Forget Me Knot (8 page)

“And where did you go to school?”

“Manor Park.”

“Really? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t have. It’s just the local—”

“Girls’ public day school,” Toby piped up.

“And Toby tells me you went to Oxford.”

“Well, not actually Oxford. It was Oxford College of Art and Design. I did a degree in textile design.”

“I see.” Lady Penelope raised a disapproving eyebrow at Toby. In return, he offered her a weak, apologetic smile.

“And what do you do for a living?”

“I have my own flower shop.”

“How utterly enchanting.” Lady Penelope’s smile was taut and thin-lipped. “Toby, you didn’t tell me we were about to have a regular Eliza Doolittle joining the family.”

At this point, Abby’s steak arrived. “So, Annie,” Lady Penelope said as Abby began stacking chips on her fork. “I take it that you are in excellent health?”

Abby was taken aback by the question. “As far as I know.”

“Ovaries and whatnot all in working order?”

Abby almost choked on her chips. “I believe so.”

“You see, Toby is an only child. He is also the last male in the Kenwood line. We rather need a boy to carry on the family name and inherit the estate. So I would suggest that you get yourself checked out as a matter of urgency.”

There was so much Abby wanted to say that she didn’t know where to start. Would Lady Penelope put pressure on Toby to walk away from their relationship if she did have some kind of fertility problem? And what would his mother do if he refused? Cut him out of her will? And why wasn’t she suggesting that he take a fertility test? And suppose they only produced girls? Not that any of this was relevant, because there was no way Abby was about to get her ovaries tested purely to pander to Lady Penelope’s outrageous demands.

Abby opened her mouth to tell her precisely that, but Toby got there first. “I’ll make sure she sees a specialist, Mother.”

Abby swung round to face Toby. “You’ll do what?” she hissed.

“Jolly good,” Lady Penelope boomed, shoving a lock of wispy gray hair back into her chignon. “You know, Annie, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’re not one of these fearful antihunting types.”

There was a pause that seemed to go on forever. Toby was visibly holding his breath. Lady Penelope was fighting with her hair, which refused to stay put. Abby was struggling with her emotions. She was aware that she had promised Toby that she wouldn’t reveal her true position on hunting, but she was so cross with him for not sticking up for her—particularly over the fertility-test issue—that she couldn’t help herself.

“Actually, I am,” Abby said.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Toby murmured, head in hands.

“You see, to be quite honest, Lady Penelope, I find the idea of hunting foxes—or any animal, come to that—quite barbaric. It’s one thing to exterminate vermin humanely. It’s
quite another to put on silly costumes and chase a fox across country until it collapses from heart failure. Foxhunting turns killing animals into a ritualized social event, which has everything to do with snobbery and class and nothing to do with concern for the countryside.”

Toby’s head remained in his hands. “I told you what she was like,” he muttered under his breath. “Now look what you’ve done. You simply couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

By now Abby was on a roll. “The law to ban hunting clearly isn’t working, and something needs to be done to enforce it. And as for those chinless, upper-class twits who run the Countryside Alliance…”

Lady Penelope looked temporarily vacant—as if she had been shot but her brain had yet to register the fact. Abby watched as she calmly put down her coffee cup and dabbed her lips with her napkin. Then, just as her ladyship seemed about to open her mouth and shower Abby with a cascade of vitriol, her face broke into something approaching a smile. “What you are saying is the kind of liberal twaddle, claptrap and balderdash put out by hunt protesters and the left-wing media. It is the kind of subversive propaganda that, left unchecked, will rip at the heart and soul of the British countryside and ultimately destroy it. Nevertheless, we live in a democracy and I would defend to the death your right to have your say.”

“You would?” Abby was stunned by her ladyship’s response—as was Toby, who had removed his head from his hands and was blinking in disbelief.

“Certainly.” Lady Penelope turned to Toby. “She’s a spirited young filly, I’ll give her that. Spouts a cartload of balderdash, of course, but I think I might be able to break her given time. Now then, it’s late and I’m rather tired. I
think I should be getting home. Toby, I would be grateful if you’d go outside and flag down a cab.”

