Cruel Legacy

by Penny Jordan

  Philippa shook her head. Her whole body had gone icy cold when Elizabeth had started talking about her housing problems.

  ‘It might very well be worth your while getting in touch with them, in pre-empting them, in fact, and pointing out to them the advantages of allowing you to remain in the house in a semi-official capacity as their nominated caretaker,’ Elizabeth told her.

  When Philippa frowned, Elizabeth explained, ‘The housing market is still very depressed, especially at the higher end; the bank may very well decide not to sell immediately but to wait until things improve slightly and they can get a better price. If that were to happen it would make sense for them to protect their investment from any risk of being broken into and vandalised. They may very well be prepared to allow you to stay on in a caretaking capacity rather than go to the expense of employing someone else to do so. They might not agree,’ she warned Philippa, ‘but in my view it would certainly be worthwhile discussing it with them. Don’t expect them to agree immediately, though,’ she added. ‘You may find you have to be persistent and work on them. Some people, especially women and especially in such circumstances, find it difficult to be assertive.’

  Elizabeth looked speculatively at Philippa as she spoke. She was a very, very pretty woman; even the stress and strain she was under couldn’t hide that fact. Was she also the type of woman who had been used to using her prettiness as a bargaining counter, using it to sway the judgement of others in her favour, or did that slightly grim look of her mouth and eyes actually mean that she could be firmer, more decisive than her pretty-pretty looks seemed to imply?

  Elizabeth suspected that it might. She was trained to observe people and their reactions, the unspoken ones as much as the spoken, and she had noted that beneath her discomfort and embarrassment with her situation Philippa was obviously quite used to and quite happy relating to her own sex, and did not, as another woman with the same degree of physical attractiveness might have done, give any hint that she would be more comfortable dealing with a man, with whom she could flirt and use her attractiveness.

  ‘I’ll make you an appointment to see the social services people,’ she told Philippa now.

  She stopped speaking as Philippa winced.

  ‘I’ve got two sons at private school; how can I claim Social Security benefits?’ Philippa asked her uncomfortably.

  ‘You can because you must,’ Elizabeth replied briskly. Philippa flushed guiltily as she caught the note of censure in her voice, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain that it wasn’t so much pride she had felt as guilt. Those people whom Andrew had caused to lose their jobs—they were the ones who were entitled to state help, not her.

  As she listened to Elizabeth explaining to her the various options open to her under some of the government training schemes she tried to imagine what her mother’s reaction would be when she heard what she was doing. That was something else her father wouldn’t want to have mentioned at his golf club… his daughter claiming Social Security.

  She left Elizabeth’s office with her head buzzing with information and determined to take Elizabeth’s advice and approach the bank with a view to their letting her stay on in the house until it was sold. Even if it was only for a few months, it would give her a few months of relative security in which to concentrate on other things.

  And the most important of those things had to be getting herself equipped to find a job and earn some money so that she could support herself and the boys.

  As she walked across the square, she saw a woman collecting for charity. Automatically she stopped and put her hand in her pocket, freezing with anger and embarrassment as she remembered that the days were gone when she could put her hand in her pocket and give away loose change. What loose change? she derided herself as she hurried past the woman, head down, face flushed.

  Elizabeth had been right when she had told her that she couldn’t afford not to claim Social Security, whatever benefits she was entitled to, no matter how guilty it made her feel to have to do so.

  * * *

  Philippa rubbed her eyes tiredly. It had been a long day and her telephone call with Neville Wilson had left her feeling physically and mentally drained.

  He would put her request to his head office, he had told her, but he had not been able to give her any real idea as to whether or not they would allow her to stay on.

  She had sensed from his voice that he was sympathetic to her plight but, as he had pointed out, it would not be his decision. All she could do now, as far as the house was concerned at least, was wait… wait and hope. And she would, she admitted, have preferred the activity of doing something constructive, which in itself was an unexpected change of attitude for someone who had previously sat back and passively let life and others dictate their own terms to her.

  At nine o’clock, just as she was about to go upstairs to run a bath before going to bed, she heard a car pulling up outside… She had starting going to bed early as much to keep warm as to sleep. During the day she could find some physical activity to keep herself warm; at night it wasn’t quite so easy.

  She paused in the hall, watching as the security lights flashed on, and then as she heard male footsteps crunching over the gravel she wondered if Robert had perhaps had a change of heart and come to visit her.

  He hadn’t. When she opened the door she discovered that her visitor was one of her husband’s philandering friends, a man called Frank Jarvis.

  She stared at him for a few seconds in confusion. He was carrying a huge bunch of flowers, white lilies, she recognised, blooms she had never really liked.

  ‘Philippa… my poor girl.’

  He leaned forward and, recognising that he was about to kiss her, Philippa stepped back.

  ‘I brought you these,’ she heard Frank telling her as he walked into the hallway and handed her the flowers. He smelled very strongly of aftershave, Philippa noticed distastefully as she took the lilies.

  ‘I was just on my way to bed, Frank,’ she told him coolly.

