THIRTY-FIVE
Putting the phone down, Ashley gazed up at the painting on the wall. It had been a gift from Ellamarie, Kate and Jenneen, “just a little something to hang in your smart new apartment,” Ellamarie had said. Ashley had cried when she opened it and found a reproduction of Claude Monet’s “A Corner of an Apartment”, featuring his wife Camille and son Jean. She wished her friends were here with her now, she so badly needed to talk to them. Turning back to Keith, she sighed as she saw that his face was still taut with anger.
“That was Conrad,” she said, needlessly waving her hand towards the telephone. “I have to meet him in his office at eight in the morning before we go to see David Burgess.”
“So the big man has spoken, and Ashley goes running.”
“He’s my boss.” She wished Keith would go back to his hotel. It was late, and she had had a long day.
“And is that all he is, Ashley? Your boss?”
“I’m not even going to bother to answer that.”
“And is that how it’s always going to be?” Keith went on. “Conrad speaks and Ashley runs? Because if it is, you’re making a big mistake as far as my son is concerned. You’re making a big mistake full stop. But I’m not going to let you ruin Alex’s life as well. I’m warning you, now. I will not allow you to take him out of the school he’s already got to know, and bring him here to New York.”
“I have custody of him,” Ashley pointed out, wishing she could find a way to end this conversation.
“Not for much longer, if I have anything to do with it. Which I will.”
Ashley paled slightly. “Look, if everything goes according to plan, I’m likely to be here for at least another five years. Maybe longer. I don’t want him to grow up without me.”
“Selfish to the end. You’ll let him grow up without me!”
“You can always visit him, you know you can.”
“New York is not exactly round the corner.”
“But we’ll be coming back often, to visit Mum and Dad.”
“For God’s sake, Ashley, just where do you get off patronising me?”
“Keith, don’t shout. You’ll only wake Alex.”
“And you don’t want him to know that his mother is planning to take him away from his father, is that it?”
“That is not the motive for bringing him here, and you know it.”
“Ashley, don’t you care about the fact that he’s English? That he was born there, that he has grown up there? Doesn’t any of that matter to you?”
“Of course it matters to me, but I don’t see that it’s so important. I think he would be better here, with me.”
“With you! You’re so damned wrapped up in yourself and that bloody agency, when will you ever find time for him?”
“I will.”
“When? For an hour after work once or twice a week, when you don’t have to stay late at the office? And what about the nights you go swanning off with Conrad Frazier? What about Alex then?”
“I don’t, as you put it, go swanning off with Conrad Frazier. We had one night out together last Thursday. It was an official function, nothing more.”
“You want it all, don’t you? You want the career, you want the social life, you want the money, you want the bloody Chairman. And it would seem any bloody chairman will do.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” said Ashley, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the heat in her face. “There is nothing between me and Conrad, you’re imagining things.”
“Imagining him taking my son to a baseball game? Imagining him take my wife to a ball?”
“I am not your wife!”
“Then why do you still wear my ring?”
Ashley looked at her left hand. She had never known quite why she continued to wear it. Perhaps it was for Alex’s sake. Now she realised how stupid it was, that it made no difference whether she wore it or not. She twisted it off her finger and handed it to him.
“Thank you, but you can keep it. No doubt the only reason you’ve taken it off now is to make room for the one you’re hoping Conrad Frazier will put there.”
“Keith, shut up, for God’s sake, shut up.”
“A harder nut to crack than you thought, is he?” he jeered. “I must say, you really have moved in to the big time. Chairman of his own advertising agency, and in New York. Makes poor Julian look positively parochial over there in London.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, there is nothing between me and Conrad and never will be. For one thing, he doesn’t even like me.”
“So it was just chance that he happened to turn up at the weekend, and take Alex riding? Because, of course, he’d do that for the son of someone he doesn’t like.”
“Maybe he likes Alex? Have you thought of that?”
“Don’t be so naive. Bit of a shock, though, when Alex came back and told you about the ‘fantastic lady’ he had met at Conrad’s. The one who’d gone riding with them. Wouldn’t you like to know who she was?”
“As a matter of fact, I do know who she was. It was Candida Rayne. She and Conrad have been seeing one another for some time. Now does that satisfy you?”
