The Nelson Touch

Chapter Six

Kurt scrambled off the train, paused long enough to help an elderly woman who had been chatting to him for the last hour after spying his uniform, then headed down towards the ticket barrier. The ticket inspector took one look at his uniform and waved him through without even bothering to check his ticket, making Kurt smile inwardly. Who would have thought he could avoid paying for a ticket just by wearing his uniform?

Outside, he looked around for the family car and saw… nothing. There were dozens of mums and dads and children running around — more than normal, suggesting that those who could avoid it had relocated themselves away from the city — but no sign of his wife. Or of his children and the nanny, for that matter. He hesitated, knowing they could be late, then reached for his terminal and switched it to the civilian network. There was no message from any of them.

He paused, then tapped their number into the terminal. There was a long pause, then the phone started to ring. It was several minutes before it was picked up, giving Kurt just enough time to worry. He loved his children and his imagination provided far too many unpleasant possibilities that could have happened to them.

It was Penny, his daughter, who answered. “Hello?”

“Penny,” Kurt said, relaxing slightly. “I’m at the train station. Is your mother on the way?”

“I don’t think so,” Penny said. She sounded surprised to hear from him. “Dad, I didn’t even know you were coming home.”

Kurt felt cold water pouring down his spine. “Well, I am,” he said. He’d sent Molly a message telling her he was coming home for a brief period of leave. “I’ll try to call her, then get a taxi if she doesn’t answer.”

Worried, he tapped in Molly’s number. There was no answer. He hesitated, cold suspicion running through his mind, then switched off the Caller ID and tried again. This time, he received an automated message stating that Molly’s number didn’t accept callers without Caller ID. Unsurprised — Molly had been harassed as a younger girl and never quite gotten over it — but annoyed, he turned and started to walk towards the taxis. The cabbie he found chatted aimlessly as they drove out into the suburbs, where his family lived.

He paid the cabbie and stepped out of the cab, then paused as the door burst open to reveal Penny. She practically ran down the garden path to give him a hug, then remembered she was supposed to be a sulky teenager and let go quickly. Kurt patted her on the back, then inspected her hair. She’d dyed it white and black, creating a striking look that, combined with her clothes, reminded him far too much of some of the girls from Sin City. But at least she still looked fresh-faced.

“Come on inside,” she urged, quickly. “I put the kettle on.”

Inside, the house felt almost empty. Kurt couldn’t help feeling worried as Penny pottered about making tea, even though it was a great improvement on her behaviour before he’d gone to war. He’d read the reports from the expensive private school — thankfully, his share of the prize money ensured he wouldn’t have to take his kids out of school — and noted a very definitive improvement in both her marks and her conduct. Clearly, the new nanny was making a great impression on his daughter. But where was Molly?

“Percy is at the Combined Cadet Force,” Penny explained, as she put a mug of tea in front of him. “They’re actually talking about forwarding his records to Sandhurst.”

“He’ll hate that,” Kurt predicted. The last he’d heard, Percy had his heart set on flying starfighters, just like his dad. But competition for slots in the Academy, even now, was still fierce. It would be at least another year before the facilities were significantly expanded, allowing them to take in far more trainees. “But I’m glad to hear he has other prospects.”

Penny nodded, then sat down facing him. “I was hoping to talk about my own future,” she said. “There’s an offer open for students to go to a French Finishing School.”

Kurt bit down on a laugh. “I thought you hated French,” he said. “You certainly picked quite enough fights with the teacher.”

His daughter flushed. “It’s Gayle,” she said. “She actually taught me how to put the words together, rather than telling everyone that ‘the pen of my aunt is in the garden.’”

“Good for her,” Kurt said. He leaned forward. “And do you think we can afford it?”

Penny hesitated. “You’re rich,” she said, finally. “And I…”

“Money is not to be wasted,” Kurt said, firmly. “And do you need a finishing school?”

He saw the rebellious look in her eyes and sighed, inwardly. He’d been a moderately successful investment banker, but he’d been nowhere near as wealthy as some of the other parents who sent their kids to private school. Percy and Penny had been confronted by children whose parents could afford to give them vast amounts of pocket money per week, enough to enjoy the latest designer clothes or electronic toys and games. He understood just how badly they resented being poor, at times… but he wasn’t about to waste money, just so they could keep up with their classmates. It helped that he simply didn’t have the money.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Penny muttered.

“To do what?” Kurt asked. “What do you want to be when you… get out of school?”

Penny hesitated. “I keep having different ideas,” she admitted. “I wanted to be a doctor, then a vet, then I thought about trying to study the aliens… you could get me into a study course, couldn’t you?”

Kurt rather doubted it. “You might be better off with being a doctor,” he said. “There’s always work for doctors.”

