Wishing Water (30 page)

It was easier to agree. Lissa hated conflict and Philip could cap every point she made with another, and never lose his cool. While she would end up hot with frustrated temper.

The house had apparently once belonged to an old lady. Farquar? No, Fraser, that was it. She had kept a maid and a gardener in happier days, and probably a cook, Lissa thought, with some displeasure. She’d now retired to a home for the elderly and Lissa was expected to attain the same standards with the assistance only of her modern appliances which seemed to break down every time she looked at them. Renee might worship at the feet of vacuum cleaners, they left Lissa perfectly cold.

As she sipped her second cup of tea that morning, Darjeeling from the very finest porcelain, she experienced a deep aching need to be back in a corner of the stock room with a mug curled in her hand and Jan’s ceaseless chatter in her ears.

She went to the phone and dialled a number. Meg’s voice rang out, as clearly as if she were in the next room.

‘Broombank.’

‘Hello, it’s me.’
 

‘Sweetheart! When are you coming to see us? We haven’t seen the terrible twosome for weeks.’
 

Lissa laughed. She and Meg had become a little closer since the birth of the twins and Lissa was anxious to build on this progress. ‘They nearly fell in the lake yesterday, got chased by the ducks and almost run over by a car. Status quo really.’
 

Meg chuckled, not taking this dire list too seriously. ‘Jan’s pregnancy is well advanced now. Not long to go. She misses you,’ Meg said, the tone of her voice changing slightly.

Lissa propped herself against the telephone table and agreed that she’d been thinking the very same thing. ‘I miss her, but she’ll soon have her hands full.’
 

‘Like you, sweetheart.’

‘Yes,’ said Lissa. ‘Like me.’
 

The front door opened and two tiny figures in neat canary yellow coats and bonnets burst in. ‘Ah, here they are. Must go.’ She hurriedly rang off, repeating her promise to visit.

‘Hello, my darlings.’ Lissa knelt on the hall carpet to sweep them both into her arms, nuzzling against their soft cheeks, breathing in the sweet baby scent of their skin. Her heart soared with happiness. How lucky she was. Nothing to complain about at all. ‘What shall we do now? Play soap bubbles? Or paint pictures to take to Granny Meg?’
 

Nanny’s hand came down upon each small head. ‘The children must have their lunch and go down for their nap.’
 

‘Of course. How silly of me. I’d forgotten. Run along then, darlings. Nanny’s waiting.’
 

She remained kneeling on the carpet for several moments after they had gone.

It was late afternoon when they woke and Lissa spent a riotous hour or more in the nursery right at the top of the house, playing Ride-a-Cock-Horse, daubing glorious pictures in red, yellow and purple on pieces of old wallpaper, and building huge brick towers which the twins knocked down with screams of delight.

She was telling them a story when Nanny Sue came in, clicking her tongue over the mess they’d made, just as if Lissa were a child too. The clock chimed down in the hall.

‘Lordy, it’s five o’clock, and I still haven’t decided what we’re eating this evening.’ She hurriedly finished the story, attempting to placate the protests and prevent tears. Then after raiding the kitchen larder and flinging together some scraps of pork and vegetables into a casserole, she flew back upstairs to bathe and change, paint her nails and attend to her hair.

At six-thirty precisely Lissa was waiting in the drawing room for the sound of his key in the lock, his gin and tonic already poured and standing on a silver tray on the walnut sideboard. She might have been Grace Kelly waiting for her prince to come, were it not for the deep and abiding unhappiness that was eating away at her soul.

Chapter Fifteen

The Yacht Club held a formal dinner every year in the Marina Hotel at the end of September. Afterwards there would be dancing for those so inclined. The band would be a classic trio and there would be no skiffle in the interval. The craze had long since died. Lissa was glad about that.

She sat at the long, white-clothed table in her little black dress, shorter than she was used to wearing but slim-fitting, expensive and flattering, with a red silk rose bud pinned to one shoulder. Philip had wanted her to wear a long one in heavy white satin, as if she were a debutante, but for once she’d refused. Lissa could sense waves of disapproval emanating from him as he took the chair next to hers and slipped his hand proprietorially over a black-stockinged knee.

