Worthy of Marriage

by Anne Weale

  Following a remark by Mrs Calderwood about how lucky she was to enjoy the support of two such ‘faithful retainers’ as Braddy and Jackson—she had waggled her forefingers as she used the archaic expression—Lucia said, ‘Do you think they might marry? They seem to get on very well.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m sure that won’t happen,’ said Rosemary. ‘In some ways it would be rather convenient. They could share the cottage, leaving me an extra bedroom for when we’re a “full house” at Christmas. Jackson might like the idea. I’ve often suspected he has a soft spot for Braddy. She likes him, too…but only on a friendly basis. They’re from entirely different backgrounds. He grew up in what’s nowadays called a dys-functional family. Braddy’s parents were very nice people.’

  ‘Does that matter now they’re both middle-aged?’ said Grey.

  ‘It matters at any age,’ said his mother. ‘Marriage isn’t an easy relationship, even for older and supposedly wiser people. Any kind of imbalance must make it even more difficult.’

  Lucia’s heart sank. If Rosemary thought Braddy and Jackson getting together would be a hopeless mésalliance, she would be appalled by Lucia’s wishful thinking. Clearly the gulf between herself and Grey would be seen by his mother as an unbridgeable abyss. Perhaps it was. Perhaps that was why he was looking displeased, because he didn’t want to be reminded that—from his mother’s perspective—by making love to Lucia he was behaving in a way she would consider unprincipled.

  Grey was displeased by his mother’s lack of tact. He knew the construction Lucia would put on the remark about imbalance. Although she was good at hiding her reactions, instinct told him she had been hurt.

  There were times when, though he loved his mother dearly, her outlook and attitudes stretched his patience to breaking point. Perhaps when he was her age, he would cling to the manners and mores of the past, but he hoped not.

  When they had finished lunch, he would have liked to take Lucia out for a walk and explain the whole situation to her. But it was neither the time nor the place for that. It was better to wait until they reached Paris where he could break it to her gently, taking it a step at a time, testing the ground as he went. That she loved him, he was in little doubt. But whether she loved him enough…that was a question only she could answer.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MRS CALDERWOOD and her party set out on their leisurely journey after breakfast. They were taking the road north, Grey and Lucia were driving south. Before they left, Grey gave the keys to No 12 to Amparo, the neighbour who kept an eye on the place in its owners’ absence.

  When he came back and got in the car beside Lucia, he said, ‘Alone at last!’

  The grin that accompanied this remark made her own spirits lift. Since her farewell embrace with his mother, she had been feeling guilty about the furtive nature of her trip with him. Not being frank and open about it made it seem like what her father would have called a dirty weekend.

  By lunchtime they were in Paris, being driven to their hotel. It was not, to Lucia’s relief, a dauntingly grand establishment, but quite a small place in a side street. Perhaps the kind of hotel where men took women whom they didn’t want to be seen with in public, was her next deflating thought.

  The bedroom allocated to them—they were given the key and left to find their own way to it—was at the back of the building, overlooking a small but attractive garden with sunbrella-shaded tables where a couple were having a drink. It looked a pleasant place to relax after a long day of sight-seeing.

  Although it was only a few nights ago that they had been locked in each other’s arms, now that they were alone in a bedroom with little or no possibility of anyone intruding on their privacy, Lucia felt curiously shy.

  She stood by the window, looking at but not really taking in the details of the surrounding buildings, trying to think of something to say.

  It was Grey who broke the silence. Sounding wholly at ease—but for all she knew he might have been in this situation many times before—he said, ‘I’m going to ask them to send up a bottle of wine. Would you like a shower before we go out for lunch?’

  ‘Yes…yes, I would,’ she said eagerly.

  ‘Go ahead.’ He sat on the side of the bed and picked up the telephone. As she had already discovered in the taxi and at the reception desk, his command of French was as fluent as his Spanish.

  He was still on the telephone when, having unpacked her toilet bag and her robe, she disappeared into the bathroom. It had a shower compartment, handbasin, bidet and loo. Talking about their night stops in France, Braddy had complained about the inadequate size and thin pile of French hotel bath towels. But the ones here were large and fluffy.

