Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series

‘I might be a girl, Gramps, but I’m also a fully qualified practising solicitor,’ Olivia heard herself reminding her grandfather in a coolly firm voice. But despite her outward control, inwardly her heart had started to beat too fast and she could feel the familiar turmoil beginning to churn her stomach. ‘I know it’s what Dad would want me to do,’ she added, looking her grandfather squarely in the eye. ‘Unless, of course, Max wants—’

‘That’s impossible,’ Ben told her testily. ‘You know that perfectly well. Max is trying for the Bar.’

‘Are you sure you know what you’re taking on?’ Saul murmured in her ear. ‘It’s not going to be easy for you, you know. I dare say that Jon isn’t as much of a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist as Ben, but you’re still talking about a very old-fashioned country practice with very old-fashioned country clients.’

‘What are you trying to say to me, Saul?’ she challenged him sharply. ‘That I’m not up to the work?’

‘No, of course not,’ he denied. But despite his denial, as she looked round at the expressions on people’s faces, Olivia suspected that none of them really believed that she was capable of stepping into her father’s shoes.

‘Livvy,’ she heard Jon beginning hesitantly and her resolve hardened and along with it her voice.

‘I’ve made up my mind, Uncle Jon,’ she told him grittily, ‘and I’m not going to change it. I’ll be at the office first thing tomorrow morning.’

She held her breath, waiting for one of them to call her bluff, then released it slowly when none of them did. They needed her, she recognised bleakly, even if none of them, apart from Jenny, was prepared to admit it. Well, she would show them. She would show them that she was just as professional as any male Crighton they’d care to name, and a good deal more so than some of them, she decided as she glowered darkly at Max, who was watching her with his usual smug contempt.

She wondered if he’d told Ben that his elevation to full junior membership in his chambers wasn’t by any means as cut and dried as he’d implied and then decided that if he hadn’t, it was his own business. She wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, though, if the final selection went against him as Caspar was pretty sure that it easily could.

‘Why?’ she had asked Caspar when they had been discussing it. ‘On what grounds?’

‘Plenty,’ Caspar had returned. ‘He’s the wrong sex for starters and in addition to that I doubt that he’s strictly fully competent enough to win the selection.’

‘He passed his exams.’

‘Just,’ Caspar pointed out pithily, ‘and he’s not popular. Oh, I know what you’re going to say,’ he continued, holding up his hand to stop her before she could begin to speak. ‘And, yes, I agree that to have the reputation of being held a little in awe by your peers is no bad thing for a barrister, but in this case I wouldn’t say his peers hold him so much in awe as in contempt.’

Olivia gave him a wry look. He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already heard. The legal world was, after all, a relatively small and close-knit one through which gossip and rumour tended to spread pretty quickly.

Now, as she looked at Caspar across the width of her grandfather’s drawing room, her heart missed a beat. How was he going to feel about her impetuous decision to step into her father’s shoes at the practice and the temporary hold it would put on their own plans? He would understand just why she had felt compelled to offer her assistance, wouldn’t he?

‘Fine. You felt you had to do it for your father’s sake. Very daughterly. But what about us, Livvy? What about me? Surely I had a right at least to be consulted about what you were contemplating.’

Olivia winced as Caspar stopped pacing the floor of her bedroom and swung round angrily to confront her. ‘I didn’t stop to think,’ she confessed. ‘I just … I thought you’d understand….’

‘Oh, I understand all right,’ Caspar told her grimly. ‘I understand very well that you just couldn’t resist the opportunity to win your grandfather over, to get his approval, to have him say how much he values you … how much he appreciates you … how he loves you. But it isn’t going to happen, Livvy, because your grandfather will never admit that he could possibly make an error of judgement or that a woman could possibly be as good a lawyer as a man. He can’t. It would mean going against everything he believes in and he’s too old and too set in his ways to do that.

‘You can think about that when you’re trying to fill your father’s shoes and abandoning a perfectly good pair of your own in the process and you can think about something else, as well,’ he told her bitterly.

‘I value you. I appreciate you … I love you, but my feelings no longer seem to matter to you. Just like the plans we’ve made. Still, at least I found out before it’s too late. There’s no way I intend to build my life around a woman who is always going to be running home to her family whenever she thinks they need her, who is always going to put them first, who’s as addicted to the way they withhold their love and approval from her in just the same way that her mother’s addicted to—’

‘That’s not true,’ Olivia interrupted him furiously. ‘I’m not abandoning you for my family, Caspar. And as for our plans, I’m simply putting them on hold for a few weeks until my father’s well enough to go back to work. You know what your trouble is, don’t you?’ she challenged him, as angry now as he was himself, refusing to listen to the small inner voice that warned her to exercise restraint and caution.

‘You’re very good at accusing me of clinging to a childhood pattern of behaviour; of misinterpreting my motivation for offering to help as some childish need to gain my grandfather’s approval. But what about you? What about the fact that you’re still acting like the little boy who couldn’t bear not to come first? It’s not my fault your parents divorced, Caspar. It’s not my fault that your father had other children. Oh, this isn’t getting us anywhere,’ she finished tiredly as she saw the look in his eyes. The last thing she wanted was to quarrel with him, not now when she needed his support and his understanding so badly. As she pushed the heavy weight of her hair off her face, she looked pleadingly at him, her stomach tensing nervously as she saw his stony expression.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed coldly. ‘But then perhaps that’s because there’s nowhere left for us to go. You’ve made your decision, Olivia … your choice, and you made it without feeling any need to discuss its implications with me. I think that says all that needs to be said about how much you value our relationship, don’t you?’

‘Caspar, what are you doing?’ Olivia demanded anxiously as he started to walk towards the door.

