Wandering into the living room he gazed at the severe surroundings with mounting gloom. It would be so nice on a dank and grey night to have a cosy chair and a couple of mellow table lamps beside a proper fireplace. It would be great to have some sort of warmth and colour, some fluidity of feature, rather than all these monochrome angles. He and Fiona had never discussed it. It hadn’t seemed important.
Still, he thought, perching on the edge of the sofa and flicking through the television channels, when the baby arrived, Fiona would probably let the rigidity drop. There would have to be softness and cushions and things, surely, for a baby? Jack was fairly vague about babies. He had never known any. It was quite exciting though, the thought of his baby. He tended to skip over its formative years in his imagination, and settled on it being about six when he could introduce it to the joint joys of painting and preservation.
It would be a friend, he thought; a confidante; an ally. Someone to pull faces at when Fiona got into one of her strops. The prospect was really quite pleasant. One thing he was absolutely sure about was that this child – male or female – would be given total freedom of choice in its life. If it loathed fairgrounds and art, then so be it. Whether this child wanted to study astrophysics or be an eco-warrior, it would have his support. He would never shackle it with the bonds of filial duty that he’d had to suffer.
He heard Fiona’s key in the lock just as the news began. She walked past the living-room door and straight into the kitchen. Tough, Jack thought, if you’re expecting a meal. He heard her sighing over the coffee cups and biscuit crumbs, heard her walking back along the hall.
He looked up. ‘Hi – you’re a bit late. Bad journey?’
Fiona sat on the edge of the oatmeal director’s chair furthest away from the television and eased off her shoes. ‘Not really. Who’ve you had in for coffee?’
‘Margaret.’ Jack knew Fiona didn’t like Margaret. Fiona thought that motherly, chatty secretaries were anachronisms. She would also be very rude about the toaster. ‘She came to tell me about her new job.’
Fiona wasn’t interested. ‘What about your new job? Or your old one? Any progress?’
She knew there hadn’t been. She knew that he would have told her.
‘I’m not going back to work with Dad. He’s already head-hunting my replacement. And I’m still hopeful of making something of the painting. I’ve drafted an advertisement.’
She watched the news. She didn’t want to know. Jack tried again. ‘There are plenty of people who want coachwork jobs, liveries, traditional skills. It’s what I want to do. Maybe it’s not what you want from a husband, and there’ll be a drop in income, but –’
‘I’ve been made a director.’ She still looked at the television. ‘They confirmed it yesterday, although I more or less knew last week.’
‘Brilliant! Congratulations.’ He was genuinely pleased for her. It was what she’d always wanted. He stood up. ‘Come on then, let’s go and celebrate. It’ll have to be the Turlington Arms so that we can walk and both have a drink – but so what? We can brag to all the neighbours. It won’t take me long to get ready.’ He stopped by the director’s chair – how appropriate! – and dropped a kiss on the top of her neat, blonde head. ‘So, now you’ll be bringing home the bacon and I’ll be the penniless artist. Look, Fi, it’ll work really well, won’t it? You can devote yourself to your career and I can do what I said – painting, take over running the house, looking after the baby …’
Fiona stared at the screen. It was an item on some particularly violent uprising. ‘There isn’t going to be a baby.’
Her words didn’t filter through straight away. They were lost in a hail of gunfire and a lot of screaming. She turned her head, her eyes challenging him. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
He didn’t understand. ‘Have you lost it? Was it a false alarm? Oh, darling – you must feel awful. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ He slid his arms round her thin shoulders. She didn’t move towards him. She must feel appalling, he thought. He felt pretty terrible himself. ‘Are you – um – all right?’ He was very hazy on this sort of thing. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed? Shall I call the doctor?’
Fiona shrugged him away. The news had moved on to the humorous item at the end. ‘I’ve seen a doctor. I’ve been in bed.’ She stared at him. ‘I had the pregnancy terminated. Yesterday.’
