Sweet Cassandra

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Would he ever marry her? Cassandra's happy homelife vanished with her mother's remarriage to a man Cass called the "General." He was an overbearing tyrant, used to his own way, who considered Cass a nuisance. Yet he did not hesitate to pass judgement on her boyfriends--and he absolutely forbid her to marry Kevin Martin. And her timid mother agreed with him. Leaving home would cut her off completely from her mother. But her love was too strong and Cass moved out, expecting to become Mrs. Kevin Martin. But then an accident postponed the marriage and Cass was left in limbo. She couldn't go back home, but neither could she live in sin...

Release date: May 29, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

It was Cassandra’s habit to get up in the morning and switch on her little radio so that she could hear some dance music and perform one or two neat steps across her bedroom while she pulled on her tights and put on her bra, then sluiced her face madly in cold water. She had always had a lovely skin and believed it was because she washed with soap and water. She used creams only as a foundation for make-up.

It was a misty May day, with the golden promise of sunshine. Cassandra (nobody ever called her that except her stepfather who was an appalling egotist and in her estimation spent his time in trying to be different from everybody else) was better known as Cass. She loved light music and was naturally of a cheerful disposition; in her way quite a philosopher for all her youth. She believed in the saying: Laugh and the world laughs with you. At the same time she was practical and had a strong streak of common sense. This had always been of great help to her—a sensible and cheerful person was better able to cope with life and Cass’s life, ever since her well-loved father died, had been far from happy.

This room, which was really a large attic with sloping roof on one side, and a dormer window, was to her more of a home than the rest of the house. The one room in which she could keep her own treasures; do as she liked; get away from the overbearing influence of the General—General Miles Woodbeare, D.S.O., whom her mother had married a year after Cass’s father died; that was ten years ago. And Cass might well have grown gloomy and discontented. Nothing had gone her way since she was adolescent, and she wasn’t altogether sure it had gone Mummy’s way; yet Mummy had seemed deeply in love with Miles Woodbeare at first. Even Cass who disliked him, could not deny that he was exceedingly handsome—all six foot two of him. Straight, soldierly, with thick prematurely grey hair, and still young-looking for his fifty years. But as Cass often thought with some bitterness, nobody knew what a supremely self-centred and even heartless being existed behind that classic face. Kevin—Cass’s boy-friend, who didn’t like the General any more than she did—said that he had seen through him right away; those blue eyes were so glacial and the lips, half-hidden by the thick grey moustache, too thin—almost cruel.

However, it was not of her stepfather Cass was thinking this morning as she danced around her little room—her holy-of-holies as she called it. Sometimes Cass had to admit that Mummy wasn’t interested in anybody but the General, and that she had taken second place to her stepfather during the last ten years. Before that, the family—Mummy, Daddy and herself, had seemed gloriously united.

At this moment it was Kevin who occupied all of Cass’s mind and heart. Kevin she was thinking of while she listened to a woman on the radio crooning that haunting Irish folk-song:

I know where I’m going

And I know who’ll go with me

I know who I love

But the de’il knows who I’ll marry.

“But it’s not only the devil—it’s me. I know who I’ll marry,” Cass muttered and stopped dancing around. She was wasting time. She quickly outlined her rather sweet full mouth with a new pale lipstick. It toned well with her caramel-coloured mini-skirt. With it she wore a white shirt and cardigan which Mummy had chosen and the General paid for (reluctantly, Cass was sure). He gave it to her for her twentieth birthday, a week ago. She liked herself in this caramel shade. It suited her long silky gold brown hair which she wore parted in the middle, and it fell on either side her oval face. Mummy did not mind this long hair. She and Cass were a bit alike, although Mummy was over forty now and her hair was cut short and curled.

Poor Mummy! Cass was sure she was scared of the General. He could be difficult when he was crossed. Cass, who still wanted to love her mother, was ashamed of her because she was so weak. Kevin had lately taken to calling her ‘Yes-dear’ because she seemed to spend her life being servile to the General.

“How’s ‘Yes-dear’ today?” Kevin would ask Cass when they met, and she would answer:

“Now, Kev, don’t be beastly. Mum can’t help it. If she said ‘No dear’, to him, he’d create.”

