Wives & Mothers

by Whitmee, Jeanne

  He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Really! What kind of way is that for a nice young lady to talk? Anyway, I rather got the impression that it was the other way round.’

  She frowned. ‘Damn. You’ve guessed.’

  ‘Guessed what?’

  ‘That I seduced you simply to stop you yelling at me. Still...’ She grinned impishly. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

  He took her hand and drew her to her feet. ‘Come on, get your coat. We’re going out.’

  ‘Why? Where to?’

  ‘To lunch. I can’t remember when I last ate properly, but I do vaguely recollect that we somehow missed dinner last night. Besides, if we don’t go out, we’ll probably finish up back in bed.’

  ‘Max — about us.’ Her face was suddenly serious, all teasing gone from her eyes. She laid a hand on his arm. ‘What happened last night... it isn’t — wasn’t casual, was it?’

  He looked down at he in surprise. ‘Casual? Of course it wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t go in for casual sex, you know, one night stands — that sort of thing. I know most people do, but I don’t.’

  He took her shoulders and drew her to him, smiling indulgently. ‘Do you think I didn’t know that?’

  ‘You did — but how?’

  The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘How can you be such a steamy little sexpot one minute and as innocent as a babe in arms the next?’

  He kissed her forehead and held her close. Already he felt a tenderness for her that he had felt for no other woman. He had felt the germ of it right from that day when she turned up late for the audition. He admired her talent, which he truly believed he could channel into greatness. She maddened and infuriated him with her headstrong manner and her stubborness. Yet all the time, deep within him, something else had been steadily growing, developing. He had tried his hardest to ignore it, telling himself it would get in the way, cloud his judgement and ruin their professional relationship. But last night he’d been able to suppress it no longer. She had finally captivated him. He looked down at her upturned face. ‘Do I really have to tell you?’

  ‘I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t have slept with you unless I’d felt something — something very special,’ she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face against his chest.

  ‘Nor would I — in spite of what you seem to think.’ He shook her gently. ‘But just for the moment we’ll have no declarations or soul baring. Just music and love. That’ll do nicely to be going on with, don’t you think?’

  She smiled up at him. ‘Sounds lovely. What could be better? Music and love.’

  ‘And food,’ he said. ‘Because I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’

  *

  The sun was setting when Grace and Harry got home. She put the car away and unlocked the front door.

  ‘We’ll have time for tea before I take you to the station?’ she said as she took off her coat.

  Harry sighed. The moment he had been dreading was almost here. He thought of the flat in Notting Hill, comparing its impersonal austerity with the warmth and attractiveness of Grace’s house. ‘It’s been such a perfect day, a perfect weekend,’ he said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

  Grace turned and looked at him. ‘Well, do you really have to?’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid I do. I have several gigs booked next week.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to come and visit me next week maybe?’

  She smiled delightedly. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you, Harry.’

  His face brightened. ‘I’d meet you at the station and we could go to a show or something.’

  ‘And I could take you to see Morgan, if you’d like that. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.’

  ‘So that’s a date?’

  ‘It’s a date.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Now I’d better get the kettle on.’

  The sound of a car on the drive outside made her pause and frown. ‘Who can that be at this time?’

  Harry looked out of the hall window. ‘A blue Metro. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘Elaine?’

  She used her own key to open the door and when she stepped inside she showed no surprise at finding them standing expectantly in the hall. Grace caught her breath in alarm at her pale face and blank, staring eyes.

  ‘Darling, what is it? Are you ill?’

  ‘Zoe.’ Elaine swallowed painfully as though her throat hurt. ‘Zoe — died this morning. Patrick came to tell me.’

  ‘Oh, darling, how dreadful.’ Shocked, Grace held out her arms, but Elaine seemed oblivious to the gesture, standing where she was, motionless as a statue.

