A Kind Of Madness

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 passion, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she would have found a man who was far more openly and demandingly sexual 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.

Her mother had been thrilled about the planned holiday, but she had been concerned about leaving her menagerie. ‘Fortunately, Carter has offered to take over and look after things for us…You remember Carter, don’t you, Elspeth?’

She did, but wished she did not. Carter MacDonald was her aunt’s stepson, but he had already been an adult when her aunt had married his father, and his visits to the farmhouse had consequently been very rare. What she did remember about him was that she had found him rather overpowering. Almost eight years her senior, she had first met him the summer her aunt had married his father. He had just finished university at the time and had been waiting to hear if his application to work in scientific crop research for Third World countries had been successful. Her feelings towards him had been so ambiguous that when her mother had mentioned his name alarm bells had started to ring wildly in her cautious brain, especially when she couldn’t seem to explain what Carter was doing in Cheshire when he was supposed to be working in America.

Gently she had tried to caution her mother against leaving a man who was after all almost a stranger to them in charge of the smallholding because, for all her own objections and fears, she had had to admit that her parents were making an outstanding success of their venture, with the vegetables they produced being in constant demand from prestigious local restaurants and hotels. Indeed, so successful was it becoming that they were being pressed to expand, to erect more greenhouse tunnels and to buy more land. Their accounts, when they had proudly shown them to her, had stunned her. She had had no idea it was possible to make so much money from producing organically grown food.

When she had said as much to Peter he had lectured her reprovingly, pointing out that with the move to a far more ‘green’ environment it was obvious that her parents’produce would sell well.

And now they were jeopardising the whole thing by lightheartedly taking off for two months and leaving their precious business in the hands of a man about whom they knew virtually nothing at all.

Not so, her mother had objected when she had pointed these facts out to her. In the past few months they had got to know Carter very well indeed. It was true that initially he had merely been looking them up out of good manners, having returned to England after a spell working in America. But it seemed that now for some reason he was seriously considering settling in Cheshire and that, moreover, he had plans to enter a similar line of business to her parents’, so that he had both the experience and the inclination to take over the running of the business while they were away.

Elspeth had found all this highly suspicious. Her memories of Carter were of a tall, thin male with a shock of overlong dark hair who had seemed very adult to her teenage self, someone who had made her very aware of her own immaturity. Her mother was even talking enthusiastically about him buying a small farm due to come up for sale next to their own land, so that the two ventures could be run as one, but her parents were so innocent…so naïve. They couldn’t see what Peter had been quick to point out to her—something she had not realised at first herself—that it might well be that Carter did intend to start up a business, a business which would be in direct competition to their own—and what better way to get a head start than by destroying their business while they were away and he was in charge?

Of course, she had known immediately it would be useless to point this out to her mother. For one thing, she knew that her mother would only laugh and dismiss Peter’s suspicions as unthinkable.

She had talked the whole thing over with him and he had pointed out further aspects of the situation which had not occurred to her: namely, that not only might Carter not take adequate care of her parents’ venture, but that he might actually deliberately try to undermine everything they had built up. ‘After all, if he is serious about setting up in competition to them…’ he had gone on.

Shocked, Elspeth had initially demurred, but Peter had insisted he was right. She had immediately wanted to warn her parents, but had known that they would not take her warning seriously. They seemed to have taken Carter to their hearts, almost as though he were a long-lost son, not someone who was barely related to them at all if one discounted her aunt’s marriage to his father.

A sensation which she had refused to admit as jealousy had struggled for life inside her—a sensation which she had immediately squashed. But then had come her boss’s announcement that she must take some leave, and she had immediately suggested to Peter that it might be as well for her to kill two birds with one stone by taking her leave and by spending it in Cheshire, where she could keep a firm eye on any Machiavellian attempts by Carter to undermine her parents’ business.

Peter had immediately agreed with her decision. She had rung her parents that evening, announcing that she had some leave due and that she was free to stand in for them while she was on holiday.

At first her mother had seemed surprisingly unenthusiastic, almost as though she didn’t want her at home, and her ire and suspicions had grown when she had later learned that it was Carter who had told her parents that that kind of sacrifice on her part was unnecessary, and that he was sure she would much prefer to spend her leave with Peter.