“It might satisfy me, but it obviously does nothing for you.”
“Precisely. It does nothing for me because it is none of my business.” She got up and walked across the room. She didn’t want to continue this conversation. They had to discuss Alex’s future, and his coming to New York, but she didn’t want to discuss Conrad Frazier. Not with Keith, or with anyone else, come to that.
“Well, whatever happens to you, Alex is not coming to live here, and that’s my final word.”
Ashley turned and looked at him. “It might be yours, Keith, but I can assure you, it’s not mine.”
“I’m going to fight you for custody,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I just thought I would give you fair warning. I will put it in motion the minute I get back to England. He is not coming to America. And if you want to see him, then you will have to cross the Atlantic, not me.”
Ashley’s face had turned white. She knew, from the look on his face, that Keith wasn’t bluffing, and the thought of a custody battle for her son was terrifying – and not only for what it would do to Alex. “You’ll never win,” she said. “With your past you’ll never win. No judge in his right mind will ever give you custody. You’re not stable, and you know it.”
“And you call yourself stable? Running off to New York the minute you couldn’t make a decision. Where will you run to next, Ashley, when Conrad leaves you high and dry? At least if Alex was with me he could continue his schooling in England, where it began, and where he is familiar with his surroundings. And his grandparents will be there, the grandparents who have brought him up. What kind of a mother have you been, Ashley? What kind of a mother do you call yourself?”
“He’s my son,” she spat. “And no one on God’s earth is going to take him away from me. So get that into your head now.”
“And he’s my son. And no one, least of all you, is going to take him away from me. So you think on that, Ashley darling.”
“Do you actually mean to tell me that you want the whole sordid story of the break up of our marriage to go back into court? The drunken father, the womanising father, the one who abandoned his wife and son and went off screwing someone else the night the child was born. The father who all but threatened to kill him rather than see him stay with me. Do you want all that brought up again? Alex is eight now, Keith, he will understand. Do you want him to know what you’re really like?”
“You bitch!” he snarled. “You’ll do anything, won’t you, to get what you want.”
“I don’t want him growing up with you, and if you must know, I never did. You’re no good, Keith. You’re a failure.”
He lifted his hand to strike her. She didn’t flinch. “Go on, hit me. Show us all what you’re really like. You haven’t changed, Keith, and you never will. And that’s why you will never win custody of your own son. I will see to it that you don’t.”
“You’re going to regret this, Ashley. I’m warning you, you will regret this.”
“There’s nothing you can do, and you know it.”
“Alex will stay in England with me. I’ll do everything I can to discredit you. You and your advertising lover. The man who won’t marry you. The man who will only use you, and then leave you, just like his partner did. You’re out of your league, Ashley, I’m going to take Alex away from you. I gave you your chance, but no, you chose yourself and your career instead. Well, now you’ll see just how dearly you’re going to have to pay for that.”
“If you do anything to hurt him, or to take him away from me, so help me, Keith, I’ll kill you. I swear it, I’ll kill you.”
“Then you’d better change your mind about keeping him here in New York. Because he’s never coming here to live. Never!”
Ellamarie wandered through the deserted theatre, dragging her feet and running her hands along the back of the chairs. She hadn’t seen Bob since Friday morning, and she hadn’t heard from him. Before he went he had thought that he might have been back again on Saturday night, after he’d told his wife. Or Sunday morning at the very latest. But now it was Monday morning, and there was still no sign of him.
She had rung and rung the mews house, but there was no answer. She was tempted almost beyond endurance to call his home, but managed to stop herself. And now, because she had to get out, she had come to the theatre. She hadn’t really expected him to be here, but her heart had sunk when his secretary said she hadn’t seen him.
Every minute that passed increased the fear that he had changed his mind. She fought hard against even thinking about it, but she had to face the fact that as she hadn’t heard from him, it could only mean one thing. But perhaps Linda had taken it harder than either of them realised she would. Perhaps he was having to comfort her. What if she had threatened to kill herself? He would have to stay then. It was the not knowing that tore at Ellamarie.
She looked up at the stage and pictured him standing there, his back to her, talking with the actors and making them laugh. The way he would run his fingers through his beard, his eyes belying the stem expression.