‘Please, Philip,’ she whispered, anxious someone might see. ‘Not here.’
 

‘In a dress so short you are clearly inviting such attention, and I am your husband.’ He slid his fingers under the dress right up to her stocking tops and then back to the knee, much to the amusement of the man on Lissa’s right who, catching her angry glare, hastily addressed his attention to the woman on his left.

Lissa gently removed the hand and attempted to appear unconcerned, smiling into the mild gaze of Doctor Robson, seated opposite. ‘Good evening, Lissa,’ the doctor said. ‘Looking as lovely as ever, I see.’
 

‘You’re looking rather spry yourself.’ Lissa liked Charles Robson. A patient, rotund man, rather old fashioned but unshockable, like the rest of his profession. Yet he managed to maintain an affable quality that made him entirely approachable. Lissa had visited him on several occasions, and he of course had delivered the twins.

They chatted for a while about the health and beauty of her two offspring, a subject Lissa never tired of.

‘Ah, Robson old chap.’ Becoming aware that a man was monopolising his wife, Philip smiled expansively. He had already enjoyed several whiskies, though not of the best quality. He was not normally one to indulge in alcohol but felt he needed to relax this evening. It had been a tedious day. Now he poured himself a second glass of a rather fine claret, hoping to soothe his irritation which had increased with Lissa’s obdurate stubbornness. It occurred to him that this might be the very opportunity he’d been seeking to discuss a matter of some importance with the good doctor. Man to man. Fellow professional and all that. ‘When are you going to help my wife, you old duffer?’ he asked. ‘Came to you months ago and you’ve achieved nothing.’
 

The doctor looked startled, though not half so startled as Lissa. She attempted to laugh it off, then flinched as once more Philip’s hand fastened upon her knee. ‘Please, Philip. Doctor Robson is enjoying an evening out. He has no wish to discuss medical matters.’
 

Philip rarely relinquished an argument once begun, certainly not when his inhibitions were at their lowest. ‘He knows well enough what I mean. What sort of a quack are you? Damned inadequate in my view.’
 

‘I’m sorry you’re dissatisfied, Brandon,’ the doctor said, quite equably, lifting his soup spoon. ‘Whatever it is I’ve done, I hope you’re not about to sue me for it.’ Several people tittered, partly from amusement, partly embarrassment.

Lissa could hardly contain her shame. She could feel her cheeks firing up, acutely aware of the growing interest about her. Voices deliberately lowered as people waited to hear what it was the doctor had failed to do. Waitresses pretended not to listen to what sounded very like the start of a matrimonial dispute, which they would be sure to relate with relish in the kitchen the moment they returned from handing out the dishes of asparagus soup and bread rolls.

‘How long is it now that you’ve been treating her? The twins are two and a half years old and still no sign of another child. You incompetent old fool.’
 

Lissa’s cheeks flared to bright red. ‘Philip, please! Not now. You’re embarrassing me.’

Hush, woman, I’m talking to this nincompoop.’ The hand on her knee gripped tighter and Lissa let out a tiny whimper.

Doctor Robson turned to her, a frown on his round face. ‘Come and see me in the morning, Lissa. We’ll talk about it then, see what we can do for you. This isn’t the moment, Brandon.’ So saying, he applied himself to his soup.

Philip leaned forward across the table, pushing his flushed face as close to the doctor’s as he could and speaking in a loud whisper that not a soul in the room could miss. ‘Are you suggesting the case is hopeless? That my wife has turned barren?’
 

In the loud and dreadful silence which followed, all movement ceased. Not a hand moved, not a soup spoon lifted.

Except for one red-headed waitress who chose that precise moment to place a bowl of soup before him. Perhaps Philip moved or jolted her elbow, no one could be entirely sure, but the bowl missed the edge of the table and hot soup poured all down the front of his black evening trousers.

