The Cruelty of Morning

by Hilary Bonner

  One thing Jennifer knew for certain was that she could not go on working on the same paper as Marcus. She made a few phone calls the following day and landed another job with more ease than she had expected. She had underestimated herself. She was young, talented, and energetic, and her reputation was growing.

  She was hired by The Globe as chief feature writer, and immediately threw herself both into her work and into a new relationship. She was desperate to forget Marcus and have nothing more to do with him. Their sexual exploits had really shaken her that night. She couldn’t quite elucidate it, but the feelings of sexual revulsion – as much with herself as with Marcus – which she was now experiencing had cleared her mind, so that her various worries and doubts about him had returned, in spite of the justification he had rather offhandedly offered her. She had to free herself completely.

  ‘And I’m going to, have no doubts about that,’ she told Anna. ‘I never want to see Marcus Piddell again.’

  ‘Really,’ replied Anna. ‘Bet you lunch at the Connaught you go back to him.’

  ‘I just hope your expenses are up to it,’ said Jennifer.

  Marcus did not give up easily. He was used to getting what he wanted. At work she dodged his calls and at home she hid behind her answering machine. A couple of times he even door-stepped her office, which surprised her a little because she thought he would have been concerned about his image. She remained resolute, refusing even to stop and talk to him, but knew that if she were to hold out against Marcus’s persistence, she needed something to take her mind off him. And the only something which could possibly do that job for Jennifer Stone would be another man.

  And so when nice Michael Appley had shown an interest in her when they met at a dinner party, she had readily embarked on a new affair. Michael was a college lecturer whose subject was history, and all Jennifer’s friends, particularly Anna, believed that he himself would soon be history too. Jennifer found him quite charming, which he was. He was like a great bear, a big man in his mid-thirties, already spreading to fat but attractive enough. He had a beard because he couldn’t be bothered to shave, and wore whatever clothes came first to hand in the mornings. Michael Appley was a complete change after Marcus, and that seemed like a jolly good idea to Jennifer. They went to bed together the first night they met. He was gentle and caring, just how she had imagined he would be. She found him delightful and enjoyed sleeping with him, but should have been warned off, because when they had finished her body invariably still ached for more.

  Jennifer was totally on the rebound from Marcus, and quite incapable of a proper emotional commitment to anybody. None the less she convinced herself that she was in love with Michael, and he was definitely in love with her.

  They were married within three months and divorced a year later.

  Jennifer felt guilty about Michael for the rest of her life. It was only two months after they were married that she strayed for the first time. New sexual opportunity seemed to arise consistently, and Jennifer could rarely resist it. She never again wanted to go as far as she had with Marcus, but his influence on her had been overwhelming. She needed regular, challenging, exciting sex – she couldn’t help it.

  Michael tried not to notice. Ultimately she became more and more careless, until he could no longer pretend ignorance of her activities. Deeply hurt, he had asked for a divorce. Jennifer hadn’t even bothered to try to explain. What could she say? She didn’t argue. In fact Michael would probably have liked her to attempt to justify her behaviour, because he secretly wanted to try again with their marriage. He loved her, he just wanted her to behave like a wife.

  She, on the other hand, knew that it was hopeless.

  She needed her own space again. She had been deeply scarred by Marcus and had felt that the love of another man could heal her scars – but in fact she should never have married Michael. It had just been a stupid romantic dream.

  Marcus had married only weeks after her. He had wed his editor’s secretary. By the time he became editor of the Daily Recorder the following year, that marriage too was over. He began to telephone Jennifer again, but, amazed at her own determination, she stuck to her resolution. Marcus was the one man who had control over her, their sex life still frightened her, and if she agreed even to meet she suspected she would succumb to him.

  Fed up with London, she accepted the chance to go to New York as Features Editor of a paper there owned by The Globe’s parent company.

  Eventually Marcus married for the second time.

  His new wife was nineteen years old, at seventeen years his junior she was little more than half his age, and had a title but no money. It seemed a fair trade.