It was all over now. In her heart she knew it, and in her heart she knew that no matter what, she would always love him. Maybe it would never have worked between them, knowing what had happened that terrible night over four months ago now. But if only she could see him just one last time. To say goodbye to him and tell him that she didn’t blame him, that she understood that he could never leave his wife to take on the bastard of a rapist. She understood, and would never reproach him.
This was the meeting Nick had not been looking forward to. In fact, he had been dreading it. Now, standing face to face with Kate’s father in the library of their home in Surrey, the meeting had all the promise of failure.
Calloway’s face was stern, yet there was something close to a sneer around his mouth as he scrutinised Nick’s face. Kate had tactfully disappeared to somewhere else in the house, and there was no sign of Mrs Calloway.
“Sit down,” Calloway said, waving Nick to a chair.
“Thank you,” Nick answered, and walked across to one of the pair of neo-rococo armchairs that flanked the hearth. Calloway sat in the one opposite.
“I guess you probably know why I’m here.”
Calloway put his head to one side and continued to stare at him.
“It’s about Kate.”
“Yes.”
“We’d like to get married.” Not for the first time, it struck Nick as absurd that in this day and age he should be asking Kate’s father for permission to marry her. But it was what she had wanted.
“Yes,” said Calloway.
Nick moved slightly in his chair. It was obvious the older man was going to do nothing to help him. He cleared his throat. “It was Kate’s idea, that you and I should have this talk.”
Calloway nodded.
Nick looked around the room, along the rows of old books that Kate’s father had collected over the years. The desk beneath the window where he sometimes worked was piled high with papers, and the slightly threadbare carpet reached comfortably across the floor as if trying to eke itself out to the walls. “Well,” he said, looking back at the older man, “I expect you would like to know the date we have set.”
Calloway paused before he answered. “No, not really.”
Nick watched his face, trying to see if it would tell him anything, but it remained inscrutable. “Does that mean you won’t be coming?”
Calloway seemed to ponder the question. Finally he said: “I think you would be right in that assumption.”
“But surely you must know how much it would mean to Kate, to have you there?”
Again Calloway seemed to think about this. “It might,” he answered. “Tell me, Mr Gough, are you actually asking for my permission to marry my daughter?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I am.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Kate is past the age where she needs parental consent.”
“Yes.” Calloway stood up and walked slowly over to a small cabinet in the corner. “Would you like a drink? Scotch?”
If it hadn’t been so important to Kate that they do things right, as she had put it, Nick would have refused and said that he was leaving. But as it was . . . “Just a small one, thank you.”
Calloway poured the drinks and handed one to Nick. “Kate has accepted you, I take it.”
“Of course,” Nick answered.
“Yes, of course, she would.” Calloway sat down again.
“We’re very much in love.” Nick felt foolish even as he said it.
“I don’t doubt that you are.”
“Are you going to refuse?” Nick asked him.
Calloway lifted his glass to his mouth and took a large mouthful of whisky. “I have to.”
“Can I ask why?”
“You can ask.”
Nick could have sworn with exasperation. Instead he stayed silent. Two can play at this game, he thought.
Calloway stood up again. He walked to the window and looked out across the sloping garden. He stayed there for a long time. Nick waited.
“Mr Gough . . .”
“Maybe you should call me Nick.”
Calloway ignored the interruption. “There is a great deal in this family, Mr Gough, of which you know nothing.”
It was perhaps more the tone of Calloway’s voice than the actual words that made Nick uneasy. He waited for him to go on.
“I don’t know,” Calloway eventually continued, “Whether it would be right to tell you.”
“Whatever it is,” said Nick, “I can assure you that nothing you say will change the fact that I am going to marry Kate.”
Calloway walked back to his chair and sat down. He gazed into the empty hearth. “You think you know Kate, don’t you?” he said. “You think you know everything there is to know about her.”
“Not everything, no.”
“Good. Because you don’t.”
“I know what I feel to be important.”
“And what, may I ask, is that?”
“I know that I love her, isn’t that enough?”
“No. No, it is not enough.”
Nick’s patience snapped. “For God’s sake, you’re behaving like somebody who hasn’t seen their way out of Victorian times. I don’t have to sit here and listen to your mysterious meanderings, I’m only here because Kate wanted me to come. If it had been up to me we would have just got married and been done with it.”