Not so, she had returned firmly. And in the end her mother had thanked her and accepted her decision, although even then she had not seemed very confident of Elspeth’s ability to take charge. Which was foolish, surely. After all, her parents had a small staff who did the day-to-day routine work. Elspeth was used to dealing with underlings, having a small department under her at the bank, and surely a well-educated, mature woman of twenty-seven would have no trouble at all in running one very small small-holding for a period of one month.

And so she had planned everything. She would drive down to Cheshire three days ahead of her parents’ departure so that she could familiarise herself with their routine, and make sure that Carter knew that any interference on his part would not be welcome.

It was a pity that he was living in the area while he looked around for a suitable property of his own, but if he turned up at her parents’ smallholding she would make it more than plain to him that, in their absence, he was not a welcome guest.

As she listened to Peter telling her about his latest case, she smothered the uncomfortable feeling that if her parents had made Carter welcome in their home as a member of the family, they would be highly embarrassed if she refused to do the same. She reflected crossly that it was high time she overcame these rebellious and unwanted weaknesses which more properly she ought to have left behind her when she’d left home.

Her parents were a warm-hearted couple, whose naïveté about the realities of life and the human race were all very well in the context of a small rural village where they had been known all their lives, but the world had changed dramatically since her parents were young, and it frightened her sometimes how little they seemed to realise that fact.

Take the time she had got off the London train in Chester, only to discover that her mother had befriended a solitary and extremely hairy young man who had got off an earlier train, and even worse that she had practically invited him home for the weekend. One only had to pick up a paper to realise the danger of befriending strangers.

Not that Carter was a stranger precisely, but his motives were very suspect, as Peter had wisely pointed out to her. In fact Peter had rather chided her because she herself had not seen that danger immediately.

Truth to tell, she had been inclined to become more indignant about the way Carter seemed to have wormed his way into her parents’ affections and become an established part of their lives—so much so that the last time she had gone home, when mercifully he had been away visiting friends for the weekend, the parrot had shrieked unrelentingly, ‘Where’s Carter? I want Carter. Now there’s a man,’ accompanying this statement with a barrage of wolf-whistles and other equally unsavoury remarks.

It was not Jasper’s fault, her mother had apologised. The parrot had had three homes before being dumped on her parents; one of these being a Manchester pub, no doubt frequented by the kind of men who thought nothing of whistling at women and making fulsome remarks about their physical endowments.

Peter had remarked on their return drive to London that he sincerely hoped the bird would have met its demise by the time their children came along. ‘It’s that kind of thing that exerts the worst possible influence on young children,’ he had informed Elspeth.

Even worse, as she cringingly remembered, had been the reaction of Peter’s mother when he had described the parrot’s excesses to her the following weekend.

Peter was scrupulous about making sure that they never visited one set of parents without visiting the other, and if sometimes she had the unnerving feeling that he was doling out these duty visits with more parsimony than real emotion, she kept these unwanted thoughts firmly subdued.

Peter’s parents were nothing like her own. Peter’s mother was a wonderful housewife. Her furniture gleamed with polish, her kitchen floor could literally be dined off, and if Elspeth sometimes noticed the stiff formality of her visits there, the immaculate tidiness of the small sitting-room with its furniture that was both uncomfortable and almost too tidily arranged, she smothered her feelings and concentrated instead on reminding herself that once they were married Peter would no doubt expect her to maintain the same high standards attained by his mother.

That would be a challenge, but Elspeth reminded herself that the modern career woman thrived on such challenges, skilfully balancing the needs of career, home and family, and in doing so winning the admiration of everyone around her.

Mrs Holmes did not really approve of wives who worked. In her day making a home had been enough to keep any woman contented, but on the other hand she agreed with Peter that the additional income Elspeth earned would contribute welcomely to the family budget. There had even been a moment when Peter’s mother had suggested that when their children came along it might not be unfeasible for her and Mr Holmes to move to London, so that she might be on hand to take charge of her grandchildren’s upbringing.

