by Penny Jordan
They might be, Saul had agreed wryly, but the antiquated heating system fuelled by the monster of a boiler with the temperament of a prima donna, which crouched so malevolently and sulkily over the kitchen, was most certainly not, and he for one preferred to know that when he turned on the hot water for his shower hot water was exactly what he was going to get, not a thin rusty dribble of something that could be anything from ice-cold to red-hot, frequently veering balefully from one to the other without the least warning.
Christie had laughed at him, telling him that he was getting soft on his rich, cosseted lifestyle, reminding him of when they were children and central heating of any sort had been an unknown luxury. Saul remembered all right. He also remembered how he had learned to be careful about mentioning at home the luxuries enjoyed by the families of some of his peers. He had once made the mistake of commenting enthusiastically on the new car acquired by the father of one of his schoolfriends, and had then realised from the set, tight look on his father’s face that he had somehow hurt him. After that he had been careful never to comment on the material possessions of others, just in case by doing so he might cause his much loved father any pain.
Christie, so much less close to their father, had suffered no such qualms, and yet, for all her often expressed envy of more affluent schoolfriends when she was growing up, she was now scattily and happily totally unmaterialistic.
People didn’t need wealth, she was fond of saying, they needed love and good health; the chance to fulfil their potential as human beings. They needed to give and to receive respect from those around them, to feel that their lives held purpose and meaning. Too much money blunted the human spirit’s ability to enjoy the pleasure of self-achievement almost as much as too little, although, of course, Christie being Christie, her sympathies were far more with the have-nots than the have-too-muches. People with wealth had the opportunity to do something about their handicap, such as using it for the benefit of others. Those who lived in poverty had no such opportunities.
Saul grimaced a little to himself as he drove slowly towards Christie’s house. What would his sister make of Davina James? They were two utterly different types. Christie was hard-working, independent, stubborn and determined in her support of the underdog, her only real vulnerability her daughter Cathy, followed perhaps by her own passionate involvement with what she believed in. Christie was passionately intense in her beliefs and in supporting them.
Davina James, on the other hand, was completely the opposite: the rich man’s daughter who had never worked, never had to support herself; who had gone from protected girlhood to equally protected wifehood; a woman who had such little emotional passion in her nature that she had calmly turned a blind eye to her husband’s numerous affairs.
Saul moved uneasily in his seat, frowning. There was no reason why that should fill him with such anger. She wasn’t on her own. He could name several couples among his own acquaintance who had exactly that kind of marriage; the kind of marriage which on the surface seemed all calm compatibility and politeness but which in reality cloaked sour indifference and mutual lack of any real feelings. Why did such people stay together? His frown deepened as he turned into Christie’s drive.
What the hell did it matter why Davina James had stayed with her husband? Their personal relationship had no bearing on Alex’s desire to acquire the company. But it had disturbed him to feel that intuitive unwanted thrust of awareness of her as a woman, soft, vulnerable, her body tensing against his in the classic defensive reaction of a woman to the physical threat of an unknown man. Not that he had been threatening her.
How could a woman like that, a woman with such sensitive and intense reactions, armour herself into the cynical indifference of being married to a man consistently unfaithful to her? Or was it that she was so physically cold that she welcomed his sexual infidelity?
His senses, his body rejected the thought so quickly that it shocked him into a fresh surge of anger. Forget the woman, he told himself as he stopped his car. She isn’t important. Just as his own awareness of his discontent, of his despair almost, over the direction of his life wasn’t important?
Getting out of his car, he slammed the door with more force than was necessary. Security lights flashed on as he walked towards the house; the front door opened and Cathy came running over to him, flinging herself into his arms. How different she was from his own daughter. It amazed him sometimes that his volatile sister should have produced this serene, loving child, whose contentment and joy in her life were so immediately obvious, while he … while Josey …
As he bent to return her hug he suppressed the sharp pain of self-knowledge. How much was he to blame for the cynical materialism that was becoming so much a part of Josey’s personality? All right, so she was older than Cathy, and lived in a different environment; but that did not change the fact that Cathy was happy while his daughter, his children were not.
‘Mum’s had to go out on an emergency call,’ she told him as they walked back to the house together. ‘She said she shouldn’t be long, though.’
‘I suppose that means the gorgon is here, then, does it?’ Saul mock groaned.
It was an old joke between them; a private name they had for the severely respectable and outwardly formidable widow whom Christie employed to sit with Cathy when she had to be out.
Beneath her formidable exterior Saul knew that she was devoted to both Cathy and Christie, but she was one of that apparently dying breed of women who exuded disapproval of the male sex. Impossible as it was to imagine that she had actually been married, she always spoke very severely of her husband as ‘the late Mr Lynch,’ causing Saul to wonder if she had ever addressed the man during his lifetime by his actual Christian name.
Christie derided him for his attitude, telling him that if Agnes Lynch was repressed then it was because of the rules of behaviour imposed on women by the male sex; because she had probably been taught from childhood to suppress her sexuality; because she had been taught that it was a woman’s responsibility to exercise a civilising influence over the men around her.