“It’s as well for you that you didn’t.” Calloway didn’t appear to be in the slightest put out by Nick’s outburst. “Did you not wonder why Kate asked you to speak to me first?”
“Because of how close you are. There’s nothing to wonder about in that.”
“But you must admit that it was, shall we say, a little odd for her to have insisted that you come.”
“Not odd, no. And she didn’t insist. She asked, and I agreed.”
“But you’d rather not have come?”
“I won’t deny it. Especially now.”
“But you would have had to come sooner or later,” said Calloway, “of that you can be certain.”
“Whatever you say, nothing is going to change my mind about marrying Kate. Now if there is something you want to tell me, then by all means do. But as I said, whatever it is, Kate and I are getting married at the beginning of next month, and nothing you say or do will alter that fact.”
Calloway looked surprised, and a little ruffled. “The beginning of next month,” he repeated. “So soon?”
“No, she is not pregnant,” Nick snapped. He stood up and put his glass on the mantelpiece. “Now, if you’ve quite finished . . .”
“Sit down,” said Calloway.
Nick glared at him.
“I said, sit down.”
Nick sat down.
“Another drink?”
“No thank you.”
Calloway took the glass from the mantelpiece and went to refill it. He handed it to Nick. “Take it,” he said. Not knowing what else to do, Nick took it.
“I mentioned earlier,” Calloway said, as he sat down, “that there were things in this family of which you know nothing. Because I am forced to, I’m going to tell you what they are. But before I do I want you to remember something. I say this, not as a threat, but as a statement of fact which you will do well to heed for your own good, and indeed my daughter’s. I am a very powerful man, Mr Gough. Probably a great deal more powerful than you realise. Joel Martin found that out to his cost. I have no wish to illustrate it again to you, but I will if you force me to.”
Nick watched his face closely, but there seemed to be no violence in it.
“I want you to remember that, and remember it for a long time after what I have told you.” He waited to see if Nick was going to speak, but when it was evident that he had nothing to say, Calloway continued. “Mr Gough, you cannot marry my daughter.”
Nick sat forward. “And I tell you, I will marry her.”
“Will and can have two entirely separate meanings.” said Calloway. “You say you will, and I say you cannot. And I will explain why indeed she can marry you, but why you cannot marry her. She can marry you because she knows. You cannot marry her because you don’t know.”
“Mr Calloway,” said Nick, trying to hold back his anger, “I am getting a little tired of your riddles. Please, come to the point.”
“Yes, the point.” Calloway looked down into his glass. “You cannot marry Kate, because Kate is in love with me.”
The colour drained from Nick’s face. He stared at the man sitting opposite him. “You’re insane!”
“No,” said Calloway, “I am in full possession of my faculties, and what I tell you, unfortunate as it might be, is the truth.”
“You’re a liar,” Nick said, the full force of his disgust sounding in his voice. “She’s not in love with you, it’s you who are in love with her. Your own daughter. Your own bloody daughter. I knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe that anyone was that . . . that, depraved! It was you who was phoning, wasn’t it?”
Calloway looked perplexed for a moment. “Phoning?”
“Ringing Kate and whispering your foul lust down the telephone. Terrifying the hell out of her.”
“Is that what she told you? Yes, I suppose she would have to.”
“For God’s sake, she didn’t even know it was you.” Nick couldn’t stop himself from shouting.
“Please, keep your voice down. Of course she knew it was me. But obviously if I called whilst any of her friends were present, she had to pretend.”
“That was no pretence,” Nick cried. “I was there, I saw her face. She was terrified, I tell you. Terrified.”
“Terrified that any of you would find out, yes.”
Nick sprang up from his chair and began to pace the room. “Dear God, you’re sick, Calloway. Kate knows nothing about this, does she? She doesn’t know the way her own father lusts after her. The way his mind warps around what he would like to do to her. Good God, I’ve got to get her away from you.”
Calloway smiled. “That wouldn’t be wise. Besides, she wouldn’t go. Perhaps if I tell you why she agreed to marry you, it will help you to accept what I am telling you. Having a husband would give her the respectability she needs, and the cover that perhaps both of us need. However, I have no wish for her to take those measures.’
