A KIND OF MADNESS.
By: PENNY JORDAN.
CHAPTER ONE.
"So you"re leaving for Cheshire this evening. Exactly when do your parents sail?" Peter asked.
They were having lunch at their usual restaurant, equidistant from Elspeth"s bank and Peter"s chambers. Both of them had agreed early on in their relationship that it made much more sense for them to fix a couple of days per week when they could lunch together, rather than committing too many of their precious busy evenings to developing their relationship.
That was one of the things that made their relationship so harmonious:
they both had the same goals, the same outlook on life--the same firm and practical outlook. Not for them the heady, and so often destructive and exhausting pa.s.sion of others. Which made it all the more difficult to understand why her parents, instead of approving of Peter, seemed almost to treat their relationship as a joke.
Of course, her parents and Peter were worlds apart; her parents were her parents, but one had to admit they were a trifle unorthodox in their att.i.tude to the things that Peter considered important--one could almost say a little careless and f.e.c.kless in their outlook on life, never treating it with the seriousness they should. Look at the way now that her father, having sold the farm and bought a small holding instead of investing the remainder of the money in some safe manner which would give them a good income, was insisting on taking her mother off to Egypt and then the Greek islands for a two-month holiday.
Really, the pair of them could be as irrational and as irresponsible as a pair of children at times. It was a good job that she was around to keep an eye on them. When her father had first sold the farm, she had heaved a small sigh of relief. She loved her parents, of course, but the farm and its demands had sometimes proved to be a small bone of contention between Peter and herself. The very first time she had introduced him to her parents, he had generously tried to point out to her father how foolish he was in trying to continue farming in the outdated traditional method her father had favoured, when he could have made the farm so much more profitable by using modern intensive methods. Peter had only been trying to help, and it had been unfortunate that her father felt so strongly about retaining the traditional methods of agriculture, and that Peter hadn"t realised that he had been treading almost on hallowed ground by arguing against them.
When her mother had first told her they were selling the farm, she had been pleased, envisaging a safe, comfortable life for them in a pleasant, easily run house in one of the very attractive local Cheshire villages, but to her shock what her parents had bought was a small and extremely rundown small holding which they had told her with enthusiasm and excitement they intended to use to raise organically grown vegetable crops.
Her mother, Elspeth remembered, had been bubbling over with eagerness for the project, explaining that they had already canva.s.sed the very popular local restaurants, with which Cheshire was well supplied, to ensure that there was a ready market for their produce.
Elspeth had been dragged down to view the appalling wreck of a cottage, which looked fit only for demolition, and the flat, overgrown paddock that went with it.
She had tried to talk her parents out of such a crazy venture, her heart sinking when she"d realised they had made up their minds. The frustration of not being able to make them see that their money would give them a far better return if it was invested had sent her to live in London with a pounding headache, and the unpleasant sinking sensation that Peter would consider her to have failed in not persuading them to change their minds. Why couldn"t her parents be more like Peter"s? His father and mother had retired to a small south coast town, where they played golf and bridge. They had an immaculate detached bungalow with smooth green lawns and well-disciplined flower-beds. No pets were allowed in the Holmes household, no cats with unexpected litters of kittens, no rough stray dogs with large muddy paws and hairy coats. no parrots who called out the most appallingly rude things when one was least expecting it. She still blushed to remember how, the first time she had taken Peter home, the parrot which her mother had originally been taking care of for a friend, and which had somehow or other lingered on to become a permanent house guest, had flown on to Peter"s shoulder and bitten quite sharply at his ear before remarking in a voice which sounded uncomfortably like her mother"s, "Oh, dear, such a shame.
Pious Peter. Pious Peter. "
"Well, perhaps once they get back from this holiday they"ll come to see sense and sell up. I must say, Elspeth, I do find your parents rather..." Peter frowned and studied his plate as though unable to find the words to describe his reaction to her family, while Elspeth hung her head in acknowledgement of his criticism.
