The Unmarried Husband

by Cathy Williams

  ‘Aren’t there rules about working those unsocial hours?’ Lucy sat down on a kitchen stool and sniffed loudly. ‘Some law handed down from Brussels?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyway, you’ve changed, and I know why.’ Jessica stopped in mid-wipe and stared at her daughter worriedly. She had tried to make sure that she gave nothing away. She felt enough of a fool without drawing attention to her stupidity. The remainder of that nightmarish weekend had passed amid pleasantries. She had been a perfectly polite guest; she had carefully hidden the fact that she had been dying to leave, to get away from Anthony Newman’s stifling, disturbing presence.

  It hadn’t been easy. She had felt his eyes on her, brooding, watching, and she had resolutely made sure to avoid any possible opportunity for him to talk to her on a one-to-one basis.

  And since then his name had not been mentioned.

  ‘Why?’ she asked in a casual voice. She sat down, though. Her legs felt shaky.

  ‘It’s that Italy trip, isn’t it?’ Lucy scowled. ‘It’s been preying on your mind!’

  ‘We’ve been through this, Lucy.’ Jessica breathed a little inward sigh of relief. Not, she thought, that she had much to be relieved about. She had considered Italy a closed affair. Now here it was, rearing its head again.

  ‘You didn’t even hear what I had to say!’

  ‘I don’t need to.’

  ‘You never listen.’

  ‘Look, darling...’ Jessica spoke clearly, firmly and kindly. ‘I have no idea which one of you two thought of this little adventure, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care for the thought of you going to Italy with Mark Newman, however nice I find him...’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I just don’t.’ It was the most feeble piece of reasoning she had ever heard in her life, but it was also the safest way of closing the discussion. ‘Is it the money thing?’

  ‘No, although that’s a small technical hitch, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘If you lent me the money, I’d pay you back...’

  ‘No. End of discussion.’

  Lucy muttered something inaudible under her breath, and Jessica clicked her tongue impatiently. She wasn’t in the mood for this repetitive, pointless discussion about a trip that wasn’t going to materialise. But, still, she felt badly about it in a way. To be a teenager again, fighting against an implacable parent... If only she could make her daughter understand how preferable that was to living with indifference.

  The matter was dropped, but the atmosphere was uneasy. To clear the air would involve broaching the subject again, and Jessica really didn’t know if this was the best way forward. It would either lead to Lucy appreciating why she couldn’t go, or else it would just simply further her stubborn feeling of being overruled. She couldn’t take the chance.

  But it gnawed away at her until she decided, on the spur of the moment one week later, that she would do something about it —to make up for Lucy’s disappointment. She returned from work, grinning for the first time in weeks, with a handful of brochures. Spain, Portugal and Greece. Mother and daughter, a week’s rest in the sunshine somewhere, close to a beach, close to a swimming pool. An olive branch. The house was empty.

  Jessica didn’t even think about Lucy’s absence. At least not for a couple of hours. She assumed that her daughter was with a friend. She prepared dinner, pottered, grew more anxious as she looked at the hands on the clock ticking by.

  By eight she was telling herself to keep calm, but within half an hour she had telephoned Lucy’s friends and it was only when she met with blank responses that she began to feel ill.

  Should she telephone the police? She sat in the kitchen with the brochures dumped on the table in a disorderly pile in front of her, and supported her head in her hands.

  Had Lucy even returned home after school’? Her mind raced ahead to possible scenarios. Her daughter returned home—tall, leggy, her hair swinging around her face. From a distance, a self-confident young woman, not the often gauche girl she was.

  A temptation for some depraved man who happened to be travelling back on the same route. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and bit her clenched knuckles.

  But if she had returned home her uniform would be in the bedroom.

  Jessica hurried to check. Lucy’s bedroom was as she might have expected it to be—bed roughly made, curtains half-drawn. School uniform in a bundle by the dressing table. She walked in. Something didn’t quite add up. The wardrobe doors were open and clothes were missing. Jessica could see that at a glance. She feverishly checked and rechecked. By the time her mind had arrived at its conclusion, the contents of the note on the dressing table were virtually redundant.

  Lucy had gone to Italy for three weeks. I know you’re going to be furious, but it was a chance in a lifetime, and I haven’t been anywhere as exciting in my life before.

  As though, Jessica thought with mounting anger, she had kept her daughter trapped within four walls and fed her on bread and water for the past sixteen years.

  She didn’t wait to think. She picked up the telephone, dialled Anthony Newman’s number, and with a deja vu feeling waited for it to be answered.

  ‘I need to see you,’ she said, as soon as his voice came down the line. The timbre of it didn’t reduce her to morbid, cringing introspection. Her urgency had put paid to that, at least for the moment.

  ‘Have you ever thought of adopting a more polite approach in these sorts of circumstances?’

  ‘Right now. Lucy’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’ He spoke sharply.

  ‘To Italy. I’ve only just discovered a note she left lying on her dressing table.’

  ‘I’ll kill him if he’s persuaded her to go with him,’ Anthony said grimly.

