by Marie Joseph
He looked at her again, hard, with disbelief, as if she were suddenly a totally different person. Then he went out, closing the door with a soft click behind him.
‘Oh, God, dear God… .’ The softly whimpered words were meaningless to Lisa, but she moaned them over and over again as she took off her bathrobe and got into the rumpled bed.
She deserved all Gordon had said to her, and more. It would serve her right if he threw in his job and left her with no choice but to sell the northern side of the business. Turning her head into the pillow she groaned aloud.
But Gordon Conway wouldn’t throw in his job, would he? He’d never get one with the same freedom or with such a salary as she paid him, so because of money hers was the power. Hadn’t she learned that a long time ago?
The power and the glory… . Lisa caught her breath. But, oh, dear God, where was the glory?
Sitting up, she saw Gordon’s cigarettes and lighter on the bedside table, but as the smoke curled up from the glowing tip of the cigarette she hadn’t really wanted, the supposedly soothing action brought no sudden flash of perception.
Her behaviour was inexplicable, even to herself. The need had been there. Drawing fiercely on the cigarette, she closed her eyes at the recollection of her clinging arms and legs, the passion which had totally overwhelmed her with its intensity. So why had she sent him away, talking to him like a puritanical spinster regretting a moment of unpremeditated folly?
Giving up all attempts to sleep, Lisa stubbed out the cigarette, switched on the light and, reaching down into a cupboard by the side of the bed, took out a bulging folder. There was a lot of work to be got through if the next spring’s lines were to be past the drawing-board stage before the end of the summer.
A tear splashed on to the paper, and she brushed it impatiently away. What good did tears do, and what was she crying for, anyway?
In sending Gordon Conway away so abruptly she was punishing her father for deserting her at a time of adolescence when she had had a great need of him. She was also punishing her husband Richard for his deception about Millie Schofield of the devious eyes, for living a lie, and taking her by force one winter’s night long ago. But most of all she was punishing Jonathan Grey for offering her a love he had no right to give, and for wanting to turn her into a replica of her mother, sitting by the fire and smoking her days away.
With an outward swing of an arm Lisa knocked the cigarettes and lighter from the little table, and as she did so the folder of drawings slipped from the bed to scatter across the carpet. She made no attempt to pick them up, but just sat there wrapping her arms around herself, swaying backwards and forwards so that her dark hair swung round her pinched and exhausted face.
Her eyes went suddenly vague, dreaming into space.
She was middle-aged, well, almost middle-aged. She was rich, not exactly beyond the dreams of avarice, but wealthy enough never again to wonder where the next meal was coming from.
She was admired because of what she had achieved, but apart from her son, who was three thousand miles away, she wasn’t loved. Lisa began to cry. Oh, there were dozens of men like Gordon Conway who would make love to her, assuage the deep physical longing that she admitted to, but who would leave her feeling diminished like she was feeling now.
Loneliness swamped her as she gave in to it.
‘Oh, Jonathan… .’ His name was no more than a sigh, as she switched out the light and stared up into the darkness, while the self-pitying tears ran from her eyes and into the pillow which still smelled of Gordon Conway’s spicy after-shave lotion.
She couldn’t believe the evidence of her own eyes when she saw him the next day.
Lisa was sitting in a taxi, being driven down Regent Street on her way to a meeting with a Jewish manufacturer of expensive accessories, when she saw him striding along, hatless, almost running with the loping stride she remembered so well.
‘Stop! Oh, please, stop!’ Banging on the glass partition dividing her from the driver, she jumped out of the taxi, thrusting a pound note into his astonished hand. She turned and ran, pushing her way along the pavement crowded with summer tourists, almost knocking an elderly couple over in her haste.
‘Jonathan! Oh, Jonathan!’ Catching him up, she clutched at his arm.
The man turned round as Lisa’s great grey-blue eyes stared at him, dulling with disappointment as she realized her mistake.
