sweat off my body and the aches out of my muscles. I stood there I don’t know how long with my head back and my eyes closed.
And when at last I opened my eyes I saw through the steamed-up glass of the shower cubicle a figure standing outside.
I said, “Pal, is that you?” and opened the door.
It was Pal all right, but Pal Junior. He was standing there naked, jerking off.
We just looked at each other for a long moment. Then he flung himself at me, forcing me back into the cubicle.
What would have happened then I don’t know, but fortunately he was already so roused that his efforts to force himself between my legs brought him to climax. I felt him go into spasm against me. He was screaming out my name, whether in pleasure or frustration I don’t know. I pushed him away with all my strength and he stood there, still firing come at me like he wished it were bullets.
I lost it then for a while and began to yell at him, incoherently at first, but eventually I got back control. I grabbed a towel around me and I told him he was a disgusting little shit and this was one piece of behaviour his father wasn’t going to be able to ignore. I’d stopped being frightened now-he certainly wasn’t a sexual threat any more-and even as I spoke I found myself thinking I sounded like some outraged doyenne of the League of Purity. But I didn’t know how else to deal with the situation.
Pal was much more self-possessed.
He just stood there smiling and said, “You do that and I’ll tell Dad that what really happened is you’ve been coming on to me and you got pissed because I turned you down.”
“And you think he’ll believe that?” I demanded.
“Why not? I’m a lot nearer your age than he is, aren’t I?” he replied. “In fact, come on, admit it, there’s a bit of truth in there somewhere, isn’t there? Don’t pretend you’ve never wondered how it would be with me. So how about it some time? Keep it in the family, eh?”
I ran at him then, wanting to scratch the sneering complacency out of his face. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but he didn’t retaliate, just ducked out of my reach and turned and left. A few minutes later I heard him go down the stairs and I ran to the bedroom window and watched him stroll off down the drive. He even turned to wave at me!
At that moment I was absolutely resolved to tell Pal Senior everything, but by the time he came home that evening, I had weakened. Faced with such a conflict of stories, how would he react? Would he recall the way I’d taken his son’s part against him in the matter of the university course and let this sow the seed of doubt? Anything but total belief on his part I couldn’t tolerate.
He was in an angry mood when he got home, which made my silence the easier. After years of being master of all he surveyed at the plant, and first mover of all activity there, he grew increasingly frustrated each time he found himself being cut out of the loop. This was driving a wedge between us too. Tony had stayed on in Mid-Yorkshire to oversee the transition period at A-P’s new acquisition and I’d carried on as his PA after my marriage, thinking it was short term till he went back to the States. But for one reason or another after a couple of years Tony seemed to have settled into the job of head man at Ash-Mac’s on a more permanent basis and had even got himself a house out in the sticks at Cothersley. I carried on working for him but only after I made it quite clear looking after Helen was my first concern. Tony said no problem, he’d have sacked me if he thought I wouldn’t put Helen first, which was sweet. And for a while, Pal had seemed cool with the idea, but as his frustration with being side-lined as he saw it grew, I think he started resenting his feeling that I was a lot closer to the action at Ash-Mac’s than he was .
So all in all it seemed better to keep my mouth shut and take even greater care to avoid letting Pal Junior in striking distance.
This proved easier than I’d hoped. He announced he wanted to spend most of his pre-Cambridge vac doing a modern version of the Grand Tour with some chums. His father fulminated about the expense but I chipped in that, in view of his degree course, this could be regarded as useful preparation.
So he disappeared, Cressida went off to stay with a school-friend, and I had a lovely summer with Helen.
For the next eighteen months, with Pal Junior up at Cambridge and Cressida in her school sixth form, things got a bit easier, but only because they spent less and less time at Moscow House. When they were home, their campaign against me was pretty unrelenting. Its form had changed. No malicious practical jokes. In their father’s presence they were coldly polite. Out of it they treated me as an ignorant foreigner untouched by either learning or culture who needed to be talked to in words of one syllable and who nursed an illicit passion for Pal Junior .
But familiarity breeds indifference even to offence, and I let all this roll off me, helped, as I say, by the knowledge that I never had to put up with it for long.
Then came last Christmas. They were at their worst. Their father was immersed in one of his deepest bouts of resentment at what he called the mismanagement of Ash-Mac’s, which, in my view, amounted to little more than a pig-headed refusal to admit he’d sold the company and finally move on. Some of this resentment seemed to spill over on to me and the children, sensing the barrier his presence normally created was lowered, were merciless. Even when they went back to college and to school in January, things didn’t get much better. My husband too now treated me with a cold reserve which made life very uncomfortable. So when Tony told me that Ashur-Proffitt were having a big party in Hartford at the end of March to celebrate fifty years of trading and invited me to attend, I jumped at the chance to get away. It seemed silly to fly all that way just for a weekend, and in any case I really wanted a longer break from Moscow House. The only trouble was Helen, who got deeply upset when I told her I might be away for a couple of weeks, so in the end I got this great idea of taking her with me and showing her a bit of the States. It meant taking her out of school but with the Easter holiday not far ahead, it wasn’t going to make very much difference. Pal Senior reacted with indifference. He seemed to be totally immersed in some scheme he was hatching to get back some of his old power at Ash-Mac’s. What he thought he could do, God knows. I tried to remind him that legally he was out of the loop with no way back in, but he wasn’t listening. A couple of weeks ago he took off on some mystery trip to London, and that same afternoon I heard the front door open and when I went to see who it was, I found myself looking at Pal Junior.
He pretended to be surprised that his father wasn’t there. Maybe he was. But I was taking no chances. Helen, who had a bit of a cold, went to bed early and I followed her not long after, locking my door behind me.
Helen’s room was next to mine and I could hear her coughing. I must have fallen asleep for I awoke just as the clock on the landing struck midnight. There was no sound of coughing from Helen’s room but I thought I heard her door close. After a while I got up and went to check. Her bed was empty. I went out on to the landing thinking she’d probably gone to the bathroom when I heard a noise downstairs. I went down the stairs cautiously-I hadn’t forgotten Pal Junior was home-but when I heard the piano in the music room, I was sure it must be Helen. She was the only one in the family with any real musical talent and the notes being picked out were the opening bars of her party piece “Of Foreign Lands and People” from Schumann’s Childhood Scenes. So I just walked straight into the darkened room, saying something like, “Hi, darling, it’s only me. Couldn’t you sleep then?”
And Pal Junior’s voice replied, “With you in the house? No way, darling.”
He’d been drinking, but not enough to affect his movement. He was off the piano stool and round behind me, shutting the door, before I could even feel concerned. But when he grabbed hold of me, I felt concerned. I was only wearing the short T-shirt I sleep in and he pushed this up and pulled me to him. He was fully clothed but that didn’t stop me feeling his huge excitement. He was trying to kiss me. I wanted to shriek but with only Helen in the house, what good would that do? I tried to talk to him, but he was beyond reach of words. He released his grip with one hand so that he could undo his belt and push his trousers down. I twisted out of his other arm and scrambled away from him but I fell over the stool and crashed down on the open keyboard. The noise was tremendous. It seemed to excite him even more. He threw me to the floor, face down, and straddled me, saying something like, ‘Prefer it this way, do you? Suits me!’ And he’d got his pants undone by now and God knows what would have happened. But just then I heard Helen’s voice calling, “Kay? Kay? Is that you?”
She had been in the bathroom, I realized later, and now she was descending the stairs, attracted by the discord from the piano.
Pal paused. I said, “For God’s sake, it’s your kid sister. You want her to see you like this?”
He rolled off me.
