For Better for Worse

by Penny Jordan

  She thought back to when they had first met and admitted their mutual attraction for one another, how eagerly she had looked forward to her dates with him; the way she had saved up all the interesting and funny happenings of her day to relate to him; the way no day seemed fully complete without his goodnight phone call… Phone calls which had often extended well into the early hours, especially when either of them was working away.

  There had been more real contact between them then than there was now that they were married and living together.

  How had that happened? When had it happened? she wondered unhappily.

  Take this evening, for instance… the way Marcus had made her feel so irritable and on edge that she had felt unable to discuss Vanessa with him, afraid of being unfairly critical of the girl, because of the lack of harmony between herself and Marcus.

  The last thing she wanted to do was to try to alienate him from his daughter. She knew how much Vanessa needed her father and, even if Marcus himself did not realise it, he needed her too. Fatherhood did not come easily to him, Eleanor recognised, and he had confided to her once that he suspected himself of lacking the necessary gene to be a good parent.

  Eleanor suspected that what he had lacked was more likely to be an example of good parenting set by his own parents.

  Both of them in their different ways had suffered from that, and she appreciated that Marcus very genuinely did his best for both sets of children.

  As she got into bed beside him, Eleanor hesitated, wanting to reach out and touch him, to reassure herself that, despite the brusqueness he had exhibited this evening, Marcus still loved and wanted her; but then she remembered the self-destructiveness of that kind of conciliatory behaviour and the way it had ultimately led to the break-up of her first marriage, and reminding herself instead of how difficult her day had been, and how Marcus did not like her to have to combine the pressures of career, family and running a home. All she had wanted was for him to listen while she confided her anxieties to him and yet instead he had cut her off with irritation and impatience, plainly not wanting to listen to what she had to say.

  As she turned her back on him, her mind was ignoring the small forlorn voice that questioned whether standing on her principles was really worth the loss of the warmth of his arms, and the pleasure of snuggling up next to him; the sensation of the soft furriness of his body hair against her skin; the delicious friction it caused when he breathed; the smell and warmth of him; the lovely male solidness of his body… the giveaway instinctive male possessiveness with which he would in his sleep sometimes throw one leg across her body, holding her against him as though he wanted to keep her securely there next to him even while he slept.

  When she felt tears unexpectedly prickling the backs of her eyes, she blinked them away irritably. She was a woman, not a child; a woman moreover who was surely old enough to accept that even within the best of marriages and relationships there were bound to be points of conflict. Perhaps she had been a bit thoughtless in rushing straight into a list of problems and complaints almost before Marcus had walked through the door, but she was not about to turn into the kind of woman who felt she had to pander to a man’s need to have his ego soothed and cosseted, and Marcus was too mature and intelligent to want her to do so.

  She would ring the surveyor in the morning and get him to supply her with a list of all the essential work the house needed, and then she would ask him to recommend some suitable builders, she comforted herself.

  And perhaps she had been a little bit over-sensitive to be so hurt when Marcus had demanded accusingly earlier, ‘For God’s sake, Nell, can’t we discuss… can’t you think about anything bar that damned house?’

  Just before she fell asleep, she reminded herself that she would have to ask Mrs Garvey if she could give them a couple of extra hours tomorrow. Because of all the problems and delays she had had today, she had not had time to move the boys’ things up into the attic, and Vanessa was due to arrive after school for the weekend.

  * * *

  Eleanor was halfway through the delicate negotiation required to persuade Mrs Garvey to work the additional two hours when the telephone rang.

  She answered it, expecting her caller to be the surveyor who had promised to ring her, but instead it was Marcus.

  ‘Nell, can you do me a favour? I’m going to be tied up in a meeting on a case all afternoon. Could you pick Vanessa up from the station for me?’

  She had already promised to take Tom and Gavin to McDonald’s after school, but when she explained this to Marcus she could hear the impatience and lack of understanding colouring his voice as he demanded, ‘Well, can’t you take all three of them after you’ve picked up Van?’

