An Accidental Shroud (2 page)

Something had subtly changed. Jake, normally open about most things, suddenly had secrets. That telephone call, for instance, yesterday morning, just after breakfast.

'Who was it? Nigel?' she'd asked as he put the bedroom phone extension down.

'Mm.'

'What did he want, so early?'

'Oh, nothing much.'

He'd buried his head in his wardrobe, making an unnecessary fuss out of selecting which of his extensive – not to say expensive – range of suits to wear. She'd decided then that the call had probably been about Matthew – Jake had his son, Matthew, on his mind in the same way that Christine had Lindsay on hers. But obviously he had his reasons for keeping it to himself, and she didn't intend to press him. You learned to be careful in a second marriage.

She had stood up and slipped into the simple yellow silk sheath she was wearing for the coffee morning, a dazzling and daring shade for one with her colouring. Jake had bought it for her, and Christine was getting used to it. 'My zip, Jake, would you mind? It's a real fiend, this one.'

He came over to her and zipped her up and she smiled at his reflection in the mirror. A big, fairish man with a rugged face and a nose that had once been broken. Brown eyes and a magnetic smile, a slight cleft in his chin. His fingers lingered on the back of her neck. He hesitated. 'I love you, Christine,' he'd said quietly, dropping a kiss lightly on her hair before moving away.

He didn't have to say that, and she wished he hadn't. It was generous of him, a typically impulsive Jake gesture, but it had made her feel marginally worse. She had been close to tears. It wasn't part of the bargain to pretend things you didn't feel.

The coffee morning hadn't been a success. It was in aid of some charity Christine had never heard of, at the house of someone she'd only briefly met before, a whistle stop on the bridge, golf and coffee morning circuit. Everyone there seemed to know everyone else and she'd felt awkward and left out, conspicuous in her yellow frock and bright hair. It was partly her own fault; although normally she enjoyed talking to people and got along with most of them, she really couldn't summon up the effort to respond to the meaningless chit-chat that passed for conversation and had left as soon as she decently could.

At that moment, the mobile telephone warbled by her ear.

'Lindsay, darling! Talk about telepathy! I'd just been thinking of you. How was Italy? I'm dying to hear about it. When? This weekend? Wonderful, I'll put pistachio ice-cream on my shopping list and meet you off the usual train. See you at four-twenty.'

'Oh, Mum, you and your lists!'

Christine was immeasurably glad that Lindsay seemed able to laugh again.

She looked at her watch, decided there was no rush, poured herself another long, cool glass of lemonade and sat up with her arms round her knees, wondering idly about meals for the weekend, looking up the extravagant curving stone staircase that led into the house, telling herself again how lucky she was.

The conservatory into which the swimming pool had been built was the sole remnant of the original early Victorian house upon whose site the present house had been built – by Jake, who was a builder and developer. The first sight of house and garden had left Christine speechless: the split-level white building that was mostly window, set on a slope, the swimming pool in the ornate conservatory below, the tennis court. Recovering herself, she'd rather tactlessly asked what the original house had been like? Hadn't it been worth restoring? There had been an awkward moment.
Jake
was being questioned. Then he'd dismissed the idea with a laugh and one of his grand, expansive gestures, forgetting that building the new house had nearly bankrupted him. What with dry rot and wet rot, unmentionable plumbing and a kitchen like a morgue, it had not, he said. He produced a photograph to prove it where, however, these drawbacks were not apparent. A charming old house, a relatively simple structure with none of the later excesses of the period. But modern was good, and new was very good, with Jake. And the inside of the new house, it had to be admitted, was better than the outside – much better now that she was gradually redecorating and furnishing it, using her considerable flair and attention to the sort of detail Jake couldn't be bothered with. Matthew still called the house Villa del Eldorado. But it was all a matter of taste. Lindsay, for instance, adored it.

The neglected garden with its rusty old laurels and gloomy yews was yet to be tackled and Jake, pleased with what she'd achieved inside the house, had agreed to leave this to her. Undaunted by the prospect, Christine, who'd never owned a garden in her life, was already reading up on the subject, making copious notes, asking advice, ready for when the cooler weather and the time for planting came.

