The Ultimate Surrender

Whilst she was in the kitchen she could hear the two men talking together, their voices carrying to where she was working.

‘For God’s sake, Rick,’ she heard Marcus demanding sharply, ‘what the hell were you thinking about? She’s little more than a baby herself…’

‘I wasn’t thinking…You don’t when you’re in love,’ she heard Richard responding simply.

‘In love!’ Marcus almost snarled. ‘You might be that but I doubt that either of you knows what real love is all about.’

He left shortly afterwards, ignoring the cheek she timidly offered him to kiss, his shark-grey eyes almost black with the intensity of his anger.

‘I don’t think that Marcus likes me very much,’ she forced herself to confess to Richard a little later. They were sitting on their small shabby sofa and Richard was trying to playfully spoon-feed her what was left of the rich chestnut roulade she had served the men for their pudding. Just the smell of it turned her stomach, never mind what the taste would do, but at this stage she was still reluctant to confront the truth.

‘Of course he likes you,’ Richard told her heartily—too heartily, perhaps, as he avoided looking at her. ‘In fact he probably wishes he’d met you first,’ he added, before admitting, ‘Not that you’re really his type…’

‘Oh? What kind of girl is?’ Polly asked him, more to stop herself focusing on how very queasy she felt than out of any real interest.

‘Oh, sort of sophisticated and tall, the kind of girl who looks as though she knows what life’s all about, if you know what I mean.’

Polly did, and the kind of girl Richard had just described was as different from the way she was herself as it was possible to be. For a start she was short rather than tall—barely five foot two—and her hair was a soft mousy-brown rather than blonde; and as for knowing what life was all about…

A month later, when it was impossible for her to ignore the fact that Marcus’s angry guess had been right and that she was pregnant, Richard walked into the flat to find her in tears and desperately worried about their future.

‘Don’t worry,’ he consoled her as he took her in his arms and held her tight. ‘We’ll manage…somehow…’

Of course she immediately felt better, comforted by his insouciance and his confidence. Richard had such a warm, sunny nature that it was impossible not to feel buoyed up and infected by his natural optimism and his belief that something would ‘turn up’.

A commission for a portrait via Marcus, together with a generous Christmas cheque from Richard’s parents, who were living in Cyprus where Richard’s father was stationed, helped them to repay the overdraft which had somehow or other built up to alarming proportions despite Polly’s excellently thrifty housekeeping. But the flat was damp and cold, and in the new year Richard caught flu, and then Polly caught it from him and was unable to work. The office sent a letter round suggesting that since she would be leaving work anyway when her baby was born it might be as well if she didn’t return but concentrated on looking after her health. The letter arrived on a raw, miserable February day when Polly was seven months pregnant and the last of the Christmas money had just been used to pay their rent.

The small sitting room of the flat was crammed with things she had bought for the coming baby—all of them second-hand—including the cot that Richard was cleverly repainting. Polly was sitting there on the threadbare carpeted floor, large round tears running down her face and dripping onto her large round tummy, when the door opened and Marcus walked in unannounced.

In her undignified haste to get up Polly caught her foot in the carpet and pitched forward, giving a sharp cry of protest and fear, quickly smothered against the unexpected warmth of Marcus’s expensive cashmere jacket as he caught hold of her, impeding her fall. For a moment, as she stood within the protective circle of his arms her face buried in his jacket, breathing in the raw male scent of him, Polly had the most peculiar and bemusing sense of somehow coming home; of being safe and protected.

It was gone in a second, quickly dismissed by her realisation of just how alien and idiotic her reaction was. She had never felt really comfortable with Marcus, still less as her pregnancy advanced, and she felt sure she could see in his eyes his disapproval of the way their marriage and her pregnancy had taken over Richard’s life, forcing onto him responsibilities which did not allow him full exercise of his artistic talents. So how on earth could she possibly have experienced what she had experienced? It was her imagination—a hallucination—an odd side-effect of being pregnant and poorly. And then Marcus was releasing her, turning his back on her, his face set and unreadable as he headed for the attic and Richard.

