Coming Home

As Maddy turned towards him to give him a wifely look, Jenny remarked in amusement, ‘There’s flour all over the back of your skirt, as well, Maddy … and Max’s suit—’

‘Caught in the act,’ Max admitted cheerfully. ‘Well, almost …’

‘Max!’

Both Jenny and Maddy protested at the same time.

‘What does Daddy mean?’ Emma demanded, tugging insistently at Maddy’s skirt.

‘Uh-huh, bath time for you, baby,’ Max announced quickly, walking towards the kitchen door.

‘Men!’ Maddy expostulated to her mother-in-law after he had escaped.

‘Hmm. Talking of which, how’s Ben?’ Jenny asked her.

‘Not really any better,’ Maddy admitted. ‘He just doesn’t seem to … I’ve arranged for this herbalist I’ve heard about to come and see him. The problem is that she’s so busy it’s going to be a few weeks before she can come.’

‘A herbalist …?’

‘Herbal medicines are proven to work,’ Maddy began defensively, but Jenny shook her head.

‘I wasn’t criticising, my dear. I think it’s an excellent idea.’

‘Do you? Good. In fact, I’ve been wondering if we mightn’t use it somehow at The Houses.’

‘The Houses’ were the units of accommodation originally sponsored and started by Ben Crighton’s sister Ruth to provide secure homes for single mothers and their babies. They had since been extended to provide not just accommodation and rooms where young fathers could visit their children, but also to give access to educational opportunities to help equip the young mothers to earn their own living.

‘What are you planning to do?’ Jenny asked Maddy in some amusement. ‘Train all our teenage mums as potential herbalists?’

Maddy laughed. ‘No, of course not. No, what I was thinking was that we could perhaps utilise the kitchen garden here and combine a programme on gardening with nutritional awareness and simple, basic home remedies of the type our grandmothers would have used. It would be another step towards making our mums independent and add to their sense of self-worth.’

‘Well, it’s certainly worth thinking about,’ Jenny agreed.

After her late marriage to the man she had loved and believed lost to her, the father of her illegitimate daughter, Ruth had handed over day-to-day control of the charity she had founded to Jenny and Maddy, thus allowing her to split her time between her home in Haslewich and her family in America.

‘Mmm … and you know that land that was used for allotments—the land the council owns down by the river—it’s all overgrown and untidy now. Well, I was thinking, if we could persuade them to allow us to use it, the boys could perhaps be encouraged to clear it. It could be a community project.’

As she listened to the enthusiasm in her daughter-in-law’s voice, Jenny reflected that Ruth couldn’t have chosen anyone better to be her successor. Maddy had transformed herself from the shy, downtrodden bride Max had married into a woman of such enormous capability and compassion, of such energy and love, that Jenny felt blessed to have her as a member of the family.

‘Joss is most concerned about Ben,’ she confessed quietly to her daughter-in-law. ‘He asked Jon if he thought David would ever come home.’

Maddy gave the older woman an understanding look. ‘Gramps has become increasingly withdrawn and morose, as you know, but when he does speak, increasingly the sole topic of his conversation is David, and just recently he’s no longer talking about if David comes back but when he comes back.’

‘Oh dear,’ Jenny sighed. ‘Do you think …?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh, no, he’s perfectly sensible. No sign of any dementia, according to Dr Forbes. No. I think that Ben is just so desperate to have David home, so determined that he will come home, that he’s convinced himself that it is going to happen. Do you think he will come back?’ Maddy asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Jenny replied thoughtfully. ‘He wasn’t … isn’t … like Jon. He …’

‘He’s like Max was before,’ Maddy agreed. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well, yes, but David never really had that … that hard-edged aggression of Max’s,’ Jenny told her. ‘He was selfish, yes, breathtakingly so, but weak. He must have known for years about Tiggy’s eating disorder,’ Jenny used the nickname for Tania the whole family knew her by, ‘but he never once attempted to do anything about it so far as we can tell. He never made any attempt to defend Olivia from Ben’s unkindness when she was growing up or to encourage her in her ambition to become a solicitor. And as for poor little Jack …’

‘Olivia has always said that he wasn’t a good father.’

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Jenny concurred soberly and then felt obliged to add in her brother-in-law’s defence much as she knew Jon would have done, ‘But against that you have to set his upbringing and the appalling indulgence with which Ben treated him. He put David on a pedestal so high that it not only gave him a warped idea of his own importance, but it must have been frightening for him at times.’

