The Unmarried Husband

by Cathy Williams

  She had just finished showering when the bedroom door was pushed open, and her immediate and horrified reaction was to yank her dressing gown tightly around her. It was only Lucy.

  ‘Why have a shower when you can swim in the pool’?’ she asked, flinging herself on the bed and kicking off her shoes. ‘That’s how I shall be spending the afternoon, anyway.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Exploring.’ She propped herself up on her elbows and stared at her mother, who was now changing into a pair of shorts and a sleeveless shirt. ‘The question is, what have you been doing?’

  ‘Oh, not this again, Luce.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t put on that innocent look. I can see right through it.’

  ‘You’re red. Have I struck a raw nerve? Have you been getting up to anything with the master of the house?’ She grinned and sat up, cross-legged, on the bed. ‘I think you should, Mum. No point remaining a spinster for the rest of your life! Even if you don’t get married, you could at least go out there and have a bit of fun.’

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Well ...you’re from that hippie generation of peace and love and all that, aren’t you?’

  ‘It was a bit before my time, actually.’

  ‘Well, I still think that you should get out there and test the water.’

  ‘Thank you for your advice. I hope you haven’t been following it yourself, miss.’ It was a clever ploy, turning the tables. In the mirror, she could see her daughter’s face redden. ‘Just the other day you were lecturing me about boyfriends!’

  ‘Are you sleeping with anyone?’

  ‘Really! Mum!’ Not a denial, but there was enough horror in the voice for Jessica to know that Lucy had not yet begun those games, and she inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m going to change into my swimming costume,’ Lucy said, heaving herself off the bed, ‘if staying here means having to answer a bunch of nosy questions.’

  ‘Lunch is outside,’ Jessica said mildly.

  ‘I’m not sure where; probably by the swimming pool. In fifteen minutes. Please do the polite thing and show up on time.’

  ‘I might,’ Lucy informed her airily, heading out of the room.

  ‘I might not.’

  But, thankfully, she was there when Jessica finally found her way to the pool twenty minutes later. Maddie had laid the table outside with a spread of cold food. Mark and Lucy had obviously partaken of some, and were now in the swimming pool. Anthony, sitting under the umbrella with just his swimming trunks on, looked at her as she approached. ‘Aren’t you going to have a dip?’ he asked, as soon as she sat down.

  ‘I forgot to bring my costume.’ Thank heavens. It was distracting enough having to look at this man in just his bathing trunks, without the embarrassment of semi-nudity on her part as well.

  Why was she so aware of him? She commented politely on the food, slipped on a pair of sunglasses, sipped some of the fresh lemonade and tried not to notice the sheer perfection of his body. His stomach was flat, hard, with dark hair spiralling out of sight beneath the waistband of the trunks. Jessica felt her imagination begin to fly, and stoutly anchored it firmly back on terra firma.

  They conversed, but sporadically. The sun made her sluggish, and the conversation was frequently interrupted by Lucy and Mark emerging from the pool at regular intervals to eat. They both seemed to eat like horses, devouring food with the rapidity of people emerging from a starvation diet. ‘Your mother tells me that she hasn’t brought a swimming costume,’ Anthony said, catching Lucy before she could vanish back into the pool.

  Maddie was clearing the dishes away, replacing the jug of lemonade with another.

  ‘Oh, Mum! And after you nagged me into bringing mine! Aren’t you boiling?’

  ‘I’m absolutely fine, darling.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re boiling. I can tell. You’re as red as a berry.’

  Jessica smiled and wondered whether she could get away with strangling her daughter on the spot.

  ‘Have you put on any sun block?’ she asked, and Lucy shook her head.

  ‘Nope. I’m only going to be here for a little while longer, anyway. Mark’s going to take me into Stratford.’

  ‘Does he know that?’ Jessica looked at the figure in the pool, floating and seemingly asleep on a large, inflatable tyre.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Lucy gulped down some more lemonade enthusiastically. ‘When I’m ready, I shall just tip him off that tyre.’

  ‘Typical woman,’ Anthony teased. ‘Forever using force to get her own way.’

  ‘Actually,’ Lucy informed him, ‘I hate men who generalise about women.’

  ‘Sorry. Accept my humble apologies.’

  Jessica hid a smile and stared out at the pool and the indolent figure in it.

  ‘Haven’t you got a costume that Mum could borrow?’ Lucy asked, ignoring the apology and also ignoring the expression on her mother’s face at this suggestion. ‘This house is so big; there must be a spare swimsuit lurking somewhere in one of the bedrooms.’

  ‘There should be, now that you mention it. Fiona uses the pool whenever she can. I’m pretty sure she would have left a swimsuit or two lying around.’

  ‘I really couldn’t...’ Jessica said hastily, glaring at Lucy.

  ‘Why not? Who’s Fiona?’

  ‘Fiona is—’

  ‘An occasional guest here,’ Anthony interrupted. He turned and looked at Jessica, squinting as the sun caught his eyes. ‘She usually uses the room you’re in. Have a look in one of the drawers. You should find something there.’

  ‘We’re differently built,’ Jessica said flatly.

