The Prodigal Wife

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Why is it,’ she’d asked plaintively, ‘that one is so driven to do something that is such mental agony? You’re seized by an idea that seems fantastic, and you get really excited about it but when it comes down to it you find you’re doing almost anything else – phoning friends, ironing, walking the dog – anything, rather than actually sitting down and getting on with it.’

  ‘I know,’ he’d said sympathetically. ‘The blank screen, those brilliant phrases that look rubbish in hard print, your confidence leaking away. Still, the vital thing is to keep hitting the keys. Get something down, even if it is rubbish, because it will almost always result in moving you on and getting the ideas flowing. You can always wipe out the rubbish later, but there’s nothing more destructive than giving in and walking away. It’ll be that much harder next time.’

  She’d followed his advice, and found that it worked, but there were still days when every phrase she wrote was an act of will born out of desperation and very little inspiration. Today had been one of those days, yet something had been achieved…

  McGregor growled, there was a movement at the window, a flash of colour, and Cordelia glanced round: had Fliss arrived already? She stood up but there was no knock at the door, no car on the parking space by the garage, only a party of hikers on the cliff path. One of them was lagging behind, pausing to look around. Cordelia shrugged. It must have been a bird at the window, or perhaps one of the hikers had come to have a closer look. Quite often a bold rambler would approach the cottages to stare in; she’d even known one or two to knock and ask questions about the coastguard service.

  She sometimes wished that her study had been at the front, overlooking the sea, but when her parents had bought the house in the seventies they’d kept the two small inland-facing rooms, divided by the narrow hall, as study and parlour and converted the seaward-facing rooms into one huge space: kitchen at one end and sitting room at the other. Occasionally she worked on her laptop at the kitchen table, but the view and the sunshine, and the lack of the necessary reference books usually proved too much of a distraction. Anyway, she liked her little study, which still had her parents’ books on the shelves and some of her mother’s pretty watercolours on the walls.

  Ah, there was the car now, and here was Fliss climbing out and looking around her, standing quite still for a moment in the sunshine to gaze out to sea. Cordelia went to meet her, still rather surprised at Fliss’s telephone call. She’d summed Fliss up as someone who kept her own counsel and was not given to speculation over the teacups.

  ‘It seems,’ she’d said earlier, when she’d phoned, ‘that our young have met at last,’ but Cordelia had caught something more in her voice than amused pleasure and had instinctively made the offer of lunch or tea and, to her surprise, been readily taken up on it.

  ‘This is great,’ she said now, opening the door and smiling warmly at Fliss. She led the way down the hall and into the kitchen.

  ‘I’d forgotten how fantastic it is,’ said Fliss, turning from one window to another. ‘We came here once before, Hal and I, when you were doing the article. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember. We had a barbecue down on the beach.’

  ‘You said it could only be done at low tide, and you dared Hal to swim.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t take me up on it. I love swimming just when the tide’s on the turn and creeping up. It’s magic. At high tide the beach is completely covered.’

  ‘I certainly remember all those steps back up the cliff when we’d eaten too much!’

  The two women laughed together, the first slightly awkward moment of meeting over. Cordelia moved to the Rayburn and pushed the kettle on to the hotplate.

  ‘And I remember this fellow. He’s nearly as tall as I am.’ Fliss put out her hands to greet McGregor, fondling his ears.

  ‘He’s the perfect companion. Big, protective, but quiet with it,’ said Cordelia. ‘Isn’t it nice that Henrietta and Jo have met up at last? It seems crazy that it’s taken so long.’

  ‘The Navy’s rather like that, though, isn’t it?’ Fliss had turned back to look at the view. ‘You run into the same families over and over again and miss others completely.’

  ‘And, to be honest, I moved out of the network rather early on. When Simon left us I went to London, although Henrietta was still at the Royal Naval School at Haslemere. That’s where she met Susan and they became very close friends. I can’t believe that she and Iain have split up. Poor Henrietta is devastated and I’m hoping that Jo will cheer her up. When I phoned this morning she was expecting him to arrive at any moment.’ She made the tea and glanced at Fliss, noting the lifted chin and the tiny frown between her brows. ‘Am I being indiscreet?’

