Past All Forgetting (20 page)

She wondered if this was part of the pattern of their relationship, taking the child to live with each of them in turn, then uprooting her just as she seemed to be settling. They seemed to be using Fleur as a pawn in some monstrous game, and it was little wonder that the child allowed herself to show so little overt emotion. She had probably had to learn to hide her feelings.

Janna gave a muffled groan, burying her face in her hands. In ordinary circumstances, when she came across a situation like this, she would have to weigh very carefully whether any good would be gained by having a talk with the parents, or asking Mrs Parsons to do so. But in this case, she dared not interfere. She felt altogether too involved, and could not trust herself to take an objective view of the matter, where her sole concern would be to do what was best for Fleur.

In her own mind at least, she was certain that the little girl needed a settled environment for a considerable period to draw her out of her shell and make her realise her full potential. But at the same time, she knew that it was impossible for her to suggest this to Rian, feeling as she did. It would be tantamount to pushing
him
into the arms of another woman, she thought unhappily.

Supper that evening was not a particularly comfortable meal, but Janna was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice this overmuch. She registered the fact that her mother was unusually silent, and given to heaving deep sighs, and that her father was frowning and pensive.

'You see,' Mrs Prentiss roused herself to say with a kind of injured triumph when Janna pushed her half-filled plate to one side, 'you're fretting. You can't deceive your mother.' She gave Janna a beseeching look. 'Go and phone him, dear. I expect you'll find he was just going to pick the phone up himself. Everyone has these tiffs when they're engaged. You'll look back in twenty years and laugh at all this.'

'Maybe I shall, but it won't be with Colin.' Janna rose to her feet. 'No, I won't have any dessert, thank you, Mummy. I—I think I'll go upstairs and do some work. There's a documentary on television I'd like to watch later on.'

Once in her room, she wandered restlessly between the bed and the window. She wanted something to happen, but she didn't know what. In her heart, and she cursed herself for being a fool, she hoped that Rian would make contact with her in some way, even if it was only to find out what had happened after his departure. Just to hear his voice on the end of a telephone would be something, she thought achingly. She sank down on to the bed with a trembling sigh. She despised herself in many ways. This wanting she felt for Rian was like a fever in her blood. There was nothing rational about it. It belonged to Janna the girl, not Janna the woman she now was. And knowing all she did about him—the way he had treated the girl who mothered his child, even his uncaring behaviour towards that child—she still could not tear him out of her heart. He was too deeply entrenched there. He had been her first love, and she knew now, with a sense of total inevitability, that he would also be her last. If she could not belong to Rian, then she would belong to no one else.

The telephone rang downstairs, and she tensed unbelievingly. Didn't they say that if you concentrated hard enough upon something you wanted, then it would come to you? she thought wildly, and waited for her mother's disapproving voice to call up the stairs to her. But no one called, and she could hear the subdued murmur of conversation below.

She relaxed with a feeling of disappointment so intense that it was painful. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was almost time for her documentary. She decided she might as well go downstairs and watch it. Brooding in her room waiting for non-existent phone calls was doing her no good at all. As she descended the stairs, her mother replaced the telephone receiver and turned away.

Her eyes met Janna's. 'Deirdre Morris,' she said with a shrug of resignation, and Janna knew, with, a dreadful impulse to laugh, that her mother's cup of bitterness was now full to overflowing.

Somewhat to her relief, Mrs Prentiss did not follow her into the sitting room, where her father was seated going through some papers, his briefcase open beside him. He glanced up as she came in. 'Change channels if you want, my dear. I shall
be
busy with these for a while.'

When her programme was over, Janna was relieved there was no one present asking questions on what she had just seen, because she knew she would be able to answer none of them. She jumped slightly when her father spoke.

'The great man descended on us today, or on me to be precise.'

'Oh, Dad!' Janna felt sudden dread grip the pit of her stomach. 'What did he want?'

Mr Prentiss gave her a quizzical glance. Well, he didn't give me the sack, so don't look so worried.' He laughed. 'It would take more than Sir Robert and all his much-vaunted string-pulling to get me off my perch. Although I must say he made it clear he wasn't pleased. Not pleased at all,' he added slowly.

'He—he mentioned Colin and me?'

'Not in so many words. But he talked of rank ingratitude and made a veiled reference to King Cophetua and the Beggarmaid which I could understand or not if I chose. I chose not,' said Mr Prentiss. 'No, what he'd really called about was this scheme for Carrisbeck House. He wants me to advise the committee to send it through to County level for a final decision.'

'Can he do that?' Janna asked doubtfully.

Her father shrugged. 'Dubious, I'd say. It can perfectly well be dealt with at District level. The fact is he wants a finger in this particular pie, and he's willing to use any means at his command to obtain it. He as good as told me he had most of the members of his committee in his pocket. Hinted that he'd take the thing to appeal and beyond, if he had to. Seems very much against it one way or another,' her father said slowly.

