First Friends

by Marcia Willett

  More to the point regarding Cass’s own pleasure was the fact that Abby and William were giving a Christmas party to which Nick Farley had been invited. She was surprised at how very much she was looking forward to meeting him again although Abby had warned her that his wife would be with him. Cass had disregarded that. Wives never figured in her calculations except in the vital assessment of how easy they would be to deceive. However, in her experience, once the husband wished to deceive then, it seemed, nobody was more gullible than a loving wife.

  It had been a definite blow to her ego that Nick had done nothing to follow up their two meetings in the autumn. She had been quite sure of his interest in her and day after day, after he had left the Manor, she had waited for a telephone call. He didn’t even mention her name in the bread-and-butter letter that he sent to Abby. Cass had been puzzled and decided to put him out of her mind. She had been only partially successful. Having discovered where his firm had their offices in Plymouth, she had, once or twice after shopping, lunched in places which he might reasonably be expected to frequent. There had been no sign of him. On several separate occasions her heart had missed a beat at the sight of a tall, grey-haired man in a city suit but it was never Nick. She felt that she was behaving like a silly girl, like Charlotte waylaying Hugh at the stables, and resolved to do no more of it.

  When Abby told her of the party, she felt the old excitement rising. William was still having problems with this long drawn-out boundary dispute and Nick, so Abby said, had the reputation for being the best litigation lawyer this side of Bristol. Anyway, William got on very well with him and had decided to ask him to the party and he had accepted. None of them had met his wife yet and Cass was looking forward to it with rather mixed feelings. She had already determined on her strategy. By no action or word of hers would Nick know that he had occupied her mind for a moment, but if she couldn’t make him sit up and take notice then she was really losing her touch.

  Cass put her mince pies in the oven with a feeling of anticipatory pleasure. Nick was fast becoming a challenge to her, someone on which to practise all her skills. She smiled to herself as she set the timer. It was an occasion that would require all her expertise and experience and, without doubt, the first requirement in her armoury would be a new outfit.

  Tom was merely hoping for a quiet leave. There was always enough to do around the place to occupy his time and he was quite content, the jobs done, to doze in front of the television or catch up on a bit of reading. He was praying that Cass wasn’t planning to fill the house with people who would eat his food and drink his booze and bore him to death. It wasn’t that he was becoming anti-social as Cass said but just that he was getting older. They’d had a bit of a row when Cass had accused him of that. She had said that he was becoming a bore and he had been stung to retort that it was about time she grew up. She was getting too old to be the femme fatale of every social gathering and he’d said so. He’d told her that she should leave it to the younger women, that it was undignified at her age and merely embarrassed people. Cass had laughed at him but he’d felt guilty afterwards.

  He was hoping too that Charlotte’s education wasn’t going to be a major issue. He was concerned as to where she would go after her O levels and Blundells seemed quite a good idea. He wasn’t quite so worried at the thought of her going away as he had been four years before—he felt that she was old enough now to cope with boarding, especially with Oliver and the twins at hand—neither was he quite so anxious that she was there to put a brake on Cass’s activities. Despite his disparaging remarks, she seemed to have settled down in the last few years, quite happy with her social round and he had seen no evidence of any extramarital activity. She still liked to flirt at parties but there was no real harm in it. After all, it must be hard for an attractive woman to grow old.

  It hadn’t occurred to Tom that, even if Charlotte were to witness anything improper, she would never tell him about it. She adored her father and the last thing that she would want to do would be to hurt him. After all, what could he do? There would be rows and fights, which she hated, and it could all result in a separation and divorce and then she might never see him. She was no longer a little girl who might drop Cass in it unintentionally and although her presence might hinder Cass, she would never betray her. Charlotte felt that she did indeed keep Cass under control—up to a point—and she had no intention of going away to school where she could no longer keep an eye on things. Anything could happen and Charlotte was determined to stay put and keep the family together.