  Fliss shook her head. ‘Not at all. We guessed as much when he said he had to go to Watchet. Well, Prue and I did. Dear old Hal wouldn’t have thought about it.’

  ‘Very astute of you.’ Cordelia laughed a little. ‘It’s the tiny things, isn’t it? Henrietta’s voice last night was just a shade breathless. Nicely flustered, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Jolyon was glowing, as if he’d drunk just a bit too much.’ Fliss looked directly at Cordelia. ‘Would you be pleased?’

  Cordelia made a face. ‘Would I! I’d be thrilled to bits. Jo is such a sweetie and Henrietta needs to fall madly in love. What about you?’

  Fliss followed her out on to the stone balcony and watched as she sorted out mugs and plates and cut a large caramel slice into smaller pieces.

  ‘I’d be delighted. Of course, I’m not his mother…My own two are a long way away. Jamie was posted to Cairo last month – he’s with the Foreign Office – and Bess and Matt and their children are in Boston. Matt plays the French horn for the Boston Phil and Bess teaches the piano. I miss them terribly but Jo helps to fill the gap. He’s always been like one of my own children.’

  Cordelia glanced up at her. ‘I tend to forget that he isn’t. He seems so much part of you and Hal.’ A small pause. ‘What is his mother like? I don’t think I’ve ever met her.’

  ‘Maria.’ This time the pause was much longer. Fliss leaned her elbows on the wall. ‘Very pretty. Very insecure. Very needy.’

  Behind Fliss’s back, Cordelia pulled a different kind of face. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s fairly comprehensive. Sugar?’

  Fliss shook her head, turned about and took the mug. ‘Thanks. Maria’s one of those people that you have ambivalent feelings about. I feel very sorry for her and she irritates me like mad. And I think she’s behaved disgracefully to Jolyon. He utterly adored her when he was a boy but she’s practically ignored him since he was about twelve, although she became more interested when his television career started. He resents that, and I don’t blame him; it makes me cross, too. At the same time I have my own guilt to contend with, which makes me try not to be too hard on her.’

  Cordelia was silent; it was one of those moments when she wished that she hadn’t given up smoking. She guessed that this outburst was very unlike Fliss and she gave her whole attention to the fair, slender woman who leaned against the wall and sipped her tea. She drank her own tea, and waited.

  ‘Maria’s husband died earlier this year,’ Fliss said at last, ‘and suddenly she wants to be a member of the family again. Hal is ready to accept that – he feels sorry for her – but I suspect that Jolyon will gradually be coerced into responding to his mother’s neediness.’ She stared at Cordelia, frowning. ‘I can’t quite decide why that makes me so…angry.’

  Cordelia was trying to hear a subtext to Fliss’s words, something that might give her a clue.

  ‘Maybe Jo won’t let himself be coerced,’ she said. ‘Maybe he understands Maria better than you know. Were they ever very close?’

  Fliss shook her head. ‘Not really. Jolyon would have liked to have been, but Ed was always the favourite. He’s two years younger than Jolyon and very much the baby of the family. He got a scholarship to the Cathedral Choir School in Salisbury and everything, including Jolyo
n, was sacrificed to it. Jo was sent away to boarding school and encouraged to spend his holidays at The Keep rather than in Salisbury. When the marriage began to fall apart Maria couldn’t cope with Jo’s loyalty to Hal and it was very uncomfortable for poor Jolyon. He loved her terribly, though. In fact…’ Another pause. ‘Actually, years later, Jolyon accused me – well, me and Hal – of breaking up the marriage.’

  Cordelia was frowning, trying to understand. ‘Why?’ she asked at last. ‘How? I mean…were you and Hal lovers?’

