The Prodigal Wife

by Marcia Willett

  He hesitated. ‘I like to know what they’re doing. When Anne was alive there seemed to be more communication but that’s because she was much better at keeping up with them than I am. I’m lucky that they like to come to stay occasionally. Of course, living in Dartmouth and having a boat on the river is going to be a real attraction. Well, you know all that. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, nothing particular. Just something I heard on the radio. Are we the first generation who needs to be friends with our children? I wondered whether I could get an article out of it. You know? Comparing our generation with our parents’. Anyway, it’s not important.’

  ‘I think it’s rather an interesting thought,’ he said. ‘With mobile phones and email it’s very easy to be in touch, isn’t it? Very tempting.’ He chuckled. ‘I can just imagine my old father texting! I don’t think he telephoned me ever in his life.’

  ‘Well, there you are. I shall do some research on it. So are you out tonight?’

  ‘Yes, I told you. Supper with Tasha and Neil. In fact, I ought to be on my way.’

  ‘Phone me in the morning and we’ll make a plan,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  Later, as she ate pizza and watched Corrie, Cordelia wondered how much more risky their meetings would be now that Henrietta was in Somerset rather than in London and about to become more closely associated with the Chadwicks. She longed to know how the day had gone but resisted telephoning or even texting. She simply mustn’t be pushy.

  At nine thirty Fliss phoned. ‘I thought you might like to know that Jolyon is back and on cloud nine, though he’s trying to disguise it.’ Her voice was guarded. ‘And Henrietta is coming to Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Gosh!’

  ‘Exactly. I wondered if you’d like to come, or whether…’ she trailed away.

  ‘No,’ said Cordelia quickly. ‘Henrietta would hate that. But thanks for asking – and for phoning. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been longing to know.’

  ‘I can imagine. Well, Jo can hardly contain himself.’ A pause. ‘He’s even gone so far as to agree to Maria coming down for his birthday weekend. He’s not particularly thrilled about it but he’s too happy to be able to refuse. Hal got him at a weak moment.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Oh, yes! Well, it’ll probably be OK, though I wondered if you might come over some time while she’s here to give me moral support.’

  ‘I’d love to. I can’t wait to meet her.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d better go. Jo might come in at any minute. I just wanted you to know.’

  ‘Bless you for phoning, Fliss. I’m so pleased.’

  ‘Me too. Henrietta sounds very special. Prue is wheedling it all out of him as only a grandmother can. Anyway, we’ll speak soon. ’Bye.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Slipping back into the drawing room, Fliss saw that Prue had given up all pretence of watching the television and had turned sideways on the sofa so as to see Jolyon better. He slumped, legs stretched out with the dogs at his feet, his eyes on the flickering screen. Lizzie was curled up in an armchair, a magazine open on her lap, though she looked up at the television from time to time. Hal was entirely absorbed in his newspaper.

  ‘I think it was very thoughtful of you to drop in to see Henrietta again,’ Prue was saying. ‘It’s horrid for those who are left behind at times like these with nothing to do but think. She must have been so pleased to see you.’

  Jolyon said, rather guardedly, that he thought she’d been glad to have some company.

  ‘I expect she misses the children,’ said Prue thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, she does.’ Jo was surprised out of his caution by his grandmother’s insight. ‘She says that’s the worst thing of all.’

  ‘Well, small children keep you busy; you don’t have time to worry about yourself. They don’t really care what kind of day you’re having. They’re only interested in what’s happening to them, you see. It’s such a relief not to have to think about yourself, isn’t it? Too much time to think can be very depressing unless you have a very good opinion of yourself.’

  Jo said he hadn’t really thought about it and looked relieved when Hal lowered the Daily Telegraph and suggested a nightcap. Lizzie shook her head and said that she was going up to bed but Prue beamed at him and said that a small whisky would go down very well. Hal got up and winked at Fliss. She was still cross because he’d had such an easy success over the business of Maria’s invitation but she couldn’t help smiling back at him. She felt more confident knowing that she had Cordelia on her side, yet the nagging anxiety still persisted. She realized that she didn’t want Maria coming back into their lives just now, when Jolyon was making his name as a television presenter and had met Henrietta. Why should Maria, who had caused him such unhappiness and destroyed his self-confidence, suddenly stroll back just in time to reap the rewards of everyone else’s hard work? Suppose she were to cause more destruction?