  How could she explain to him, especially with Mrs Garvey within earshot, that the visit to McDonald’s had been both a conscience-soother and a small unadmitted bribe to her own sons to make up for the upheaval the arrival of his daughter would inevitably cause them?

  Even if Mrs Garvey had not been there, could she have explained? Would Marcus have understood?

  It was obvious that in Marcus’s eyes her children’s visit to McDonald’s rated far far lower in his list of priorities than his meeting.

  Curtly agreeing to his request, she replaced the receiver and reflected half an hour later that, in view of the way her life was going at the moment, it was perhaps not surprising that Mrs Garvey had announced that it was impossible for her to work over.

  Which meant that she would have to clear out the boys’ room, Eleanor acknowledged.

  Why was it that all members of the male sex seemed to share the same habit of misplacing one of a pair of socks? And why, additionally, was it that half a dozen pairs of grey socks all bought at the same time and all washed in the same way should ultimately end up in so many varying shades, so that each sock could only be matched to its own specific partner? Irritably she surveyed the three very definitely off-grey socks she had found beneath Tom’s bed.

  Of the two of them, Gavin was definitely the neater; his possessions, unlike Tom’s, were not strewn haphazardly all over the room but stacked neatly in his ‘half’.

  Children, like adults, could be very territorial animals. All the more so when they felt that the security of tenure of that territory was threatened? Gavin was a much more independent and self-reliant child than Tom, far less sensitive and imaginative, a sturdy sports enthusiast, who took most things easily in his stride.

  She had spent all morning trying to convince herself that the surveyor was being unduly pessimistic in quoting a period of almost a year before the house was fit to move into. A year… She tried to calculate how many weekends, how many holidays, how many nerve-shredding hours of animosity and tension that would comprise. Too many. That would be Marcus’s opinion… The whole idea of moving was to find as immediate a solution as they presently could to their present lack of space.

  Working here at home was proving even more impossible than she had imagined. Like her sons, she resented the fact that she had no private, personal space of her own. The kitchen table was not an adequate substitute for her own office and, while Marcus had said she could use his study, she felt reluctant to do so.

  Marcus’s method of working was neat and methodical, everything in its place and a place for everything; she on the other hand liked to strew things haphazardly all over the place, something it was impossible to do in a work space that was not really one’s own.

  As she surveyed the possessions Tom had strewn all over the bedroom, she recognised wryly that she knew full well to whom he owed that particular trait.

  * * *

  The visit to McDonald’s was not a success. Tom sulked and picked at his food, refusing to look at her, kicking Gavin under the table. Gavin retaliated in kind, and as for Vanessa…

  Watching her stepdaughter’s disdainful, contemptuous expression as she complained in a voice loud enough for those sitting near enough to them to hear about both the health value of the menu and the
intelligence of those choosing to eat there, Eleanor gritted her teeth and tried to hold on to both her temper and her sense of humour.

  When she and Marcus had first married on her visits to them, the only things Vanessa would eat had been burgers and fries. From Marcus, Eleanor had learned that Julia was not the kind of mother to be interested in the nutritional value of her children’s diet.

  Vanessa’s conception had apparently been ‘an accident’ and it seemed to Eleanor that Marcus had never enjoyed that closeness with his daughter which she shared with her own sons.

  It had, oddly enough, been Jade who had been responsible for the change in Vanessa’s eating habits, shrugging impatiently when Eleanor had begged her not to say anything that might hurt or antagonise Vanessa.

  ‘She’s got you just where she wants you, Nell,’ Jade had told her forthrightly. ‘You’d never let Tom or Gavin get away with the things she does and she knows it. She also knows that you love them,’ she had added tellingly, but, despite what she had said, Eleanor had still not felt able to comment adversely on Vanessa’s behaviour.

  ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ Vanessa demanded now, glowering at Tom, adding under her breath, ‘God, this place is so juvenile. Why didn’t Dad pick me up?’ she demanded curtly, turning to Eleanor.

  ‘He had a meeting,’ Eleanor told her quietly.