Jack froze. He still had his arms towards her and dropped them by his side. She’d killed his child. No – his dream. Oh, God. He’d always had liberal views on abortion; always felt that it was absolutely a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. He’d never understood how so many men could appear on anti-abortion rallies; what did men know about an unwanted pregnancy? What did men know about how a woman felt? He just hadn’t expected to feel such pain.
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t want it. I never really wanted it.’ She didn’t look upset, or even angry. ‘I would have had to give up everything, while you – you haven’t given up a thing, have you? You’re still playing with the anoraks, still following your stupid dreams. Therefore, when I knew about the directorship being practically in the bag –’
She’d disposed of the baby for her bloody career! And she knew he would have looked after it, loved it, cared for it. …
‘Why didn’t you talk to me about it?’
‘There would have been no point.’ She shook her head, but it was more a gesture of irritation than sorrow. ‘You’re so full of woolly idealism, Jack. You see everything through rose-coloured glasses. You think life can be like a bloody happy families cornflake advert! I didn’t plan to become pregnant. I didn’t plan to be a mother. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was wrong. I didn’t want the responsibility.’
Jack knew he should be comforting her. Supporting her. Saying that it didn’t matter; that if it was right for her, then of course he agreed with her decision. But he couldn’t. Maybe if she’d discussed it with him, told him how she felt, maybe then he would have agreed. But she just – did it. As if he were of no consequence. No importance. It had been his child, too – however unplanned and ill-timed.
She snapped off the television as the weather forecaster was predicting a return of the heat wave. ‘So, are we still on for this celebration drink?’
‘No, we’re fucking not!’ Jesus! A quick trip down to the Turlington Arms to celebrate the directorship with Fergus and Caroline and Belinda and Adam and whatever their bloody names were. And then a quick, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re also celebrating Fiona no longer being pregnant.’ He stared at her with something like revulsion.
She stood up. ‘Suits me. I’m knackered. Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time for planned babies when we’ve been married for a few years. When you’ve got this fairground crap out of your system and made it up with your father, and when I’m more settled in the directorship. When we can afford a nanny. The time simply wasn’t right. And it wasn’t as if we’d decided to get married because of the baby or anything gruesomely old-fashioned, was it? We’d already planned the wedding before either of us knew that I was pregnant.’
‘You and my mother planned the wedding.’ There was a drumming in his ears. He had never felt so angry. So hurt. ‘I didn’t have any say in that either. I can’t imagine why you ever wanted to marry me.’ He walked past her, his nostrils filled with her sharp scent. Not floral and floaty; spiky and aggressive.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Upstairs to grab some clothes and the very few things that are mine.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ he clenched the Roadster’s keys very tightly in his hand as if trying to transfer the pain, ‘I don’t want to live with you any more. I certainly don’t want to marry you. You can have the house. I’ll keep up my share of the mortgage or I’ll arrange for you to buy me out if that’s what you want. You can have what’s left in the joint account. You can have your directorship and your business colleagues and your greedy, grasping, ladder-cl
imbing existence.’
‘You’re leaving because of the abortion?’ She didn’t look upset. Just surprised. ‘Because of something that wasn’t even a baby – just a cluster of cells?’
‘I’m leaving because I can’t love you.’
Jack drove for hours, the night and the rain closing in in a shroud of grey. He pushed the Roadster to its limits, hoping that the swooping, roaring, rushing power would salve his pain. Would produce answers. It did neither. It made his head ache. He wished he could cry. He wished his father hadn’t instilled in him from such an early age that crying was for girls.
He slewed the bike to a halt on one of the A34 crossovers, looking down at the constant swish of night-time traffic. Were all the drivers going home to somewhere? To someone? For the first time in his life he had nowhere to go.
His hands were frozen by the continual fret of rain and the frantic way he’d clasped the handlebars, but he managed to wrench the signet ring from his finger. He looked at it for a moment, illuminated only by the garish orange lights. Had it ever meant that much to him? The flakes of paint – crimson and royal blue – meant more.
He hurled the ring into the night sky and watched as the light caught it fleetingly in its arc before it disappeared for ever.
Kicking the Roadster into life again, he roared away.
