Kitabı oku: «Lingering Shadows», sayfa 3

The only person Davina had been able to turn to had been Giles, who at least knew something of how the company functioned.

She was learning, though, but what she was learning she did not like. The working conditions of her employees shamed her, as did their poor wages.

‘You look tired, Giles,’ she said sympathetically.

‘Davina, I’m sorry … I hate to let you down, but I’m going to have to hand in my notice.’

He had been rehearsing his speech all day, dreading making it, but last night Lucy had given him an ultimatum. ‘Leave Carey’s or I leave you,’ she had told him. She was given to making tempestuous threats, and at one time the volatility of her nature had entranced and amused him. She was so different from him, so alive and vital, but gradually he had begun to find her unpredictability a burden; to find that he was longing to go home to someone who was calm and relaxed, who wanted to listen to his problems rather than to unload upon him the avalanche of her own. Someone, in fact, like Davina.

Davina, who was always so calm and so kind. Davina, who had never once in anyone’s hearing criticised her husband, even though everyone knew that he had been unfaithful to her; Davina, whom, to his increasing despair and guilt, he was beginning to believe he loved.

‘Giles, there’s no need to apologise. I’m more than grateful to you for all that you’ve done. Without your support, your loyalty …’ Davina made a wry gesture. ‘I know what you think … what everyone thinks—that nothing can save Carey’s now, that we’re bound to go bankrupt.’

‘You could trade on for another six months or so, but that’s all,’ Giles told her.

‘I can’t give up yet, Giles,’ Davina told him. ‘And it isn’t for my sake. If Carey’s closes down so many families will suffer.’

Giles remained silent. What she was saying was true. Carey’s was the largest, virtually the only major local employer.

‘If you could just stay for a little while longer,’ Davina pleaded with him. ‘We could still find a backer … a buyer …’

Davina could see the indecision in his eyes. She hated having to do this, but what alternative did she have? Without Giles the company would have to close. She was doing all that she could, but there was so much she had to learn. If Giles left they would lose what little credibility they still had, and it was all too likely that the bank would insist on her closing down the company.

‘I know I shouldn’t ask,’ Davina continued. ‘You’ve got your own future to think of, yours and Lucy’s, but Carey’s needs you so much, Giles …’ She took a deep breath, and then looked directly at him and said quietly, ‘I need you so much.’

She saw the colour recede from his face and then flood painfully back into it. He moved as though he was about to get up and then settled back in his chair.

‘Davina …’

‘No, please don’t say anything now. Think about it. Talk it over with Lucy,’ Davina begged him. ‘Philip Taylor at the bank has promised to do what he can to help us find a buyer.’

The overhead light highlighted the delicacy of her face. She had lost weight since Gregory’s death, Giles thought and then wondered bitterly what it was about that kind of man that gave him a wife who was so devoted and loyal, so gracious and loving, while he …

He swallowed quickly. He must not think like that about Lucy. He loved her. He had been desperately in love with her when they married, and she had loved him … had wanted him. He flinched a little as he recognised the direction his thoughts were taking, shifting his weight slightly as his body was jolted into a sudden sharp and dangerous awareness of how alone he and Davina were, and how much he desired her. When he had kissed her last Christmas she had felt so light in his arms, so small. He had wanted desperately to go on kissing her … holding her.

‘Please, Giles,’ she repeated huskily now, and he knew that he couldn’t refuse her.

Lucy often said things she didn’t mean; often lost her temper and gave him ultimatums which within hours she had forgotten. In fact, he had been surprised that she actually cared what he did. Sometimes recently when she looked at him he felt almost as though she hated him, there was so much anger and bitterness in her eyes.

‘I’ll … I’ll think about it,’ Giles promised her.

Davina smiled her thanks at him.

Outwardly she might appear calm, but inwardly her stomach was churning; inwardly she felt full of despair and guilt. How could she be doing this to Giles, using him … using what he felt for her? But what alternative did she have? It wasn’t for her own sake. Owning Carey’s meant nothing to her. She felt no possessive pride of ownership in the company.

