Corporation Wife Read online

  Corporation Wife

  Catherine Gaskin

  Copyright © The Estate of Catherine Gaskin 2019

  This edition first published 2019 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1960

  www.wyndhambooks.com/catherine-gaskin

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover image © Nejron Photo (Shutterstock)

  Cover design © Wyndham Media Ltd

  Titles from Wyndham Books by Catherine Gaskin

  The Property of a Gentleman

  Sara Dane

  The Lynmara Legacy

  The Summer of the Spanish Woman

  A Falcon for a Queen

  Promises

  The Edge of Glass

  Blake’s Reach

  Fiona

  More titles coming very soon. Visit

  www.wyndhambooks.com/catherine-gaskin

  to be the first to know when the next

  Catherine Gaskin ebook is released

  Wyndham Books: Timeless bestsellers for today’s readers

  Wyndham Books publishes the first ebook editions of bestselling works by some of the most popular authors of the twentieth century, including Lucilla Andrews, Ursula Bloom, Catherine Gaskin and Naomi Jacob. Enjoy our Historical, Family Saga, Regency, Romance and Medical fiction and non-fiction.

  Join our free mailing list for news, exclusives and special deals:

  www.wyndhambooks.com

  For Sol

  Contents

  BOOK ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  BOOK TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Preview: The Property of A Gentleman

  Preview: Sara Dane

  Preview: The Lynmara Legacy

  Preview: The Summer of the Spanish Woman

  Preview: A Falcon for a Queen

  Preview: The Edge of Glass

  Preview: The Wine Widow by Tessa Barclay

  Preview: Lily’s Daughter by Diana Raymond

  Preview: Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom

  Corporation ‒ an artificial person created by legislative act

  THE OXFORD DICTIONARY

  BOOK ONE

  One

  There were some days in Jeannie Talbot’s life when sitting in a school-room appeared to have nothing to do with the essential business of living, days when she needed other air to breathe, and other sounds to hear. These were the days when she simply took off from Burnham Falls High School ‒ sat on the bluff above the freight yards watching the trains shunt in and out, or walked by herself in the woods. She recognised that there were going to be very few more days such as these, because she was seventeen and an adult world was close upon her.

  She had settled herself in the midst of an outcrop of granite boulders on the edge of the wood, where the rocks gave her shelter from the light wind, and trapped the warmth of the spring morning. She knew she was trespassing on country-club property, and she didn’t give a damn. Jeannie Talbot had lived all her life in Burnham Falls, and Talbots had lived there for a hundred years before her, and she just didn’t believe there was anywhere around Burnham Falls she couldn’t go without hindrance. She took some satisfaction in the thought that there were such rights which belonged to her without paying for them, because in the Talbot family there was very little evidence of what hard cash would buy.

  Jeannie didn’t particularly mind the lack of money ‒ it only hit her when she needed a new dress, and couldn’t buy it, and even that she forgot about pretty soon. If she had been asked she couldn’t have said exactly what it was she wanted that more money might have bought for her. Her father was the town’s odd-job man, and her mother hired out as a maid when she was called for. They lived in a neat, crowded house near the shellac factory; she had a sister, Christine, who was three years old.

  She supposed that she had to take these days off occasionally because she was like her father, Ted, who hadn’t done a full day of indoor work in his life. Jeannie had a sharp, quick mind, and a good measure of her father’s pride and independence; she had a sensuous, graceful body, mature to the point of lushness, and rich, golden hair she had inherited from her mother ‒ though in Selma Talbot the richness was fading. Jeannie was the prettiest girl at Burnham Falls High School, was voted the most popular, and she would graduate in June near the head of her class.

  She liked to come up here because from this high point among the boulders she could see the town and the whole valley. It was a fine place from which to view her world.

  But this was also the start of the cleared land around the Carpenter place, and the start of the acres of daffodils that Joe Carpenter had planted. They were in full bloom now; that was why she had come here to-day. Soon after she had settled herself she had noticed that Harriet, Joe’s daughter, had come out of the house, and begun to cut and lay daffodils in a basket. The sight of Harriet did not disturb her; if she kept still Harriet would never look up here, would never notice her.

  As she watched Harriet moving in the distance, she debated with herself whether or not she would go down into the town to hear the speeches at noon, and share the free lunch they were handing out. The high school was being let out at eleven thirty so that the students could be present, and the school band was going to play, as well as the Fire Department Band.

  But the thousands of daffodils waving lazily before her eyes half-mesmerised her, and soon she forgot about Burnham Falls, and the high school, and about Harriet Carpenter. She lay back against the rock and closed her eyes, feeling the warm granite against her shoulder blades. Her mind drifted into the vague places of the future, the unknown places where she would become a different Jeannie Talbot, one that even she was unable, at this moment, to recognise.