When Cass and Kevin fell in love, at a Charity Ball where they first met and danced together, Cass broke through the wall of reserve she had built around herself, and confided all her troubles to Kevin. His extraordinary gifts for listening with sympathy and understanding drew her to him. It was wonderful—after her life with a stepfather who neither listened nor sympathised with anyone.

Yes, Cass reflected this morning, I do know where I’m going now and I know who I’ll marry. It’ll be Kevin or nobody.

But when? How? With him, that wretched General, so dead against them. Now because she knew that it was expected of her, she ran down a flight of stairs and knocked on the door of their bedroom.

Her natural high spirits evaporated as she walked into the room. There was her stepfather in a smart dressing-gown in the centre of the double bed, spruce, shaved, full of dignity, while Mummy sat at a table beside him fully dressed and looking a little wan and tired. She had been up earlier to get the breakfast and carry up the tray. As usual, the General was ‘creating’. What about Cass did not know but outside the door she had heard the loud voice of authority declaiming.

“Good morning, darling,” Dorothy Woodbeare said timidly, as she turned what Cass called ‘her pathetic spaniel look’ upon her daughter.

The General did not waste time. As a military man he favoured direct attack. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses, stared at Cass with his cold blue eyes, and barked:

“I have been telling your mother finally and definitely, Cassandra, that I will not agree to this ridiculous marriage you want. I do not approve of your young man.”

Cass felt the hot colour scorch her cheeks then drain away. Her hands, clutching her white plastic bag, trembled suddenly. She no longer felt gay. This awful man seemed to have the knack of reducing her in a flash to depression and antipathy. Before she could control herself, she rose to the defence of Kevin.

“Well, really—what a beginning to anybody’s day! Why must you be so unpleasant about my future husband?”

“Future husband!” The General bellowed the words. “Did you hear that, Dorothy? She speaks of him as her future husband.”

“Oh, dear,” whispered Mrs. Woodbeare.

She was, as everybody knew, a weak character. With Cass’s father it had been all right because he was a kindly, charming man, who had managed to carry her along on the wings of his love. She had been happy with him. And they had both adored their little daughter. When poor David was alive, they had lived in the country near Brighton, where once David worked as a dental surgeon. They had led a peaceful sort of existence. There were never any fireworks or disputes. Now there seemed to be at least one, daily.

She had never meant it to be like this. After poor David died suddenly of a heart condition and left her badly off, she had thought it wonderful to have met and married a fine splendid-looking man like General Woodbeare. At the time of their meeting when they were all on holiday in Majorca, staying at the same hotel, Miles had seemed to adore her, and he had been so nice to little Cass. Dorothy felt sure he would make her a good father. He had been a confirmed bachelor. He was still in the Army. He seemed delighted with his attractive wife and a home life instead of barracks or Clubs. But it didn’t work out that way. Almost as soon as they returned from the honeymoon, Miles exhibited that other side of his nature. Dorothy soon learned that the handsome hearty soldier could also be a tyrant and a bully. A man of set ideas who wanted to rule the roost, found Cass a nuisance and was jealous of the time and love his wife gave to the child.

So it had ended in Cass and her mother gradually being separated from each other. Cass was sent to boarding-school and kept there whether she liked it or not. The General always upset or scared her and she was not as ready and willing as her mother to be bullied. She had more spirit. The two had clashed from the start.

When the General retired from the Army and bought this house in Putney, Cass during the holidays never really relaxed or was left alone with her mother. The General expected her to follow the strict routine he set for her, and to obey him. Dorothy knew full well that she had failed her daughter, but she could not bear scenes and kept out of the rows. Besides, she, too, was an egotist at heart. She wanted to keep her husband’s love and attention. In a cowardly way she sided with him against the young girl.

“Oh, dear,” she whispered again this morning, then, as usual, appealed to Cass: “Try and do as your father wants, dear, please.”

That put Cass into a resentful mood. She never did look on the General as her father. She addressed him by his military prefix.

“I’m sorry, General, sorry, that is, that you don’t like Kevin, but you are not fair to him—honestly!”