But what she did feel was a very powerful and strong sense of responsibility towards its employees, an awareness of how guilty she had been over too many years of turning a blind eye to what was going on.

She could have overridden Gregory’s refusal to let her come to Carey’s. She could have insisted on doing so, but she had, as always in her life, taken the easy way out.

Well, there was no easy way out now … not for the people who depended on Carey Chemicals’ survival for their living.

She was all right. She had the money her father had left her, money that had been left untouched since his death—a good deal of money, in her eyes, but Mr Taylor had explained patiently, almost a little condescendingly to her that, as far as Carey’s was concerned, it was little more than a drop in the ocean.

He had told her then the extent of the company’s overdraft, an overdraft secured by Carey Chemicals’ premises and land, and she had blenched at the extent of it.

The money had been lent to Gregory some years ago by his predecessor, he told her grimly. An advance that should never have been made and certainly would not have been made in today’s harsh financial climate.

That advance, together with Carey Chemicals’ profits, Gregory had used to fund his money-market gambling.

Why had he done it? He had always been a man who enjoyed taking risks; who craved their dangerous excitement. That was, after all, why he had died. He had been driving far too fast for the road conditions, the police had told her, and yet there had been no need. He had not been expected anywhere. No, it had been the thrill of driving at such an excessive speed that had excited him, and killed him and the woman with him, just as his greed and reckless addiction to danger was now killing Carey’s and threatening the livelihoods of everyone involved with it.

Davina stood up, and so did Giles.

They both walked to the door. Giles opened it for her. She thanked him, taking care not to stand too close to him, guiltily aware of the way his hand trembled slightly as he opened the door.

‘Give my love to Lucy,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t seen her for ages.’

She felt uncomfortably hypocritical for mentioning Lucy’s name, as though she had no knowledge of Giles’s feelings for her.

They left the building together, walking to their separate cars, Giles waiting while Davina unlocked and got into hers.

Carey’s was within easy walking distance of the village, its two-storeyed buildings surrounded by the lush Cheshire countryside. The site on which her grandfather and father had originally set up the business had once been occupied by a corn chandler’s. The original two-storeyed Cheshire brick mill was still there. It had a preservation order on it now, because of its age.

Face it: Carey’s doesn’t look like a profitable drug-producing company, Davina reflected as she drove off. She surveyed the jumble of buildings that housed the company, contrasting them with photographs she had seen of the premises of the huge multinationals that dominated the drugs market.

Carey’s, she had to admit, was an anomaly. But for her grandfather’s discovery of that heart drug, Carey’s would never have existed. At home she had his notebooks with his meticulous descriptions of the drugs and potions he had made up for his customers, human and animal. When he had been a young man there had been no National Health Service and very few ordinary people had been able to afford the fees of a doctor, so men like her grandfather had doctored them instead.

She thought it was a pity that her own father had been so reluctant to talk about his childhood and his parents. It had been her mother who had told her about her grandfather, and she had only known him for a couple of years, as he had died shortly after she and Davina’s father had married.

There was a portrait of Davina’s father in the room that was used as the boardroom, and Davina had always thought that there should have been one there of her grandfather as well.

There never would be now, of course. If she was lucky enough to find a buyer, the last thing they would want would be portraits of the original founders of the company.

She drove home, worrying about whether or not Giles would stay with the company, and trying to quell her guilt at the way she had manipulated him.

And then, even more guiltily, she found herself wondering what her life would have been like if she had married someone like Giles instead of Gregory.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT HAD been Davina’s father who had been responsible for Davina’s meeting Gregory.

Gregory had come to work for Carey’s as their technical salesman and her father had invited him to one of the dinners he occasionally gave for certain members of his staff.

Davina had been busy in the kitchen when everyone arrived. These dinners were always something of an ordeal for her. Her father was a perfectionist and Davina dreaded his disapproval if everything was not as he wished it to be.

