Semi-Detached Marriage (3 page)

The two girls took the escalator down to the
basement and found themselves a table in the coffee shop, which was all apple
green walls, white trelliswork decoration and potted plants.

'Ooh, that's better!' Julia gave a sigh of relief
as she eased her shoes off under the table. 'Why is it that the

oo pavements around Oxford Street are always
harder than anywhere else?'

'You shouldn't wear such high- heels,' Cassie
told her, without sympathy. 'Arc you going to tell John about the things you've
bought?'

'No. He won't find out until the credit card
statement comes in, and by then we might be on better terms.'

Cassie didn't say anything, letting her
friend decide whether or not to take that last remark farther. Julia was silent
for a moment, broodingly stirring her coffee, then she burst out, 'Honestly,
Cass, you'd never think that John was only a few years older than Simon! Simon
still makes a fuss of you and takes you out a lot, whereas all John wants to do
when he comes home from work is eat a meal and then collapse in front of the
television. And he usually falls asleep in the chair!' she added feelingly.

'But don't forget that Simon and I have only
been married three years, whereas you've been married ten. Maybe when we've
been married that long all Simon will want to do is watch television. Maybe it
happens to all men in time.'

Julia's eyebrows rose in disbelief and she
shook her head.

'Oh, no. Do you really believe that Simon's
the type of man who goes to bed and then tells his wife that he's too tired to
make love?'

Cassie had to laugh at Julia's outraged face.
'Oh, come on, it's not as bad as that, surely?'

'Near enough. If I didn't know that John was
just too lazy, I'd say that he was having an affair.' 'Oh, you don't really think
that, Julia? You can't!' There was real shock in Cassie’s voice. 'Why, John
dotes on you and the children.'

Julia sighed. 'Yes, I know he does. And I'm
sure he's faithful. It's just that.' She shrugged rather helplessly. 'It's just
that I wish he was more
^alive
,
younger in spirit.
Sometimes he seems about sixty years old, when he's not even forty yet.'

Cassie thought it wiser to change the subject
then, and they talked of other things until Julia mentioned the dinner party
the previous night.

'They were a nice couple, Sue and
Christopher. Have you known them long?'

'No, only a few months. Sue only came to work
at Marriott & Brown's after they got married.' 'They haven't been married very
long, then?' 'No, just over a year, I think.'

'He seemed interesting; quite a sporty type
by the look of him.'

There was something in Julia's voice that
made Cassie look at her quickly, but the elder girl's face was quite impassive,
her attention given to the cream cake she was cutting.

'Yes, I believe he's a squash addict.'

'They usually are nowadays; no one seems to
go in for tennis any more. It's either squash or badminton. Oh, by the way,'
Julia licked cream off her lips, 'per- haps you could give me Sue's telephone
number. I promised to give her my recipe for salmon mousse, but she forgot to
give me her number.'

'I'll write it down for you.' Cassie jotted
the number on a page torn out of her notebook and passed it over, looking at
her friend searchingly, but Julia was completely casual as she took it and
dropped it in her bag. Cassie chided herself for being a fool; as if Julia
would be interested in a boy six years younger than herself! They parted soon
after and Cassie went home to

oo spend the rest of the weekend catching up
on jobs. Simon phoned every evening, but it seemed that the labour problems
were even worse than he had feared, and they were also having trouble from a
group of environmentalists who were trying to disrupt the building of the new
terminal.

Monday was a busy day: getting the computer
readings of all the stock sold during the last week, re-ordering where
necessary, interviewing sales reps, looking at samples, writing to the firms
whose garments she had admired in other shops and asking for catalogues and
quotes. She was constantly being sought out to make decisions all day. She was
busy, but she carried out all her tasks efficiently and in a businesslike
manner, not asking for anyone's advice and not afraid of making her own decisions.
The job was demanding and required her constant attention and energy. But
Cassie loved it, loved the adrenalin it roused, the excitement of choosing from
the new collections and the satisfaction when a line sold particularly well,
especially when it was a Marriott & Brown's exclusive.

She had come a long way in the five years she
had been working there, first as a humble trainee, then working her way up to
be an assistant to a very small department, then a larger one, and eventually
to have a department of her own. Her flair for clothes had certainly helped
her, but she also had an instinctive idea of what women, the younger generation
especially, wanted. She seemed to have a constant finger on the pulse of
fashion and could tell what London girls would be wearing six months before
they even thought of buying. So now she controlled all the buying for the 'Top
Togs' department which filled half the basement of Marriott & Brown's.

The rest of the week fell into the some busy
pattern, except that at the weekly buyers' conference on

Thursday she was asked to go to Paris on the
following

Monday to select some goods from the new
designer collections which would eventually go on sale in the shop in the
autumn. Cassie accepted eagerly; this was quite a feather in her cap as she
hadn't yet been entrusted with many buying trips abroad and had always before
gone in company with another more experienced buyer, but this time she was to
go alone because the head buyer for the fashion department was away on a skiing
holiday. Cassie was very pleased, because she by no means intended to remain as
she was; her ambition was to eventually become the head buyer for the whole of
the fashion department, and even that wouldn't be the end; there were far
bigger organisations than Marriott & Brown's in the fashion world.

It was her father's birthday on Sunday and
Cassie was beginning to be afraid that Simon wouldn't be able to make it.
Although he hadn't gone into details over the phone, she had gathered that the
problems at the terminal were tougher than he had anticipated and consequently
would take longer to solve. But he assured her that he would do everything he
could to make it, and with that she had to be content. Not that

Cassie was the one who was really worried
about him not being there; it was her mother who always liked to have the
entire family gathered around her on such occasions, and that included son and
daughtersin-law as well as Cassie and her two brothers. Also she knew that her
father had a special regard for Simon and would be disappointed if he couldn't
make it, even though he wouldn't say anything or show it.