  ‘I’m afraid I had no idea. I’ll get to you immediately.’ He hung up, and Jessica was left holding the telephone, which she slowly replaced after a while.

  She reread the note. ‘I’ll call,’ it said, ‘as soon as I arrive.’ Knowing her daughter, that probably meant that she would call just as soon as she thought that her mother’s wrath had abated.

  I could strangle her, she thought. Now that her fears of abduction were gone, anxiety was giving way to anger. Wasn’t this just typical of her headstrong daughter? She thought of Mark coercing Lucy into the trip, and realised that the truth was probably a little different. He had, she acknowledged to herself, probably tried to dissuade her. But Lucy could be as stubborn as a mule, and she had obviously made up her mind to go and off she’d gone.

  Where on earth had she got the money? No doubt from her building society account, which Jessica had been adding to over the years, building up a nest-egg for Lucy’s college days. She didn’t want even to think about that.

  By the time the doorbell rang, her head was beginning to hurt. She yanked open the door, looked at the tall, still alarmingly handsome face looking back at her, and felt even more enraged.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ were her opening words.

  ‘When I get my hands on that daughter of mine, I’m going to throttle her! I’ve spent the past four hours worried sick!’

  ‘May I come in?’

  His voice was utterly calm. It was like having cool water poured over her.

  Jessica stepped back, leaving him to shut the door behind him, and headed for the sitting room.

  ‘Has she phoned?’ he asked, once they were both sitting down. ‘No.’ Jessica stared glumly at him, half wishing that she hadn’t bothered to call him, resenting the fact that even with her mind preoccupied with Lucy she still couldn’t help drinking him in. This awful, powerful, helpless attraction was the closest she had ever come to an addiction, and she wished that she could turn it off.

  ‘Had she discussed the idea with you?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ She blushed a little. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of...?’

  ‘Well, it’s all very well for you to send your son to Italy, but firstly he’s a boy, and secondly I just couldn
’t see that I could afford the luxury!’

  Anthony coolly ignored the accusation behind the outburst. ‘So she did mention the subject to you?’

  ‘And I told her no. Categorically.’ In fact, she thought, there really hadn’t been any discussion at all. She had simply put her foot down the way she’d used to when Lucy had been very young and had asked for something preposterous. She was slowly coming round to the idea that dictatorship was a thing of the past, and she half closed her eyes with a sudden wave of guilt. She should at least have had a rational conversation about the whole thing.

  ‘I brought details of where Mark’s staying.’ He handed her a slip of paper, which she looked at. It meant nothing at all to her. She had never been to Italy, did not speak Italian, and had no idea where this so-called place was. North? West? South? Somewhere in the middle?

  ‘Is this the first stop on a tour? When Lucy brought up the subject, I just assumed that...’ Her voice faltered. ‘That she was going to be hitch-hiking her way around the country with my son, vulnerable to the passing whim of some crazed lorry driver... ?’

  He had so accurately hit the nail on the head that she felt a rush of defensive, righteous anger flood through her. ‘Mothers tend to be just a little protective of their girls, Mr Newman!’

  ‘I realise that.’ He sighed, raked his fingers through his hair, and looked at her with such brooding directness that she could feel her body begin to burn.

  ‘I very much doubt it. I’ll bet you just nodded when Mark suggested the idea, threw some money at him, and then forgot about the whole thing.’

  ‘He’s no longer a child.’

  ‘And Lucy is!’ Maybe not, though. Maybe she was leaving childhood behind, and the way to deal with that wasn’t to try and keep her where she was, but simply to build their relationship up in a slightly different way. ‘Well, there’s no point arguing the toss. There’s a phone number listed. Why don’t you just give her a call and put your mind at rest?’

  ‘My mind isn’t going to be at rest just by speaking to her down the end of a line! How do I know what kind of place this is?’ She stared at the slip of paper, as though hopeful that the words would somehow rearrange themselves into something comprehensible. ‘What kind of place is this anyway?’ Anthony shrugged. ‘A campus of sorts, I gather...’

  ‘A campus? Of sorts? Don’t you mean a commune...?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite what you have in mind.’

  ‘How do you know what I have in mind?’

  ‘Because your face is as transparent as glass.’ He looked at her and she felt that tingle of awareness zip through her again, like an electric shock. Brief but potent. She had, she considered, never been told that she was transparent. Just the opposite. Funny thing was that with Anthony Newman it was as though he could read her mind, as though he had somehow discovered an inside route through the workings in her head. In a way, as though they had known one another for centuries.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a collection of hippies—picking grapes, tilling the land and participating in orgies at night...’ A sudden flash of humour crossed his face, and she unwillingly felt it suffuse her like incense.

  ‘Well, what sort of place is it, then?’

  ‘I gather it’s some sort of art place...’

  ‘What’s a ‘some sort of art place’?’

  He shrugged again, as though uncomfortable with her detailed questioning. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly read the damned brochure back to front, Jessica. Like I said to you, Mark’s a big boy now, quite capable of taking care of himself.’

  ‘You mean that you switched off the minute you heard that it had to do with art.’

