The Garnett Marriage Pact

Her skin flushed as she realised he had seen her recoil. Rather shakily she asked him, ‘What was it you wanted to know—about the computer, I mean?’ She was desperately conscious that while she was conversing quite normally with him on the surface, at another, deeper, more primitive level she was acutely aware of him in a way that set off a thousand alarm bells ringing in her nerve-endings.

‘Whether it could be adapted to help me with some of my paperwork. I was talking to a colleague who uses one.’

‘I don’t see why not. It’s an advanced model and capable of taking a variety of software.’ She forgot to be wary as her mind concentrated on what he was asking her, and as he stepped forward to put the pan into the sink his arm touched her own. A frisson of totally unfamiliar sensation shot through her, the almost silk-like brush of his skin against her own causing an electric reaction that made her muscles seize and her breath lock in her throat. She could feel him looking at her, but there was no way she could meet his eyes. To feel so vulnerable and afraid was a new feeling for her, and one she knew she did not like. Slowly backing away from him she said formally, ‘Perhaps we could discuss it in the morning.’

‘Of course.’

She saw his shoulders shrug, half fascinated by the play of flesh and muscles.

‘You really don’t like my sex, do you? Or is it just me who affects you this way?’

She stiffened and stopped moving, her voice unsteady as she lied, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Like hell.’ His arm shot out, his fingers curling round her wrist, dragging her forwards with such force that she couldn’t withstand him. He brought her to within inches of his body, refusing to slacken his grip on her, his voice dry with irony as he said, ‘You should see yourself, Jessica. You’re frozen with rejection, your body’s practically screaming at me to let you go, and you do that every time I come anywhere near you. Oh, don’t worry, I’m going to let you go.’

When he released her, her whole body started to shake and she stepped back from him immediately, at a loss to understand the dark anger glittering in his eyes. She couldn’t endure another moment in the kitchen with him, and forgetting her thirst she turned and stumbled towards the door.

All the way up the stairs her heart thudded against the wall of her chest, her legs so weak that she could feel them tremble. She was as unable to explain her own reaction as she was to understand Lyle’s response to it.

CHAPTER FIVE

LIKE THE WARNING implicit in a spasmodically aching tooth, her inability to be totally open and honest with herself whenever she tried to rationalise her reactions to Lyle continued to niggle at Jessica’s conscience. The tiny spurts of adrenalin that raced through her veins whenever he came too close to her urged flight rather than fight, caution rather than confrontation, but what was there

after all to confront him about?

Once his initial antipathy towards their marriage had subsided, in so far as the terms of their contract were concerned he was practically a model husband. He had even explained to her that part of his original irritation had sprung from the fact that at the time Justine had delivered her ultimatum he had been right in the middle of the hay-fever season, with all its attendant extra work.

The hours he worked honestly appalled Jessica, and she found herself getting illogically irate about the unfairness of a system that demanded so much from one man. Her tentative suggestion that she might be able to help him to process his work on to the computer he was thinking of buying, regretted the moment she had made it, had been surprisingly well received, and for the last ten days or so they had spent an hour or more together each evening after surgery, and once the boys were in bed, steadily working through his files.

Watching him surreptitiously to observe him, Jessica was caught off-guard by the degree to which her own perceptions of him had changed. The ill-mannered, arrogant man she had first come up against had virtually been superseded by the caring, hard-working, if sometimes understandably irritable human being she was discovering him to be.

As they worked together in his office, sometimes he would make a comment as he handed her a file.

‘Mrs Meadows,’ he said briefly handing her a particularly bulky folder. ‘She’s sixty-two years old and suffering from senile dementia. Her condition has grown progressively worse over the last four years, and there’s very little we can do to help her. And there are thousands of people suffering from the same affliction.’ He frowned and got up from his desk, going to stand in front of the window. Without looking at him, Jessica knew that his frown was deepening; that his concern for the plight of Mrs Meadows was genuine and went deep.