His mother, in a quilted dressing gown, opened the front door the merest crack. She’d left the chain on. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s me. Jack.’
He heard the chain rattling and the door opening. The light from the hall dazzled him. The smell of supper and disinfectant made tears well in his throat. His mother looked pleased to see him. ‘Come on in. Dad’s working upstairs. I’ll call him. It’s not too late, Jack. I know it isn’t. Go and sit down. Cup of tea?’
‘I haven’t come for my job back. And, yes, I’d love a cup of tea. Don’t call Dad yet, please.’
Eileen looked at him for a moment, seemed to be about to speak, then thinking better of it, bustled off into the kitchen.
Jack leaned back in the comfort of the Parker-Knoll recliner and knew he didn’t belong.
His mother hustled back with a tray. The cups and saucers were flowery and she’d added digestive biscuits on a matching plate. There were three cups but she hadn’t called his father down. Jack watched her as she poured the tea, not needing to ask how he liked it or whether he wanted sugar.
‘Thanks. No, no biscuits.’
She sipped her tea and munched a digestive, being careful to flick the crumbs from the corners of her mouth. ‘Have you and Fiona had words?’
Words! Whole bloody sentences! ‘Sort of …’
Eileen nodded. ‘It’s pre-wedding nerves. You’re bound to be on edge. Both of you – especially with this silly hoo-ha with your father. I told him that’s what it was. Nerves. Stage fright. You’ll get over it –’
‘I’ve left her.’
The words hung in the air. He wasn’t sure that she’d heard him so he said it again. Eileen bit her lip. Her teacup rattled slightly against the saucer. By the time she looked at him, she was in control. She still said nothing. The silence was more accusing than a ricochet of reproaches.
‘I’m not going to marry Fiona.’
‘Of course you’re going to marry her.’ The cup and saucer rattled a bit more. ‘Get a grip, Jack. You can’t just walk away from everything. Your job, your marriage, your home. People have to do things they don’t want to do, live lives they don’t particularly enjoy because that’s how it is. You make the best of things. You have to. Just because you and Fiona have had some silly quarrel is no reason to walk out. And as for not getting married! Everything’s organised. Whatever has got into you?’
Eileen, without her make-up, looked old and tired. There were lines and pouches that seemed to have crept up from nowhere. He needed someone to comfort him – but neither his mother nor Fiona had ever been any good at that. He drank his tea and wondered if he should go. But where? It hadn’t occurred to him that his parents might not want him to stop, at least for tonight.
‘It’s not a silly quarrel. It was deadly serious. And I’m not going back. I’ll make all the necessary arrangements in the morning. She can have the house and everything. I’ll sort all that out. I do need a bed for tonight, though.’
‘You’ve got a bed. Your own bed.’ His mother put the cup and saucer back on the tray and stood up, drawing her quilted dressing gown more tightly round her. ‘You’re not staying here.’
Shit. ‘Then can you call Dad down? I’d like to speak to you together before I leave.’
Bill Morland must have been listening. He was in the room far too quickly to have been in the study, and he certainly didn’t need a précis. His scowl said that he’d heard it all.
Jack told them. They seemed unaware of his pain. Maybe because they hadn’t known of the pregnancy, its non-existence now wasn’t a problem to them. They couldn’t seem to accept that it was a good enough reason to walk out, to cancel the wedding, to leave home. They even looked quite happy when he told them that Fiona had been made a director. It shocked him to realise that perhaps they thought her decision had been the right one.
‘At least one of you will have a decent job.’ His father was staring at the wall over the fireplace. ‘Can’t blame the girl for doing it. Someone had to bring a crust into the house. And there’ll be other children.’
‘It was my baby too.’ Jack wanted to shake them. ‘She didn’t discuss it with me. She just did it. Anyway, it’s not just the abortion – it’s everything.’
Bill snorted derisively. ‘To be frank, I can’t see why someone like Fiona, with a good head on her shoulders, wanted to marry you in the first place. You walk out on me – you walk out on her – it’s hardly the stuff good husbands and fathers are made of, is it?’