Not too much change, she thought: the unchecked growth of beech and ash saplings, for instance, had grown into a pretty little coppice where all sorts of wild flowers grew. Sometimes at dusk small, chestnut-brown muntjak deer came down to graze at the edge of the wood that bordered the property, and occasionally even jumped the fence into the garden, though they were too shy to let her get near enough even to photograph them. Once or twice at night she had heard their peculiar bark, weird and ghostly and faintly chilling.

She had gradually eased herself into what was for her a very different way of living, though she knew that, ultimately, all this would not be enough. She'd worked all her life and was incapable of dribbling her time away.

It would have been a different story if Nigel had kept his promises. Christine knew that was the major reason for her present restlessness and dissatisfaction. Nigel's image came into her mind: dark, urbane and immaculate. Polished, tanned skin, deep-set eyes, a sophisticated and rather devious man.

Damn Nigel.

In the sapphire-blue swimsuit her body gleamed like a kingfisher's as she stood up in one lithe movement, dived into the pool and swam, fast and with some style, several times across its length. As was usual with Christine, action made her feel temporarily better. It was not being able to do anything about a worrying situation which defeated her.

Something was in the wind, the old man was sure. Nigel had on his new dark suit and a pale grey shirt and wore the heavy gold cufflinks and the Roman-mounted lapis-lazuli intaglio ring which an hour earlier had been reposing in the display case; he looked prosperous and urbane – not, however, as self-assured as usual. He was slightly on edge, and he'd given Matthew the day off. Taken together, the signs were that something was going on that he didn't wish either Matthew or George to know about.

'How's your pill supply, Father? Wouldn't it be as well to slip round this afternoon and get Ison to top it up? Can't afford to find yourself without, you know,' he suggested to George, critically assessing the large professional flower arrangement which had just been delivered, one of which was always kept by the door of Cedar House Antiques. Nigel was extremely particular about the impressions such things made. Although the shop was still fitted in the quietly opulent style his grandfather had created – an Edwardian elegance that formed a perfect backdrop for the sparkling gems they sold – he saw to it that it was beautifully kept and decorated. A grey carpet and pale walls, champagne nets and dark blue velvet drapes at the side windows, through which could be seen a glimpse of the big cedar tree on the lawn outside the white, Georgian building; the old display cases also lined with dark blue velvet, a discreet glassed-in office at the back of the shop. Tasteful in a conservative, understated style – if too overstocked, in George's opinion. Nigel was inclined to buy what he personally coveted and was then unable to bring himself to sell it.

He answered Nigel's suggestion with a tetchiness in his voice he heard too often lately. 'I'm not so senile yet that I can't look after my own welfare. I've already arranged with Ison to let me have more pills.'

Nigel said nothing more for the time being, point taken, but looking up from his desk a little while later, he remarked, 'Do me a favour. Father, would you, and walk along to Oundle's this afternoon and pick up that new reference book I ordered? They rang this morning to say it'll be there by four.'

Pills! Reference books! A visitor was expected, without doubt. Quite possibly female, and if so, young. Nigel had always been very attractive to women. He had a way of looking at them which conveyed a genuine interest in what they said and did, and a smile, deeply indented at the corners, that they seemed to find irresistible. They passed through his life regularly, in greater numbers than he let on, but conforming to a certain type. He liked to maintain the fiction that these affairs were not generally known about, certainly not to his father. George, though uneasy about them, didn't disabuse him. In his own way, he could be as cagey as Nigel.

He's my father all over, George thought, pottering about, covertly watching his son: Henri Fontenoy as he was when he took over the business from his father, Edouard, the founder of what had then been Fontenoy Gems. Shrewd and go-ahead and, in Nigel's case, confident enough to be forever urging his father to expand, even in these difficult times. Not content with branching out into selling silver and small antiques, as well as fine old jewellery. But George (he'd dropped the 's' at the end of his given name years ago; the family was British now, and proud of it) was stubborn, and clung to the old ways. That one disastrous foray into modern jewellery, many years ago, wasn't something he was anxious to repeat.

