An Excellent Wife?

‘No, no, I’d forgotten. Of course I’m eating out.’ James did not want to ruin their evening just because his own had been cancelled. He might as well still eat at the new restaurant as he had a table booked.

Barny relaxed with a barely audible sigh of relief. ‘You had me worried there—Enid is really looking forward to seeing this show. You know how she loves a good musical. She’s such a romantic, my Enid.’

Eyes warming, James smiled back at him. ‘Always was, I remember. How many Sunday afternoons did I spend with Enid watching weepie films on TV, feeding her paper tissues to mop her eyes with? Well, have a lovely evening. Could you pick me up at five and drop me at my club? Then you’ll be free. I’ll get a taxi back home tonight.’

‘Right, Mr James, thanks.’ Barny drew up outside the bank; James looked around hurriedly before getting out, but there was still no sign of Patience Kirby’s bright red head. He felt a queer little niggle inside his chest; he told himself it was relief. She was the last thing he wanted to see. Crazy girl. But he was surprised—had she really given up and gone home?

He had a much busier afternoon and hardly had time to think about anything except work. At five o’clock precisely he went down in his lift and walked out of the bank to where Barny was waiting.

By then he had forgotten Patience Kirby. He got into the back of the Daimler; Barny walked round to get into the driver’s seat. The window beside James was half-open. A little hand came through it suddenly and grabbed his shoulder. Startled, he looked out into those large, luminous hazel eyes. Stupidly, for a second all he could think about was the tiny golden flecks around her dark pupil, like rays of sunlight fading into the soft hazel iris.

‘Won’t you please change your mind? Surely you could spare an hour to drive over and see her? Just once, that isn’t too much to ask, is it? If you could only see how frail she is, you wouldn’t refuse. She looks as if a breath of wind would blow her away.’

‘Can’t you understand English? As far as I’m concerned she’s dead. I’m not interested in renewing our acquaintance. Now, let go of me, will you? Drive on, Barny!’

He was hot with temper, partly because for a second he had felt his heart lift as if with delight, and that was disturbing, and partly because some of his employees were coming out of the bank, shamelessly eavesdropping and staring. This would be all round the bank tomorrow morning. In all his time at the bank James had never been the centre of scandal and he was furious at the prospect of all the gossip he could be sure would follow.

‘How can you be so hard-hearted?’ Patience Kirby hurled at him, her eyes glittering. ‘Your own mother!’

James heard an intake of breath from Barny, felt him swivel in his seat to stare with clearly shocked eyes. Damn her! What was she going to do next? Ring the national newspapers and give them the story, spread it right across the country?

‘I’m going to shut this window; get your hand out of it!’ he muttered, his hand reaching for the button.

The window began to slide upward. She snatched her hand away only at the last moment.

‘Drive off, Barny!’ snapped James.

Barny automatically obeyed, accelerating away fast just as James realised that the window had shut on Patience Kirby’s sleeve. To his horror he also realised that she was being dragged along with the car, her red hair blowing around the pale, frightened face he could still see outside his window.

‘Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’ he yelled at Barny, who slammed on his brakes. The Daimler came to a shuddering halt.

It was at that point that James made a stupid, overhasty move. He operated the electric switch, the window slid down, releasing her sleeve, and the red hair disappeared from his view. It was only at that second that he realised he should have waited, got out on the other side of the car and held her while Barny opened the window. As it was, she tumbled to the pavement with a crash that made his heart crash in echo. Jumping out, he found her lying face down; he hurriedly knelt down beside her, white-faced in shock. By then a crowd was beginning to gather, staring with a mixture of curiosity and hostility.

‘What’s happened?’ one woman asked another, who shrugged.

‘Think he knocked her down.’

‘Poor girl! Looks bad to me. Dead, I’d say.’

Barny had got out too. ‘How is she, sir?’ he asked, and James noted the slight frost in his tone and knew Barny was now as disapproving as Miss Roper. What was happening to everyone in his life? They were all starting to look at him as if he was a monster.

He had a strange suspicion that if he looked in a mirror right now he would find his own eyes held a similar expression.

Patience Kirby sat up shakily. ‘Are you okay?’ James asked. ‘You’d better not move until we get an ambulance.’

She put a hand to her head; James saw blood on both.

‘You’re bleeding! Barny, ring for an ambulance!’

Patience Kirby hurriedly staggered to her feet, using James’s arm for support.

‘No, really, I don’t want to go to hospital. They are bound to be busy. It will mean spending hours in Casualty waiting to be seen and all that’s wrong with me is a few cuts and bruises.’

