Spider Light(25)
When Don reached his teens, people said he was spoilt and a bit selfish and lazy, but that often happened to the children of wealthy parents. Donna knew this to be untrue and mostly due to sheer jealousy. Don was not spoilt and he was not really selfish or lazy. You might perhaps say that different rules applied to him, and you might also add that you did not apply the rules for a carthorse to a thoroughbred.
The simile of a thoroughbred pleased her–Don was sleek and aristocrat-looking, he was exactly like a thoroughbred. His hair was fair and silken, and he was slender and supple. In the summer holidays he lay in the garden of their house, just wearing cotton shorts. Donna usually joined him, pretending to read, but secretly watching him, and seeing how his skin gleamed with health. Once or twice he had asked her to rub sun-tan lotion over his back–he could never reach it all himself and he liked his tan to be even. His skin felt satiny and warm under Donna’s hands, and the scent of the lotion and the sun’s warmth and the masculine scent of his body blurred together in her mind. She spent a long time rubbing the lotion into his back, and when it was done she waited for him to say he would turn on his back so she could rub the lotion on his front, but he did not.
Lack of money was not something Donna ever thought she would have to cope with, but when she was eighteen and Don was fifteen, their parents died and they had to cope with it very abruptly indeed.
Donna was never sure, afterwards, how they got through that time. She had been grief-stricken, of course she had, but Don had been in pieces. He cried for hours over their parents’ death, flinging himself on his bed, not bothering to hide the sound of his sobbing. He pushed Donna away when she tried to put her arms round him, thinking this was the one time they should cling to one another.
But Don had not wanted Donna’s arms. Leave him alone, he’d said. His life was in tatters, and he would never get over this, not if he lived to be a hundred. He wanted to die in this bed, now, tonight; he knew he would never be happy again. Dramatic. Even melodramatic if you wanted to be truthful. He had always been like that and he always got over it, but it had torn Donna apart to hear his grief.
And then within days–days!–of the double funeral, they had been dealt a second blow. Their father, it seemed, had been teetering towards bankruptcy, and his business–outwardly so prosperous–had been on the verge of collapse for months.
Donna listened to the solicitors who came to the house to talk to them, and had at first simply stared in blank incomprehension. No money? But that was utter nonsense; of course there was money, there was a great deal of money. Their father had been extremely wealthy–everyone knew that, said Donna. They had this house, cars, ritzy holidays. Her mother bought expensive clothes and jewellery–it was a joke within the family that even mundane things like tights or face flannels went on the Harvey Nichols account. Donna and her brother had both been to costly boarding schools; Don, only fifteen, was still at his school, of course. There were trust funds, investments, fat share portfolios, many of them intended to safeguard her and Don’s future. It could not be right that there was no money.
But apparently it was right. As well as there being no money, there were a number of debts and business obligations to be met. There were salaries due to the people in her father’s company which had to be paid, said the solicitors solemnly. This house would have to be sold, and the cars and most of the furniture would probably have to go as well–there were some quite valuable pieces and one or two good paintings. There would have to be a proper valuation, of course; they would see to that as soon as possible. Unfortunately the house was heavily mortgaged and the bank would probably call in the debt fairly soon, but something might be salvaged.
Well no, Donna and Don would not be thrown homeless into the world–of course they would not, said the solicitors, shocked at such an idea. A little money would have to be squeezed from somewhere, and a suitable place found for them to live. Unless there was anyone in the family who might take them in? Ah, there was not. No relatives? Oh dear, that was a pity. Well yes, they did appreciate that Donna was eighteen, and therefore an adult…Oh yes, she would almost certainly be regarded as Don’s legal guardian. And a modest house, or perhaps a little flat would somehow be managed for the two of them.
Donna did not want these stupid smug men squeezing out money to buy a modest house or a flat for them to live in, and she did not want them computing income and selling things or knowing all the details of her father’s financial ineptitude. But she did not let them see this, and somehow she managed to control the cold furious rage that welled up inside her. She asked if her mother had been aware of the situation, and the solicitors hemmed and hawed and avoided her eye, and said, Well, possibly she might have, but they were not here to judge.
It was instantly obvious to Donna that her mother had known all along. She had known all about the mounting debts and the tangled finances, and Donna, realizing this, hated her mother very fiercely indeed for continuing to expect expensive holidays and first-class travel and lavish entertaining. She hated her father as well, for continuing to provide all those things, and for not giving so much as a hint to Donna or Don. When Donna thought about her father’s deceit and her mother’s selfish extravagances she knew she would never forgive either of them, and she was very glad they were dead.
She had politely told the solicitors that she and her brother would be perfectly all right. No, they did not need anyone’s help, thank you so much. They would manage. They did not want anyone finding somewhere for them to live; they would find their own place. Donna had already left school and would look after Don, who must, of course, finish his education. Two more years that would be.