The Garnett Marriage Pact

by Penny Jordan

  On the point of retorting that Andrea was being ridiculous, her eye was unwillingly drawn to the newspaper again. Who replied to these personal ads? How many of those replies were genuine ones and how many were not? Why did they reply? Perhaps for the sake of her research this was an avenue she ought to pursue?

  Even as the denial formed in her mind Jessica found she was asking herself just how much she cared about her sister’s welfare and health. Marriage these days did not necessarily involve a lifelong commitment, it could be a business arrangement—sometimes for illegal purposes such as when someone wanted to become a British citizen, or perhaps even when a husband or wife was needed for some other reason—as in her case. It might even be a way of discovering at first hand how viable her theories on arranged marriages were.

  Suddenly a tiny thrill of excitement pierced her. She of course did not intend to fall in love—but if she could prove to herself that such a marriage would work, what a wonderful way of confounding her literary attackers! Dare she? Or was she being totally ridiculous?

  It took her an hour to calm Andrea down to the point where she could safely leave her, but even once she was back at her desk, Jessica found it impossible to concentrate on her work. The ridiculous idea which had taken root in Andrea’s kitchen refused to be dislodged. When she thought about it logically there were several advantages at present to her having a husband; most importantly it would force Andrea to accept that there was nothing between David and herself, and it would also make David realise the pointlessness of pursuing her any longer; and not just David, but also those other men who had shown an interest in her since she had become something of a public figure.

  Of course she would have to make sure that legally and financially she held the upper hand, but pre-marriage contracts were not entirely unheard of these days. She frowned, startled by how much thought she was giving to what was surely a ridiculous idea.

  By early evening she had completely dismissed the thought from her mind and was busily studying the notes she had made the previous summer, so that when the doorbell rang it was several seconds before the sound penetrated her consciousness.

  When it eventually did she was annoyed by the interruption. But her visitor, whoever it was, seemed determined not to go away. When she opened the door and saw her brother-in-law standing outside, his fair skin flushed by alcohol, his blue eyes faintly glazed, her own narrowed in biting contempt.

  ‘Whatever it is you want, David, I don’t want to know,’ she told him curtly. ‘Go home to your wife.’

  He grinned at her, the inane, self-satisfied smirk of a man whose conceit overshadowed everything else.

  ‘Oh, come on Jess.’ He was slurring his words, his voice overloud in the enclosed hallway, and she glanced anxiously at the other doors, hoping that none of her fellow tenants would emerge and see David standing there. But she was also reluctant to invite him in, knowing it would take her ages to get rid of him.

  ‘You know you want me,’ he told her thickly. ‘Stop fighting it. It could be so good for us, babe.’

  His arrogant egotism coming on top of her own tension snapped the frail cord on her temper, and before she could stop herself she heard herself saying furiously, ‘You’re quite wrong, David. Far from wanting you I loathe you, a fact that even you will have to accept now that I’m getting married.’

  ‘Married!’ It socked him into momentary sobriety. ‘You’re lying, Jess.’ He said it harshly, coming towards her as though he meant to take her in his arms. ‘You’re not the marrying type. You never have been. You’re too bloody independent for marriage. You’re incapable of wanting a man—any man—to the extent that you’d marry him,’ he went on, betraying the fact that he was quite well aware of how little she cared for him. ‘The only thing that matters to you is your work, your research…’ He paused and then stared at her, his eyes glittering with spite. ‘I get it,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it, Jess? This marriage of yours is just an experiment. A way of testing out the theories behind your new book.’

  It had been impossible to hide from David what the subject of her new work was to be, and now temper ignited inside her that he should have so completely read her mind, but she toyed with the idea of denying it and telling him that the only reason she was contemplating such a course was quite simply to save her sister’s health, when it struck her that it would be far wiser to let him believe what he had just said. Apart from anything else it would be a mammoth blow to his pride to know that she would marry a stranger rather than submit to him, and so with a smile that was entirely false she said sweetly, ‘Yes, that’s quite right, David,’ and then with a slam she shut the door in his face and locked it.

  Now that she was committed, incredibly she was very calm. Before she went to bed she drafted out her advertisement, keeping it as brief and general as possible, quoting merely her age and sex. It was the most quixotic thing she had ever done in her whole life, and amazingly she felt neither anxiety nor guilt at the thought of it.

  * * *

  THE LIFE OF A COUNTRY GP, when he was the sole doctor for a radius of twenty miles with only the back-up service of an understaffed cottage hospital behind him, was certainly no sinecure, Lyle Garnett decided tiredly as he folded his long frame into his shabby estate car.

  When he had voluntarily given up the brilliant career specialising in micro neuro-surgery that had been forecast for him his friends had thought he was mad, and privately he tended to agree with them, but the involvement and commitment needed to succeed in that sort of field were not something he could give and bring up two children as well, especially not two boys as rebellious and difficult as Stuart and James.

  It was because of his career that he had seen so little of them during their early years. Even before their divorce he and Heather had been living in semi-estrangement; he devoting long hours to the advancement of his career, and Heather constantly complaining about the two small children which had made the continuation of hers impossible.