“Oh, he’s a nice enough boy, but I don’t think he’s what Father and I really want for you—” began Mrs. Woodbeare. The General waved a silencing hand in his wife’s direction, without looking at her, and interrupted:

“I’ll deal with this, Dorothy.”

Cass stood rigid and still while her stepfather loudly listed all the things he had against Kevin Martin.

He was only twenty-three—too young to marry. He hadn’t established himself anywhere in the world at anything. True he had a degree in English for which he had worked at Bristol University—but the lowest possible one. He was without real ambition, had so far taken only odd jobs—like being a salesman in a bookshop or some other temporary work, and now he thought he was a writer, the General added scathingly. No settled career or income. And what with that hair that needed cutting and the careless way he dressed, he was all that the General detested. He could not actually call Kevin a beatnik but he had no background, no prospects. How the devil did Cass think that he could support a wife?

Cass listened to all this, and more. Her lips took a mutinous curve down, but she stared back bravely at her stepfather’s scowling face.

She said:

“I haven’t much time to tell you what I really think of Kev. I’ve got a job and it takes me a long time to get to the Strand. But you really don’t know Kevin. He’s unusually clever. He gained an honours degree at Bristol University and he worked for it, didn’t he?”

“His aunt had to subsidise him from the time he left school,” argued the General. “And he hasn’t settled down to a proper regular job.”

“That isn’t his fault,” explained Cass, her eyes flashing indignantly. “We’ve had this all out before, and as I’ve told you, General, it’s unfair to criticize Kevin as you do. His parents were killed in an air crash. They didn’t leave him a sou. His aunt believed in him enough to help him over his education. And I believe in him enough to want to marry him. He has got ambition, and he will make a writer one day. He doesn’t want a settled job till he’s found his feet in the literary world. He writes good articles and he intends finally to write a book.”

“The rubbish they publish today,” sneered the General, putting on his glasses again and grimacing.

“Oh, you’re so prejudiced against Kev. I hate you!” cried Cass with unaccustomed heat. Her mother gasped.

“Cass!”

“It’s just as I would expect,” said the General, snorting. “Thanks to your upbringing, Dorothy, your daughter is not only impertinent to me but hopelessly prejudiced in favour of all the wrong things and the wrong people in the world today. These young upstarts think they know everything. They lack morals and manners and they—”

Cass, still daring, broke in:

“I haven’t time to listen to a diatribe against modern youth. If I miss my bus, I’ll lose my job.”

“Oh, Cass, do tell your stepfather you did not mean to be rude!” implored Mrs. Woodbeare.

Cass looked at her mother with a mixture of pity and scorn.

“I’d just like to say, Mummy, that I am what I am today scarcely because of your upbringing. For the last ten years I’ve been dictated to either by the headmistress of my school or by General Miles Woodbeare, D.S.O.”

“I will not have this impertinence!” thundered the General, and glared at the slim defiant young girl. Her beauty and grace and natural sweetness completely escaped him. He hated her for the way in which she stood up to him and what little money she had cost him over the years. He was a mean man and defiance was a thing Miles Woodbeare had never been able to tolerate.

After Cass swept out of the room, he turned upon his wife, who had risen to her feet and gone to search for a face tissue in order to wipe away her tears.

“For God’s sake, don’t start snivelling, Dorothy, you know how it annoys me. Do something more constructive than cry. Make that daughter of yours see sense.”

Mrs. Woodbeare came back, tissue pressed to her lips.

“Miles, you must remember, dear, that you can’t easily control a girl of Cass’s age. She’s twenty and has been earning her living for the last eighteen months, and she does give us a few pounds a week towards her keep, and after all, Mrs. Taylor’s girl, next door, is allowed to keep all her earnings for herself.”

“I don’t care a damn about the Taylors. Anyhow, Taylor is in the City, earning quite a bit of money and their house is twice as big as ours. They can afford a full-time gardener, instead of which I have to do all the mowing, etc. I have only my pension and small private means and you know what my taxation is.”

Dorothy sat down by the bed and tried to smile a little timid smile in order to soften up her exacting and frightening husband.

“Darling, you know how much I admire you and I hardly ever take Cass’s part, but these days girls and boys do seem to make their own lives. Parents can’t choose their daughter’s husband.”