  She kissed Lizzie abstractedly as she went off to bed and smiled at Jolyon as he stood up and said that he was taking the dogs out for a last stroll. Pooter and Perks got up reluctantly, stretching, tails wagging, and followed him out.

  ‘A very satisfactory day,’ Prue was saying happily, whilst Hal was swallowing his whisky contentedly, and Fliss was seized with another surge of irritation.

  ‘I’m still not sure that it’s wise to agree to Maria coming for Jo’s birthday,’ she heard herself saying, and saw Prue’s eyes grow wary and Hal assume a slightly martyred oh-not-all-that-again expression. ‘Anyway, I think I’ll go on up. I’m going to have a bath.’

  She bent to receive Prue’s faintly whisky-flavoured kiss, feeling guilty, knowing that she was spoiling Prue’s happiness. Upstairs she drew the bedroom curtains, went into the bathroom and turned on the taps, took off her jersey and jeans. Perhaps she shouldn’t have allowed herself the luxury of telling Cordelia about the ginger jar; perhaps it had been self-indulgent. Certainly it had stirred up all the old memories and resentments – and certainly it had been out of character. Even now she couldn’t quite decide what had led her to confide in Cordelia; she preferred to keep her own counsel rather than have emotional soul-baring sessions with her friends, and she could usually discuss most things with Hal.

  Fliss wrapped herself in her dressing gown. This was the difficulty, of course; for the first time they were in disagreement about Maria. Always they’d been on the same side, she and Hal; even when Miles had taken a job in Hong Kong without consulting her, and Maria had decided to move to Salisbury, making family life almost impossible for Hal and Jolyon, she and Hal had agreed that they must stick it out, feeling they must continue to work at their own marriages. Yet, all the while, their secret love for each other had sustained them.

  ‘What are we doing, Fliss?’ he’d asked her once, rather desperately. ‘Why are we wasting our lives? For God’s sake, are we mad?’

  ‘No,’ she’d answered quickly, ‘not mad. Well, probably…’

  ‘We love each other,’ he’d said urgently. ‘Nothing else matters.’

  ‘It’s not just us. Other people matter too,’ she’d said. ‘We don’t live in a vacuum.’

  ‘I don’t care about anyone else,’ he’d said angrily. ‘It’s our turn…’

  ‘But you do,’ she’d said. ‘You love Jo and Ed. And you promised Jo you’d hold on. You’d hate being a weekend father, Hal. Driving to Salisbury and taking them out, wondering where to go when it’s pouring with rain, having to put them back in through the front door at the end of the day, or taking them to a hotel with a bleak empty evening ahead. That awful brittleness with Maria at the beginning and end of each outing and the boys miserable and awkward. Oh, Hal, you’d hate it and so would they.’

  ‘But what will it matter in the long run?’ he’d asked bitterly. ‘We’ve sacrificed our youth, Fliss. We’ve given it all up. Wasted it. And for what? Maria despises me and is teaching Ed to do the same. What if she leaves me? What about Jo then? It will all have been
for nothing.’

  Oh, yes, thought Fliss, testing the water, turning off the taps, we resented their behaviour but Hal and I supported each other in spite of it. Actually, of course, it drew us even closer and helped us to cope – and, anyway, back then I still had Uncle Theo to talk to when things were really bad.

  She remembered talking to him once about resentment: ‘Every time I think I’ve conquered it,’ she’d said, ‘it comes back as bad as ever. I wish I could forgive and forget but it’s terrible the way the past clings.’

  ‘I’ve sometimes wondered,’ he’d answered, ‘if that’s what Christ meant about forgiving our brothers and sisters seventy times seven. That it’s more to do with having to forgive the same hurt each time it comes back to haunt us than forgiving a succession of sins against us. Brooding over the past makes us less able to grow into the future. We have to learn to let things go. Not to bury them down but to truly let them go and trust ourselves to the future, generously and single-mindedly.’

  ‘But how?’ she’d asked almost desperately. ‘How is it possible?’