  Tom, unaware of the undercurrents, felt that there was plenty of time yet before the decision need be taken and made up his mind that he wouldn’t let his Christmas leave be disrupted by it.

  OF ALL OF THEM, Jane enjoyed Christmas least. Worried that things were getting out of hand with Philip, she had started Alan’s leave full of good intentions. At the very least it gave her the opportunity to have a break from Philip, who was spending the holiday with his mother and sister in Moretonhampstead. If only she could have some time alone with Alan, she felt that things might settle down again and be as they were when they were first married, before Alan had been promoted. No sooner was he home, however, than there was a party on the submarine at which, after he had been drinking rather heavily, he announced that he and Jane would be giving a New Year party and that all present were invited. Whilst Jane was speechless with shock and horror, the other officers and their wives had accepted with great enthusiasm. By the time she regained her faculty of speech the thing was done and there was no going back on it. Plead though Jane might—and she did—that he should cancel it, Alan was adamant. He would look a fool, he said, and when Jane protested that he’d been drunk and could say that he’d forgotten a long-standing arrangement that couldn’t be put off, he became angry, told her to pull herself together and accused her of being a spoilsport and other things. The invitation had been made and the party would go forward.

  All Jane’s good intentions vanished into thin air. The thought of the party dominated every waking hour and although Alan, having simmered down a bit and feeling that he’d been the least bit highhanded, told her that he’d help her to organise it, the whole thing was a nightmare to her. Alan had been to quite enough parties to know what was needed and in the end Jane went to Mrs Hampton, who had helped out at enough of Cass’s parties, to ask her for some advice on how to deal with the catering. Alan’s assurance that all that was necessary was to give people enough to drink and the party would run itself was no comfort to her. She visualised noisy, screaming people, cigarette burns on her precious tables and wine spilt on her new carpet. She could have almost hated him.

  By the time that it was all over—and just as dreadful as she’d feared—she was relieved to see him go back to sea and to welcome Philip back into her life.

  CASS DID A LITTLE better. By the end of Abby’s party she was almost in despair. Nick behaved throughout with the utmost propriety, staying close to his wife and behaving like a devoted husband. She was a short well-built woman, at least five years older than he and making no effort whatever to hide the fact. Her iron grey hair was cut short, her face was unadorned. Her name was Sarah. Cass dismissed her almost at once, seeing in this middle-aged woman no mettle worthy of her steel. She was charming to her and took care to treat Nick with a friendly indifference calculated to re-stimulate his interest. He made no effort to rise to the bait and she began seriously to wonder if she’d misread that earlier interest. However, once or twice she took him unawares and caught him watching her with an expression which Cass could only interpret in one way. On one of the occasions he raised his eyebrows slightly and she stared at him, unable to look away, until somebody spoke to him and he turned to answer him. In the bustle of farewells he carried her hand to his lips and turning it, held the palm against his mouth until she felt that he must feel the blood pounding in her veins. The look he gave her when they parted kept her awake most of the night beside the snoring Tom.

&
nbsp; For the first time in her life she felt out of her depth. She barely noticed when Tom went back to sea or the children to school. She haunted the hall, anxious to be within the sound of the telephone’s bell. Once she telephoned his office but put the receiver back when the receptionist answered. After all, what could she say to him? And then, one morning in early-February, he telephoned. He said that he would be in Exeter the following day. If she happened to be there shopping perhaps she might like to lunch? Stammering a little, Cass said that she had been meaning to go up to shop. Excellent, he said, and named a restaurant. He added that he was quite sure that she would understand if he asked that their meeting must appear to be quite unpremeditated and that he could trust her to be discreet. She agreed at once and he suggested a time and hung up.

  It was the first of many similar meetings, always at his instigation, always in public if secluded places. He was charming, amusing, delightful company. And very attractive.

  By the time Easter had arrived, Cass was obsessed, in love as never before and Jane was pregnant.