It was less than a week later when Richard burst into the flat, full of excitement to tell her of the ‘terrific idea’ that Marcus had had. He picked her up and whirled her round in his arms despite the bulk of her pregnancy, until she was so dizzy she had to beg him to stop.

‘What idea?’ she asked him.

‘Instead of selling Fraser House Marcus says that we should keep it…’

‘But we need the money from it,’ Polly protested anxiously. One thing she had learned about her husband was that he was something of a dreamer, prone to wonderful ideas that he painted for her in all the rich colours of his imagination; but, strong as he was on imagination, Richard was rather weak on practicality, and her heart sank a little as she prepared to listen to him.

‘We need money, yes,’ Richard agreed. ‘But Marcus has come up with this wonderful way for us to make some. You know how he’s just got that recent promotion which involves him spending more time here in the UK and entertaining a lot?’

Cautiously Polly nodded. Marcus had recently been made the head of his department, travelling daily to the company’s UK offices in the city and returning each evening to the luxurious apartment he retained in the small commuter village where his and Richard’s family roots were. And she had learned, through listening to his conversations with Richard, that he spent a lot of time having meetings with his overseas colleagues.

‘Well, apparently Marcus’s boss has just come back from a prolonged visit to their American parent company in the States and he’s told Marcus that over there the trend is for visiting execs and their wives to stay as house guests with their US counterparts. Apparently he’s very keen to introduce the same sort of system over here. Marcus would get a special expenses allowance to cover all the costs but, as he was saying to me, it would be virtually impossible for him to provide the standard of hospitality that would be needed as an unmarried man living alone in a service flat. That’s when he realised what a perfect solution it would be for all of us…’

‘What would be?’ Polly asked him in bewilderment. The baby had started kicking quite hard and her head was still full of flu, and what she really wanted more than anything else was to go to bed—a nice warm bed in a nice warm bedroom…not the horrid, lumpy, uncomfortable bed she and Richard shared in their cold, damp room.

‘What I’ve just said,’ Richard told her. ‘What a terrific idea it would be if the three of us moved into Fraser House and you and I…well, you, I suppose, really,’ he admitted a little ruefully, ‘looked after Marcus’s colleagues…you know…tidied up their rooms, cooked their meals—that sort of thing,’ he told her vaguely. ‘And Marcus would pay us for doing it. Oh, and of course he’d be living there as well, and I suppose you’d have to cook for him too, although he’d still be away some of the time…’

‘Richard…’ Polly stopped him faintly.

‘What is it? Aren’t you feeling well?’ he demanded anxiously as soon as he saw how pale and shocked she was looking. ‘It isn’t the baby, is it? It isn’t time yet…’

No, it wasn’t the baby, although the shock to her system of what he had just outlined could well have caused her to go into premature labour, Polly reflected a little later on as she tried and failed to find the words to tell him how impossible what Marcus was suggesting was. For one thing she just couldn’t see how Marcus—immaculate, lordly, impatient Marcus—was ever going to be able to live side by side with a small baby…never mind side by side with her.

Then, during the night, the ceiling above their bedroom fell in, sending plaster and water cascading everywhere causing Richard to say worriedly that there was no way they could continue to live where they were, especially since he was having to leave in the morning to spend the next ten days working on a private commission for his father’s regiment. He had been asked to paint the regiment’s mascot—an elderly goat which was ‘stationed’ at regimental headquarters near Aldershot.

While Polly still wandering round the flat in a daze, trying to remove bits of fallen plaster from her carefully washed and ironed inherited baby things, Richard was on the telephone to Marcus. Marcus arrived shortly after surveying both the flat and Polly in grim silence before announcing that the place was totally unfit for anyone to live in, never mind a pregnant child.

‘I am not a child,’ Polly retorted, flinching as though he had struck her, reminding him through gritted teeth, ‘I am nineteen years old.’

‘Like I said…a child,’ Marcus returned scathingly, before he instructed, ‘No, leave those and just go and get in the car.’