“This is a nightmare,” Nick cried. “It’s all a bloody nightmare.”
“I’m sorry, you must accept it. You cannot marry Kate, can you see that now? You cannot marry her for your own sake.”
Nick stared at him, for the moment speechless.
“Ask yourself, can you really live with a woman whom you know to be making love with someone else? Can you marry a woman who is already in love with someone else? Can you accept a woman whom you know is doing what Kate is doing, with her own father? Of course you can’t. No one could.”
“You’re a liar, a filthy stinking liar.” Nick was panting with rage. “She’s a normal, decent human being.”
“Mr Gough, Kate is already mine. Kate has been mine for a long time now. We have shared . . . shall we say, experiences? We share a love that no one, not even you, can come between. If you must put her to the test, well, then you must. But it will be a bitter and hard lesson for you to learn. Why not spare her the agony of having to admit it? It is hard enough for her as it is. But everything she does, you know, is for me. I daresay, if you think about it, you will already have realised that. Even that silly mistake with Joel Martin. Yes, even that was for me. She wanted us to have a child, you see. But of course, for us, there can never be any children, not of our own. But she needed Martin to say that it was his, can you see that? She needed him to say that it was his, in order to avoid any suspicion falling on us. And then she even went out and stole a baby.” His face was sad as he spoke, and he looked into the empty fireplace again. “I told her, after what had happened with Martin, that one day we would have a child that we could call our own, and so she went out and stole one, even though she knew it was wrong.” He stopped and looked up. “And now she has agreed to marry you. She has agreed to marry you, so that she can have that child. And when she does, your marriage will be over. She will leave you, and bring the baby to me.”
“I don’t believe anything you’re saying,” said Nick, but the conviction had gone from his voice. There was something in what the man was saying that had started alarm bells in his head. An odd comment here, a look there, so many little things that seemed to give some insane truth to what he was saying.
“Would you like me to call her? I was hoping that you wouldn’t need her to confirm any of this, but if that’s what you want, well . . .”
Nick looked at him. “You could go to prison for what you’re telling me now.”
“Perhaps I should remind you of how this conversation began,” Calloway answered.
Nick turned away. “It’s not true,” he said, “it’s not true. It can’t be true.” He was speaking more to himself than to Calloway.
Nick found himself at the window. Kate was at the end of the garden, sitting on the bank and looking down into the stream. She looked so innocent, so lovely.
“I’m sorry,” Calloway said. “I understand how you must be feeling. You see, I love her too.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Nick yelled. “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t believe you. I’ll never believe you. OK, call her in. Let’s get her in here. Let her tell me. If she tells me it’s true, then I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll never come back. But until I hear it from Kate herself, I’ll never believe it.”
“If you’re sure that’s what you want,” said Calloway, getting to his feet.
Nick was far from being sure, but he nodded.
“Wait here.”
Nick stayed beside the window, and watched as Calloway walked across the length of the neat lawn to where his daughter was sitting. His heart was beating so hard he thought it might burst from his body. He saw Kate throw her hands up in the air, and turn away. He watched her as she turned back to her father, and she seemed to be shouting at him. And then she beat her fists against him, and he tried to take her in his arms. She pushed him away, and walked back towards the house. Her father came after her, and now Nick could see that she was crying.
“Why!” he heard her scream. “Why?”
He couldn’t hear anything else that was being said, they were still too far away. Her father was speaking; Kate clearly didn’t want to listen. Then she fell to her knees, and began to pound the ground with her fists.
Calloway knelt beside her, and tried to lift her into his arms, but she pushed him away. He managed to keep hold of her hand, and he was still speaking. Now she was listening, and then she was looking at him. She fell back on the grass, and Calloway sat in front of her, so that Nick could no longer see her.
Then he saw her arms go round her father’s neck and Nick watched in morbid fascination as he realised that Calloway was kissing his daughter, and his daughter was kissing him back.
He couldn’t stand to see any more. He ran from the house, leapt into his car and drove away. His mouth was coated with a bitter bile, and his gut twisted in protest at what he had witnessed. He felt sick to his very soul.
In the garden, her face buried in her father’s neck, Kate begged him to tell her why Nick no longer wanted to marry her.
