Wishing Water (42 page)

The words were almost on her lips when the reality of her situation hit home. She couldn’t tell him now, like this. She couldn’t say, I’ve been secretly using contraception. Not while standing in his office. With the door locked. She was suddenly afraid.

Laughing softly he slid up her skirt with the palms of his hands and curled his fingers into her crotch, massaging the soft mound of flesh. Lissa gasped, stifling the sound in her throat. She pushed him away with a light laugh. Stop it, Philip! Not here in your office.’
 

‘You are so beautiful I can’t keep my hands off you. I’ve neglected you recently. I’m sorry, my sweet. Business worries. Grim bank managers. We seem to go through money like the proverbial water. I’ve had my mind on other things.’ His breath was shortening, his eyes glazing over. ‘It seems so long since we made love.’ He kissed her throat, pushed open her blouse and slid his lips down to her nipple. ‘But you must be kinder to your grandmother, my darling. We need Larkrigg to be truly secure.’
 

She pushed him away with all her strength and faced him with narrowed, incredulous eyes. ‘What are you saying? Is that what you’ve wanted all along? Larkrigg. Is that why you married me?’
 

He chuckled, reaching for her again. ‘You were a delightful child. How could I resist you? And I was patient, wasn’t I?’
 

‘But would you have been so keen if there hadn’t been a wealthy grandmother in the background?’ Her eyes opened wide now as she saw it all. ‘That’s why you’ve tried so hard to bring us together, Not for my benefit at all, but your own. Oh Philip, I trusted you. I thought you truly loved me.’ She felt sick, and a terrible weariness came over her. How naïve she had been, how very foolish.

He looked confused, guilty almost. ‘I do love you, my darling. What is so wrong with wanting you to have your just desserts? That family owes it to you.’
 

Lissa was moving away from him, disgust in her voice. ‘I can’t take any more of this. I’m going home, Philip.’
 

She unlocked the door and walked out of the office, politely declining Miss Henshaw’s offer of coffee.

When she arrived home the twins were perfectly well and probably hadn’t even noticed her absence. A telephone call to Broombank proved that Rosemary Ellis was indeed on her death bed and Meg agreed that it would be respectful to go and see her.

Lissa took a shower, brushed her hair, which helped dissolve her temper and made her feel better. When Philip came home he insisted that they take the twins with them and they set out on a cold April night to face the final interview with her grandmother.

The stale smell in the bedroom was so overwhelming it made Lissa feel sick. In the great bed lay a figure, white as wax and just as still. She wanted to feel compassion, to experience grief. This was her grandmother, after all. Her own mother’s mother. She felt nothing.

‘Have you brought them?’ The voice sounded uncannily strong.

‘We are all here, Rosemary,’ Philip said, in a voice Lissa recognised as the one he reserved for old and valued clients. Unctuous, grasping. Like Uriah Heep, she thought, feeling a nervous spurt of laughter in her throat.

The eyes opened, regarding her with cold dispassion, and Lissa wondered why she became such a bag of nerves whenever she was confronted by this woman? She could feel Beth’s small hand creeping into hers. Even Sarah was shivering, her small mouth turning down in comical self-pity.

A voice from the bed. ‘Let me see them.’
 

There was nothing for it but to bring the children forward. Stern black eyes peered fiercely over the hump of blankets. ‘Why are they whimpering? Are they stupid?’
 

‘No, Grandmother,’ Lissa said, a new firmness in her tone.

‘Don’t call me that. I’m not your grandmother.’
 

Lissa hung her head, saying nothing.’
 

A hand came from beneath the bedclothes, like a claw. One yellowed finger nail touched Sarah’s cheek. ‘That one, she’s very like Katherine.’ The old woman’s gaze slid away to fix upon the ceiling and the hand dropped. In the silence a clock ticked and Sarah gave a half-strangled sob of fear.

‘You can send them away now. They tire me.’
 

With relief Lissa sent the twins scampering to Nanny Sue. Straightening her spine, she faced Rosemary Ellis with resignation.

‘My energy is limited,’ Rosemary said. ‘Please don’t interrupt.’
 

‘Very well - Mrs Ellis.’ It seemed ridiculous to address her so formally.
 

‘Katherine has expressed a wish to compensate you for her defection. Says she should have stayed and tried to keep you. I don’t agree, but the young have their own ideas. Larkrigg Hall would naturally go to her in the normal course of events. I’m not going to live much longer.’
 

‘I’m sure you’ll recover and be up and about in no time,’ Philip put in, smiling condescendingly.

Blackcurrant eyes turned to his. ‘Don’t pretend, or I might change my assessment of you. Which would be a pity since I am never wrong.’ The breath rasped in her throat and Lissa grew anxious. She had no wish to be responsible for Rosemary Ellis’s last breath. ‘Don’t tire yourself. Not on my account.’
 

‘It’s Katherine’s wish, not mine you understand. Katherine’s request - that Larkrigg Hall be left to you. Says she owes you that at least.’
 

Lissa took a step backwards, away from the high bed. ‘I don’t want it.’
 

She sensed Philip twitch as Rosemary turned astonished eyes to hers.

‘Of course you want it, you silly girl. I’ve always known that.’
 

The sickly sweet smell of death seemed to clog her nostrils, the room swam before her eyes and Lissa grew light-headed, feeling as if she might faint. ‘I never wanted anything of the sort. Larkrigg Hall is yours. Nothing at all to do with me.’ She became aware that her voice was rising, sounding close to hysteria. How dare you accuse me of being so mercenary?’
 

Rosemary Ellis continued in scathing tones. ‘All you have to do is agree not to pursue your claim of being Katherine’s daughter.’
 

Lissa stared at her grandmother in total shock. ‘What did you say?’
 