Nigel remained uncharacteristically fidgety for the rest of the morning, making from time to time further suggestions as to how George might occupy himself during the afternoon, but George had no desire to go out. He wanted to stay where he was, in the shop, his place for over fifty years, if only to be there should any customer need his specialist advice on what piece of jewellery to buy. And, incidentally, to find out what Nigel was up to; although, in effect, George accepted that he no longer had the automatic right to expect to be told every little thing. His world had lately changed to a place where he was not the one who gave the orders, a fact he'd been forced to accept since his stroke. It was Nigel who was now in charge.

'I might wander up and see Christine,' he said at last, putting Nigel out of his misery, adding that he'd better make the most of this hot weather. Couldn't go on much longer, it must break soon, which would mean he'd be confined indoors. He was committed, since his stroke, to taking regular exercise, and though he affected to despise doctors, Ison was a sound man whose advice George usually took, if sometimes with bad grace.

'Good idea,' Nigel replied, over-hearty with relief, 'but I should get her to drive you back. The walk there's quite far enough.'

George knew himself quite capable of walking both ways, and that it would be good for him to do so. The heat didn't affect him – at his age, the problem was keeping warm enough. He didn't say so, or remind Nigel that Christine, when he'd spoken to her on the telephone not an hour since, had said that Lindsay was coming home for the weekend. And since she always met Lindsay off the four-twenty, she wouldn't be at home. It would do no harm, however, to lull Nigel into thinking he would be out of the shop for the time it took to walk along to Ham Lane and back, plus half an hour or so for a cup of tea when he got there. Evidently that would serve to keep George away long enough, or would have done if George had had any intention of making the abortive visit, which he had not.

Earlier that same morning, walking down to the site office after parking the car, Jake's immediate attention had been caught by the sight of Matthew, deep in conversation with Joss Graham over the engine of one of his bright yellow lorries,
WILDING
painted in two-foot letters down the sides. His first pleased surprise at seeing Matthew there was immediately quenched when he saw the animation drain from the boy's face as he looked up and saw his father.

Jake's reaction to how much this hurt put him wrong-footed from the start. 'If you
must
smoke, don't do it here, and certainly not over that petrol tank,' he said shortly. 'You should both know better.' They put out their cigarettes, Joss immediately, his attractive, lazy smile apologetic – he knew smoking was forbidden, for obvious reasons, and wasn't normally either insubordinate or foolish. Matthew, however, only put his out after taking another defiant pull. 'I'd like a word, Matthew, in the office. If you can spare a minute.'

Jake, raising his voice above a churning cement mixer and the sound of another lorry depositing a load of hard-core, realized too late how the words would sound to Matthew. Tact was not his middle name, he reflected wryly, as he walked to the portakabin that served as site office, red dust rising in little puffs round his feet. He heard the boy's reluctant footsteps behind him and could visualize the resentment already building up. Hell's teeth! He tried to remind himself to tread as though on eggshells whenever he spoke to Matthew and yet he heard himself saying all the wrong things, to which Matthew predictably responded, either with one of his smart-alec retorts or faintly veiled insolence. He never acted that way with anyone else. It was a phase he was going through, everyone said. He'd been such an appealing little boy; remember what pals he and Jake had always been?

The implication being, Jake felt, that it had all been his fault. Yet however hard he tried, Jake couldn't seem to get through any more. Adolescent behaviour he could just about cope with, but this bloody-mindedness was something else. Matthew was, after all, nearly nineteen.

He'd long since dismissed the notion that Matthew resented his marriage to Christine, or was jealous of his affection for Lindsay, they all got on too well. But Jake's divorce had happened when Matthew was a mere baby and he'd never discussed the details with Matthew; why Naomi had left him for another man, leaving him to fulfil the role of both parents. In fact, it hadn't been until he was already entering his teens that Matthew had showed any sort of curiosity about his mother. Yet to discuss Naomi's faults and imperfections with a vulnerable thirteen-year-old boy hadn't seemed like a good idea, then or now; Jake had skirted the subject, finding it impossible to explain the disaster that had been Naomi to him. Impossible to explain Naomi to anyone! Christine had suggested that maybe Matthew blamed Jake for what had gone wrong. It would have been a disturbing thought, if true. Jake didn't believe it, however. That wasn't the main reason for Matthew's present intransigence.