‘You don’t know that! You could have some broken bones.’

She flexed a slim ankle, took a couple of swaying steps. ‘See, I can walk; I haven’t broken anything.’

‘What about your head? That hit the pavement with an almighty crack.’

‘Oh, I’ve got a tough skull.’ But she did not seem to James to be too steady on her feet, all the same.

‘Was she trying to snatch something out of your car?’ a man in the crowd hissed next to him. ‘I saw her grabbing at you through the window. Don’t know what the City’s coming to, street girls hanging about in broad daylight! You expect them up West, but not around here. You be careful, mister, I don’t think she’s hurt at all—just a bit of blackmail. I’ll be a witness for you if the cops come. I saw it was an accident; don’t you let her trap you.’

James gave him such a ferocious sideways glance that the man backed off hurriedly, muttering. ‘Oh, well, if you want to make a fool of yourself, don’t let me stop you.’

‘You should be X-rayed to make sure there are no fractures,’ James told Patience, who shook her head, grimacing.

‘I hate hospitals.’

‘Nevertheless it’s only sensible...’

‘I won’t go, okay? Look, if I feel any worse tomorrow I’ll go along to Casualty. Please stop fussing. You’re worse than my grandpa.’

Being compared to her grandfather went down like a lead balloon with James. Tight-lipped, he said, ‘Get in the car, please. I’ll give you a lift home.’

The crowd began to disperse, seeing that no further excitement was likely.

Her hazel eyes glinted mischievously up at him. ‘Remember, I might pick your pocket if you let me get close enough.’

‘Very droll, Miss Kirby. Please get into the car.’

She obeyed this time, but was still looking up at him, which was why she stumbled over the edge of the kerb.

Before she could hit her chin on the open car door James grabbed her, slid an arm around her waist, another behind her knees, and carried her to the car, very conscious of her glinting red hair brushing his jawline, her heart beating under that shabby old sweatshirt she wore, picking up a faint, flowery scent from her throat. If you missed the slight rise of those tiny breasts you’d think she could be a boy, she was so slightly built, so skinny of hip and leg, but it would be a mistake to forget her femininity. He had already been stung by it once or twice. Looking at her was one thing; having her in his arms made an entirely different and disturbing impression.

She looked like a child, but she got her own way with a woman’s maddening deviance. He had been determined not to visit her home and here he was, committed to doing just that—and the really infuriating part was that he didn’t even really mind.

Not that he was really attracted to a skinny brat like this, of course! Good God, no! It was just that... He tried to explain his reactions to himself, to be rational and level-headed, but she had slid her arms round his neck and put her head on his shoulder and James was suddenly having some sort of problem thinking at all.

Almost feverishly he deposited her in a hurry on the back seat of the car and climbed in beside her, trying not to make his agitation visible.

What the hell was the matter with him? He was behaving like some sex-starved lunatic.

Slamming the door, he watched Barny get back behind his driving wheel. Without looking at the girl, James asked curtly, ‘What’s the address?’

‘Muswell Hill, Cheney Road; the house is called The Cedars.’

The address intrigued him; it sounded Victorian, gracious, and didn’t fit this girl at all. He would be curious to see what her home looked like, what sort of family she came from. But he wouldn’t go into the house; he was not letting her win every trick. He would drop her and drive away.

‘Make for Muswell Hill. Barney,’ James said, leaning forward to open a small cabinet fixed to the back of the front seats. It held among other things first aid items; James selected a box of paper handkerchiefs, a bottle of still water and a couple of sticky plasters.

“Turn your face to me, Miss Kirby.’

‘Patience,’ she said, obeying.

‘That’s a very old-fashioned name.’

‘My aunt’s; she was rich and my parents hoped she would leave me her money if they called me by her name.’

‘Did she?’

‘No, she left it to a cat’s home. In her will she said she had always hated her name, and if my parents hadn’t called me Patience she would have left me her money, but she despised them for saddling an innocent child with a name like that and said money had never helped her enjoy life so I’d be better off without any.’

James laughed. ‘She sounds interesting. And were you?’

‘Was I what?’

‘Better off without her money.’

Sadly she shook her head.

He began cleaning the blood from her forehead, exposing a long but thankfully merely a surface cut. James washed and dried it before covering it with a plaster, then washed the rest of her heart-shaped face and dried it carefully, very aware of her looking up at him, curling dark gold lashes deepening the effect of those eyes. He wished she would stop staring. Uneasiness made him brusque. ‘Head hurting much?’

‘Not at all.’

He held up three fingers. ‘How many fingers can you see?’

