Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘Yes. I do realise that, Jenny,’ Jon snapped, interrupting her. ‘But it would make my life much easier if certain members of this family would stop trying to decide what’s best for me and allow me to make my own decisions.’

Jenny stared at him. She knew, of course, that by ‘certain members of this family’ he meant her, but his criticism was so grossly unfair and out of character that she could hardly believe he had uttered it.

‘Jon,’ she protested.

‘I have to go and see Tiggy,’ he told her curtly. ‘She’s getting herself into a terrible state over some problem or other with the bank and I promised her I’d go round.’

‘Olivia’s at home,’ Jenny reminded him, trying to keep her voice deliberately neutral. ‘I’m sure if she knew that Tiggy was worrying about something like that, she would sort it out for her.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she would,’ Jon agreed, ‘but perhaps Tiggy feels more at ease asking for my help rather than Olivia’s. She feels that Olivia disapproves of her … considers her too irresponsible. They do have rather conflicting personalities. You’ve said so yourself,’ he reminded her when Jenny remained silent.

‘I doubt I ever said that they have conflicting personalities,’ Jenny corrected him gently. ‘Different, yes. But I’m sure you’re wrong in accusing Olivia of disapproving of her mother.’

‘I’m not accusing Olivia of anything. Just repeating what Tiggy told me … a confidence she’s given me,’ he underlined. ‘You might try to be a little bit more compassionate and understanding yourself, Jen. I know you and Tiggy aren’t exactly close and that in the past she has tended to be rather dizzy, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel …’

He paused, looking uncomfortable and self-conscious as though aware that he had said too much, betrayed too much. But since when had he felt it necessary to defend Tiggy from her? Jenny wondered grimly, and more importantly, why should he feel it necessary to do so?

‘Olivia has always been much closer to you than she has to her mother,’ he pointed out, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Jenny noticed, and the way he was playing with the cutlery she’d been laying on the table for supper gave away his inner tension.

‘Olivia and I have always been close, yes,’ she agreed, ‘but that doesn’t mean … Tiggy can sometimes tend to overreact to situations,’ she began to explain carefully. ‘She needs—’

‘She needs help,’ Jon interrupted her, ‘and that’s not something she should be made to feel ashamed of needing.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jenny agreed. Her hands, she noticed distractedly, were trembling slightly as she reached up for a serving dish. Why? Not because Jon was defending Tiggy, surely. Uneasily she reflected on his implied criticism of her. All she had been going to say was that in her opinion Tiggy needed careful handling, but she could see that Jon was in no mood to listen to her, never mind welcome her interpretation of his sister-in-law’s volatile personality. In fact, in his present uncharacteristic mood, he would probably take any attempt on her part to put forward her own viewpoint as an unwanted disparagement of his own judgement of the situation.

Once they would have sat down together and discussed the whole thing amicably, but recently he seemed to be so touchy and on edge, taking umbrage at the slightest thing. Only the previous evening he had lost his temper with Joss just because their son had quite innocently and unintentionally knocked over some papers Jon had been working on.

Jon had apologised to Joss later, but normally such an apology would not have been necessary in the first place because her husband would never have lost his temper over such a trivial incident.

Of course, Jenny appreciated the difficulties he was facing. David was his twin after all, but knowing he was carrying a double burden of anxiety both as David’s twin and his business partner, surely it made more sense for him to welcome Olivia’s offer of assistance instead of acting as though in making it she had given him yet another set of problems to deal with.

‘Things could be worse,’ she told him mildly, trying to inject some measure of light-heartedness into the situation. ‘It could have been Max who offered to stand in for David.’

‘Max!’ Jenny was unprepared for the look of loathing that suddenly darkened his eyes. ‘No, never! Max is far too selfish, too self-obsessed, too concerned with his own needs and not anyone else’s to even think of—’

‘Jon, he’s your son,’ Jenny felt bound to remind him, disturbed by such an explosion of antagonistic emotion from a man who was normally so placid and prone to give others the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t want to have to point out to him that Max’s selfishness had been increased a hundredfold by his grandfather’s, and to some extent David’s, thorough spoiling and indulgence of him.