  ‘Did I tell you that Alison is going to Canada?’ she said. Her voice was unnaturally high, as though on the edge of hysteria. ‘And now Zoe’s abandoned me too. And guess what? Patrick — Patrick tells me he’s getting married again next month. Isn’t that good news?’ Tears welled up in her eyes and began to slip unchecked down her chalk-white cheeks. ‘I thought — I really believed that now I’m free again we’d...’ She shook her head disbelievingly. ‘But he’s marrying his secretary. She’s called Jessica, and she’s young and cultured and beautiful.’ With a sudden harsh sob she turned to Harry.

  ‘Please help me, Daddy. It hurts so much. I don’t know how to bear it any more. Oh God, God — what am I going to do?’

  Without a word he stepped forward and folded her tightly in his arms. ‘There, don’t cry, baby.’ He rocked her gently in the way he had done when she was a little girl. ‘It’s all right, love. Daddy’s here — Daddy’s got you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  1991

  The September evening air was warm and fragrant with the scent of pines. Grace and Harry had left their hotel half an hour before the start of the concert to take a walk along the cliffs and through the pleasure gardens before taking their seats.

  They had been together again now for almost four years and sometimes it seemed to Grace as though they had never been apart. They had settled into the easy relationship of all happily married, middle-aged couples, enjoying one another’s company in a way that had never before been possible; drawn ever more closely together by the traumatic events of the year following Zoe Carne’s death.

  Bournemouth held so many memories for them both. Happy ones for Grace, and for Harry a mixture of both bitter and sweet. As they crossed the road and began to climb the winding path to the Winter Gardens Concert Hall, memories flooded back: of the new start Elaine’s birth had seemed to give their marriage; idyllic days in the sun and the joy of motherhood, for Grace. For Harry, later ones of the sad end of Stella’s career and the loss of their unborn child. It was here that he had tried so hard to regain earlier joy and peace, and failed sadly.

  Grace squeezed his arm. ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  He smiled down at her. ‘I was just thinking, when we were in Bournemouth last, all this was brand new.’

  ‘I know. And now it all looks so mature,’ she said. ‘And who would have guessed that we’d be coming here all these years later? After all that’s happened...’

  ‘To hear our own granddaughter play solo violin in a symphony concert,’ Harry completed the sentence proudly. He smiled reminiscently, looking at the bill outside the concert hall which gave the programme for tonight’s concert. Max and Tricia had top billing: Guest Conductor Max Crichton. Soloist Patricia Crichton (violin).

  Harry smiled with satisfaction. ‘The Mendelssohn violin concerto was always a favourite of mine — and Elaine’s. I remember buying her Menuhin’s recording of it when we lived in Stanmore. LPs had just come out at the time.’

  ‘I remember.’ Grace looked up at him. ‘Harry — she is happy now isn’t she?’

  He pressed her fingers. ‘No doubt about that, love. I think she’s found her true vocation in life at last.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Grace sighed. ‘I do hope so.’

  After Zoe’s sudden death, Elaine had suffered a serious collapse and become very ill. T
he doctor told Grace that the strain she had suffered over a long period of years had taken its toll of her. Zoe’s death and the news of Patrick’s engagement had finally tipped the balance. She had sunk into a deep clinical depression that had lasted for almost a year. Harry had been marvellous. He had given up his flat in London and moved to Cambridge to be near her, visiting her in hospital every day. After a conference with Alison and the other directors it had been decided to franchise the three branches of HEA. This would provide Elaine with an income — something that worried Grace who, at the time, could see no prospect of her ever working again.

  One bonus was that during Elaine’s illness the three of them had become close again — a family. It had helped her on to the road to recovery in the way that nothing else could.

  Morgan had proved to be a tower of strength too, both as a friend and a business colleague. He visited Elaine every weekend while she was ill, and when she was on her feet again he had taken her on holiday. Not to Switzerland, which he knew would bring back too many memories, but to his villa in Spain. Whilst there he had offered her a job with his London firm. There was a vacancy on his team at the luxury end, for a designer who could create wedding and ball gowns. He told her that he had the utmost faith in her. The job was hers if she wanted it, if — and the challenge was intentional — she thought she was up to the hard work involved.

