A Mother's Love: An Exclusive Short Story Page 9

  “Good gracious, Antoinette, that’s very noble, but is it prudent?” Margaret asked. “You know nothing about her.”

  “I’m with you, Mum,” said Tom in surprise. “I rather like the idea of having a sister—and such a pretty one, too.”

  “I’m in,” David agreed. “If it’s what Dad wanted. She’s flesh and blood.”

  “Blood is thicker than water,” added Rosamunde, standing by her sister like a loyal hound.

  Antoinette turned to Julius. “I’d like to meet as soon as possible to read the will, Mr. Beecher.”

  “At your convenience, Lady Frampton,” he replied. “I shall call you when I’m back in my office on Monday and arrange a meeting. I will now leave you in peace. I’m glad you have decided to accept Phaedra as your stepdaughter.”

  Margaret gave a disapproving sniff. “I’m afraid I’m going to take a little longer to convince. It’s more than I can absorb in one day. Burying my son has been quite enough, thank you very much. I’m going home. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, when I’m feeling stronger. David, escort me to my car.”

  David did as he was told and accompanied his grandmother down the corridor and into the hall. Guests parted to let her through. Harris helped her with her stole, and she leaned on David as she descended the steps to where Lord Frampton’s chauffeur waited to drive her to the pretty Queen Anne dower house positioned at the other end of the estate. “Do you know what distresses me the most?” she said, hesitating at the open door. “That my son felt he couldn’t confide in me.”

  “He didn’t confide in anyone,” David reassured her.

  “But I’m his mother.”

  “I think mothers are often the last to know.”

  “Well, George and I were very close. I can’t understand why he didn’t tell me. How long had he known this girl?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Eighteen months! How could he have kept something so important from me for that long? I mean, I would have been surprised, certainly, but I wouldn’t have thought any less of him.”

  “He was probably biding his time, waiting for the right moment.”

  “Of course he was. He could not have predicted this!”

  David watched the car disappear down the drive and turn left up the farm track that cut through the estate. It irritated his mother that Margaret lived so close and visited so often. Fairfield House punctuated her daily walk through the park with Basil, her Yorkshire terrier. Being a woman ill at ease in her own company, she appeared unannounced most days, and Antoinette felt compelled to entertain her while Bertie and Wooster chased Basil up and down the corridors. After all, the house had once belonged to her, before she and her late husband, Arthur, had moved out to accommodate their son and his growing family. Antoinette could hardly turn her away.

  David did not want to go back inside. The sun now shone brightly and the damp grass glittered, beckoning him to walk over it. The countryside looked resplendent, as if the mist had given it a good polishing. He was still reeling from the disappointment of discovering that the first girl he had taken a shine to in years had turned out to be his half sister. It was as if life had played a horrid practical joke at his expense.

  He decided to wander around the gardens. Bertie and Wooster pricked their ears and watched him disappear through the gate in the hedge. Then they bounded down the steps to join him, eagerly expecting a long walk. He had to smile at their exuberance, although now he no longer felt like smiling at all. His soul was once more plunged into darkness, and his heart felt heavy again, like a sack of ash.

  His father had been such a dominant presence in his life; it was unimaginable that he would no longer be around. He gazed at the towering trees and gently undulating lawn, and remembered that nothing was forever. Not even the earth he was standing on. Eventually, everything would pass away.

  Life was quiet in the countryside. His father had advised him to settle down young, as he had, but David had failed to find the right girl. He had had relationships, but love had always eluded him. He had watched Joshua marry Roberta and knew that he didn’t want a joyless marriage like theirs. He didn’t want the rootless life that Tom had, either. A different girl every night so that in the end they all blurred into one soulless encounter.

  He had really liked the look of Phaedra. In retrospect, perhaps it had been their common blood that had attracted him to her. Perhaps he had sensed a bond, subconsciously. Whatever it was, the attraction was fruitless. When he saw her again, he’d have to suppress it.

