She sat looking at Crispin who still sat on the bed, his hands nervously clasped together, his body bending forwards and backwards in an edgy rhythm.
“I do.” She said, aware that those were the words she would have to use in a few hours time in an entirely different context.
“No you don’t. At least wait until after your finals. Don’t do it now. You don’t have to. You can stay here every vac, you’ve always got a home here. Carl did. We’re open house. Mum and Dad love you, we all love you and will be here for you. You don’t have to marry him just to have somewhere to live.”
She was surprised that he had identified the main reason she had accepted Graham. He had a place she could call home. He had bought a nice newly built terraced house with three bedrooms and a garage and although it didn’t have much of a garden there was enough room in the back yard to have a washing line. Graham had bought some new furniture and he kept saying how lucky she was that they were getting such generous wedding presents.
She wanted to use her mother’s china, that was still in boxes in the Forster’s loft but he wanted everything new. He wouldn’t let her fetch the boxes of books and pictures that she had rescued from number 16 that Spring.
She knew she wouldn’t have chosen the furniture he had bought, but she hadn’t been given the choice. He had asked her to marry him, she had accepted and then he had taken her to the house that was fully furnished.
She couldn’t say she hated it because it was the only home she could have.
“I’m going to get married.” She sounded more defiant and defensive than she would have wished. “And I’m not going to wait. I’ve got no need to wait.”
“You don’t’ have…”
“No, of course I don’t have to. I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t mean that.” He knew he had handled it all wrong. He had wanted her to know she would be OK, she had people who loved her, she didn’t have to marry Graham to feel safe again. He understood she was only getting married because her Mother had died and her father had abandoned her. He just didn’t know how to tell her the real reason he didn’t want her to marry Graham.
“Well, I’d better go then.”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to make it any easier for him.
“I hope you’re very happy.”
“I know.”
“The car will be here in half an hour.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Crispin went downstairs to the kitchen feeling more depressed than he had since he had first heard that Holly was to marry Graham. “She’s going ahead with it.” He said, resigned to the inevitable.
“Well you didn’t think she wouldn’t did you?” Oliver replied trying not to understand how much his brother was hurting and how much he might be responsible.
“I suppose not.”
They sat down at the kitchen table, coffee mugs in hand, waiting for the time to come when they would have to finish getting dressed and prepare for the ordeal ahead.
Chapter Sixteen
If I had been curious to see the three invitations, carefully addressed to Mrs Monika Heller, Mr Charles Donaldson and Mr Max Fischer, I was horrified when I read the contents.
The wedding of his daughter, Holly, with Graham Tyler
So Max had been right. Somehow, in such a short time, Graham had managed to get Holly to marry him.
I phoned Linda. I was quite pleased to have an excuse. I was disappointed she hadn’t been in touch since the O’Dwyers had been over from Canada, but then I suppose I hadn’t called her either.
She told me the bare bones of how it had all come about so quickly. “I probably wasn’t much help,” she admitted, “I thought Graham was a complete shit and thought she must be if she liked him at all. I kind of abandoned her. Her father abandoned her. I suppose she felt she had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to so had decided to marry Graham.”
So that was how they had done it.
I asked Linda whether there was any way Holly could know what he was really like.
“If she does she doesn’t care.”
“She will.”
After the service that passed off uneventfully, even though there had been a rash of giggles from some young girls at the phrase ‘speak now or hereafter hold your peace’, I walked the few yards to the hotel alone. I spent the time observing the motley group of people who had attended the wedding, trying to allocate their relationship to either bride or groom. I had been surprised to see my grandmother with David. I had rather assumed they weren’t coming since they hadn’t contacted us and she made no effort to talk to me.
I thought that would have been a natural thing for them to have done.
I stood alone in the line waiting to shake hands with Holly’s father and congratulate him on his daughter’s wedding. There was no sign of Holly or Graham, who had driven off as soon as the photographs had been taken.
As I drew nearer the head of the line I could hear the comments people made to the father of the bride, and his responses. Some guests, aware of Mary’s death the previous spring, spoke kind words of sympathy that he was having to do this without the love and support of his wife. His face was a mask of stoicism and he took their compliments with slight sharp bows of his head.
As I waited I remembered the time I had seen him last, standing on the terrace at Sandhey looking around him as if he owned the house, striding off down the drive without a word to his family or to me. There was something of that same look as he held his hand out and shook mine briefly. There was a knowingness, an assumed superiority about him that I did not like.
I was afraid for Holly in this marriage that I had done nothing to prevent. I knew Graham was not a nice man, but then it seemed her father wasn’t either.
I was talking to Linda’s brothers when the bride and groom arrived some time after all the guests had settled into drinking and talking. Holly looked dreadful. She had obviously been crying and her dress, which I had thought particularly elegant, was badly crumpled.
