Greater Love Hath No Man

Chapter 1-2

Father was correct. Oh, not about ruing the handful of weeks I had with Barbara, but that we were much too young.

It was difficult being a husband, and I came to realize that once I started University it would be even more difficult.

We took a small bedsit in Oxford, and a problem—a very minor one!—arose. Barbara had never had to cook or keep house or manage money. Before very long, I began looking for a job that would supplement the monies that Uncle Chas had left me.

The job situation after the war was not promising—men far more skilled than I were desperate for any kind of employment—but finally I found a position working in the bus depot, sweeping the floors.

As for Barbara, even if she had any marketable skills, I didn’t want my wife to work, and so she remained at home.

The evening before our third anniversary—we’d been married three weeks—we had a blow-out of a row. I’d found a silver bracelet with tinkling bells with which I would have liked to surprise her, but even though it wasn’t very costly, I could not afford to buy it for her.

Added to that was that I was tired and ravenous and there was no dinner on the table, and things quickly escalated.

“I’m bored, James. You don’t take me dancing or to the movies, and we don’t have enough money for me to go shopping. And why is there still rationing?” She pouted, an expression only a few weeks earlier I’d found charming.

Because for the first time in my life I didn’t have the wherewithal at my fingertips, I snapped, “Perhaps because we’re still paying your government back for funding the war? Look, Barbara. If we don’t have the money to go out in the evening, how do you expect us to have the money for you to buy fripperies? The money Uncle Chas left me barely covers the rent on this dreadful flat, and we’re fortunate the job I’ve got provides enough to feed us! What would you have me to do?”

“Go ask your father—”

“And give him the satisfaction of knowing I can’t care for my wife without his help? I won’t!” I didn’t even cringe at how childish that sounded.

“Then I’ll wire Daddy to send us some things.”

“No,” I said stonily. If I wouldn’t accept help from my own father, what made her think I’d accept help from hers?

Barbara, however, appeared completely oblivious, as she wailed, “Oh, no, I can’t! He doesn’t even know we got married.”

“Barbara! You told me—”

“Mrs Parks thought it would be best to wait a while. Daddy would have said no.” Her eyes welled up with tears, looking like rain-drenched violets, and my heart melted. “I wanted to be married to you, James. Didn’t you want to be married to me?”

“Of course I did, darling! Please don’t cry!” My ire melted as well, and I took her in my arms. As usual when we touched each other, everything else fell by the wayside, and we spent the night having a glorious time making it up to each other.

And the next day, after receiving my pay packet, I went looking for flowers for my wife.

My wife. I did like the ring of that.

And since I was slightly more familiar with Oxford than Barbara, I went shopping for something for our evening meal as well. While our bedsitter had no kitchen, I’d managed to smuggle up a gas ring.

A Rolls Royce was idling a couple of doors down, and I regarded it thoughtfully for a moment. It was decidedly out of place, but when I approached to ask the driver if I could be of any assistance, he gave me a bored stare, a flat “No,” and rolled up the window.

Odd. But my wife was waiting for me in our bedsitter, and I shrugged, let myself into the building, and climbed to the second floor.

I unlocked our door and called, “All right, darling, I’ve got the makings for bangers and mash. Time to flip a coin to see who gets to burn them tonight.”

“James…”

Our bedsitter was so tiny it only took a step or two to bring me to the room from which her voice came. I stood in the doorway, ignoring the shabby furniture that had come with the flat.

Barbara was a trifle nervous. Seated in our matchbox of a drawing room-c*m-bedroom was a stocky man in a business suit. “This is my father.” It was easy to see where she had gotten her violet eyes.

“Mr. Kendall, how do you do, sir? I’m James Trevalyan.” I realised I still had the bag of groceries in one hand and the bouquet of flowers in the other. I stuffed the flowers into the bag and extended my hand to my father-in-law.

“Trevalyan.” He rose and shook my hand.

“He’s here to take me home, James.”

My mouth went dry, and I looked around for a flat surface on which to place the bag, using that as an excuse to do some furious thinking. How could he have found out about our marriage? “Darling?”

