lot more to this nutrition business than he had realised. Food was the fuel that powered the body; and just like any engine the body’s engine worked more efficiently on the right kind of fuel.

  ‘Uggh… it’s not sweet enough,’ Cathy complained as she took a spoonful of the fruit salad.

  ‘Yes, it is… too much sugar’
s bad for you…’

  ‘Yuck, you’re worse than Mum,’ Cathy grumbled, but again she ate it none the less, Joel noted.

  He looked up as he heard Sally opening the back door.

  ‘Lucky you, Mum,’ Cathy teased. ‘You’re just in time to have some of Dad’s delicious nutritious fruit salad.’

  ‘Yeah—the reason this stuff’s so good for you is that you wouldn’t want to have any seconds,’ Paul commented, but there was no malice beneath the teasing grumbling, and they had both cleaned their plates.

  ‘Yes, you sit down, Sal,’ Joel invited. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You’ll never guess what Neil suggested today,’ he told her. ‘He seems to think that——’

  ‘Joel, how could you?’ Sally interrupted him angrily, ignoring what he said. ‘When Daphne rang me at work to tell me what you did, I could hardly believe it… do you have any idea how much that wallpaper cost?’ she demanded, her voice rising. ‘Daphne was practically hysterical. If you didn’t know which way the design ran, you should have checked with Daphne first…’

  She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening as she accused, ‘You did know, didn’t you…? You did it deliberately. You deliberately hung Daphne’s wallpaper upside-down.’ Her voice had risen slightly with each word. She was trembling with anger. When Paul started giggling she rounded on him furiously, telling him, ‘It isn’t funny! Joel, what on earth possessed you?’ she demanded. ‘Daphne is furious and I don’t blame her. The whole room will have to be stripped and redecorated. I’ve had to offer to pay for the wallpaper, of course… have you any idea how much it cost…?’ Her voice was rising again.

  ‘Tell her to deduct the cost from the money she’s not paying me,’ Joel suggested sarcastically.

  Sally flushed. ‘Is that why you did it?’ she demanded. ‘Because…’

  ‘Because she wheedled her way round you to get the job done for nothing,’ Joel supplied for her. ‘No… it wasn’t…’