‘And you’d know all about that, would you? You being expert at both? Goodbye.’
He crashed towards the front door. Eileen, looking tearful, hurried after him. He longed to hug her but he’d never been encouraged to, and it was far too late to start now.
‘Jack! Wait!’
‘I’ll be in touch. I’ll let you know where I am. Don’t worry …’
‘I’m not worried.’ Eileen’s eyes flashed. ‘I just want to know what to tell the caterers and the string quartet.’
Jack rubbed his hand wearily across his face. ‘Tell them that the wedding is cancelled due to lack of interest. But knowing Fiona, she may well capture another far more suitable bridegroom before September, so it won’t all have been wasted, will it?’
As he kick-started the Roadster, he could see the twitch of net curtains and one or two bedside lights flickering on. The neighbours would be forming their own opinions and gossiping across their herbaceous borders in the morning. Speculating. And Eileen and Bill would tell them the whole sad story and get the sympathy vote.
Sod them, Jack thought, roaring away. Sod the lot of them.
This time he really didn’t have anywhere to go. His friends would probably welcome him in, but wouldn’t be able to let him stay for ever. Not that he’d want to. Nor did he want pity – he wasn’t sure any more if he’d even get it. Was he wrong? Was it all his fault? Not all, he admitted, as the blackness and the roaring wind punched his face, but enough. He should have left long ago. He’d let Fiona believe that her plans were the same as his because it was the easy option. Not any more. There were no easy options left to take.
It had stopped raining. He skidded the Roadster into the yard at Fox Hollow and pulled it out of sight. Unlocking the door and switching on the first set of lights he immediately felt better. Not great, but relaxed. He could hole up here for a while. No one except Nell and the Downland Trusters would disturb him here – and certainly not tonight. Tonight he just had to get his head sorted out. He needed time alone to think – and to mourn. It surprised him that he felt grief. Grief for the child who would have come here to Fox Hollow, or somewhere similar, and shared in the painting a
nd the machines and been his friend. Grief for what might have been. Grief for the child who would never see any of this now.
Jack undid the leather artist’s roll, took out a handful of brushes, and began to paint through his tears.
Chapter Twenty-five
Perhaps, Adele thought as she hauled armfuls of crumpled holiday clothes from the last of the suitcases and stuffed the first lot into the washing machine, she would tell him tonight.
In fact, she decided, as she returned the passports to their cubby-hole in the dresser, coming clean with Peter this evening would leave the way clear to visiting the fairground at Oxford tomorrow. She bent down and picked up Priscilla, taking deep steadying breaths in the silky grey fur. She wasn’t sure which was going to be worse. Peter’s discovery of her chicanery, or having to face Nell’s accusations of major meddling. Nell’s answerphone messages – immediately erased last night in case Peter played them – had been scalding.
While they were revelling in the glories of Memphis, Adele had almost convinced herself that the fuss would have died down by the time they got back. She had known that the Crash’n’Dash would be in situ; that Ross would have moved smoothly into his partnership with Danny and Sam; and had hoped that Nell – once she’d recovered from her initial shock – would have accepted the Crash’n’Dash – and started to accept Ross too. It didn’t seem to have happened exactly as she’d planned if Nell’s threats on the answerphone were anything to go by.
The minute they’d scrambled out of the taxi Adele had had to hide all the accumulated World’s Fairs from Peter, and blamed their non-delivery on the cross-eyed paper-boy. Peter had been pretty shirty with Mr Grewal, the newsagent, on the phone this morning.
She knew that she’d have to pick her moment with Peter. Knew that to prevent him blowing his top and risking further palpitations, she’d have to tell him before anyone else did. Tucking Priscilla under her arm she flicked open Delia’s Summer Collection. If she offered to cook Peter an extra-special supper the day after returning from the States and while still jet-lagged, would it raise his suspicions? Probably. However, she knew she would have to soften him up before breaking the news of the Crash’n’Dash’s arrival. One of his favourite meals – a good old down-to-earth English meal – might just make things easier.
Stealing the Show Page 28
