And their marriage had been a good one, she told herself firmly now, even if …
Shaking her head, she reminded herself silently that she had far too much to do to lie in bed thinking about the past. She wanted to get to Queensmead as early as she could just in case there were any unforeseen problems.
She knew, of course, that Ruth was more than capable of taking charge but she also knew that Ruth and Ben did not always see eye to eye.
‘If he’d just admit that he’s getting older, that he’s suffering from rheumatism, I’d feel a lot more sympathetic towards him,’ Ruth had commented tartly to Jenny the previous winter when Ben was being particularly difficult. ‘But oh no, it’s our fault that he’s in a bad mood. But then that’s Ben for you. Nothing is ever his fault. He is never the one to blame.’
‘I expect he feels it would be admitting to a weakness to complain that he’s in pain,’ Jenny had soothed her aunt-in-law.
‘In pain, he is a pain,’ Ruth had countered forcefully.
Jonathon waited until he was sure that Jenny was safely in the shower and unlikely to come back to bed before opening his eyes. He had been aware of her leaning over and kissing him and of her hesitation as she wondered about waking him up and he had held his breath, dreading having to respond to her uncertain overtures.
He hadn’t slept well, his rest fragmented by uncomfortable dreams. In one of them he had been hunting frantically for a missing school book, a child once again, knowing that if he couldn’t find it, he would be morally obliged to take responsibility for its disappearance, even though in reality the book was David’s.
Like a child, he squeezed his eyes tightly closed against the memory. But he wasn’t a child any more, shouldn’t think like a child, just as he knew he couldn’t go on ignoring certain facts that had to be confronted and that knowledge weighed heavily on his heart as he faced the prospect of the newly dawning day. Their birthday. Not his birthday, never just his birthday, but always theirs, David’s and his. David’s …
When the shower stopped running, he kept his eyes closed, even though he knew that Jenny would be going downstairs and not returning to their bedroom.
She had worked so hard for today but instead of looking forward to it he was dreading it, conscious of an uncomfortable sense of foreboding, a heaviness of spirit, a dark presence almost that seemed to be pressing against his body.
From the past he could hear the angry echo of his father’s voice on another birthday morning—their seventh—as he stood in front of the imposing man, tears of disappointment and, yes, anger, too, filling his eyes as he answered his father’s question.
‘But I didn’t want a new bike … I wanted something else … something different … something that David hasn’t got,’ he had told his father passionately. He could still remember how angry his father had been, how disgusted.
‘You’re jealous of your brother, that’s what it is,’ he had accused Jonathon. ‘My God, I don’t believe it. Don’t you realise how lucky you are to have a brother.’
To Jonathon, it sometimes didn’t seem so lucky and at seven he had still been young enough and stupid enough to say so, even if only indirectly through his disgruntlement with his birthday present—a new bicycle had been David’s choice. He would have much preferred a train set.
In the end he hadn’t had either, at least not immediately. The bike had been confiscated until he had repented of his ingratitude, and as for the train set …
David had never been interested in trains and since their father strongly believed in giving them both the same, the train set had never been forthcoming.
He could still remember the look on Jenny’s face the Christmas they had bought one for Max. Like David, he hadn’t been particularly interested in trains and they knew this even before they had bought the set but, for some reason, Jenny had been insistent that they get it.
She had tried to stop him when, after the New Year, he had quietly packed it all up again, telling him, ‘Maybe if you played with the trains together …?’
But Jonathon had shaken his head, pointing out to her, ‘He much prefers the pedal cart that David gave him.’
He had planned to give the trains away but for some reason Jenny had kept them, and when Joss was born … A few years later, Joss had humoured him by showing an interest in the set but Jonathon didn’t want his young son to have to bear the burdens of adult expectations and prejudices that he had had to carry.
Fifty … Where had all those years gone? What had he actually done with them? What had he actually achieved? Increasingly lately, he had been asking himself those questions, knowing that he could not supply any satisfactory or comforting answers.
Oh yes, he had been a dutiful son, a good brother, husband and father, but what about him? What about himself? More and more these days he had felt as though he barely knew what or who he was, as though frighteningly he had no real self, no real identity, as though he was forever doomed to be merely David’s brother … David’s twin, a mere shadow figure. And yet why should that disturb him now when for so many years he had been content to remain in his twin’s shadow? Why should he be feeling this stronger and stronger pull to be something else, to do something else, just for himself? Was this a mere male mid-life crisis or something more?
Today was not the day to start asking himself these kinds of questions, Jonathon warned himself wearily, not when other far more portentous and troublesome questions still remained unanswered. Questions that weren’t purely self-indulgent. Questions that involved others and their futures, their lives. Questions that he knew would have to be asked and answered.
But not today …
In Pembrokeshire, Hugh Crighton was awake early, too. His inability to sleep past the early-morning fingers of sunshine stroking in through the windows of his solidly built stone farmhouse was caused not by any excitement at the prospect of the day ahead of him but by the persistent crying of his youngest grandchild, little Meg.
Saul, his elder son, his wife, Hillary, and their three children had arrived late the previous evening—several hours after they had originally been expected, with both adults in what was plainly not the best of moods and three children very obviously fractious.
Hillary, Saul’s American wife, and his own wife, Ann, had put the children to bed whilst he and Saul and his younger son, Nicholas, had broken open a bottle of wine.
As Nicholas had remarked to his parents after supper, Saul and Hillary were apparently going through a rather difficult patch in their marriage.
‘All married couples encounter problems from time to time,’ Ann had responded protectively.
‘Mmm … but there are problems and there are problems,’ Nicholas had countered and then refused to be drawn on exactly what he had meant.
Hugh knew that Saul and Hillary’s marriage had been stormy, but this was the first time he had seen the children so obviously affected by their parents’ differences.
Saul had a tendency to retreat to a position of lofty solitude and disdain when he was angry, an aggravating habit that Hillary, who was far more emotional and volatile, insisted was sulking. Saul could be exasperating, Hugh admitted, but Hillary seemed to take delight in fuelling the fires that lit that particularly unproductive side of his personality rather than taking the trouble to use her inherently feminine skills of diplomacy and tact to coax him round.
‘You’d better not let Hillary hear you saying that,’ Ann had warned him mildly when he voiced the comment to her. ‘She’s a very modern young woman and modern young women do not believe in coaxing men round.’
‘No,’