An Excellent Wife?. CHARLOTTE LAMB
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got to the office by eight and would have liked his secretary to get there by that hour, too, but Miss Roper had a mother living with her for whom she had to get breakfast and who she had to see settled in a chair by the window of their flat, with the television switched on, before she would leave. She paid a neighbour with children at school to come in five days a week to take care of her . mother and their flat until she got home.
James had suggested that Miss Roper should get the neighbour to come an hour earlier, but apparently the woman had to get her children off to school first, and the children needed to have a good breakfast and be taken to the school gates in person by their mother. The way these women organised their lives was maddening. It would have been far more convenient if he could have persuaded Miss Roper, and her neighbour, to see things his way, and organise their lives to suit him, but when you came up against their domestic responsibilities these helpful, sensible, capable women became immovable objects, politely deaf to the most rational of arguments.
The phone on his desk rang and James absently reached out a hand to pick it up. ‘Yes?’
‘Miss Wallis, sir,’ his secretary said in the remote voice she always used when she talked about Fiona. James was quite aware that Miss Roper did not like Fiona, and the hostility was mutual, he suspected, although Fiona was simply cool whenever she mentioned his secretary. Fiona never wasted energy on anyone who was no threat to her. Miss Roper seemed to hum like a vacuum cleaner with unspoken dislike, however.
This morning Fiona sounded listless and fuzzy. ‘Darling, I’m sorry, I’ll have to cancel dinner tonight. I’ve got one of my migraines.’
‘Cheese or chocolate?’
She laughed huskily. ‘You know me too well! Cheese, darling, at dinner last night, with my father. I had the merest sliver of Brie. It looked so delicious I couldn’t resist it, and I did hope I’d get away with it this time, but no such luck, alas. I’m almost blind with migraine this morning.’
‘How can you be so silly? Why risk triggering a migraine just for a piece of cheese?’ It was unlike her to be weak-minded, but she landed herself with one of these migraines every week or two by giving in to a passion for both cheese and chocolate, knowing perfectly well that a migraine would probably follow within eight hours.
‘I know, it was crazy, but I had the teeniest bit, James, and I do love Brie.’
His mouth twisted. ‘I despair of you. I hope you’ve at least taken your pills?’
‘Just now, but they haven’t started working yet. I’m at the office, but I’m going home to lie down in a dark room. It will probably take eight hours for me to get over it, so I have to scrub round this evening. Sorry, James. Maybe tomorrow night?’
‘It will have to be Saturday; I’m having dinner with the Jamiesons tomorrow night. Ring me on Saturday morning and don’t eat any more cheese! Or chocolate!’
She blew him a kiss. ‘I’ll be sensible. Bye, darling.’
He hung up, irritated that his planned evening should be ruined by something so unnecessary. They had been going to have dinner at a new restaurant someone had recommended, then go on to a club to dance for an hour or two. It was a favourite way of unwinding for both of them. They both loved the smoky, dark atmosphere of their favourite nightclub.
Fiona, an ice-blonde with hair the texture of white spun sugar and eyes of arctic blue, and he had been seeing each other for a year now, and he knew her family and friends expected them to get engaged any day.
She was probably the most suitable girl James had ever dated, and she would make an excellent wife for a man in his position, but he hadn’t proposed yet.
Fiona worked in her father’s stockbroking business, had a clear, hard mind for business, was tall and elegant, with perfect taste. He admired her looks, her clothes, her exquisitely furnished flat in Mayfair and her red Aston Martin, about which she was almost passionate—far more excited than she had ever seemed about James, he sometimes thought.
But then he wasn’t sure how he felt about her, either. Was he in love with her? He swung his chair round to face the window and gazed at the grey, glittering waters of the Thames, as if they might give him the answer to that question, but honesty forced him to admit to himself that the possibility had never arisen. He had never been ‘in love’ in his life.
He had fancied girls from time to time, had been to bed with some of them, although not with Fiona, who had told him early on in their relationship that she did not believe in sex before marriage. He had been faintly startled by that, had wondered if she might not be rather cold, sexually, a thought which was faintly offputting. He had tried a few times to get her to change her mind, but when she’d gently refused James hadn’t particularly cared. He wasn’t desperate to get her into bed, he discovered.
He knew that that meant he wasn’t in love with her—but then what did being in love really have to do with getting married? You didn’t need to be in love to have a good marriage; all you had to do was choose the right woman.
Someone who shared your interests and attitudes, a beautiful woman like Fiona, who made other men envy you, who looked good at your dinner table, who could discuss international finance or world affairs or politics rationally, without getting emotional or losing her cool. Fiona would never make heavy demands on his time or expect him to change the way his life was organised. What else did he want from a woman?
It was a little disturbing that neither of them felt any urgent desire to make the final jump, perhaps because they were both so comfortable as they were.
If they did marry, Fiona would have to sell her flat and move into his Georgian house close to Regent’s Park, in which he had lived all his life, his father having inherited it from his own father, old James Ormond the first, who had founded the firm and bought the house in 1895. James couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. If he felt passion for anything it was for his home. He loved every brick of it, every painting, piece of furniture, even every blade of grass in the garden.
Thirty-five, and very settled in his ways, he did not want his well-run life to change. He expected it to go on in just the same way for ever, even if he married and had children. He wanted children; he would like a son to inherit the business in turn, one day, and then maybe Fiona would want a daughter after that, but neither of them would want a large family. The children and the home would be Fiona’s province. She would get a nanny, of course, and continue to work, at least parttime. She was an only child, too, and would inherit her family business, but she liked to make decisions and be in charge; she would enjoy taking care of their home and family.
Yes, he was sure they would build a good life together, but there was plenty of time. No hurry.
The telephone on his desk rang again and he swung back to pick it up, saying curtly, ‘I thought I told you I didn’t want interruptions? I hope this is urgent.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Ormond, but Miss Kirby has rung again and insists on speaking to you. This is the fourth time she’s rung; I can’t get rid of her.’
‘Have you found out who she is? Has she told you what she wants to speak to me about?’
Miss Roper’s voice was expressionless and discreet. ‘She says she wants to talk to you about your mother, sir.’
James stiffened, his face losing all its colour, turning pale and immobile.
There was half a moment of silence. He heard his wristwatch ticking, a pigeon cooing on the windowsill outside, and from the river the sigh of a spring wind.
His voice harsh, he said at last, ‘My mother is dead; you know that perfectly well! I don’t know what she’s up to, but I do not want to speak to her, now or ever. Hang up, and then tell the switchboard not to put through any more calls from Miss Kirby.’
Dropping the phone back on its rest, he leaned back in his chair, his hands flat on the leather top of the desk, grey eyes bleak as they stared straight ahead.
His tie was too tightly tied; he couldn’t breathe. He angrily