The Unmarried Husband

by Cathy Williams

  ‘But, Mum ...!’

  ‘I’m not about to give in, Luce. It’ll do us both good to get out of London for a couple of days. It’s so hot here, and—’

  ‘I hate the countryside! It’s boring. What are we going to do for a whole weekend there? Take long, bracing walks, I suppose? Have chummy singsongs around the grand piano in the evening?’

  The thought of Anthony Newman indulging in singsongs around a grand piano was so comical that Jessica looked down to hide the laughter she felt rising up in-side. ‘It’ll be fun,’ she said, plastering a serious expression on her face.

  ‘And won’t it be nice to be surrounded by fields and countryside? Wouldn’t it make a change from dirty streets and traffic and buildings?’

  She assumed that Elmsden wasn’t located in the middle of a housing estate.

  Lucy was staring at her as though she had taken leave of her senses. ‘Are you sure that this wondrous invitation wasn’t for your benefit?’ she asked suspiciously. Her thoughts had swerved off on a tangent and she was scrutinising her mother now. ‘I mean, you’re not that old, and, really, you’re not bad-looking for someone of your age...’

  ‘Thanks, Luce,’ Jessica said dryly.

  ‘Any more compliments up your sleeve?’

  ‘W...e...ll, you know what I mean...’ She had forgotten about the all-night party, or rock concert, or whatever. She was now on the scent of something else, and Jessica didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed by this change of direction. ‘Anyway, darling...’ she said briskly, rattling her newspaper to indicate the end of the conversation.

  ‘I mean, he’s not bad-looking either, for someone of his age...’

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Mark said that his dad always has a string of glamour girls around him, so he must have something...’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Jessica wasn’t accustomed to being questioned on her love life, even if Lucy’s questions were way off line. She had never had a love life. She realised that she found her daughter’s inquisition a bit embarrassing. ‘Why is it ridiculous?’ Lucy insisted, with the tenacity of a bloodhound on the trail of something tasty. ‘You’ve never had a boyfriend, Mum. And don’t tell me that there haven’t been opportunities. You remember that oddball a year and a half ago? Gerry something or other? With the goofy smile? Used to phone you up all the time?’

  Jessica could feel her face getting red. ‘He was a very nice man, Luce...’

  ‘Then how come you gave him the brush-off?’ At the time Jessica had never imagined that Lucy had been paying the slightest interest in that particular little occurrence. She had met Gerry through a friend of a friend, at a Christmas party, and for a while he had pursued her avidly. But she hadn’t been interested. Not at all. He was likeable enough, and politeness had obliged her to accept one dinner invitation with him, but then she had had to firmly inform him that she had no interest in taking their acquaintanceship further. Now it amazed her that Lucy had stored up the episode, when at the time she had seemed not in the least interested.

  ‘He just wasn’t my ...my type, I suppose you could say,’ Jessica mumbled vaguely.

  ‘So who is your type?’

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Well, you’re always asking me about my social life.’

  ‘That’s different! You’re my daughter!’

  ‘And you’re my mother!’

  ‘You would make a very successful barrister, Luce, do you know that? Anyway, just throw a few things in your bag—a few sensible things that no one can find over-offensive.’

  Lucy seemed to find this idea amusing, because she grinned. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ There was an element of surprise in Jessica’s voice. Whatever had happened to the argument about the party? She was immensely relieved that it had been dropped, but she was stunned by the speed of her daughter’s change of mind. But then, wasn’t that typical Luce? She was as changeable as the weather on a spring day.

  Of course, she was back to complaining in undertones the following morning as they polished off a light breakfast and waited for Anthony to arrive.

  Jessica, rather than lose her temper, took refuge in house cleaning, while Lucy followed in her wake, mumbling about what she would be missing, darkly implying that her entire life would be scarred by missing this one rock concert. Jessica ignored the moaning, but she was frankly relieved when she heard the doorbell ring.

  ‘Now,’ she said sternly, ‘I want you to behave yourself, Luce...’

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do, Mum’?’ Lucy asked sulkily. ‘Stick a toad under his pillow? Put bubble bath in the loo? I’m not into pranks.’

  It was just as well, Jessica thought one hour later as the car ate up the miles on the motorway, that Anthony was an accomplished conversationalist.

  Co-operation from the back seat was conspicuous by its absence. Mark and Lucy sat and conversed in sporadic, huddled undertones. Clearly he had been as reluctant to come on the trip as Lucy had been, and Jessica could feel waves of hostility emanating from him. She was sure that Anthony could as well, but, if so, he gave little indication of it from his expression. He had been quite charming from the start. The perfect gentleman, really, she told herself repeatedly. So what if they were going to be under the same roof for two days? Since when did a girl have anything to be wary of from a perfect gentleman?

  She was surprised, though, at how much she had absorbed about him in how little time.

  She’d answered the door, and his effect on her had been immediate—a highly sensitised awareness of that energy he gave off, that was apparent in the lean muscularity of his body and in the casual self-assurance of his bearing. It was as hot as it had been for the past couple of weeks, and he was in a pair of khaki shorts. Long, sinewy legs were sprinkled with dark hair. Jessica had taken it all in with one glance, and had felt that strange stirring of something inside her, which she’d immediately stifled under her well-honed, polite facade.

