Penny Jordan (5 page)

'I wasn't criticising, my dear. I think it's an excellent idea.'

'Do you? Good. In fact, I've been wondering if we mightn't use it somehow at The Houses.'

'The Houses' were the units of accommodation originally sponsored and started by Ben Crighton's sister Ruth to provide secure homes for single mothers and their babies. They had since been extended to provide not just accommodation and rooms where young fathers could visit their children, but also to give access to educational opportunities to help equip the young mothers to earn their own living.

'What are you planning to do?' Jenny asked Maddy in some amusement. Train all our teenage mums as potential herbalists?'

Maddy laughed. 'No, of course not. No, what I was thinking was that we could perhaps utilise the kitchen garden here and combine a pro-gramme on gardening with nutritional awareness and simple, basic home remedies of the type our grandmothers would have used. It would be another step towards making our mums independent and add to their sense of self-worth.'

'Well, it's certainly worth thinking about,'

Jenny agreed.

After her late marriage to the man she had loved and believed lost to her, the father of her illegitimate daughter, Ruth had handed over day-to-day control of the charity she had founded to Jenny and Maddy, thus allowing her to split her time between her home in Haslewich and her family in America.

'Mmm...and you know that land that was used for allotments—the land the council owns down by the river—it's all overgrown and untidy now.

Well, I was thinking, if we could persuade them to allow us to use it, the boys could perhaps be encouraged to clear it. It could be a community project'

As she listened to the enthusiasm in her daughter-in-law's voice, Jenny reflected that Ruth couldn't have chosen anyone better to be her suc-cessor. Maddy had transformed herself from the shy, downtrodden bride Max had married into a woman of such enormous capability and compassion,'of such energy and love, that Jenny felt blessed to have her as a member of the family.

'Joss is most concerned about Ben,' she confessed quietly to her daughter-in-law. 'He asked Jon if he thought David would ever come home.'

Maddy gave the older woman an understanding look. 'Gramps has become increasingly with-drawn and morose, as you know, but when he does speak, increasingly the sole topic of his conversation is David, and just recently he's no longer talking about
if
David comes back but
when
he comes back.'

'Oh dear,' Jenny sighed. 'Do you think...?'

Maddy shook her head. 'Oh, no, he's perfectly sensible. No sign of any dementia, according to Dr Forbes. No. I think that Ben is just so desperate to have David home, so determined that he
will
come home, that he's convinced himself that it
is
going to happen. Do you think he will come back?' Maddy asked.

'I don't know,' Jenny replied thoughtfully. 'He wasn't...isn't...like Jon. He...'

'He's like Max was before,' Maddy agreed.

'Yes, I know.'

'Well, yes, but David never really had that...that hard-edged aggression of Max's,'

Jenny told her. 'He was selfish, yes, breathtak-ingly so, but weak. He must have known for years about Tiggy's eating disorder,' Jenny used the nickname for Tania the whole family knew her by, 'but he never once attempted to do anything about it so far as we can tell. He never made any attempt to defend Olivia from Ben's unkindness when she was growing up or to encourage her in her ambition to become a solicitor. And as for poor little Jack...'

'Olivia has always said that he wasn't a good father.'

'No, he wasn't,' Jenny concurred soberly and then felt obliged to add in her brother-in-law's defence much as she knew Jon would have done,

'But against that you have to set his upbringing and the appalling indulgence with which Ben treated him. He put David on a pedestal so high that it not only gave him a warped idea of his own importance, but it must have been frightening for him at times.'

'Frightening?' Maddy queried.

'Mmm... He must have worried about falling off it,' Jenny told her simply. 'And Ben never stopped insisting to Jon that he must virtually devote his life to his first-born twin brother. He also paradoxically and probably without thinking deliberately did everything he could to drive a wedge between them. Their loyalty to one another was never left to develop naturally. Jon was practically ordered to put David first.

'It all stemmed, of course, from the fact that Ben lost his own twin brother at birth. His mother, who I am sure never realised what she was doing and was perhaps following the way of the times, seems to have brought Ben up in the belief that his dead brother would have been a saint and that Ben's life and hers were blighted because he was not there to share it with them.