  ‘Yes, I know I’m calling at a late hour… Look, why don’t we make ourselves a little bit more comfortable—unless you’d prefer me to come upstairs with you and tuck you up?’

  Philippa didn’t bother to make any response, leading the way instead into the cold drawing-room.

  He sat down on one of the plain cream sofas and patted the seat next to him, draping his arm along the back of the sofa as he told her, ‘Come and sit down here next to me and then we’ll talk.’

  Talk? What was there to talk about? Philippa wondered, deliberately avoiding the space next to him on the sofa and choosing the security of a chair instead.

  ‘You know how much I’ve always admired you, Philippa,’ he told her as she sat down. ‘In fact, if I’m honest, I always envied old Andrew being married to you. You’re a very beautiful woman—an intelligent woman as well, I suspect.’

  He paused and then smiled at her.

  ‘I don’t like to think of such a pretty woman missing out on life’s treats. Pretty women should have pretty things… enjoy themselves…’

  Philippa started to speak, but he held up his hand, silencing her as he continued, ‘When Andrew was alive he provided those things for you, but Andrew’s dead now.’ He got up off the settee and came towards her while Philippa stiffened in dislike and disbelief.

  ‘I’m a very rich man, Philippa, a very rich man who appreciates pretty things… pretty women. Women like you shouldn’t have to worry about money. And there’s no reason why you should. I think you know what I’m talking about, my dear. There’s a very nice little mews house close by the cathedral in town. You’d be very comfortable there. I’d like to show it to you but, of course, like any sensible man, I’m sure you’ll understand that I like to ensure I’m investing my money wisely, that it’s buying me… exactly what I want.’

  Philippa could feel the anger pouring through her in a red-hot tide. Did he really honestly think that she would actually consider selling herself to him,
leasing him the use of her body in return for his little mews house? Her fury was so intense that it literally rendered her speechless.

  ‘Why don’t we go upstairs now, and talk the whole thing through?’ she heard him saying smoothly as he came towards her.

  Another moment and he would be touching her. Philippa’s flesh crawled in anticipatory revulsion, galvanising her into action. She stood up, distancing herself from him as she said quietly, ‘I’ve got a much better idea…’

  She could see the expectant sexual glisten of his eyes, hear the gloating note in his voice, and her stomach heaved.

  ‘Oh, and what might that be?’

  ‘Why don’t I pick up the phone and ring your wife and tell her what you’ve just said to me?’ she suggested levelly, firmly retaining eye-contact with him as the meaning of what she was saying sank in.

  He was a man who could, she suspected, be a bully and physically violent, and she could sense now his desire to take hold of her and hurt her.

  Without taking her eyes off him, she told him coldly, ‘Please leave—now!’

  ‘If you think that by doing this you’re going to up your price then you’ve mistaken your man,’ she heard him telling her, his voice thickening with anger as he added brutally, ‘You might be a pretty woman, Philippa, but I should be careful if I were you. After all, you’re not so young any more, and that sharp tongue of yours will drive more men away than it will attract: sexual domination might turn some men on; verbal domination certainly doesn’t. If I were you I’d be careful not to place too high a value on myself; you might price yourself out of the market and, when you do, don’t bother to come knocking on my door,’ he told her sneeringly, adding venomously, ‘Come to think of it, you probably wouldn’t have been much use in bed anyway. I’ll lay odds I’d get a better fuck off a girl on the streets; better and cheaper.’

  There was more in the same vein, all of which Philippa heard out in silence.

  Later, when he had finally gone and she had bolted the door behind him, she leaned against it, shaking, not so much with fear as with nausea and anger.

  Previously she had looked upon Belinda Jarvis with a mixture of irritation and contempt; now she felt profoundly sorry for her.

  As she walked past the open drawing-room door she automatically went to close it and then recoiled as she caught the smell of the aftershave which still hung on the cold air.

  When she unlocked and pushed open the French windows, the icy breeze brought her skin out in goosebumps but she scarcely noticed the cold.

  Upstairs in the bathroom, she scrubbed her skin so hard with the loofah that it physically burned. No doubt the incident had had its funny side, she acknowledged, but right now she wasn’t in the mood to see it.

  He had really genuinely believed that she would accept his proposition. Was that how people… men… saw her… as a commodity to be bought and sold, a possession? She had heard apocryphal tales of divorced and widowed women being approached by the hitherto irreproachably faithful spouses of their woman friends and their ex-husbands’ male friends with offers of sex, but for Frank Jarvis to assume…

  Did he and other people really believe she was so weak, had so little going for her, so few options open to her that she would welcome such an offer? Well, she would show them, she decided fiercely; she would show them all: her parents, her brother, Frank Jarvis… Blake Hamilton…

  Blake Hamilton. She went very still. Now why on earth had she tagged him on to that list? Her subconscious must have been well and truly disturbed by Frank Jarvis’s visit for it to fling such a remote piece of her past at her.

  She had put Blake firmly and permanently out of her mind the day she’d agreed to marry Andrew.