Crispin and Oliver hugged Holly in turn, I self-consciously kissed her on both cheeks, trying to ignore the smudges around her eyes and the beginnings of bruises on her shoulders.
“Well done Mrs Tyler.” Oliver’s smile was sympathetic rather than enthusiastic. It was less genuine as he turned to Graham “Look after her, won’t you?” I don’t think the question was welcomed as Graham made no reply, simply grasping Holly’s arm and tried to steer her away from us.
“Holly, are you OK?” Crispin’s sensitivity was greater than his brother’s.
“Of course she’s OK,” interrupted Graham “we just got a bit carried away, that’s all, didn’t we Holl Doll. You know what it’s like.” And he laughed, in what I can only think of as a lascivious way that simply added to Holly’s obvious embarrassment as she realised how many people knew what they had been doing for the past half hour.
“Where’s Linda? I need some help from my bridesmaid.” Holly tried to sound normal but no one in earshot, not even I who hardly knew her, would have been convinced.
“I’ll get her, she’s over there, I won’t be a moment.” I felt I had to be some use and Crispin and Oliver were able to deal with Graham.
As Linda threaded her way through the throng back to Holly and they went, arm in arm, towards the lifts. I made the mistake of putting my hand on Graham’s arm as he passed me, obviously intent on following them. It was an instinctive movement, I had no intention of restraining him and I doubt I could have done anyway. “I don’t think they need you old chap.”
“Screw you.” He must have seen me looking at Linda and Holly as they left. “Don’t even think about it chummy. She’s a randy little tart but she’s my randy little tart so you can keep your eyes to yourself.” A few minutes later in the afternoon I was talking with Crispin and Oliver when Graham pulled my shoulder so I had to turn to face him.
“I meant what I said earlie
r. Touch her and you’re dead.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” I spoke with as much dignity as I could muster though I probably only sounded pompous.
He turned on me, his face no more than a couple of inches from mine. “Shut the fuck up. She’s my fucking wife and don’t think you can stop me doing what I fucking like with her. I’ve seen the way you look at her. Week after week you find a way to talk to her. Fancy her don’t you? Well no one’s going to screw her but me. If I see you anywhere near her I’ll fucking kill you.”
I wondered what he was talking about. I hardly knew Holly. I’d only really spoken to her once, that evening when her grandparents stayed at Sandhey.
He looked behind me at Crispin and Oliver. “And that goes for you two arsewipes as well.”
“I think you’ve mixed me up with someone else.” I said, trying to back away. It was the only explanation.
He thought I was Carl.
He moved away, heading for a group of giggling girls who seemed already to have had too much to drink, leaving me and the twins stunned at his attitude.
“What brought that on?” I was glad the twins were with me.
“He thinks you’re Carl.” Crispin had no doubts.
“Well, you are very like him.” Oliver said, calming, encouraging. Normal.
“Your hair’s a bit darker, but he’s got the eyes hasn’t he Oliver?”
“Pretty much two peas in a pod.”
I was still shaking from Graham’s onslaught and found it reassuring to talk to Linda’s brothers.
“It appears Holly has already had an inkling of what it’s going to be like to be married to Graham.”
“We’ll have to keep an eye on her.”
“He’s a dangerous man. There’s a violence about him.”
They told me of Graham’s appearances over the past year. “It was really odd. Christmas, New Year, Easter, there he was.” As they talked I was thinking that when Graham had turned up at those odd times in their lives, he hadn’t wanted to be with Holly. He was showing Matt that he couldn’t control him, and, knowing how much Linda disliked him, he was creating a barrier between Holly and her friends.
It seemed he had succeeded.
I was still talking to them when Holly and Linda joined us. “It was my fault, silly really, I spilt a bottle of coke all over her beautiful dress. She had to change.”
Only when Holly had left us could Linda tell us the truth.
“She knows she should have listened to you Crispin, even Oliver told her not to go ahead with it, to wait. She knows it’s too late. I told her she had to get through today first. When Graham left I tried to tidy her up a bit and told her to try to enjoy the party. We’d see her tomorrow.”
“She’s married to Graham and all we can do now is watch and wait as it all turns to shit.”
“He doesn’t care for her, I know he doesn’t”
“He’s using her. What for, I don’t know. There’s got to be more to it, everything was done in such a hurry.”
I couldn’t tell Crispin how right he was.
“You’re his cousin aren’t you, Charles, you know him better than anyone. What’s he up to?”
I couldn’t tell them any of what I knew, even if I could have done now wasn’t the time or the place.
So I said nothing other than to repeat that I knew Graham was deceitful and devious, that I didn’t like him or trust him, and if there was anything they could think that I could do they must just tell me.
“So you’re one of us now?” she said hooking her arm into mine. “He hasn’t got a hope.”
I disentangled myself feeling uncomfortable and in many ways as deceitful as Graham, though I told myself mine were the more honourable motives.