  Thank heavens, in a way, for Lucy. Offhand, unimpressed by the car, barely communicative with Anthony beyond the absolute minimum. Still, her presence reminded Jessica of why she was sitting here now, speeding along to a country house somewhere far from the madding crowd. It also reminded her that she was a mother, a woman in her thirties who had left the world of girlish infatuation behind so long ago that she could barely remember having been there. She was a parent, like Anthony. Two mature adults cooperating for the benefit of their respective children. She had no need to sparkle, or bewitch, or attract. Not, she thought, that she would be able to do any such things anyway. But wasn’t it reassuring not to feel any pressure to try? She asked courteous, informed questions about where they were going, and spent most of the journey staring out of the window in apparent fascination at the scenery flashing past them. From the congested streets of London to the motorway, and finally off the motorway and down a series of roads that became more and more rural until the car headed away from the beaten track completely.

  Occasionally she glanced across at him, at the long fingers idly curled around the gear shaft, the powerful arms, the easy elegance of his body.

  She was aware of Lucy’s voice chatting in a desultory fashion now and again from the back seat. By the sounds of it, she too felt little need to shine in the presence of Mark. There was no flushing coyness in her responses to him. Jessica wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if she had looked around and seen her daughter nodding off. Lucy might not realise it, but Jessica could see, clearly enough, that her daughter’s relationship with Mark had all the makings of a lifelong friendship—there was a touching camaraderie between them that included long periods of silence as perfectly acceptable.

  She was reflecting on this, vaguely aware that they must be approaching their destination because the road could not possibly become much narrower, when Elmsden reared up in front of them.

  Good heavens, she thought, for the past ten minutes they had been driving through his estate! Now they had rounded a corn
er, and there it was—gigantic, majestic, awe-inspiring. A house in name only. In reality, a mansion. It wasn’t simply the beauty of the design that struck Jessica, but the enormity of the place.

  Before her parents’ finances had taken a beating, she could remember, dimly, the large Victorian house they had lived in. She had been a child then, no more than eight or nine, and her memories were of a vast place. She realised now that it had been anything but vast. It had been minuscule compared to this edifice.

  ‘Good Lord!’ she heard herself exclaim. Anthony turned to her and smiled. ‘Meet Elmsden House,’ he murmured. ‘I assure you that only a part of it is maintained for use. It’s been in the family for generations,’ he explained, pulling up in the courtyard outside.

  ‘You grew up here?’ Jessica asked, looking at him. ‘How on earth did you communicate with your parents? By remote control?’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Lucy contributed from the back, opening her door. ‘Mum’s made a joke.’ She grinned and sauntered outside, flexing her arms—supple, young and indifferent to her surroundings. ‘Great spot for holding an open-air concert,’ she said to no one in particular.

  ‘Think of it—no one would have to drive back home!’

  Mark, also outside the car now, laughed, and Anthony muttered under his breath, ‘What a grim idea.’

  ‘Lucy!’ Jessica called, opening her door and standing with one foot out, breathing in the fresh, unpolluted air.

  ‘Your bag?’

  ‘Stan will bring them in,’ Anthony said, as on cue the front door was opened, framing a man and a woman who were smiling and bustling forward.

  But Lucy, naturally, said with aggravated politeness, ‘I’m quite strong enough to carry my own bag.’ She hoisted it over one shoulder, and she and Mark headed towards the house, heads bent towards each other, conversing about God only knew what.

  Which left Jessica and Anthony.

  ‘Shall I show Mrs...?’ the woman, mid-fifties, rotund, kindly-faced, looked at Jessica questioningly ‘...to her room?’

  ‘Jessica,’ Jessica said, smiling and extending her hand. ‘Jessica Hirst. I’m very glad to meet you both.’ The couple smiled in unison.

  ‘I’ll take her up, Maddie,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Which room have you prepared?’

  ‘The green one for Mrs Hirst and the one next to it for her daughter.’

  Green room? Were there so many guest bedrooms that they were colour coded?

  When she was a child, her parents’ house had had two guest bedrooms, and at the time that had been considered wildly extravagant. It had also had a large garden—unusual for a London property—and a conservatory, of all things. Jessica rarely remembered details of where she had spent the first few years of her life, but now, as they walked up to the front door, she recalled the feeling of smallness in that very first Victorian house. A child echoing in a big house.

  She followed Anthony into the hall and experienced that feeling of smallness once more, of being dwarfed by the magnificence of her surroundings.

  It was a vast hall, dominated and split in half by a winding staircase, and hung with paintings which were noble rather than pretty, and had clearly been handed down through the generations. Most were portraits, and Jessica scanned them quickly to see whether she could spot a family resemblance anywhere.

  ‘It’s a beautiful house,’ she said, looking around her, wondering whether ‘house’ was really an appropriate word.

  ‘So large! You must have rattled around in it!’