‘And it isn’t just Mrs Meadows herself who suffers; her complaint affects her whole family—or what’s left of it,’ he turned round, and grimaced faintly. ‘Mrs Meadows lives with her daughter because technically senile dementia is not a condition that requires the patient to be hospitalised. However, with her it has now reached the stage where she’s virtually bedridden, although no bed can be found for her in either our local hospital or the old people’s home, so the burden of caring for Mrs Meadows falls on her married daughter. And it is a burden. Mrs Meadows requires twenty-four-hour-a-day care—like a small child, she cannot be safely left. Imagine the burden that places on her daughter. Because of it her marriage has broken up—her husband simply could not endure life with a wife who was constantly tied to someone else, never able to go out with him or take part in any activities that meant leaving her mother alone.

‘They have three children, and the whole family live in a rented three-bedroomed cottage. The eldest girl has just left home—she’s sixteen, still little more than a child, but she says she won’t live at home any more. She’s both resentful of her mother because of the time she has to give to her grandmother, and frightened that as she gets older she too will be pressed into the same caring role as her mother. The most damnable thing of all is that because of the care she receives from her daughter, Mrs Meadows could well live, physically at least, for another twenty years.’

Jessica was horrified by what he was telling her. ‘But surely the Social Services…’

‘They do what they can, but they’re already overstretched. If there were the money available Mrs Meadows could go into private care, but there isn’t. It’s a problem to which there’s no answer, and Mrs Meadows’s daughter is only one of hundreds of thousands of women all over this country who have virtually had to give up any idea of living what the rest of us consider to be a normal life, because of the burden of looking after older relatives. In a hospital patients are bodies, symptoms and operations, but as a GP…’

He shook his head without finishing what he had been saying and went back to his desk to extract another file.

‘Mrs Meadway…’

* * *

THE WEATHER had suddenly turned hot; not a pleasant heat, but a muggy, threatening one, sultry with storm warnings.

Jessica was out in the garden. She found the work both therapeutic and relaxing. With both boys at home she didn’t have much time to work on her book and had put it on one side. It was less than two months since she and Lyle had married, and yet strangely now she could not imagine any other life.

Andrea’s pregnancy was advancing smoothly. Her sister had driven over to see her the previous week, and Jessica had been delighted to see how much calmer she was. The boys too were benefiting from her marriage. They turned to her more and more, and only this morning James had hugged her impulsively. She put down her trowel and sat back on her heels, remembering. She had been sorting out the washing and had shouted at him on discovering a rip in his new jeans. To her amazement, instead of being suitably penitent he had rushed over to her and hugged her fiercely, mumbling in explanation as he drew away, ‘When you shout you sound like a real mother.’

A real mother… Was that what she was becoming? Certainly she was more emotionally involved with the boys than she had ever imagined possible. She derived pleasure from their company even when they exasperated her. The feeling she had for them was in no way mawkish or sentimental, but it was a form of love, she recognised, startled by the discovery. How quietly and compellingly it had crept up on her, this concern and involvement with their lives, creating a bond which she knew she would hate to see severed. Her feelings for them had added a new dimension to her life; before she had loved Andrea, but now her relationship with the boys had brought a…yes, a richness to her life…a certain inner tranquillity she had not experienced from her literary and financial successes.

So this then was love, this mutual need and sharing of experiences, this knowing that in addition to teaching the boys, she was herself learning from them. Suddenly it struck her how acutely shut out Lyle must feel. Although James did not share Stuart’s resentment of their father, neither of them sought out Lyle’s company in the way they sought out hers. And now that she knew him better she realised how bitter this must make him feel. He was a complex man, and one who did not reveal himself easily to others. It gave her a warm, pleasurable sense of euphoria to know that when they were working together he shared with her some of his most intimate feelings, opening barriers which she sensed had been carefully constructed to keep the world at bay.