  His confidence in her was just the boost she needed. As for the hard work, she revelled in it. Morgan sent her to New York, to Paris and to Rome to study current trends and glean ideas. She had always longed to travel and enjoyed every minute, coming back bursting with a new health and energy, her note book and drawing pad bulging with ideas, impatient to begin work. At last Grace and Harry were able to breathe a sigh of relief and take up the threads of their own life again.

  In her hotel room Elaine put the finishing touches to her make-up. She was nervous. Becoming a mother-in-law at thirty-nine and a grandmother at forty-one had been traumatic enough, but her daughter’s English concert debut promised to be the most dramatic development yet. Her own contribution was the dress that Tricia would wear, designed especially for the occasion.

  It was a very special evening for Tricia, her English concert platform debut. It had been delayed by the birth of her baby son, Greg, born six months ago. Elaine had been too ill to attend the wedding, which had taken place in the early spring of ’88, just in time for Max’s overseas tour, and she had missed Tricia’s concert debut in Canada six months later. Since then she and Max had earned themselves a stunning reputation as a soloist-conductor team, touring Canada and Australia and the Continental capitals. They had worked non-stop until earlier this year when Tricia’s pregnancy had forced her to take a break. This would be the first time Elaine had heard her perform as a soloist and she felt as nervous as she imagined her daughter did at the prospect.

  She leaned forward to take a long hard look at herself in the dressing table mirror. In spite of her illness and the strain of the past years she looked much younger than forty-one. Her hair was thick and springy as ever, and the silver highlights merely added to her new sleek sophistication. Her figure was still slim and supple and, thanks to Morgan’s unshakable faith in her, she had never felt fitter or happier. She loved her new job and was making a name for herself as a luxury designer. There was even a whisper that she might be chosen to design something for minor royalty in the coming months.

  The news that Patrick hadn’t married after all reached her through Tom, whom she ran into one weekend in Cambridge a little over a year ago.

  ‘Couldn’t bring himself to go through with it in the end,’ he told her with characteristic bluntness. ‘Well, silly devil. I always said it was sheer flattery on his part anyway. You know — middle-aged man and young girl. A touch of mid-life crisis, if you ask me.’

  The news had left Elaine feeling strangely detached. It was then that she had realised that she was over the heartache once and for all. The girlhood heartbreak that had haunted her through the whole of her life now belonged to the past. At last her heart was her own. She no longer needed anyone in whom to invest her dreams. She was whole, a complete person at last.

  She stood up smoothed the skirt of the slim black sheath dress she had designed especially for tonight. The dresses she created for clients were lavish and sumptuous, but the ones she designed for herself were plain to the point of starkness; glamorously understated, like the single diamond that hung around her neck on a cobweb-fine chain.

  Picking up her evening bag she took a last look at herself then, smiling with anticipation, went to find Morgan.

  ‘Zip me up, please.’ Tricia flicked nervously at her fringe with a comb as Max stepped forward to fasten her dress.

  She peered at him anxiously through the mirror. ‘Oh, God, do I look all right?’

  Max stood back to look at his wife. Privately he thought she had never looked more lovely. ‘Love and music’ had suited her, but the more recent addition of motherhood had added a new, almost luminous radiance.

  He had never in his life been as happy as he had during the three and a half years of their marriage. Although their tempers sometimes still flared, it was an undisputable fact that they brought out the best in each other. Musically they were like instrument and player. Although each was talented independent musician, the real magic only occurred when they performed together. Then they fitted like the two halves of an intricate puzzle.