'Having a twin is such a special relationship,'

Jenny added soberly. 'To have another person made in one's exact physical image and to have shared the intimacy of the womb with him and yet to know oneself to be completely separate from him.'

'Olivia would hate it if David were to return,'

Maddy said with insight.

'She does have scant reason to want him back.

As we've agreed, he wasn't a good father. Add to that the fact that she had to deal with not just her mother's bulimia but David's fraud, as well, at a time when her own relationship with Caspar was going through a bad patch, and I can understand why she feels so negatively towards him.'

'Yes, so can I.' Very carefully, Maddy drew an abstract outline on the kitchen table with her fin-gernail before saying slowly to Jenny, 'I don't think Olivia is feeling too happy at the moment.'

As she lifted her head and looked into Jenny's eyes, the older woman's heart sank. Olivia was as close and as dear to her as one of her own daughters—more so in some ways—and although Olivia had said nothing to her, Jenny, too, had noticed how strained and unhappy she was looking.

'Jon has told her that she is working far too hard,' Jenny responded.

There was a small pause and then Maddy said uncertainly, 'You don't think there's anything wrong between her and Caspar, do you?'

Jenny looked searchingly at her. 'What makes you ask that?'

'Nothing. Well, nothing I can explain logi-cally,' Maddy admitted. 'It's just...well, I've noticed whenever I go round that there's a sort of atmosphere.'

'Olivia has mentioned that she feels that Caspar ought to refuse an invitation they've received to attend a wedding in the family,' Jenny told her carefully. 'Perhaps...'

'No, Olivia told me about that. I think it's more than that. They just don't...they just don't seem happy together any more,' Maddy told her hesitantly. 'And the children...' She stopped and shook her head. 'Olivia isn't the type to discuss her most personal thoughts and feelings freely, but I know how much you and Jon think of her and would hate—'

'Olivia has always been a very private person,'

Jenny quickly agreed. 'Her home life made her very independent from an early age. That was one of the things that helped her to bond so closely with Caspar, I think, the fact that they both experienced difficult childhoods, Caspar with his parents' constant remarriages and Olivia with David and Tiggy's problems. We were very close when Olivia was younger, but she seems to have changed since Alex's birth.' Jenny gave a small sigh. 'I suppose it's only to be expected—she has Caspar now and the children, and Caspar adores Amelia and Alex. He's a wonderful father.'

'Yes, I know,' Maddy agreed, turning away from Jenny as she asked a little awkwardly, 'I was wondering if
that
could be part of the problem.

Oh, I know that Olivia loves them, too, but—'

'You think that she might be a little resentful of the fact that because of their different careers, Caspar has taken over the main parenting role?'

Jenny guessed. 'Olivia loves her children,' she added protectively.

'Her children—yes,' Maddy replied before saying uncomfortably, 'I probably shouldn't mention this, but the other week when we were over there for dinner, Olivia really snapped at Caspar over something trifling and it wasn't just an ordinary husband-and-wife grizzle. She's told me, too, that she thinks Caspar has become far too protective of the children. Whilst we were there, she said to him, quite vehemently, that Haslewich wasn't New York.'

'Max is a very caring father, too,' Jenny said.

'Mmm...but not to the extent of correcting me about what size socks the children wear and whether or not they need new underwear,' Maddy told her simply. 'To be quite honest, I can imagine that in Olivia's shoes I might easily feel just a little shut out and I—'

'You didn't have Olivia's upbringing when she learned in the most painful way that as a girl, as
herself,
she wasn't properly valued. I understand what you're saying and I
can
see the problem, but
seeing
it and knowing what to
do
about it are two different things.'

'Yes, I know. I did offer to have the children for a weekend so the two of them could go away together, but Olivia said that they simply didn't have the time. "I'm far too busy at work" and

"Caspar would never leave the children" were her exact words.'

'Mmm...' Jenny was thoughtful.

'Oh, and speaking of children, I almost forgot.

Did Leo say anything to you about seeing a strange man?'

'No!' Jenny denied immediately, looking alarmed. 'Where? What...?'

