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‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Christy, but I desperately need your help. David is due to fly out to Hollywood in a couple of days, and you know what he’s like. It’s panic, panic, panic, and now I can’t seem to find the manuscript for Fathers and Daughters. He swears that it should be filed with all the others, but it isn’t there, and you know how impossible he can be when he gets into one of his moods. He wants to take it with him, because it seems the Americans might be interested, and you’re my last hope.’
In spite of her own misery Christy grinned to herself. David’s methods of filing were notorious, as were the moods he flew into whenever anyone dared to criticise or complain about his lack of proper methods.
‘Well, I can’t think of anywhere offhand. Have you tried the pending file? Or the one marked ‘‘M’’?’
‘M?’ Meryl queried.
‘For mistakes,’ Christy informed her with another grin.
‘I’ve looked everywhere, and I’m at my wits’ end.’
She sounded it, and Christy felt a surge of sympathy for her.
‘Look, I know it’s an awful imposition, but I was wondering if you could possibly come down. We could put you up overnight, and you could go through the files with me. You know what a calming effect you always have on David. At this moment in time I’d happily file him under “M” myself. “M” for monster,’ she added feelingly.
‘Oh, Meryl, I’m afraid I can’t.’
There was an unhappy silence that made her feel extremely uncomfortable, and then her father, who had walked out into the hall queried, ‘Can’t what?’
‘Can’t go to London,’ Christy told him, covering the receiver. ‘Meryl can’t find one of David’s plays, and she wanted me to go down there and give her a hand.’
‘Nonsense. Of course you can go. Do you good, if you ask me,’ her father added vigorously. ‘You need a break. Besides, you’ll be able to get yourself something for this Grand Ball.’
Christy frowned. She could hardly explain to her father or to Meryl why she didn’t want to see David again. She gnawed at her bottom lip and then heard Meryl asking anxiously if they had been cut off.
‘No…no, I’m still here.’
‘Look, Christy, I hate to pressure you, but I really do need your help. You’ve no idea what it’s like down here! David is driving me mad…and besides…’ her voice seemed to fade away a little and then rallied again as she said with a false brightness that cut Christy to the heart, ‘I don’t need to pretend with you. I suspect that he’s deep in the throes of a new affair, and it’s making him more unbearable than ever.’
While her heart went out to Meryl, Christy couldn’t help thinking that if she was right—and Meryl knew her husband very well indeed—then she herself need have no fears about seeing David.
‘Well, if you really need me…’
‘Oh, you’re a darling! When can you come?’
Before she hung up it was arranged that Christy would catch the early morning train from Newcastle the following day, and that she would stay overnight with her old employers before returning home. She was touched almost to tears that evening when her father called her into his study, and after much indecision presented her with an extremely generous cheque which he told her she was to use to buy herself a ballgown. When she protested at his generosity, reminding him feelingly that she had already caused him expense by damaging her mother’s car, he told her not to be so silly, adding bracingly, ‘Besides, you’ve got the honour of Setondale to uphold, you know. Can’t have our local girl being out-shone by an incomer!’
Christy laughed, but she didn’t have the heart to tell her parent that, generous though his cheque was, it would hardly buy her a dress that could compete with the Emanuel outfit with which Amanda was planning to dazzle them.
To save her father having to get up early, she ordered a taxi to take her to Newcastle for the early morning train. When her alarm went off at four, she groaned, and went through the motions of getting washed and dressed, feeling like a zombie. She didn’t feel much better when she eventually got on the train and eschewed the dining car, to curl up and catch up on her shortened sleep in the comfort of her seat in the first class section. It was a welcome surprise to discover that Meryl had come to the station to meet her.
‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ Christy protested, when she had disengaged herself from her welcoming hug. ‘I could easily have made my own way to Wimbledon, and you must have a hundred and one things to do.’
‘A thousand and one,’ Meryl agreed ruefully, ‘but I needed the luxury of a familiar shoulder to cry on.’ She acknowledged Christy’s comprehensive look with a wry smile. ‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for me; after all, I stay with him by choice, but there are times when I wonder if I’m just a fool, or a masochist. I tell myself that deep down there somewhere he loves me.’
She grimaced slightly as Christy interrupted fiercely, ‘He does, Meryl. I know he does.’
‘I wonder. That’s what I’ve always told myself, but now I’m beginning to wonder. It wouldn’t be so bad if the others all shared your moral code, Christy.’ She saw her start with surprise and allowed herself a grim smile.
‘Oh, I might be stupid, but I’m not dense. Women like me with wandering husbands soon learn to recognise the signs. I must admit that with you it took a bit longer than usual. It was when he wanted to buy you that fox that the truth dawned.’
‘But you still…’
‘I chose it for you because it was a present that you richly deserved. I must admit that for a while I wondered if you’d be able to resist him. In fact, I couldn’t see how you could. He can be very persuasive when he wants to be…but when you said you were going to resign I knew then that I had nothing to worry about from you.’
Christy saw the tears standing out in Meryl’s eyes and cursed David for his insensitivity. Never had she been more glad that she hadn’t given in
to the physical impulse to take David as her lover. She could never have faced the grief and torment in Meryl’s eyes if she had.
‘Oh, and I promised myself I wouldn’t behave like this. It’s just that…’ Meryl broke off, and as Christy looked at her she realised that she had put on weight, and that she was moving less briskly than usual.
Meryl watched her and then said tiredly, ‘Yes, ridiculous, isn’t it, at my age? And what on earth David will say I don’t know. At the moment he thinks I’ve just been indulging in a bout of over-eating, and I want him to go on thinking that way, at least until we’re all safely established in Hollywood. If I tell him that I’m pregnant now, he’ll seize on that as an excuse to leave me behind. And we all know what happens to wives who get left behind, don’t we? A temporary separation all too often becomes a permanent one.’
‘You’re having a baby!’
‘Thanks,’ Meryl said drily. ‘You’re doing wonders for my ego.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean it that way…’
‘No…I know. It came as something of a shock to me as well, I can tell you,’ Meryl confided, leading the way to her parked car. ‘To say nothing of what it’s going to do to David. It was a genuine accident, but remember—not a word to him.’
The traffic was very heavy and Christy didn’t try to distract her companion by trying to talk to her, but at last they were out of the city and heading for the Galvins’ comfortable house in Wimbledon.
‘David’s out, and the kids are at school,’ Meryl told her as she unlocked the front door and led the way into the comfortable study that David worked in. ‘He stormed out in something of a huff. No doubt he’s gone round to see Mirabelle Hastings for sympathy and comfort.’
There was an edge of bitterness to her voice that Christy wasn’t used to hearing. ‘He’ll get tired of her eventually, Meryl.’
‘Yes, I know. He always does. But what I’m not sure about any longer is whether I’ve got the resilience to make myself wait. I always used to tell myself that I was lucky to be married to a man like David, and that because he is the man he is I must just pay the price that being married to such a man demands, but just lately I’m beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off married to someone else—someone who puts me first and not himself.’