  ‘If I did, I never noticed at the time.’ He followed her gaze politely, then began leading the way up the winding staircase. ‘But then, there were always guests. A series of them. And parties on the weekends. My parents were always fond of the good life. I think they decided from a very early age that if they were going to live in the country, then they would make sure that isolation wasn’t part of the package.’ He spoke over his shoulder, glancing at her every now and then to make sure that she was still behind him.

  Her parents had had friends too, she thought wistfully. Once. Before the big house had been sold and they had been forced to move down, ever down, into a series of smaller and smaller properties. Not too many friends left by then. A few stalwart ones, but even they, towards the end, had deserted the sinking ship. They’d been able to cope with the misfortune of her father’s company collapsing, of the pressure of mounting debt. More difficult to cope with had been his steady decline into gambling and alcoholism.

  It surprised her how much of her past she had put behind her.

  The mind, she supposed, always blocked out what it didn’t want to see, and, really, what was the point of remembering the past when there was nothing you could do to alter the memories?

  Had she ever known any real happiness?

  She could remember the bickering, her father’s belligerence after he had been at the bottle, her mother cowering in the background. She could remember hiding.

  She seemed to have spent a great deal of her childhood hiding, but things couldn’t have always been bad. There must have been a time when life had been easier.

  Was that why she had been so susceptible to the outward charms of Eric Dean? Because he had been kind? A refuge in the storm when things had been particularly bad?

  ‘Hello? Are you still here?’

  Anthony’s voice was right beside her, and she jumped.

  ‘Oh! I was just wondering where Luce and Mark were,’ she said, instinctively stepping away from him.

  ‘Were you?’ He looked down at her curiously, his eyes narrowed, and she had a feeling of being stripped of every outer layer, until her most private thoughts were exposed. ‘You seemed very absorbed just then...’

  ‘Which is my room? I wouldn’t mind freshening up a bit.’

  ‘Of course.’ But he was well aware of her retreat, and he gave her another one of those cool, stripping glances before continuing up the stairs.

  Her room was on the next landing. Along the way, they passed a door which opened into a small, well-stocked library, then a large sitting room, which seemed a very odd thing to have on a first floor. Next to that was Lucy’s room. Jessica could see the unpacked overnight bag dumped on the bed. And opposite was her room, the green room—appropriately named because it had been decorated in various shades of green. Pale green carpet, cream and green striped wallpaper, cream and green flowered curtains and sofa, large four-poster bed with an elaborate bedspread that matched the curtains and the sofa. ‘There’s a bathroom just through that door,’ Anthony said, pointing to one corner of the room.

  ‘And lunch will probably be outside.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In half an hour.’

  ‘Right.’ Jessica turned to look at him. He wasn’t smiling. She could feel him thinking.

  ‘You’re an intensely private person, aren’t you?’ he remarked casually, not following her into the room, but lounging against the door frame, arms folded. There was nothing threatening about his question, but still she felt threatened. At any rate, her privacy did.

  ‘Not unusually so, I don’t think,’ she replied neutrally.

  ‘I’m slowly realising that I don’t know a damn thing about you.’ The grey eyes looked her over carefully, and again she felt that sensation of speculations being made. ‘You have a daughter, you’re unmarried, you work in a legal office somewhere in London.’

  ‘What else is there to know?’ Jessica asked with a nervous laugh.

  ‘What made you decide to come and see me in the first place?’

  ‘I thought you knew... I was worried about Lucy. I thought that your son might have been exerting some kind of influence over her.’ She looked back at him warily

  ‘Why didn’t you just wait and see whether she would settle down in time? Most parents accept small acts of rebellion as part and parcel of growing up.’

  ‘Yes, I could have,’ she answered evasively. Why was he asking her these questions? Why the sudden interest? It alarmed her because he struck her as
the persevering type, not the sort to be fobbed off with a litany of pat responses.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you? That’s precisely my point.’

  ‘I really don’t quite see what you’re getting at...’

  ‘I think you do,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘I think you see very well what I’m getting at. You just don’t want to answer my questions, do you’? Why? Why so reticent?’

  ‘If I had known that this weekend would include answering questions about myself, then I wouldn’t have accepted your invitation,’ Jessica replied coldly.

  ‘It was kind of you to think of us and ask us up here. I just hope you don’t think that that gives you the right to try and pry into my personal life.’

  ‘Is there one’?’ He raked her face. ‘Or is Lucy your personal life?’ Jessica felt two spots of burning colour on her cheeks. ‘That’s hardly any of your business! I don’t feel the need to ask you about your personal life, do I?’

  ‘I get the feeling that you built a shell around yourself years ago, and you spend most of your time hiding inside it. She felt anger and confusion begin to spread through her like poison, until her hands were trembling and she had to hold them together to still them.

  ‘Lucy is very important to me; I can’t deny that. Single mothers can be very protective of their children, sometimes more so than married ones, because there’s no partner for them to fall back on, to share concerns with.’

  ‘Quite.’ He straightened up and stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘If there’s anything else you need, please let me know. Maddie’s usually very good at preparing the guest rooms. I’ll see you by the swimming pool in a while.’

  ‘Yes.’ Relief. For a minute there her body had been rigid with apprehension. Most people backed off the minute she erected her defences. He was the first man who had dared to try and penetrate them, and it had rattled her; there was no denying that.