“Do you want her to marry that mixed-up youth then? Do you call him a suitable husband in any way for your daughter? My step-daughter? I wouldn’t want to introduce Kevin Martin to anybody in my Club, or acknowledge him as a son-in-law.”

Mrs. Woodbeare felt compelled to protest.

“Darling, he isn’t as bad as that. He hasn’t got long hair like some—it’s only a bit long at the back, and they all wear it that way now, and even if he doesn’t dress like a military man, he isn’t freakish like some of them, is he?”

“Maybe not, but he has little to recommend him. Cass hinted last night that they don’t intend to wait. It’s outrageous—not even an engagement; no announcement in the Telegraph; no proper procedure; and no money. As I said just now, he hasn’t even got a proper job.”

“Oh, I agree with you, Miles, that it would be foolish, but—”

“But what?” he cut in irritably.

“They seem very much in love.”

“Oh, don’t be asinine, Dorothy; in love!”

She gave him a wistful look from large eyes that had lost much of their brilliance.

“We were once very much in love in Majorca, weren’t we?”

The General coughed, cleared his throat and crackled the pages of his daily paper.

“I dare say. I dare say. But we are at least sensible people who knew their own minds. These two are idiots. Anyhow I am not prepared to sit and listen to sentimental reminiscences at this time of the morning. All I can say is that it’s a pity Kevin Martin can’t be put into uniform and sent to the battlefront.”

“What battle front, dear?” asked Mrs. Woodbeare unhappily.

“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s talk of something else. We will have nothing more to do with her. She is behaving very stupidly. Most ungrateful after all I’ve done for her.”

Mrs. Woodbeare was near to tears again. With sudden uneasiness she cried:

“Whatever we do, don’t let’s drive her into leaving home and eloping with him.”

The General glared at her.

“Now, you’re not going to suggest Gretna Green or some such idiocy.”

“No, that’s out of date, but young people today do get married willy-nilly and magistrates let them. Cass hasn’t got my soft nature, really, Miles. She’s like her father. He was soft in one way but very determined in another and she’s the same. I’d hate her to leave home in anger.”

“She can go to the devil,” said the General whose temper this morning was at its worst. “And if she is foolish enough to defy us, she won’t see either of us again.”

Dorothy Woodbeare sat silent now, completely crushed. She supposed she had brought all this on herself by her second marriage. She could hardly bear the idea of seeing Cass go right out of her life. She wouldn’t see her grandchildren, if they had any, either. She would have nothing in her old age.

Now her tears really fell thick and fast, and in order not to anger Miles, she picked up the breakfast-tray and hurried out of the room.

“I just don’t think I can stand life at home much longer.”

Cass made this announcement after taking a long drink of Coke through a straw, straight from the tin she was holding. It was an exceptionally warm day now that the mists had cleared. She sat on a bench in Temple Gardens, with Kevin beside her, eating the remains of his ham roll. They often met and lunched here like this when the weather was fine. It was lovely near the shining Thames, and the song of the birds in the trees made them feel that they were in the country rather than the City of London. It was an easy meeting-place for both of them. Kevin at the moment was doing a temporary job in an advertising firm with offices in Chancery Lane. Cassandra worked for a goldsmith and silversmith firm in the Strand.

This was, for Cass, the loveliest hour of the day, but just now she looked rather mournfully at the sparrows hopping on the grass in front of them picking up the crumbs. She dabbed her lips with a tissue and sighed deeply.

“It’s always been the same since I grew up. My life’s been ruined by the General. If only darling Daddy hadn’t died and Mum hadn’t married that ghastly man.”

“I must say he is pretty ghastly,” agreed the young man beside her. “Perfect gentleman, ever-so-military and all correct, but there’s a nasty bit of flint where his heart ought to be.”

“Pity we can’t arrange a transplant for him,” said Cass with a sudden return of her old humour.

Kevin put an arm round her shoulders. She felt a lot better under that warm pressure, and better still when she heard him murmur:

“Poor sweet Cass—you’ve had one hell of a time! I lost my own parents when I was young but Aunt Millie was always good to me and I still miss the old girl. It’s just a pity she was living on an annuity which, of course, ended with her death. She always told me she would have nothing to leave—even the house she lived in was only . . .