'Against the scheme itself, or against Rian?' Janna was bitter, staring into the fire. She did not see the quick glance her father sent her.

'A bit of both, I'd say.'

'Can you understand what he has against it?'

'I think so.' Mr Prentiss began to fill his pipe. 'But as they're mostly founded on personal pique and not good planning reasons, I don't intend to take much notice of them. I gave
him
to understand as much.'

'Oh, Dad!' Janna gave him a troubled look. 'What did he say?'

'There wasn't a great deal he could say.' Mr Prentiss got his pipe going to his own satisfaction. 'My next appointment was waiting and my secretary had buzzed twice, so he went off breathing threatenings against the world in general.'

'He didn't treat you like that when I was engaged to Colin,' Janna said forlornly.

Her father patted her arm. 'Now don't start thinking like that,' he admonished. Tour personal life is your own affair, and Sir Robert has no more business than anyone else to drag it into the public sector. He'll get over this broken engagement in time. Probably by tomorrow when he's calmed down he'll be telling everyone what a lucky escape his lad's had.'

His tone was so like Sir Robert's own that it forced an unwilling laugh from Janna: She leaned back against his chair.

'Will Rian get permission to do what he wants with the house?'

'I don't see why not. There are no firm grounds against it—the house isn't a listed building, and if it's left empty for many more years it could just become a derelict white elephant. And it isn't as if he wants to turn it into a night club, or one of these infernal country clubs. Then we would have to stop him because that road isn't wide enough to accommodate all the extra traffic. But the kids using Carrisbeck aren't likely to arrive driving their own cars and causing a jam back to the market place. I've discussed it with our chairman, and all in all, he thinks it's a fair idea.' He paused and looked at Janna. 'Has that put your mind at rest?'

She started uncomfortably, aware of the implication in his words. 'Heavens, no. Why should it? It's nothing to do with me.

'Methinks the lady doth protest too much,' Mr Prentiss quoted. He smiled down at Janna, but there was a trace  of anxiety in his eyes. 'For someone who is not concerned, you're taking a devil of an interest in. the progress of Tempest's affairs.'

'I'm just interested because I knew the house,' Janna mumbled. She jumped to her feet, smoothing out the creases in her skirt. 'It's late, and it's going to be a busy day tomorrow. We start rehearsals for the Nativity play.'

'How the years roll by!' Her father gave a reminiscent grin. 'I suppose there's a Watson playing the Virgin Mary.'

'Not this year.' Janna returned the grin. 'I think you're in for a surprise.'

'Not too great a one, I hope,' Mr Prentiss called after her. 'We don't take kindly to surprises, here in Carrisford.'

They were words that Janna was to remember before too long had passed.

Janna came out of the school gates and turned towards home with a feeling of thankfulness. She had never felt this before at the end of a school week. She enjoyed teaching, and was never happier than when she was busy and involved in her work, but the last ten days had been oddly disturbing ones, and she could not help but be glad they were over.

She had hardened herself to the fact that her broken engagement and subsequent resignation would be a nine days' wonder when they were generally known, and she had not been disappointed. Fortunately, Mary Bristow, the head of the infants' department, had just discovered that she was going to have a baby, and this had now taken precedence over Janna's affairs as the staff's most absorbing topic of conversation. Nevertheless, she had not had an easy time of it. Most of her colleagues seemed to share her mother's opinion, she discovered, and she'd had to put up with a number of lectures on being adaptable and learning to give and take.

But that was not all. She had expected that, and could cope with it. What she had not bargained for was the subtle alteration that had taken place in her relationship with the children in her class.

She could not have defined it to save her own life, but she knew it was there just the same, and it worried her. Suddenly there was a slyness about some of the children which had never existed before, an attitude that verged on insolence which she had not previously encountered with any of them. And the most worrying thing was that it seemed to have begun just after she had chosen Fleur for the leading part in the Nativity play.

Her intuition told her that Lucy Watson was at the bottom of it all, but she had no real grounds for this assumption. Lucy was polite and demure, almost exaggeratedly so, yet once when Janna had found herself unexpectedly at odds with one of the other children, she had observed an odd gleam in Lucy's eye which could have been triumph.

She felt bewildered and distressed. Surely Lucy's influence over her peers was not so great that she could disrupt almost an entire class because she had been disappointed over a part in a play? She tried to tell herself she was imagining things, but she knew that it wasn't so. There was something there, something insidious and unpleasant.

Children who would once have turned cartwheels for her if she had asked them now did the absolute minimum and stared in silence when she took them to task. When she asked for volunteers for small jobs, no one moved. It was, she thought, troubled, rather like being sent to Coventry.