She herself wasn’t happy with her son’s behaviour any more than Jon, but like any mother she was sorely tempted to defend her child. She wanted Jon to see that the faults he so deplored in his elder son were the same faults to be found in his twin brother who had—or so it sometimes seemed to Jenny—been elevated in the combined consciousness of Jon and his father to a state approaching sainthood.

However, this was quite obviously not the time to remind Jon that much of what was now happening could be directly attributed to David’s own refusal to moderate his lifestyle.

‘Max may be my son,’ Jon repeated in angry disgust, ‘but as we both know he’d much rather have had David as his father—even as a child he used to revel in the fact that people often mistook him for David’s son and perhaps …’ He stopped and shook his head, then without giving Jenny the opportunity to object he got up and walked over to the door, stopping only to tell her brusquely, ‘Don’t bother with any supper for me. I’ll eat with Tiggy.’

‘Mum … where’s Dad?’

Hastily Jenny tried to regain control of her chaotic thoughts as Louise came into the kitchen.

‘He’s gone to see your Aunt Tiggy. She needs his help with something. Finish setting the table, will you please, Louise? It’s almost time for supper.’

‘Again,’ Louise grumbled as she picked up the plates. ‘He’s always over there. In fact, he might as well move in with her, then at least she wouldn’t be ringing him up all the time.’

‘This is a very difficult time for her, Louise,’ Jenny responded quietly.

‘It’s a very difficult time for all of us,’ Louise countered feelingly, ‘especially Dad.’

‘Yes, well, Olivia’s offered to come home and help your father out at the practice.’

‘Has she? I bet Caspar won’t like that. Still … I expect Hillary will do her best to comfort him. Are she and Saul going to get a divorce?’

‘Louise!’ Jenny warned. It was quite frightening at times to realise how much modern teenagers absorbed and how aware they were of adult concerns and personal problems, far more surely than when she had been a girl.

‘I like Saul. I think he’s very, very sexy,’ Louise pronounced, ignoring her. ‘I don’t suppose it will take him long to find someone else. It’s a pity that …’

‘That what?’ Jenny asked with maternal suspicion, but typically Louise refused to be drawn, simply shaking her head.

Really, in far too many ways, Louise was more adult, more knowing, than she sometimes was herself, Jenny reflected wryly. But for once her mind wasn’t fully on the potential problems Louise, far too swift and determined to emerge into womanhood, was likely to cause. Other more immediate concerns about the recent scene with Jon had left her shaken and dismayed.

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed against the threatening onslaught of tears. She dared not let Louise or anyone else see her crying. But, she wondered in silent anguish, whose shoulder was she supposed to cry on? Whose arms were supposed to hold her? Who was supposed to listen and sympathise with her pain and fears whilst her husband did all those things for someone else?

It had shocked her to hear Jon speaking so bitterly about Max. She had always felt guilty about the fact that Max and Jon weren’t closer; that Max had always instinctively turned to David. Nature perhaps wasn’t always wise in the way she passed on family traits and characteristics. She herself had always been wary of making too much of Max’s startling psychological resemblance to David rather than to Jon; she had assumed that, like her, Jon believed it was a subject best left alone.

It had disturbed her to hear the resentment in Jon’s voice and to see the accusation in his eyes. And more than that, it hurt her deeply, knowing that he had deliberately walked away without allowing her to defend herself or tell him that, given the choice, she would rather her son had inherited his virtues and his strengths rather than David’s weaknesses.

9

Jon paused uneasily as he got out of his car. There were lights shining from the upstairs window, which he knew belonged to David and Tiggy’s large bedroom—only Tiggy’s bedroom now and for some time to come if, as the specialist warned, David was going to have to remain in hospital for the present.

‘I thought the idea these days was to get the patient back on his or her feet and home as quickly as possible after a heart attack,’ Jon had commented when the specialist had taken him through his proposals for David’s treatment.

‘There are heart attacks and heart attacks,’ Mr Hayes had responded enigmatically, ‘and there are patients and patients.’

Olivia’s car was parked outside and Jon’s heart sank slightly as she opened the door to his knock.

‘Tiggy’s upstairs,’ she told him and took him through into the small sitting room that he always associated with David’s wife.

Like her, it was delicate and feminine and somehow always seemed to smell of her perfume. David had his own study on the other side of the hall, which reminded him …

‘I’d like to have a word with you before Tiggy comes down,’ Olivia told him as she handed him the glass of dry sherry she had poured him.