  He scowled at her but didn’t say anything. They were arguing. Again. Yet there was a strange undercurrent of intimacy behind the argument, and she wondered whether she was the only one feeling it. More than likely, she thought. Far more probable was that he considered her a mumsy bore, bristling and defending her daughter like an anxious mother hen. Again. The desperate, clinging parent who refused to acknowledge that there came a time for letting go.

  ‘Mark mentioned in passing that there’s teaching on the premises. I just let him get on with it. I had no idea that Lucy was involved.’

  ‘I shall have to go and see what all this is about,’ Jessica told him eventually. She smoothed the piece of paper and tried to work out how much the trip would cost. Well, it didn’t matter. ‘I thought you might say that.’

  ‘What a mind-reader,’ she mumbled under her breath.

  ‘So I got my secretary to get us on the next flight over, which is tomorrow morning.’

  Jessica’s head shot up and she stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘You did what...?’

  ‘I have a breakfast meeting, but I’ll meet you at the airport at ten-thirty.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ she spluttered.

  ‘We should be there some time after lunch. We can sort out accommodation once we arrive.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me! I don’t want to go with you. You weren’t invited.’

  ‘I fail to see how you can keep me off the plane,’ Anthony told her reasonably, but his eyes were cold, as though he had sized up her reaction and knew precisely what lay behind it. ‘I feel slightly responsible for Mark involving your daughter in all this.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ Jessica said abruptly, but he was already standing up. Business finished. How, in such a short time, had she and her daughter somehow managed to become this man’s responsibility? She had always prided herself on her independence, which now seemed to be compromised. She didn’t want Anthony Newman treating them as though they were charity cases which had to be sorted out.

  ‘I only wanted you to tell me where they were staying!’ she protested heatedly as he walked towards the front door. ‘I didn’t want you becoming involved. I’m more than capable of handling things from here on!’

  ‘You have a problem accepting help.’

  ‘I never had any of these problems until you came along!’ she informed him, swerving around him so that she barred his exit through the front door. She folded her arms and stared at him without flinching.

  He looked back at her with an odd expression.

  ‘Funny. I could say exactly the same thing. My life was relatively problem-free until you appeared.’

  It wasn’t what she had expected to hear, and she blinked back a mixture of hurt and anger.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at the airport,’ he said, pushing her to one side and opening the front door. Maybe, she thought viciously, or maybe not. Maybe I’ll just make a phone call and let Lucy get on with whatever it is she’s doing there. But she knew that she would do no such thing. Years of protectiveness were very hard to do away with. Lucy could be at a kibbutz, or an establishment of high learning with segregated floors—she had to go; she had to see for herself. She knew that she couldn’t just let go and hope for the best. Other parents might joyfully be able to send their teenage girls away for three weeks abroad with only the occasional phone call to let them know that everything was all right, but not her. Lucy was her life.

  The thought, which she took to bed, was a faintly depressing one. She would have to wean herself away from this protectiveness. Sooner or later she would be on her own.

  *

  So she was there at the airport the following morning, in sandals and a dress, and with a small case stuffed with various bits of clothing, a book and some make-up. She had no idea how long she would be in Italy, but she didn’t envisage that it would be longer than a couple of days. Nor did she envisage what she would say to her daughter when they did meet. That was a headache which she would have to face when the time came.

  Anthony didn’t arrive until the plane was ready to board, which further increased her already disgruntled frame of mind. ‘Sorry,’ he said briefly, going through all the airport technicalities with the knowhow of someone who’s quite familiar with the procedure and heartily bored by it all. ‘Last-minu
te things to sort out.’

  ‘You needn’t have bothered,’ Jessica told him, breathlessly following him as he wound his way through the terminal and towards the gate where the plane was boarding.

  It felt peculiar not to be in charge. Even more peculiar was the fact that she found it refreshing, even though the circumstances were awful and his presence on the scene, she told herself, was little more than interference.

  ‘I called Mark last night,’ he said as they were led to their seats.

  Jessica looked around her, forgetting for a moment that she truly resented him being here with her. ‘We’re travelling first class,’ she whispered to him, sitting down and stretching out her legs in front of her. It was luxurious. Lots of space, not many people sharing the compartment, and an air of deference as the air hostess offered them a glass of champagne. ‘Oh, so we are.’

  She surreptitiously checked out the various buttons on the armrests, tempted to push them all just to see what they would do.

  ‘You can press them all just as soon as the plane’s in the air,’ he told her, sotto voce, and she turned to see him looking at her with an expression of amusement.

  ‘You were saying?’ Jessica reminded him haughtily. ‘You telephoned your son...?’

  ‘And he said that Lucy showed up unexpectedly. Apparently she decided to go on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘The little minx,’ Jessica muttered. ‘Stubborn as a mule.’

  ‘She must get it from somewhere,’ Anthony commented neutrally, but she let that remark go.

  ‘She’s in for a shock when she sees me.’ Jessica tried to picture the look on her daughter’s face and couldn’t. ‘And what do you intend to do once the shock’s worn off?’ Anthony asked bluntly. ‘Haul her onto the next flight out, kicking and screaming?’