  Marcus sent Jennifer an invitation to the wedding which, in spite of being divorced, he had managed to arrange in a rather grand church on the outskirts of London. Never ceasing to wonder at his cheek, Jennifer declined even to reply.

  A few weeks after Marcus’s second set of nuptials, Anna McDonald flew to New York on a business trip and Jennifer took her to her favourite New York restaurant, a delightful but unfashionable establishment where she liked to relax with her real friends. It was tucked away off the beaten track and in no way a place for seeing or being seen, yet suddenly, just as she and Anna were about to order their dinner, Marcus turned up with his new wife.

  Jennifer could hardly believe her eyes. She was stunned. It would surely have been stretching credibility even to consider that Marcus had deliberately sleuthed out her regular haunts, but New York was a big town, boasting several thousand restaurants, and he had not seemed inordinately surprised to see her already sitting at a table. Indeed, with his customary self-confidence, he strode purposefully across the restaurant with his new bride in tow and flamboyantly introduced her to the two women.

  Her name, it transpired, as Jennifer vaguely recalled from the wedding invitation, was Pamela. Lady Pamela, Marcus pointed out with obvious satisfaction, while explaining with a ridiculously rakish wink that they were on a delayed honeymoon. Pamela was tall, skinny, and horsily good-looking, the kind of looks that you know can only be English upper-class and yet you can’t explain exactly why. Her hair was very dark and skin very pale. She had that assured air about her which so often comes with an obvious public-school education, and in some ways she seemed older than her nineteen years, while retaining the naivety of a young woman who has never had to fight for anything in her life and never expects to.

  None the less she seemed quite untroubled at meeting her husband’s ex-partner in such a manner. An immaculately manicured hand was produced for a firm handshake.

  ‘How lovely to meet you,’ she announced heartily.

  Unlike Marcus she had yet to bother to modulate her public-school accent, which was pure cut-glass.

  ‘Good to meet you too,’ muttered Jennifer.

  The words came out in some kind of dreadful mid-Atlantic drawl. God, this bloody man was the only person in the world who could throw her off balance like this. She felt extremely uncomfortable and very angry with herself. Marcus’s new wife was just a kid and yet it was Jennifer who was behaving like one. She had stood up when the couple approached her table and now wished she hadn’t. Sitting down again, rather clumsily, she groped for her napkin which she had dropped on the floor. With the swift agility she remembered only too well, Marcus picked it up and familiarly placed it on her lap. Jennifer felt herself beginning to blush. Marcus’s gaze was upon her as he rested an arm on his wife’s shoulder. Casually he brushed a finger against Lady Pamela’s neck beneath the heavy dark hair. Jennifer could see that he was scratching her flesh lightly with his fingernail. The young woman shuddered, almost imperceptibly, but Jennifer noticed.

  ‘So he does that to you, too,’ she thought. And her blush deepened as she had a brief and unwelcome vision of their two bodies together in bed, Marcus with all his mighty sexuality, Marcus doing to this debbie young thing all that he had done to her…

  She forced herself to look away, and became aware tha
t Marcus was still staring at her. His eyes were smiling, almost mocking. He flashed a grin. Was it her imagination or did his tongue dart swiftly across those immaculate white teeth? The bastard. He was reading her mind. He knew full well what she was thinking about. She tried desperately to look at ease and knew she was failing. She could not trust herself to speak at all.

  Anna came smartly to the rescue. Thank God, as ever, for Anna, who, of course, had not stumbled unnecessarily to her feet, but remained sitting, a picture of composure, throughout the somewhat awkward confrontation. Anna’s eyelashes fluttered briefly. She looked up at Marcus from beneath their pale fringe. Anna McDonald had never particularly liked or trusted Marcus Piddell, and neither did she fear him.