Ever the obedient son, Toby got up and made his way to the door.

“Goodness, Lady Penelope,” Abby said, “surely you’re not driving back to Gloucestershire tonight.”

“Of course not. I keep a pied-à-terre in town.” Her look of haughty surprise clearly said: “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Oh, yes. Toby mentioned you owned a London flat.”

Lady Penelope extended her hand toward Abby and smiled. “Good-bye, my dear,” she said. Abby reached out and took her future mother-in-law’s hand. “Toby must bring you to Kenwood one weekend so that I can verse you in the ways of the countryside. I swear I’ll have you hunting yet.” With that, Lady Penelope picked up her patent-leather handbag and lumbered away from the table.

THEY HEADED
toward the multistory parking lot in Chinatown, where Toby had left his car. Neither of them spoke, but their mutual anger was almost palpable. Abby was the first to break the silence.

“I cannot believe you agreed to me taking a fertility test just to please your mother. How could you do that without even asking me? The two of you sat there discussing me as if I weren’t even there.”

“And how could you take on my mother like that? I told you not to and you disobeyed me.”

“I
disobeyed
you? When did I start having to obey you?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just that you took one hell of a risk, that’s all. You could have wrecked everything. As it happens, I think she rather liked you.” He paused.
“Look, I only agreed to you taking the fertility test to shut her up. Of course we won’t do it. We’ll lie, say you’ve taken it and that the results came back fine.”

She bridled. “You can tell your mother what you like, but if she asks me straight out if I’ve taken the test, I will tell her the truth. You might be prepared to let her walk all over you, but I’m not.”

“Clearly,” he said with a bitter laugh.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“OK, you really want to know?”

“Of course.”

“It means,” he said, “that I’m jealous. I’m jealous that you were able to stand up to her and I can’t.”

“But why can’t you? She’d have far more respect for you if you did. From what I can see, she seems to thrive on conflict. So what if she shouts? Shout back.”

“I’ve tried; I can’t. I know this sounds pretty pathetic, but I’m still desperate for her approval. I’ve spent my life trying to please her, hoping that one day she’ll tell me she’s proud of me. The fact is that whatever I achieve, whatever I do, it’s never enough.”

“I can understand that,” she said, allowing her voice to soften.

“And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“She holds the trump card.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that the one time I tried to stand up to her, she threatened to cut me out of her will.”

“So what? Bloody hell, Toby, you earn a fortune as it is. Surely your self-respect is more important than any amount of money.”

They were a few paces from the car. He took out his keys and hit the remote. The lock clicked open. “Abby, let me explain something to you. We’re not talking a piddling few hundred grand here. The manor house alone is worth ten million. Then there is the rest of the Kenwood estate, with its farms and houses. There’s also a vatload of cash. By rights it should have come directly to me when my father died, but he left it all to my mother so that she would be provided for in her lifetime. I don’t blame him for that, but after the way she’s treated me, I am not about to let her come between me and my inheritance. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t get a kick out of being lady of the manor.”

His final remark quite literally stopped Abby in her tracks. “I can’t believe you just said that. If you imagine for one minute that I’ll be prancing round the estate in my green wellies and a Barbour jacket, hosting gymkhanas and dispensing patronage and largesse to the lower orders, then you clearly don’t know me.”

“That’s what you say now,” he said.

“Toby, please don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not patronizing you. I just think you’ll change, that’s all. Money has that effect on people.”

“Believe me. I will not change. Nor will I sit back and watch you let your mother behave toward you the way she does.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I really don’t give a damn how she treats me. Not if I’m going to benefit in the end.”

“I don’t believe you. If you don’t give a damn about your relationship with your mother, why are you still looking for her approval?”

Toby didn’t reply. Her remark had clearly floored him.
There was silence while they got in the car and he started the engine. He followed the tight, snaking route to ground level, then handed over a twenty-pound note at the barrier and waited for his change—such as it was.

