Anne Weale - Worthy Of Marriage

‘Not until I’ve made some things clear to you. My mother refuses to listen to reason. But don’t congratulate yourself on landing a cushy number here. If you step out of line by so much as a centimetre, I’ll make you regret you were born. You got off lightly last time. You won’t again. I’ll make sure of that.’

Lucia was tempted to respond with a mouthful of the hair-raising invective she had learned while she was ‘banged up’, as habitual law-breakers called being behind bars. But even after spending months among women whose language, at the beginning, had often made her flinch inwardly, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to use their vocabulary to vent her hostility towards him. Anyway swearing at him would only prove his point: that she wasn’t fit to associate with a sheltered woman like his mother.

Swallowing her resentment of his unforgiving attitude, she said, ‘I’m very grateful to your mother for extending a helping hand to me. I shan’t abuse her trust.’

‘See that you don’t.’ He walked out.

He and Mrs Calderwood were in the drawing room, chatting as if nothing untoward had happened, when Lucia joined them. From the clothes put out for her to wear, she had chosen a plain white shirt and a pair of pale khaki chinos.

As she entered, Grey rose. It was, she knew, an automatic reflex ingrained from boyhood. Actually he felt none of the chivalrous respect implied by the now-rare courtesy of standing up for her.

‘What would you like to drink, Lucia?’ Mrs Calderwood asked. ‘Grey is having a gin and tonic and my pre-lunch tipple is always Campari and soda—unless I’m alone. I never drink on my own.’

‘May I have a soft drink, please?’ After months of abstinence, Lucia didn’t want to risk her first taste of alcohol going to her head.

‘Of course. Orange juice or peach juice?’

‘Orange juice, please.’

Grey moved to an antique cupboard, the upper half containing glasses and bottles, the lower concealing a small fridge. He brought her a crystal goblet with ice cubes floating in the fruit juice. Rather than handing it to her, he placed it on the end table of the sofa which his mother had indicated her guest should share with her.

‘Thank you.’ Lucia wondered if he felt that physical contact with her, even of the most fleeting kind, might contaminate him. He had probably never had to socialise with an ex-prisoner before.

She had always known there would be people who would consider her unfit to mix in polite society. That was inevitable. She just hadn’t expected to encounter that attitude on her first day outside.

‘What were the meals like in prison?’ Rosemary Calderwood asked. ‘Like boarding school food, I imagine…lots of stodge and over-cooked vegetables.’

Lucia nodded. ‘Chips with everything and not enough salad. But then prison isn’t supposed to be like a pleasure cruise.’

‘No, but they should feed people properly. You look as if you’re several pounds under your proper weight. We’ll soon put that right. Both Braddy and I are excellent cooks and we have a big kitchen garden so our vegetables haven’t been grown under plastic and spent days being transported to a supermarket. I’m a bit of a health freak. My children tease me about it, but I do most strongly believe we are what we eat.’

Obviously aware of the antagonism between her son and her protégée, Rosemary kept a conversation going with the skill of an accomplished hostess. From time to time she forced her son to take part with a question or comment that he was obliged to respond to. Lucia was glad to pick up the cues she gave her. If it hadn’t been for Grey’s presence, she would have been in heaven.

The elegant room, with its paintings, antiques, oriental rugs and bowls of freshly-cut flowers from the garden outside was balm to her beauty-starved senses.

Presently they moved to the dining room where three places had been laid at the end of a long polished table.

Grey drew out the chair at the end for his mother. Lucia seated herself. Then Mrs Bradley came in with the first course, a dish of grilled aubergines garnished with chopped herbs and crumbled feta cheese.

‘Will you have some wine?’ Grey asked, after pouring a pale golden liquid into his mother’s glass.

Lucia decided one glass would be OK. ‘Yes, please.’

He moved round the table, standing close to her chair, making her strangely conscious of his nearness, his masculinity. Was it only because she was used to an almost exclusively female environment? The prison doctor and the chaplain were the only men she had seen during her time inside.

Compared with the fare provided since her arrest, the aubergines were almost unbearably delicious. Then came the cutlets, decorated with strips of red pepper and served with a bulghur wheat salad containing diced cucumber, chopped spring onions, toasted pine nuts and fresh mint. The tapenade mentioned earlier turned out to be the black olive paste smeared on the cutlets.

While they were eating, Grey suddenly asked her, ‘Are you wearing a PID?’

Before Lucia, startled by this abrupt return to hostilities, could answer him, his mother said, ‘What is a PID?’

‘Ms Graham will explain,’ said Grey, eyeing her with undisguised dislike.

‘PID stands for Personal Identification Device,’ Lucia said evenly. ‘It’s about the size of a diver’s watch, but it can be attached to the ankle as well as the wrist. It sends a signal to a radio receiver called a Home Monitoring Unit. If the monitor can’t detect the signal, it sends a message to the Monitoring Centre where records are kept of offenders and their curfew orders. It’s a way of keeping a check on people who, like me, have been released early.’

She had been speaking to Mrs Calderwood, but now looked directly at her son. ‘But I’m not wearing one, Mr Calderwood. They must have thought it wasn’t necessary. I haven’t been given any curfew instructions.’

‘Possibly not, but I think you will find that you’re not completely at liberty,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s unlikely the conditions of your release will permit you to leave the country. If you can’t go abroad, you’re of little use to my mother.’

This was an aspect of the situation that Lucia hadn’t considered. She had a sinking feeling he might be right.

‘That point was raised by Miss Harris when we discussed Lucia’s case,’ said Mrs Calderwood. ‘Luckily I have a friend at court, as they say. Or, rather more usefully in this instance, at the Home Office. He kindly pulled some strings for me. In view of the fact that I was a magistrate for twenty years, it was decided I was a suitable person to supervise Lucia’s life until she is free to go where she pleases. As long as she is with me, there are no restrictions on her movements.’

This announcement made Grey look even more forbidding. Clearly, he had thought he was playing a trump card and was furious to find himself trumped.

Lucia wondered if he also had friends in high places whose influence he could bring to bear. He struck her as a man who, once he had put his mind to something, would not easily be defeated. There was obstinacy, even ruthlessness, in the jut of his jaw.

The meal ended with a rhubarb compote served with whipped cream.

Forgetting for a moment the constraint imposed by the man on the other side of the table, Lucia said to her hostess, ‘I shall remember this lunch all my life. It was a lovely meal by any standards, but for me…’ She made an expressive gesture.

‘Good: I’m glad you enjoyed it. As it’s such a warm day, let’s have coffee on the terrace, shall we? Then I’ll take you round the garden. Since all the children left home, gardening has been my principal occupation,’ Rosemary told her. ‘But now I’m beginning to find that I can’t kneel and bend as comfortably as I used to. So I’m turning more and more to painting. The wheel is turning full circle.’