Penny Jordan - Cruel Legacy

‘No, of course there is that,’ her mother allowed patiently, oblivious to Philippa’s sarcasm; so oblivious in fact that she made Philippa feel both childishly petty and furiously angry. ‘But he was your husband and in the circumstances Daddy feels that it might be a good idea if you didn’t come over to see us for a while. Poor, dear Robert is terribly upset about the whole thing, you know. I mean, you do live almost on his doorstep and he’s held in such high esteem … Have you made any arrangements yet for the …?’ Delicately her mother let the sentence hang in the air.

‘For the cremation, you mean?’ Philippa asked her grimly. ‘Yes. It will be on Friday, but don’t worry, Mother; I shall quite understand if you don’t feel you want to be there.’

‘It isn’t a question of wanting …’ her mother told her, obviously shocked. ‘One has a duty, and Andrew was after all our son-in-law, although I must say, Philippa, I could never really understand why you married him, nor could Daddy. We did try to warn you …’

Did you … did you really, Mother? Philippa wanted to demand. And when was that … when did you warn me? Was it after you told me what a good husband Andrew would make me, or before you pointed out that I would be lucky to find another man so suited to me … or rather so suited to the kind of wife you had raised me to be? If you really didn’t want me to marry him, why wouldn’t you allow me to go on to university; why did you insist on keeping me at home, as dependent on you as a pet dog and just as carefully leashed?

‘But then you always were such a very impetuous and stubborn girl,’ her mother sighed. ‘Robert was saying only this morning how much both Daddy and I spoiled you and I’m afraid he was right.

‘Have you made any plans yet for after … ?’

‘Not yet,’ Philippa told her brusquely. ‘But don’t worry, Mummy; whatever plans I do make I shall make sure that they don’t cause either you or Daddy any problems.’

Philippa replaced the receiver before her mother could make any response.

Her palms felt damp and sticky, her body perspiring with the heat of her suppressed anger, but what, after all, was the point in blaming her parents for what they were, or what they had tried to make her? Hadn’t they, after all, been victims of their upbringing just as much as she was of hers? This was the way she had taught herself to think over the years. It was a panacea, an anaesthetic to all the pain she could not allow herself to feel.

‘THE trouble with long weekends is that they just don’t last long enough,’ Richard grumbled as he drained his teacup and reached for the pot to refill it. Elizabeth laughed.

‘Fraud,’ she teased him affectionately. ‘You know as well as I do that you can’t wait to get back to your patients. I heard you on the phone to Jenny earlier.’

Jenny Wisden was Richard’s junior registrar and as dedicated to her work as Richard was to his. She had married the previous year, a fellow medic working in a busy local practice.

‘Poor Jenny,’ Elizabeth had commented at the time.

Richard had raised his eyebrows as he’d asked her, ‘Why poor? The girl’s deliriously in love; anyone can see that.’

‘Yes, she is, and so is he. She’s also a young woman on the bottom rungs of a notoriously demanding career ladder. What’s going to happen when she and Tony decide they want children?’

‘She’ll take maternity leave,’ Richard had informed her, plainly not following the drift of her argument.

‘Yes, and then what? Spend the next eighteen years constantly torn between conflicting demands and loyalties, knowing that she’s got to sacrifice either her feelings as a mother or her desire to reach the top of her profession.’

Richard had frowned then.

‘What are you trying to say? I thought you were all for female equality … women fulfilling their professional potential. You’ve lectured me about it often enough …’

‘I am all for it, but, once a woman has children, biologically and materially the scales are weighted against her. You know it’s true, Rick: once Jenny has children she won’t be able to go as far in her career as she would if she were a man. She’ll be the one who has to take time off to attend the school concert and the children’s sports day. She’ll be the one who takes them to the dentist and who worries about them when they’re ill, feeling guilty because she can’t be with them.

‘No amount of paid substitute care, no matter how professional or good it is, can ever assuage a woman’s in-built biological guilt on that score.’

‘Mmm—damn waste it will be too. Jenny is one of the best, if not the best junior registrar I’ve ever had.’

‘Well, perhaps in future you should remember that and when you’re lecturing your students you should remind them all, but especially the male students, what sexual equality really should mean—and I’m not referring to a token filling up and emptying of the dishwasher now and then.

‘Do you realise, Rick, that, despite all this media hoo-ha about the “New Man”, women are still responsible for the major part of all domestic chores? Sorry,’ she’d apologised, with a wry smile. ‘I didn’t mean to start lecturing you, but …’

‘I know.’ Richard had smiled, standing up and leaning towards her to kiss her.

‘I saw Sir Arthur yesterday,’ Elizabeth told him now.

Sir Arthur Lawrence was the chairman of the hospital board, an ex-army major, rigidly old-fashioned in his views and outlook, with whom Richard had had so many clashes over the years.

‘Oh, did you? What did he have to say for himself? More complaints about overspending on budgets, I suppose,’ Richard grunted.

Elizabeth laughed. ‘No, as a matter of fact he was very complimentary, praising you for all the work you’ve done to help raise money for the new Fast Response Accident Unit.’

Richard grunted again. ‘You should have told him not to count his chickens. We need government funding if we’re to go ahead with it, and we haven’t heard that we’re going to get it yet. The Northern is putting up a pretty good counter-claim to ours. They maintain that they’re closer to a wider range of motorway systems than we are …’

‘And we’re closer to the centre of the region and we have better access to the motorway,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘And you’ve got a much better recovery record.’

‘Mmm … well, that’s no thanks to Sir Arthur; you should have heard the objections he raised when we opened our recovery ward …’

‘Admit it, you enjoy fighting with him.’ Elizabeth laughed.

Richard pulled a face. ‘He’s twenty years behind the times … more … Hell, is that the time? I’ve got to go. You’re at home today, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I thought I might drive over and see Sara. She sounded a bit down when I spoke to her yesterday.’

‘Yes, it’s no picnic being a GP’s wife—nor being a GP, either.’ Richard kissed her, smiling at her as he suggested, ‘Why don’t we go out for dinner together tonight … Mario’s? Just the two of us,’ he added.

‘Just the two of us,’ Elizabeth responded, emphasising the ‘just’. ‘Mmm … that would be lovely.’

‘I’ll get Kelly to book us a table,’ he promised her as he picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

After he had gone, Elizabeth made herself a fresh cup of coffee and picked up a buff folder from the dresser. The dresser had been an antiques fair find, which she and Richard had stripped of its old paint, a long and laborious job which she suspected had cost far more in terms of their time and paint-stripper than had she bought the ready-stripped, polished version from an antique shop.