‘You men, you’re like children,’ she had scoffed at Saul. ‘Always refusing to take responsibility for your own behaviour. You’re sexually promiscuous … well, that “isn’t your fault”. It’s “up to the woman to say no for you”. Rubbish! A man is just as capable of controlling his sexual urges as a woman, and a woman has just as much right to the freedom to enjoy her sexuality as a man.’
Saul had said nothing. He often wondered how much his sister’s voluble championing of women’s sexual rights had to do with the fact that Cathy’s father, the married man who had seduced her and then calmly told her that he wanted neither her nor her child, had treated her so cruelly, but he knew his volatile sister too well to ever lay that charge at her.
‘I’m to make you some supper,’ Cathy told him importantly. ‘It’s all ready in the kitchen, but I expect you’d like to go upstairs first.’
Saul hid a small wry smile at her young motherliness. Where had she picked that up from? Certainly not from his independent sister, who was far more likely to direct him to the fridge and tell him to help himself.
An hour later when Christie arrived home she found the two of them at the kitchen table, playing Scrabble. She kissed her daughter and then hugged Saul, releasing him to demand drily, ‘So what is this important business that brings you to our part of the world, big brother?’
‘Who said anything about its being important?’ Saul countered. Christie might be volatile, but that did not mean that she was unintelligent. Far from it. Uncomfortably he acknowledged that he had no wish for his sister to know exactly why Alex wanted to obtain Carey’s.
But why should he care what Christie thought of his actions? The differences in their moral viewpoint and outlook had never bothered him in the past. No, because in the past he had been bolstered, protected from her acerbic dismissal of the materialism and greed that turned the wheels of his world by the knowledge
that he was fulfilling his father’s dreams for him. Now he no longer had that protection.
‘You’re Sir Alex’s right-hand man. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important,’ Christie told him, watching him.
‘Ah … I’m afraid I’ve suffered a slight fall from grace and that this is more what Alex deems to be a subtle form of punishment than anything else. There’s a local company he’s interested in acquiring.’ He gave a brief shrug and deftly made up another Scrabble word, trying to give the impression that his concentration was fixed more on his game with Cathy than on the purpose of his visit to Cheshire.
Christie was frowning. ‘Which local company?’ she demanded. ‘I shouldn’t have thought that there was anything big enough here to interest Sir Alex. There’s only really Carey’s.’ She stopped and stared at him. ‘Is it Carey’s?’ Her frown deepened. ‘But why on earth would Sir Alex want them?’
Saul shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure that he does,’ he lied.
‘Well, something needs to be done about them,’ Christie told him grimly. ‘They’ve got a very poor accident record, and I’m very concerned about the number of people working there who’ve consulted me recently with contact dermatitis. The wages they pay are horrendous, and none of his employees seemed to think very highly of Gregory James.’
‘Did you know him?’ Saul asked her.
She shook her head. ‘No … and from what I’ve heard about him I doubt we’d have had anything in common. I’ve me his wife a couple of times.’ She frowned. ‘She’s the quiet, docile type, although …’
‘Although what?’ Saul pressed her. As he waited for her response he suddenly realised how tense he had become, the small lettered squares in his hand biting into his flesh as his fingers closed too tightly over them. He could feel the sudden acceleration in his heartbeat, and he knew he was waiting for Christie’s answer with a very dangerous blend of anger and hostility.
‘Well, she and I were on the same fund-raising committee a couple of years ago, and she was the one who actually managed to persuade the hospital authority to agree to look into certain types of alternative treatments and therapies. I’m still not quite sure how she did it …’
‘You mean she’s not perhaps as docile as she appears.’
Christie shrugged. ‘I don’t know the woman well enough to pass any real judgement on her; all I do know is that the general local consensus is one of surprise that she’s become so involved in the business since her husband’s death. Come on, Cathy,’ she added, turning to her daughter. ‘Time for bed. How are Josephine and Thomas?’ she asked Saul over her shoulder.
‘Fine,’ he told her shortly, tensing a little as she turned round to give him a thoughtful look.
‘Sore subject?’ she asked softly.
Saul shrugged, unwilling to admit even to Christie how much of a failure he felt as a father, and how frustrated and unhappy he felt at not being able to get closer to his children. ‘They’re growing up,’ he said. ‘Especially Josey. They both have their own lives, their own friends.’
Christie said nothing, but later, when Cathy was in bed and they were alone, she caught him off guard by returning to the subject.
She had just made them a nightcap; she had been telling him ruefully about one of Cathy’s small misdemeanours, and then quietly she asked him, ‘How do you really feel about Josey and Tom, Saul? They are your children.’
He put down his cup, angry with her for raising the subject and even more angry with himself for what he was feeling. ‘Biologically, yes,’ he agreed tersely. ‘But if they don’t want me in their lives I can’t force them to accept me, Christie.’