She had spent virtually all week preparing for this dinner, shopping, cleaning, polishing the silver, washing, starching and then ironing the table linen. And picking flowers from the garden and then arranging them. Her father would never countenance wasting money on buying flowers.

He personally selected the menus he wished Davina to serve, and they were always complicated. Her father was a fussy eater, preferring small, delicately cooked dishes, but on these occasions he liked to impress with lavish cordon bleu meals.

Sticky and uncomfortable from the heat of the kitchen, praying frantically that she had correctly judged the timing and that the hot soufflé her father had insisted on for the first course would not deflate before everyone was seated, Davina heard the kitchen door open. Expecting to see her father walk in to tell her that she could serve the soufflé, she was astonished to see instead a very good-looking young man.

He smiled at her, a warm flashing smile that showed the whiteness of his teeth. His skin was tanned; his brown hair shone. He was tall and lean, and there was a warmth in his brown eyes as he smiled at her that made her face burn even more hotly than the heat from the kitchen.

‘Hello, I’m Gregory James,’ he said to her, introducing himself and holding out his hand.

Automatically Davina extended hers and only just stopped herself from gasping out loud at the frisson of sensation that struck her as he slowly curled his fingers around hers and shook her hand.

No one had ever affected her like this before. In her naïveté her skin flushed darker, her whole body trembling as she succumbed to his sexual magnetism.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Gregory told her smoothly as he released her hand.

For a moment Davina felt confused. There was something about the tone in which he delivered the apology that jarred on her, some falseness, some instinctive awareness of a mockery of her, as though he intended the words to have a double meaning, as though he was laughing at her for her reaction to him, but these feelings were so vague and unformed that they had vanished before she could really grasp them, leaving her to stammer a few incoherent words, while Gregory continued, ‘Your father was on his way to tell you that everyone is ready to eat, and I asked if I might deliver the message for him. And to see if there was anything I could do to help.’

To help? Davina gave him an unguarded startled look. Her father believed that it was a woman’s place to be subservient in every way to the males in the household, and the thought of any man offering her any kind of domestic help was a concept with which Davina was completely unfamiliar.

‘Thank you, but there’s really no need,’ she began breathlessly, but he stopped her, looking at her until she could no longer meet the intensity of his gaze as he said slowly,

‘Oh, yes, there is. There is every need. I’ve been wanting to meet you, Davina.’

He … this wonderful, good-looking man, had been wanting to meet her? She shook her head dizzily, wondering if she had fallen asleep and was having a dream, but no, it was real. He was real. She was so flustered that she could barely even breathe, never mind think of moving, and Gregory, watching her, allowed himself a small inner smile of satisfaction. Good. She was obviously as naïve and dumb as he had heard. He had met her. Now the rest should be easy.

Brought up by a widowed mother who had died while he was in his first year at university, Gregory had always bitterly resented the good fortune of others, a good fortune which had been denied to him. His mother was poor. He was clever and good-looking, but he learned early in life that that did not compensate for lack of wealth. Wealth was power, and power was what Gregory wanted. He had learned young to smile and say nothing when others taunted him or drew attention to his second-hand school uniform and the poverty of his possessions. His time would come. He would make sure that it came.

It was while he was at university that he realised how hard it was going to be for him to achieve his ambition. The best jobs, and with them the money and the power he craved, would not be offered to someone like him. They would go to others, youths with far fewer qualifications than he possessed, far less worthwhile degrees, but they had something more important than intelligence: they had family; they had position and power.

It had been a chance conversation he had overheard between two fellow graduates which had told him the path he must take through life. Both of them were unaware of his presence, and were discussing a third, absent friend.

‘You know, his sister’s getting married in June. He was telling me about it last week. She’s in the club. His family are furious. Apparently she’s been going around with some working-class type, who obviously knew which side his bread was buttered on. Now she’s pregnant, the family have no option but to let them marry, and they’ll have to support them, find him some sort of decent job. They’re furious about the whole thing, but, of course, they’re putting a brave face on it.’