  The fact was that they should never have married. Heather hadn’t wanted to. When she discovered that their affair had led to a pregnancy she had wanted to go for an abortion, but he had been young and idealistic in those days and he had stubbornly held out for marriage. He had loved her then, or had thought he did, he acknowledged wryly, but what in effect he had loved had been a very young man’s dream of a woman, not the reality. He had wanted Heather to be the mother to his children that he himself had never known. His mother had been an actress, someone he saw very infrequently and whom he had yearned for desperately all his childhood. She had died when he was sixteen from a brain haemorrhage, and her death had sparked off his interest in medicine, filling in with a crusading and totally impractical dream of curing the world of all its ailments.

  Time and reality had hardened that idealistic teenager into the man he was today, a world, and almost twenty years, away from that boy of sixteen. Now he recognised that for his own sake he should have allowed Heather to have her abortion. If he had maybe she would still be alive today…but that was an old guilt and one he had learned to live with in a way that he had never learned to live with his guilt towards his sons. He loved them but they were hostile towards him. They resented the fact that they had lost their mother and in her place gained a father who was virtually a stranger to them. He and Heather had divorced when James was two and Stuart four and Heather had died two years ago, running directly into the path of an oncoming car, having just had a row with him.

  She had always had a terrible temper, something he had pushed to the back of his mind when as a young houseman of twenty-odd he fell in love with her, and when he had refused to take the children so that she could emigrate to America with her lover and take up the medical career she had been forced to abandon when she became pregnant, she had flown from his flat in such a fierce rage that she had never even seen the car.

  She had been killed instantly, the driver distraught with shock; and in death she had achieved
what she had not been able to achieve in life. He had had to take on the responsibility for his sons. Not that it had been a lack of love for them or reluctance to care for them that had prompted his refusal, merely the belief that their place was with their mother. But Heather had never wanted them. She had told him so often enough. And so he had had little alternative but to give up his career as a neuro-surgeon, and instead look around him for something less demanding and time-consuming that would mean he could take charge of his sons.

  He had heard of this rural practice from a friend of a friend, and the local medical board had been astounded and delighted at the thought of getting such a highly qualified man for the job.

  Within a month of Heather’s death he and the children were established in Sutton Parva, several miles west of Oxford, where his married sister and her family lived.

  Justine had promised to do all she could to help him with the boys and had been as good as her word, but there were still problems. He frowned as he drove homewards. The boys were both rebellious and sullen; and being older than their cousin tended both to dominate and persecute him. Although he told himself that their bad behaviour sprang from insecurity and pain, there were times when he was so exasperated by them that he almost wanted to be able to resort to the old-fashioned parental hard hand in a place where it hurt the most. So far he had managed to restrain himself.

  Added to all his other problems was the fact that as a widower and a doctor, not to mention what Justine called his ridiculously unfair share of good looks, he was constantly having to fend off the romantic and sexual overtures of some of his female patients.

  It took him half an hour to drive home. The house he had bought from the previous doctor was large and rambling, with a garden that he made infrequent and haphazard attempts to tame.

  Far from enjoying their country environment his sons never ceased bemoaning the lack of facilities. Raised as city children, even after eighteen months they were still not at home in the country. The new bikes he had bought them for Christmas were virtually unused, and obvious but nonetheless effective method of showing their dislike and resentment of him.

  A large part of the problem was that Heather had never made any attempt to hide from the children how little either parent had genuinely wanted them, and they in turn were fiercely determined to show the rest of the world, especially their father and his family, how little they wanted him.

  Even while he understood and sympathised with them, Lyle found they exasperated him.

  He knew the moment he entered the kitchen that there had been another scene.

  Justine, who like him had inherited the strong family profile and thick dark hair, was standing belligerently by the table, the silence thick and taut with angry resentment.

  ‘I’ve sent the boys upstairs,’ she told him without preamble. ‘I had to bring them back early. They tied Peter up in the garden and built a bonfire under him. They told me they were playing at Guy Fawkes.’ Her eyes darkened as she said unsteadily, ‘Dear God, Lyle, if I hadn’t caught them in time…’

  She had no need to go on. He himself felt physically ill at the thought of what could have happened.

  ‘I can’t look after them for you any more, Lyle,’ she told him bluntly. ‘I know their problems aren’t necessarily their own fault, but I’ve tried everything, and nothing works. They need someone of their own.’

  She watched sympathetically as her brother sat down; a big lean man, with a shock of thick dark hair, and eyes of a vividly intense blue, who at this moment in time looked older than his thirty-five years.

  She loved him and she sympathised with him, but she could not risk the safety of her own dearly loved eight-year-old any longer with a pair of children whom she frankly considered to be beyond her ability to help.

  ‘God, Justine, what the hell am I going to do?’ He looked so tired and depressed that she was tempted to retract, but she hardened her heart against him.

  ‘Well, for one thing, this,’ she told him firmly, placing a folded newspaper down on the table in front of him. ‘Go on, read it,’ she demanded, waiting until he raised his eyes to hers in incredulous disbelief, finely mixed with anger.