  HARRIET STOOD AT THE bedroom window watching Tom mow the Rectory lawn. He was cross. Harriet could almost feel his crossness emanating upwards from the hunched back, tensed arms and fast-striding legs. Furiously he drove the lawn-mower across the grass, jabbing it violently, if ineffectually, into tall, weedy clumps and only pausing to swipe his forearm across his perspiring brow.

  The sweet, piercing joy of seeing him again battled, as usual, with other emotions in Harriet’s breast—terror lest he should perceive her love for him, jealousy of his blind love for his wife and rage at Cass’s treatment of him. However, for the first time ever, shortly after her arrival earlier that afternoon, she had seen Tom angry.

  ‘Hell’s teeth, Cass, not another bloody dinner party! Every time I come home the place is full of people. No, not you, Harriet love.’ Pausing behind Harriet’s chair, Tom placed his hands on her shoulders as she made a convulsive movement, as if to rise from the kitchen table and flee. ‘It’s always lovely to see you, you’re one of the family. It’s all these others, and having to dress up and play the host when I want to relax.’ His thumbs idly massaged Harriet’s neck muscles as he remained behind her, staring across at Cass who leaned against the old oak dresser.

  ‘Darling.’ Cass’s voice held a caressing, faintly teasing note. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand. I know how you love it when we’re all on our own but life goes on while you’re at sea and it’s not always possible to drop everything when you come home. I have responsibilities too, you know.’

  Harriet almost cried out as Tom’s fingers bit into her collar-bones.

  ‘Forgive me if I seem more than usually obtuse.’ His voice was very cool. ‘But I can’t quite see where your responsibilities lie in this particular case. Are you saying that it’s your duty to get the Hope-Latymers tight on my booze and to be bored rigid by that tedious Alan Maxwell and his dreary wife?’

  Cass retained her expression of amused affection although she raised her eyebrows as if reproving him mentally for his lapse in good manners. Harriet, however, was aware of an inner conflict. Cass was trying to decide whether she should adopt the air of a wronged wife, struggling to keep home and family together in her husband’s absence, or to let her hair down and have a blazing row. She decided that Cass would find her decision easier to make without a third party spectator and rose determinedly from beneath Tom’s weight.

  ‘I must go and unpack,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me?’

  Cass seized her opportunity triumphantly.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re satisfied, Tom. You’ve made poor Harriet feel thoroughly unwelcome.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harriet.’ His apologetic hug would have been lovely if it hadn’t been so absentminded. ‘Honestly, this is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I know.’ She returned his embrace. ‘All the same, I must hang up my dress or it will look like an old rag this evening. See you later.’

  She paused at the door to look back and saw that Tom was not going to eat humble pie. He had quite forgotten her and was gazing at Cass with a total lack of affection, the kitchen table stretching between them like a battlefield.

  Having gained her room and hung up her dress Harriet heard the garden door slam and, a few moments later, the sound of the lawn-mower’s engine. Evidently Tom had decided to work off his spleen in frenzied activity.

  As he vanished from her line of vision to the lawns at the side of the house Harriet moved back from the window and sat down in a comfortable wicker chair. The tall room was filled with evening sunlight which turned the ivory-painted walls gold and glinted on the old mahogany furniture. Harriet closed her eyes against it and let her mind rerun the old well-worn pictures: Tom and she dancing at a Christmas Ball: walking with him along some cliffs during a picnic: sitting next to him during dinner parties. Each scene and accompanying conversation was so well-thumbed that it was amazing that she wasn’t heartily sick of him. Yet she wasn’t. No matter how long the period between their meetings nor how short those meetings were, Tom retained a hold over her imagination that no other man she had met since Ralph’s death had been able to loosen.

