They had had a rather good lunch on the way to the wedding, and she was already feeling slightly tipsy; that, combined with the sunshine and the emotion of the day, and her own great new happiness, suddenly overwhelmed her and she reached up to kiss Colin.
“You look very, very nice,” she said. “Really handsome.”
“Well, thank you,” he said, “and you look absolutely beautiful. You must bring that outfit to Salzburg. Not long now.”
“No, indeed,” she said. “And that reminds me, Colin, there’s something I wanted to say to you about Salzburg.”
“Ye-es?” He looked rather wary.
She smiled and kissed him again. “It’s all right,” she said. “All I wanted to say was, could you change the booking slightly?”
“I’ll try,” he said. “What would you like me to change?”
“Well,” she said, smiling at him and thinking how even the hat wasn’t too bad, “I really would rather we weren’t in separate rooms. If it’s all right with you.”
Annabel Beaumont was attracting a lot of attention. Dressed in a sliver of palest blue silk, with extremely high-heeled silver sandals, her hair scooped back in a waterfall of curls, she looked almost as ravishing as the bride herself: indeed, Lucinda hissed at her as she embraced her in the receiving line, she made her feel like a fat old bat.
“Lucinda, I don’t think so. You look about seventeen, maybe a bit younger, doesn’t she, Jamie? Lucinda, this is my fiancé, Jamie Cartwright.”
“Oh, how lovely to meet you,” Lucinda cried. “Blue, darling, this is Jamie, Annabel’s totally handsome fiancé—he’s a lawyer from the States, you know. Lucky you to be married to a lawyer, Annabel—wish I’d been, saved me a lot of trouble.”
And Jamie kissed Lucinda’s hand and shook Blue’s and said how extremely generous of them to have invited him to their wedding, and Annabel thought not for the first time how charming he was, and how he really was rather like her father.
Jamie was still an associate of Cartwright and Partners, but he was to move to London for a year, to work for a firm in Lincoln’s Inn with which Cartwrights had an agreement. After that, he and Annabel had agreed, they would decide together where they would settle permanently.
This had not been arrived at without difficulty.
Elizabeth had managed not to display any great surprise at Jamie’s presence in the house the day after the inquest and kept carefully out of the whole thing for the next twenty-four hours, merely greeting Jamie with affection. Later, when she was told that Jamie and his father had made up their quarrel and that Jamie was going to be allowed to spend a year in London, she was more relieved still, and any anxiety she had felt for Annabel joining the Cartwright clan diminished considerably.
“The old bugger actually said,” Annabel told her, “that he could see Jamie was going to be an excellent lawyer, having demonstrated an ability to stay cool in a—a standoff situation. And Jamie’s going to work for some firm where all the partners are his best friends.”
“Well, it’s lovely,” said Elizabeth carefully, “and I’m very happy for you. The only thing I would say, darling, is that you must make some concessions too.”
“Mummy,” said Annabel indignantly, “do you think I’m stupid or something? Of course I will.” Adding that if Jamie thought she was going to move to Boston when she had Florian’s salon to work in, then he had better change his mind pretty quickly.
“Annabel,” said Elizabeth warningly, and Annabel looked very discomfited and said, “Well, not till we’re married anyway.”
And now Jamie was in London for a year, and they were looking for a flat—“But very, very near, Mummy, I promise you. You don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not worried,” said Elizabeth, while thinking that this was what she had predicted would happen when she had agreed to have the baby, and that Annabel’s life would of course take precedence over hers, and that that was precisely what she wanted for her.
Elizabeth was not at the wedding; she had been invited, of course, but as she was now eight and a half months’ pregnant she said that she was sure Lucinda would understand and forgive her.
Every day now she felt happier, stronger, more able to cope with what was a fairly daunting future. She had found a nanny, a stalwart Scottish girl called Tess, who was clearly going to fit into the household extremely well—not least in that she was very pretty and Toby approved of her.
Elizabeth had insisted that they all interview her; and Tess had liked that very much, said she always knew there would be trouble when she’d only been allowed to meet the mother.
Nigel was not at the wedding either; Lucinda knew he wouldn’t come, nor even want to, but she felt that he would be very hurt if he wasn’t invited, and so sent him one of the somewhat excessive invitations. He had looked at it through slightly blurred eyes while wondering even then how Lucinda could have become the sort of person who added pink ribbons to a wedding invitation, but after that he did feel much better, as she had known he would, and put it on his fireplace along with some more sober ones. He ordered a pair of bay trees for a present, to be delivered to the house on the day of the wedding, and then found it surprisingly easy to regard the whole thing with equanimity. He supposed Catherine would be at the wedding; unless of course she was in Somerset with this man. If he hadn’t feared rejection so, he might even now have tried to see her. But it was all a bit depressing.