  ‘Don’t let us keep you newlyweds,’ she said sweetly. ‘I am sure you would rather be alone…’

  Mercifully Marcus led his young wife away to a table at the far end of the restaurant. They were elegance on legs, he all Armani and Gucci as usual, she dressed in a style which said, simply, class.

  ‘Good God, what on earth was all that about?’ asked Anna.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Jennifer. ‘And I wish I hadn’t fallen apart like I did. Without you I think I’d have died.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ replied Anna. ‘You might have succumbed to his evil clutches again, though…’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He was with his new wife for Heaven’s sake.’ Jennifer was trying very hard to behave like a successful independent woman again.

  ‘Really?’ said Anna. ‘And what the hell was he doing in this restaurant? It’s hardly New York’s answer to The Ivy is it? I reckon the bugger found out it’s one of your places. He’s probably been dragging his child bride here every night since they’ve been in the city, just waiting to put the pair of you together.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘Is it? I’d never put anything past that man. He wanted to see you wriggle. He’s obsessed with you.’

  ‘Well I’m certainly not obsessed with him any more.’

  ‘I do hope that’s true – for your sake.’ The gentle grey eyes were momentarily serious. Then they started to twinkle.

  ‘It’s just occurred to me – that poor little cow has become blessed with the name of Pam Piddle,’ said Anna, chuckling into her third martini.

  ‘Piddell,’ corrected Jennifer, smiling easily now.

  Anna was making her feel better again, as usual.

  ‘Piddle to me,’ said Anna ‘And always will be…’

  It was Anna who later told Jennifer that Marcus had bought a mansion in Kent – which in Anna’s opinion gave the marriage half a chance of working because it meant that with all his city commitments, Marcus had to spend most of the week apart from his wife.

  He had risen to become chairman and chief executive of his newspaper group. Jennifer heard about it in New York and wondered idly how he had managed that so swiftly, and also how much power Freemasonry really had in the world order of things. His reign was controversial, decisions were constantly being taken which hit the headlines in other newspapers. They seemed to have no pattern. The left-wing political stance of the newspaper was frequently turned upside down. With Marcus at the helm the Recorder appeared to have little or no direction. It did of course – it went unfailingly the way which suited the aims of Marcus and those who pulled his strings.

  None the less the paper kept its circulation and its profitability, because Marcus was an excellent newspaperman who employed the best journalists and insisted on the best stories, both when he was editor and later – as long as they did not interfere with any of his masterplans. For the readers the Recorder was still the best popular paper going. Only the readers mattered – and how they mattered!

  When the Recorder somersaulted right on to its head and backed the Conservatives at a crucial general election, Marcus and his newspaper were widely credited with having brought about what seemed unthinkable at the time – a Tory victory over the incumbent Labour government. Marcus was duly rewarded with a knighthood.

  In New York, Jennifer chuckled to herself. Trust Marcus. He had a wife with a title so he would have to match it, and he had promptly done so. Everything that she read about him told her that he was becoming more and more powerful. His integrity was frequently questioned in the papers, but then, wasn’t that the case for any super-successful man?

  In New York, one sunny Sunday morning, the phone rang in Jennifer’s apartment. Her mother was on the line. Her father had just suffered a major heart attack and been rushed to hospital.

  Jennifer took Concorde out of John F. Kennedy Airport. She couldn’t mess around. She dreaded that her father might die before she reached him. And when she arrived at Heathrow and immediately called Devon, her worst fears were realised. She tried to remember when she had last been home to Pelham Bay and couldn’t quite. She hired a car at the airport, and could not stop crying throughout the three-and-a-half-hour journey to North Devon – she shed tears of grief for the father she had truly adored, and tears of guilt too. As is so often the case, the guilt was probably hardest to bear.

  The funeral was well attended and curiously comforting. Her brother Steve had flown back from his home in Australia. If Mrs Stone wished that just one of her two children lived near to her, she never said so.

