qualifications, no training. She had been dependent on others from the day she was born, she had always been accustomed to comfort and plenty; she quailed at the thought of having to set about earning her own living for the first time now.
She had received only a modest legacy on her father’s death, all dribbled away in the six years since then. The bulk of his estate had been left in trust for Grace, his second wife, fifteen years his junior; it wouldn’t be distributed till after her death.
She pulled out the plug and got to her feet. She reached for a towel and began to dry herself.
She had no legal grounds of any kind for divorcing James; she was certain he would never agree to a divorce by mutual consent. It suited him to have his home well run by a compliant wife, to present a façade of conventional domestic harmony to the circle in which he moved. If she simply took herself off she would be forced to wait five years to secure a divorce. She was equally certain James would contribute nothing to her support in those five years. He had a sharp legal brain, he would get the better of her in any contest she might try to set up.
There was nothing for it; she would have to look out for herself.
As club treasurer, James had helped to organize the charity buffet lunch, as he had helped to organize – always with considerable success – other charitable events over the years for his various clubs.
Friday was always a good day for such an event; the approach of the weekend lent a relaxed, holiday air to the proceedings. Folk were more willing to give up a little time to attend, loosen their purse strings, heed the voice of compassion.
The food was excellent, the coffee first class. James circulated diligently, drumming up donations and promises of donations. By one-forty-five he had achieved a very respectable figure – with more to come; people were still arriving. Among them he caught sight of the tall figure of his brother-in-law, Matthew Dalton. Matthew was chatting expansively to another latecomer, glancing cheerfully about, with his ready smile. Never short on the charm, James said to himself.
A minute or two later, James made his way across the hall to where Matthew stood surveying the array of buffet dishes. Nowadays, it wasn’t only Matthew’s manner that was expansive; years of affluent living had done little to hold his waistline in check. His good looks were also losing the battle. His hairline was receding, he had the slightly flushed face of the man who drinks a little too much. Like James, he was a chartered accountant, but, unlike his brother-in-law, he had set up on his own twenty years ago. His offices were situated in an upmarket block close to the centre of Brentworth.
Matthew watched James cross the floor towards him; James exuded his customary air of power, positive success. ‘A pretty good turn out,’ James commented as he came up. ‘Better than I’d hoped for.’ He directed Matthew’s attention to dishes he considered especially good. ‘I’ll give Nina a ring when I’ve got the final figures,’ he added. ‘She’ll be delighted.’
James drank a sociable cup of coffee as they stood chatting. He passed on to Matthew a rumour he had heard earlier in the day: a firm of asset managers in a neighbouring town was being investigated by the Fraud Squad. Matthew expressed surprise at the rumour; he would have thought the firm soundly based; they were certainly long established.
‘You can’t always go by that these days,’ James said with a knowing movement of his head. More than one good firm had gone down in the recession through spiralling difficulties, and the sorry saga was not yet over, even though better times were on the way. ‘A bit of speculating, soon it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, next thing it’s outright gambling. Over-extended all round, no margin anywhere, teetering along on the edge of the precipice. Only takes the smallest extra shove – some international ruckus, a blip on the currency markets – and over they go, for good.’ He eyed Matthew. ‘How are you finding things these days?’
Matthew helped himself to a particularly appetizing dish. ‘Pretty good, all things considering,’ he responded heartily.
As James set off once more in pursuit of donations, Matthew stood gazing after him. Oh, boy, he said wryly to himself, if you only knew the half of it. There wasn’t much anyone could tell Matthew about the perils of recession and the unorthodox easements always so temptingly close to hand. He gave a little shudder and closed his eyes for a moment.
He had a brief flash of vision: his father’s face, his shrewd eyes contemplating him. What would that principled man of business have to say if he could see him now, could know the dire straits he had got himself into? He shuddered again at the thought. His father would dearly have liked him to go into the family business but Matthew had little interest in printing and publishing, and shrank moreover from the idea of working for the father he had always found intimidating.
All he had received outright on his father’s death had been a modest legacy of precisely the same amount as that left to his sister, Esther.
He began to eat, scarcely tasting the food. If he could just manage to keep going, struggle through into the boom that must surely come, without ruin or disgrace – or, paralysing thought, a gaol sentence. If he could scrape through without Nina ever having to know. That would be the part of any catastrophe he would relish least of all, letting down his beloved Nina, having to break the news to her that the glory days were over, the gravy train had finally smashed into the buffers. Pray God it never came to that, but if, God forbid, it ever did, then thank God for a wife with backbone and loyalty. Whatever happened, Nina would never whine or indulge in self pity. However low the depths to which he sank, there was always the cast iron certainty that she would stand by him to the end.
A business acquaintance came up, calling out a friendly greeting. Matthew at once switched on his cheerful smile, his look of lively interest, his genial, on-top-of-the-world manner.
It was easy to imagine Nina Dalton as a fashion model, with her tall, willowy figure, fine-boned face, honey-coloured skin and large, expressive eyes of a clear golden amber. Her wealth of pale blonde hair, full of natural waves and curls, was taken up on top of her head, displaying the graceful line of her neck.
She had worked for charity in one capacity or another, paid or voluntary, since the day she had left secretarial college. She wasn’t a native of Brentworth but came from a small town some distance away. It was when she was on the payroll of a national charitable organization that she had first met Matthew Dalton; she had called on him in the course of a fundraising campaign directed largely at businessmen.
She had walked in through the door of his office at a crucial moment in Matthew’s life. He had just managed to break away from a long entanglement with an older woman, a divorcée, good-looking and sophisticated, with more than one string to her bow. Matthew had finally realized the relationship was leading nowhere, it was time his bachelor days were done; what he needed now was a conventional marriage, settled and supportive. He married Nina three months after she walked into his office.
She had spent the latter part of Friday morning dealing swiftly and competently with the affairs of a small local charity set up a hundred and fifty years ago for the benefit of retired governesses by a wealthy widow who had herself been a governess before her marriage. The endowment, so munificent seeming in its day, was now greatly eroded and governesses were a dying breed. These days, the charity’s business required only an hour or two of Nina’s time on alternate Friday mornings. For this purpose she was allowed a corner in the Brentworth office of a national charity for the welfare of the elderly: Friends of the Third Age.