For no good reason she could understand, Elspeth had experienced a very fierce and surprising shock of dislike for that suggestion. Into her mind had come mental images of her own childhood, of the farmyard and its inhabitants, of her mother’s kitchen with its good smells and its untidy bustle, of laughter and sunshine, of love and warmth, and she had known instinctively that she would never ever allow her prospective mother-in-law to bring up her own children.

Disturbing though these thoughts were she had managed to subdue them, chiding herself for being over-sentimental, reminding herself of how ill-equipped her own childhood had left her for the hard realities of life and people. And yet…

‘Elspeth, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying. Really, I don’t know what it is about your family, but they do seem to have the most unsettling effect on you. If it weren’t for the fact that someone ought to check up on what this man is planning, I’d have serious doubts about the wisdom of your spending so much time in Cheshire. Both apartments need decorating. You could have made a start on the painting while you were off.’

Elspeth focused on him, wondering why she didn’t feel more enthusiastic about his suggestion, why she felt an almost sneaking sense of relief that she was committed to going home.

For no reason that she could readily discern, over these last six months she had experienced more and more rebellious moments of startling clarity, during which she had had the unnerving sensation that her relationship with Peter, her life here in London, her work, her scrupulous re-tailoring of her personality, her appearance, even her thoughts, were not an escape from the old childish, trusting Elspeth and her naïve country ways, but a trap—a trap which was gradually but inexorably closing around her.

Which was totally ridiculous, and fostered, she was sure, in some odd and indefinable way by her parents. Not that they would be liable to make those oh, so casual, but nevertheless pointed remarks about Peter this time. At least, not after the first three days, and she suspected they would be far too excited about their holiday to even think of remarking on how odd it was that she should choose to marry such a man.

Elspeth had never quite dared ask what they meant. She preferred to assume that they were simply marvelling at her good fortune rather than criticising Peter.

At precisely one-thirty, Peter summoned the waiter and paid the bill. At the end of the month they would scrupulously divide up the total cost of their total outings for that month, to make sure that such costs had been shared equally between them.

And if just occasionally Elspeth wondered what it would be like if Peter suddenly lavished her with expensive flowers or bought her handmade chocolates, she told herself severely that she was not that kind of dependent, childish woman, who needed to be bought such treats by a man; that if she wanted flowers she could buy her own. But something inside her refused to be totally convinced, making her cross with herself for yearning for such outdated, meaningless gestures.

‘Time to go,’ Peter informed her, standing up.

He said exactly the same thing every time they lunched together. Previously she had always found his predictability soothing, reassuring—but for some reason today it grated on her. She wondered what it would feel like if Peter suddenly behaved like her father, and announced that he had booked them both a surprise holiday, that he was taking her away to somewhere she had always wanted to go. She told herself severely that he would never do anything so thoughtless, that he would realise that it would not be possible for her to drop everything to go to the other end of the world with him. No, if—when she and Peter took a holiday together, it would be one that was meticulously planned and organised, which was just what she would want. She could think of nothing worse than being told that she had less than three weeks in which to prepare for a two-month trip abroad.

Of course her mother thrived on such announcements, throwing herself into them with enthusiasm and as much excitement as a small child. But she was not her mother…No. She had recognised, the day when she’d stood in the doorway to the staff-room of the bank listening to Sophy, that for the rest of her life she would have to protect her parents from people like that. That she must never again subject them to the kind of cruel mimicry employed by her supposed friend.

Just before they parted outside the restaurant, acting on some impulse she couldn’t understand, she leaned towards Peter, inviting him to kiss her.

A look of shock crossed his face. He drew back from her immediately, glancing hurriedly over his shoulder as though to make sure no one had witnessed her lack of self-control. He cleared his throat, avoiding looking at her. He was embarrassed, she recognised, flushing hotly, and no wonder. What on earth had possessed her? She knew quite well that Peter hated public demonstrations of affection.

‘Er—I’m afraid I shall be late in tonight—I’m seeing a client. I’ll ring you at the weekend. When would be a good time?’

Still flushed and angry with herself, Elspeth made an automatic reply, and then, having exchanged slightly guarded smiles, they both went their separate ways.