  As she stood by her mother’s side in Pelham Bay’s pretty little church, Jennifer was surrounded by familiar faces from her past. She spotted Bill Turpin sitting at the back. He hadn’t changed a bit. Strange how he always stood out, that man. She had forgotten that her father even knew him, but then, her father knew everybody.

  Todd Mallett was there, a sergeant now. More solid and dependable-looking than ever.

  Outside the church he appeared quietly at her side and took her hand briefly.

  ‘He was a good man, I’m sorry Jenny,’ he said. She held her tears back and thanked him for his sympathy.

  ‘You’re a good man, too, Todd,’ she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead she asked him about Angela and his family; three fine boys, she had heard.

  Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Bill Turpin slipping quietly away, speaking to nobody. Typical of what she remembered of the strange old man.

  Johnny Cooke’s parents were also there. It was the first time Jennifer had seen them since the trial, how many years before? She had not recognised them at first, but they had attracted her attention, even through her distress at her father’s death. Mr and Mrs Cooke had a weariness about them. Their son was still in jail. Mabel Cooke continued to make her monthly visits. Charlie Cooke just pretended Johnny had never existed. They barely raised their heads during or after the service. Jennifer’s mother, kindly even in grief, had sought them out in the churchyard and invited them back to her home afterwards to join the family and other mourners.

  Mrs Cooke looked grateful, but shook her head.

  ‘No dear, thank you,’ she said. ‘We just came to pay our respects…’

  ‘Who was that?’ Jennifer had asked.

  ‘You know them – that Johnny Cooke’s poor parents,’ her mother replied. ‘Thank God I’ve got you and Steve.’

  Jennifer had held her close in the car as they were driven back to the little terraced house. She vowed to visit more often in future. But she didn’t of course.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jennifer didn’t even tell Anna McDonald at first when she started to see Marcus again. All the half-told stories about him and his activities, both personal and professional, over the years made her feel uneasy and slightly embarrassed. From the moment Marcus had started to rise to power she’d suspected that she would find many of his business dealings shocking. Yet that would probably be so with most big businessmen. And Marcus had become one of the biggest. A genuine tycoon. Chairman of a giant publishing house with a property company and a chain of launderettes also under his wing. Launderettes? Trust Marcus. His very first business venture had been to buy a launderette soon after he first arrived in London
in 1970. It was a boom time for that business and Marcus was always quick to spot the main chance. Most unlike a journalist. Jennifer remembered asking at the time how he had found the money for such a venture. A bank loan, he had replied shortly. It seemed reasonable, because although he had little or no collateral, if there was one man who could talk a bank into a loan for no good reason at all it would be Marcus Piddell. And nothing had changed.

  His empire frequently brought him to New York, and for the last few months he had been determinedly wooing her. It had been the previous year that he had telephoned her out of the blue. Before that their break had been total and, apart from the bizarre restaurant meeting, she had not seen or heard from him since his marriage. He had explained on the phone that he was in town and was lunching with an American writer he knew Jennifer had always admired. He wondered if she would like to join them.

  Her warning mechanism sparked into action.

  None the less she hesitated before replying. He was quick.

  ‘Look Jennifer, I know it’s long over for us and I am not going to try to start it again, I promise you. I just thought that after all this time we could be friends and I know you would like to meet this guy.’

  It was a cliché, but it worked. Probably because she wanted it to. Jennifer met the two men at The Russian Tea Rooms as instructed. The American writer was delightful and brilliant and Jennifer did indeed enjoy meeting him. Marcus was charm itself. But then he would be, wouldn’t he? He talked about his aristocratic young wife a lot, giving Jennifer just the odd sidelong glance to see how she was taking his remarks.

  At the end of lunch he pecked her lightly on the cheek and said he would be back in New York soon and maybe they could go to the theatre or something. She walked alone back to her office, suddenly aware that she was vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t made a pass at her. She shook herself angrily. She was not going to fall into the Marcus Piddell trap again. He would never change. She knew for certain that, one way or another, further involvement with him would mean the end of the last of her self-esteem.