The Unexpected Husband

‘Thank you,’ Daisy said gravely.

‘But now it’s time for straight talking,’ Lydia went on pointedly. ‘If you love Joe Jordan and he loves you and wants to marry you, you have my blessing. Otherwise it’s a dangerous game you’re playing—don’t do this to yourself. You’re worth much more than a life of seducing men so you can have a baby.’

Daisy turned the brush over in her hands. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Lyd,’ she said slowly. ‘You fell in love once and it worked out perfectly—well, until Brad died, of course. But it never works perfectly for me.’ She brushed away a tear.

‘Could you be…could you be a shade too generous, Daisy?’ Lydia suggested, picking her words with care. ‘Why don’t you play hard to get for a change?’

Daisy lifted her head as if struck by inspiration. ‘Oh. Maybe Joe would respond to that!’

‘Forget Joe Jordan—’ Lydia broke off and bit her lip.

‘Why?’

‘Uh—you told me yourself that he’s very clever and that he can be moody and sarcastic. That’s always hard to live with unless you’re clever in the same way. What you need is someone musical, someone who could share the area where you’re really sensitive and creative.’

Daisy stared reflectively into the distance. ‘There is a new oboe player who’s just joined the orchestra. He’s rather sweet, and I can tell he’s interested, but, no, it wouldn’t work.’

‘It’s probably far too early to tell whether it would work,’ Lydia commented practically, ‘but how can you be so sure it wouldn’t?’

‘He’s younger.’

‘Younger… How much?’

‘He’s about your age, I guess.’

Lydia was struck silent for a long moment, struck by the irony of her sister plotting to have some man’s child to bring up on her own yet unable to contemplate a normal relationship with a man because he was a little younger…

She said, at length, ‘Three years—that’s nothing, really.’

‘Oh, yes, it is. When I’m thirty he’ll still be in his twenties. More importantly, when I’m fifty, he’ll still be in his forties. I’m sure it should be the other way around because men tend to age better than women, don’t you think?’

But Lydia was suddenly gripped by the feeling that a younger man could be just what Daisy needed. Might it not bring out a so far latent streak of maturity in her? As well as getting her over Joe Jordan, of course. Then she sighed and decided she’d done enough interfering in her sister’s life for one day.

‘Why don’t you just wait and see what happens?’ she murmured, and reached for the silver-framed photo of Brad on the dressing table. She stared down at it, blinked a couple of times, then laid it gently face down on top of her clothes in the suitcase.

Daisy was on her feet in a flash, and she knelt in front of Lydia and took her hands. ‘Do you still miss him so much, darling? I had hoped it was getting easier.’

‘It is, mostly,’ Lydia said tremulously. ‘Just sometimes it’s actually harder. I don’t know why. Unless it’s because I’m afraid I’ll forget.’

‘You know,’ her sister said, ‘you worry an awful lot about me, but I can tell you that Brad loved you so much he would not want you to be unhappy for ever. And it’s been five years now. Time to stop living a half-life. Time to have no guilt about finding someone else.’

Lydia smiled painfully. ‘The problem is, I couldn’t care less if I never did find anyone else. Men don’t seem to interest me much, apart from—’ She stopped abruptly as it surfaced in her mind that Joe Jordan was the first interesting man she’d met for a long time. To make matters worse, she’d been just about to say it.

‘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.

It had been a matter of surprise to many, her family included, that she should have been the first sister to marry, and so young.

He’d been such fun, she thought sadly, the night before she went—not to Queensland, although via it to the Northern Territory. Not that you’d necessarily have known that behind his glasses and his computer-like brain there had lurked a delicious sense of humour. And he’d handled her growing ardour with surprising passion for a man who had always been able to tell you how many points the All Ordinaries or the Dow Jones had gained or dropped overnight.

It wasn’t fair. She’d thought it so many times, when her body had ached physically for him, and her mind had yearned for the warmth, tenderness and laughter they’d generated together.

She’d also suffered the growing conviction it would never happen for her that way again. So that, despite their good intentions, she hated it when people told her it was time to think of falling in love again—even her own sister.

She brushed steadily for a few minutes, trying to compose herself, and finally found some relief from her sad thoughts coming from an unusual direction…Joe Jordan and his hints that she was not as feminine as her gorgeous sister.

She put the brush down and studied herself in the mirror. What would he have thought, she mused, if he’d known that under her suit she’d been wearing—these?

‘These’, beneath her velvet robe, were a midnight-blue silk camisole deeply edged with lace and a matching pair of panties.

She stood up, opened her robe and, putting her hands on her hips, twirled slowly in front of the mirror. True, she conceded to her image, she was not like Daisy, who had an hourglass figure, but—how had Brad put it? Beneath her clothes she was slim, sleek and surprisingly sensuous, and her legs were to die for.

Of course, she told herself as she sat down again and grinned at herself, what appeals to one man may not appeal to another! And although her clothes were sometimes mannish it was only for comfort, and they were beautifully made. She also had a passion for shoes and bags and the finest lingerie.

So there, Mr Jordan, she thought, and was tempted to stick out her tongue at a mental image of him.

Then she sobered and wondered what on earth she was thinking. Only minutes ago she’d been consumed by sadness and the unfairness of fate—how could she be thinking of another man? A man her sister might be in love with—might even have slept with, moreover.

She closed her eyes and clenched her hands until Brad came back to her in her mind, and she remembered how he’d loved to cook, but had been quite hopeless at clearing up after himself…

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