It wasn"t until she had come to live in London that she had realised how eccentric and unusual her home life was. Having a father who was a farmer had caused a few amused raised eyebrows, but not too much other comment in the high-powered world of merchant banking. It was only after she"d made the mistake of taking a colleague home with her one Christmas that she"d made the humiliating discovery of how very odd and amusing her family was to others.
She had reacted instinctively on learning that Sophy, the other girl, had had nowhere to spend Christmas, inviting her to return to Cheshire with her, knowing quite well that another body would hardly be noticed in the crowd that her mother always drew around her. Having produced only one child, her mother had gone on to make up for this by maternally adopting every chance waif and stray she could, both of the human and animal varieties, and so it was that the farm had abounded with pet lambs turned aggressive and demanding sheep, goats who could never be milked, chickens too old to lay but whose necks could never be wrung, sheep-dogs who only dreamed lazily of sheep in their old age as they huddled up to the Aga, a collection of barn cats who never hunted--although thankfully in those days the parrot had not been in evidence.
Sophy had seemed to fit in so well with her family that it had come as a double shock to walk into the staff-room behind her and discover her entertaining a crowd of their fellow employees by telling them in her high-pitched Sloane Ranger voice about the chaos of the Turner household.
Elspeth had never felt so humiliated in her life. She had resolved there and then that, in the future, no one would ever be able to humiliate her or laugh at her in that kind of way again.
When her mother had asked gently why she no longer brought any friends home with her when she came back from London, she had quietly and firmly avoided a direct answer. From then on her home life and her career were two separate things.
After that she had been cautious about where and with whom she made friends. She had swapped her room at the small, crowded flat she"d shared with four other girls and had found herself a lone bed sitter
Having more time to spend on her own had given her the opportunity to concentrate on her exams, so that when Sophy had been simpering over the engagement ring she had managed to extract from an up-and-coming bank clerk, she, Elspeth, had been quietly receiving the congratulations of her management on the excellence of her exam results.
While her colleagues had opted for the glamour and high-powered pressure of the dealing-room, she had set her sights in a different direction,
cautiously looking ahead to the future, and equally cautiously deciding to leave the world of mainstream banking for the more specialised arena of merchant banking.
Here it seemed she had found her niche. She loved the meticulous, quiet, thoughtful concentration needed for such work; she liked being out of the public eye, working behind the scenes; and she was rewarded for her diligence with a good salary which had enabled her to buy her own small dockside apartment and to run a neat, economical car.
She had met Peter when he"d moved into an adjoining apartment. They had soon discovered how much they had in common. Unlike other couples, they had decided against moving into one shared apartment. After all, when they eventually decided to marry, by selling the two apartments they would have sufficient profit to enable them to buy a sensible London house which would be convenient for both their offices.
Later, when they had children, they might decide to move a little way out of London, somewhere convenient for the M4 and healthy for bringing up children. Yes, she and Peter had their lives all properly planned.
Not for her the careless insouciance of her parents, who always left so much to chance.
When she had once gently chided her mother for this, the latter had replied firmly, "Elspeth, we like surprises, even the bad ones. I can"t understand how you can bear to have your life so carefully mapped out, every move planned. My dear, think how boring it will be..."
She had subdued the small, rebellious voice inside her which had found astoundingly that her mother had been right, reminding herself of her humiliation at the hands of the insufferable Sophy. That was never going to happen to her again--nor to her children. They would have parents whom they would know would never do anything to embarra.s.s them.
She would never forget the awful humiliation of that day. the mockery and laughter of her colleagues. the cruelty of Sophy, who had exaggerated her parents" soft Cheshire accents just sufficiently to make them sound almost unbelievably bucolic, who had described in loving, cruel detail the plethora of cats, dogs and livestock that had run riot in and around the old farmhouse, who had mocked her mother"s somewhat casual att.i.tude to the kind of housework that involved having a home in which nothing looked as though it was ever out of place.
Even now it made her squirm to remember. "I"ll try to drive up to Cheshire for your second weekend there," she heard Peter saying, and automatically switched her thoughts from the past and back to the present.
Three weeks ago, just before her mother had telephoned and dropped her bombsh.e.l.l that she and Elspeth"s father had decided more or less on the spur of the moment to take a long holiday, Elspeth"s boss had sent for her, and had told her almost severely that it was time she used some of the eight weeks of leave that was due to her.