“And why did you keep trying to convince your mother that I’m posh? I can’t help feeling that you’re just as much of a snob as she is.”

He turned on her. “I’m not a snob.”

“Then what was all that stuff about the Dorset Cromptons and pretending I went to a private school?”

“I was trying to tell her what she wanted to hear, that’s all.”

Abby shook her head. “This has to stop. For both of our sakes.”

He let out a long, slow breath. “OK, you’re right. I do have to sort out my relationship with Mother. It’s been a long time coming. Maybe I should get some counseling or something. That’s what people do, don’t they, when they’ve got problems?” He shook his head. “The idea of spilling one’s guts to a perfect stranger is just so… so un-British. And God only knows how I’m going to fit it in with everything else I’ve got on my plate. Can you just bear to give me some time?”

There was a beseeching, almost childlike expression on his face. “Of course I can,” she said. “And I think seeing a counselor is a brilliant idea. Try not to panic. It’ll be fine. Promise.” She reached over and kissed his cheek.

He said he wouldn’t stay at her flat that night, as she needed her sleep and he had to be up at the crack to catch the early shuttle to Edinburgh.

“That’s OK,” she said, realizing that she had rather wanted him to stay over. After all the trauma and drama of
the last few hours, she could have done with feeling his arms around her tonight.

She couldn’t work out if he was genuinely concerned about not disturbing her or whether he was simply trying to avoid having sex. He’d spent weeks assuring her that things would get better, but they hadn’t. It had occurred to her several times that his lack of desire might be due to more than stress and overwork. Now the issue was really starting to play on her mind. She knew she had to confront it, but so far she’d chickened out for fear of hurting him. Now, maybe because of the adrenaline still in her system or the fact that she was still emotionally charged up after the row they’d been having, she couldn’t let it go.

“Toby, I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Well, I can’t help wondering whether our lack of love-making is somehow my fault.” She needed to ease into this. She couldn’t come straight out with it and accuse him of being gay.

“
Your
fault? How do you work that out?”

“Well, am I doing something wrong in bed? Maybe you don’t find me sexy.”

“Abby, of course I find you sexy. You’re a beautiful woman. Any man would find you sexy. And, no, you’re not doing anything remotely wrong.”

“Then why do I get the feeling that it’s not me you want? Sometimes I think you’d rather be with somebody else.”

“Hang on, are you saying I’m cheating on you?”

“Are you?”

“God, no!”

“So if there’s nobody else, then…”

“Abby, what are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying, could it be that maybe… just maybe you don’t like women.”

He burst out laughing. “You think I’m gay?”

“Well, it did occur to me.”

“So, you think because I dress well and occasionally have difficulty getting it up that I must be—”

“It’s not occasionally. It’s all the time.”

“Whatever. Christ, Abby, that is such a narrow-minded, knee-jerk reaction. I’m surprised at you, I really am.”

“So, you’re not, then?”

“OK, read my lips. I, Toby Kenwood, am not, never have been and never will be gay.”

“It’s just that we haven’t done it in so long….”

“Abby, I get tired, that’s all. It’s as simple as that. I know it’s hard on you and it makes you feel neglected, but I will do something about it. It occurred to me that maybe my testosterone level is down from working all these hours. Perhaps I should think about getting a blood test or something.”

“OK. Sounds like a good idea. So, you promise you’ll do that?”

“Promise.”

For several minutes, they didn’t say very much. As they hit Euston Road, Abby noticed a billboard for
The Producers
. There were zany line drawings of the three main characters: Max Bialystock, Leo Bloom and a vampy blonde called Ulla.

Abby started to giggle quietly to herself as she remembered the poster in the elevator advertising
The Producers
and
realized that the names had clearly been Dan’s inspiration for the Bialystock joint, the Bloom overload breaker and the Ulla oscillator.

“What’s so funny?” Toby asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just something on a poster I found amusing. It’s not important.”