Cruel Legacy

‘You should make the children contribute more to the household work,’ Daphne had remonstrated with her when she had called round unexpectedly one day and found her sister up to her eyes in domestic chores.

‘The way you do with Edward?’ Sally had commented wryly.

‘Edward is a very special child. With his level of intelligence he needs a constant input of intellectual stimuli to prevent him getting bored. Besides, he’s naturally a very tidy boy. Your two need the discipline of taking responsibility for certain domestic chores. But then, of course, I suppose it is difficult for you. If Joel were a different kind of man … Clifford is marvellous in the house. He wouldn’t dream of sitting down and expecting me to do everything … but then of course it’s all down to background, isn’t it?’ she had added. ‘And with Joel’s family background …’

Daphne hadn’t meant to be unkind. It was just that, as the older sister, she had always seemed to think it her role to have the freedom to comment on and criticise Sally’s family and way of life.

‘She’s a snob,’ Joel had once commented blatantly, and a part of Sally agreed with him, but naturally, since Daphne was her sister, she had felt duty-bound to defend her. She looked at her watch.

She had another half hour before she needed to leave for work.

She finished cleaning the bathroom, emptied the washing machine and refilled it. Both Cathy’s and Paul’s bedrooms were fearsomely untidy, but she hardened her heart. They both knew that they were supposed to tidy their own rooms.

Where was Joel? Irritably she scribbled him a note, reminding him that he had to pick Cathy up and that he had forgotten his promise to Paul.

It must be nice to be a man, and not have to worry about domestic routine and arrangements, safe in the knowledge that there was someone else there to cope. Well, she reflected, she didn’t have that luxury, and if she didn’t leave in five minutes flat Sister was going to be reminding her that every minute she was late meant that either someone else had to cover for her or the ward went unstaffed … Sister was a stickler for punctuality, and who could blame her? If only she could impose the same awareness of responsibility on Joel that Sister imposed on her ward nurses.

As she finally locked the back door behind her, she breathed a small sigh of relief.

Wearily Joel opened the back door. The kitchen smelled cold and empty, unlike the kitchen of his childhood where his brothers and sisters had always played. But his mother hadn’t always been there, too caught up in doing other things, just like …

He dismissed the thought irritably. No one could ever accuse Sally of not being a good mother—far from it. She doted on Paul and Cathy. Spoiled them, made it obvious that their needs came first in her life—well before his.

He frowned as he caught sight of the note on the kitchen table.

Pick up Cathy. All he wanted to do was to sit down and unwind, to think about what was happening at work.

They had all known that Andrew’s suicide had to be bad news for the company. It had been obvious for months that things weren’t going well. No one seemed to know exactly what was going to happen, but everyone was afraid that it would mean more job losses, more redundancies.

The other men had turned to him, as foreman, for reassurance and explanations, but he hadn’t been able to give them, and on top of his own feelings of anxiety and uncertainty he had felt as though he was somehow failing them, letting them down in not being able to supply the answers to their questions.

He had tried to see the works manager, but the pale, thin girl who was his secretary had simply shaken her head. The last thing he needed was to come home to an empty house and a terse note from Sally complaining because he had forgotten he had promised to take Paul fishing. Didn’t she realise how serious the situation was?

He had tried to ring to explain that he was going to be late, but the phone had been engaged.

He hadn’t eaten anything all day and his stomach felt empty, but the last thing he wanted was food. He looked at the note again and then checked his watch. He might as well go straight round for Cathy.

Jane’s mother gave him an amused look as she opened the door.

‘I’ve come to collect Cathy,’ he told her.

She was a plump, slightly over-made-up blonde, the smile she gave him just a little bit too suggestive as she told him, ‘Lucky Cathy,’ and added, ‘Look, why don’t you come in and have a drink? And I dare say we could find you something to eat,’ she added as they both heard his empty stomach growl protestingly.

‘Thanks but I’d better not. Sally’s got supper on,’ he lied.

‘Oh … I thought she was working tonight.’ The blonde was pouting slightly now, the pale blue eyes narrowing.

He’d never been a man who enjoyed the dangers of flirting, but her obvious availability and sexuality were making him sharply aware of the contrast between her attitude towards him and Sally’s.

His body hungered for the comfort of sexual contact with Sally, but these days she just didn’t want to know. Sometimes he felt the only reason she stayed with him was out of habit and because he provided a home for her and the children plus a steady income to support them all. It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to be with him.

The children were more important to her than he was. Much more important.

Cathy chattered excitedly all the way home.

‘Lindsay Roberts went to Disneyland for her summer holiday,’ she told him. ‘She was telling everyone about it. When can we go, Dad? Everyone else in my class has been.’

‘Stop exaggerating, Cathy,’ he told her sharply. Too sharply, he realised when she suddenly fell silent and he saw the sullen pout of her mouth and the tears shining in her eyes.

‘Why are you so mean?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Mum wants us to go.’

‘I’m not being mean, Cathy … I …’

He stopped. How did you tell a fifteen-year-old that the way things were right now you were lucky to be able to pay the mortgage, never mind pay for expensive American holidays?

‘You’re mean,’ Cathy told him. ‘And you forgot that you promised to take Paul fishing.

‘I wish I lived in a big house like Lindsay’s with a garden all the way round it.’

Joel’s mouth tightened. It wasn’t Cathy’s fault, he told himself. Kids were more materialistic these days; the whole world was more materialistic.

‘Aunt Daphne’s having an extension built on to her house, with a new bathroom. I heard her telling Mum.’

Paul was in the kitchen when they got back. Tiredly, Joel apologised to him and started to explain, but Paul wasn’t listening.

‘It’s OK … I didn’t want to go fishing anyway,’ he told him curtly.

Joel had never found it easy to get on with his son. He had always felt that Sally over-indulged him, much more so than he had ever been indulged as a boy. He could scarcely even remember his mother spending much time with him. She had not been the maternal type, despite giving birth to five children. Sally, on the other hand, had cosseted and protected Paul to the point where Joel had sometimes felt when he was a baby that he wasn’t even allowed to touch him.

‘You’re too hard on him. He’s a child, that’s all,’ Sally would protest whenever he attempted to discipline him.

‘Mum said to tell you that there’s cottage pie in the fridge for supper,’ Cathy informed him. ‘But I don’t want any.’

‘Neither do I,’ Paul announced.

Joel paused in the act of opening the fridge door and then closed it again. The phone rang and he went to answer it. It was the foreman in charge of one of the other production lines at the factory.

‘Fancy a pint?’ he asked.

Joel sighed under his breath.

‘I can’t,’ he told him flatly. ‘Sally’s at work and I’ve got to stay in with the kids.’

‘When I grow up I’m never going to get married,’ Cathy announced when he had replaced the receiver. ‘And I’m going to have lots and lots of money and go to America as often as I like.’

‘Cathy …’ Joel began, and then stopped. What was the point? How could he explain to her?

Later, when both children had gone to bed, he prowled restlessly round the living-room, too on edge to sit down and watch the television. No one knew yet exactly what was going to happen with the factory, but, whatever it was, he already had a gut feeling that it wasn’t going to be good.