  She had been brave to come today, he thought, although misguided. His mother was understandably upset about the whole situation. He wasn’t upset as much as surprised—suddenly to discover a half sibling at twenty-nine was a very big surprise. He couldn’t care less about his father changing his will. If he had wanted to include his daughter, that was his business. Tom wouldn’t mind, either. He wasn’t avaricious, just extravagant with what he had. Joshua and Roberta were a different matter altogether. He wondered how they would take the news. Not well, he concluded. If anyone was going to make a fuss about money, it was Roberta.

  Phaedra drove her sky-blue Fiat Uno into a lay-by and turned off the engine. She dropped her head onto the steering wheel and squeezed her eyes shut. She had wanted more than anything to go to George’s funeral, but she could see now that it had been a terrible mistake.

  She winced as she recalled the look of horror on Antoinette’s face and the way she had sunk into the armchair, her hands visibly shaking; the reproachful twist to her sister Rosamunde’s mouth; the disbelief that had set the boys’ cheeks aflame. Only Julius had remained resolute, as if he relished having dominance over them. She wished she had had the power to keep her name out of the will. She wished she hadn’t come. If only she could now disappear in a puff of smoke.

  The trouble was that George had died without giving her time to say good-bye. She would have told him she loved him. She would have told him she had forgiven him. He didn’t need to change his will to make it up to her. She didn’t want his money. She didn’t want his gifts. She wanted security of a different sort, and that he could no longer give her.

  She had needed George, the man. The father figure of her early years had left her mother when Phaedra was ten and gone to live in New Zealand, eventually marrying again and starting a new family. Phaedra had been forgotten, or mislaid, in the murky past, and she never saw him again. From then on her mother had jumped from unsuitable man to unsuitable man like a frog in a pond of lily pads, hoping that the next landing would make her happy. She didn’t realize that with every hop she carried the source of her unhappiness within her, and she couldn’t run away from herself. She resented Phaedra, for she was a living reminder of her husband’s rejection and an unwanted responsibility. So, while her mother sank her sorrows into bottles of gin, Phaedra made her own way, relying on her friends and her dreams to carry her through the hard times. As soon as she was old enough she left home and her mother forever. She had no desire ever to go back. She had not only closed the chapter, but thrown away the book.

  George had given her a lifeline that promised stability, permanence, and love. She had grabbed it with both hands and held on to it with all her might. But it had broken, and George had gone, leaving her alone and adrift once again. Nothing in this life is permanent, she mused—only love. That thought made her howl for her own sorry predicament and the future that had died with him.

  After a while she calmed down and wiped her nose and eyes on the sleeve of her black coat. She glanced in the rearview mirror and recoiled. She had managed to put on a pretty good show at the funeral—she had wanted them all to see her looking her best. If they saw her now, with puffy red lizard eyes and blotchy skin, they’d be extremely underwhelmed.

  She started the engine and turned on the radio. The music made her feel a little better. She wouldn’t worry about the future but would take every moment as it came, and as for the past—that lived only in her memory now, giving her pain w
henever she dwelt on it. So she wouldn’t dwell on it. She looked about her as she motored up the lane, the fresh green buds reminding her of renewal. If they could reawaken after winter, then so could she.

  When David returned to the drawing room, he found that most of the guests had gone. Only Molly and Hester remained with an old curmudgeonly cousin of his grandfather, drinking sherry out of small crystal glasses beside the fire. Julius had left; Antoinette had retired to her bedroom to lie down; and Rosamunde and Tom remained in the library with Joshua and Roberta, who had just been told the news.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Roberta was saying from the sofa, her angular face ashen against her black jacket.

  “I suppose they’ve told you about Dad changing his will,” said David as he entered the room with Bertie and Wooster. A deep loathing of his sister-in-law propelled him to provoke her.

  “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing,” she continued, sitting back into the cushions and folding her arms. “I mean, he’s known her, what? A year and a half? Do you think she would have made an effort to be part of his life had he been a simple farmer?”

