A Paper Marriage

by Jessica Steele

  'He came here one time. Didn't Dad lend him some money?"

  'He did,' Hilary Pearson replied sharply. `And now it's his turn to pay that money back.'

  `He never repaid that money?' Lydie asked, feeling just a touch disappointed. He had seemed to her sixteen-year-old eyes such an honourable man-and she knew he had prospered greatly in the seven years that had elapsed.

  `Coincidentally, the money he borrowed from your father is the same amount we need to stay on in this house.'

  `Fifty thousand pounds?"

  'Exactly the same. I can't impress on you enough that if the bank don't have their money by Friday, come Monday they'll be making representation to have us evicted. I'd go and see him myself, but when I mentioned it to your father he hit the roof and forbade me to do anything of the sort.'

  Lydie could not imagine her mild-mannered father hitting the roof, especially to the wife he adored. But he must be under a tremendous amount of strain at the moment. No doubt he himself had previously asked Jonah Marriott to make some kind of payment off that loan. There was no way her father's pride would allow him to ask more than once. But to...

  Her thoughts faded when just then the drawing room door opened and her father walked into the room. At least the man was tall, like her father, white-haired, like her father, but Lydie was shocked by the haggard look of him.

  'Daddy!' she whispered involuntarily, and went hurriedly over to him. There was a dejected kind of slump to his shoulders which she found heartbreaking, and as she looked into his worn, tired face, she could not bear it. She put her arms round him and hugged him.

  `What are you doing here?' he asked, putting her aside and sending her mother a suspicious look.

  `I-thought I'd give Donna a chance to see how she'll cope without me,' Lydie invented, quickly hiding her shocked feelings. 'I'll give her a ring later. If she's okay I'll stay on, if that's all right with you?"

  'Of course it's all right,' he replied with assumed joviality. `This is your h...' He turned away and Lydie's heart ached afresh. She just knew he had been thinking that this was her home, but would not be for very much longer. `Your mother been bringing you up to date with everything?' he enquired, his tone casual, but pride there, ready to be up in arms if his wife had breathed a word of his troubles.

  `This wedding of Oliver's sounds a bit topdrawer. Are they going to have a marquee-you didn't finish telling me, Mother?'

  Over the next half-hour Lydie observed at first hand the proud facade her father was putting up in front of her, and her heart went out to him. Looking at him, seeing the strain, the worry that seemed to be weighing him down, to go and see Jonah Marriott and ask him to repay the money he had borrowed from her father seven years ago did not seem such a hard task. Particularly as, if memory served, that money had only been loaned for a period of five years anyway.

  `Your room's all ready for you.' Her mother took the conversation away from the wedding. `If you want to go and freshen up,' she hinted.

  `I've things to attend to in my study,' Wilmot Pearson commented before Lydie had answered. `It's good to see you, Lydie. Let's hope you'll be able to stay.'

  No sooner had he gone from the room than her mother was back to the forbidden subject. `Well?' she questioned. `Will you?'

  Lydie knew what she was asking, just as she knew that she did not want to go and see Jonah Marriott. `You're quite sure he hasn't paid that loan back?' she hedged. Her mother gave her a vinegary look. `Perhaps he can't afford to pay it back,' Lydie commented. `All firms work on an overdraft basis, you recently said so,' she reminded her mother, but, still shaken by the haggard look of her father, wondered why she was prevaricating about going to see Jonah Marriott.

  Her mother chose to ignore her comments, instead scorning, `Of course he can afford to pay it back-many times over. His father made a packet when he sold his department stores. Ambrose Marriott might be one tough operator but I can't see him giving to one son and not the other-and the younger Marriott boy hasn't done a day's work since the deal was done. They're all sitting on Easy Street,' her mother said with a heartfelt sigh, `and just look at us!'

  Lydie glanced at her parent, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to go and ask Jonah Marriott for the money he owed to her father, she knew that the time for prevaricating was over. She looked at her watch. Half past four. She had better get a move on. `Do you have his number?"

  'You can't discuss this with him over the telephone!' her mother snorted. `You need to be there, face to face. You need to impress on him how-'

  `I was going to ring his office for an appointment,' Lydie interrupted. `He's hardly likely to see me without one.' And if he guesses what it's about he'll probably say no anyway!

  `I don't want your father to catch you. You'd better make your call from your room,' Hilary Pearson decided. And, not allowing her daughter to consider changing her mind, 'I'll come up with you."

  'Marriott Electronics,' a pleasant voice answered when up in her old bedroom Lydie had dialled the number.

  `Mr Marriott please,' Lydie said firmly, striving with all she had to keep her voice from shaking.

  `Mr Jonah Marriott,' she tacked on, just in case Jonah had taken other members of the Marriott clan into the business.

  `One moment, please,' the telephonist answered, but even though Lydie's stomach did a tiny somersault at the thought she might soon be speaking to the man she had seen only once but had never forgotten, she did not think she would be put through to him as easily as that.

  Her stomach settled down when the next voice she heard was a calm and pleasant voice informing her, `Mr Marriott's office.'