‘Frightening?’ Maddy queried.

‘Mmm … He must have worried about falling off it,’ Jenny told her simply. ‘And Ben never stopped insisting to Jon that he must virtually devote his life to his first-born twin brother. He also paradoxically and probably without thinking deliberately did everything he could to drive a wedge between them. Their loyalty to one another was never left to develop naturally. Jon was practically ordered to put David first.

‘It all stemmed, of course, from the fact that Ben lost his own twin brother at birth. His mother, who I am sure never realised what she was doing and was perhaps following the way of the times, seems to have brought Ben up in the belief that his dead brother would have been a saint and that Ben’s life and hers were blighted because he was not there to share it with them.

‘Having a twin is such a special relationship,’ Jenny added soberly. ‘To have another person made in one’s exact physical image and to have shared the intimacy of the womb with him and yet to know oneself to be completely separate from him.’

‘Olivia would hate it if David were to return,’ Maddy said with insight.

‘She does have scant reason to want him back. As we’ve agreed, he wasn’t a good father. Add to that the fact that she had to deal with not just her mother’s bulimia but David’s fraud, as well, at a time when her own relationship with Caspar was going through a bad patch, and I can understand why she feels so negatively towards him.’

‘Yes, so can I.’ Very carefully, Maddy drew an abstract outline on the kitchen table with her fingernail before saying slowly to Jenny, ‘I don’t think Olivia is feeling too happy at the moment.’

As she lifted her head and looked into Jenny’s eyes, the older woman’s heart sank. Olivia was as close and as dear to her as one of her own daughters—more so in some ways—and although Olivia had said nothing to her, Jenny, too, had noticed how strained and unhappy she was looking.

‘Jon has told her that she is working far too hard,’ Jenny responded.

There was a small pause and then Maddy said uncertainly, ‘You don’t think there’s anything wrong between her and Caspar, do you?’

Jenny looked searchingly at her. ‘What makes you ask that?’

‘Nothing. Well, nothing I can explain logically,’ Maddy admitted. ‘It’s just … well, I’ve noticed whenever I go round that there’s a sort of atmosphere.’

‘Olivia has mentioned that she feels that Caspar ought to refuse an invitation they’ve received to attend a wedding in the family,’ Jenny told her carefully. ‘Perhaps …’

‘No, Olivia told me about that. I think it’s more than that. They just don’t … they just don’t seem happy together any more,’ Maddy told her hesitantly. ‘And the children …’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘Olivia isn’t the type to discuss her most personal thoughts and feelings freely, but I know how much you and Jon think of her and would hate—’

‘Olivia has always been a very private person,’ Jenny quickly agreed. ‘Her home life made her very independent from an early age. That was one of the things that helped her to bond so closely with Caspar, I think, the fact that they both experienced difficult childhoods, Caspar with his parents’ constant remarriages and Olivia with David and Tiggy’s problems. We were very close when Olivia was younger, but she seems to have changed since Alex’s birth.’ Jenny gave a small sigh. ‘I suppose it’s only to be expected—she has Caspar now and the children, and Caspar adores Amelia and Alex. He’s a wonderful father.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Maddy agreed, turning away from Jenny as she asked a little awkwardly, ‘I was wondering if that could be part of the problem. Oh, I know that Olivia loves them, too, but—’

‘You think that she might be a little resentful of the fact that because of their different careers, Caspar has taken over the main parenting role?’ Jenny guessed. ‘Olivia loves her children,’ she added protectively.

‘Her children—yes,’ Maddy replied before saying uncomfortably, ‘I probably shouldn’t mention this, but the other week when we were over there for dinner, Olivia really snapped at Caspar over something trifling and it wasn’t just an ordinary husband-and-wife grizzle. She’s told me, too, that she thinks Caspar has become far too protective of the children. Whilst we were there, she said to him, quite vehemently, that Haslewich wasn’t New York.’

‘Max is a very caring father, too,’ Jenny said.

‘Mmm … but not to the extent of correcting me about what size socks the children wear and whether or not they need new underwear,’ Maddy told her simply. ‘To be quite honest, I can imagine that in Olivia’s shoes I might easily feel just a little shut out and I—’

‘You didn’t have Olivia’s upbringing when she learned in the most painful way that as a girl, as herself, she wasn’t properly valued. I understand what you’re saying and I can see the problem, but seeing it and knowing what to do about it are two different things.’