Another Woman (9781468300178)

by Vincenzi, Penny

  ‘That’s an impossible question for her to answer,’ said Theo quietly. ‘Harriet would not, could not, have been in that kind of situation. She’s too honest even to imagine it.’

  Harriet stared at him, surprised as always by the depth of his knowledge of her family, the daily conflict of her feelings towards him intensifying sharply.

  ‘Theo, don’t speak for me,’ she said finally. ‘My brain hasn’t been affected by the accident, you know.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can see that. James, can I take some more of that excellent Armagnac?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said James. He seemed distracted, scarcely aware of where he was. ‘It’s so odd talking about her like this, I feel somehow I don’t know her at all any more, that she can in no way be my child, the one I loved and cared for and endeavoured to bring up well and did so badly with. It’s as you said to your mother, Harriet, she has become another woman altogether, one we simply don’t know any more. And conjecture as we may, we can’t properly understand her or why she did what she did. But I – I have to share that woman’s view – what was her name, Harriet, the gynaecologist –’

  ‘Bradman,’ said Harriet. ‘Jennifer Bradman.’

  ‘Yes. I have to share her view, looking at Cressida from this viewpoint, that she was – well, disturbed. With hindsight, she did display a classic personality disorder. The near compulsion to lie, the complex deceptions – those flying lessons she talked you into are classic, Theo, there was no real reason for secrecy there, after all, her constant health problems, her ineptness with money.’

  ‘You say that,’ said Harriet, ‘but I’ve been pretty inept with it myself. No one suggests I have a personality disorder. Or perhaps you do,’ she said, glaring at Theo.

  ‘Harriet, of course we don’t,’ said James. ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve just made some bad business decisions. That’s completely different.’

  ‘Oh, well, good,’ said Harriet, her voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘That’s all right then, I can relax. Well, I think that selling the flat, for instance, keeping that a secret, just proves she was planning on doing something drastic.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Theo. ‘She would have had to sell her flat anyway, what use would it have been to her if she was living in New York? She could have explained it away so easily.’

  ‘You’re all obsessed with her,’ said Harriet. She felt the tears rising again. ‘Here we are still making excuses for her, saying poor Cressida, there must have been something wrong with her, when she was just a – a brat, a spoilt, self-centred girl, who you all adored.’

  ‘She was indeed,’ said James, his face heavy with pain, ‘and it hurts me to say it, but that is another reason for not being too hard on her now. Being overindulged, the spoilt baby as she undoubtedly was, the youngest, having excuses made for her all the time, does predispose to that sort of condition. I’ve talked to people about it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Theo, ‘as I said, I personally take the view the answer is not simple. That we have to accept an amalgam of all three explanations.’

  ‘Not, surely not, Julia’s?’ said James, desolation in his voice.

  ‘I’d say not, I’d like to think not,’ said Theo, ‘but it’s an extraordinary lie on Julia’s part, and if she did show Cressida the letter and Cressida had no interest in the money, then surely she would have told Oliver, would have laughed – or even cried about it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Harriet slowly, ‘that was the last straw. Maybe she was desperate anyway, and Julia’s hostility tipped her over into going.’

  Theo was staring into his glass, his dark eyes very sombre, his face infinitely sad. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I think the truth is that none of us will ever really know. Only Cressida knows. And she will never tell.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Theo one evening, sitting down by Harriet, taking her hand, ‘there’s a lot to discuss. I don’t understand you, Harriet. I love you. I know you love me –’

  ‘Theo, I don’t. Well, of course I do, but not like that. It’s over. It was a lovely time, a lovely experience, but – well, it just wouldn’t work. It couldn’t. I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because – because I just do. Our lives won’t, can’t go together. You’d start taking me over, owning me, and I won’t be owned.’

  ‘I don’t want to own you.’

  ‘Theo, you can’t help owning things. It’s in your very soul.’

  ‘Harriet, I swear I won’t even try to take you over. I won’t ask you to marry me, I won’t suggest I give you any money for your wretched company, I won’t even suggest I give you money for anything. You can live in some hovel in Brixton or somewhere like that and I’ll come and visit you sometimes and we can eat baked beans and drink bitter paid for out of your social security money. How’s that? As long as I can love you, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Harriet. ‘And anyway, you know perfectly well I’m probably going to New York.’

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten about that. I thought you’d given the whole idea up.’

  ‘Well I haven’t. You were wrong. Wrong about the whole thing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Telling Hayden Cotton I’d never go.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘oh, yes. I’d forgotten that too. It seemed like a good idea at the time – and it worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean it worked? What worked?’

  ‘I told him to tell you I’d said you’d never go, because I knew that was the one thing that would change your mind. And I was right.’

  ‘You what!’ said Harriet. ‘Theo, you are absolutely outrageous. Playing with my life as if it was some kind of a – a computer game.’

