Lingering Shadows. PENNY JORDAN
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them to be impressed by the house’s grandeur, and they were.
He had a keen eye for a bargain: the heavy old furniture, the Edwardian silver had all been sale-room bargains, and since it was Davina and not he who had to polish the carved wood and the intricately moulded silver he had no idea of the work entailed in keeping his home and his possessions as immaculate as he demanded.
He didn’t love her, Davina knew that. He had wanted a son, and she always felt somehow to blame for the fact that she was not that son. She also felt guilty in some way because her mother had died, as though in doing so her mother had proved that her father was right to despise her sex as weak and second-class. Somehow Davina felt as though it was up to her to justify her sex’s right to exist, but these were vague unadmitted thoughts and feelings that subconsciously shaped the way she behaved.
Yes, she had been very lonely in those years—and then she had met Gregory. Tall, good-looking, charming Gregory had been the ideal she had dreamed of secretly for so long.
A brief knock on the office door roused her from her thoughts. She wasn’t using Gregory’s office with its ostentation and luxury; somehow she hadn’t felt able to. The contrast between it and the rest of the building had not only shocked her, it had also almost made her feel physically ill.
In her father’s day Carey’s had been austere enough, but it had been kept scrupulously clean and well painted. Gregory had discouraged her from visiting Carey’s. And so the shock of discovering the conditions in which their employees were expected to work was something for which she had been totally unprepared.
And she was just as guilty as Gregory in that regard, guilty of taking the easy way out, of going along with what Gregory wanted because she didn’t want to argue with him.
She felt responsible; she was responsible, even though Giles had tried to comfort her and reassure her that she was not to blame.
Giles! That would be him outside the office now—a small square room at the rear of their premises without a window, just a chair, a desk and a telephone, but it was all she needed. There was no place, in a company on the verge of bankruptcy, for plush, expensive offices, for fax machines and computers that lay idle through lack of orders. She had asked Giles innocently about the fax machine in Gregory’s office the first time she visited it after his death. He had looked away uncomfortably and when she pressed him he had blurted out that he thought Gregory used it for his money-market dealings.
That had been the first she had known of her husband’s disastrous gambling in the world money markets.
She called out to Giles to come in and smiled warmly at him as he did so. Although he was almost six feet tall, Giles always seemed shorter because he had a slight stoop. His thick dark blond hair flopped endearingly over his forehead and he was always pushing it back. He was a quiet, studious-looking man who at forty still had a boyishness about him. There was something gentle and non-threatening about Giles that Davina found very appealing.
She wasn’t sure when she had first realised that Giles was attracted to her. Last Christmas at their annual Christmas party he had danced with her, and then, when she was in the kitchen stacking used glasses in the dishwasher, he had come to help her. He had kissed her before he and Lucy left. A brief enough embrace, but she had sensed the need in it … even though she had firmly denied to herself later that it had existed.
She liked Giles and of course it was flattering that he was attracted to her, but she was married to Gregory, and Giles was married to Lucy.
Only now Gregory was dead.
‘Giles—come and sit down.’ She patted the spare chair and smiled warmly at him.
He looked tired, and she felt guilty. He was their personnel manager and was not really equipped to take over the running of the company, but there was no one else. Gregory had always refused to allow anyone to share control of the company, and now Davina knew why: he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know how much money he was losing.
The sales director, their accountant, their chemist—all of them had reported directly to Gregory and had had no real power at all; the chemist had already left, telling Davina grimly that there was no point in his staying. The company was living on its past, he had told her, and Gregory had kept his department so starved of the money needed for research that their very existence was little more than a bad joke.
The sales director had said much the same thing, and their accountant was in reality treated as little more than an accounts clerk, dealing with the wages and day-to-day expenses.
The only person Davina had been able to turn to had been Giles, who at least knew something of how the company functioned.
She was learning, though, but what she was learning she did not like. The working conditions of her employees shamed her, as did their poor wages.
‘You look tired, Giles,’ she said sympathetically.
‘Davina, I’m sorry … I hate to let you down, but I’m going to have to hand in my notice.’
He had been rehearsing his speech all day, dreading making it, but last night Lucy had given him an ultimatum. ‘Leave Carey’s or I leave you,’ she had told him. She was given to making tempestuous threats, and at one time the volatility of her nature had entranced and amused him. She was so different from him, so alive and vital, but gradually he had begun to find her unpredictability a burden; to find that he was longing to go home to someone who was calm and relaxed, who wanted to listen to his problems rather than to unload upon him the avalanche of her own. Someone, in fact, like Davina.
Davina, who was always so calm and so kind. Davina, who had never once in anyone’s hearing criticised her husband, even though everyone knew that he had been unfaithful to her; Davina, whom, to his increasing despair and guilt, he was beginning to believe he loved.
‘Giles, there’s no need to apologise. I’m more than grateful to you for all that you’ve done. Without your support, your loyalty …’ Davina made a wry gesture. ‘I know what you think … what everyone thinks—that nothing can save Carey’s now, that we’re bound to go bankrupt.’
‘You could trade on for another six months or so, but that’s all,’ Giles told her.
‘I can’t give up yet, Giles,’ Davina told him. ‘And it isn’t for my sake. If Carey’s closes down so many families will suffer.’
Giles remained silent. What she was saying was true. Carey’s was the largest, virtually the only major local employer.
‘If you could just stay for a little while longer,’ Davina pleaded with him. ‘We could still find a backer … a buyer …’
Davina could see the indecision in his eyes. She hated having to do this, but what alternative did she have? Without Giles the company would have to close. She was doing all that she could, but there was so much she had to learn. If Giles left they would lose what little credibility they still had, and it was all too likely that the bank would insist on her closing down the company.
‘I know I shouldn’t ask,’ Davina continued. ‘You’ve got your own future to think of, yours and Lucy’s, but Carey’s needs you so much, Giles …’ She took a deep breath, and then looked directly at him and said quietly, ‘I need you so much.’
She saw the colour recede from his face and then flood painfully back into it. He moved as though he was about to get up and then settled back in his chair.
‘Davina …’
‘No, please don’t say anything now. Think about it. Talk it over with Lucy,’ Davina begged him. ‘Philip Taylor at the bank has promised to do what he can to help us find a buyer.’
The overhead light highlighted the delicacy of her face. She had lost weight since Gregory’s death, Giles thought and then wondered bitterly what it was about that kind of man that gave him a wife who was so devoted and loyal, so gracious and loving, while he …
He swallowed quickly.