  Lucia undressed and hung her clothes on the pegs on the back of the door. She had washed her hair and blow-dried it before going to bed last night. As she didn’t want to get her hair wet, she used the shower cap provided, with other giveaways, by the management.

  The warm water relaxed her. It had been stupid to be tense, she told herself. Whatever Grey was going to tell her couldn’t alter the essential fact that she loved him. Today, this hour, this moment, being the only time that anyone could be sure of, it made sense to relish the present and not think about tomorrow.

  At which point the bathroom door opened and she saw Grey’s tall figure as a blurred but recognisable shape through the patterned glass walls of the shower cabinet. The next thing she registered was that he had no clothes on. A moment later he opened the door and stepped in beside her.

  ‘May I join you?’ he asked, smiling down at her.

  ‘Why ask when you’ve already done it?’ said Lucia, somewhat abruptly.

  The reason she was less than welcoming was the shower cap. She knew she looked horrible in it. What woman didn’t? Even the expensive frilly kind of cap did nothing for anyone, not even a beautiful girl, which she was not.

  ‘Why are you cross?’ asked Grey, putting his arms round her to draw her close to him ‘Because I didn’t kiss you the moment we were alone? I wanted to, believe me. But I used to hear my sisters complaining about guys who pounce too soon. My problem—’ he paused to touch her lips lightly with his ‘—is that, the moment I kiss you, I want to make love to you, no holds barred.’

  He kissed her again, more lingeringly, caressing her back with his hands.

  Lucia closed her eyes and forgot the unbecoming shower cap.

  Several hours later they left the hotel and stepped into the legendary street life of one of the world’s most romantic cities.

  ‘It’s a little late for lunch, so let’s have a croque-monsieur to stave off the pangs until dinner,’ said Grey, taking her hand in his. ‘Does that sound OK to you?’

  ‘It sounds perfect…even though I don’t know what a croque-monsieur is,’ said Lucia smiling.

  ‘A toasted sandwich, generally cheese and ham. But there may be something else we’ll like better when we see the menu.’

  Although it was a few degrees cooler than it had been in Spain, the weather in Paris was warm and the pavement cafés were full of people chatting, or reading, or watching the passersby.

  They found a café that wasn’t too crowded. A waiter brought them a menu and Grey ordered coffee to drink while they made their decisions about what to eat.

  When that had been done, and the coffee brought, he said, ‘I can’t put it off any longer. This is the moment of truth…when I put my cards on the table and you read my fortune.’

  Lucia wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but decided to hold her tongue and let him explain in his own time without asking questions.

  ‘Most of my adult life I’ve been living a lie,’ he said, his grey eyes suddenly sombre. ‘For various reasons, I’ve pretended to be someone I’m not…and have no wish to be. Like a lot of bad habits, it started when I was at university. Up to that point I hadn’t given any serious thought to the rest of my life. My parents had always assumed I would follow my father into the family business and I’d gone along with that becaus
e there was nothing more attractive in view.’

  Their waiter reappeared with a little basket of quails’ eggs, a larger basket of crusty bread and two pots of butter.

  ‘Bon appetit, m’sieur…’dame.’

  While they were peeling the thin speckled shells from their first eggs, Grey said, ‘Then I began to realise there were other kinds of lives than the one my family and most of their friends lived. Not everyone was obsessed by business and golf, like my father and the men he mixed with. There were other options.’

  As he buttered a piece of bread, not for the first time Lucia felt the urge to draw the strong masculine hands whose touch could be firm or gentle.

  ‘To cut a long story short, I knew that I wanted to break out from the mould made by my grandfather,’ Grey went on. ‘But I wasn’t sure what I did want to do. Without being able to present my father with a positive alternative to his plans for me, there wasn’t much point in resisting the pressure to conform. Perhaps what I should have done is walked out and made my own way in the world. But that would have caused a good deal of distress. Am I making any sense to you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lucia. She told him about her father’s sacrifice of his plans. ‘I think not wanting to wound their parents has influenced a lot of people’s lives.’