‘Have you thought that they could just be testing you?’ she asked him. ‘Josey especially is at an age where her emotions are very vulnerably poised between childhood and womanhood. You are her father, and she’s bound to—’
‘To what? Want me in her life?’ Saul demanded bitterly. He got up and wheeled around, leaning down towards her. ‘And what about Cathy, Christie; does she want her father in her life?’
He was cursing himself before the words were out, hating himself for his cruelty as he saw the blood drain from his sister’s face.
‘God, Christie, I’m sorry …’ he apologised instantly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No. It was a question you’d every right to ask,’ Christie told him shakily. ‘And, believe me, it’s one I never cease to ask myself.
‘Cathy is young for her age. I’ve always tried to be as honest as I can with her, without hurting her. She knows that her father was married when we met, that he has a wife and family, other responsibilities, and so far she’s always accepted that he isn’t free to play any kind of role in our lives.
‘What I haven’t told her is that he wanted me to abort her; that I know he would never want anything to do with her and that if she ever tried to approach him he would reject her. What I also know is that one day she is going to want to make that approach—she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t—and I know I can’t protect her from the hurt she will suffer. That’s my guilt and my burden, only Cathy is the one who will have to bear their pain. As she grows up I keep on asking myself if I should prepare her … warn her … but then I wonder, even if I do tell her, will she believe me … will she still not want to find out the truth for herself? I know that, in her shoes, I would.
‘All I can do is to make sure that she’s strong enough; that she grows up surrounded by enough love; that I give her a strong enough belief in herself as a human being to sustain her through that pain.’
As he saw the tears standing out in his sister’s eyes Saul felt sick with shame and self-contempt. He reached out and took hold of her, rocking her in his arms.
‘Christie … forgive me. I envy you so much, you know,’ he added truthfully. ‘Whenever I’m with you, you make me so sharply aware of my own shortcomings.’
Against his chest Christie laughed. ‘Shortcomings! You! I never thought you had any.’
Saul laughed with her, both of them acknowledging the truth that had dominated their shared childhoods, which was that their father had loved his son to the detriment of his daughter.
Saul marvelled that Christie had always been large-spirited enough never to resent him for that; that she had been strong enough to somehow find her own way through life.
‘I’m glad Cathy’s father didn’t really want me, you know,’ she told Saul now as she pushed herself away from him. ‘It would never have worked out. I realised later that what I wanted from him was his approval, his admiration … that what I wanted from him was all that Dad withheld from me. I put him up on a pedestal, virtually worshipping him, and when he rejected me and Cathy, when I realised the truth … well, let’s just say that by the time Cathy was born I was glad he was working on the other side of the Atlantic.’
‘Is he still there?’ Saul asked her.
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? It would be easy enough for me to find out, I suppose, but I can’t see the point.’ She touched his arm briefly. ‘Don’t give up on Josey, Saul. She needs you in her life. They both do.’
‘Not according to Karen,’ he commented sardonically.
Christie gave him a quick look. ‘I’m going up to bed,’ she told him. ‘I want to check over my notes for the conference.’
‘I’ll stay down here for a little while longer, if you don’t mind,’ Saul responded.
She shook her head, smiling at him as she opened the door and left.
Once he was on his own he sat down again.
Was Christie right? Did his children need him? Not according to Karen.
Karen … It seemed impossible now that they could ever have been married. Had she ever loved him? Had he ever loved her?
He closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair, thinking back to the past, to the year he had left Oxford to begin his course at Harvard. Two things of almost equal importance had happened to him as a result of going to Harvard: the first was that he met Karen Ma
nners, and the second was that he was head-hunted by one of New York’s most prestigious and old-established firms of financial analysts.
He met Karen soon after he arrived at Harvard. She, like him, was a Brit, doing a fill-in course at Vassar. A tall redhead, she had a sharp-boned elegance, a wickedly keen wit, and an almost masculine attitude towards sex, which drew him to her like metal to a magnet.
They met first at a party given by a mutual acquaintance, and in the crowd of American women Karen stood out immediately as being different. There was, Saul recognised, something about her that drew him to her, although it wasn’t until later, much, much later that he recognised that what he saw in her was a mirror image of his own ambition and drive.
Outwardly all cool control, all elegance, she was, as Saul discovered the first time they went to bed together, a very accomplished lover. Accomplished and controlled. He liked that in her. It made him feel safe. It seemed to underline her support and her approval of the way he had chosen to run his own life. She was not like other women of his acquaintance, a creature of emotions and needs that he was supposed in some way to satisfy. Karen had no needs, made no demands on him other than sexually.
It was she who suggested they move in together, but he had no qualms about doing so. He already knew her well enough to know that living with her would not mean that she would impinge on his life in any way that would prejudice his ambitions. She was, after all, as ambitious as he was himself.
They rented a tiny apartment in a block that had a resident husband and wife team who took care of the domestic chores—an essential, not a luxury, as Karen pointed out to him when he suggested that they could probably find somewhere cheaper. Money was always on Saul’s mind. He was deeply aware of how much the lack of it, of how having to economise had pressured and depressed his father.