  `Oh, hello,' Lydie said in a rush. `My name's Lydie Pearson. I wonder if it's possible for me to have a word with Mr Marriott?"

  'I'm afraid Mr Marriott's out of the office until Friday. Is there anything I can help you with?' Pleasant, polite, but Lydie knew she was getting nowhere.

  `Oh,' she murmured, then paused for a moment, very much aware of her mother's tense gaze on her. `I wanted to see him rather urgently. Um-perhaps I should ring him at home,' she pondered out loud, knowing in advance that she had small chance the woman-his PA, most probably-would let her have his private number.

  `Actually, Mr Marriott is out of the country until late on Thursday evening.'

  Oh, grief, she wanted this over and done with. 'I'll ring again on Friday,' Lydie said pleasantly, and rang off to be confronted by her mother, who wanted to hear syllable by syllable what had been said.

  `We're going to lose the house!' Hilary Pearson cried. `I know it! I know it!' And Lydie, who had never before seen her mother in a state of panic, began more than ever to appreciate how very dire the situation was-and she started to get angry-with Jonah Marriott.

  `No, we won't,' she said as calmly as she could. 'I'll go and see Jonah Marriott on Friday, and I won't leave his office until I have the money he owes Dad.'

  Lydie had no chance in the two days that followed to have second thoughts about going to see Jonah Marriott. With her father seeming to grow more drawn and careworn by the hour, not to mention her mother's endless insistence that Lydie was their only hope, Lydie knew that she had no choice but to go and see him.

  Consequently, whenever the voice of reality would butt in to enquire what made her think anything she might say would make him promise to repay that money-he had let her father down; what difference did she think her appeal would make?-her emotions, her love for her parents and the calamity they were facing, would override the logic of her head.

  Which in turn, over the days leading up to Friday, caused Lydie to grow angry again with Jonah Marriott. That anger turning to fury with him when she thought of how her father had lent him that money in good faith, and how Jonah had so badly let him down.

  Her fury dimmed somewhat, though, whenever she recalled her only meeting with the man. She had occasionally helped her father in his study during her school holidays, and had known that someone was coming to the house in the h
ope of borrowing some money. It had gone from her mind that day, though, until she had come home and found him sitting in the drawing room of their home. She had been sixteen, a thin, lanky, terribly shy sixteen-year-old.

  `Oh, I'm s-sorry,' she had stammered, blushing to the roots of her night-black hair. `I didn't know anyone was in here!' He hadn't answered, but had done her the courtesy of rising to his feet. She had blushed again, but had felt obliged to ask, `Are you waiting for Daddy?'

  The man had superb blue eyes, quite a fantastic blue, she remembered thinking as he'd looked directly at her and commented in that wonderful all male voice, `If your daddy is Mr Wilmot Pearson, then, yes, I am.'

  Her knees by that time were like so much jelly. But, at the same time, she could not help but think how ghastly it must be for him to have to come and ask to borrow some money, and, while she wanted to fly, she found she wanted more to make him feel better about it. 'I'm Lydie,' she stayed to tell him. 'Lydie Pearson.'

  `Jonah Marriott,' he answered, and, treating her as a grown-up, his right hand came out.

  Nervously, she shook hands with him, her colour a furious red as their hands met, his touch firm and warm. But still she could not leave him without trying to make him feel better. `Would you like some tea, Mr Marriott?' she asked him shakily.

  He had smiled then, and she had thought he had the most wonderful smile in the world. `Thank you, no, Miss Pearson,' he had refused politely-and she had blushed again, this time at the dreadful thought that he was perhaps teasing her.

  Just then, though, her father had come in. `Sorry to keep you, Jonah. That phone call has settled most everything.' And, with a fond father's look to his daughter, `You've met Lydie soon to tear herself away from her beloved Beamhurst and go back to school again after the summer break!"

  'You'll miss her when she's gone, I'm sure,' Jonah answered with a glance to her, and Lydie had blushed again.

  'I'll see you later,' she mumbled generally, and fled.

  And so had begun a giant-sized crush on one Jonah Marriott. But she had not seen him later or ever again. That had not stopped her from finding out more about him. He had been in his late twenties then, and already had a thriving electronics business. From bits she had gleaned on separate occasions from her mother, from her father, and also from her brother Oliver, who at one time had gone around with a crowd that included Jonah's younger brother Rupert, she knew that Jonah was the elder son of Ambrose Marriott. Their father owned several department stores, and Jonah had felt obliged to go and work for his father. When Rupert had finished university, and had declared that there was nothing he would like better than to start work in the business, Jonah had felt free to leave the family business and start up his own company.

  His father had not liked it, so Jonah had borrowed from the bank to get started. He had gone from success to success, but still owed the bank when he had wanted to expand his company. The banks had lent him as much as they could-it had not been enough. Too proud to ask his own father to lend him money-he had approached her father, a well-known businessman, instead.

  The rest was history, Lydie fumed when, after a very fitful night's sleep, she awakened on Friday morning. Her father had lent Jonah Marriott fifty thousand pounds. Jonah Marriott, her idol for so long, had never paid him back. And Lydie was going to do something about itthis very day !

