A Paper Marriage (2 page)

`Dad doesn't owe the bank very much, then?' Lydie asked, but before she could start to feel in any small way relieved, her mother was giving her a snappy reply.

`They're his one remaining creditor-he's managed to scrape enough together to pay off everybody else, plus most of his overdraft. But today's Tuesday, and the bank say they have given him long enough. If they aren't in receipt of fifty thousand pounds by the end of banking on Friday-they move. And so do we ! Can you imagine it? The disgrace? A fine thing it's going to look in Oliver's wedding announcement. Not "Oliver Pearson of Beamhurst Court", but "Oliver Pearson of No Fixed Abode". How shall we ever-?'

Her mother would have gone on, but Lydie interrupted. `Fifty thousand doesn't sound such a fearfully large amount.'

`It does when you haven't got it. Nor any way of finding it either. Apart from the house, we're out of collateral. How can we borrow money with no way of repaying it? Nobody's going to loan us anything. Not that your father would ask in the circumstances. No, your father over-extended himself, the bank won't wait any longer-and now I have to pay!'

Lydie thought hard. `The pictures!' she exclaimed after a moment. `We could sell some of the family-'

`Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? Haven't I just finished telling you that everything, everything that isn't in trust for Oliver, has been sold? There's nothing left to sell. Nothing, absolutely nothing!'

Her mother looked closer to tears than Lydie had ever seen her, and suddenly her heart went out to her. For all her mother had never been the warmest mother in the world to her, Oliver being her pride and joy, Lydie loved her.

Lydie went impulsively over to her. `I'm sorry,' she said gently, taking a seat next to her on the sofa. 'I'm so very sorry.' And, remembering her mother saying only a short while ago that it was time she paid something back for the expensive education she had received, `What can I do?' she asked. While the amount of her inheritance was small, and nowhere near enough, Lydie was thinking in terms of asking to have that money released now and not two years hence, when she would attain the age of twenty-five, but her mother's reply shook her into speechlessness.

`You can go and see Jonah Marriott,' she said clearly. `That's what you can do.'

Lydie stared at her, her green eyes huge. `Jonah Marriott?' she managed faintly. She had only ever seen him once, and that was some seven years ago, but she had never forgotten the tall, good looking man.

`You remember him?"

'He came here one time. Didn't Dad lend him some money?"

'He did,' Hilary Pearson replied sharply. `And now it's his turn to pay that money back.'

`He never repaid that money?' Lydie asked, feeling just a touch disappointed. He had seemed to her sixteen-year-old eyes such an honourable man-and she knew he had prospered greatly in the seven years that had elapsed. `Coincidentally, the money he borrowed from your father is the same amount we need to stay on in this house.'

`Fifty thousand pounds?"

'Exactly the same. I can't impress on you enough that if the bank don't have their money by Friday, come Monday they'll be making representation to have us evicted. I'd go and see him myself, but when I mentioned it to your father he hit the roof and forbade me to do anything of the sort.'

Lydie could not imagine her mild-mannered father hitting the roof, especially to the wife he adored. But he must be under a tremendous amount of strain at the moment. No doubt he himself had previously asked Jonah Marriott to make some kind of payment off that loan. There was no way her father's pride would allow him to ask more than once. But to...

Her thoughts faded when just then the drawing room door opened and her father walked into the room. At least the man was tall, like her father, white-haired, like her father, but Lydie was shocked by the haggard look of him.

'Daddy!' she whispered involuntarily, and went hurriedly over to him. There was a dejected kind of slump to his shoulders which she found heartbreaking, and as she looked into his worn, tired face, she could not bear it. She put her arms round him and hugged him.

`What are you doing here?' he asked, putting her aside and sending her mother a suspicious look.

`I-thought I'd give Donna a chance to see how she'll cope without me,' Lydie invented, quickly hiding her shocked feelings. 'I'll give her a ring later. If she's okay I'll stay on, if that's all right with you?" 'Of course it's all right,' he replied with assumed joviality. `This is your h...' He turned away and Lydie's heart ached afresh. She just knew he had been thinking that this was her home, but would not be for very much longer. `Your mother been bringing you up to date with everything?' he enquired, his tone casual, but pride there, ready to be up in arms if his wife had breathed a word of his troubles.