  Vanessa smirked, giving her a knowing look. ‘I suppose that means he’s got a mistress. Men always tell their wives they’re in meetings when they’re having affairs.’

  Eleanor stared at her. Did Vanessa have any idea of what she was saying, or was she simply reacting too naïvely to comments she had heard other girls make, assuming a sophistication she did not yet possess? Taking a deep breath, Eleanor looked at her and said calmly, ‘I doubt that that’s true, Vanessa. If it was, the country would quite simply grind to a halt and, since it hasn’t, we must assume that there are men who, when they say they have business meetings, are actually telling the truth. Your father is one of those men.’

  Vanessa said nothing, but she was still smirking. Irritated, Eleanor turned back to the table and snapped unfairly at Gavin, who was still stoically munching his way through his burger.

  ‘For goodness’ sake hurry up and finish, will you, Gavin?’

  When they got back to the house, Vanessa went straight to her room, firmly closing the door behind her. Gavin was watching television and Tom was doing his homework on the kitchen table. There was a small desk upstairs in the attic bedroom, but Tom complained that there wasn’t enough room for him to work on it.

  They had been back about half an hour when Gavin suddenly looked up from his work and announced that he had football practice in the morning and that he had left his football kit at school.

  Subduing her exasperation, Eleanor told him that he would just have to make do with his spare kit.

  ‘But the shirt is too tight,’ he complained.

  ‘It wouldn’t be if you had remembered to bring your kit home with you. I’ve told you before, Gavin, you’ve got a calendar in your room. You know that you’re supposed to write down on it all your school “extras”.

  ‘I did,’ he told her indignantly.

  Eleanor sighed. The hypermarket would still be open. She could buy him a new shirt; it might not be strictly school regulation but at least it would fit him. He would probably need boots as well. If she remembered correctly, his old pair had been getting too small for him…

  She tensed as she suddenly heard the noise from upstairs; Tom’s outraged shriek of, ‘Give it to me, it’s mine,’ and Vanessa’s answering,

  ‘Well, what is it doing in my room, then?’

  Quickly she hurried upstairs to find Tom standing on the landing, his face scarlet with temper, while Vanessa stood in the doorway of the bedroom, holding aloft a poster.

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ Eleanor commanded. ‘Tom, stop making that noise. Vanessa, please give Tom his poster.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Vanessa smiled at her and then, so deliberately that Eleanor could scarcely believe she was doing it, she ripped the poster into four and dropped the pieces on to the floor, apologising with insolent insincerity, ‘Oh, sorry, Tom. I’ve torn it.’

  Before Eleanor could say a word, she was turning her back on them and closing the bedroom door.

  ‘I hate you,’ she heard Tom crying shrilly. ‘And when we move house and I have my own room I’m never, ever going to let you in it…’

  ‘Move house?’ Vanessa shot out of the bedroom, slamming the door back against the wall, and stared at Eleanor, her expression so bitterly hostile that for a moment Eleanor was too shocked to speak.

  ‘Who’s moving house?’

  ‘We are,’ Eleanor told her as calmly as she could, inwardly helplessly aware that this was neither the time nor the place to explain to Vanessa what they were planning.

  She knew immediately that she was right. The look of fury and fear on Vanessa’s face made her wince and, at the same time, it also made her ache for the vulnerability she had witnessed in her eyes, but before she could say a word Vanessa had disappeared back into the bedroom, returning with the rest of Tom’s prized football posters which were always removed from the wall for her visit and stored in the wardrobe.

  ‘Here,’ she told Tom savagely, handing him the rolled-up posters. ‘Seeing as you’re going to have your own room, you won’t need to contaminate mine any more with this junk, will you?’

  But as Tom reached out to take them from her, instead of relinquishing them, she held on to them, deliberately twisting and screwing them up, a smile of such unkind, almost malevolent satisfaction in her eyes as she heard Tom’s anguished protest that for the first time in her life Eleanor experienced a direct and very urgent desire to retaliate in kind and to subject her to the same kind of cruel demonstration of superior power the girl was showing to her son.

