Lindsay Armstrong – The Unexpected Husband (страница 4)

‘So there is someone?’ Daisy said eagerly.

‘No!’ Lydia denied hastily.

‘But you said—“apart from…”?’

‘Um—the ones you can’t have,’ Lydia improvised madly, then thought, Well, that wasn’t so far from the truth either.

‘Still, that could be a start!’ Daisy frowned. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘No. No—’

‘Is he married?’ Daisy asked, with both understanding and sympathy. ‘A lot of the best ones are.’

‘You’re right—was that Chattie calling?’ Their aunt Charlotte was universally known as Chattie Kelso, and she still lived with them in the big old house at Bronte, a beachside suburb of Sydney where both Daisy and Lydia had grown up.

Daisy rose. ‘She’s cooked roast pork,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘You know how paranoid she is about getting the crackling crisp. We’d better not keep her waiting.’

James Kelso, who was renowned for his bush ballads and poetry written under the name of Kelso James, as well as renowned for always wearing a bush shirt and jeans, raised his glass and cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to propose several toasts. First to you, my dear Chattie, for the crispest crackling you’ve ever produced.’

Chattie, a spinster in her fifties, with Lydia’s colouring and build although her hair was sprinkled with grey now, looked gratified. She raised her glass in return and her fine eyes glinted with mischief. ‘Thought so myself, although I didn’t like to say it.’

‘And to you, my dear Daisy—’ James inclined his head towards his elder daughter ‘—for looking sensational, as usual. No one would think you were a day over nineteen.’

Daisy smiled fondly at him. ‘Dad, you’re sweet, but you tell awful lies!’

‘May one enquire how your love life is going at present?’

‘One may—it’s going, but it’s at a critical stage, you could say.’

‘Hmm. Dangerous age, twenty-nine. Would you agree, Chattie?’

‘No. They can all be dangerous. I consider myself at my most dangerous when I was seventeen, closely followed by thirty-nine. At seventeen I would have done anything to have a boyfriend and be like the rest of the girls, and at thirty-nine I would have done anything to have a husband.’

‘What about children?’ Daisy asked.

‘That too. I gave serious thought to having one without a husband—’

‘Chattie!’ James reproved. ‘Don’t put silly ideas into their young heads.’

Lydia ate her roast pork and thought that if Joe Jordan were a fly on the wall he might be able to judge for himself how eccentric her family could be.

‘If you’d let me finish,’ Chattie said, ‘I decided against it because I realised it was extremely unfair to a child to deprive it of a father.’

Lydia put her knife and fork down and glanced at her aunt through her lashes. Had a whiff of Daisy’s state of mind got through to her?

‘I have to agree,’ James said. ‘For example, do you or do you not think I’ve enriched your lives, girls?’

Daisy masked her expression almost immediately, but Lydia saw her sheer horror at the thought of never having known their father, and she felt like cheering at the same time as she wondered whether her father had also divined Daisy’s dilemma…

She said, ‘Dad, you’ve not only enriched our lives but your wisdom never ceases to amaze me—when you’re not driving me mad with your forgetfulness, your inability to find your glasses, even when they’re on top of your head, and the way you persistently wear odd socks—when you remember to wear them at all.’

‘Well, that brings me to you, Lydia, my younger and most practical daughter,’ James said humorously. ‘We’re going to miss you, my dear. Who else will we have to fix fuses and start our cars when they break down? You know how hopeless I am at that kind of thing.’

‘I do.’ Lydia grinned. ‘Heaven alone knows where that expertise came down to me from, but if you just look in the Yellow Pages you’ll find there are electricians, mechanics, plumbers and so on galore—on second thoughts, I’d better write you out a list.’

‘Now that makes us feel really small,’ James Kelso admonished, ‘but I’d be much easier if you did! And I know I speak for the rest of us when I say we’re all happy to think of you enjoying a new challenge, a new experience—may it be a wonderful one!’ He raised his glass again.

‘Hear, hear!’ Chattie and Daisy echoed.

‘So let’s think up a suitable limerick,’ James went on.

It was a game they’d played ever since Lydia could remember…

‘Lydia Kelso is going to Queensland,’ Daisy started.

‘To…look after cows…with a magic hand,’ Chattie supplied.

‘Not for too long,’ James said.

‘You won’t know I’m gone!’ Lydia laughed.

There was silence until Daisy said frustratedly, ‘The last line is always the hardest! What rhymes with Queensland? We’ve got hand…’

‘Wedding band?’ Chattie suggested.

‘Oh, no!’ Lydia protested. ‘There’s not the least likelihood of that happening, and anyway, I didn’t like to interrupt the creative flow, but I’m actually going to the Northern Territory.’

Everyone groaned. ‘Oh, well,’ James murmured, ‘that’s right next door, so we won’t start again—and you never know! So… And she’ll come home complete with a wedding band.’

‘Very amateurish,’ Lydia said. ‘But thank you all for your good wishes!’ And she looked round the dining room, with its heavy old oak table, dark green walls, examples of her aunt’s sculpting and some lovely gold-framed paintings on the wall. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she added. ‘Just promise me you’ll all be good!’

It struck her as she got ready for bed that she could go away with a much easier mind, now. A quiet word with Chattie had revealed that she was aware of Daisy’s dilemma and would keep a weather eye out for her.

‘We won’t tell your father,’ she’d said. ‘He’s liable to go and want to have things out with this Joe Jordan.’

Lydia had confessed that she’d already done that, but that Daisy was unaware of her actions.

‘What’s he like?’ Chattie had asked curiously.

‘Interesting, but not serious about her—nor, I suspect, did he stand much chance. She made the running, so to speak.’

‘So she is sleeping with him?’

‘She hasn’t actually admitted to that, but she looks, well, you know…’

‘I do. But he could have knocked her back. How like a man!’

They’d looked at each other, then grinned simultaneously.

‘Daisy, in full flight, is a sight to behold,’ Chattie had acknowledged. ‘Perhaps I was being a bit hard on him. What about you?’

Lydia had blinked. ‘What about me?’

‘When are you going to lay Brad to rest and start living again?’

‘Not you too!’

‘Your father been giving you a hard time?’

Lydia had shaken her head. ‘Daisy. But I am living, and enjoying myself and really looking forward to this job!’

‘All right.’ Chattie had looked as if she’d been about to say more, but had desisted and hugged her niece instead. ‘Leave them to me; I’ll look after them!’

Lydia took off her pinstriped trouser suit, donned a velvet housecoat and sat down at her dressing table to brush her hair, after removing a few very dark strands from the brush.

She’d returned to this room and this single bed after a year of marriage, and some days it was hard to believe she’d ever left it.

She and Brad had met at university, he’d been studying economics, and the first thing to draw them together had been their common although unusual surname. But the attraction had been almost instantaneous, and mutual. It had also been a revelation to Lydia, because he’d been her first serious boyfriend, and to find someone she clicked with so completely had been totally unexpected.

To fall so much in love when she’d expected to spend her university years working hard to achieve her career goals had also been disconcerting, but that had been another wonderful part of their relationship. They’d been quite happy to allow each other the space to study.

So, after two years, and before she had graduated—although he had, and had joined an eminent firm of stockbrokers—they’d got married, got themselves a small flat and had a year of idyllic happiness.