Much as she longed to object to his high-handedness, Polly thought better of it, which was how she found herself somehow or other installed at Fraser House, its 'For Sale’ sign firmly removed and a team of cleaners produced from out of nowhere to attack the neglect of the months it had been empty.

It was the kitchen which converted Polly to Marcus’s seemingly impossible idea. Large and surprisingly well equipped, considering the age and solitary lifestyle of the General, it possessed a deliciously warm range and a central heating system which produced gallons of scaldingly hot water—something which had been in very short supply at the flat. And then, of course, there was the garden, large enough for an army of children, and the bedrooms—in need of a fresh coat of paint, perhaps, but each of them with the most wonderfully sturdy country-style furniture and enough cupboards and dressing rooms for every single one of them to have its own en suite bathroom, which Marcus told her firmly was an absolute necessity for his executives and their wives.

The drawing room was enormous, and so too was the dining room, complete with the custom-made dining table and its twenty-four chairs—it seemed the General had never done anything on a small scale and that included entertaining. There was a small library and a pretty morning room which Marcus told her he could remember had been his grandmother’s own special domain, and then another sitting room, cellars and an upper storey as well as the attics.

When Marcus told her how much his board were prepared to pay per executive couple per visit, Polly felt faint with shock.

‘So much,’ she faltered, round-eyed.

‘You’ll have to feed them for that,’ Marcus warned her tersely. ‘And proper food, Polly; these people are used to dining at the very best restaurants and they’ll expect the same standard here. Not that that will be any problem for you, I know,’ he added, totally flooring her both with the unexpectedness of the compliment and his casual acceptance that her cooking skills could rival those of the country’s best chefs.

‘I…’ Polly had begun to feel quite faint. ‘I…’ she began again. Marcus had been walking ahead of her across the large hallway, which already in her mind’s eye Polly could see freshly decorated with a huge bowl of freshly cut flowers on the wooden chest next to her to welcome their visitors. The decorating she knew could be safely left to Richard, who, most unusually for an artist, had no inhibitions or prejudices about turning his hand to such work. The mural he had painted for the tiny cupboard at the flat which had been going to be the baby’s room had taken her breath away with its delicacy and imagery.

‘Yes, Richard would…Oh-h-h…’ The sharpness of the pain she felt made her catch her breath and stop in mid-step, her eyes going wide with apprehension and dread.

‘What is it?’ Marcus demanded sharply.

‘Nothing,’ she fibbed, praying that she was right and that the ominous penetrating pain that was ebbing and flowing with increasing strength and increasing frequency was simply the false alarm she had learned so much about at her antenatal classes. It was far too early for the baby yet. She still had nearly a full month to go…

And so, reassuring herself, she forced herself to walk as steadily as she could to Marcus’s side, and made to climb the stairs so that they could inspect the bedrooms together and decide which ones should be allocated as guest bedrooms.

It had already tacitly been decided that Marcus would have the large bedroom which had been their grandfather’s, mainly because the bathroom and small sitting room which went with it meant that he could be reasonably self-contained there. Tactfully, Polly had chosen for them two rooms as far away from him as possible, not just to maintain their own privacy but also to make sure that Marcus wasn’t disturbed by the baby.

In her heart of hearts she knew the last thing she wanted was to live in the same house as Richard’s cousin, no matter how much Richard might enthuse about the idea. But what choice really did they have?

She winced as another pain caught her, sharper this time, deeper and lasting a little longer, and this time too there was no disguising what was happening from Marcus. As the pain gripped her she automatically held her breath. She felt sick and dizzy and very, very alone and afraid, and she longed more than anything else for Richard, or, failing that, her aunt, but Richard was in Aldershot painting the regiment’s goat’s portrait and her aunt was in South Africa visiting her eldest daughter.

As sweat beaded her forehead and her whole body was gripped by the necessity to deal with what was happening, Polly had no breath left to protest as Marcus suddenly swore under his breath and started to urge her towards the front door.

‘No…Where…? What…?’ she began, and then stopped as the pain surged again.

She could hear Marcus responding to her question, telling her tersely, ‘Where the hell do you think? Hospital, of course. Can you walk to the car, do you think, or…?’