  ‘I very much doubt that any of her swimsuits would fit.’

  ‘Well, Mum, you could always swim au naturel.’ Lucy grinned cheerfully at this suggestion. ‘It’s pretty private here. Oh, apart from you,’ she added, glancing at Anthony and idly picking ice cubes out of her glass and eating them. ‘But you wouldn’t mind, would you?’

  Jessica wondered whether parents could divorce their children.

  ‘Not at all.’ He shrugged and glanced at Jessica. ‘I don’t think she’d agree to that suggestion, though, do you?’

  ‘No, Mum can be a bit reserved like that.’

  ‘Would you two mind not talking about me as though I wasn’t here?’ she said, snapping out of sheer embarrassment. ‘Lucy, go away!’

  ‘Oh, charming! One minute you’re telling me that I can’t go anywhere, and the next minute you’re yelling at me to go away! I can’t win! I’ll only go if you put on one of Fiona’s swimsuits. There’s no point you sitting there frying in the sun like a lobster.’

  ‘Lobsters don’t fry in the sun,’ Jessica told her, just managing not to snarl.

  ‘You’re cross. I can tell. You’re being pedantic.’

  ‘Children!’ Jessica muttered under her breath, standing up. ‘All right, I’ll go and try on one of those wretched swimsuits.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘Just to make sure that you don’t lock yourself in the bedroom and hide.’ She turned to Anthony with a shrug. ‘Such a child sometimes.’

  Jessica grabbed her daughter by the elbow. That’s it, she thought. If this is Lucy in high spirits, then she’d better fly back down to earth. Heaven only knows what she’ll be saying next if she doesn’t.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I LOOK ridiculous.’ There had been six swimsuits in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, which had made Jessica wonder whether Fiona did anything other than sunbathe during her trips to Elmsden House. Apparently not.

  And, inevitably as far as she was concerned, they were all bikinis.

  The choice rested not so much on which was the most flattering colour, but which was the least minuscule. It had been a difficult choice. Jessica couldn’t remember having ever seen such skimpy swimwear outside a magazine. Certainly, she had never owned anything along these lines herself. Nor in such quantity. Two one-
pieces in sober colours had been her concession to the sunbathing industry over the years. What had ever been the point of investing in any more? She had yet to go abroad to a sunny country for a holiday, and the weather in England was simply too unreliable in summer to warrant spending hard-earned cash on items of clothing that would spend most of their time at the bottom of a drawer. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ Lucy said, with disheartening candour. ‘You have a couple of stretchmarks on your stomach, that’s all.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Luce. Any more compliments where those came from?’ She eyed herself critically in the mirror. A couple of stretchmarks? Trust Lucy to zoom in on what she herself had quite happily chosen to miss for the past sixteen-odd years. She grabbed a towel from the bathroom, feeling increasingly nervous as they made their way back to the swimming pool. In the interim, Lucy, speaking from the Olympian heights of teenage suppleness, had proceeded to mention why her mother should think about taking up some regular form of exercise. Anyone would think, Jessica said tartly, that she was in the running for the fat lady at the Circus, which provoked the expected round of laughter.

  It would be pointless to wish that Anthony had vanished from the poolside area, perhaps to take an important overseas call which would helpfully last for a couple of hours, but she went ahead and wished it anyway.

  When was the last time she had felt so nervous about how she looked?

  It had been bad enough squeezing into a bikini that was really a size too small for her, particularly in the bust area, and Lucy’s frank and open observations had hardly helped matters. At least, though, she wasn’t sniping and whinging. There had been little or no mention of the ‘event of the century’ rock concert which she was missing, and no sulks at all. Jessica made a deliberate effort to smile broadly at the thought of that as they meandered out towards the pool. Predictably, Lucy plunged into the water as soon as they were there, and even more predictably Anthony looked up from where he was sitting, still in the same spot under the umbrella by the table, and stared at her as she approached. ‘Found something, I see.’

  ‘Found several things,’ Jessica replied, unable to sustain the stare and looking away towards the pool.

  ‘Of which this was the least...the least outrageous.’

  ‘Fiona does like to parade,’ Anthony said, and at the thought of the other woman waltzing up and down by a turquoise swimming pool, clad in six inches of stretchy fabric, Jessica felt a swift stab of envy.

  At that age, she thought, I was busy bringing up baby, trying to juggle my life so that I could be a mother and earn some money at the same time.

  No mother, even, to help her find her feet in a new and scary world.

  Despite her father’s drinking problems, it had ironically been her mother who had been the first to go, and after that, well, she might just as well have become even more invisible than she already had been. Her father had thrown himself into yet more drink with frightening desperation. He’d barely acknowledged her presence in the house at all. She had always accepted that it could have been a lot worse. He could have become physically abusive. As it was, she’d merely had the sad and dubious privilege of having complete, utter and lonely privacy at the age of fifteen and a half. She’d been able to come and go as she liked, see just whosoever she wanted. She could have jumped off a cliff, for that matter. Her father would never have noticed.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Anthony said, and she literally jumped and refocused her eyes on him.

