For Better for Worse

‘Look, Vanessa,’ Eleanor began impatiently, and then stopped. On another occasion she might have just laughed; as it was she felt too drained, too shaken by her own fears about what might have happened, her own guilt for not being more aware, for being so gullible and foolish, to do anything other than to remain silent.

She would have to tell Marcus, of course. Not to punish Vanessa but for her own protection. There was obviously no point in her trying to explain to the girl the very real danger she could have been inviting, never mind discuss with her how she really felt about the deceit involved in setting up the meeting in the first place.

Teenage girls liked and even needed secrets they could share with one another, giggles, whispered conversations, long, deep talks about boys and ‘things’. Letting them have secrets, respecting their privacy and acknowledging their transition from the protected dependency of childhood to the independence of adulthood were one thing; tolerating and accepting outright deceit, coupled with the teenagers’ awareness that they were being deceitful and why, was another.

* * *

Eleanor tensed as she picked up the post which had been delivered while they were out. Almost immediately on their return to the house the two girls had gone upstairs to Vanessa’s room and the loudness of the music now coming from it was beginning to make Eleanor’s teeth ache as well as her head.

As she looked through the mail she wondered how long it would be before the neighbours started to complain about the noise.

Perhaps that was something she ought to have pointed out to Vanessa, she decided ruefully—the advantages of living in isolation with no one to complain about any noisy teenage predilection for over-loud music!

She frowned, pausing to study a typed envelope addressed to her in French bearing a French stamp.

Assuming it was from Louise and would contain the signed papers she needed to complete the final winding up of the partnership, Eleanor put the rest of the post down and opened it.

It wasn’t from Louise. Much to her astonishment it was from Pierre Colbert, a totally unexpected follow-up to their meeting, explaining that since he had been unable to get a response from her partner to his request for her private fax or telephone number he was having to write to her.

What he wanted to know was whether she would still be interested in taking on some of his translation work. He had contacted her partner—who had written to him informing him of the dissolution of their partnership in the first instance—hoping to discover whether he could get in touch with Eleanor, since he had been unable to get any reply from her office telephone. Eleanor’s frown intensified as she read this, since one of the few duties Louise had taken on after they had agreed to end the partnership had been that she would make arrangements for their telephone and fax calls to be diverted to Eleanor’s home number. Now it seemed that, instead, not just her own calls but Eleanor’s as well were being diverted, but to Louise’s number.

Now, though, there was some urgency in the matter, as he was due to begin a business trip to the Far East at the end of the month and had really wished to have a meeting with her before this in order that they could talk. If Eleanor was interested in his translation work, he went on to say, he had hoped that she would be able to travel to Provence where he had his headquarters, at his expense of course, so that they could discuss everything. If she was interested and felt able to take the work on he asked that she telephone him, adding that, unfortunately, the only time he would be able to see her now would be during the following ten days.

Shakily Eleanor put down the letter. She had had to accept the rift which had developed between herself and Louise and the loss of someone whom she hadn’t seen just as a business partner but as a friend as well, but this new evidence of Louise’s underhandedness still had the power to hurt her.

Louise was not proficient in modern European languages and could surely never have hoped to get Pierre Colbert to give her the contract, which meant that her only purpose in neglecting to organise the passing on of her own telephone number to him had been mean-spiritedness and nastiness. She had obviously felt obliged to give him her home address, but Louise must have hoped the news of the work would come too late—if at all.

What hurt even more was that Louise knew how concerned she had been about losing work through the break-up of their partnership; she had even admitted then that she was especially anxious to do as much as she could to maintain the level of her income because of the expense of moving house.

Yes, Louise knew how much this contract would have meant to her, and if she had been able to be in contact with Pierre Colbert in time she could perhaps have arranged to see him earlier. As it was… She sighed as she studied the date of the letter. As it was, there was no way she could go to France while she had Vanessa and Sasha here, and since Pierre Colbert specified that he wanted to have something sorted out before he left for the Far East that must surely mean that he already had someone else in mind should she not be able to take on the contract.

Later in the evening, when she was discussing the letter with Marcus, she told him tiredly, ‘It’s impossible for me to go, of course. I shall have to ring Monsieur Colbert and tell him.’

Marcus frowned as he listened to her. What had happened to the Eleanor he had fallen in love with and married; the Eleanor who had charmed and delighted him with her laughter and her happy, confident, positive attitude towards life? That Eleanor had always had time to listen to his problems, to be interested and involved in h

is life. That Eleanor had made him feel that he featured prominently in her life. This Eleanor seemed to be more interested in a house than she was in him. A house and their children. Even when they were in bed together at night she talked about it, about them, worried about it.

What was wrong with him? he asked himself irritably. He was a man, not a boy, who ought to know himself well enough to understand that the irritation, the resentment, the jealousy almost he was feeling now came not from Eleanor’s preoccupation with Broughton House, but with the spill-over from his own childhood feeling that his mother did not love him; that the mere fact that he belonged to the same sex as his poor despised father made it impossible for her to love him.

His grandmother’s attitude towards him had reinforced this feeling, and so had his first marriage to Julia.

It had taken him a long time to accept that a part of him must have deliberately chosen as his first wife a woman who he should have known instinctively would cause him to repeat within his relationship with her the same needy rejected role he had experienced with his mother and grandmother.

With Eleanor it had been different; right from the start he had not merely been attracted to her physically, but had also been aware of how very different she was from the other women who had taken prominent roles in his life. Eleanor had a vulnerability, a gentleness, a warmth and genuine compassion for others that he now recognised they had lacked.

In the initial stages of their relationship, her sexual hesitancy and insecurity had helped to bond them together, his awareness of her insecurity making it easier for him to acknowledge, even if it was only privately to himself, his own emotional need. Her relationship with her sons, her love and care of them had never made him feel threatened or jealous. Her agreement that their relationship, their love for one another was strong enough not to need any additional cementing with the conception of a child of their own had strengthened not just his love for her, but his feeling of security as well.

And yet now, he recognised, he not only felt angry and resentful, he also felt threatened somehow too.

Because of a house? Because of the way Vanessa spoke to her? Why were they important enough to her to dominate their relationship? Wasn’t what they shared enough? Did she, despite all she had said to him, perhaps not love him as totally as he had thought? Was this obsession she had over the house just a way of trying to conceal from herself, from them both her awareness that their relationship, their love was not enough for her? Marcus’s legal training had taught him to be analytical and logical, just as his early upbringing had taught him to conceal his emotions and to deny the pain they caused him.

Now, as he listened to Eleanor listing all the things she had to do, all the small problems which were beginning to dominate her life, he tried to confront the tidal swell of resentment and fear sweeping through him with calm logic, to tell himself that it was ridiculous to feel such resentment. But was he being ridiculous? Look at the way she was now denying herself the opportunity of taking on this new contract, and all because she had to be here for the house…

He took a deep, supposedly calming breath and then to his own shock heard himself exclaiming harshly, ‘For God’s sake, Nell, forget the house! The whole purpose of buying the damn thing in the first place was to ease our problems, not cause us more.’

He winced as he heard the tension in his own voice and saw the way Eleanor reacted to him, almost physically flinching back from him, shock and hurt registering in her eyes as she glanced at him and then looked quickly away again… almost as though she couldn’t bear to look at him.

‘Go away… just go away… I can’t even bring myself to look at you.’ That was what his mother had said to him, on more than one occasion when he had done something wrong: broken one of the many rules which had governed his childhood.