She couldn’t speak. This stranger was so like Jonathan he might have been his double. The height was the same, the flop of black hair over the forehead the same, but there was no well-remembered humorous tilt to this man’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say at last. ‘I thought you were someone I knew. Please forgive me.’
‘The disappointment is mine, ma’am.’ Smiling, the stranger moved on, leaving Lisa standing there on the wide pavement, a cold wind of disillusionment passing over her.
She began to laugh. All alone among the milling summer crowds she found herself laughing silently, even as one side of her mind ordered her to stop. But she couldn’t. She knew she was behaving like an hysteric because she had seen it before, years ago, in her mother as Delia had pounded on the wall in a frenzy, all control vanished.
For a moment she wondered if the mirthless agitated laughter that seemed to be bubbling from her was loud enough to be heard, but people were walking past her, talking to each other, window-shopping, enjoying the sunshine, and so she knew the terrible sound was inside her.
‘Stop it!’ she told herself, struggling for air. Then, as she forced herself to walk back in the direction of Oxford Circus, she remembered the leather zipped briefcase lying on the back seat of the taxi. A briefcase filled with sketches of next spring’s designs, as yet the only copies in existence.
Running she knew not where, Lisa stepped off the kerb almost under the wheels of a red London bus.
The man pulling her back to safety opened his mouth wide in astonishment as she twisted away from him.
‘Don’t touch me!’
As he stared at her he saw tears, thick as glycerine, gliding down her cheeks.
‘Can I help you, lassie?’ His face was a farmer’s face, red and kind, and his vowels were straight from the Lancashire dales, broad, well-defined, tempered with compassion.
‘That’s a lass in real trouble,’ he told his wife, as Lisa stumbled away, shaking her head. ‘Proper fashion-plate, too.’ He sighed. ‘Nay, but I’ll be glad to get back home tomorrow, love. The sun might be a bit warmer down here, but that’s all what is. You could break your heart here and no one would be the wiser. There’s too many folks knowing nowt about each other for my liking.’
At two o’clock the next morning Lisa was working on a fresh set of drawings. All her attempts to get the originals back had been abortive.
‘Whip anything, some would,’ the kindly voice at the other end of the telephone had told her. ‘There’s always the chance there’d be money in the case, you see, but leave your telephone number and if it’s handed in we’ll let you know.’
So she had to start again, while the designs were fresh in her mind. Lisa rubbed her aching eyes. That way the hysteria could be kept under control. Because that’s what it had been, and she might as well face it. For the first time in her life she had been on the verge of cracking up, and it was no good pretending it was her age, because she wasn’t old enough for menopausal vapours. Besides, she wasn’t the type. Everything depended on her. The shop, the girls in her employ, her very existence. If she’d been the type to cry on shoulders, where would she find one? What time had she had to make even one good friend?
Reaching for an eraser Lisa rubbed out a curve and began again.
The ring of the telephone startled her so that she jumped violently. Half-past two in the morning. Who on earth would be ringing her at that time? Picking up the receiver she said a shaky ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Mom!’
‘Peter!’ Her heart was beating so fast she felt it pounding in he
r throat. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Did I wake you up?’ His voice was so clear he might have been standing there right by her side. ‘It’s only nine o’clock here, but I had to tell you.’ There was singing joy in his voice. ‘I’ve just asked Marianne to marry me and she’s said yes. Hold on, Mom, she wants to say hello.’
‘Hi, Mrs Carr!’ The girl’s young voice was filled with the same ringing happiness. ‘I hope you’ll forgive your son for wanting to talk to you in the middle of your night, but we’ve just told my parents and he couldn’t bear you not to know.’ There was a slight pause. ‘I hope you’ll come visit us soon. Peter has told me so much about you. I feel I know you already.’
As the bright young voice went on and on Lisa stared with detached contemplation at a moonbeam filtering through the curtains where she hadn’t pulled them together closely enough. Peter would never come home again now. She frowned at a pencil which had rolled from the little side-table to the floor. Well, of course he would come home sometimes, for holidays. She had imagined him sleeping on a camp bed in the tiny dining-room, coming into the shop with his smile and the red-gold flame of his hair brightening up her office. But with a wife?