  ‘Doing what?’

  Drifting off into some other world of your own.’

  ‘And you’re doing it again as well,’ Jessica said brusquely.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trying to speculate on my private life.’

  She could not make out his expression behind his sunglasses, but she didn’t have to. It was apparent in the thinning of his mouth.

  Jessica sat back with a mental shrug and watched as her daughter emerged, dripping, from the pool, followed by Mark. They were laughing, a sound which had been all too unfamiliar over the past few months, and Jessica automatically smiled, looking at them.

  ‘We’re off,’ Lucy announced, slinging a towel around herself and squeezing her hair between her hands.

  ‘Off? Where to?’ It dawned on her that she would be left alone with Anthony, and, much as she tried to approach this in an adult way, she still felt a sudden, panicky trepidation at the prospect.

  ‘Stratford,’ Lucy explained in a long-suffering, exaggeratedly patient voice. She had cultivated this little trait and honed it down to a fine art so that it never failed to get on Jessica’s nerves.

  ‘We’re going to indulge in a spot of culture,’ Mark said, not looking at his father at all and concentrating all his attention on Jessica.

  ‘Do all the touristy things like look around Will Shakespeare’s house. Fascinating from an artistic point of view, apart from anything else.’

  At which Anthony snorted and glared at his son in disgust. ‘That sounds like fun,’ Jessica said hurriedly.

  ‘What time can we expect you back?’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Lucy said, scowling. ‘Mum and her fanatical clock-watching.’

  ‘Oh, we should only be a couple of hours,’ Mark said, walking off while Lucy followed.

  ‘Going to have a look around Will Shakespeare’s house,’ Anthony said, as soon as they were out of ear-shot. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. ‘Sees nothing wrong with that, but if I asked him to come and have a look around the company he’d run a mile.’ Jessica tilted her head back so that it was resting comfortably half off the back of the patio chair and didn’t say anything. Every time father and son were together, there was an electric current of unease running between them, and she had already decided that she would ignore any such tension. It was enough coping with her own daughter’s mood swings. ‘Consider yourself lucky that you have a daughter who’s got her head screwed on.’

  At this, Jessica twisted slightly so that she was looking at him. It was an awkward angle—something she only realised afterwards. The swimsuit top had been fashioned for someone flatter chested. Now, out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cloth virtually only managing to cover her nipple, and she rearranged herself accordingly.

  Anthony Newman wasn’t looking at her. At least not in any way that could possibly suggest anything sexual. He wasn’t really even seeing her. His forehead was creased in a dark frown—he was thinking of his son, that much was obvious. So why did she still feel so hotly aware of him? So desperate to make sure that she maintained a facade of cool aplomb? ‘What do you mean, ‘got her head screwed on’?’

  ‘Planning on doing something useful with her life.’

  ‘And that’s your definition of happiness? Doing something useful with one’s life?’

  ‘Isn’t it yours?’ He narrowed his eyes and regarded her coolly. ‘No, of course it’s not!’

  ‘Then why on earth are you so concerned with whether Lucy goes on to university or not?’

  It was an obvious question, but it still left her feeling as though she had been wrong-footed. She took a deep breath to keep her temper in check.

  ‘It wouldn’t bother me whether Lucy wanted to study art or economics,’ she said evenly. ‘Just so long as she was happy.’

  ‘Progressing her education.’

  ‘Presumably you want Mark to progress his as well?’ Jessica asked sweetly.

  ‘It would help if he could progress it in a slightly more useful manner.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, and she felt a sudden, unexpected burst of sympathy. It must be hard, she supposed, to be at the very top of business and finance and to know that your son had little or no interest in the world you’d taken pains to build. What had happened to his wife?

  It wasn’t the first time she had asked herself that question. Every time, her speculations on the subject became slightly more detailed.

  ‘It would help if you gave him a bit more support, I suppo
se,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘And how would you advise me to do that’?’ Anthony growled.

  ‘Take time off to tour a few art galleries?’

  ‘That mightn’t be a bad idea! Have you ever been inside an art gallery?’

  ‘Naturally! I’m not completely uncultured. Believe it or not, though, I rarely have time to indulge in such leisurely pursuits.’ You have enough time to indulge in leisurely pursuits with the owner of this bikini, though, Jessica thought. She remembered what her initial impression of Anthony Newman had been, even before she had met him—that he was a workaholic, too preoccupied for the needs of his son. The situation, she acknowledged, might not be quite as clear-cut as she had originally assumed, but in a nutshell wasn’t that the problem? She looked at him and realised that her anger stemmed only in part from this. Most of it stemmed from the image of him with Fiona.

  ‘You could make time,’ she heard herself tell him.

  ‘It would probably do your son a world of good to know that you’re not entirely against the idea of him studying art at university.’

  ‘Oh, but I am,’ Anthony said silkily.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because—’ He stopped short and threw her a dark, exasperated glance.

  ‘Because...?’

  ‘Because his mother was an artist,’ Anthony told her, his voice hard. ‘She spent quite a lot of time waffling on about the importance of being creative. What she really meant was the importance of self-gratification.’