Her Hand in Marriage

He continued to frequently ask her out. She as frequently told him no. Her mind was on very different matters. Her mother was continuing to make progress. Slow progress, it was true, but after so many years in her private dark place, it was a joy to Romillie to see her picking up the threads of living again.

‘I was wondering,’ Eleanor mused as they sat drinking coffee after dinner one night, ‘how you’d feel about sitting for me?’

Romillie could not believe it, but was more than ready to give her every encouragement. ‘No problem,’ she answered cheerfully.

As soon as his gifted daughter’s artistic talent had shown through, Grandfather Mannion had had a studio made for her. And so it was that after her stint at the dental practice, where it seemed Jeff Davidson still had not taken on board that no thanks meant exactly that, Romillie would spend some part of every evening in her mother’s studio while her mother re-acquainted herself with that which had once been her life.

It was during these sittings that Romillie learnt that Lewis Selby had been down, and had again been invited in for a cup of tea.

Indeed, as the weeks went by, it appeared that he came down once or twice every week and, out of courtesy, always knocked on the door to let her mother know that he was about. Out of that same courtesy, her mother would always invite him in for a cup of tea.

He was divorced, Romillie learned at one of their sittings. ‘A rather acrimonious divorce too, I think,’ her mother revealed. ‘Though, because he’s such a nice person, he never says a word against his ex-wife.’ And, going on to another topic, ‘How do you feel about doing a nude sitting? You needn’t if you don’t want to, but I’d like to try…’

‘Happy to oblige,’ Romillie answered. If her mother went on making progress like this she might soon be saying a permanent goodbye to her ‘down’ days.

At a further sitting Romillie learned that Lewis Selby had paid another visit, and had again been invited in. But when she privately wondered if he was perhaps interested in her mother, she discovered that he was seemingly still too bruised from his divorce to consider leaving himself open to anything like that again.

‘It’s nice that he can pop in from time to time,’ Romillie commented lightly. ‘Er—when does he retire?’

‘Not yet. Not officially for another three years. He works for the telecommunications company Tritel Incorporated. But with him being chairman of such a vast company, it’s not a job he can leave in an instant.’ Eleanor broke off to concentrate on what she was doing for a while, and then resumed. ‘Though from what Lewis was saying he has a very able deputy in Naylor Cardell, a man who, it seems, while dealing with his own work, is already taking on some of Lewis’s duties. Keep your head still for a moment, there’s a love.’

Romillie was in the kitchenette of the dental surgery a few days later when Jeff Davidson came in and tried a new tack. ‘If I promise to keep solely to you while we’re going out, would you bend just a little and come out with me again?’ he asked. And as she just stared at him, because he still hadn’t got the message, ‘Did I hurt you so much, Romillie?’ he went on. ‘Did I? That you no longer trust me?’

Trust, in her book, was one very big word—and he had proved himself undeserving. She looked at him, tall, good-looking and with everything going for him—and yet he suddenly seemed totally without substance.

But her pride reared up at his question of whether his fickleness had hurt her, and there was no way she was going to let him know that hurt she had been, nor how betrayed she had felt. And she who abhorred lies found in that proud instance that it was no effort to have a lie tripping off her tongue.

‘I’ve moved on, Jeff,’ she replied.

He cocked his head to one side. ‘How?’

‘Pastures new,’ she told him without blinking.

‘You’re dating someone else?’ he asked, seeming astounded.

‘You seem surprised?’

‘No, no.’ He back-pedalled. ‘You’re very attractive…You know that you are. It’s—um—just…’

It annoyed her that he should so conceitedly think she stayed home nights, hurting because of him. ‘You blew it, Jeff,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Get over it.’

Her pride was fully intact when she drove home that night. But, when she went in it was to discover that her mother, who had recently been so up, looked tense, and had taken a step backwards.

‘Had a good day?’ Romillie asked cheerfully, starting to become convinced that her father had called and been up to his old trick of shattering her mother’s confidence.

But it was not her father who was the culprit this time, but, surprisingly, Lewis Selby. And he was not so much shattering her confidence as wanting her to take a peep outside the safe little world she had made for herself.

‘Lewis—called,’ she answered jerkily as Romillie put the kettle on to make a pot of tea.

