Tug Of Love

‘At least, with James living in Australia, he’s hardly likely to have the opportunity to disrupt your and Charlie’s lives too much,’ Heather had consoled.

‘I suppose Charlie’s quite excited,’ Heather ventured sympathetically now.

Win flashed her a bitter look. She was smaller than Heather, barely five feet two and enviably slender, but because she carried herself so well she always looked taller. Her hair was a thick mane of tawny brown which she normally wore severely controlled, sleeked back and tied in her nape with a soft bow. Her eyes always reminded Heather of rich warm sherry, and very occasionally when she dropped her guard and allowed her real feelings to show, as she was doing now, they could burn with an intensity disconcertingly at odds with her outwardly calm demeanour.

‘Quite excited? He’s practically delirious,’ Win told her grimly.

‘I take it, then, that his father’s return is an event even more exciting than the home team winning the boys’ league,’ Heather joked.

It was a joke that fell flat. Win looked at her, her delicately shaped face fiercely set.

‘If James thinks he’s going to take Charlie away from me…dazzling him, bribing him…’

‘Take him away from you? But he can’t do that. You were given custody, surely?’

‘Legally, yes,’ Win agreed, her eyes suddenly dark and sad as she confided unsteadily. ‘Heather, Charlie worships James. Since he had that holiday in Sydney with him, I don’t think a single day’s gone past without him mentioning his father. If James settles here in this town, as it seems he intends to do…Well, I don’t suppose it’s any secret to you that Charlie and I are going through a bad patch at the moment. He doesn’t get on with Tom. That’s my fault, I suspect. After all, he’s used to being the only male in my life.’ Win smiled sadly and wryly. ‘And let’s face it, Tom isn’t exactly the conciliatory type. It’s a bit like watching two bulls lowering their heads and pawing the ground at one another.’

Heather couldn’t help laughing a little, even though she sympathised with and understood her friend’s very real distress.

‘You’re afraid that having James back in the area is going to make things even more difficult between Tom and Charlie, is that it?’ she asked softly.

‘That’s part of it. But what I’m really dreading is James asking Charlie if he wants to go and live with him.’ Win saw her friend’s face and grimaced. ‘Oh, don’t think it isn’t possible. I know that legally I have custody of Charlie, but if James did make such an offer and Charlie wanted to go…Right now he’s in the middle of a love-affair with his father, or with the man he believes his father to be,’ Win added bitterly. ‘He’s too young to remember how it was when he was born, how angry James was with me for getting pregnant in the first place. Charlie wasn’t planned—in fact he was the classic accident. I’d had flu, and was too naïve to realise that the tummy problems I’d had made my pill totally ineffective. We’d only been married four months, and, as you know, neither my parents nor James’s wanted us to marry.

‘James was twenty-six, barely out of university and qualified. I was only nineteen. With hindsight I can see why they wanted us to wait, but we were in love—or at least I was in love. I suppose with James it was just sex. I was the classic example of an only girl in a family of boys—the only experimenting with sex I ever got to try, with my four big brothers always standing guard, was a furtive kiss or two at the odd party I managed to get to unchaperoned.

‘I was so sexually naïve, and I’d had it dinned into me so much by the boys just what their peers thought of girls who were sexually promiscuous, that I honestly believed that the boys—men—really did only respect a girl who said “no”.

‘And that was despite the fact that, had I had the wit to do so, I could have seen for myself that none of my brothers exactly practised what he preached, but of course I’d grown up so much in their shadow, and so over-protected. The male of the species most definitely does have one rule for himself and another for those females he considers to be his responsibility.’

A fact which Charlie was now endorsing by his antagonism towards Tom Longton, Heather reflected as she laughed at Win’s rueful words.

‘But surely, once Charlie was born, James changed—?’

Win shook her head, cutting her off.

‘He was away when Charlie arrived. After we discovered I was pregnant, he got another job, one where he earned more money, but it meant him travelling into the city every day, setting off at seven in the morning and not getting back most evenings until gone eight or nine. He was at a conference when I was in labour.’ Win’s mouth twisted a little. ‘I tried to ring him, but she told me he was unobtainable.’

Heather had no need to ask who ‘she’ was. She knew the story of how Win had discovered that her husband was involved in an affair with his personal assistant.

‘No, James never really wanted anything to do with Charlie. He complained that his crying got on his nerves, and I could see from the look on his face when he came home at night how disgusted he was by the state of the house, and me.’

Win sighed again.

‘Perhaps if my parents hadn’t had to be away in Edinburgh with Gran…If there’d just been someone there to help me with Charlie when he was so ill. I felt so afraid, Heather. People tried to be kind, but the hospital staff made me feel so incompetent, as though I couldn’t really be trusted to look after Charlie. He was so small and so frail, and then having that dreadful gastro-enteritis…I—I thought he was going to die, and that it was all my fault. I suppose I could have told Mum, but she’d been so angry when I insisted on getting married and not going on to university as I’d planned. I can understand why now, but then—well, it caused a rift between us for a time, and I felt that I couldn’t admit that she was right and I was wrong and tell her how frightened I was for Charlie.’

