A Perfect Family

‘I think I’d better go and ring them again, just to check that they have sent my shoes. It will be a complete disaster if they don’t arrive.’

‘Mmm?’ Jenny murmured, coming back to the present.

‘My shoes, Jenny,’ Tiggy repeated irritably. Heavens, Jenny could be so dull and boring at times. She hadn’t even mentioned what she was going to wear for the ball. Tiggy had offered to go shopping with her, help her choose something suitable, but predictably Jenny had shaken her head and said that she was too busy … that she would find ‘something’.

Tiggy just hoped that the ‘something’, whatever it was, wouldn’t prove to be too horrendous. Her own dress, of course, was a dream by one of her favourite designers. David had baulked a little at the cost but she had soon talked him round.

The cream of Cheshire society had been invited after all. David’s people, through the Chester side, were extremely well-connected and when one included some of their long-standing county clients …

It was a pity that the house didn’t have its own ballroom … a marquee was all very well in its way but … She had been a little bit cross when Jenny had refused to agree with her that a black-and-white theme would be marvellously chic. As well as setting off her own colouring, black always looked good on blondes.

‘It’s too restricting, too dramatic, Tiggy,’ Jenny had argued in that quiet, calm voice of hers. ‘Not everyone will want to keep to the theme and wear black or white. We must be practical.’

Typical of Jenny, practical should have been her middle name. She was a dear, of course, frightfully worthy and good-natured and, oddly enough, she was more attractive now than she had been when she was younger. She had kept her figure, even if she was a good size twelve compared with her own delicate size eight and her hair was still a rich, glossy brown and naturally curly, even if it could do with a proper styling.

Tiggy had seen the way Jonathon looked at the two of them sometimes, no doubt comparing her elegance and Jenny’s lack of fashion sense. Jenny really ought to take a bit more trouble with her appearance. Jonathon was a very attractive man, though not quite as startlingly good-looking as David. The wheat blond of David’s hair was slightly less extravagantly film starrish in Jonathon. His was tinged with a soft caramel brown, but the twins shared the same impressive height and the same broad shoulders. Curiously it was Jonathon’s slightly more spare frame that seemed to carry the years well now; David had begun to develop a paunch, although he denied it vigorously and loathed any reference to it.

‘Ah, there you are….’

Jenny smiled as she saw their mutual father-in-law approaching them. He was in his seventies now, a widower, and he walked with a slight limp, the legacy of a bad fall three winters ago when he had dislocated his hip and broken his leg.

‘Have a few things I want to talk to you about,’ he announced as he reached them.

‘Father, you look wonderful,’ Tiggy told him, darting forward to give him a quick hug and to kiss him delicately on the cheek. Even with her father-in-law she still could not resist the impulse to flirt, Jenny realised.

No, not to flirt, she amended mentally. What Tiggy did, what she wanted, was to reassure herself that she was still desirable, still wanted. Poor Tiggy. Jenny wondered briefly what it must feel like to have one’s whole self-worth invested in the frightening transitoriness of one’s physical features. No wonder at times Tiggy seemed so brittle, so insecure.

‘Tania, I—’

‘Darling, I must fly. There’s so much I have to do….’

Their father-in-law was one of the few people who used Tiggy’s proper name and Jenny hid another wry smile as she watched Tiggy detach herself from him. She knew quite well why Tiggy wanted to avoid being questioned by Ben.

‘She does too much,’ Ben commented as they both watched Tiggy hurry round the side of the house to where her car was parked. ‘She’s never been very strong. Ellie tells me these marquee people are due to start work tomorrow.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Jenny agreed. Ellie was Ben’s housekeeper. ‘They’re due to arrive about lunch-time and most of the work should be completed by early evening.’

‘Mmm … Well, let’s just hope they don’t make too much of a damn mess of the lawn. Ruth tells me she’s doing the flowers,’ he added, referring to his unmarried sister. ‘Should have thought you’d have got somebody professional in to do that.’

‘Aunt Ruth is better than a professional,’ Jenny told him calmly. ‘When she does the church flowers—’

‘The church flowers,’ Ben interrupted, snorting dismissively, then shaking his head when he realised that Jenny wasn’t going to allow him to agitate her but instead was simply listening serenely.

That was the trouble with Jenny; she was too damn serene at times and too damn clever.

‘Young Olivia’s coming home, I hear, and bringing some American or other with her.’