  “Don’t judge her by your own standards, Roberta—and don’t presume she’s after his money. She might be wealthy in her own right, for all you know.” David made for the drinks tray. “Anyway, she only learned about the will after Dad had died.”

  “You’re being naïve, David. Of course she’s after his money,” Roberta retorted, giving a little sniff. “To someone like her, an English lord is synonymous with a large fortune.”

  “By that you mean someone American?” asked Tom, back on the club fender, smoking.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you should be ashamed of yourself,” he reproached her. “She’s not from some haystack in Kansas, you know. She’s Canadian, anyway, which is very different. Canadians don’t like to be mistaken for Americans.”

  “Is she pretty?” she asked.

  David poured himself a glass of whiskey. “Extremely pretty,” he replied, to torment her.

  “She’s hot,” Tom agreed, grinning. “Though a little too wholesome for my tastes.”

  “Oh really, Tom. You fancy anything in a skirt!” Roberta retorted.

  “I think I saw her,” said Joshua. “Long curly blond hair, with very pale gray eyes.”

  Roberta rounded on him. “That’s a lot of detail, darling, for someone who thinks he saw her.”

  “She was the only person in the congregation under thirty,” he explained.

  “She’s thirty-one, actually,” David corrected.

  “Blinded by her good looks: no wonder you boys can’t see through her. Takes a woman to understand a woman, don’t you think, Rosamunde?”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you,” Rosamunde replied. She had always found Roberta a little overpowering.

  “How much has he given her?” Roberta persisted.

  “We don’t know,” said Tom.

  “When do we find out? I mean, we have to contest it, surely.”

  “Why?” David asked, flopping onto the sofa and stretching out his long legs.

  “Because it’s not fair. The portion he gives her might be our daughter’s inheritance.”

  “I think we have enough,” said Joshua quietly, wishing his wife wouldn’t make such a scene.

  “That’s not the point, darling. It’s the principle,” she retorted.

  “Antoinette has no intention of contesting it,” said Rosamunde authoritatively.

  “She’s tired and emotional. When she’s had some rest, she’ll change her mind,” Roberta assured her.

  “I think you should go and talk it over with Grandma,” Tom suggested, smirking at the thought of the pair of them pecking away at poor Phaedra’s remains after they had torn her to pieces.

  “So Margaret agrees with me at least.” Roberta smiled.

  “She didn’t want to talk about it, actually,” David corrected. “But I imagine she’ll agree with you. Not that any of our opinions matter when it comes to the will. Dad had every right to change it. We can’t undo it, and Mum won’t want us to. In spite of being tired and emotional, Roberta, she wants to honor Dad’s request, and so do Tom and I.”

  “Sure, whatever,” said Tom, flicking ash into the fire. “But it is all rather odd, don’t you think?”

  David sank into the armchair and swirled the ice about in his tumbler, making a light tinkling sound. “She’s thirty-one, which means she was born in 1981. I was born two years later, so Dad slept with her mother a year before he married Mum.”

  “That’s cutting it pretty fine,” said Joshua. “Considering he dated Mum for about a year before he proposed.”

  “Perhaps it was a one-night stand,” said Roberta.

  “Shhh, keep your voice down,” Joshua cautioned, thinking of his mother upstairs in her bedroom.

  “Phaedra said Dad was her mother’s ‘great love,’ so it must have been more than a one-night stand,” Tom recalled softly.

  “But she was not your father’s ‘great love,’” Rosamunde was quick to add. “I imagine it was a hasty fling for George that left the poor girl heartbroken. Happens all the time, though in this case he left a bun in the oven, which was very careless.”

  “Why didn’t she tell him he had got her pregnant?” Roberta asked. “I mean, if she was so in love with him, might she not have thought he would do the decent thing and marry her? Nowadays people have no sense of duty, but in those days—we’re talking the 1980s—wasn’t it a terrible blot on one’s reputation to be pregnant outside marriage?”