‘And James’s mother?’ Heather pressed sympathetically.

‘They were in Canada visiting James’s elder sister, a trip they’d been saving for and planning for a long time. They’ve retired there now, although they still keep in touch.’

‘Poor Win. You did have a bad time, didn’t you?’ Heather told her, remembering the joy of the birth of her own first son. She had been in her late twenties and Paul’s birth had been carefully and hopefully planned, just as soon as she and Rick had felt able to afford to start their family. Her own mother had been alive then, and on hand to help and support her, as had Rick’s sisters and mother. Rick had been with her for the birth, and had taken a month off work afterwards, to be with her and their baby.

‘It was my own fault,’ Win insisted. ‘James and I should never have married. I was too young and I was certainly far too immature to have a child. Perhaps if I’d been married to a different kind of man, one who was less selfish…’ She bit her lip. ‘That’s what I’m so afraid of, Heather—that James is going to shatter all Charlie’s illusions. Charlie worships him, but he doesn’t really know him, and I’m so afraid that once he does…I know that Charlie needs a man in his life, the right kind of male influence and guidance, but for that influence to come from James…’

‘And you’re sure he’s coming back permanently and not just for a visit?’ Heather persisted.

‘So it seems. After all, he is the business, and I suppose he can produce these computer software packages just as easily here as he does in Australia. It’s very difficult for me to talk to Charlie about his father,’ Win admitted. ‘Charlie tends to get very defensive and sullen—my fault, I suppose. Sometimes I feel he almost wants me to criticise James so that he can immediately leap to his defence.’

‘Have you ever tried to discuss with Charlie the reasons why you divorced his father?’ Heather asked gently.

Win shook her head.

‘No. I know he blames me for the divorce, though. I hate myself for saying this, Heather, but sometimes—well, it’s almost as though I’m willing James to reveal himself to Charlie in his true colours, and yet really that’s the last thing I want, because I know how much it would hurt Charlie if he did.’

Heather’s face softened.

‘You judge yourself too harshly,’ she told her, hugging her. ‘You are only human, Win, and I know how hard it’s been for you. All right, so James left you with the house and never tried to claim his share, and financially he’s always been generous…’

‘I’ve never spent a penny of his money on myself,’ Win told her quickly, defensively almost.

‘I know you haven’t, and it can’t have been easy for you once James did start to take an interest in Charlie—all those expensive and inappropriate gift parcels from Sydney, and then that trip out there…’

‘I think it was that that spurred me into going to college and getting myself some proper qualifications, getting myself a job.’

‘But you’ve always worked,’ Heather protested.

Win pulled a face. ‘Part-time jobs without any real status—the kind of low-paid jobs that women like me have to take. I suddenly realised how poor an image I was giving Charlie of our sex. I wanted him to see that women could achieve and be successful.’ She bit her lip and flushed. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest, I was jealous of constantly hearing him saying how successful James was, and, let’s face it, working at the hotel can hardly compare with owning and running a successful company.’

‘I know you better than that,’ Heather told her stalwartly. ‘And I also know that the last thing you want for Charlie is that he should judge and measure people by their commercial achievements. You’ve worked so hard to encourage him to grow in every direction, Win. All those cold wet afternoons watching him play football! I used to get quite furious with you when Danny came back and complained that I never watched him play. And then there’s his chess, and his swimming, not to mention the drama group…’

She stopped as Win pulled another face. ‘You make it sound as though I’m force-feeding him on “suitable” activities. I just didn’t want him to grow up being isolated. You feel you have to try so much harder when there’s only you.’ Her mouth trembled suddenly, and Heather realised how very genuinely disturbed her friend was by the fears aroused by her ex-husband’s projected return.

‘Oh, God,’ she muttered thickly, reaching for a tissue and firmly blowing her nose, ‘I loathe people who wallow in self-pity. Now,’ she asked firmly, ‘what was all this about a celebration? Your wedding anniversary is still six weeks away, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but what I was thinking of celebrating was our anniversary.’

When Win frowned Heather explained.

‘Ten years…of course, it must be. So what did you have in mind?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—a weekend with Tom Cruise; a fairy godmother to instantly transform me into Julia Roberts,’ Heather sighed, while Win laughed. ‘No, what I’d really got in mind was a day at a health hydro,’ Heather told her. ‘It’s something I’ve always fancied,’ she added yearningly. ‘All that pampering and spoiling—mm. And—’

‘Mm, sounds good,’ Win agreed. ‘But pricey.’

‘We deserve it,’ Heather told her positively.

Win looked doubtful. ‘Charlie’s been on at me for a new pair of trainers, and—’

‘No,’ Heather interrupted her firmly, then added a little more gently, ‘You spoil him sometimes, Win. It won’t do him any harm to wait a little longer for his trainers. It’s time you indulged yourself a little bit.’