  And out of her heart? She gave a small angry shrug. Now she was being ridiculous. She had had a crush on Blake, that was all, her feelings for him created by teenage hormones and fuelled by fantasy. They had been no more real than her romanticised, idealised image of him; his treatment of her, his rejection of her had proved that.

  She tensed as she heard the phone ringing, tempted to ignore its summons, but common sense told her that it was hardly likely to be Frank Jarvis telephoning to pursue his suit of her.

  A wry smile curled her mouth. No, indeed.

  When she answered the phone she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not when she heard the boys’ headmaster’s voice.

  ‘Both boys are fine,’ he assured her, anticipating her anxious question. ‘Perhaps because they’ve got each other and maybe partly because they aren’t the only pupils we have here to have suffered some kind of personal trauma. The reason I’m actually calling is the Easter holidays.’

  Guiltily Philippa recognised that she had been so concerned with making plans for the future that she had overlooked the present.

  ‘Both boys are down to go to Italy with the school, but I’m afraid that when your husband paid the school fees no extras were included.’

  ‘How much, exactly, is involved?’ she asked him unhappily.

  When he told her her heart sank even further. The last thing she wanted to do was to cancel the boys’ trip at the last moment, but she couldn’t see what alternative she had. There was certainly no way she could afford that kind of money.

  ‘You don’t have to let me have your decision right now,’ she heard the headmaster telling her quietly. ‘But perhaps if you could telephone me tomorrow evening…’

  ‘Yes… yes, I’ll do that,’ Philippa told him.

  After she had put the phone down, she stood where she was, staring unseeingly in front of her. What should she do? What could she do other than ring the boys and explain to them that she couldn’t afford to let them go to Italy?

  They would be bound to feel humiliated and embarrassed in front of their friends and schoolmates at having to drop out at the last minute.

  The last thing she had ever wanted for them was that they should grow up believing that they should judge themselves and others only by their material assets, but Andrew’s death was bound to have made them feel vulnerable and insecure.

  And then there were the practicalities to consider. If they came home, she would have to feed and entertain them, and, much as she herself longed for the comfort of having them with her, for their sakes she could not give in to such selfishness.

  For their sakes she would have to bite down on her pride and go cap in hand to her parents, she acknowledged tiredly. Not a prospect she relished one tiny little bit. In fact today had been a day filled with so many unpalatable realisations that it was a wonder she wasn’t suffering from mental and emotional indigestion, she admitted ruefully.

  Half an hour later, as she got into bed wearing her plain cotton nightshirt, she tried to envisage the nightwear Frank Jarvis would have expected her to don had she accepted his offer.

  What did his tastes run to? Something in black, and restricting, rendering her a passive object for him to paw over and play with; a physical present he had bought for himself all tied up in silk and ribbons.

  That kind of relationship was the total antithesis of what she had once dreamed of having. The one she had once believed she would have… in the days before Blake had taken those dreams and deliberately destroyed them.

  Then she had believed that the smiles Blake gave her, the way he watched her, talked to her, treated her meant that the exciting, overwhelming physical and emotional turmoil she was in whenever he was there wasn’t just felt by her; that he shared it… But that had been before he had told her the truth, before he had humiliated her, almost destroyed her, cruelly confronting her with the fact of the matter: that she was nothing more to him than the silly, immature, spoiled sister of one of his friends. It had been the shock of discovering how badly she had misjudged the situation, how little he really thought of her, how wrong she had been to believe that he cared about her that had been responsible ultimately for her marriage to Andrew. Unable to believe any longer that she could trust her own judgement, she had given up trying
to fight against her father’s control of her life.

  But that, in the end, had turned out to be just as much of a mistake as loving Blake. How many more mistakes could she allow herself to make? Not many, and certainly not the one of becoming involved with someone like Frank. No, certainly not that one. Her flesh crawled at the thought.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Pippa…’

  Startled, Philippa looked up, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she watched her visitor approaching her. She had been so busy digging over the weed-infested vegetable garden that she hadn’t even heard her arriving.

  If she had ever been asked to name her closest woman friend, it would have been Susie’s name that she would have given.

  They had met originally when both of them were doing voluntary work and immediately a rapport had developed between them despite their apparent differences.

  Andrew had never particularly approved of the friendship; Susie and her husband Jim didn’t move in the same social circles as they did. Jim was a self-employed builder who had established a small business for himself dealing mainly in property repairs and extensions; he had a very good reputation but, as Susie had once said ruefully but fondly, he would never become rich. Neither of them was particularly money-conscious or ambitious and their lives revolved mainly around their family. Susie had a warmth and generosity about her that had immediately drawn Philippa to her. They got on well together and Philippa knew that if she had been the type to confide in others Susie would have been the one person she would have felt able to turn to.

  Susie had been away staying with her mother when Andrew had died, and Philippa had felt reluctant to get in touch with her. Afraid to put their relationship to the test.

  But now, as she looked into her friend’s face, she realised how much of an injustice she had done her.