'Well, you know what a vivid imagination my son's got.' Maddy gave Jenny a rueful look. 'But he keeps talking about a "nice man" who he wants to be his friend. He says he's seen him in the garden. "Grampy Man" he calls him, whatever that means! But whenever we've gone out to look, we haven't seen a sign of anyone.'

'Oh, Maddy, have you told the police? These days...'

'Not yet. Leo knows, of course, about not talking to strangers or going near them, but the odd thing is that he keeps referring to this man as a nice man, but when I asked him what he meant he couldn't explain. He's normally very cautious, too, but—'

'Where
exactly has he seen him?' Jenny asked worriedly.

'In the garden. But when I wanted to know what the man was doing, Leo said, "Nothing. He was just standing looking." Not at him, apparently, but at the house.'

'I think you really ought to mention it to the police,' Jenny cautioned.

'Yes, but if it's just some poor itinerant looking for an empty shed to spend the night in—'

'Maddy, you've got a heart of gold,' Jenny told her, shaking her head.

'Maybe, but I'm still making sure that the children don't go out of my sight when they're in the garden,' Maddy assured her.

As the grandfather clock on the stairs struck the hour, Maddy gave a small groan.

'Is that the time? I haven't given Ben his medicine yet this afternoon.'

Jenny laughed not unsympathetically as she told her, 'Perhaps if your herbalist's remedies work, you won't have to any more.'

Maddy laughed with her. 'Wouldn't
that
be something? You wouldn't believe the lengths he goes to not to have to take his pills and yet, after refusing them, he goes on to complain about the pain he's in. He says they make him feel sleepy and he's even accused us of trying to sedate him into senility. He apologises afterwards, of course, but when he's having a bad day...' She shook her head.

'You're a saint. Do you know that?' Jenny told her fondly as she got up and gave her a loving hug.

' . . . M A D D Y WAS SAYING
that when she and Max went to dinner with Olivia and Caspar, Olivia was... Jon, you aren't listening to a word I'm saying,' Jenny protested.

'Sorry, Jen. What was that?' Jon apologised, giving his wife a penitent look.

'I was just trying to talk to you about how concerned both Maddy and I are about Olivia and Caspar,' Jenny told him mock sternly and then sighed and asked him more gently, 'What is it, Jon? What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' he denied swiftly, too swiftly in Jenny's wifely opinion.

'Yes, there is,' she insisted. 'Tell me.'

'It's David,' Jon admitted with reluctance. 'I just can't stop
thinking
about him. I don't want to. Heaven knows I've got a hundred other things I
ought
to be thinking about—at least—but no matter how hard I try to keep him out, he keeps coming into my mind.'

Because she understood and loved him, instead of allowing him to see her curiosity by demanding farther details, she simply smiled and said non-chalantly, 'Oh, I expect it's just because we've been talking about him recently.'

'Mmm...that's what I thought,' Jon agreed in relief. 'Where are you going?' he asked as Jenny suddenly got up out of her armchair and hurried towards the sitting-room door.

'Oh, I just remembered that I need to give Katie a ring. She was saying the other day that she had no idea what to get her mother-in-law for her birthday and I saw the very thing for her in the shop, the prettiest Dresden inkstand.'

The antiques shop in Haslewich, which had originally been owned and run by Jenny and her partner, Guy Cooke, but which was now owned solely by Guy and run by one of his cousins, Didi, was a favourite stopping-off point for Jenny whenever she went into town. Still, Jon couldn't help giving a faint, pained male sigh of incomprehension and bewilderment at his wife's sudden and to him inexplicable need to speak with their daughter right in the middle of a discussion about something else.

'I thought you wanted to talk to
me
about Olivia and Caspar,' Jon complained.

'Yes. I did...I do,' Jenny agreed. 'But you know what I'm like. If I don't ring Katie now and tell her about the inkstand, I'll probably forget.'

Jon blinked a little in surprise at this disarming statement since, as he had good cause to know, Jenny never forgot
anything.
She could, he often privately thought, have masterminded the provi-sioning and deployment of an army were she called upon to do so, so excellent was her grasp on all the many different threads of her life. Still, who was he as a mere male, a mere
husband,
to question the intricate thought patterns of a master tactician?