  He’d remained silent for a long time. ‘I believe that only God can make change really possible,’ he’d said at last, almost reluctantly, ‘and only then if we want it. God will meet us at the threshold of our fear but we are too busy believing that He cannot manage without our tinkering and interfering to put our trust absolutely in Him. We cannot make that ultimate commitment which makes it possible to die to ourselves so as to receive our security at last, for once, from Him.’

  Fliss took towels from the heated rail, piled them beside the bath and climbed into the hot, scented water.

  It was odd that Theo, naval chaplain and priest, had been so reluctant to talk about his faith: the point was that he’d lived it, and so it had had a much more profound effect than preaching would have done. What would his advice have been now?

  She hummed a bar of ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’, trying to raise her spirits, concentrating on the prospect of meeting Henrietta. It was silly to imagine that Maria could have any real effect on Jolyon now that he was so established, so much more confident. A tiny voice in her head suggested that it might be she and Hal who were more at risk than Jolyon, but this was too foolish to take seriously and she reached for the soap and began, instead, to think about Cordelia.

  Downstairs, Hal sat alone nursing his whisky. His mother had gone to bed, pausing on the way out to kiss him lightly and to say: ‘I’m sure all will be well. Nothing can come between you and Fliss now. You’ve loved each other all your lives.’

  It was an odd thing to say, although it was true that he was feeling the least bit defensive about Maria coming to stay – but much more because of old Jo than Fliss. It was true that Fliss was being edgy but it was crazy to think that there was anything to worry about. It was also true, what Ma had just said, that they’d loved each other for ever. He could hardly remember a time when Fliss hadn’t been there; even as children there had been a special bond between them. Of course, it had been a bad time during those first few months when his three young cousins, Fliss and Mole and little Susanna, had arrived back at The Keep from Kenya, their parents and elder brother murdered by Mau Mau. He’d been told that he must be very kind, very patient, and he’d tried hard to look after them.

  Hal swallowed some more whisky, remembering those holidays at The Keep, travelling down from Bristol on the train with his mother and his sister, Kit. The trips to the beach, to the moors, and, years later, the triumph when he passed his driving test and could take the younger ones out in his grandmother’s car. Hal chuckled reminiscently, finishing the last of the whisky, settling more comfortably in his chair. What times they’d had together. Drowsing a little, clasping the empty glass in his hand, he slipped between waking and dreaming, remembering the first outing they’d taken, the five cousins, without any adult company. His grandmother had been anxious – all her precious grandchildren in his care – but he’d been confident, with Fliss beside him in the passenger seat, Mrs Pooter curled at her feet, and the other three with Mugwump squashed in the back, the hamper and the rugs and the rounders bat and tennis balls packed in the boot…

  Autumn 1961

  The picnic party arrives safely at Haytor rocks with only one moment of real anxiety. A car travelling too fast towards them in one of the narrow lanes causes a frightened Hal to turn the wheel sharply, cursing under his breath.

  ‘Bloody fool!’ he mutters – and casts a shamefaced glance at Fliss, who is nearly as shocked to hear Hal swearing as she is at the near miss.

  She smiles back at him, hiding the shock, not wishing to look prudish. ‘He was going much too fast,’ she assures him, lest his confidence should be shaken. ‘You were jolly quick.’

  The three in the back are sorting themselves out, Mugwump pushing his head out at the open window.

  ‘Easy does it,’ sings out Kit. ‘You had poor old Sooz on the floor.’

  Fliss glances back anxiously but Susanna has already scrambled back on the seat and is asking her usual question. ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘Very nearly,’ says Fliss as they bump over a cattle grid. ‘Not long now. Hold tight.’

  Kit gazes out with pleasure, across the top of Mole’s head, as they reach the open moor at last. The deserted road winds between slopes of bracken-covered moorland, which glows with fiery intensity in the afternoon sun, stretching away to the very feet of the high granite tors. Banks of prickly gorse bushes are bright with enamel-yellow blossoms whose excitingly sweet, nutty scent drifts gently in the warm air. Wind-shaped thorn trees, already scarlet with winter berries, offer dappled shade to the grazing ponies, which kick up their heels and clatter away suddenly as the car approaches. A sheep ambles out unexpectedly, crossing the road without a glance, so that Hal has to stand on the brakes and, as the engine slows and idles, Kit can hear a lark singing somewhere high above them.