  Harriet, who did not believe in love at first sight, had been quite content with her relationship with Ralph. It had grown out of having certain interests in common and enjoying each other’s company, although not enough to preclude their having individual hobbies and friends which they continued to pursue after they were married. In fact, Harriet had always rather despised those couples who professed to be so passionately in love that they couldn’t spend more than ten minutes apart without getting withdrawal symptoms. So, when she met Tom at that Summer Ball and he had taken her in his arms and kissed her—on the strength, so he explained, of his long-standing friendship with Ralph—she was totally unprepared for the wave of emotion which engulfed her. She had fallen in love for the first time in her life and she got it badly.

  The thought of him possessed her. She didn’t see him often enough to have any idea of the real Tom. She only ever met him in the framework of social events, where he was at his best, and from which—like any lovesick teenager—she built up a dream which in due course began to destroy the reality of her life with Ralph.

  Ralph’s death came as a terrible shock and Harriet felt remorse and guilt but no real grief. Self-sufficient to begin with, they had by then drifted so far apart that it was more like losing a very good friend than a husband. Harriet, knowing that she had cut him out of her life, suffered terrible attacks of guilt and had submerged herself in her work, thankful that at least she no longer had to keep up the pretence. Her consolation was that Ralph hadn’t been in love with her either and, even in the very beginning, had always spent just as much time on his boat as he had with her. They had congratulated themselves on their sensible, undemanding way of conducting their relationship and mocked gently, in private, the muddled, passionate affairs of their friends.

  Tom and Cass had been wonderful after the accident. It had been Tom, urged on by Cass, who had sorted out the legal side of things and had helped her to organise herself financially whilst Cass had, as much as was possible at such a distance, drawn her into their home circle in an effort to shield her against loneliness.

  An old friend, with whom she had worked in London, had just opened his own estate agent’s office in Tavistock and was urging Harriet to come in with him as a partner. Harriet was tempted. Although the thought of taking a partnership was a terrifying one, she knew that it was time to make a change, to take a new and positive direction in her life. A quiet country town like Tavistock would be a good place to start and, after all, she knew quite a few naval families in the area, the Wivenhoes for one.

  Harriet stirred in her chair and glanced at her watch. Heavens! she must have been dreaming. She rose and went into the adjoining bathroom to run her bath, wondering what mood Tom would be in for the party. Her heart fluttered slightly at the thought of seeing him again so soon and, flinging
off her clothes, she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  WHEN CASS TOLD TOM that he had made Harriet feel unwelcome she was not merely trying to induce guilt. Nick Farley was once again staying with Abby and William and they were bringing him to the party. Sarah had not accompanied him this time and Cass had been visited with a most uncharacteristic show of nerves at the thought of seeing Nick, here in her own home, at the party. Her confidence that she could continue the flirtation under Tom’s eye had evaporated a little. Of course, she and Tom had had rows before but never had she known him so implacable, so unmoved by the explanations that, after Harriet’s departure from the kitchen, she had felt it necessary to give him. Indeed, never before had Tom behaved so before another person with the possible exception of Kate. Of course, it was only old Harriet. Cass smiled a little as she sat before her dressing table screwing in her ear-rings. She was well aware of Harriet’s feelings for Tom and suddenly she began to wonder if they could be put to good use. Most of us are flattered at the thought of someone being in love with us and Tom, in Cass’s opinion, would be no exception. Would he not, at such a disclosure, be distracted not only from his ill-temper but also from Cass’s plans for Nick? She decided that the situation was serious enough to give it a try. Her mind worked busily for some time, assembling various pieces of information: one being that Tom had to make a visit to the Ministry of Defence in London and another being that Harriet had to drive back to Lee-on-Solent on Sunday so as to be back in her office on Monday. When Tom emerged from the shower she was ready for him.

  “Will you be going up to London by train on Monday, darling?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Tom still sounded grumpy. He hated being addressed as ‘darling’ when they were having a row.

  ‘You see, I was just thinking. Harriet’s got to go back tomorrow and knowing how she hates driving alone and how you hate the train I was wondering if you couldn’t go together. Of course she’d be thrilled to bits.’