For the rest of the afternoon I watched the room closely. More than once I saw Graham leave the room with one or other of the young women I assumed worked with him. I hoped he was simply taking them for a dance in the disco room but it seemed more likely that he was doing something very different. Graham was making it obvious from the beginning that he had no intention of being a good husband.
I was probably the only person in the room who understood why Matt ignored what was going on, not just accepting it but being obviously amused by it. I thought it likely that he was joining in.
“Well that’s nearly over.” Linda handed me a full glass. I was glad she wanted to talk to me, I didn’t want there to be any awkwardness between us and I had probably been more abrupt than necessary earlier on when she had only been trying to be friendly.
“How is she coping?” Perhaps talking about Holly would give us something to share, something we could agree on.
“Regretting, crying.”
“Do you know why she’s married him?”
“You don’t like him either do you?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Actually I hate him. Yes ‘hate’ is the right word.”
“I think she was frightened of being on her own. Her mum dying, her father ignoring her for months…”
“He’s not ignoring her now is he? This must be costing him a bomb.” I swept my arm in a wide arc nearly dislodging a tray of glasses from a waitress’s arm where it had been delicately balanced. “Sorry!”
“No harm done.”
“If you ask me he’s paying for it because he wants her married and no longer his responsibility. This is like his final payment.”
“But why Graham?”
I knew why. I knew it was because they had manoeuvred Holly into it, isolating her from her friends. But I wanted to know what Linda thought.
“No one else asked her. If you’d asked her she’d have married you. She would have married anyone to get a home and some security if you ask me.”
“So she doesn’t love him.”
“What’s love got to do with it? Of course she doesn’t. Crisp tried to talk her out of it this morning. We all think it’s a complete disaster. It’s one thing in all my life I think I agree with them about.”
“I’d hoped that people married for love these days. If she wasn’t sure why didn’t she just live with him?”
“He asked her to marry him. She seemed to think it was a good idea. She thought she had no one else.”
“She had your family.”
“We weren’t enough.”
As I was leaving I bumped into Crispin as he argued with Graham.
“You’ve been married how long? Three hours? And how many times have you been with another woman?”
“What the fuck’s it got to do with you?”
“Holly. She’s my friend. You’re…”
“Yes I am aren’t I? I’m her husband. She’s my wife. She has to put up with whatever I do. Lucky me!”
“What about them?” Crispin pointed at the group of girls, giggling in the corner, obviously sharing their experiences.
“Yeah. So what? I had a bet that I’d have it off with them all during the reception. I won.”
“What about Holly?”
“Holl Doll? What about her?”
“Don’t you care that you’re upsetting her?”
“No. Should I?”
Crispin obviously couldn’t think of anything to say to Graham that would make clear exactly how he felt. So he hit him.
Remembering how hard Graham could punch I thought I’d come to Crispin’s rescue.
“Come on Crispin, time to go home. I think you’ve had enough.” I took his arm, leading him out to the car park where a line of taxis was waiting. Linda must have seen us leaving as she followed us out, thanking me in a rather detached way as she took over the support of her brother.
I needed time to myself to sort out the conflicting emotions of the day, all brought on by my dislike for Graham, so I set off to walk the two miles home.
I thought first about Linda.
Each time I saw her it was in different circumstances, a funeral, a birthday party, a wedding. Each time she was a different person and I decided I rather liked them all. She w
as opinionated, bossy and had a confidence I could never hope to match, though I had also seen her considerate, loyal and caring. I wondered if she could ever be fond of someone like me.
I knew she had always been interested in Carl. Her parents had made a joke of it at my birthday barbecue.
But Graham had thought I was Carl.
Perhaps we did look more alike now than ever; after all he was getting older and for the past 18 months I had been getting younger. The twins had said I was very like him and they knew both of us. I realised I had probably never tried to know him.
I had always been jealous of Carl but perhaps we weren’t so different, perhaps we had more in common than I had ever thought.
We had both run away from our family for different reasons and at very different times. Carl had run away after he discovered the girl he loved was his father’s daughter. I had felt forced to leave when my father went bankrupt and he made it clear there was no room for me in his new home. Nor had there been room for Monika, for whom I felt responsible even then. Max had taken us in, for whatever reason, and had given us a home for more than 15 years.
Perhaps the differences between Carl and I had been emphasised by the people who had taken us in. Where I had found an austere and old fashioned household Carl had chanced on a loving and open-hearted one.
As I walked along the beach path I tried not to think what sort of person I would have been if I had had those years with the Forster family. What would Carl have been like if he had had to cope with the mysteries and the secrets of Sandhey.
Perhaps his infatuation with Susannah would have died naturally as they grew older.
What had Graham meant about Carl and Holly? Had Carl been trying to get to know Holly? Was he giving up on his obsession with Susannah? It would only be natural for him to be interested in other girls. But perhaps Graham had read his own motives into the actions of others, perhaps he had misread friendship and concern as lust.
Walking Alone Page 19