‘Of course she’s coming home,’ Jenny agreed. ‘After all, she is David’s daughter—and Tiggy’s.’ But it was Jenny, her aunt, whom she had telephoned to tell her in the strictest confidence that she had decided to move in with Caspar, and Jenny whom she had contacted to sound her out about the wisdom of bringing Caspar home with her.

‘Exactly who is he, then, this American?’ Ben demanded, changing tack, having recognised that Jenny wasn’t going to rise to the bait he had originally been dangling and rush to defend his sister. They were having a particularly hot summer and since his accident the heat bothered him. It got into his broken joints and made them ache so much that the pain made him irritable.

‘He’s Livvy’s boyfriend,’ Jenny returned.

‘Boyfriend.’ Ben frowned at her under his heavy silver eyebrows. Like his sons he, too, had a good thick head of hair, although where theirs was still blond, his was now silver. ‘According to David he’s in his thirties—hardly a boy. Serious between them, is it?’ he demanded, shooting her a penetrating look.

‘That’s something you must ask Livvy,’ Jenny told him.

It was certainly serious enough for Olivia to tell her mother that the two of them would be sharing a room even though David apparently had put his foot down and said no.

‘David’s right, of course,’ Tiggy had told Jenny when relating the details of their conversation to her. ‘Father would not approve at all and we’d never hear the end of it for allowing it and really, it will only be for a few days….’

‘Mmm … at that age a few days can seem an awfully long time. What does Livvy say?’

‘We haven’t told her yet. David said it was best not to until she arrived. You know what she can be like. She’s so strong-willed at times….’ Tiggy pulled a small face. ‘You remember what it was like when she decided she wanted to study law. Of course, we all knew it was only because David and her grandfather had both told her that they really didn’t think it was a good idea and after all, she is—’

‘Female,’ Jenny had supplied dryly.

Personally she thought the views of the males of the Crighton family were decades out of date and that it was high time that someone challenged them. Olivia might be the first female of the family to do so, but she wasn’t going to be the only one.

Jenny knew that her own Katie already, at sixteen, had very strong views as to where her future lay. It was to be the Bar or nothing, she had told her parents emphatically. Louise, her twin, was less single-minded; she still hadn’t totally given up all hopes of becoming a film star. Failing that, she might well opt to study law, she had said judiciously.

‘But I wouldn’t want to stay here,’ she had told her parents.

‘No, neither do I,’ Katie had agreed. She was always the one who took control, and Louise, like her father before her, seemed quite happy to good-naturedly let her do so.

Jenny, however, had been determined from the moment they were born that there was not going to be a favoured child and a second best; that both of them were going to grow up knowing they were of equal importance, equal value.

‘I know,’ she had told Louise. ‘We’ll go to Strasbourg. That’s where all the important legal decisions are made on human rights….’

‘Does your father know that?’ Jenny had murmured sotto voce to her husband. ‘I sometimes think he has a hard time grudgingly acknowledging that even Chester has more impact on the legal world than Haslewich.’

‘Mmm … Dad is fiercely parochial,’ Jonathon agreed. ‘He inherited that from his own father, of course. Aunt Ruth says that their father, Josiah, never really got over being sent away from Chester in disgrace and that he always remained bitter about the way his family treated him.’

‘Well, your father certainly believes in keeping the old rivalries going,’ Jenny had agreed. ‘I was quite surprised when he insisted on inviting the Chester side of the family to your birthday do.’

‘Oh, that’s just because he wants to impress them and—’

‘Just like Max wants to impress Grandad and Uncle David,’ Katie had interrupted scathingly, tossing her sixteen-year-old head in sisterly contempt of her elder brother.

Over that head Jenny had looked warily at her husband. It was no secret that Max was very much the apple of his grandfather’s eye and that of his uncle David’s.

‘That boy should have been David’s son, not yours,’ Ben had once infamously remarked at a family gathering.

Jenny had never forgotten hearing him say it. Neither, unfortunately it seemed, had Max.

Much as it pained Jenny to admit it, her son had a streak of vanity and, yes, weakness in him that she felt had been exacerbated by his grandfather’s indulgence.

‘Max will never be called to the Bar,’ Katie had announced scathingly the day of Max’s twenty-first when their grandfather had beamingly made the announcement of his grandson’s career intentions and presented him with the keys to a Porsche Carrera that both Jonathon and Jenny had pleaded with Ben not to give him.