  ‘Probably,’ Grey agreed. ‘The forces that shape people’s lives are very strange and complex. I always knew I wanted to travel, but I didn’t have a specific reason for travelling. Now I do—but also an equally strong reason why it may not be possible.’

  He paused to drink some coffee before saying, ‘It wasn’t until my late twenties that I found what the French call a raison d’être…a reason for existence. I began to be seriously interested in paintings. Learning about them, visiting the world’s great art galleries whenever I had the chance, filled one of the voids in my life. Eventually that interest led to my second raison d’être—you, my sweet girl.’

  Startled, she swallowed a crumb the wrong way and had to gulp down some coffee to avert an inelegant coughing fit.

  ‘Me?’ she said huskily, when she could draw breath.

  ‘You,’ he said gravely. ‘And I don’t think you would be here if you didn’t feel warmly about me. But the problem is this: I am not who you think I am. I want to cut loose and run from the past…and the present. I want to begin a new life. But it’s not the kind of life most women want to share.’

  She was still knocked sideways by what he had said moments earlier. ‘What is it you want to do?’ she asked, to give herself time to recover her self-possession.

  ‘First, I want to chuck the business…to have no further part in the running of the company. That will horrify my mother and it won’t delight my sisters. Julia is expecting me to keep the CEO’s seat warm for her eldest son who appears to be keen on the idea. Even if she lives into her nineties, as I hope she will, Mum will always have a comfortable income. But the rest of the family are less secure and won’t be happy if their Calderwood incomes plummet, as they may after I resign.’

  ‘I don’t think they can expect you to go on doing something that bores you in order to make their lives more comfortable,’ said Lucia. ‘What do you want to do instead?’

  ‘I want to set up a gallery, not in London, somewhere in the country. But I don’t want to run it myself. I want to travel the world, learning more about other cultures’ art and buying pictures to re-sell. I should also like to create a showcase for it on the Internet. The few friends I’ve discussed this with think I’m out of my mind. Perhaps you do too?’

  ‘I think it’s a great idea, and I’d love to help you with it…if you’d like me to? This is the same gallery you were talking about the night we had dinner isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but at that time we weren’t on the same terms that we are now. I would want you to help me, but not as the gallery’s minder. I would like you to travel with me…as my wife,’ he added quietly. ‘I’m in love with you, Lucia. I would like you to be part of my new life. But I know it’s asking a great deal…asking you to sacrifice everything that women need and want.’

  ‘Like what?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Women are nesters by nature. They need somewhere settled and safe.’

  ‘You’re generalising,’ she said. ‘Women aren’t all alike.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘How many women have been in prison? Hardly any.’ She leaned towards him and drew a deep breath. ‘I need only one thing, Grey. For you to love me as much as I love you.’

  He reached for her hands. ‘Darling, you think that now, but a lifetime is a long time. It won’t always be Paris on a warm summer evening…we won’t always want to go to bed as urgently as we do today. You need to think this over before committing yourself.’

  ‘I’m already committed. I have been for ages. I just didn’t see how you could possibly lose your heart to someone so wildly unsuitable. Don’t say I’m not because we both know I am.’

  ‘Unsuitable for the man I’ve been trying to be, perhaps. Not for real Grey Calderwood. You don’t actually know him yet.’

  ‘I’ve caught glimpses.’ She reached out to touch his cheek with her fingertips. ‘Isn’t marriage always a voyage of discovery? Neither of us is going to be the same person in ten, or twenty, or thirty years’ time. But if we grow and change together, the chances are we’ll feel the same way about each other when we’re your mother’s age as we do now.’

  ‘I would certainly hope so,’ he said. ‘But she is one of the reasons why I’m concerned that you shouldn’t let yourself be blinded by emotion…as Mum was.’