  “Depends what sort of family she came from,” said Rosamunde. “In most respectable families, it wouldn’t be considered proper even today.”

  “Which leads me to suspect that she never told him,” said David. “If she had, he would have looked after her. I’m not sure he would have married her, but Dad was a good man; he wouldn’t have run off, leaving her to bring up his child alone. No, I believe she never told him.”

  Roberta narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “It all seems very fishy to me. She turns up the day of his funeral and declares herself his illegitimate daughter. It’s a little too tidy.”

  Tom blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Not really. Mother brings daughter up on her own, tells daughter who her real father is, daughter goes looking for him, which is natural. Father feels guilty he wasn’t around when she was growing up so includes her in his will. Nothing fishy about that.”

  “It’s just a feeling,” Roberta persisted. “You’re all much too trusting.”

  “Look, Dad isn’t around to answer our questions,” said David. “The only person who knows the answers, and most likely not all of them, is Phaedra. I suggest we ask her when we next see her.”

  “You’re not thinking of seeing her again, are you?” Roberta looked horrified.

  “Why not? Don’t you want to know some answers?” David replied.

  “God, you’re going to invite her back, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps,” David replied.

  “With your mother’s permission,” Rosamunde interrupted.

  Roberta turned to her husband for support. “Josh, aren’t you going to say something?”

  “I think you should calm down, darling, and wait until we know what’s in the will,” he suggested. “She might have been given so little it’s not worth making a fuss.”

  “Or she might have been given a great deal, in which case it is,” said Roberta firmly.

  3

  Antoinette lay on her big brass bed and allowed her weary gaze to meander around the room. Her bedroom was her sanctuary—the only place in the house where she was safe from her mother-in-law. It was large and light, with a high ceiling bordered in a bold fleur-de-lis cornice. Portraits of her sons as little boys hung on the pale-yellow-striped wallpaper, with paintings of dogs and eighteenth-century landscapes. Primrose-yellow curtains dropped from thick wooden poles where latticed windows looked out over the lawn and ancient woodland beyond. A ward
robe dominated one wall, a chest of drawers another, while a delicate dressing table stood in front of the window where Antoinette often sat before the Queen Anne mirror to brush her hair and apply her makeup. There had been little room for change when she had moved into the house just over twenty years ago, for the Framptons had traditionally been avid collectors of art and antiques from all over the world, and George liked it as it was. But she had decorated her bedroom exactly the way she wanted it.

  It is the custom in great houses for the husband and wife to inhabit separate bedrooms, so George’s dressing room was positioned on the other side of the adjoining bathroom from Antoinette’s. He had rarely slept in there—only when he had drunk too much or was coming home late—but all his clothes were kept there, along with sentimental trinkets and the customary ashtray full of loose change. He had always hated to throw anything away, so the drawers were packed with old theater tickets and ski passes, letters and postcards dating right back to before they married. The mantelpiece was adorned with trophies for ski-club races and tennis tournaments, and framed photographs of his school days. The biggest frame contained a black-and-white photograph of Antoinette as a young debutante in the early 1970s, with her dark hair drawn up into a beehive, her false eyelashes long and black. She had seldom entered that room, for she couldn’t abide the chaos, but now she didn’t dare because she was too scared. The appearance of George’s illegitimate daughter raised the possibility that he might have kept other secrets from her. She had never mistrusted him in life, but in death a shadow had been cast over his integrity.

  She pondered the unexpected appearance of Phaedra. It didn’t surprise her that George had had girlfriends before he married—he had been a handsome, sharp-witted, and charming young man—but it did surprise her that he had never mentioned Phaedra’s mother. She thought she knew all the names that related to his past—at least, all the important ones. And if Phaedra was thirty-one, then she was only a year older than David. She and George had married the year before David was born, but they had courted for eight months before that. Was there a chance that George had been unfaithful during that time? She wished George were alive to answer her questions and defend his honor. She wished he were there to put her mind at rest and reassure her that he had loved her, and only her.