`This wedding of Oliver's sounds a bit topdrawer. Are they going to have a marquee-you didn't finish telling me, Mother?'

Over the next half-hour Lydie observed at first hand the proud facade her father was putting up in front of her, and her heart went out to him. Looking at him, seeing the strain, the worry that seemed to be weighing him down, to go and see Jonah Marriott and ask him to repay the money he had borrowed from her father seven years ago did not seem such a hard task. Particularly as, if memory served, that money had only been loaned for a period of five years anyway.

`Your room's all ready for you.' Her mother took the conversation away from the wedding. `If you want to go and freshen up,' she hinted.

`I've things to attend to in my study,' Wilmot Pearson commented before Lydie had answered. `It's good to see you, Lydie. Let's hope you'll be able to stay.'

No sooner had he gone from the room than her mother was back to the forbidden subject. `Well?' she questioned. `Will you?'

Lydie knew what she was asking, just as she knew that she did not want to go and see Jonah Marriott. `You're quite sure he hasn't paid that loan back?' she hedged. Her mother gave her a vinegary look. `Perhaps he can't afford to pay it back,' Lydie commented. `All firms work on an overdraft basis, you recently said so,' she reminded her mother, but, still shaken by the haggard look of her father, wondered why she was prevaricating about going to see Jonah Marriott. Her mother chose to ignore her comments, instead scorning, `Of course he can afford to pay it back-many times over. His father made a packet when he sold his department stores. Ambrose Marriott might be one tough operator but I can't see him giving to one son and not the other-and the younger Marriott boy hasn't done a day's work since the deal was done. They're all sitting on Easy Street,' her mother said with a heartfelt sigh, `and just look at us!'

Lydie glanced at her parent, and while the last thing she wanted to do was to go and ask Jonah Marriott for the money he owed to her father, she knew that the time for prevaricating was over. She looked at her watch. Half past four. She had better get a move on. `Do you have his number?"

'You can't discuss this with him over the telephone!' her mother snorted. `You need to be there, face to face. You need to impress on him how-'

`I was going to ring his office for an appointment,' Lydie interrupted. `He's hardly likely to see me without one.' And if he guesses what it's about he'll probably say no anyway!

`I don't want your father to catch you. You'd better make your call from your room,' Hilary Pearson decided. And, not allowing her daughter to consider changing her mind, 'I'll come up with you."

'Marriott Electronics,' a pleasant voice answered when up in her old bedroom Lydie had dialled the number.

`Mr. Marriott please,' Lydie said firmly, striving with all she had to keep her voice from shaking.

`Mr. Jonah Marriott,' she tacked on, just in case Jonah had taken other members of the Marriott clan into the business. `One moment, please,' the telephonist answered, but even though Lydie's stomach did a tiny somersault at the thought she might soon be speaking to the man she had seen only once but had never forgotten, she did not think she would be put through to him as easily as that.

Her stomach settled down when the next voice she heard was a calm and pleasant voice informing her, `Mr. Marriott's office.'

`Oh, hello,' Lydie said in a rush. `My name's Lydie Pearson. I wonder if it's possible for me to have a word with Mr. Marriott? "

'I'm afraid Mr. Marriott's out of the office until Friday. Is there anything I can help you with?' Pleasant, polite, but Lydie knew she was getting nowhere.

`Oh,' she murmured, then paused for a moment, very much aware of her mother's tense gaze on her. `I wanted to see him rather urgently. Um-perhaps I should ring him at home,' she pondered out loud, knowing in advance that she had small chance the woman-his PA, most probably-would let her have his private number.

`Actually, Mr. Marriott is out of the country until late on Thursday evening.'

Oh, grief, she wanted this over and done with. 'I'll ring again on Friday,' Lydie said pleasantly, and rang off to be confronted by her mother, who wanted to hear syllable by syllable what had been said.

`We're going to lose the house!' Hilary Pearson cried. `I know it! I know it!' And Lydie, who had never before seen her mother in a state of panic, began more than ever to appreciate how very dire the situation was-and she started to get angry- with Jonah Marriott.