  ‘I wonder if she was? Or if, deep down, she knew that she didn’t have what it takes to be an important artist? I know I don’t have that inspired vision of the world. Perhaps Rosemary knew it too. Perhaps marrying your father made it easier for her to come to terms with it. It’s quite hard to admit to yourself that you won’t ever be in the front rank.’

  ‘That’s one of the things I love about you,’ he said, ‘that you’re gentle with other people’s feelings. You would never hurt her by letting her know that you know her talent is only a small one. The only person whose feelings you haven’t handled with kid gloves is me, and I guess I was fairly brutal to you at first.’

  ‘You were horrible,’ she told him, laughing. ‘But I have to admit you were entitled to be. I will try very hard to make amends. When are you going to break all this to your family?’

  ‘As soon as George has given Mum a check and advised me on whether the shock of my resignation would be bad for her just now. Our news we’ll tell her at once. That’s something that can’t be put on hold. The only way I can endure being a square peg in a round hole for a little longer is if my evenings and nights are spent with you.’

  Presently they left the café and strolled in the direction of the Seine, recapping their whole relationship and explaining why they had behaved as they had, both misleading the other into thinking they were in a no-win situation.

  On one of the wide tree-lined quais between the many bridges spanning the river, Grey said, ‘The last time I came down here I was by myself. There was a girl leaning against that tree, with a guy kissing her. They made me wonder how much longer I was going to live on my own. It’s an unnatural existence, being single. Men and women were designed to live in pairs, don’t you think?’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Lucia, as he steered her towards the tree, put his arms around her and his hands on the trunk, and kissed her.

  ‘Hugging a tree takes on a whole new meaning when you do it like this,’ he murmured against her mouth.

  Not caring who might be watching—Paris had that effect on her—Lucia put her arms round him.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine you feeling lonely. You always seem so self-sufficient,’ she murmured, leaning into him, his chest being a more comfortable support than the trunk of a tree.

  ‘I hope I am…up to a point,’ he said, resting his chin on the top of her head and moving his hands from the tree to her waist. �
��People who have no inner resources can be a burden to everyone. On the rare occasions when my father couldn’t go to the office or play golf, he drove everyone crazy. He didn’t read, he didn’t listen to music, he never walked except on a golf course. When I was old enough to analyse myself and my family, I realised that any woman with my mother’s looks and social skills would have satisfied him. I sometimes wished I was like him in that way.’

  He put his hand on her chin and tilted her face up to his. ‘But I needed somebody special. I had almost given up hope of ever finding you. When you did turn up, it wasn’t love at first sight. Do you realise that, if you hadn’t defied me that first day, if you’d taken my cheque and done what I wanted—got lost—our paths would have diverged, never to cross again? Now, I can’t bear to think of you out there, alone in the world, with no one to love and protect you.’

  Later they had dinner at Le Thoumieux, in the seventh arrondissement not far from the Eiffel Tower. It was, so Grey told her, a classic turn-of-the-nineteenth-century bistro, with banquette seats, walls lined with huge mirrors, gilt chandeliers and waiters wearing huge white aprons.

  The speciality of the house was duck, either confit de canard, the preserved duck, or the cassoulet, a traditional white bean, sausage and duck stew.

  ‘If we have the stew, we’d better pass on a starter. It was created to satisfy hard-working country people’s appetites,’ said Grey.

  ‘In spite of the quails’ eggs, I feel amazingly hungry,’ said Lucia. ‘Maybe it’s making love that has whipped up my appetite.’ After their walk, they had returned to the hotel and spent another hour of delirious pleasure in bed.

  ‘Don’t worry: sex uses up lots of calories,’ said Grey, the amusement in his eyes betraying that he was teasing her. ‘Anyway you can afford to put on a pound or two. Curvy women are much more attractive than the twig insects in the fashion magazines.’

  The delight of being on these easy, bantering terms with him was a joy it would take her some time to get used to. But even though she was now very close to perfect happiness, the thought of his family’s reactions was a cloud in the sky that could be ignored for the time being but was not going to go away. She could only hope there wasn’t a storm brewing up which, even if it could not destroy their love, could leave a trail of bad feelings and bitter reproaches in its wake.