‘Nice work if you can get it,’ the other man commented wryly. ‘Marrying a rich girl.’

Marrying a rich girl. Gregory mulled the thought over in his mind, letting it lie fallow for a short time before finally allowing it to take root.

The problem was that he did not know any rich girls. He knew girls … plenty of them. He was a good-looking young man who had grown up in an environment where teenagers had begun experimenting with sex well under the legal age limit, and he had learned early the basic mechanics of sex. To those over the years he had added a variety of refinements which so far had ensured him as much success as he needed or wanted with the opposite sex.

When he wished he could be ingratiatingly charming and well mannered, surface attributes that went no more than skin-deep, as those of his sexual partners who had not immediately taken the hint that he was tired of them had very quickly found out.

Gregory had no real warmth about him, no real kindness; as far as he was concerned, they were weaknesses he could not afford.

A rich wife. He bided his time. The doors to the homes of his fellow graduates, or at least those who could have introduced him to the lifestyle he craved, remained firmly closed to him. He got a job and then another, and finally a third with Carey’s.

He had chosen Carey’s out of three possible employers because he had learned from eavesdropping on a casual conversation while waiting to be interviewed that the man who owned Carey’s had only one child, an unmarried daughter.

Gregory had become very adept over the years at listening to other people’s conversations. He had discovered it was an extremely profitable way of learning things.

He had been at Carey’s now for six months. That was how long it had taken him to discreetly and cautiously bring himself to old man Carey’s eye, without offending or arousing the suspicions of his co-employees.

He had accepted the accolade of the dinner invitation for one purpose only, and that had been to meet this small, naïve girl with the flushed face and untidy hair. He had made enough discreet enquiries into Carey’s now to know just how rich Davina would one day be.

Physically she was not his type. He liked women with endless legs, generously curved bodies and with that look in their eyes which said they knew what life was all about.

Davina Carey was small and slight, her body girlish rather than sensual. Her eyes held naïveté and self-consciousness. And when they looked at him they also held awe and wonder.

As he accepted Davina’s disjointed dismissal and left the kitchen—after all, he had never intended actually to help her; that had simply been an opportune method of meeting her—he was smiling to himself.

Physically, as a woman, she might not appeal to him, but as a wife, a rich wife, she would be ideal.

Davina served the meal in a daze of gauzy unbelievable daydreams in which all manner of impossible things suddenly seemed dramatically possible.

Now, she told herself breathlessly as she cleared the plates from the main course, scraping them into the waste-bin before soaking them in hot water and then hurrying to serve the pudding, she knew why there had never been anyone else in her life: it had been because fate had already chosen Gregory for her. Because fate had known that he was there, that he existed; that he lived and breathed … even if she hadn’t.

Her body completely still, she stared out of the kitchen window, lost in her dreams, and then abruptly and painfully jolted herself back to reality by reminding herself that she was probably reading far too much into what he had said to her, in the way he had looked at her. Achingly she wished she had someone, a friend in whom she could confide, whose advice she could seek, with whom she could discuss the wonder and excitement of what had happened.

Gregory deliberately waited almost a week before getting in touch with her. A week was just long enough for her to have begun to lose hope, but nowhere near long enough for her to have even begun to forget about him.

He telephoned her, using his office telephone.

Davina had just returned from doing some shopping. She picked up the receiver and said the number, her heart shuddering to a frantic standstill of shock and pleasure when she heard Gregory’s voice.

So many times over the last six days she had mentally relived those moments when he had walked into the kitchen, the things he had said, the way he had looked, and, with each day that passed, so her belief in herself, in the message his eyes had silently given her, had diminished.

And now, just when she had been on the verge of giving up hope, of accepting that she had foolishly read far too much into what had happened, he had rung her.

And then as abruptly as her hopes had swung upwards they were dashed again as he said formally, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t rung before. I’ve been away on business. I just wanted to ring to thank you for a marvellous meal last week.’