  The dress Elaine had created was slim and, like her own, perfectly plain. ‘It must be glamorous without taking the attention away from the music,’ Tricia had instructed. It was made in a taffeta with a soft sheen that caught the light; its colour a shade of blue shot with green that complemented her colouring dramatically. The strapless bodice lay against her skin in petal-like points and clung to her slender waist and hips, to froth out below the knee into a tulle ‘fishtail’. This was delicately starred with tiny brilliants that caught pinpoints of light as she moved.

  ‘You’re sure it’s not too distracting?’ she asked, turning to face anxiously up to Max.

  ‘No, but you are. You look like some magical kind of mermaid.’ He took her face between his hands and kissed her gently so as not to spoil her make-up. ‘Darling, you’re trembling. There’s no need to be nervous. You’ve played the Mendelssohn before, I don’t know how many times.’

  ‘But not here, Max — not in England.’ She glanced at the huge basket of flowers on the dressing table, sent by her grandparents, and the other flowers and cards crowding the room, all wishing her luck. ‘So many of my friends and family will be out there. Uncle Red and Tom. Alison and Robert. Morgan, Granny Grace and Harry. Then there’s Mum.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Even Tracey has taken time off to be here. They’re all expecting so much of me. Suppose I let them down?’

  ‘You won’t.’ He held her chin firmly and looked into her eyes. ‘Remember what I told you once, a long time ago? My students never fail.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘And my wife certainly won’t.’

  For Max half the concert was already over. They had played a Beethoven overture and a Sibelius tone poem. Now the interval was almost finished and the audience had begun to filter back to their seats. It was time for the violin concerto, the highlight of the evening. On the dressing room intercom they heard the orchestra tuning up and a round of applause as the leader of the first violins took his place. Max smiled and took her hand. ‘Darling, it’s time,’ he said.

  As he led her on to the platform there was a burst of welcoming applause. In the front row she caught sight of her mother and Morgan; her grandparents; Conseula, looking radiant in a white dress and holding tightly to the arm of Max’s father. But the time for nerves was over. Max had mounted the rostrum. Stunningly handsome in white tie and tails, he towered above her. He was looking at her — tapping and raising his baton. A hush fell. The orchestra poised, ready to begin.

  As always, once into her music she lost all sense of time and place. The rows of faces be
low her melted and merged into a mist as she became one with her instrument and her interpretation of the great music she loved so much.

  *

  In the front row Grace surreptitiously held Harry’s hand under cover of her programme. She could hardly believe that she was here and that it was all really happening. Tricia looked so beautiful, so happy and fulfilled. She had everything — success in her chosen career; the man she loved; and a beautiful baby son to seal their happiness. And tonight, the admiration and love of all those watching and listening would be hers. It was as though all the bitterness and regrets — all the broken dreams and dashed hopes of the past years — were being redeemed at last in Tricia.

  *

  The first movement evolved into the second, the hauntingly beautiful slow movement. Elaine sat next to her father. Tricia’s playing was faultless. Surely tomorrow the critics would rave. She would be made.

  Reaching out her hand she touched her father’s fingers and they exchanged a brief smile, each knowing what the other was thinking.

  The slow movement came to an end and the rousing third began. In the back row of the concert hall sat a solitary figure. Although his father and brother were in the audience, neither knew that Patrick was coming this evening. In fact he had tried hard to stay away. He had arrived in Bournemouth at the last minute, to find the car park packed and the concert sold out. He’d had to hang around the box office till the very last minute, waiting hopefully for a cancellation.

  Listening to the music he watched the lovely young woman on the platform with curious nostalgia, his heart full of regrets and misgivings. The sealed letter his mother had written for him had been left with the solicitor, attached to the Will she had made without the knowledge of her family. He had received it two days after the funeral.

  Elaine has never told me so herself and I can’t prove it, but I know with all a mother’s instincts that Tricia is your daughter, Patrick. I know it just as surely as I know you are my son. As far as I know, no one else does. What you do about it is up to you, but you must promise not to show this letter to anyone. My only wish is for your happiness.