‘Three, of course.’

He stared into the centres of the hazel eyes but the pupils seemed normal, neither dilated nor contracted. She smiled, a sweet, warm curve of the mouth that made him flush for some inexplicable reason.

He scowled. No, that wasn’t honest; he knew very well why he had gone red. He had wanted to kiss that warm, wide mouth. He still did; in fact just contemplating the possibility made him dizzy. I’m light-headed, he thought. Am I coming down with some bug? There is flu going around the office. That must be it. Why would I want to kiss her? I don’t even like this girl; she’s a nuisance. She isn’t much to look at, either. Not my type.

She’s too young for you, anyway, a little voice inside his head insisted. Look at her! You can give her a good fifteen years.

Don’t exaggerate! he told himself. Ten, maybe—she’s in her early twenties, not her teens!

She had been watching him, now she looked down, her dark gold lashes stirring against her cheeks. James hoped she hadn’t picked up what was in his mind. He didn’t want her getting any crazy ideas about his intentions. As far as she was concerned, he did not have any!

A moment later Barny slowed, turning a corner. ‘This is the road; where exactly do I find the house, miss?’ He and James both contemplated the road of detached houses in large gardens. It certainly matched the address the girl had given them, but it did not match the girl herself. She didn’t look as if she came from one of these gracious period homes set among trees and shrubs, with curving drives, and lawns.

‘Keep driving and I’ll tell you when to stop,’ Patience said, and obediently Barny kerb-crawled until she said, ‘This is it!’

The car stopped outside and both men stared curiously at the high Victorian house with gabled pink roofs on several levels, twisty red barley sugar chimneys, latticed windows behind which hung pretty chintz curtains. Built of red brick, the woodwork painted apple-green, the design made it took more like a cottage than a large house, a typical design of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was set well back from the road in large gardens in which spring was busy breaking out.

A flurry of almond blossom on black boughs, green lawns covered in daisies, yellow trumpets of daffodils and purple crocus showing in naturalised clumps—James hadn’t noticed until now how far spring had progressed. There was an over-civilised tidiness to his own garden that missed out on this lyrical note.

‘The Cedars?’ he queried drily. ‘What happened to them?’

‘There is one, but it’s at the back. There were two when the house was built; the other one blew down in a storm years ago.’ She gave him a defiant glare. ‘And will you stop being sarcastic?’

He didn’t answer. ‘Barny, take us up to the front door.’

Barny swung the car through the green-painted open gates and slowly drove up to the porch which sheltered a verandah and a green front door. He stopped right outside; James got out of the car and turned to help Patience out.

‘Here you are. Goodbye. And I don’t want to see you again.’

She slid down from the car and stumbled over his foot. Quite deliberately, in his opinion, but it would be useless to point that out. Sighing, James caught her before she hit the path and picked her up. She was beginning to feel comfortable in his arms. He would have to watch that. This girl was insidious as ivy; she would be growing all over him soon if he wasn’t careful.

‘Okay, this is the last thing I do,’ he told her coldly. ‘I will carry you to your front door, but I am not going inside.’

He waited for an argument, but didn’t get one, which was ominous in itself. He would dump her on the doorstep and run back to the car and safety.

She looked over his shoulder at Barny, gave him that lovely, sweet smile. ‘Thank you, Barny.’

Suspiciously, James demanded, ‘How do you know his name?’

She turned her hazel eyes up to him. ‘You’ve been calling him that all the way.’

He got the smile this time, and felt his stomach muscles contract disturbingly.

‘You are funny,’ she told him indulgently.

He carried her up the steps on to the verandah and over the painted wooden floor which creaked every step of the way. James forced himself to put her down at the front door.

‘Well, goodbye, Miss Kirby, don’t come to my office again. I have tightened up security procedures; you won’t get in again.’

She gave him a distinctly wicked glance through her long, darkened lashes. ‘I bet I could if I really tried.’

He bet she could, too. His security men were only human.

Sternly, he said, ‘Don’t try. I would hate you to land in jail.’

‘You’d love it,’ she said, mouth curling, pink and teasing. ‘Men love to exercise power. Tyranny is their favourite occupation.’

James refused to argue with her any more. He turned to go back to the car, but at that second the front door swung open and a noisy multitude rushed out of the house and engulfed him in barking dogs with wagging tails and licking tongues, what appeared to be a dozen yelling children in scruffy jeans and sweaters, two old ladies in floral aprons and an old man in dirty boots and dungarees.