‘That’s wonderful, darling,’ she said automatically, realizing that her son was now at the other end of the line. ‘Of course I’ll come over to the wedding. Just try to keep me away! Spring? Let me know the date as soon as possible.’
‘So you can make sure it doesn’t interfere with your business arrangements?’
He was teasing. Lisa gripped the receiver hard. He had to be teasing. Peter wasn’t given to making sarcastic remarks. He had always known and accepted that the business was her life. Hadn’t he?
When the call was over, Lisa sat down on the edge of the bed. Had the fact that she had had to miss his Degree Day ceremony hurt him more than she realized? Hadn’t she made it clear enough to him that even as she sat in conference with her banker and a manufacturer who was offering to buy her out, her mind had been with him in his college precincts, standing by his side in her best suit and hat, anticipating proudly his coming glory?
‘It’s only a rolled-up parchment,’ he’d told her. ‘Honestly, Mother, it doesn’t matter. Pomp and circumstance never bothered me none.’
But it had. That unguarded remark about his wedding day had given him away.
Just as she had given his home away. Lisa’s mind went back to the day when she had told her son at the time of his father’s funeral that she was going to make a present of the red-bricked house to Irene and the little hairy man Irene was going to marry.
Never for one moment had she considered the fact that it was Peter’s home, too. Lisa sighed. How strange that she had never seen it that way. And how sure she had been that he would understand her need to work, when all the time he had nursed a hurt, wanting, really wanting her to be there on his big day, wearing one of her less outlandish creations with maybe a feathered hat on her head.
No wonder he had gone to America. What else could he have done when his own mother had rendered him homeless?
Moving slowly, Lisa sat down at her dressing-table and stared at herself in the mirror. Her tired face looked soggy with self-pity, as for the first time in her life she wallowed in it unashamedly.
‘Lisa Logan!’ Her reflection stared back at her in total despair. ‘You are a success. In your own world you are a great big resounding success. But as a mother? Do you know what you are? A terrible failure.’ She watched a tear slide down a cheek. ‘You told yourself your son was different; that he could cope because you’d brought him up that way; and now you’ve got your come-uppance, Lisa Cleverclogs Logan. Because materialistic success can’t compensate for unhappiness. Or loneliness. And it’s all your fault.’
The sound of her voice in the empty room frightened her, but she knew the silence would have been worse. She knew also that talking to herself was a sign of the hysteria threatening once again, but what had to be said had to be said.
‘You are admired, Lisa Logan. Oh, yes, you are very much admired, especially by men. They find you attractive. Gordon Conway found you attractive, and you could sleep around as much as you liked, even at your age.’ Leaning forward, she pulled a single silvery strand from her parting. ‘But you were born just too soon to be a part of what’s going on now. You have a cold puritanical heart, a northern puritanical heart, and you’re daft enough to try to equate sex with love. Inside you’re as unsophisticated as a sixteen-year-old girl. You’re a prude. A frustrated, dried-up woman, lacking the courage to do what should be coming naturally. A freak with the mind of a Victorian virgin, pining for a man who would probably not even recognize you if he saw you again.’
Even in her misery, Lisa accepted that she was mouthing a soliloquy that would have sounded better coming from a stage. Like a rerun of a film, she saw herself tearing down Regent Street, calling Jonathan Grey’s name, then clutching the arm of a perfect stranger. ‘All the world’s a stage,’ as Angus would undoubtedly have said.
‘And now you’re going to pour yourself a drink,’ she whispered. ‘A drink to put you to sleep. The mother and father of all drinks. OK?’
But her hand jittered the bottle of gin against the glass, and as she drank it down she choked, swallowed, then poured some more.
‘Damn you to hell, Jonathan Grey!’ she yelled. ‘Why won’t you go away?’