As he opened it he paused and looked coldly at her before saying, ‘I think you already know the answer to that. It’s too late for me to leave for London this evening, but first thing in the morning I’ll make arrangements to do so. After all, there’s very little point in my staying on now, is there?’

‘Caspar,’ Olivia protested, but it was too late; he had already gone and yet, alongside her despair, Olivia was acutely conscious of a sharp sense of resentment she couldn’t completely smother.

Yes, she had acted impetuously, and yes, she should, with hindsight, have talked things over with Caspar before making that offer to Jon. But to make those accusations about her motives, to have reacted the way he had without making any attempt to understand her feelings or her situation … to virtually demand that she focus her life on him and only him …? After all, he hadn’t wanted to listen to her last night, had he?

Olivia couldn’t forget how alienated from him she had felt when he had refused to understand how upset she had been about her mother. At least now she would be on hand if her mother should need her, something she was sure that Saul with his far more compassionate nature would understand.

Wearily she looked out of her bedroom window. She could see Caspar standing in the garden. He had his back to her, his hands in his pockets, his hair ruffled by the late afternoon breeze. She would have to go down and talk to him, make him understand, make him see her point of view … apologise to him for not having consulted him … show him that she did love him, and that once she had discharged her duty to her parents, her family, they could be together as they had originally planned.

He would have to understand that she couldn’t go back on her word to Jon. Not now … If she did, it would simply confirm everything that her grandfather was so scathing about concerning the ability of her sex to commit itself to a career, to put logic first and emotion second. But would Caspar understand? Perhaps Saul had been right this afternoon when he had claimed wryly that Americans have a different way of looking at life … a different set of priorities.

At the time, whilst she had been sympathetic, Olivia had put his disenchantment down to the fact that he and Hillary were having marital problems. Now she wasn’t so sure …

‘Well, at least Livvy’s offer to help out at the partnership will take one problem off your shoulders,’ Jenny commented to Jon later that evening after their return from Queensmead.

‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely. They were both in the kitchen. Jenny was starting preparations for supper.

Jenny looked thoughtfully at him. His terseness only confirmed what she had already guessed—that for some reason he was reluctant to accept Olivia’s offer of help. She was sure about one thing; it wasn’t because of Olivia’s sex. Jon, after all, had been the one who suggested, albeit rather tentatively, to both David and Ben when Olivia had first expressed an interest in training as a solicitor, that they take her on themselves as an articled clerk. It had been David and, of course, Ben who had vetoed the idea.

‘You don’t sound very keen,’ she pressed when he made no further attempt to answer her. ‘You can’t run the practice on your own,’ she told him. ‘You need—’

‘Yes. I do realise that, Jenny,’ Jon snapped, interrupting her. ‘But it would make my life much easier if certain members of this family would stop trying to decide what’s best for me and allow me to make my own decisions.’

Jenny stared at him. She knew, of course, that by ‘certain members of this family’ he meant her, but his criticism was so grossly unfair and out of character that she could hardly believe he had uttered it.

‘Jon,’ she protested.

‘I have to go and see Tiggy,’ he told her curtly. ‘She’s getting herself into a terrible state over some problem or other with the bank and I promised her I’d go round.’

‘Olivia’s at home,’ Jenny reminded him, trying to keep her voice deliberately neutral. ‘I’m sure if she knew that Tiggy was worrying about something like that, she would sort it out for her.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she would,’ Jon agreed, ‘but perhaps Tiggy feels more at ease asking for my help rather than Olivia’s. She feels that Olivia disapproves of her … considers her too irresponsible. They do have rather conflicting personalities. You’ve said so yourself,’ he reminded her when Jenny remained silent.

‘I doubt I ever said that they have conflicting personalities,’ Jenny corrected him gently. ‘Different, yes. But I’m sure you’re wrong in accusing Olivia of disapproving of her mother.’

‘I’m not accusing Olivia of anything. Just repeating what Tiggy told me … a confidence she’s given me,’ he underlined. ‘You might try to be a little bit more compassionate and understanding yourself, Jen. I know you and Tiggy aren’t exactly close and that in the past she has tended to be rather dizzy, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel …’

He paused, looking uncomfortable and self-conscious as though aware that he had said too much, betrayed too much. But since when had he felt it necessary to defend Tiggy from her? Jenny wondered grimly, and more importantly, why should he feel it necessary to do so?

‘Olivia has always been much closer to you than she has to her mother,’ he pointed out, but he couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Jenny noticed, and the way he was playing with the cutlery she’d been laying on the table for supper gave away his inner tension.

‘Olivia and I have always been close, yes,’ she agreed, ‘but that doesn’t mean … Tiggy can sometimes tend to overreact to situations,’ she began to explain carefully. ‘She needs—’

‘She needs help,’ Jon interrupted her, ‘and that’s not something she should be made to feel ashamed of needing.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Jenny agreed. Her hands, she noticed distractedly, were trembling slightly as she reached up for a serving dish. Why? Not because Jon was defending Tiggy, surely. Uneasily she reflected on his implied criticism of her. All she had been going to say was that in her opinion Tiggy needed careful handling, but she could see that Jon was in no mood to listen to her, never mind welcome her interpretation of his sister-in-law’s volatile personality. In fact, in his present uncharacteristic mood, he would probably take any attempt on her part to put forward her own viewpoint as an unwanted disparagement of his own judgement of the situation.

Once they would have sat down together and discussed the whole thing amicably, but recently he seemed to be so touchy and on edge, taking umbrage at the slightest thing. Only the previous evening he had lost his temper with Joss just because their son had quite innocently and unintentionally knocked over some papers Jon had been working on.

Jon had apologised to Joss later, but normally such an apology would not have been necessary in the first place because her husband would never have lost his temper over such a trivial incident.