‘You must give up this foolish demand to be acknowledged as an Ellis. It’s not possible. Have Larkrigg Hall by all means, since Katherine seems to want that, but don’t expect anything else. No money, no recognition.’ She scrabbled her withered hand across the bedclothes and Lissa saw Philip put a paper into it. ‘Sign,’ she said, and the voice was weakening, growing tired, though rasping just as harshly.

It was Philip who took the paper from the shaking hand and brought it to her. Lissa stared down at it, bemused. He offered her a pen.

‘Sign here, along the bottom,’ he said, crisp and businesslike.

Lissa couldn’t move. She looked from one to the other of them in disbelief.

‘Don’t either of you understand? I don’t want your house or your money. I never wanted those things. I wanted to belong. I wanted to know that you cared about me. That Kath cared. It wasn’t my fault that I was born illegitimate. Do you realise how that dreadful feeling of rejection messed me up? All those broken promises.’ She paused, trying to keep a grip on herself. ‘I took it out on Meg and Tam, the two people I cared most about in all the world. And you offer me your
house,
like a
bribe?’
 

Philip’s hand closed tightly upon her wrist. He was forcing the pen between her fingers, his voice furiously calm in her ear. ‘Take the pen, Lissa. Sign. It’s what your mother wants. You deserve it. She owes you that at least.’
 

‘No!’ Lissa threw the pen to the other side of the room. ‘She owes me nothing.’ And turning on her heel, she ran from the room.

There was snow on the roads as Philip drove furiously home, slipping and sliding on black ice. The mountains frowned at her, at their most forbidding at this time of day with darkness already closing in, though it was but late afternoon. The air was piercing cold, almost as cold as the ice forming about Lissa’s heart.

‘How could you?’ she kept saying. ‘How could you do this to me?’
 

The twins sat silent in the back seat, one on either side of their precious Nanny who had long since learned to give the impression of closed ears while drinking in every tidbit to relay to her dear mother whom she visited each month.

Philip changed gear, grating it loudly. ‘How dare you refuse when I want only the best for us all. You have no sense of what is right, Lissa.’
 

‘I know it isn’t right for that woman to treat me with such contempt.’ Or you either, she thought, not quite daring to say it.

The car skidded on a corner and the twins screamed. It must have shaken Philip too for he slowed down and seemed to draw a steadying breath, getting his temper back under control as it more usually was. ‘All right, my precious ones. Daddy is sorry.’ He turned to Lissa. ‘You see how you make me behave? Couldn’t you for once consider someone besides yourself. The girls, for instance, and me, even if you don’t care about Larkrigg for yourself.’
 

‘Why don’t you care how I feel?’
 

‘I’m not made of money. To ignore such a valuable gift would be lunacy. Fortunately I was able to put it right.’
 

‘What? How?’
 

He glanced up in the driving mirror at two white faces and one pink one, avid with curiosity. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’

Over a dinner which Lissa could not eat, Philip explained how he had persuaded Rosemary Ellis to leave Larkrigg Hall to the twins instead.

‘You may not want it but it’s certainly not right to deprive the children of their heritage. Larkrigg Hall will stay in the family, after all.’
 

Lissa gazed at him, stunned by this new twist, furious that he had gone against her wishes. ‘I hate you for this.’
 

He smiled. ‘Hate away. It is done. In these uncertain times we may well be glad of it in the future.’ I’ve succeeded, he thought. Now I have tied you to me for all time. He smiled at Lissa, well pleased. ‘The old dear will be dead within the week.’
 

But she was not dead within the month. Rosemary Ellis stubbornly clung to life, determined to be as difficult in dying as she had been in living.

Lissa put on a blue kilted skirt, not too short, a lemon turtle neck sweater and a soft ginger suede jacket. She brushed her hair into a tight knot on top of her head and in her ears wore very proper pearl earrings. Quite the right outfit, she decided, to suit a staid lawyer.

She kissed the twins, promising to be home as usual for lunch, but instead of going to the shop, caught the bus into Kendal. She’d chosen this particular practice, hidden away down one of the yards, because it was far enough from Carreckwater not to have any involvement with Philip Brandon. She needed an independent opinion, not one influenced by that of friendship.

All through the long journey she had rehearsed what she wanted to say. But by the time Lissa was sitting in the solicitor’s office, her hands clasped together in her lap, breathing in the familiar smell of dusty law books in an unfamiliar setting, every word had gone from her head.

Perhaps it was because the solicitor was younger than she had expected, and carried a slightly bored expression on his pale flat face. Surely he was too inexperienced to be of any use to her?

Lissa told her tale haltingly, with embarrassment pinking her cheeks. It did not come naturally to reveal her most intimate secrets to a stranger. He asked a few questions, made notes on a pad, then leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers and stared at her over the tips of them.

‘So there is no question of his desertion?’

‘No.’
 

‘You realise, l am sure, Mrs Brandon, that there are three grounds only for divorce. One is desertion, a long and tiring method which I prefer not to recommend. Should your husband wish to return within the three-year period, and you refuse to accept him back, then you lose your grounds.’
 

‘He would never desert me.’ Lissa swallowed and slackened her hands as she realised she’d been pressing them together so hard they were hurting her.

‘The second is adultery.’ The solicitor raised querying brows and Lissa shook her head,

‘Not that I’m aware of.’
 

‘Pity. He wouldn’t, I suppose, do the decent thing? We could set up a hotel room, a woman?’
 

‘He would never consent to that.’ She felt unclean just thinking about it.

‘Pity. He need only go through the motions.’ He gave a resigned sigh. ‘That leaves us with cruelty. He has not beaten you?’
 

‘No.’
 

‘Locked you up? Twisted an arm perhaps? Thrown anything at you?’
 

‘No.’
 

‘Not a single bruise to show me?’