James should have fled there and then but he was too slow, too busy looking at the old ladies and wondering if one of them was his mother. He saw no resemblance at all, but then would he, after twenty-five years? Patience had said that his mother was frail and delicate. The description did not fit either of the two women; they looked tough and capable, in spite of both being at least seventy years old.

‘He’s taken our puppy and he’s going to drown it!’ one of the children sobbed. ‘Make him give it back.’

Patience was greeting dogs, her small hands busy on their heads, impeded by their licking tongues. ‘What puppy?’ she asked the tallest child, a boy with a mop of familiar red hair and eyes like melting toffee.

The old man answered her gruffly. ‘They found it and brought it home with them. As if there weren’t enough dogs underfoot without bringing puppies back here!’

‘I found it,’ the smallest child said, a little boy with spiky ginger hair. ‘I bringed it home in my spaceship.’

‘Spaceship?’ asked Patience.

‘Her wheelbarrow,’ interpreted the eldest boy.

Her wheelbarrow? That was a girl?

Patience smiled down at the smallest child, ruffling the hedgehog-like hair.

‘Where did you find it, Emmy? It must belong to someone! They’ll be worried about it; we must let them know the puppy is safe.’

‘No good,’ the old man grunted. “They don’t want it back. They’re not daft; they jumped at the chance to get rid of it.’

“The lady at Wayside House gave it to me!’ said Emmy. ‘She said nobody wanted it and I could have it, and it likes me. It wanted to come with me, it licked my face and jumped in my spaceship, but Joe says he’s going to drown it. Don’t let him, Patience, please...’

Emmy began to cry, tears seeping out of her eyes as if she was melting, and trickling down her small face.

‘This place is already overrun with animals; we’ve got to take a stand!’

‘I hate you, I hate you,’ Emmy sobbed, and kicked the old man with surprising violence on his ankle.

He hopped back. ‘Here, you stop that!’

As if at a given signal, the children all surged forward and were clearly about to launch a physical attack on him, too, but Patience said sharply, ‘No! Don’t be naughty, children!’ and they fell back obediently but glared and muttered.

‘He’s a nasty man!’ Emmy said, still dripping tears.

‘And what business is it of his, anyway?’ the tallest boy said, his voice breaking with temper, making him sound oddly touching, stranded halfway between child and man, neither one nor the other.

Patience produced a handkerchief and gently wiped Emmy’s wet little face. ‘You shouldn’t kick grown-ups; you know that, Emmy.’

‘Not even if they deserve it?’ the tall boy asked cuttingly.

Patience looked confused. ‘Not even then, Toby,’ she said at last, and the children shifted, scowling.

By then James had worked out that there weren’t actually a dozen, only about half a dozen, and he wasn’t sure if they were all related. The ones with hair on the red side were probably related to Patience; the three others of about the same ages were probably just their friends.

Barny got out of the car and came up the steps, asking quietly. ‘Are you coming, sir? I have to get back to Enid, if you remember, or we’ll be late for the theatre.’

Patience swivelled to look at James; the children, the old women and the old man all stared, too, silenced for a second or two and taking James in then, their eyes curious, probing. ‘Is it him?’ the children whispered to Patience, who nodded at them, putting a finger on her lips.

James knew he should be going. This whole family were obviously crazy. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. His life had always been so neat and ordered, a world of calm colours and hushed voices. He couldn’t help being fascinated by this revelation of a very different universe and he hesitated, feeling he should leave yet so curious he knew he would stay.

‘Off you go, Barney, you mustn’t keep Enid waiting. I’ll get a taxi,’ he said offhandedly.

Barny nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ For some reason he smiled, too, as if he was pleased with James, although why he should be James could not imagine, flushing slightly and feeling irritated and self-conscious. Barny went back down the steps; the car drove off and James felt one last wild urge to run after it, but at that instant a tiny hand twined itself around his fingers.

He looked down into the bright green eyes of the little girl.

‘Come and see my puppy. Do you like puppies?’

‘Don’t encourage her,’ said the old man. ‘You can see how many dogs we’ve got. The last thing we need is another dog, and this puppy isn’t even house-trained; it leaves puddles everywhere and it has already torn up a cushion and Mrs Green’s slipper—chewed it to bits, it did.’

‘Oh, never mind that old slipper! I don’t care twopence about it. Don’t you drown that poor little mite on my account!’ said a spry, white-haired woman whose blue flowered apron exactly matched her blue eyes. ‘I’ll soon house-train him. I’ve always had a soft spot for a Jack Russell, and he’ll certainly keep the vermin down. We won’t need to worry about rats or mice if we have that little chap here.’

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