Thoroughly alarmed that he might have been suggesting a fall in the standard of her work, Elspeth had protested that she didn"t need a holiday, that she enjoyed her work so much.
"Yes, Elspeth, I know and I do sympathise, but the board has issued instructions that, praiseworthy though they consider it that our staff are so conscientious, in this day and age with so many stress- related illnesses their staff must take their due allocation of holiday leave.
Our personnel department tell me that it is over two years since you had a break of longer than three or four days.
"The board has asked me to provide them with a list of all those members of staff who have more than one year"s allocation of leave built up.
"The view of the board is that a healthy staff member with a well-rounded att.i.tude to life will in the long run serve the bank better than, to use a current term, a " workaholic".
"I think you will agree that, in these circ.u.mstances, it might be as well if you could find a way of using up some of your built-up leave.
I do sympathise, Elspeth, but the Livingstone contract is all but wound up, and unless you have something very pressing to attend to. "
Elspeth had shaken her head, her heart sinking, knowing that she had had no possible excuse for not taking her boss"s advice.
When he had added a further blow, telling her that he expected her to take at least four weeks" leave, she had left his office feeling almost as sick with shock as she had done on that never to be forgotten occasion when she had overheard Sophy"s malicious description of her parents and home.
Had anyone told Elspeth that she was an extremely sensitive, almost over-sensitive young woman, whose emotions and self-confidence were easily bruised, she would have reacted with astonishment and dismissal.
She considered herself to be one of that new breed of women who had managed to tame and control all those dangerously subversive feminine traits which had told so badly against her s.e.x in the past.
Not for her sentimentality and the weakness of allowing her emotions to rule her head; not for her the folly of falling in love, of submitting herself to the pain of allowing another human being to become so important to her that he was the focus of her whole world. No, she preferred to put her faith, her trust in something far more dependable--like her work. Of course she wanted to marry, to have children, and in Peter she considered she had found the perfect mate: someone who felt about life exactly as she did.
They considered themselves an established couple, even though she wasn"t wearing an engagement ring, even though they were not as yet lovers. Peter was old-fashioned in such things, and she was glad of it. These days, when one heard and read of the appalling consequences of s.e.xual freedom and promiscuity, it was rea.s.suring to meet a man who considered his health more important than the satisfaction of physical desire. There had been one previous serious relationship in Peter"s life, a girl at university, but that was in the past. And as for her.
Elspeth moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her virginity was something she preferred not to dwell on. It had been the source of enough mirth among the other girls she had flat-shared with when the local office of her bank had first transferred her to London, and she had been too hurt and too proud to explain to the others that it was very difficult to enter into a purely physical fling with the careless abandon they seemed to favour when one lived and worked in a small country town, where everyone knew everyone else, and where at the first sign of her attempting to do any such thing the gossips would be having a field day.
And then by the time she had moved to London she had felt too shy, too self-conscious to remedy things. After Sophy--strange how she always thought of her life as before Sophy and after Sophy--she had curled up into herself, not trusting herself to form any new relationships with anyone, male or female.
But now there was Peter, and if she sometimes found his insistence that they did not sleep together, his reluctance to touch her at all except to give her the odd very chaste and brief kiss, somewhat lacking in pa.s.sion, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she would have found a man who was far more openly and demandingly s.e.xual very off-putting indeed.
No, Peter was right for her, and once they were married of course things would be different. As it was, their careers took up so much of their time that it was hardly surprising that Peter wasn"t keen to rush on their marriage. After all, as he had pointed out to her recently, the terrible events of the autumn of "87, when the markets had fallen so drastically and so many of their peers had lost their jobs, had had a disastrous effect on the property market, which had still not recovered, and it would be foolish for them to make marriage plans and to sell their flats until it had done so.
She had agreed wholeheartedly with him, but it had niggled her none the less the last time her mother had rung up to have had to explain that no, she and Peter had not made any wedding arrangements as yet.
It was the purpose of that phone call which was the subject of their lunchtime discussion today.