Jon’s heart sank a little further. He had no need to ask her what she wanted to talk to him about.

‘I know that nothing will ever persuade Gramps, and to some extent Dad, too, since he always tends to fall in line with Gramps’s views that a woman, any woman, but most especially a Crighton woman, is capable of being a competent lawyer, but I thought that you were different, Uncle Jon. I am qualified, you know, and … But from the look on your face when I offered to stand in for Dad until he’s fit enough to return to work—’

‘Olivia, I know how well qualified you are,’ Jon interrupted her dryly, ‘and as for your competence …’ He gave her a wry look. ‘We both know that you are far, far more than merely competent, but—’

‘But you still don’t want me working here in the practice.’

‘It isn’t a matter of what I may or may not want,’ Jon hedged. ‘You know—’

‘What? That Gramps doesn’t approve? You can’t run the practice on your own. It’s obvious from what Mr Hayes has told me that at least part of the cause of Dad’s heart attack was the stress he was under at work. You don’t have time to advertise and interview and—’

‘There are agencies that supply temporary cover,’ Jon started to point out, but Olivia overruled him, shaking her head, her chin firmly, stubbornly, set.

‘Yes, I know, but …’ She stopped speaking and walked impatiently over to the fireplace before turning round and demanding, ‘If I were male … if I were Max, for instance, you wouldn’t think twice about accepting my offer, and—’

‘Olivia, I promise you, any reluctance you might imagine there is on my part to take you on has nothing to do with your sex.’

‘Hasn’t it? Then prove it,’ Olivia challenged him.

Jon closed his eyes tiredly; there was no point in continuing to oppose her. He couldn’t carry the workload of the practice without help. He hadn’t had a chance to go through David’s desk or files yet, but if the backlog of work there was as large as he suspected … How could he explain to Olivia that the reason for his reluctance to accept her offer was because he … If only he had had more time. If only he had had some warning, he might have been able to …

‘It isn’t that I don’t appreciate your offer, Olivia,’ he told her quietly.

‘Good,’ she returned firmly. ‘Then that’s settled. I’ll start tomorrow morning.’

‘What’s settled?’ Tiggy demanded as she walked into the room. She was wearing some kind of housecoat-type garment, Jon noticed, a floaty, chiffony affair in soft pastels that reflected the delicate purity of her skin.

She had never been exactly robust-looking, but since David’s heart attack, she seemed even more vulnerable and fragile.

‘It’s settled that I’m going to be filling in for Dad until he’s fit enough to go back to work,’ Olivia answered her mother. She frowned slightly as she commented, ‘I thought you said you were going upstairs to get dressed.’

‘Yes, I did … I was,’ Tiggy agreed. Jon noticed she hung her head almost as though she were the child and Olivia the parent. ‘But …’ She turned to Jon, her eyes wide and appealing as she told him huskily, ‘I started thinking about David and …’ Her mouth started to tremble, her eyes filling with tears. ‘You won’t be cross with me for not getting dressed properly, will you, Jon? After all, you are family. I’m so glad you’re here,’ she added without waiting for his response. ‘The bank keeps ringing up and—’

‘I would have spoken to the bank, Tiggy,’ Olivia interrupted her. Her mother gave her a tearful look.

‘I know you would, but it’s better if Jon talks to them. He’s a man and …’

She bit her lip as Olivia replaced her empty sherry glass on the silver tray with unnecessary force.

‘Oh, Saul rang,’ Tiggy told her. ‘He wants you to ring him back.’ She waited until Olivia had left the room before turning to Jon and saying apologetically, ‘Olivia isn’t in a very good mood, I’m afraid. I think she and Caspar have had a row. Oh, Jon.’ She stopped talking, her voice suspended by her tears. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be burdening you with my problems, but I know David—’

‘Shh … it’s all right,’ Jon started to reassure her, ‘and you’re not burdening me. I want to help.’

‘Oh, Jon.’ The misty-eyed look she gave him was full of gratitude and trust. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if it hadn’t been for you. I’m not like Jenny or Olivia. It doesn’t matter what happens, they always seem able to cope, but I’m not like them.’