Pandemonium broke out, and low-pitched, stifled laughter. Philip leapt to his feet, shouting his rage and agony, demanding the waitress be dismissed on the spot. Bringing the manager scurrying.

‘I’m going,’ she said. But not before she had placed one hand on Lissa’s shoulder and given it an affectionate squeeze. Lissa looked up into Renee’s sympathetic face.

‘Common as muck, that’s me, but I don’t let nobody push me around. Certainly not a jumped up, full of himself, no good tyke like Philip Brandon.’ Renee’s hands stilled in their kneading of bread dough as she stared, appalled, at Lissa. ‘Crikey, what’ve I said? I didn’t mean it like it sounded. He’s your husband, for God’s sake.’
 

In bright tartan trews and an emerald green T-shirt, the whole covered by a huge white apron, and her once bleached hair now a bright orangey red to match her lips and backcombed to within an inch of its life, Renee looked the very picture of a fulfilled and happy woman. Apart from the fact that her voluptuous figure filled the clothes a touch more tightly, gone was the lethargic, whining creature who had never moved from her fireside. Lissa felt a pang of envy at her obvious contentment.

‘It’s all right. I do understand what you’re saying and in a way I agree with you, it’s just that…’ Lissa searched her mind for a way to explain the complications of her marriage. ‘Philip needs me, and I want to make him happy.’
 

‘Except in this. You don’t want another kid?’

‘No.’
 

‘But they’re gorgeous.’

They both gazed at the two girls, happily swathed in tea towels and rolling out grey pieces of dough on the end of the table.

‘And all my maternal instincts are quite satisfied, thank you. I don’t need to go through it all again.

‘So tell him.’
 

‘I can’t. He’s keen to try for a boy.’
 

Renee glanced sharply at her. ‘You’ve been using summat. Right?’
 

Lissa, hunched on a tall stool, nodded her agreement. ‘A diaphragm. Doctor Robson didn’t know Philip wanted another child. Until last night.’
 

‘Now the fat’s right in the fire.’

Lissa nodded.
 

Renee sucked in her breath, then picking up the lump of dough flung it back on to the floured board and began pummelling and rolling it with fresh vigour. Clouds of flour flew up and settled in drifts on her red hair. In her mind the dough might well have been Philip Brandon’s head. She wished it was, for the contempt with which he’d treated Lissa at the dinner last night. Humiliated her, rotten toad, fondling her before everyone and then revealing her private business. ‘So what did the good doctor say when you saw him this morning?’
 

Lissa, an incongruous picture of elegance in the untidy kitchen in a sleeveless dress of ice blue linen, hair hanging in a single plait down her back, gave Renee a woebegone look. ‘He expressed his surprise.’
 

Both girls’ eyes met and held while the dough was neglected. ‘I’ll bet he did. Let me get this straight. Your husband thinks you’ve been going to the doc for help to get pregnant again, only the doc has actually been helping you stop babies from coming? Is that the way of it?’
 

There was a glint of merriment now in Renee’s eyes and for the first time that morning Lissa began to see the funny side of her predicament and twisted her lips into a smile.’ It does sound a bit odd, I suppose, put like that.’ She glanced at the twins, stopped Sarah from putting some of the disgusting mixture into her mouth and helped Beth stick currants into hers.

‘No, darling. We must cook it first.’
 

‘I’d say it was pretty confusing for any chap to understand, even someone as clever as a doctor. A woman now, would catch the drift right away.’
 

‘Oh, Renee.’ Laughter was bubbling up in her throat. Where it came from, Lissa couldn’t imagine. She certainly hadn’t felt like laughing earlier when she’d faced Doctor Robson’s glowering disapproval and listened to his lecture on wifely duty. It had taken all her courage and skill to persuade him not to divulge this information to Philip, which he’d threatened to do for all it would mean breaking a patient’s confidence. Now she was holding her sides as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

Renee was screaming with laughter, flour going everywhere as she circled the kitchen gasping for breath. The twins, entranced by the sight, started to shout with laughter too though they had no idea why. ‘Oh Gawd, what a laugh. Crikey, I’d love to see his face when you tell him the truth!’