He was merely ringing to thank her. A polite bread-and-butter telephone call, that was all, Davina acknowledged dully.

On the other end of the line Gregory smiled to himself. He could almost taste her disappointment.

He waited a few seconds and then added casually, ‘There’s a very good musical on at the Palace in Manchester at the moment. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve been given some complimentary tickets and I was wondering if you’d care to see it with me. The tickets are for tomorrow evening. Rather short notice, I’m afraid.’

He was asking her out! Her. Like a rider on a roller-coaster, her hopes soared again. Both her hand and her voice were trembling as she thanked him and accepted the invitation, ignoring the small warning voice that reminded her that she would have to get her father’s approval and that tomorrow evening was his bridge evening and he would expect her to provide a supper for himself and his cronies, since it was his turn to host it.

Well satisfied with his progress, Gregory made arrangements to pick her up the following evening.

He didn’t live locally, but rented a small flat in Manchester, preferring to keep his work and his private lives apart. He had a company car, and one of the first things he had learned in his first job was how to ensure that his expenses claims covered his own personal motoring costs as well as the travelling he did for his employers.

Not that he overdid things. Gregory knew very well how to temper greed with caution. It was one of the things he was best at.

He was having a good day today. He picked up his paper and turned to the stocks and shares section. If he had one appetite that was not wholly under his own control, it was not, as with so many of his peers, sex; sex was something he enjoyed for the pleasure it gave him and the control over the women who enjoyed the benefits of his skill and experience. No, Gregory’s weakness was the thrill of tension and excitement that he got from gambling.

Not gambling as in betting on horses, or visiting casinos. No, Gregory’s gambling took the form of highly calculated risks in the buying and selling of stocks and shares.

Over the years Gregory had had some spectacular successes with this, his own private, very private game, and he had also suffered some heavy losses.

He frowned as he remembered the last one. It had all but wiped out the special fund he kept for his investments, and for a month or two he had had to live very meagrely indeed, but today he felt lucky. All the omens were good. He picked up the paper, studying it avidly.

For once fate seemed to be on Davina’s side. When her father came home that evening, before she could mention Gregory’s invitation, he said curtly to her, ‘I shall be going out tomorrow night.’

‘But it’s your bridge night,’ Davina interrupted him.

Her father’s mouth thinned with displeasure. ‘I wish you would allow me the courtesy of finishing my conversations, Davina, instead of interrupting me. Yes, it is my bridge night, but there has been a slight alteration in the arrangements. The Hudsons have decided to take a short holiday and visit their son next week, and because of this they have asked if the venue of tomorrow’s meeting can be changed from here to their house, since it would have been their turn to host everyone the week they will be away.’

As she prepared her father’s supper Davina hummed under her breath. She couldn’t believe her good fortune. She closed her eyes, giving in to the temptation to let her imagination recreate for her a mental image of Gregory James. Tall, good-looking, and with a look in his eyes that made her ache with excitement.

She still couldn’t entirely believe that he had actually asked her out.

She told her father about the invitation after he had eaten, picking her time carefully and cautiously, and then holding her breath as he frowned. ‘Gregory James, you say. Hmm. A very bright young man. Well-mannered, as well. Not like some these days.’

Very slowly and carefully Davina released her pent-up breath. Her father, it seemed, approved of Gregory. She could scarcely believe her luck.

It took her virtually all afternoon the next day to decide what to wear for her date. Outfit after outfit was discarded as she went through her wardrobe, wishing she had had the courage to buy something as daring as the outfits Mandy had worn with such panache, and then being forced to admit that her father would never have permitted her to wear such short skirts, nor such striking colours.

In the end she settled for a cream linen skirt teamed with a neat floral blouse. Over it she could wear the cream mohair jacket she had knitted for herself the previous winter.

As an irrational extravagance, the last time she had been to Chester she had bought herself a pair of new shoes. They were all the rage, beige patent, almost flatties, with tiny heels and a large gold-rimmed flat buckle on the front. They matched her outfit exactly and she was lucky enough to have small enough feet to wear such pale-coloured shoes.