`No, we won't,' she said as calmly as she could. 'I'll go and see Jonah Marriott on Friday, and I won't leave his office until I have the money he owes Dad.'

Lydie had no chance in the two days that followed to have second thoughts about going to see Jonah Marriott. With her father seeming to grow more drawn and careworn by the hour, not to mention her mother's endless insistence that Lydie was their only hope, Lydie knew that she had no choice but to go and see him.

Consequently, whenever the voice of reality would butt in to enquire what made her think anything she might say would make him promise to repay that money-he had let her father down; what difference did she think her appeal would make?-her emotions, her love for her parents and the calamity they were facing, would override the logic of her head.

Which in turn, over the days leading up to Friday, caused Lydie to grow angry again with Jonah Marriott. That anger turning to fury with him when she thought of how her father had lent him that money in good faith, and how Jonah had so badly let him down.

Her fury dimmed somewhat, though, whenever she recalled her only meeting with the man. She had occasionally helped her father in his study during her school holidays, and had known that someone was coming to the house in the hope of borrowing some money. It had gone from her mind that day, though, until she had come home and found him sitting in the drawing room of their home. She had been sixteen, a thin, lanky, terribly shy sixteen-year-old.

`Oh, I'm s-sorry,' she had stammered, blushing to the roots of her night-black hair. `I didn't know anyone was in here!' He hadn't answered, but had done her the courtesy of rising to his feet. She had blushed again, but had felt obliged to ask, `Are you waiting for Daddy?'

The man had superb blue eyes, quite a fantastic blue, she remembered thinking as he'd looked directly at her and commented in that wonderful all male voice, `If your daddy is Mr. Wilmot Pearson, then, yes, I am.'

Her knees by that time were like so much jelly. But, at the same time, she could not help but think how ghastly it must be for him to have to come and ask to borrow some money, and, while she wanted to fly, she found she wanted more to make him feel better about it. 'I'm Lydie,' she stayed to tell him. 'Lydie Pearson.'

`Jonah Marriott,' he answered, and, treating her as a grown-up, his right hand came out.

Nervously, she shook hands with him, her colour a furious red as their hands met, his touch firm and warm. But still she could not leave him without trying to make him feel better. `Would you like some tea, Mr. Marriott?' she asked him shakily.

He had smiled then, and she had thought he had the most wonderful smile in the world. `Thank you, no, Miss Pearson,' he had refused politely-and she had blushed again, this time at the dreadful thought that he was perhaps teasing her.

Just then, though, her father had come in. `Sorry to keep you, Jonah. That phone call has settled most everything.' And, with a fond father's look to his daughter, `You've met Lydie soon to tear herself away from her beloved Beamhurst and go back to school again after the summer break!"

'You'll miss her when she's gone, I'm sure,' Jonah answered with a glance to her, and Lydie had blushed again.

'I'll see you later,' she mumbled generally, and fled.

And so had begun a giant-sized crush on one Jonah Marriott. But she had not seen him later or ever again. That had not stopped her from finding out more about him. He had been in his late twenties then, and already had a thriving electronics business. From bits she had gleaned on separate occasions from her mother, from her father, and also from her brother Oliver, who at one time had gone around with a crowd that included Jonah's younger brother Rupert, she knew that Jonah was the elder son of Ambrose Marriott. Their father owned several department stores, and Jonah had felt obliged to go and work for his father. When Rupert had finished university, and had declared that there was nothing he would like better than to start work in the business, Jonah had felt free to leave the family business and start up his own company.

His father had not liked it, so Jonah had borrowed from the bank to get started. He had gone from success to success, but still owed the bank when he had wanted to expand his company. The banks had lent him as much as they could-it had not been enough. Too proud to ask his own father to lend him money-he had approached her father, a well-known businessman, instead.

The rest was history, Lydie fumed when, after a very fitful night's sleep, she awakened on Friday morning. Her father had lent Jonah Marriott fifty thousand pounds. Jonah Marriott, her idol for so long, had never paid him back. And Lydie was going to do something about it this very day !