  ‘No. Maria told Ed that we were, though, and he believed her and told Jo. She said that we’d remained lovers after Hal married her and it had destroyed her confidence. It wasn’t true, although we did still love each other. That was the trouble, I suppose, and that’s what I mean about feeling ambivalent about Maria. Hal and I were completely loyal to Maria and Miles but, underneath, our love was still there. She sensed it, I suppose. When they separated, and Maria went off with Adam, I was living at The Keep with Miles. He’d had a stroke and I took him home so that he’d be well looked after by the whole family. One day Hal arrived unexpectedly and I was taken off-guard. It was such a stressful, anxious time and, when I saw Hal, I simply flung myself at him. It was such a relief just to react normally with him. Jo saw us but it was later, after Ed told him what Maria had said, that he confronted me; accused me and Hal of deceiving Maria and making her unhappy. He was about seventeen; very hurt, very angry.’

  ‘Gosh. That must have been…scary. What did you do?’

  Fliss smiled; she drank some more tea and her eyes were wide with memories. ‘I gave him the ginger jar,’ she said.

  ‘A symbolic gesture?’ hazarded Cordelia. ‘Sorry, I’m not quite with you. What was the ginger jar?’

  ‘It was given to me by my children’s amah out in Hong Kong when we left to come back to the UK. It represented our friendship and the trust and happiness we’d shared, and although later it got damaged it still endured and remained beautiful despite its cracks. I tried to explain something along those lines to Jolyon about friendship…’ Fliss shook her head. ‘Honestly. It would take too long.’

  ‘But I’d like to hear what you said to him,’ insisted Cordelia. ‘Come on, you can’t just stop there. And I’ve got all evening, if necessary.’

  ‘Jo took me by surprise,’ Fliss said, remembering. ‘Ed had been down to The Keep for a visit and we found out that Maria had left Adam and gone off with another man. It didn’t last, and Adam took her back, but Ed was in a state. It was then that he told Jolyon that Maria had said that Hal and I had remained lovers after their marriage and it had destroyed her self-confidence and ruined her life. After Ed had left, Jolyon confronted me.’

  ‘Why you? Why not Hal? He was his father, after all.’

  ‘Hal had gone back to sea by then. And, in a way, I was the outsider, wasn’t I? It would have been easier for Jo to be able to blame me rather than his parents. Anyway. There he was with all his angst and hurt, just not able to contain it any longer, accusing me of ruining his mother’s life. I tried to show him how it really was but the truth was very painful. I said that he had to accept that neither age nor parenthood necessarily confers wisdom or perfection on ordinary fallible human beings. It was a very difficult and emotional moment and we very nearly fell out, but afterwards I gave him the ginger jar as a symbol of the renewal of our own friendship and trust.’

  ‘I like that. And what happened then?’

  Fliss laughed at her insistence. ‘We all lived happily ever after.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Cordelia looked repentant. ‘I only ask because I want to know. I’m a journalist, remember. It fascinates me how people work, how they think. And this is important. If Jolyon and Henrietta are going to get together then I want to understand him and his relationship with his mother. And with you. Have some more tea and start at the beginning.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Later, after Fliss had gone, Cordelia went back into her study to check her emails and to glance over what she’d written earlier. She pressed a key to get rid of the screensaver and sat down to read her day’s work. It was a few seconds before she realized with a heart-jerking shock that it wasn’t there. The first few sentences were still on the screen but the rest had disappeared. She scanned it again, recognizing some of it, knowing that most of it was missing and all the while trying to remember what she might have done to lose it. She’d saved it; she knew she had. She could recall it quite clearly: there had been the noise at the window and she’d thought it was Fliss arriving – and she’d saved the document before standing up. Perhaps, as she’d stood up, she’d touched the delete key. If so, why had only some of the work been deleted?

  She swore beneath her breath, still staring at the screen, confused and angry with herself – but she knew she had a chance to retrieve her work if she didn’t mess up.

  ‘Close down,’ she murmured, pressing the appropriate keys.

  Up came the words: ‘Do you want to save the changes to “Soke”?’ She clicked on ‘No’ and then opened her Articles file and scrolled down to ‘Soke’. Fearfully, she pressed ‘Enter’ and there it was: all her work, quite safe. Very carefully she set it to print off.

