Tears stung her eyes. “Sorry. I apologise. I am grateful that you helped me this morning,” she blurted. She gave him her contrite face: watery eyed and imploring. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“Very well. I have to get to work. Lines, Gemma. A hundred of them on my desk at Blythewood by the time I’m home tonight: I trust my Master and will be respectful to him at all times. Got it?” He stared down at her.
“Yes, Sir.” She tried hard not to sigh.
Corporal punishments were no longer an option for Jason, but he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to correct her with humiliating childish lines, something to calm her down. A thought crossed her mind, and her lips curled upwards slightly.
“Handwritten, Gemma. I saw that.”
She spent the rest of Friday Christmas shopping with only Gibson to keep her company. It reminded her that in a few weeks she would have a baby in a pram and a new nanny for company. She arrived at Blythewood with enough time to see the housekeeper before she left for the weekend. They discussed menus for Saturday and Sunday. Gemma’s brother, John, and wife, Andrea, would be visiting. They were recovering from the sadness of a recent miscarriage. Andrea had conceived not long after their wedding in September, which had been a beautiful day, autumnal and pleasantly mild.
~
Gemma’s parents loved the church. A Norman structure filled with fresh flowers, and the sun, for a brief poignant moment, shone through the stained glass above the altar of the small parish church.
At the hotel before the ceremony, waiting for the car to collect her, Gemma’s mother kept touching her waist, adjusting the bridesmaid dress with trembling fingers. Below her belly button, a bulge, not rotund, but the ambiguous rise of a belly that confused people into wondering if she was pregnant or not.
Her original bridesmaid dress had had to be abandoned and replaced with a custom-made one. Her mother remained in a state of perpetual excitement about the baby, her grandchild. Gemma rang at least once a week with an update.
The wedding day went without a hitch. Andrea glided gracefully up the aisle with her father, her chosen ivory dress sensational and her red hair bouncing about. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. The biggest surprise for Gemma came not from the happy bride and groom, but Jason. Being a church wedding there were hymns, and her husband sang. She listened to him deliver the lyrics with little reference to the hymn sheet, as if his private school upbringing had been reactivated without his noticing. A divine voice, as his mother had once told Gemma. A clear, unwavering tenor with an easy pitch and tone. She gazed up at him for a while, agog, and he caught her eyes. His ears turned an unusual pink.
“Don’t stop. Please,” murmured Gemma and returned her gaze to the minister in the pulpit. She didn’t want to ruin the moment. She composed a vision of him singing lullabies to their baby. Perhaps, if she weren’t in the room, he would do it for the child, if he didn’t want to sing for her.
John didn’t stop smiling all day. To Gemma, he looked like a younger version of their father, except with broader, more youthful shoulders. Conversations with John in the weeks before the wedding had been full of positive news. His plans for starting up his gardening business had transformed from the back of an envelope into something tangible and feasible. Jason’s suggested business advisor buoyed up John, and he’d worked hard at filling in all the gaps in his plan. From time to time, he sent Jason a copy to review, and Jason would return it with constructive comments, much to Gemma’s delight. John’s grand scheme was shaping up, and he hoped to resign from his existing job in the New Year.
The wedding reception was low key. A buffet in the barn with a small disco. Gemma danced, and since it was a family affair, there was no reason for Jason to baulk at her frivolity. She danced with her brother, the best man, cousins, uncles, and, lastly, with her father. She requested a melodic slow waltz and her father beamed throughout. She w
anted to cry, having him hold her so close for the first time in years; instead she rested her head on his chest, and he whispered, “Well done,” in her ear.
By the end of the evening, she felt shattered and her feet had grown in size. She took refuge in a seat next to Jason while her more energetic relatives carried on cavorting and drinking. Having been banned from drinking alcohol, other than the champagne to toast the happy couple, she discovered she didn’t miss the intoxicating effects. Being pregnant and in the company of Jason, nothing else mattered. Her family, her second cousins in particular, failed to hide their curiosity about her husband, pointing their fingers at him and nudging one another as he sat in his tailored morning suit. Gemma made a concerted effort not to gloat or appear smug, as it wasn’t her special day.
A few cousins approached, after downing a few pints, and asked personal questions.
Had he met the prime minister? Yes, came the answer, at a civic function attended by many others.
The Queen? No, he would be honoured, but, as yet, he hadn’t been invited to tea.
Gemma suppressed a giggle because Jason was a closet Republican, which was at odds with his educational upbringing.
Did he know how to fly? No, he would rather have a professional pilot.
Why did he not live abroad in a tax haven? Because he was British and proud of his heritage.
Would he go on Dragon’s Den? No, but if he ever had done, he would give them a hard time, or else where was the fun?
Gemma ducked her head, seeing the gleam in his eye when he made his last remark. She could envisaged the inquisitor at work, pressing the poor souls for facts and figures, belittling their feeble attempt to impress him then dismissing them with no compunction.
She took off her shoes in the car while Jason drove them to their nearby hotel. The relief, in having the exhausting day finished exhibited itself in a long mellow sigh, which slipped out of her lips while Jason patted her leg. The hotel was mediocre by their standards, but suitable for late-night, gentle lovemaking—Jason on top and Gemma sunk below in a blissful state.
Andrea’s miscarriage came out of the blue. The newlyweds hadn’t announced Andrea’s pregnancy. Seven weeks gone and she bled out one night, spending the next day in hospital, recovering. Gemma didn’t know what to say to Andrea as her own bump grew. Was she offering platitudes instead of real sympathy? Level-headed Andrea reassured Gemma she was dealing with it all—she didn’t cry down the telephone. Their loss made Gemma worry about her own pregnancy. Having the 3D scan comforted her, and she stared long and hard at the image, trying to convince herself her baby was fine.
~
Sitting at Jason’s desk, Gemma found a sheet of paper and began to write her lines. The tedium set in. She thought of her idea to use a computer and it reminded her how in a previous job, when she was bored, she would write words or lines in different screen fonts to spice up the document. Once finished, she would switch it all to the standard generic font, but, for a short spell, while she was being creative, she would work her way down the list of available fonts and experiment.
Finding a pen on Jason’s desk and with her ingenious idea in mind, she wrote the first line in block letters. The next in lower case. She mixed the next line up with joined-up or printed letters. Then she got into the spirit of it and tried sloping in different directions. With an italic ink pen, which she found in her hobby room, she wrote long, sloping letters. She mirror wrote some lines and another lot upside down, switching to columns on the back of the sheet for a couple of dozen inverted lines. She drew letters, curving them into patterns and coloured in different parts. To finish, Gemma did the last line in code and added the key at the bottom. A simple alphabetical-letter swap, the kind school children would reproduce.
She left the pages on his desk and went away quite happy to make the evening meal with the baby kicking in conjunction with her positive mood.