She was ready far too soon, of course, her hair combed as straight as she could get it, a defiant touch of blue eyeshadow on her eyelids, pale pink lipstick on her mouth. She ached for the courage to line her eyes with the black kohl that everyone was wearing, but cringed from her father’s reaction should she do so. He didn’t approve of make-up of any kind, but she defiantly refused to give in completely.

Her father was still at home when Gregory arrived. To her surprise and delight, he actually invited Gregory into his study and offered him a glass of sherry.

Davina, of course, wasn’t included in the invitation, but she didn’t mind. She went upstairs and surreptitiously checked her appearance, staring anxiously into the mirror. If only her hair were thicker, straighter. She wondered if it would look any better if she coloured it lighter or if somehow she could cut herself a thicker fringe. She wished too that she were taller. All the girls in the magazines were tall, with endless, endless legs.

She sighed fretfully. There were so many things about herself she’d like to change if only she could. What on earth could a man like Gregory possibly see in her?

Downstairs in Alan Carey’s study, Gregory displayed the charm and good manners which so often had blinded people to his real nature. Alan Carey seemed as easy to deceive as all the rest.

It was a slow, careful courtship. Within weeks Gregory knew quite well that there was virtually nothing that Davina would not do for him, although it was not Davina who was important but her father. Davina was no use to him without her father’s money. And so, in effect, although it was Davina he took out and dated, it was actually her father to whom he was paying court.

For six months they exchanged nothing more than relatively chaste kisses. Only occasionally did Gregory assume a mock passion, for which he always apologised, claiming to Davina that it was his love for her that threatened his self-control.

Davina, with no experience of any kind to illuminate her sexual darkness, accepted what he said, and, if when she left him and was lying awake in bed her body ached rebelliously for an intimacy that had nothing to do with the kind of kisses Gregory gave her, she told herself severely that she was lucky to have someone who treated her with so much respect.

It was a time when, although the media might have given out an image of teenagers eagerly and freely enjoying what was termed ‘the sexual revolution’, in fact in country areas, away from the freedom of cities like London, where young people lived away from home and their parents’ watchful eyes, many of the old shibboleths still existed. And one of these was still that nice girls did not ‘do it’, or at least not until they were engaged, and then only very discreetly, so that it was something they discussed in nervous excited whispers, and only with other girls in the same situation.

So, while her body wantonly ached with a need whose fulfilment was only something Davina vaguely understood, her mind, her upbringing told her that it was right that Gregory should be so restrained with her, that it was out of love, out of respect for her; and she contented herself with rosy, breathlessly exciting daydreams of how different things would be if he actually asked her to marry him. Then there would be no need for restraint between them, then … She moved restlessly in her bed, turning over on to her stomach, her hand pressed against her lower body and then hastily, guiltily removed.

She had started waking up out of her sleep, brought abruptly from its depths by the intensity of the powerful rhythmic contractions of her body, shocked and disturbed by such a physical phenomenon, and yet at the same time delighted and awed by this glimpse of the pleasure it could afford her, naïvely assuming that, if her dreams of him could bring her so much pleasure, when Gregory did become her lover the pleasure would be even greater.

It was her father who announced that he had invited Gregory to spend Christmas Day with them, and, when after church on Christmas morning Gregory presented her with an engagement ring while her father looked on in approval, Davina was too thrilled with happiness and love to question the fact that her father had obviously known that Gregory was going to give her the ring before she had, or that Gregory had not actually asked her if she wished to become engaged to him.

The wedding date was set for the following summer. Davina was pleased that her father approved of Gregory; she was happier than she had ever believed possible.

They were married the following June. It had been agreed that the young couple would move in with Davina’s father rather than buy their own home, an arrangement that had been made between Davina’s father and Gregory without either of them consulting her, but Davina was too blissfully in love with Gregory to care.