Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,16
baked her own bread. I even told him, by way of a joke against me, about my first love affair. His only comment about that was to ask me if I were on the pill now. I said I wasn’t, and blushed. He looked thoughtful, but didn’t start taking precautions, which made me thoughtful in turn.
He talked freely about his life until he’d qualified, but little about his present job. He talked a lot about his brothers. Fair-headed, steady, short-sighted Ronald was only a year older than Charles and had acted as a brake on his younger brother’s wilder impulses. Mechanically-minded David, the eldest of the three Ashton boys, was a genius with his hands and lyrically content with his flaxen Inge and three tiny daughters. He talked of his father, a gentle-mannered, kindly man, devoted to his beautiful wife Mary. He had been a butter-fingered, easy-going father, who couldn’t teach his sons to play cricket because he dropped the ball all the time, but who knew the names of all the wild flowers and birds in the county. Oliver Ashton had had an operation for cancer of the lung a couple of years ago, and been a part-timer at the office since then.
As for his mother, Mary Collett Ashton sounded the sort of woman you would not want for a mother-in-law; interfering, managing, spending a fortune on clothes, autocratic... I guessed the reason Charles didn’t get on with her was because they were so much alike.
“So which of you,” I asked, “worked in your father’s office? Ronald or you?”
“Me? For Christ’s sake! Can you imagine me stuck in that office with...? No, neither Dad nor Ronald would have stood for that. I’d have driven them mad, and I want more out of life than a career in a country...”
“So you’re the brilliant son with the Double First and a job in London?”
“I worked for a Merchant Bank in London until just after the trial, yes.”
“So why give that up to come back here and work for John Brenner?”
“I fancied a change.”
He’d lied there. I charged him with lying, and he shrugged. Later, I asked him what he actually did at Whitestones. He smiled, employing charm. He said he licked stamps, took messages, and pasted cuttings in scrapbooks. He drove his boss when the chauffeur was off duty, filed letters and made excuses if J.B. didn’t want to do anything he’d promised to do.
I gave him an old-fashioned look. Charles was no office boy.
“Does this sound any better?” he asked. “I act as nursemaid. I see he takes exercise, but doesn’t overdo it. I am in charge of the insulin bottles — he’s a diabetic but hates to give his own injections. I chivvy him out of the house to social functions. I see he keeps in contact with his old friends, even when he curses me for doing so. I argue with him, to keep his brain keen. I go round the golf course with him, and he fines me £10 if I lose too obviously. I take him to Point to Points and place bets of 50p a time for him; I see that we celebrate if he wins. I buy him Christmas presents.”
“You really care about him, then?”
He didn’t want to admit it. He tried to excuse his weakness.
“J.B.’s had a raw deal in life. He and my father were at school together; my father had a happy marriage, his three sons are off his hands, and we all speak well of him both behind his back and to his face. J.B. made a disastrous marriage, his only son would spit in his face if he dared, and he was pretty much of an invalid, and a recluse by the time I got to him. He’s been a power in the world, has had everything that money can buy, and there’s no one but me to care if he gets indigestion or makes a killing on the Stock Market. He fears senility, incontinence; old age in the hands of servants. His son has given him no grandchildren yet. I doubt if he ever will. J.B. was more or less all right while he was able to work full time, dashing around the place — lunch in Rome and dinner in Paris. Then he developed angina and was advised to retire. Inaction showed him the loneliness of his life. He degenerated physically and mentally. Twice he went into a coma because he’d neglected his injections; he’s been a