  Had she experienced the smallest doubt about that, then that very small doubt evaporated into thin air when she went down to breakfast and saw that, while she had slept only fitfully, her father looked like a soul in torment and appeared not to have slept at all.

  `And what are you going to do today?' he forced a cheerful note to ask. And she wished that she could tell him, Don't, Dad, I know all about it. But her father's pride was, mammoth, and she could not take that away from him. Time enough for him to know when she came back from seeing Jonah Marriott and was able to tell him-if all went well-that Jonah would ring her father's bank and tell them, hopefully, that he would take on his debt.

  `I haven't seen Aunt Alice in ages,' she answered, Aunt Alice being her mother's aunt, in actual fact, and therefore Lydie's great-aunt. `I thought I might take a drive over to see her.'

  `You're picking her up for the wedding next week, aren't you?"

  'She doesn't want to stay away from home overnight.' Lydie tactfully rephrased part of what her great-aunt had written in her last letter.

  `We, your mother, Oliver and me, are going to a hotel overnight, as you know. Your mother's idea,' he muttered, but added dryly, 'Hilary will be sorry her aunt won't be staying here.'

  Lydie grinned. She thought Aunt Alice brilliant; her mother thought her a stubborn pain. Lydie was not grinning after breakfast, though. Dressed in a smart suit of powder blue, her dark hair pulled back from her delicate features in a classic knot, she got out her car ostensibly to make the twenty mile drive to her aunt's home in Penleigh Corbett in the next county.

  While facing that she did not want to make the journey to the London head office of Marriott Electronics, since make it she must, she wanted to be early. For all she knew she might have to wait all day, but if Jonah Marriott was in the building and refused to see her, then, since he had to come out at some time, she was prepared to wait around to speak to him on his way out.

  Her insides had been churned up ever since she had opened her eyes that morning, but the nearer she got to London, the more her churning insides were all over the place.

  When the traffic started to snarl up she found a place to park her car and made it to the Marriott building by foot, tube and lastly taxi.

  But once outside the building she experienced the greatest reluctance to go inside. For herself, perhaps having inherited her father's massive pride, she would have galloped in the opposite direction. Only this wasn't for her; it was for him.

  Lydie had to do no more than recall her father's drawn look at breakfast and she was pushing through the plate-glass doors and heading for the reception desk.

  The receptionist was busy dealing with one person and there was someone else waiting. `Mr Marriott's PA is on her way down to see you.' The receptionist put down the phone to pass on the message to the suit-clad man she was dealing with.

  Lydie closed her ears to the rest of it, her glance going over to where the lifts were. One started up and, from the changing numerals, she saw that the lift was making its way down from the top floor.

  Without being fully aware of it, Lydie edged over to that lift. When the doors opened and a smart-looking woman of forty or so stepped out, and with a smile on her face went over to the man at the desk, Lydie stepped in and pressed the button for the top floor.

  She knew she could quite well have got it wrong, but if her hunch was right, that had been Jonah Marriott's PA. If she had just come down from the top floor, then, to Lydie's mind, on the top floor was where she might find Jonah Marriott.

  The lift stopped; she got out. She felt hot, sick, and knew that this was the worst thing she was ever going to have to do in her life. Instinct took her to the end of the carpeted corridor. With what intelligence her emotions had left her, it seemed to her that the man who was head of this corporation would have his office well away from the sound of the lift going up and down.

  There were doors to offices on either side of the long corridor. Lydie ignored them and at the bottom of that corridor turned round a corner which opened out to show two doors blocking her way. Lydie hesitated, but only for a moment. She was by then starting to feel certain she had got it all wrong. Somehow, churned up, anxious, worried, she had got it all wrong, all muddled; she knew that she had. She went forward and, placing a hand on the handle to the door to the right, she paused for about half a second, then turned the handle.

  Shock as the door swung inwards and she saw a man seated at a desk in front of her kept her speechless and motionless. He looked up, and as colour surged to her face so, his glance still on her face, he rose from his chair and began to come round his desk and over to her.


  She was five feet nine inches tall, he looked down at her and-to her utter astonishment commented, `Still blushing, Lydie?' He remembered her, her blushes, from seven years ago?

  'I'm L-Lydie Pearson,' she heard herself say inanely from somewhere far off.

  `I know who you are,' he answered smoothly. `Come in and take a seat,' he invited, and as she took a couple of steps into the room he closed the door behind her and touched a hand to her elbow.

  In something of a daze she found she was seated on a chair some way to the side of his desk before she had got herself anywhere near of one piece.

  `Haven't I changed at all in seven years?' she asked, her head still a little woolly that he had so instantly recognised her.

  `I wouldn't say that,' Jonah replied pleasantly, his eyes flicking a glance over her still slender, but now curving deliciously in all the right places, shape. `Elaine, my PA, made a note that a Lydie Pearson phoned last Tuesday. I recalled one black-haired, green-eyed Lydie Pearson with one hell of a superb complexion. It had to be you.' He paused, and then, while she was feeling a touch swamped that he thought she had a superb complexion, `You're still Lydie Pearson?' he enquired.