  ‘You’re seriously suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, are you? That I reply to this ad from some crazy woman who wants a husband, sell myself?’

  ‘Why not? Other people do it all the time,’ she interrupted evenly. ‘Only they call it self-sacrifice. You’re a doctor, Lyle,’ she reminded him, hoping he wouldn’t guess how much she hated doing this to him. ‘But how long can you go on calling yourself that? How long will it be before all the problems you’ve got here occupy so much of your mind that you make a mistake? A mistake that could cost someone’s life?’

  She was only echoing his own inner thoughts, but to do what she was suggesting! He put his hand to his forehead and found that he was sweating slightly.

  ‘I just can’t look after them any more,’ Justine pressed on. ‘I’ve got Peter to think of. They need someone of their own,’ she added more gently, ‘someone who can give them what you and I can’t.’

  ‘And you think this…this stranger, a woman who needs a man so desperately she’s forced to advertise for one, will do that?’ he demanded harshly, expelling the pent-up breath from his lungs so tensely that it hurt.

  Justine lowered her eyelids so that he wouldn’t see the sympathy and pain in her eyes.

  ‘I know that after Heather you said you’d never marry again, Lyle, but the children need a mother, even if you don’t need a wife. Of course, you could always marry one of your patients. Sylvia Hastings, for example.’

  She saw the grimace and understood why. Sylvia was a pretty divorcee with a tendency to develop minor ailments, and an avid look in her eyes whenever they rested on the doctor.

  ‘She’s not capable of looking after herself, never mind two kids.’

  ‘No, and she would demand something from you that you’re no longer capable of giving, wouldn’t she, Lyle?’

  She said it quietly, hating herself for delivering the blow but knowing she had to. After Heather’s death, he had told her that his guilt had affected him so strongly that he felt completely unable to touch any other woman. Physically he was as capable of being aroused as the next man, but mentally there was something there, stronger than that physical need, which had destroyed his desire for sex.

  ‘A marriage with someone with whom you can make a proper business arrangement would solve all your problems,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m not saying that you marry the woman in this particular advertisement. But its one way of looking for someone. And to help you make a start, I’ve replied to this on your behalf.’

  For a moment she thought he might actually hit her, but then the angry colour died out of his face, leaving it white, a muscle beating sporadically against his jaw.

  ‘By God, Justine, you push your luck,’ he told her thickly. ‘I don’t want or need your interference in my life.’

  Her own anger beat up inside her, reminders of how they had quarrelled as children filling her mind. He had been so stubborn, a trait both his sons had inherited.

  ‘Maybe not, but you do need my help, and it is my right to decide what form that help will take,’ she told him evenly, adding for good measure, ‘I’ve replied to the advertisement suggesting that the woman calls here to see you.’ She saw his look of incredulous fury and held up her hand. ‘I had to do it, Lyle. I know you, if I hadn’t you’d find a way of wriggling out of it. I’m not asking you to marry the woman, not at this stage. I’m simply telling you that your children need someone in their lives that they can trust and relate to, and it seems that neither you nor I can fulfil that role. They are your children, Lyle.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He said it wryly, his voice heavy with acceptance, and Justine felt herself relax just a little. Knowing of his decision never to marry again she had realised what she had taken on in adopting such a highhanded course of action, but she was convinced th
at it was the only way to help Stuart and James. Lyle might not need or want a wife, but they both needed and wanted a mother. It was after all no worse than the arranged marriages organised by many Eastern parents for their children, and on balance these worked.

  ‘Good.’ She smiled briefly and glanced at her watch, squashing her guilt. ‘I’ll have to go. The boys had something to eat. I think it’s best from now on that they don’t come to me. It just isn’t working out, so instead I’ve arranged for my daily, Mrs Davies, to come here and look after them, but it can only be a temporary arrangement,’ she warned him.

  Watching her drive off, Lyle stuck bunched hands into his trouser pockets. Damn her for her interference! He scowled blackly, unaware of how much he looked like his recalcitrant sons. What kind of woman would advertise for a husband, for God’s sake? But he supposed he would have to see her now, otherwise Justine would raise merry hell and he depended too much on his sister to risk antagonising her.

  He turned away from the window and looked at the door. Now he would have to go upstairs and tackle the boys. Cravenly he found himself longing for a restorative whisky and soda before doing so, but he refused to give in to the urge.

  Justine had been right about one thing. They were his children…his responsibility and one that he was not tackling very well at all. It was all very well to know in theory what to do, but in practice two sulky and silently condemning children seemed to be able to frazzle his nerves far faster than the most awkward patient

  He found them in the room linking their bedrooms, which was designated as a study. Both of them were sitting down, so close together that their bodies were touching.

  They looked more like him than Heather. They had his height and colouring, but their eyes were Heather’s, deeply hazel, and now both of them gazed accusingly but mutely at him.

  He sat down, feeling ill at ease and ill equipped to deal with them. What on earth had possessed them to play that stupid and dangerous game with their cousin? They were not unintelligent kids, far from it.