She felt sick; she was trembling so violently that when she lifted a hand and saw it shaking she thrust it behind her. She was mad. Like her mother before her she was going crazy… . In another minute she would be pounding on the wall and waking the earnest couple next door. She would be swearing, words which trembled inside her. Filthy, four-letter words waiting inside her head to burst out and echo round the empty room. And when the next-door neighbours saw her there would be horror and disgust mirrored on their faces, the same disgust that had once been mirrored on her own as she looked at Delia.
Setting the glass down, Lisa forced herself to take deep breaths. She walked unsteadily through into the bathroom, dropped her robe down round her ankles, and stepped into the shower.
Raising her face, she let the water cascade over her. Gasping, she turned the control to cold, bowing her head as the water pricked like needles on the back of her neck.
‘Count your bloody blessings,’ she whispered. ‘There are still plenty of them around; and start by forgetting a man who once told you you were the love of his life, because that kind of love doesn’t exist. Not even in books these days. You’re Lisa Logan, not Scarlett O’Hara. OK?’
Her heart was still beating with dull heavy thuds as she towelled her thick dark hair part-dry, but when she climbed into bed and switched off the light she sank almost at once into a sleep nearly as profound as a coma.
And when she walked into the shop the next morning her face was as smooth as glass, with only a light bruised look round her grey-blue eyes denoting the trauma of the night before.
Lisa Logan had found her sense of purpose again; she had come to terms with the way things were and the way they were going to be, and like a true Lancastrian she was accepting the inevitable.
Alone she might be, but defeated – never.
And if Angus Logan, her father, had seen her at that moment he would have smiled at her with his blue, blue eyes and more than likely given his daughter a round of applause.
Twelve
JONATHAN GREY SIPPED his second whisky, neat without ice, and stared at his wife with a kind of detached interest. Amy sat opposite him in the new house with four bedrooms, bathroom ‘en suite’ off the master bedroom, with a bitter-lemon balanced precariously on the well-upholstered arm of her chair.
Ever since the time she had kicked the drinking habit she had watched him drink with a resigned expression on her face, saying nothing but making it quite clear that she was sure – not that she cared – he was going the way of his father before him.
When he lit a cigarette she wafted the air even before he had take
n the first puff, still saying nothing.
‘Are you coming out to dinner wearing those things?’ Jonathan pointed at the shiny white boots encasing her fat legs like plaster casts. ‘I hardly think it’s going to snow even in November.’
Once, a long time ago, she would have flared up, taking even the mildest remark as implied criticism, but now nothing her husband said made the slightest difference. It wasn’t that Amy actively disliked him, merely that their marriage had deteriorated over the years to a state where he no longer had the power to provoke her into any kind of reaction.
‘They’re fashionable,’ she informed him. ‘Fashion boots, not wellingtons.’ Holding out a leg she admired their shiny newness. ‘Everyone’s wearing them now.’
‘At your age?’ Jonathan wanted to say, but bit back the retort. Amy had made a life of her own, revelling in their undoubted affluence, using her cheque book like a talisman, giving the lie to the supposition that money bought good taste; festooning her neck with gold chains, vulgarizing her fingers with an encrustation of rings, having her auburn hair dyed a fierce carrot shade, and drawing black rings round her pale blue eyes. Proud of her cleavage, she wore dresses which showed it to advantage, belying the fact that for years now she had slept alone, making it more than clear that she found his touch repugnant.
Jonathan had stopped blaming himself, stopped blaming his long-dead father for his wife’s defensive, belligerent attitude, stopped telling himself it was her childless state that had turned her against him. Their incompatibility had grown like a fungus, so that all they did now was go through the machinations of a marriage that was one in name only.
The downward slide into cold indifference had begun, he knew, on the day two of Amy’s so-called friends had thought she ought to know he had been seen holding hands with Lisa Carr on a windswept platform in Manchester. It was almost as if Amy had been looking for an excuse to start the campaign against him, needing something on which to pin her frustration.