He leaned forward. “I imagine your career advisers have talked to you about the requirements?”

Penny nodded, sullenly. “They say I may have to retake some exams,” she said. “And that I’ll have to work very hard. But I’m not even sure it’s what I want to do.”

“That could be a problem,” Kurt agreed, dryly. He smiled at his daughter. “Look, it’s the start of the summer holidays. I’ll have a word with a doctor I know and ask if she’ll let you observe her work for a few days. Or there are emergency clinics that are always keen on volunteer manpower. I don’t know how much they’d let you do, but they might let you volunteer for a few weeks. If you like it, I will pay for you to train as a doctor.”

He paused, significantly. “And if you don’t like it,” he added, “at least you’ll know before you spend five years of study learning the ropes.”

Penny nodded, again. “Yes, dad,” she said. “But…”

She broke off as the door opened, revealing Percy. Kurt came to his feet as his son stepped into the kitchen, dripping mud on the floor. Percy had always been big, but now he had more muscles than Kurt remembered and looked disgustingly healthy. And he looked very good in uniform too. Clearly, Kurt decided, the CCF was doing wonders for his son. Behind Percy, Gayle stepped into the room. The young lady looked surprised to see Kurt.

“Dad,” Percy said. “I thought you were still on the moon.”

“I have a couple of days leave,” Kurt said. “And so I thought I’d come see you two.”

He chatted about nothing with his children for a while, then sent Penny upstairs as Gayle started complaining about the mess on the floor. Percy sighed, then reached for the mop and started to clean up the mud, getting more mud on the floor as he moved. Kurt glowered at him, then told his son to undress and take a shower before he tried to clean the floor. Leaving him alone, he led Gayle into the next room and closed the door firmly behind them.

“I told Molly I was coming,” he said. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his wife with the kids, but he had no such qualms with Gayle. “Where is she?”

Gayle looked embarrassed. “She went out early this morning,” she said, “leaving me to get the kids off to school. I haven’t seen her since.”

Kurt stared at her. “You’ve been here all day?”

“I’ve been here for the last six months,” Gayle said. “She gave me a room, a list of chores and a few other duties, then let me get on with it. I’ve been cooking, cleaning and tutoring the kids.”

Kurt sucked in his breath. He hadn’t realised just how much time Gayle had spent with the kids. Had Molly spent any time with them at all?

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Molly had always wanted to have a live-in maid, but they’d never been able to afford it. She too resented being poorer than most of the families who sent their kids to private school. “I didn’t mean…”

“I get paid well,” Gayle assured him. “And I don’t really have a family to live with…”

Kurt nodded, told her to make sure Percy did a good job of cleaning up the mess, then walked upstairs and entered his office. Once, he’d worked from home two days a week; now, the room had been left untouched for months. Molly had to have told Gayle to leave it alone, he decided, as he saw the dust lying on top of his desk. Sitting down in front of it, he opened the computer terminal and pressed his thumb against the scanner. A moment later, he was looking at their joint account.

“Shit,” he breathed. Molly was spending money as if it was going out of fashion. He’d once thought the prize money would last the rest of his life. Now, it was clear that over half of it was gone. But what had she been buying? A check of the spending pattern revealed that she’d spent most of the money on clothes. “What the hell is she doing?”

He skimmed through the list of items, wondering just when and where she’d worn a bright silk dress, a set of incredibly expensive pieces of underwear or a bikini that seemed to cost enough to feed the entire family for a week. He’d certainly never seen her in such underwear… was she having an affair? The thought outraged him for a long chilling moment, then he laughed at himself. How could he possibly complain about her having an affair when he was having an affair?

But she could have been caught at any time, he thought, dully. What if the kids found out the truth?

He stared down at the computer, miserably. Their relationship had been falling apart for years, he saw now, long before he’d been taken away. They hadn’t had sex in months before he’d been recalled to war, then they’d had sex only once before he’d been reassigned to the Luna Academy. But he’d had sex with Rose more times than he could count. The spice of fucking someone he knew he shouldn’t even be thinking of fucking, paired with the certainty of death, had spurred him onwards. Every time he tried to think of Molly, naked and willing, he saw Rose instead.

Carefully, he closed the computer and headed out the door, locking the room behind him. Outside, he could hear the sound of Penny chatting on the phone to her friends, while Gayle — downstairs — was lecturing Percy on the value of thinking before doing something as stupid as walking into a clean house with muddy clothes. Kurt had to smile at her threat to turn the hose on him next time, washing him down thoroughly before he stepped foot into the house and scattered mud everywhere. Kurt’s father had made the same threat, years ago. He hadn’t actually done it.