  ‘Rabbits!’ she whispers in Mugwump’s ear – and he strains at the open window, whining faintly.

  Hal parks the car near Haytor rocks and they lay out the rugs and the hamper on the springy, sheep-nibbled turf and look about them, laughing and stretching, finding it a little strange to be all together without one of the older members of the family.

  ‘Tea first?’ asks Fliss, who feels that someone should be in charge of the catering department. ‘Or climb? Which?’

  ‘Climb,’ says Kit at once. ‘We shall be too full after tea to want to climb things.’

  They stare up at the grey-seamed rocks, piled high into strange shapes, reaching stony fists and fingers into the pale blue sky; granite islands in a sea of burning bracken.

  ‘Come on,’ shout Susanna and Mole. ‘Come on, you lot.’

  They jump about amongst the bracken, leaping on and off the smaller rocks that lay tumbled about, calling to the dogs questing to and fro, noses to earth, tails wagging.

  ‘Should I stay with the hamper?’ suggests Fliss uncertainly. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘No need,’ says Hal impatiently. ‘It’s all quite safe. No ponies about. Roll the rugs up if you’re worried. Let’s get going.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ says Kit suddenly. ‘No, really. I want to. I’m a bit fagged, to tell you the truth, and poor old Mrs Ooter-Pooter will never make it to the top. She’ll stay here with me, won’t you, old lady? Good girl, then. Honestly, Fliss. Don’t look so worried. I shall stretch out here in the sun. Go on. Bet you can’t get to the top in ten minutes. I’ll time you.’

  They’re off at once, the two little ones running ahead, Mugwump at their heels. Kit watches them for a few moments then lays back, the sun warm on her closed eyelids, listening to the skylarks, her fingers playing with Mrs Pooter’s ear. She forgets to keep an eye on her watch, and presently she dozes.

  Hal strides out, filled with a joyful sense of wellbeing and achievement; breathing in lungfuls of the clear air. It had been quite a near thing, with that ass of a driver pushing them into the hedge, but he’d handle
d it very well, all things considered. He dwells with private satisfaction on one or two moments of the journey and then glances down at Fliss, who is almost running to keep up with his long strides. His heart is filled with a new tenderness for her. He’s always been fond of his little cousins but Fliss’s faithful devotion and admiration have given her a rather special place in his affections. Last Saturday evening, when she’d appeared in the drawing room, looking shy but excited in her new dress, he’d felt an almost painful sensation in his heart. She’d looked so sweet, so vulnerable – and so different, with her hair all put somehow on the top of her head, emphasizing the slender neck, the swelling of small breasts just evident…

  He frowns to himself as the climb becomes steeper, loose scree slipping beneath his feet. It seems impossible that little Fliss should be a woman. She is so small and slight, so dear and familiar. Yet, that evening, she seemed strange to him, alight with some kind of inner mystery known only to herself; a mystery that transformed her. He’d felt oddly shy and rather clumsy, glad that he’d seen Kit change from child to woman and therefore had some sort of experience of this sudden transformation. Kit seems capable of passing back and forward between the two spheres of childhood and womanhood, so that he often becomes quite muddled, but the sight of Fliss made him feel protective – and it made him feel something else too. He isn’t sure whether it is wrong to be aroused by the sight of his own cousin and he feels guilty – and confused – at this uncontrollable desire because he has the strange idea that it is what Fliss wants him to feel. Yet how could she? She is so young, so innocent – and his cousin.

  ‘Hi!’ Mole is shouting from somewhere above him and Hal leans back, looking up to the rocks where Mole and Susanna dance, waving. Fliss is panting up behind him and he puts out his hand so as to haul her up beside him. She is laughing, her face flushed, the shining strands of corn-fair hair blowing loose about her face. She wears an old Aertex shirt that had been Kit’s, the faded blue reflecting the colour of her eyes and flattering the warm colour of her skin. Hal feels the strange tightening feeling in the pit of his stomach again as he stares down at her, imagining the breasts that are pressing inside the shirt. He sees her face change, though she still clings to him, and suddenly he wants to kiss her, knows that she wants him to kiss her, and he pulls her closer, his heart crashing about, hammering in his ears…