  II

  In the town they still called it ‘the Carpenter place’, even though her father had been dead for over two years, and there was no longer anyone in the town named Carpenter. Harriet sometimes wondered if Steve minded having the house he lived in called by another man’s name, but she doubted it, because Steve only noticed what went on in his laboratory and at Amtec, and he wasn’t likely to care what they called the house. It stood on a gentle rise, about half a mile from the edge of the town, with the white paint flaking off the columns of the wide veranda, surrounded by its own five acres of land, and at the back the four hundred acres that belonged to the country club. It was heavily mortgaged, and it belonged to another time.

  She laid down her garden shears, and stared reflectively across the stretch of lawn towards the house; she was standing in the long grass where the daffodils grew ‒ with the pale su
n full on her face, with the wind from the west swaying the long-stemmed blooms and the feathery branches of the trees. This was the house she had lived in all her life, except for those few years in California, and it was bound in every thread and fibre of her uneventful history. It was part of her, something accepted, and scarcely ever questioned; it represented her father as much as anything a man can leave behind him. Now she wondered if Steve had grown to hate it.

  It was the typical large house of the area ‒ built of white frame, of spacious and even graceful proportions, with the faded green shutters opening back from windows that gave a view of the town and the lake, and the rolling, wooded hills beyond. Her grandfather, Henry Carpenter, had built it as a young man, and it was here Henry’s only child, her father, Joe, had been born.

  Harriet took up the shears again, and for some minutes concentrated on cutting the flowers, piling great masses of them in the basket. Her father had not been an imaginative or exotic gardener, but he had cherished a fondness for the old-fashioned, conventional flowers. Harriet could remember, before the war, when the great stretch of lawn had been mown velvet-smooth right to the edge of the woods; each year since she had come back, the square had shrunk, and the long grass and the alien weeds had crept nearer to the house. The formal border was gone now, long ago overgrown, with only the irrepressible hollyhock and phlox coming back each summer, like old relatives who could recall better times. She still kept up the rose garden in front of the house, and the climbers still embraced the fat pillars of the porch. That was all ‒ the rest of the garden she had lost, just as she was losing the battle with the house itself, with the dust that gathered on the high cornices, with the worn rug on the stairs, with the old-fashioned bathrooms, and the furnace that used too much fuel. When Joe Carpenter had made his addition to his father’s modest house he had built generously, with many rooms to accommodate the swirling, restless life of the large family he had wanted. He had had only two children ‒ Harriet and his son, Josiah.

  Again Harriet’s shears fell idle, and again she straightened and looked towards the house. Her arms dropped limply by her sides. Josh should have been living here now, his own children filling the rooms, and learning from him the secret places of the woods that he had known. But Josh was dead, and his chance to have children was gone ‒ in Australia there was an Army nurse who should have married him, and come here and borne his children. Josh should have been here now instead of Steve.

  She turned away from the house, and went on cutting. She picked many more daffodils than she needed to fill the vases, moving with deliberate slowness against the flying minutes, against the inevitable hour of noon.

  Inside, the house felt chill, which meant their worn-out furnace was giving trouble again. From the laundry room she heard Nell muttering irritably to herself.

  She went upstairs and showered and dressed, and put on her make-up with great care. The new warm, red shade of lipstick suited her, she thought, but she wished that she had something new other than lipstick to wear to-day. It would have been nice to surprise Steve. Then she tugged the skirt of her suit a little to the side, and paused to pat her flat stomach approvingly ‒ at least she still fitted her six-year-old suit. She didn’t think she looked thirty-three, and the mother of two boys ‒ or was she glossing over that as well as the suit? Suddenly the thought struck her that she hadn’t been to New York for a long time, and what was considered youthful and smart in Burnham Falls was apt to look faded on Fifth Avenue. There would be a lot of women from New York there to-day. She turned away from the mirror hastily, and took up her bag and gloves.

  Downstairs she called to Nell.

  ‘I’m going now, Nell!’

  The old woman appeared in the kitchen door. She nodded approvingly. ‘Well, you do look nice, Miss Harriet. You’ll be a real credit to your dad to-day. You always have looked nice in that suit … He always knew what was right for you.’

  Harriet, about to open the back door, turned around and faced Nell. She laid her hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder. She said, half-jestingly, ‘Well, I did make a few decisions for myself …’

  ‘Yes ‒ but that suit he picked out for you. I remember it perfectly. You both went to New York, and he got that contract. That was the time …’ She broke off, frowning. ‘Well … it doesn’t matter now. People have been quick to forget about Joe Carpenter since the new company came in. But I don’t forget. I remember everything.’

  ‘We don’t forget my father, Nell. But the company had to come … you know that. We couldn’t hang on any longer.’

  Nell sniffed. ‘Mr. Carpenter would have found a way to hang on. He always did.’

