Jessica Steele - A Paper Marriage

She turned her car in through the gates of Beamhurst Court and love for the place welled up in her. She stopped for a brief while just to sit and look her fill. Beamhurst would one day be handed down to her brother, she had always known that, but that did not stop the feeling of joy she felt each time she came back.

But her mother was waiting for her, and Lydie started up her car again and proceeded slowly up the drive, starting to get anxious again about what it was that worried her father so, and what it was that caused his business telephone line to be unobtainable.

She left her car on the drive, knowing that her father was her first priority. She would not be looking for a new job until she knew what was happening here. Using her house key, she let herself in and went in search of her parents.

She did not have to look far; her mother was in the hall talking to Mrs Ross, their housekeeper. Lydie kissed her mother and passed a few pleasantries with Mrs Ross, whereupon her mother said they would have afternoon tea in the drawing room.

While Mrs Ross went kitchenwards Lydie followed her slim stiff-backed mother into the drawing room. ‘You took your time getting here!’ her mother complained tartly, turning to close the door behind them.

‘I had to pack. Since I was leaving anyway there didn’t seem much point in going back next week to collect my belongings,’ Lydie answered, but had more important matters on her mind. ‘What’s going on? I rang Dad’s office and—’

‘I specifically told you not to!’ her mother interrupted her waspishly.

‘I wouldn’t have mentioned you’d phoned me! If I’d had the chance! His number’s unobtainable. Where’s Dad now? You said he no longer has an office. But that’s impossible. For years—’

‘Your father no longer has an office because he no longer has a business!’ Hilary Pearson cut her off.

Lydie’s lovely green eyes widened in amazement. ‘He no longer…!’ she gasped, and wanted to protest, to believe that her mother was joking, but the tight-lipped look on her parent’s face showed that her mother saw no humour in the situation. ‘He’s sold the business?’ Lydie questioned.

‘Sold it! It was taken away from him!’

‘Taken! You mean—stolen?’ Lydie asked, reeling.

‘As good as. The bank wanted their pound of flesh—they took everything. They’re after this house too!’

‘After Beamhurst!’ Lydie whispered, horrified.

‘Oh, we all know you’re besotted with the place; you always have been. But unless you can do something about it, they’ll force us to sell it to pay them their dues!’

‘Unless I…’ Already Lydie’s head was starting to spin.

‘Your father paid out enough for your expensive education—totally wasted! It’s time for you to pay him something back.’

Lydie was well aware that she was a big disappointment to her mother. Without bothering to take into account her daughter’s extremely shy disposition, Hilary Pearson had been exceedingly exasperated that, when Lydie’s exam results were little short of excellent, she should take on what her mother considered the menial work of a nanny. Lydie still had moments of shyness, and was still a little reserved, but she had overcome that awful shyness to a very large extent.

She stared at her mother incredulously. Pay back! She hadn’t asked to be sent to an expensive boarding school. That had been her mother’s idea. ‘There’s that few thousand pounds that Grandmother left me. Dad can have that, of course, but…’

‘You can’t touch that until you’re twenty-five. And in any case we need far more than that if we’re not to be thrown out like paupers.’ Thrown out! Of Beamhurst! No! Lydie could not believe that. Could not believe that things were as bad as that. Beamhurst Court had been in the Pearson family for generations. It was unthinkable that they should let it go out of the family. But her mother was going angrily on, ‘I’ve told your father that if the house has to go, then so shall I!’

‘Mother!’ Lydie exclaimed, on the instant angry too that when, by the look of it, her father should need his wife’s support most, she should threaten to walk out on him. Anything else Lydie might have added, however, remained unsaid when Mrs Ross brought in a tray of tea and set it down.

While Hilary Pearson presided over the delicate tea cups, Lydie made herself calm down. Her last visit home had been four months ago now, she realised with surprise. Though with Donna only then starting to get better, but still feeling down and unable to cope a lot of the time, she had wanted her near at hand should everything became too much for her.

Taking the cup and saucer her mother handed to her, Lydie sat down opposite her, and then quietly asked, ‘What has been happening? Everything was fine the last time I was home.’

‘Six months ago,’ her mother could not resist, seemingly oblivious that she was out by a couple of months. ‘And everything was far from fine, as you call it.’

‘I didn’t see any sign…’

‘Because your father didn’t want you to. He said there was no need for you to know. That it would only worry you unnecessarily, and that he’d think of something.’

It had been going on all this while? And she had known nothing about it! She tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. ‘But he hasn’t been able to think of anything?’

Her mother gave her a sour look. ‘The business is gone. And the bank is baying for its money.’

Lydie was having a hard time taking it all in. By the sound of it, things had been falling apart when she’d been home four months ago—but no one had seen fit to tell her. They had always had money! How could things have become so bad and she not know of it? She could perhaps understand her father keeping quiet; he was a very proud man. But—her mother? She was proud too, but…

‘But where has all our money gone?’ she asked. ‘And why didn’t Oliver…?’

‘Well, naturally Oliver’s business needed a little help.’ Hilary Pearson bridled, just as if Lydie was laying some blame at her prized son’s door. ‘And why shouldn’t your father invest heavily in him? You can’t start a business from scratch and expect it to succeed in its first years. Besides, Madeline’s family, the Ward-Watsons, are monied people. We couldn’t let Oliver go around looking as though he hadn’t a penny to his name!’

Which meant that he would take Madeline to only the very best restaurants and entertainment establishments, regardless of cost, Lydie realised. ‘I didn’t mean Oliver had—er—taken the money,’ Lydie endeavoured to explain, knowing that her brother had started his own business five years ago and that, her father’s firm doing well then, he had put up the money to set his son up in his own business. ‘I meant why didn’t Oliver say something to me?’

‘If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that Oliver and Madeline were on holiday in South America the last time you were home. Poor Oliver works so hard; he needed that month’s break.’

‘His business is doing all right, is it?’ Lydie enquired—and received another of her mother’s sour looks for her trouble.

‘As a matter of fact, he’s decided to—um—cease trading.’

‘You’re saying that he’s gone bust too?’

‘Must you be so vulgar? Was all that expensive education lavished on you completely for nothing?’ her mother grumbled. Though she did concede, ‘All companies work on an overdraft basis—Oliver found it just too much of a struggle. When he and Madeline come back from their honeymoon, Oliver will go and work in the Ward-Watson business.’ She allowed herself the first smile Lydie had so far seen as she added, half to herself, ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Oliver isn’t made a director of the Ward-Watson conglomerate before he’s much older.’