No, she wasn’t, Jon acknowledged. He couldn’t remember the last time that Jenny had needed him, turned to him, wanted him…. His heart missed a beat. He hadn’t let himself think about their quarrel as he drove over here.

‘Am I a nuisance, Jon? I’m sure Jenny …’

‘No, of course you aren’t.’

Later he wasn’t sure how it had happened. One moment he was reaching out automatically and a little awkwardly to pat her reassuringly on the arm; the next Tiggy was in his arms, fragile, fragrant and fatally feminine, clinging to him and crying out her anxiety and fear.

His awareness that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath the chiffon affair and that her breasts felt pert and firm came too late for him to do anything about his body’s unexpected reaction to her. He could feel the soft warmth of her breasts against his body, the scent of her filling his nostrils. He had an overwhelming urge to …

When Tiggy nervously whispered, ‘We mustn’t. Olivia might come back,’ he suddenly returned to his senses—to reality—his face flooding with hot, guilty colour as he released her and stepped awkwardly back from her, unable to look directly at her as he started to apologise.

‘No, it’s not your fault,’ Tiggy stopped him shakily before bursting out in an anguished voice, ‘Oh, Jon, you don’t know how much I’ve needed someone like you. David hasn’t … Our marriage …’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. You’re his brother … his twin.’ She gave him a sad smile. ‘But who else can I talk to … confide in … trust?’ She lifted her hand to her head.

‘My head aches so much I can’t think. There are so many things I ought to do … things that I know that Jenny would be able to do, but I just can’t …’

It hurt him that she so constantly felt the need to compare herself unfavourably with Jenny. How well he himself knew that feeling of envy, the sense of shame and self-dislike it brought, the guilt and self-contempt.

‘You and Jenny are different people,’ he told her gently.

‘Yes, I know,’ she agreed, giving him a slightly wobbly smile. ‘But I can’t help thinking that if Jenny had been David’s wife, she would have seen what was happening, she would have known … done something … I just know that everyone blames me for his heart attack,’ she confessed brokenly.

‘No, you mustn’t think that,’ Jon denied. ‘Of course it wasn’t your fault. How could it be? Look … I have to go, but don’t worry. I’ll speak to the bank in the morning.’

There was something else he had to ask … something he had to do. He paused and then took a deep breath.

‘Tiggy, I was wondering … the keys to David’s desk here, do you …?’

‘They’re upstairs,’ she told him instantly. ‘Do you want them? I’ll go and get them for you.’

She was so trusting, so guileless, he could taste the sour bile of his guilt.

‘If … if you don’t mind, there are some papers … some files.’

‘I shan’t be a moment.’

He closed his eyes as he watched her leave, his forehead beaded with sweat, his heart thumping. He silently prayed to God not to be right, not to let the suspicions that had been gathering round him like dark clouds be confirmed.

Tiggy returned, smiling her innocent triumph, as she gave him David’s keys. ‘I’m not sure which ones are for his study desk,’ she confided, her forehead puckering.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll find them,’ Jon reassured her. The telephone had started ringing and he held his breath in relief as she went to answer it.

Feeling like a thief, he hurried into David’s study, flicking through the keys Tiggy had handed him until he found the ones for the desk. The drawers were a jumble of unanswered mail and unfiled correspondence all thrown haphazardly on top of one another. He could see the familiar buff edge of the file poking out from underneath a thick, untidy wad of bank statements. His heart started to beat very fast.

He had just removed the file when the study door opened. He froze as he heard Olivia exclaiming, ‘Tiggy … Oh, Uncle Jon, it’s you.’

‘Yes. I was just getting some papers … your mother …’

Olivia frowned as she watched the awkward way he tried to conceal the buff file he had removed from her father’s desk amongst some of the papers he had picked up.

‘I, er, promised your mother I’ll ring the bank in the morning.’

‘Won’t you need to take Dad’s bank statements, then?’ Olivia suggested quietly.

‘What? Oh yes …’ He reached for them almost reluctantly as though he didn’t want to touch them, Olivia noticed.

Her instincts warned her that something was wrong. Jon looked pale, ill almost, but then none of them was exactly behaving normally at the moment. Take Saul for instance. She had telephoned him at Queensmead to discover that he wanted her advice.