“I swear I didn’t wire Daddy!” However, she did look a trifle guilty.

“Barbara?”

“I…well, I wrote to Bootsy. She’s my best friend, and I swore her to complete secrecy!”

“It took a week and a half for the news to reach us,” her father remarked dryly.

“But—”

“I’m sorry! I just wanted to share the news.”

“Barbara. I want to talk to your…to James alone for a moment. Go powder your nose, please.”

“Daddy…”

“Please.”

The glance she sent my way was filled with regret, and she left our flat. Mr Kendall scowled.

“Where’s she going?”

“You told her to powder her nose. The toilet is down the hall.”

“I don’t know what that woman I hired to chaperone my daughter could possibly have been thinking.” His scowl became even fiercer.

I straightened. I was a Trevalyan when all was said and done, and I wasn’t about to let him think he could intimidate me. “Sir, Barbara is my wife.” I wondered how long her father had been here, and I wondered what he had been saying to her.

“She’s underage. She is not Juliet, and you, young man, are not Romeo.” Mr Kendall stared at me broodingly. “She hasn’t finished high school.”

“We love each other, sir.”

“You have no money to speak of. My daughter is not used to this kind of lifestyle.”

“I’ve a job.”

“Working pushing a broom. Barbara has told me.”

“It will only be until I finish University—”

“Which you haven’t even started yet. And look at this place you have her living in! No kitchen, and it doesn’t even have its own bathroom. That one down the hall—you have to share it with how many others?”

“We’re doing quite well, Mr Kendall.” I gritted my teeth. “We have enough to get by.”

“Only barely. When was the last time you took her dancing or to the movies? Bought her a new dress or a trinket? She’s a young girl who deserves those things.” He took a turn about the room before taking a seat again. He leaned forward, his hands between his knees.

“How did you know…?”

“She told me of the row you had last night.”

A flush heated my cheeks. One did not air one’s family linen, even though Mr. Kendall might be, in one sense of the word, family.

“Her things are already packed—”

“What, already?”

“—and are in the car.”

“That Rolls?”

Mr. Kendall looked surprised, but I saw no need to inform him that Trevalyan males were raised to be observant. Among other things.

“I know your parents object to this marriage also.”

“I beg your pardon? What have they to do with this, sir?” Although I was afraid I knew.

“It wasn’t just Barbara’s letter to her friend that brought me here.”

I should have known. I recalled Father’s ire, the look on Mother’s face. No, they would not sit by idly, not when it came to the Pennington heir, although I couldn’t say they would do the same for my sister. For a moment I thought sadly of Pamela. Two little boys had been lost before my sister’s birth, and I’d always had the impression her arrival was a disappointment to them.

“Let her go while there is still caring and fondness between you. I’m not an unreasonable man, James, and neither is your father.” He rose to put a gentle hand on my shoulder, and as much as I wanted to shrug it off, I didn’t, reminding myself that I was a gentleman and would behave as such. “If you will agree to her returning home with me now, why then, in two years’ time, when she turns eighteen, and if you are both of the same mind, we will not stand in the way of your marriage. I’ll even fund your remaining years at college.”

The latch lifted, and Barbara entered.

“Darling…”

She came to me and pressed a kiss to my cheek, and the flowery perfume she favoured filled my nostrils. Forever after I would associate the fragrance of mimosa with her.

“I’m sorry, James. Daddy is right. I thought being married would be…” She hesitated, and I wondered if the term she was looking for was “fun.” But the word she wound up choosing was, “…different, but you’re away all day, and I’m home all alone.” There was remorse in her voice but also relief. “I’ll write you, I promise.”

“Of course, darling.” My throat was so tight I could barely get the words out, and my eyes burned.

“And you’ll see. Two years will fly by.”

“Of course.”

It wasn’t until she was gone that I remembered the flowers. I stared at them for a moment, then picked them up out of the shopping bag and tossed them in the bin.

* * * *

As she’d promised, Barbara wrote to me. The letters came every few days at first, and I’d tear open the envelopes and eagerly read page after page of words describing how she missed me, missed my kisses and how we’d hold each other after we’d made love.