By Sunday morning she had resigned herself to

oo having to go alone, but at eleven o'clock
when she was having a long soak in the bath, the radio playing the latest hit
tunes nearby and a book in her hands, the door was pushed open and Simon walked
in. The noise from the .radio had drowned the sounds of his arrival, and she
jumped with fright when he suddenly appeared.

He grinned at the consternation on her face.
'It's all right, it's only me.'

'God, what a fright you gave me! Oh, lord,
you made me drop my book in the water, and it's a library book too!' She fished
in the bubbly water and brought out the sopping book. 'Now I suppose I'll have
to pay for it.'

'See what it's like when it dries out.'
Firmly Simon took the book from her and put it to one side. 'Now, woman, I've
been away for a whole week. How about greeting me properly?'

He knelt down beside the bath and Cassie
tilted her head up to kiss him. His lips held hers for a long time, gradually
becoming harder, and his voice was thick when at last he drew away and said,
'Wouldn't you like your back scrubbed?'

'All right.'

She found the soap and gave it to him and
then slowly stood up. The water ran in rivulets down her slender body, but here
and there the bubbles still clung as if reluctant to leave her. Her long
chestnut hair she had piled on top of her head, but a few tendrils hung damply
on her neck. She turned her back on Simon and he carefully moved aside the
clinging strands of hair before he began to soap her. His hands moved in unison
over her, starting at her shoulders and moving slowly down to her hips, his
fingers firm and caressing

'Turn around,' he demanded after a while, his
voice husky.

Slowly she did so, her tongue licking lips
gone suddenly dry, her body starting to tremble in anticipation.

It was strange to be in the bathroom together
like this, Simon fully dressed and she stark naked. He resoaped his hands and
they began to slide over her, the soap leaving long white finger strokes as his
hands gently circled each curve, aroused every sexual nerve end. Excitement
surged through her and Cassie gasped as he found and fondled a particularly
sensitive place. Her breasts hardened and she pushed herself against his hands,
eyes half closed with desire, her breath panting through lips drawn back in
ecstasy. Suddenly Simon made a sort of groaning sound deep in his throat and he
lifted her bodily out of the bath, still wet and soapy as she was, and carried
her into the bedroom. He kissed her as he carried her and kept on kissing her
as he laid her down on the bed and stripped off his clothes. The first time he
made love to her hungrily, urgently, as if he'd been away much longer than just
a week, but the second time he did so slowly, pleasurably, taking delight in
her body until he was again consumed by thrusting passion.

Later, in the early evening, they drove out
of London to Cassie's parents' home in Buckinghamshire, and she took the
opportunity to tell Simon about her trip to Paris the following day.

'It isn't one of the big fashion house
collections, of course, otherwise they would have sent one of the senior buyers
instead of me, but it's by a comparatively new group of designers who've got
together and produced a whole range of clothes for young girls, teens and twenties
age range mostly. They sound really exciting, just the thing we need to lift
Top Togs into being the most upto-date department in London,' she told him
enthusiastically.

'When exactly are you leaving?'

Early tomorrow morning. I have to be at
Heathrow by eightthirty.'

Simon's dark brows drew into a slight frown.
'Then we only have tonight.'

Cassie smiled and leaned against his
shoulder. 'But we had this afternoon,' she reminded him gently.

'So we did.' His hand came down to cover hers
for a moment, but then he had to put it back on the steering wheel as he
overtook a slow-moving lorry. 'I'm afraid I won't be able to drive you to the
airport, darling; I have to be at the office at nine to attend a meeting to try
and find a solution to the oil terminal crisis.'

'Crisis? That's rather a strong word. Is it
really as bad as that?'

Simon nodded grimly. 'It's certainly getting
that way. The man in overall charge of the project doesn't seem to be able to
cope. Or maybe it's because he's resentful because his company was taken over
by Mullaine's and he isn't trying. I certainly didn't get much in the way of
co-operation from him.'

'Does that mean you'll have to go up there
again?'

do.' 'Very likely. I can't see it getting
sorted out unless I

Cassie wrinkled her nose in sympathy. 'That's
a shame. The terminal's miles from anywhere, isn't it?

You must be bored out of your mind in the
evenings.'

`Too many worries on my plate to be bored.
But it is a lonely place. There was nothing but sheep and seabirds before they
decided to build the oil terminal there.'

`Didn't the local people object?'

'Yes, but it was an area of massive
unemployment, so they really had no choice but to agree. Better to lose one bay
on the coast than to have several thousand people on the dole.'

Shortly afterwards they arrived at the house
and were immediately caught up in purely family matters: congratulating her
father, greeting the rest of the family and swapping gossip with her two
brothers and their wives. After the meal Cassie helped her mother to wash up;
the other girls had also offered to help, but her mother had insisted that they
stay in the livingroom with the men, saying that she and Cassie could manage.
For some time they made small talk about everyday matters, but Cassie knew that
her mother was working up to the subject she always brought up whenever she
could get her daughter alone. Naughtily Cassie, half teasing, half serious, put
her off by quickly opening up a new topic every time there was a pause and her
mother opened her mouth to speak. But at last, exasperated, the older woman
said bluntly,

'I suppose you haven't decided to start a
family yet?'

'No, Mother,' Cassie agreed. 'You're right,
we haven't.'