A Paper Marriage

‘But where has all our money gone?’ she asked. ‘And why didn’t Oliver…?’

‘Well, naturally Oliver’s business needed a little help.’ Hilary Pearson bridled, just as if Lydie was laying some blame at her prized son’s door. ‘And why shouldn’t your father invest heavily in him? You can’t start a business from scratch and expect it to succeed in its first years. Besides, Madeline’s family, the Ward-Watsons, are monied people. We couldn’t let Oliver go around looking as though he hadn’t a penny to his name!’

Which meant that he would take Madeline to only the very best restaurants and entertainment establishments, regardless of cost, Lydie realised. ‘I didn’t mean Oliver had—er—taken the money,’ Lydie endeavoured to explain, knowing that her brother had started his own business five years ago and that, her father’s firm doing well then, he had put up the money to set his son up in his own business. ‘I meant why didn’t Oliver say something to me?’

‘If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that Oliver and Madeline were on holiday in South America the last time you were home. Poor Oliver works so hard; he needed that month’s break.’

‘His business is doing all right, is it?’ Lydie enquired—and received another of her mother’s sour looks for her trouble.

‘As a matter of fact, he’s decided to—um—cease trading.’

‘You’re saying that he’s gone bust too?’

‘Must you be so vulgar? Was all that expensive education lavished on you completely for nothing?’ her mother grumbled. Though she did concede, ‘All companies work on an overdraft basis—Oliver found it just too much of a struggle. When he and Madeline come back from their honeymoon, Oliver will go and work in the Ward-Watson business.’ She allowed herself the first smile Lydie had so far seen as she added, half to herself, ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Oliver isn’t made a director of the Ward-Watson conglomerate before he’s much older.’

All of which was very pleasing, but this wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘There won’t be any money coming back to Dad from Oliver, I take it?’

‘He’ll need all the money he can lay his hands on to support his wife. Madeline is used to the finer things in life, you know.’

‘Where’s Dad now?’ Lydie asked, her heart aching for the proud man who had always worked so hard. ‘Is he down at the works?’

‘Little point. Your father has already sold the works to pay off some debts—he’s out of a job, and at his age nobody’s going to employ him. Not that he would deign to work for anyone but himself.’

Oh, heavens, Lydie mused helplessly, it sounded as though things were even worse than she had started to imagine. ‘Is he out in the grounds somewhere?’

‘What grounds? Any spare ground has been sold. Not that, since it’s arable land only, it made a lot.’ And, starting to build up a fine head of steam, ‘Apart from the house—which the bank wants a slice of, which means we have to leave—your father has sold everything else that he can. I’ve told him I’m not moving!’ Her mother went vitriolically on in the same vein for another five minutes. Going on from talk of how they were on their beam-ends to state that if they had only a half of the amount the Ward-Watsons were forking out for their only daughter’s fairy-tale wedding, the bank would be satisfied.

‘Dad doesn’t owe the bank very much, then?’ Lydie asked, but before she could start to feel in any small way relieved, her mother was giving her a snappy reply.

‘They’re his one remaining creditor—he’s managed to scrape enough together to pay off everybody else, plus most of his overdraft. But—today’s Tuesday, and the bank say they have given him long enough. If they aren’t in receipt of fifty thousand pounds by the end of banking on Friday—they move. And so do we! Can you imagine it? The disgrace? A fine thing it’s going to look in Oliver’s wedding announcement. Not “Oliver Pearson of Beamhurst Court”, but “Oliver Pearson of No Fixed Abode”. How shall we ever—?’

Her mother would have gone on, but Lydie interrupted. ‘Fifty thousand doesn’t sound such a fearfully large amount.’

‘It does when you haven’t got it. Nor any way of finding it either. Apart from the house, we’re out of collateral. How can we borrow money with no way of repaying it? Nobody’s going to loan us anything. Not that your father would ask in the circumstances. No, your father overextended himself, the bank won’t wait any longer—and now I have to pay!’

Lydie thought hard. ‘The pictures!’ she exclaimed after a moment. ‘We could sell some of the family—’

‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Haven’t I just finished telling you that everything, everything that isn’t in trust for Oliver, has been sold? There’s nothing left to sell. Nothing, absolutely nothing!’

Her mother looked closer to tears than Lydie had ever seen her, and suddenly her heart went out to her. For all her mother had never been the warmest mother in the world to her, Oliver being her pride and joy, Lydie loved her.

Lydie went impulsively over to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently, taking a seat next to her on the sofa. ‘I’m so very sorry.’ And, remembering her mother saying only a short while ago that it was time she paid something back for the expensive education she had received, ‘What can I do?’ she asked. While the amount of her inheritance was small, and nowhere near enough, Lydie was thinking in terms of asking to have that money released now and not two years hence, when she would attain the age of twenty-five, but her mother’s reply shook her into speechlessness.

‘You can go and see Jonah Marriott,’ she said clearly. ‘That’s what you can do.’

