Winning Through - an Extract

The golden brilliance of the summer twilight was fainting into quiet shadowy evening; thick sweet scents were drifting in the warm air; a thrush was singing in the orchard.

The old man leaned back a little in his chair, stretching out his cramped legs, removing his spectacles and massaging the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. In his late eighties, Theo Chadwick was still a big man, tall and wide-shouldered, but his once black hair was now grey, though still thick, and his naturally lean frame was thin almost to the point of gauntness. His article for the Quarterly Defence Journal lay on the battered leather-topped desk before him. It was nearly finished, several pages covered with his small clear writing, but this evening he was distracted and finding it difficult to concentrate. The thrush's glorious song, the liquid succession of lyrical phrases, was excuse enough for inattention to a complicated subject but Theo knew that the thrush was not to blame.

It was Fliss's return from London which had sown the seeds of this distraction. His great-niece had been away for a few days, staying with her husband, Miles, who had newly arrived from Hong Kong. Their two years of separation were over and the decision as to whether she should join him permanently in Hong Kong must now be made. All through the fourteen years of their married life Miles had been firmly in control. When he had accepted the job as a man­ager with an import/export firm in Hong Kong without discussing it with her, Fliss had known that she must make a stand. She did not want to leave her family or her country and settle permanently in Hong Kong. In her view, their twins, at eleven, were too young to be left behind in boarding school and she'd been deeply hurt - though not particularly surprised - that her feelings had not been considered by him for a single moment. After several long, painful scenes Fliss moved back to The Keep, the Chadwick family home near Totnes in Devon, back to her Great-Uncle Theo and her Aunt Prue, and to Caroline who had been nanny to Fliss and her siblings.

After he'd been only a few months in Hong Kong, at Miles's request, Fliss had flown out to stay for two weeks, and the following Christmas she had travelled there once more, taking the twins, Jamie and Bess, with her. In the autumn, after eighteen months of separation, she'd made another trip.

‘There's a woman,’ Fliss had told Theo, privately, after this third visit. ‘Well, I might have guessed it, I suppose. After all, why not?'

Watching her small face, Theo had tried to guess at her reaction. He wondered if he simply imagined that she was growing more and more like her grandmother, his sister-in-law Freddy Chadwick, whom he had loved so much. He knew that Fliss still considered herself morally tied to Miles and that it must have been a shock to her to learn that he did not consider this period of separation in the same light. Theo was rather shocked, too, but he'd waited for her to work out her feelings and presently she'd grinned at him.

‘I'm cross,' she told him honestly. 'Not really jealous or hurt. Just cross. Oh, they were fairly discreet, of course, but neither of them could quite disguise that tiny air of triumph. D'you know what I mean? He needed me to see that another woman wanted him even if I didn't, and she simply couldn't resist a little show of possessiveness. "Oh, it was such fun, wasn't it, Miles? Do you remember. Miles? Oh, we did laugh" and so on.1

Her unexpected imitation - the braying voice and coy yet sly expression - brought the unknown woman clearly before him. He saw her - glossy, hard-faced, immaculately presented, plumped up with confidence, yet uneasy in the presence of the legitimate wife - and felt a stab of anger on Fliss's behalf.

'I pretended utter indifference just tinged with a faint disgust,' said Fliss.

'I'm sure it did,' he'd answered cautiously. 'Did she . . . this woman cause any real problems?'

'It helps,' she'd answered with pleasurable recollection, 'that I'm a good fifteen years younger than she is. She's Miles's age, you see. In her fifties and rather looks it. She's a naval widow.'

Now, the separation period finished, it appeared that Miles was giving Fliss an ultimatum: either she joined him at once or he would seek a divorce in order to marry the widow.

 

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