Lewis Selby had been there yesterday. Twice in two days! ‘He must be nearly finished with his business next door,’ Romillie remarked lightly.

‘He asked me to have dinner with him!’ Eleanor burst out in a sudden rush.

Oh, heavens! Romillie kept her expression impassive, but knew the answer even before she asked the question. ‘Are you going?’

‘No, of course not!’ Sharp, unequivocal. And she saw that her mother, like herself, was a long way from trusting again.

Romillie had never met Lewis Selby, but in her conversations with her parent had gleaned enough to know that the man seven years her mother’s senior sounded a very nice and kind man. He must be nice or her mother would never have allowed him over the doorstep.

‘What did you tell him?’ she asked, believing her mother needed to talk her present agitated feelings out of her system. She looked at her parent and thought, as she always had, how beautiful her mother was. She had raven hair, too, but the trauma of her life with Archer Fairfax had added a wing of pure white to one side.

Her mother was suddenly looking self-conscious, and all at once confessed, ‘I feel a bit of a fool now, but he caught me so unawares at the time that I told him that I never went anywhere without my daughter.’

‘You didn’t!’ Romillie gasped. And, when her mother nodded, ‘What did he say to that?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t bat an eye, but straight away suggested that he take the two of us to dinner.’

Heavens! He sounded keen! ‘So where are we going?’ Romillie teased gently, knowing in advance that her parent had put the kibosh on that notion.

‘We aren’t. I told Lewis I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Eleanor replied, as Romillie knew she would. ‘I feel dreadful now. I didn’t even make him a cup of tea. He just—sort of left.’

All went quiet on the Lewis Selby front after that. Her mother seemed to spend long moments staring into space—though pensively, and not as she had formerly, when her whole world seemed to have imploded.

But a week later Romillie arrived home from work to discover that Lewis had popped in again and had been given a cup of tea. In return he had left her mother with a couple of complimentary tickets he could not use himself and which he thought, since it was for an exhibition of paintings at the opening of an art gallery in London on Friday evening, she might be interested in.

‘Wasn’t that thoughtful?’ Eleanor said, more back to the way she had been prior to Lewis’s dinner invitation. ‘We won’t be able to use them, of course, but it was very kind of Lewis to think of us.’

‘Why won’t we be able to use them?’ Romillie asked, not missing that her mother had seemed a touch animated when speaking of the exhibition of paintings.

‘Do you think we could—should?’ Eleanor asked hesitantly.

‘I don’t see why not. It would be a shame to waste the tickets if Mr Selby can’t use then. And we can easily drive up there when I finish work.’

Eleanor was thoughtful for a minute or so. But suddenly agreed, ‘We’ll have a cooked meal at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll only need a sandwich before we go.’

Romillie hurried home after on Friday and noticed that her mother was dressed in a pale blue suit, making her look as smart as a new coat of paint. It pleased her—her mother was usually dressed in trousers and an overblouse.

‘I can’t remember the last time I was in London,’ she commented when Romillie, having quickly showered and changed into a smart two-piece, too, headed the car down the drive.

It was ages since her mother had been anywhere, for that matter, and Romillie could only hope she was not too churned up. She would keep an eye on her anyway, and if she looked to be feeling stressed in any way she would get her out of there.

Romillie found that she need not have worried. ‘Eleanor! Eleanor Mannion!’ someone greeted her the moment they walked into the gallery. She had always painted under her maiden name. And, for all she had not picked up a paintbrush or sold any of her work in years, as several other arty types came up and beamed at her, it was a name that had not been forgotten.

The next half-hour passed quickly as they paused to look, paused to study, prior to moving on. Romillie did not know when she had last seen her mother so animated.

There were a good many people there whom Eleanor did not know, but a good few whom she did. More people came over and expressed warmth and delight at seeing her there so unexpectedly, and Romillie stood back. This was her mother’s world, or used to be. And she looked so cheered Romillie could only be glad that they had come.

Then it was just the two of them again, but as her mother turned to point out the merits of one particular picture, Romillie saw her glance to someone else who was making his way over to them. He was a man of average height, smartly suited, and had white hair and looked to be approaching sixty.