Conveniently His Omnibus

‘Uncle Jon...when are you coming back?’ She paused and then held out the receiver to Sophy. ‘He’s leaving now but he wants to speak to you.’

Her hand was shaking slightly as she took the receiver from Alex.

‘Hello, Jon.’ She hoped her voice sounded calmer to him than it did to her.

‘Sorry I couldn’t make it back earlier.’

Was she imagining the constraint she thought she heard?

‘That’s okay. Was the problem more difficult to solve than you expected?’

There was an odd pause and then when Jon did speak his voice was slightly muffled. ‘Yes...yes, you could say that. I should be back by midafternoon.’

After asking her if there had been any urgent telephone calls he hung up. Now that he had rung she felt worse than she had done before. She felt as though a wall had suddenly sprung up between them, as though for some reason Jon was deliberately setting a distance between them.

The preparatory work for the dinner party kept her fingers busy but left her with not enough to occupy her mind, and by the time the mousse was chilling in the fridge and the ice cream was in the freezer, she had managed to convince herself that Jon was bitterly regretting ever having touched her. Everything that Chris had said to her was true. Jon found her just as undesirable as Chris had...

She kept herself busy, polishing the old-fashioned silver cutlery she found in one of the sideboard drawers, carefully washing china and crystal that she had also discovered tucked away in the sideboard cupboards.

She had bought an expensive white-linen tablecloth, deeply trimmed with lace, and Alex who had volunteered to help her with the silver polishing and then with the table, stopped to admire the rich gleam of the green and gold banded dinner service and the sparkle of the heavily cut crystal.

Fresh flowers brightened up the heaviness of the room and decorated the centre of the table. All she really had to do now was to prepare the salads and the chicken.

Alex watched round-eyed while she made the mayonnaise, leaving Sophy to reflect that she had after all gained something from her mother, for it was she who had taught Sophy to cook. She recognised now that she had absorbed a good deal of her mother’s housewifely skill almost without being aware of it.

At three o’clock Sophy heard a car stop outside. Instantly an explosive mixture of fear and excitement gripped her stomach. Watching Alex’s exuberant and totally natural pleasure, she wished for a moment that she too was free to welcome Jon back the way she wanted to but she had to be more circumspect, so she deliberately held back a little washing and then drying her hands, timing her arrival at the front door to coincide with Jon’s.

Her first thought was that he looked tired—far more tired than she had seen him looking before, and instinctively she reached out to touch him, withdrawing her hand as though it had been stung as she realised what she was doing.

‘You look tired.’ The words left her lips before she could stop them.

‘I could do with a shower...it’s no pleasure travelling at the moment—especially in a taxi without air conditioning.’ He bent down and picked up the overnight case he had put on the floor. ‘I’ll go up and get changed.’

‘Would you like a drink or something to eat?’

Jon paused at the foot of the stairs and shook his head. ‘No...I ate before I left.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Something he normally only did either when he was tired or when something was bothering him. Her love for him tugged at Sophy’s heart. She wanted to go up to him and wrap her arms round him but instinctively she was frightened of being rebuffed.

On Saturday afternoon Sophy made her weekly telephone call to her mother, something which was more a duty than a pleasure, especially when her mother still continued to make slightly disparaging references to Jon. For once though, she seemed uninterested in the subject of her son-in-law, rushing to tell Sophy the moment they had exchanged ‘hellos’.

‘The most shocking thing has happened—I can hardly believe it. Felicity has left Chris. Poor boy, he is absolutely devastated. He adored her, you know...spoilt her really. Of course I’ve done my best to comfort him. Girls do funny things when they’re in her condition but even so...’