Stronger than Yearning

Hiding her shock at the question Jenna tried to appear calm. ‘I shouldn’t think so. That item in the paper was just gossip-column stuff, Lucy—I’ve already told you, we only met at the party by the merest chance.’

‘I wanted to go and see him when we heard about the accident,’ Lucy blurted out. ‘I like him.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Jenna snapped. ‘Now, will you please stop talking about the man.’

Lucy lapsed into a sulky silence, and the miles sped past. They stopped for lunch at a small hotel that Jenna had patronised before. The head waiter remembered her, and they were shown to a small private table.

The conversation between them was stilted, Lucy making only monosyllabic responses to Jenna’s questions.

‘I’ll ring you on Wednesday to see how you’re getting on, and if you’ve forgotten anything,’ Jenna suggested when they headed back to the car after lunch. She quickly checked herself to amend, ‘No, not Wednesday, I forgot. That’s the day I think I’ll be going to Yorkshire with James Allingham…It will have to be——’

‘You’re going to Yorkshire with James? You said you didn’t like him,’ Lucy accused.

‘I don’t. This is a business matter. He has some documents relating to the old Hall. He wants to look over the house again and I’ve agreed. In return he’s going to let me see certain papers and diaries relating to the original decoration of the house.’

‘Business!’ Lucy said bitterly, curling her upper lip, but there was a speculative look in her eye that warned Jenna that Lucy did not entirely believe her explanation. Teenage girls were so prone to romantic daydreams—s

he had been herself in the days before Rachel’s death.

‘Janet’s mother got married again at Christmas,’ Lucy supplied thoughtfully after a small silence. ‘Janet really likes her step-father, she says he’s great. He’s going to buy her a car for her seventeenth birthday and he’s taking them all to America for their holidays this year…’

Jenna’s mouth thinned slightly. Was Lucy seriously suggesting that she wanted a step-father? A feeling of guilt attacked her. Was it so strange that she should? After all, Bill and Nancy had both warned her that Lucy needed a man in her life to whom she could relate. It seemed the whole world was determined to get her married off, Jenna reflected grimly, as the miles passed, if not for financial reasons then for emotional ones. Was she being selfish in depriving Lucy of a father-figure? But who was there in her life who could fulfil that role? Most of the men she knew were business acquaintances, mainly ambitious, artistic types, far too vain to want to play father to a teenage girl.

They arrived at the school in the middle of the afternoon. The car park was already quite busy with parents’ cars.

As an older girl Lucy shared a very pretty room with a classmate. The school, although strict, did not believe in an austere regime; the food was good and healthy, the girls were encouraged to develop their own individuality, and there were many opportunities to pursue art and sport leisure interests. The school also had an excellent reputation and the headmistress was a woman who was genuinely caring about the girls under her authority, but still Lucy was not happy.

They said goodbye awkwardly, Lucy turning away as Jenna bent to kiss her. This aversion to being touched by her was something painfully new and hurtful, but Jenna refused to let Lucy see her chagrin.

She was just heading back to her car when the Headmistress’s secretary caught up with her.

‘Ms Stevens, Mrs Goodman would like to have a word with you if you can spare the time.’

‘Of course.’

Norma Goodman was a tall, elegant woman in her mid-fifties. Her grey hair was fashionably styled, her make-up and clothes immaculate. Nothing about her was remotely headmistressy, and she greeted Jenna warmly, offering a glass of sherry.

‘I’d better not, I’m driving back, and I have the lowest alcohol tolerance of anyone I know,’ Jenna admitted wryly.

They exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, Norma Goodman expressing her admiration of a colour scheme Jenna had recently organised for a mutual acquaintance.

Then, with the barest hesitation in her manner, she walked over to the window that looked out on to the front of the school. After pausing for a few seconds, she turned to face Jenna, and what Jenna saw in her face made her heart sink.

‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it?’ she asked tensely.

‘Yes…I’m afraid so. She’s an extremely intelligent girl you know, one of the brightest we have—definitely Oxbridge material. But she can’t settle here, and because of that she isn’t able to give her best attention to her work. In our pre-enlightenment days she would have been described as a bad influence on the rest of the class, but now we know that these pupils, who seem determined to disrupt their classes and flout authority continuously, are normally suffering from some deep-seated emotional problem. In Lucy’s case, and from the talks I’ve had with her, there can be no doubt that she resents being a boarder…’

‘And she resents me,’ Jenna supplied tiredly. ‘I know. Just lately we don’t seem to be able to get on at all. She seems to be obsessed with the fact that she doesn’t know the identity of her father.’

‘Surely not entirely unusual in a girl of her age,’ Norma Goodman suggested gently. ‘I think it’s a natural human desire to know one’s antecedents. Lucy is undeniably one of those girls who responds best to masculine authority. She isn’t alone in that, of course.’ She looked gravely at Jenna and added, ‘I wonder if you realise fully just what that could mean. In a very short space of time she will be eighteen and adult, at least according to the laws of this country—that means free of all parental control—free to vote, and also free to marry. Far too often I’ve seen what happens to a girl of eighteen who marries for a parental substitute—as I’ve just said Lucy is an extremely intelligent girl. Of course, like most girls of her age a career is the last thing on her mind. It’s almost impossible for them to visualise being forty, and alone with a couple of children to bring up, but regrettably that is what happens to a good many women.

‘Here at Chalmhurst we don’t teach our girls to despise marriage and motherhood, but neither do we advocate it as an escape from reality and responsibility. We like to think we teach our pupils to be self-sufficient, whether as a wife and mother or as a single woman. We try to make them understand that leaning on emotional crutches and other people is false security and that the only real security in life comes from being self-reliant.

‘In Lucy’s case, I suspect she is deliberately shutting her ears to what we have to say. I know all teenage girls dream of marriage and motherhood, but with Lucy I’m afraid it’s more than that. Her lack of a father seems to have given rise to an almost obsessive desire to form her own family unit. She’ll leave here…and marry within twelve months, almost certainly to a man old enough to be her father. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t dream of imposing my personal views on the life of my pupils—for some girls such a marriage could work, but not for Lucy. I suspect by the time she’s in her mid-twenties, she’d feel trapped; her independence and intelligence would reassert themselves, but by then it would be too late. She’d be trapped in a little-girl relationship with an immature father-figure—probably with a couple of children dependent on her—and my view is that because of her own background she will stick by the marriage for the sake of those children.’

The picture she was painting was not a pleasant one, but it was all too possible.

‘Is it really not possible to tell Lucy the identity of her father?’ Norma Goodman pressed gently. ‘It would give her someone to relate to if nothing else.’