Lydie stared at her, her green eyes huge. ‘Jonah Marriott?’ she managed faintly. She had only ever seen him once, and that was some seven years ago, but she had never forgotten the tall, good looking man.

‘You remember him?’

‘He came here one time. Didn’t Dad lend him some money?’

‘He did,’ Hilary Pearson replied sharply. ‘And now it’s his turn to pay that money back.’

‘He never repaid that money?’ Lydie asked, feeling just a touch disappointed. He had seemed to her sixteen-year-old eyes such an honourable man—and she knew he had prospered greatly in the seven years that had elapsed.

‘Coincidentally, the money he borrowed from your father is the same amount we need to stay on in this house.’

‘Fifty thousand pounds?’

‘Exactly the same. I can’t impress on you enough that if the bank don’t have their money by Friday, come Monday they’ll be making representation to have us evicted. I’d go and see him myself, but when I mentioned it to your father he hit the roof and forbade me to do anything of the sort.’

Lydie could not imagine her mild-mannered father hitting the roof, especially to the wife he adored. But he must be under a tremendous amount of strain at the moment. No doubt he himself had previously asked Jonah Marriott to make some kind of payment off that loan. There was no way her father’s pride would allow him to ask more than once. But to…

Her thoughts faded when just then the drawing room door opened and her father walked into the room. At least the man was tall, like her father, white-haired, like her father, but Lydie was shocked by the haggard look of him.

‘Daddy!’ she whispered involuntarily, and went hurriedly over to him. There was a dejected kind of slump to his shoulders which she found heartbreaking, and as she looked into his worn, tired face, she could not bear it. She put her arms round him and hugged him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, putting her aside and sending her mother a suspicious look.

‘I—thought I’d give Donna a chance to see how she’ll cope without me,’ Lydie invented, quickly hiding her shocked feelings. ‘I’ll give her a ring later. If she’s okay I’ll stay on, if that’s all right with you?’

‘Of course it’s all right,’ he replied with assumed joviality. ‘This is your h…’ He turned away and Lydie’s heart ached afresh. She just knew he had been thinking that this was her home, but would not be for very much longer. ‘Your mother been bringing you up to date with everything?’ he enquired, his tone casual, but pride there, ready to be up in arms if his wife had breathed a word of his troubles.

‘This wedding of Oliver’s sounds a bit top-drawer. Are they going to have a marquee—you didn’t finish telling me, Mother?’

Over the next half-hour Lydie observed at first hand the proud façade her father was putting up in front of her, and her heart went out to him. Looking at him, seeing the strain, the worry that seemed to be weighing him down, to go and see Jonah Marriott and ask him to repay the money he had borrowed from her father seven years ago did not seem such a hard task. Particularly as, if memory served, that money had only been loaned for a period of five years anyway.

‘Your room’s all ready for you.’ Her mother took the conversation away from the wedding. ‘If you want to go and freshen up,’ she hinted.

‘I’ve things to attend to in my study,’ Wilmot Pearson commented before Lydie had answered. ‘It’s good to see you, Lydie. Let’s hope you’ll be able to stay.’

No sooner had he gone from the room than her mother was back to the forbidden subject. ‘Well?’ she questioned. ‘Will you?’

Lydie knew what she was asking, just as she knew that she did not want to go and see Jonah Marriott. ‘You’re quite sure he hasn’t paid that loan back?’ she hedged. Her mother gave her a vinegary look. ‘Perhaps he can’t afford to pay it back,’ Lydie commented. ‘All firms work on an overdraft basis, you recently said so,’ she reminded her mother, but, still shaken by the haggard look of her father, wondered why she was prevaricating about going to see Jonah Marriott.

Her mother chose to ignore her comments, instead scorning, ‘Of course he can afford to pay it back—many times over. His father made a packet when he sold his department stores. Ambrose Marriott might be one tough operator but I can’t see him giving to one son and not the other—and the younger Marriott boy hasn’t done a day’s work since the deal was done. They’re all sitting on Easy Street,’ her mother said with a heartfelt sigh, ‘and just look at us!’

Lydie glanced at her parent, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to go and ask Jonah Marriott for the money he owed to her father, she knew that the time for prevaricating was over. She looked at her watch. Half past four. She had better get a move on. ‘Do you have his number?’

‘You can’t discuss this with him over the telephone!’ her mother snorted. ‘You need to be there, face to face. You need to impress on him how—’

‘I was going to ring his office for an appointment,’ Lydie interrupted. ‘He’s hardly likely to see me without one.’ And if he guesses what it’s about he’ll probably say no anyway!

‘I don’t want your father to catch you. You’d better make your call from your room,’ Hilary Pearson decided. And, not allowing her daughter to consider changing her mind, ‘I’ll come up with you.’

‘Marriott Electronics,’ a pleasant voice answered when up in her old bedroom Lydie had dialled the number.

‘Mr Marriott please,’ Lydie said firmly, striving with all she had to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Mr Jonah Marriott,’ she tacked on, just in case Jonah had taken other members of the Marriott clan into the business.