It was nearly four hours before Molly finally arrived home. By then, Kurt had managed to have a man-to-man chat with Percy, a more peaceful discussion with Penny and speak to Gayle about how his children had been behaving. Penny had, apparently, fought quite a bit with the nanny at first, then settled down and started to learn. Percy had been buying books and videos on starfighter training and studying them frantically. Kurt could only hope that he picked up enough to realise that he knew nothing when — if — he entered the Academy.

“I want you to take them both out tonight,” he’d said to Gayle, when they’d finished talking. “Take them bowling, then go watch a movie or something that will keep them out for a long time.”

Gayle didn’t argue. In a way, that was a more worrying sign than anything else.

“Molly,” he said, when his wife closed the door behind her. “We need to talk.”

Molly scowled at him. She had always had a fiery temper and some of their arguments had been shockingly loud. “Why?”

Kurt braced himself “For a start,” he said, “why didn’t you tell the kids I was coming?”

“I thought it was tomorrow,” Molly said, sullenly.

“I told you it was today,” Kurt said, feeling his temper flare. When had he started hating his wife? “If you couldn’t come and pick me up at the station, all you had to do was tell me and I would have taken a taxi home. But you didn’t have to leave the kids unaware I was coming.”

He took a breath. “And what about the money you’ve been spending?”

“It’s my money,” Molly snapped. “I have a right to spend it how I like!”

“Yes, we agreed we would share the joint account,” Kurt said, trying to keep an icy grip on his temper. “But you’ve been spending money on expensive clothes, expensive handbags, expensive… underwear! What the fuck have you been doing?”

“I’ve been enjoying having money for the first time in years,” Molly thundered. She drew herself up to her full height and glared at him. “Why should I not spend it as I please?”

“Because we have to think about the future,” Kurt snapped back. He took a long breath. “Penny will be in schooling for at least another three years; longer, if she wants to train as a doctor. We might have to pay for that training if she can’t win a scholarship. Percy might change his mind about what he wants to do with his life! And what happens if we run out of money because you’ve been spending it on overpriced clothes?”

“All of my friends buy such clothes,” Molly said, sharply. “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”

“Because your friends are married to rich aristocrats, high-priced lawyers and corporate CEOs,” Kurt said. “The amount of money I got as my share of the prize fund is barely a month’s wages for them. But we won’t get another windfall like that, Molly, while they earn the same amount of money each month! We cannot afford to spend like rich men and women!”

He took a breath. “And I don’t understand some of your choices,” he added. “Are you having an affair?”

Molly stared at him for a long moment, then exploded with rage. “Are you daring to suggest that I would have an affair with someone?”

Kurt glared back at her. “Why the hell have you been avoiding me? I call from the moon; you’re never there! I send messages; you reply late, if at all. I’ve spent more time talking to Gayle than I’ve spent talking to you in the past three months. You knew I was coming today and yet you fucked off somewhere else while I had to take a taxi home and surprise my daughter! Why didn’t you even tell them I was coming?”

“I was busy,” Molly shouted.

“Doing what?” Kurt shouted back. “What the hell have you been doing that keeps you from talking to your goddamned husband?”

Molly grabbed for a vase and held it up, threateningly. Kurt reached for a plate, then stopped himself before his fingers closed around the fine china. They’d picked the christening plates for their children, years ago. He wasn’t going to destroy them just because he’d had a fight with his wife. And yet… what was she doing?

It was worse, he realised mutely, than an affair. If she’d been honest, he would have been honest too… but it was clear she no longer cared about him or their future. All she cared about was her chance to join High Society — or what passed for it in their hometown — without worrying about anything else. But it was unsustainable. The prize money would run out and then Molly would be dependent on the kindness of strangers. Her job — and his - didn’t pay enough to maintain her lifestyle.

“Do what you wish,” he said, suddenly feeling very tired. “I will put half of the money into reserve accounts for the kids. They will complete their schooling, no matter what you do with the rest of the money. And you can stay in this house as long as you like, provided you let the kids stay here too. I’ll even keep sending you and them money.”

He took a breath. “It’s obvious you don’t give a shit any longer,” he added. “You can keep the remaining money; do what you like with it. But when you run out of cash to maintain your new lifestyle, I hope your lover will pick up the tab. Because I damn well can’t and won’t.”

“Get out,” Molly hissed.

Kurt gave her a long look. How had their relationship failed so badly? Was it his fault for not earning enough to satisfy her or her fault for not accepting what he was? Or was it his fault for going to war and leaving her alone? In the end, it didn’t matter.

He picked up his coat and walked out of the door. There were trains running back to London at all hours of the day. He’d be able to get to the spaceport, then start his journey to his next posting. Or maybe he should speak to the kids first, let them know what had happened and why. But what could he tell them?

Nothing, he thought, numbly. The anger had faded away, to be replaced by a numbness that dampened his soul. Nothing at all.