I’d sit down to answer immediately, describing how I wanted nothing more than to kiss her and run my fingertips over her lovely body, and how, soon, we’d be together again. Just seven hundred days more, darling!

Before long, however, the letters were arriving every other week, telling me really very little. I didn’t know the friends of whom she wrote, and the films she’d seen in the cinema wouldn’t reach this side of the Atlantic for quite some time, if they did at all. She hadn’t particularly cared for the post-war films being made here at home, never having quite caught on to our sense of humour. At any rate, I couldn’t afford to go to the cinema, so beyond mention of the occasional odd item I’d find on my job—which I couldn’t imagine of interest to her—there wasn’t very much for me to write back about.

I took to counting down the days, hoping it would bring us closer together.

Six hundred and seventy-three days, darling!

Usually she would respond to a statement like that with little hearts all over the page, but this time, it was as if she hadn’t noticed.

Eventually, the letters dropped off completely. Oh, I wasn’t much better. Absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but in this case, it seemed not.

As little as I relished the fact, I knew there had to be young men who were as drawn to her violet eyes as I’d been and who could afford to shower her with all the things I wasn’t in a position to give her.

Why hadn’t I talked to Barbara?

Green-eyed jealousy possessed me, to be gradually replaced by despair.

* * * *

University started, and I discovered how difficult things could be. I had even less time to write to my wife. Indeed, I was unable to ponder how different things might be if Barbara were with me—I went from lectures to the library to study and from there to my job. There was no money to spend at the local pub with friends, and once home from my job, I barely had time to eat before I tumbled into bed, asleep before my head hit the pillow, to begin the cycle again in the morning.

I refused to ask Father for assistance, though. In two years, my wife would be at my side once more, and I kept that thought in mind as much as I could.

* * * *

Three months after Barbara returned to California—six hundred forty days before we were to be reunited—I received an official letter I had not expected: from the law firm of Lawson, Bauer, and Wells, it notified me that my wife had taken up residence in the American city of Reno. The result was my marriage to Barbara Kendall had been dissolved.

Later that day, while I sat in the bedsitter with my head buried in my hands, brooding over the inconvenient American wife I no longer had, a neighbour tapped on the door.

“Your da is on the telephone, Mr James.” It had been a nine day wonder that a baron’s son resided on the second floor, but even afterward, my fellow tenants treated me well.

A lifetime of courtesy came to the fore. “Thank you, Mrs Peabody.” I pushed myself to my feet and went down to the phonebox in the street. I picked up the receiver. “Good evening, Father. I trust you and Mother are well.” I hadn’t spoken to him since Barbara’s father had come to take her home.

“Yes, yes, we’re fine. How are you?”

“No longer married, it appears.”

“We’re aware.”

“How is it you’re aware, Father?”

“That isn’t important.”

“Isn’t it?” I wanted to throw something. He was treating me like a child. “I have no doubt you and Mr Kendall got together on this, and I won’t forgive either of you.”

“Don’t be childish, James.”

“Hardly childish, sir, since between the two of you, you’ve succeeded in breaking your offspring’s hearts.”

He cleared his throat. “I will reinstate your allowance, so you no longer need that…that job.”

Of course. It would never do for Pennington’s heir to appear to be on the dole. I wanted to throw his offer back in his face.

“And since your courses have started, you may keep your flat if you choose. I’ll see your allowance covers it.”

“It’s a bedsitter,” I corrected. “You’re too kind, sir.”

“Splendid, splendid.” Did he truly not notice how droll my tone was? “Your mother and I expect to see you—”

“I’m afraid I shan’t be available to visit for quite some time, sir. My courses, you understand.” I wished I could hear him grind his teeth over the line, because meanly, I would take some pleasure in that, but of course Father was too controlled for such an action.

“In that case, during the holidays.” Before I could reject his offer, he continued. “Your sister misses you and would like to see you.”

Dammit. “Very well, sir. I’ll see you all then. Please tender my respects to Mother and tell Pamela I’m looking forward to seeing her in a couple of months.”

“Yes.” The satisfaction in his voice saw me desirous of striking something quite hard. “Goodbye, James.”

“Goodbye, sir.”