  ‘Not this time,’ Harriet said; she turned, not wanting to discuss it any further with Nell. She opened the door, then paused. ‘If Gene and Tim get back before I do, tell them their father has promised to take them over to Sheraton to see about that fishing gear. Don’t let them go off somewhere.’

  Nell nodded. ‘All right ‒ I’ll keep them.’ She added, ‘Will hamburgers be all right for supper? I don’t expect you’ll want much after that fancy lunch they’ll give you.’

  ‘Hamburgers will be fine,’ Harriet said. She closed the door, and started along the flagstone walk to the garage.

  Nell Talbot had been in the Carpenter house for twenty-six years, and it was true that she remembered everything of even minor importance. She had been the daily help for two years before Claudia Carpenter died, and after that she had moved in to look after Josh and Harriet. She was Ted Talbot’s aunt, and the two were the last of a clan that had lived in Burnham Falls for four generations.

  Harriet opened the garage doors ‒ the extravagant white frame building that Joe had built to house his two cars, his saddle horse, and the array of gardening equipment he had collected. She smiled when she saw the car. She had explained to the boys the importance of the occasion and they had responded with a burst of family pride. The car had been lovingly polished; its dark surface mirrored every stud and nail in the walls.

  She touched the starter, and backed the car out, turning it to face down the drive to the road. For the first time now she had misgivings about using the Rolls to-day ‒ it would have been better to have Steve come and pick her up in the Chevy. Of course the townspeople were used to it ‒ ‘Joe Carpenter’s old Rolls’ ‒ but what would the strangers think of the old-fashioned convertible? Joe had seen it in the showroom window on Park Avenue one afternoon back in 1938. He hadn’t been able to afford it but he had bought it after only three minutes’ hesitation; he had driven it proudly until he died.

  The clock on the dashboard told her that she had a few minutes before she need leave; she lighted a cigarette and leaned back, relaxing.

  The land that stretched on each side of the house ‒ to the edge of the town on one side, and over to Route 40 on the other ‒ comprised a little more than four hundred acres. In her grandfather’s time it had been known as the Carpenter Farm. It had given Henry Carpenter a good living, and sent his son to college. The soil of this New York State farm was stony, and Henry, and his father before him, had had to blast boulders away to grow feed for their cattle; it wasn’t an easy living they won from that land. Henry’s son, Joe, had little inclination for farming, and he had recognised the era and the competition of the giant farming combines out West; he had no plans to work the land when he should inherit it. Instead he brought his degree in chemistry home from college, and had put it to work. Here in Burnham Falls he had started to manufacture shellac from his own formulas, and his first operation was carried on in one of his father’s barns. His product was good, and from the barn he had expanded into a plant, and had become one of the principal suppliers for the New England region. In giving employment to the men of the town, Joe had realised something of an unspoken dream ‒ that the decline of farming in his area should not entirely bring to an end the old way of life. His shellac plant had given employment to the sons of farmers who might have moved away; his weekly pay
cheques supported their families. The plant was called the Burnham Falls Shellac Company.

  Even in the early, struggling days of the plant, Joe had refused to sell off even an acre of his land to the week-end cottage dwellers from New York who were just beginning to make an appearance. He had held on to all of it, at first only by sacrifice and thrift, and then later because he could afford to hold it. It had been a luxury he had held on to until right at the end ‒ and then he had sold it all in one piece, leaving the house its island of five acres. Over by the stream the woods had been cleared again, copses moulded out of their thickness, earthmovers had come in and shaped the bunkers, sand traps and greens. Now it was the finest golf course in the county. Harriet had never been there. The townspeople welcomed it as a source of business, until they found that the contracts went to suppliers in New York. The local people were hired as help.

  To-day the celebration lunch would be held at the club.

  The clock on the dashboard ticked gently, and the hands moved up towards twelve. She squashed out her cigarette, and brushed the ash off her skirt. Out here, in the bright sunlight, the suit seemed even more out-of-date than it had been upstairs in her room. She really should have got something new for to-day, and be damned to the expense; she should have done it for Steve’s sake, even if the habits of eight or ten years were hard to shake. The suit had been an expensive one ‒ and her father had bought it for her six years ago, as Nell had said. They had been in New York together, and he was celebrating a contract that had just been renewed.

  Joe had been shrewd enough to see the effects of the giant combines, of mechanised farming on the small farms of his father’s day; but he had not known when his own time had come. In the plant at Burnham Falls he was using much man-power on outdated equipment, and he was paying them too well to leave much surplus to put into new tools and machinery. A businessman, he now bore small resemblance to the young man who had started the shellac factory in his father’s barn. He had placed his bid for the renewal of the contract confidently, because he had held it for over twenty years. But his bid had come in too high, and two days after that trip to New York he was told that the contract would not be signed. All that remained from the trip was the suit Harriet was now wearing. Afterwards the bill had come, and they had been a long time paying it.