A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [66]
Fifi had made up her mind on the long train ride home that she would be sweet, generous and tactful, whatever her mother threw at her. But there was no way she could deal with that spiteful statement except with more spite.
‘It could be said you were irresponsible having four children while there was a war on,’ she snapped back. ‘And as I remember, you and Dad were helped to buy this house by his parents. Where would you have been living if not for that?’
‘Don’t answer me back,’ Clara hissed. ‘You go off and marry a worthless labourer who has neither brains nor breeding and expect us to be glad that you are producing his offspring!’
Fifi reeled at the vitriol in her mother’s voice. ‘He is not worthless,’ she retorted, getting to her feet. ‘And he is a skilled bricklayer, not a labourer. And if breeding is what makes you so nasty, then I’m glad he hasn’t got any.’
‘Nasty! I’m just speaking the truth, my girl.’
It was all too obvious that time hadn’t mellowed her mother’s views on Dan one iota, and out of loyalty to her husband Fifi knew she must make the final stand, even if that meant losing her family for good.
‘You aren’t speaking the truth,’ she hissed at Clara. ‘You are just airing your stupid prejudices and snobbery and showing how ignorant you are! You haven’t attempted to get to know Dan, if you had you might have found out how wrong you are about him. Well, I love him, I’m glad I’m having his baby, and as it was a mistake to come here, I’m going right back to him.’
‘Don’t be so hasty,’ her mother called after her as Fifi sped out to the hall and picked up her weekend bag. ‘You can’t go back to London now, it’s too late.’
‘It’s too late for you to show any concern about me,’ Fifi threw back at her, then opened the door and left.
Clara Brown stood for a moment in the hall, tempted to run after her daughter and apologize. She knew she shouldn’t have been so outspoken, but when Fifi rang this morning and asked if she could visit, her immediate thought was that her daughter’s marriage was on the rocks.
But the moment Fifi came through the door, she knew that wasn’t so. Her daughter had a glow about her, and a calm that Clara recognized as the kind women had when they felt secure and happy. For a little while it had eased all Clara’s fears, but the moment Fifi told her what had happened to Dan, they all came back a hundredfold.
Maybe it was true that Dan didn’t know his assailant, but she thought it far more likely he was involved in something unpleasant, maybe even criminal. Long before she actually met Dan she had an idea there was something shady about him. The story about him being abandoned as a baby sounded preposterous. She thought it far more likely that he’d spent his youth in approved schools and invented such a story to gain sympathy. When he and Fifi got married in secret, that was all the confirmation she needed. A convenient way of hiding his real origins.
Of course she might have been less suspicious if Dan hadn’t been so handsome, but any man with filmstar looks would have made her question his motives in going after her daughter. She had voiced her misgivings later to Harry, and he had asked why she thought their beautiful daughter couldn’t attract an equally beautiful man. She hadn’t been able to explain that. But the truth was, she had retained an image of Fifi as plain and anti-social, the way she was when she was a child. And just as she’d wanted to protect her from harm then, she still did.
No one fully appreciated what she’d been through with Fifi when she was little, not even Harry as he was away so much in the war years. As a baby she hardly slept, screaming her head off half the night, and when Patty was born Clara had to watch like a hawk because Fifi was always prodding and poking her. She’d throw her dinner on the floor, disobey every order, and she never allowed herself to be cuddled. Every single milestone – walking, talking