  Rage swept over her, pure, sweet rage, hot, liquid. All he had done for her since her accident, all the care he had lavished on her, the thoughtfulness, the love, was blotted out, and she could have, given the strength, killed him. Her voice rose, shook with fury. ‘How dare you, Theo, how could you? I’m not one of your businesses, one of your projects that you can just push around however and whenever you like. Dear God, you’ve made a mistake telling me that. If anything, anything could have convinced me I was right, that we could never –’

  He looked at her, and saw she was actually near to tears, her face white and tense.

  ‘Harriet I –’

  ‘Theo, for God’s sake just leave me alone. Leave me alone.’ She was shouting now, her fists clenched. ‘All right? Get out of my life. I keep saying it, and you won’t take any notice. Get out, go back to London, go to New York, just go anywhere, but please please stop this, I can’t stand it.’

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll stop it. I’ll go. I’ll go now. You win, Harriet. It’s over.’

  Looking after him as he left the room, seeing his great shoulders drooped in misery, hearing his voice, his deep, resonant voice, harsh with pain, she had to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself calling out, calling that she knew she was wrong, that she knew she loved him.

  He was gone within the hour, everything packed into the Bentley. He didn’t even say goodbye to her, just left. The house seemed bleak, bereft of him.

  Harriet went to bed early; she was tired, but slept badly, and when she did sleep she had dreadful, complex dark dreams, with Theo at the heart of them. She woke late, feeling exhausted, shattered; her father helped her downstairs. She sat drinking cup after cup of coffee, staring morosely out of the window, trying not to think too much about what she had done, trying to convince herself that she’d been right, that she was actually feeling much better. It was a lovely day, rather like Cressida’s wedding day, mistily golden, but summer was almost over now, the roses were drooping, dropping, and the lawn looked parched. Only a few weeks, but a whole life ago; and here she was still hurting, still angry, still lonely. Why did she have to do this, behave as she did, so sure she knew what was best for her when she didn’t know at all? She suddenly wa
nted Theo so much, so badly, just wanted him there, near her, that she moaned aloud.

  James looked up startled from the paper. ‘Ankle hurting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Head hurting?’

  ‘No. Just my heart.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that old thing.’

  He paused, then said, ‘You love him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I’m afraid I do. So much. So very much. But –’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Oh – nothing. It could never ever work out. And it’s too late, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s never too late.’

  ‘It is this time. And I know it’s for the best really. We could never, ever have had a life together. We’d have killed each other.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it might have been fun for a while. Until you did.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so. The thing is, Daddy, he’s got me wrong. He’s never done anything really, not a single thing, that showed he properly understood me. And what I’m about. He thinks he does, but he just doesn’t.’

  ‘It isn’t easy,’ said James, ‘understanding someone properly.’

  There was a silence, then she said, ‘I think I’d really like to go down and sit by the bridge. I love it there, it always makes me feel better, and I haven’t been since – well, since Cressida’s wedding day. Could you help me down there?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will. Get your crutches and we’ll hobble down together.’

  It was very quiet at the bridge; the water was low after the summer drought, and there was a mass of weed muffling the small waterfall. But it was cool there, and comforting. She sat on the stone seat and threw bits of twig into the water, and smiled at a particularly foolish moorhen trying to walk on the weed. ‘You really should know better than that,’ she said.

  ‘I could say the same to you,’ said Theo.

  She turned; he was standing there, on the other side of the bridge, looking at her very seriously. He looked slightly odd, slightly misshapen; he seemed to have something buttoned into his jacket.

  ‘Theo,’ she said, with an immense effort, ‘Theo, I wish you’d stop prolonging the agony. How many more times do I have to say it? It really would be much better if you’d just go away.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’ve only come to say goodbye. I think we owe each other that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet uncertainly. ‘Yes, yes of course we do.’

  ‘Can I come and shake hands,’ he said. ‘Would that be all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘Please do.’

  He walked slowly over the bridge, stood in front of her.

  She looked up at him, studying him for the last time, still carefully smiling. He looked back at her very solemnly.

  Finally he said, ‘I’ve got something for you here. A goodbye present. I can’t really shake hands until I give it to you.’ There was a silence as he started to undo the buttons of the jacket.

  ‘You’re always saying,’ he said, ‘that I don’t understand you, don’t know what you really want. This might make you change your mind. God, I wish you’d help me with the bloody thing.’

  Harriet sat wordless, staring at the bundle, the bump wriggling inside his jacket, realizing slowly that it was moving, was wriggling slightly, that emerging from the darkness of the jacket came first a small wet black nose then a golden rumpled face, then two fat blunt paws.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Theo. ‘Something I do know you really want. He comes with all my love. He’s called Biggles.’