  She felt quite ill and weak with relief; eagerly watching the printer as it produced the sheets, taking them out and folding them together. Keeping them with her, she went into the kitchen and poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle she and Fliss had shared earlier. The shock of almost losing her work had driven her conversation with Fliss from her mind but now, gulping a mouthful of Sharpham’s, she remembered Fliss’s story and how Fliss had looked at her when she’d finished telling how she and Hal had been separated and how she’d married Miles; rather embarrassed, surprised at herself, yet hopeful that she, Cordelia, would understand.

  She’d said the first thing that came into her mind: ‘I didn’t love my husband either. Not really. I was in love with someone, just like you with Hal, but he hesitated and then went away for two years. I was terribly hurt and while he was away I had this mad moment and married Simon. I thought it would be OK and I became pregnant and everything was fine, and then he came back into my life.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Fliss had asked into the silence that followed.

  ‘I had another kind of mad moment,’ she’d answered wretchedly. ‘Just the one – but somehow Simon found out and a year later he left me. Henrietta was devastated – she adored him – but he always kept in contact with her. Then, when she was fifteen, he put in for a transfer to the Australian Navy and he wrote to Henrietta and told her in detail why he’d left us and that he was beginning a new life with his new family and he wanted no more contact.’

  ‘Oh hell!’

  Now Cordelia smiled wryly, remembering her reaction to the inadequacy of Fliss’s response and how they’d laughed together with compassion for each other and a sense of real friendship.

  ‘I know all about guilt,’ she’d said to Fliss. ‘At least you and Hal played it straight. Henrietta’s never really quite forgiven me.’

  Fliss had hesitated for a moment. ‘What about the other man?’

  ‘Simon was rather clever about that,’ she’d said. ‘He waited until he, the other man, was married and then he announced that he was leaving us. By then it was too late for me.’

  That’s when they’d decided to have a drink, and then Fliss had gone back to The Keep.

  Dusk was gathering in corners; beneath a rising moon the tide turned, tugging and towing away from the land, dragging its anchors over stony beaches. Cordelia shivered; she went into the hall and dropped the latch on the front door, and then drew the curtains in the rooms on the landward side of the cottage and upstairs. Now, only the big room facing the sea was filled with moonlight. She lit candles and, when her mobile rang and she saw Angus’s initials, she gave a great breath of relief.

  ‘It’s a good job you didn’t stay,’ she told him. ‘Fliss Chadwick came over.’

  ‘I’m sure you’
d have explained me away adequately,’ he answered drily. ‘A friend of a friend, perhaps? Or a dear old distant cousin. Then there’s always the naval connection to fall back on, of course. You’d have thought of something. We’re going to get found out one day, though, now I’ve moved down. Hal and I are bound to run into one another before too long.’

  ‘I know. Listen, Henrietta and Jo were meeting up again today. That’s good news, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very. Is that why Fliss came to see you?’

  ‘I think so. She’s rather worried about Jo’s mother becoming a pain now that she’s a widow. Having ignored Jo for years it seems that he’s about to become flavour of the month and Fliss is rather cross about it. Apart from that, no woman wants an unattached ex-wife hanging about.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Fliss is the jealous type.’

  ‘Oh, darling, we’re all jealous types. It’s just that some of us are able to disguise it better than others.’

  In the slightly awkward little silence that followed, Cordelia guessed that any light rejoinder he might have uttered had seemed suddenly inappropriate when he remembered how she had watched from a distance whilst he and Anne had raised three boys within a loving, stable relationship.

  ‘But then,’ she said brightly – too brightly – ‘that’s life, isn’t it? The outward show and all that. As long as we can all go on playing happy families, that’s all I care about. I don’t want anyone else being hurt. We’ve all done enough of that.’

  ‘And Henrietta?’ he asked. ‘Has she phoned to tell you how it went?’

  ‘Good grief, no. Well, it’s not likely, is it? I can’t decide whether it’s simply that she doesn’t want to talk about that sort of thing with me or whether she just doesn’t think I’m that interested. Do you need to be friends with your boys, Angus, or do you let them just get on with it?’