‘Hillary and I have decided to separate,’ he had told her tautly. ‘She wants to go back to the States. As yet we haven’t made any plans to divorce, but I suspect it will only be a matter of time before we do so. I’m going to need a good divorce lawyer, Livvy. I want full custody of the kids. There’s no way they’re going to be passed between us like parcels and no way do I intend to be an absentee father. You’re more up to date with these things than me. Is there someone you can recommend?’

‘I’m like you. I work in industry,’ Olivia reminded him. ‘Wouldn’t Max have more idea?’

‘Max!’ Saul had snorted with derisive contempt. ‘The only ideas he’s got are how to extract more money out of Ben. Come over if you can, Livvy, please. I need someone to talk to … or are you and Caspar …?’

‘Caspar’s gone out,’ Olivia told him shortly, not wanting to tell him that she and Caspar had quarrelled.

‘So you can come over, then?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed after a small pause, ‘I can.’

She had gone into the study thinking her mother was there and intending to tell her that she was going out. She hadn’t expected to find Jon there and expected even less to see the almost guilty way he seemed to be furtively going through her father’s papers.

Tiggy appeared at the door. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked Jon.

‘Yes, yes, I have,’ he told her, adding, ‘Look, Tiggy, I must go.’

‘Yes, I know you must,’ she agreed wanly. ‘Jenny will be cross with me for keeping you so long, but you will come with me when I go to see David tomorrow, won’t you?’

‘Yes, of course I will,’ Jon assured her gently.

‘I’m going to Queensmead to see Saul,’ Olivia told her mother, then turned to Jon and asked him quietly, ‘What time shall I be at the office in the morning?’

A shadow crossed his face before he reluctantly answered, ‘I normally like to be there around eight-thirty.’

‘Fine, eight-thirty it is,’ Olivia agreed.

‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Olivia asked Saul, concern etching her features. He had met her at the door as she arrived and had plainly been waiting for her, shaking his head as she turned towards the house.

‘Do you mind if we talk outside? It’s easier for me somehow. We could walk down to the river. Remember how much you used to love it as a kid?’

‘I can remember how exasperated you got when I disturbed your fishing expeditions.’ Olivia laughed. ‘Remember the time I fell in …?’

‘Can I ever forget it? You terrified the life out of me, and I’m sure your mother thought I’d pushed you in deliberately.’

‘I’ll bet there were plenty of times when you wanted to,’ Olivia teased him.

‘The temptation was certainly there,’ he agreed wryly, ‘and I don’t just mean the temptation to give you a ducking….’

‘Oh?’ Olivia frowned as she looked questioningly at him.

‘No,’ he returned softly. ‘Dunking you wasn’t what I had in mind at all the night I caught you skinny-dipping.’

This time, Olivia’s ‘oh’ was low and vibrant with remembered teenage embarrassment. ‘It was midsummer night’s eve, and I—’

‘You were standing there perched on a rock in the middle of the river stark naked, curtsying to the moon,’ Saul interrupted her huskily, ‘and you looked—’

‘A complete idiot,’ Olivia supplied ruefully for him. ‘No … a complete naked idiot,’ she amended, tongue-in-cheek.

‘You looked like a young acolyte, a moon maiden, offering herself up in sacrifice, virginal and pure; as innocent as a child and yet as knowledgeable as Eve. I wanted to reach out to you, take hold of you. You had been in the river and I could see the water still running off your skin, your breasts, your belly, your … The moonlight turned your body the colour of moonstones, pale and almost translucent. I wanted to bury my face between your legs and lick the drops of water from your skin. I wanted to join you in your pagan nakedness, your sensual abandonment to the night and the moon, and then you turned your head and saw me and—’

‘Fell off my perch and into the river,’ Olivia finished for him shakily. She was glad of the concealing darkness around them, not because Saul had evoked the embarrassment her adolescent self had experienced at being so shamingly discovered by her so much older and more sophisticated male relative cavorting around naked in the river, but because of the sensations, the emotions, his words had aroused in her now.

‘I never knew you could be so poetic,’ she finally managed to say as she struggled to dismiss the surge of heat she could feel invading her body. It would serve no good purpose and only add fuel to embers, which, she suspected, given half a chance, could start to burn very dangerously out of control if she admitted to Saul that if he had done all those years ago any one of the things he had just described, he would have made the magic of the night complete.