  Anger swept through her, fiercely protective maternal anger, and a more subtle but just as overwhelming female recognition of the challenge Vanessa was throwing out, not at Tom, but at her.

  Her patience already strained long past breaking point, Eleanor reacted instinctively to it, reaching out to grab hold of Vanessa by her wrist, her own shock at what she was doing mingling with Vanessa’s as her stepdaughter froze, surprise, confusion and then bitter resentment blazing in her eyes as she pulled back against Eleanor’s hold.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? Give Tom his posters at once.’

  Eleanor could hear the fury trembling in her voice; it made her whole body shake.

  ‘You can’t make me,’ Vanessa defied her. ‘You can’t tell me what to do. This isn’t even your house. It’s Dad’s…’

  The shock of hearing the venom in her voice instantly sprang Eleanor from the trap of her own anger. Shakily she released Vanessa, stepping slowly back from her, watching as Vanessa rubbed her wrist.

  ‘I hate you,’ Vanessa hurled at her. ‘I hate all of you and I wish Dad had never married you.’

  Ignoring the pain her words were causing her, Eleanor gritted her teeth and said quietly, ‘Please give Tom his posters back, Vanessa.’

  She watched as the girl turned away from her and towards Tom.

  ‘You want them… you really want them?’ she taunted him. ‘Well, here you are—you can have them.’

  With a savage motion she ripped the posters in half, laughing as Tom howled in outraged anguish, throwing the ruined things at Tom’s feet before turning back to Eleanor and demanding insolently, ‘Happy now? That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

  She couldn’t let her get away with it, Eleanor recognised. If she did… if she did, she would have even more of a problem with her than she already had.

  Taking a deep breath, she took a step towards her. Behind her, Tom was crying noisily, protesting about what Vanessa had done. There was a sound in the hallway, but Eleanor ignored it, concentrating instead on what she was going to say to Vanessa.

  As she moved towards her, Vane
ssa’s expression suddenly changed, the gloating, triumphant look obliterated by the shrinking, almost cowering look of fear which took its place.

  ‘No! No, don’t. I didn’t mean to do it… Please don’t hit me.’

  Hit her? Eleanor stopped, her body suddenly ice-cold. Surely Vanessa hadn’t really thought…

  ‘Eleanor, for God’s sake, what the hell’s going on? You can hear the noise in the street.’

  Marcus… Thankfully Eleanor turned to greet her husband, but Vanessa beat her to it, darting past Eleanor to fling herself into her father’s arms, sobbing half hysterically, ‘Daddy, Daddy… don’t let her hit me.’

  Vanessa had obviously inherited her mother’s love of acting, Eleanor reflected tiredly as she met the look Marcus was giving her.

  Later she would explain the whole situation to him; later when they were alone, not here, allowing herself to be manipulated by Vanessa into defending herself.

  Vanessa was a child, that was all, she tried to remind herself. A child…

  Numbly she realised that Tom was still complaining loudly about his posters and that Marcus, who had disentangled himself from Vanessa’s tearful embrace, was giving her an irritated, impatient, frowning look.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Tom wailed. ‘She can do just what she likes… I wish I didn’t have to live here with you. You always take her side in everything…’

  As she saw the tears standing out in his eyes, saw the accusation in his face, heard the dented male pride in his voice, Eleanor looked helplessly from his flushed, angry face to Vanessa’s smooth, triumphant one.

  A child? No. Vanessa’s actions had not been those of a child motivated by a misunderstood reactionary impulse; it had been deliberate and spiteful; its result carefully planned and understood.

  A sick sensation of despair overwhelmed her as she stood there, knowing that there was no reasonable explanation she could give her son to help him to understand why it seemed that Vanessa received more favourable treatment and was therefore more ‘loved’ any more than she could explain to Marcus just why his teenage daughter made her feel so vulnerable and so on edge; so wary of saying or doing the wrong things in case it prejudiced her own relationship with him.