Penny Jordan - Lingering Shadows

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of your extending your visit until after the conference, is there?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Saul told her. He had only intended to spend a couple of days in Cheshire, but there was no reason why he shouldn’t stay a little while longer. The thought of putting some distance between himself and Sir Alex was one that appealed to him.

Alex was trying to manipulate him, to threaten him into submission. ‘Get me what I want or else’ had been implicit in his comments, and what the hell did he care about the damage he was about to inflict on the company he wanted to acquire?

Come to think of it, why should he care? Saul asked himself ten minutes later when he had finished speaking to Christie. He hadn’t minded in the past, had he?

At least not until Alex had wanted to take over and dismantle Dan Harper’s family company. Then he had minded.

He moved irritably from his desk to the fireplace. He had bought this apartment after the break-up of his marriage in what had then been an unfashionable part of London. The Georgian house was four storeys high and his apartment occupied the entire second floor. It was too large for a single man, but when he had bought it he had had the children in mind. The apartment had three good-sized bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.

He grimaced to himself. He could probably count quite easily on the fingers of both hands the number of times Josey and Tom had stayed with him for any period longer than one night, especially recently. Recently their visits had become even more spasmodic. Josey in particular seemed to be showing increased antagonism towards him.

Beside his bed he had a photograph of them, next to the one of his father.

His father. Why was it that, when he thought of his father these days, as well as all the love and the positive emotions he had always felt for him he now felt anxiety, a fear almost that somehow he was letting his father’s dreams for him slip away from him?

His father’s dreams for him . Wasn’t that the crux of the problem, of the doubts, the anxiety, the increasing awareness possessing him that his whole life had narrowed down to a tunnel which had become a trap, and that in continuing down that tunnel he was going against his own instincts, his own desires? Wasn’t that partially why there was so much antagonism between him and Alex? Wasn’t it true that somewhere deep inside him an unwanted voice was beginning to question what exactly it was he wanted out of life, whether the ambitions he was pursuing so relentlessly were really what he wanted?

And didn’t his thoughts always come back to this … this ongoing and increasingly stressful battle inside him to force himself to fulfil the tacit promises he had made his father?

For as long as he could remember, Saul had known that as his father’s son it was his duty to succeed and do well in life.

His earliest memories of conversations with his father were of the tight, painful feeling he got inside his stomach when his father told him how much he regretted wasting his own opportunities, how hard it was to bring up a family on his modest income and how, if he was wise, Saul would not do as he had done and ignore the importance of becoming a success.

Saul had hated those conversations. They had left him feeling sore inside and afraid. He loved his father and he was proud of him, and he hated knowing that somehow his father was not proud of himself; that in some way he felt as though he were a failure.

And yet, when Saul looked for an explanation as to why his father should feel this, he could not find it. He was loved by his family, especially Saul himself. His parents had lots of friends; there always seemed to be people dropping in; the large kitchen was always full of warmth and laughter, and, if his mother frowned sometimes and sighed anxiously when he tore his jeans, she still hugged and kissed him and told him he mustn’t worry when he asked her if it was true that they were poor.

Saul had not understood then why his father worried so much about money. It seemed to Saul that there could be no better place to live than here in their small, cosy, well-filled house with its untidy garden; that there could be no better feeling than the one he got when he came home from school to find his mother waiting for him in the kitchen with a smile and a warm hug. In fact, if it had not been for the fact that his father was so often worried and unhappy, Saul would have thought their family was very lucky indeed. But he knew that he must be wrong, because his father was not happy, his father was always urging him not to make the mistakes he had made, and that confused and worried him, because he loved his father and he wanted him to be happy.

It worried Saul a great deal that a man like his father, whom everyone liked and many people loved, a man who was part of a family where there was such warmth and laughter, should be so unhappy, and it made him feel guilty and anxious because he could not always understand what it was that made his father like that.

Saul knew that his father did not talk to Christie the way he did to him. Girls, it seemed to Saul, did not have to worry about things like ‘doing well’. Girls were allowed to be happy and not to have to think about things like that. Saul loved his sister, but he understood as he listened to his father that it was his duty as a male to take care of the females and to protect them, and most of all to make sure that he earned enough money to look after them properly.

Saul’s father had had his chances, Saul knew that, because he had often told Saul so, but he had not made the most of them. Saul must not repeat his mistakes. Saul must work very hard at school. There was no money in the family for him to inherit, no family influence to secure a safe future for him. He would have to succeed by his own endeavours.

The year Saul came third in the class in the end-of-term examinations his mother praised him but cautioned him to remember that there were other things, other gifts, other virtues that were just as important as being clever.

His father, on the other hand, told him that only the very best, the very cleverest children were given the chance to make the most of their lives, and Saul sensed that somehow he had let his father down. That being third was somehow not good enough.

The next year he was first. His father praised him, but still Saul felt empty inside. And not just empty, but lonely as well. He thought about all the football matches he had missed … all the times he had stayed in to work when his friends were out having fun, and he told himself again that he was wrong to feel that doing well and being a success had not made him feel happy in the way that his father had told him they would.

By the time he was ready to sit his GCEs Saul had dismissed those earlier childish feelings of doubt and pain. He was almost a man now, and he had absorbed his father’s teaching so well that he no longer questioned how he felt. Feelings were for girls, anyway. He had more important matters to concern him.

Saul was going to do well. Everyone said so, and Saul could see how proud and pleased that made his father. He was going to be accepted for Oxford if he did as well in his exams as his teachers felt he could. He knew already what subjects he would read, and that he would leave Oxford to go to America to spend some time in Harvard, getting his master’s.

After that the world, the commercial world, at any rate, would be his oyster. He would have the kind of qualifications that would make firms eager to employ him.

Saul saw his way ahead very clearly. A man with no money behind him and no family influence had to work, and work hard, to achieve … to make something of his life, and he intended to do just that … he had to do that … didn’t he? His family, his father, were relying on him to do so.