He tried to think what he might do with the day. In the end he decided to stay in London; he had a few houses to look at—one in particular, a pretty little terrace house in Ovington Street. That would be a positive thing to do on such a day, and then maybe he’d have dinner at his club. The day would pass, and then—well, then what? A lifetime of bachelorhood, he supposed. There were worse things. At least you could do what you wanted.
Toby was at the wedding, and looking forward rather desperately to the wedding breakfast when Fallon was arriving, to help in the kitchen. Lucinda had told Tilly she could bring a couple of friends if she liked, and Tilly had asked both Fallon and Madison, but Madison, who was very shy anyway, said that it would be too much of a temptation with her diet—at Tilly’s instigation she had joined Weight Watchers, and already lost two stone—and Fallon said she’d feel like some kind of freak at a fair, unless Tilly could find her something she could actually do. It turned out that the caterers were two short on the washing-up front, and Tilly had volunteered Fallon: “And then we can maybe have a bit of a bop at the end of the evening.”
Fallon said pigs could maybe fly, “And certainly not with that brother of yours, bet he’s a sight on the dance floor.”
Tilly told her rather stiffly not to be so rude, and Fallon, who genuinely adored Tilly, told her not to be so silly and that actually she thought Toby was pretty good-looking really, and if he’d only unstarch his neck and learn to speak properly, he could look quite fit.
Debbie and Richard weren’t at the wedding; they had hardly known Lucinda. In any case, Debbie couldn’t have gone as it was a Friday and Friday was the day she wrote and filed her copy for the Daily News.
Joel had done something wonderful for Debbie before he left for New York; he had taken Nicky Holt out to lunch and asked her if she “or one of your mates in that silly business of yours” could possibly give Debbie a chance to do some writing.
“Debbie Fielding’s a PR,” said Nicky witheringly. “You fancy her or something, Joel?”
Joel said of course not, but: “She writes really nicely and she’s funny and she’s just desperate for a break. Please, Nicky! I’ll buy you dinner at the Pierre next time you come to New York.”
“You do fancy her, don’t you?” said Nicky curiously. “Yeah, OK, I’ll try and think of something. I’m setting up a panel testing various products each week—how’d that be?”
“Great,” said Joel.
And Debbie, managing somehow to function more or less normally—how did she do that, how, when she felt increasingly she was
going mad—was telephoned one morning by Nicky and asked if she would like to join her panel of guinea pigs. “I’ll only want about two hundred words each week—could you manage that, d’you think?”
“Of course I could,” said Debbie. “I’d love to.” And within four weeks, she had so impressed Nicky, her two hundred words being much sharper and funnier and better composed than any of the others, that Nicky asked her if she’d like to extend her testing to various health clubs and spas—“that sort of thing.”
She was now writing a regular review—literally a column running down the right-hand side of Nicky’s Monday pages, of such places; she’d turn up incognito, stay a day, and then deliver copy so well-honed, and so coolly to the point that within weeks she had a modest fan mail. Nothing could have soothed her pain, eased her loneliness, restored her sense of optimism more efficiently and quickly than that column. She could even listen to Richard telling her how wonderful Morag was without wanting to scream. And the best thing of all was that when she moved to Scotland in the spring, she could just carry on doing it. It meant being away overnight once a week, but that was wonderful; she told Richard it was the least he could do for her, and slightly to her surprise he agreed without any argument. She wondered if Flora, her newest and greatest ally, had anything to do with it, and decided she probably did.
She still missed Joel with a savageness that was physically painful, she still cried at least once a day; she still woke up from dreams that he was there—but she was surviving. The first dreadful days, when it had hurt so much she was actually frightened, had passed; she managed from time to time to enjoy things, her children, her job, the contemplation of her lovely new house. And one day, she could see, she would be properly happy again.
Elizabeth hadn’t mentioned a terrible headache to Annabel as she left for the wedding, or a feeling of distinct dizziness to Tilly when she came to kiss her goodbye, and obviously neither of these things to Toby. She knew if she did, they would all have refused to leave her. But once they had gone—soon after midday, for they all had much to do, not least Annabel who was assisting Florian on the bridal hair—she phoned Mr. Taylor, her obstetrician and reported these things to him.
Within thirty minutes she was in a private ambulance on her way to the Princess Diana Hospital, where a rather worryingly large committee was waiting for her, headed by Mr. Taylor, looking stern.
“I think,” he said, after checking her blood pressure, and both their heartbeats, “it’s time we got that baby out. Your blood pressure is extremely high, you’re only two weeks away from term, and there’s no earthly reason not to. I’m going to do a section, so we don’t waste any more time.”
“Oh God,” said Elizabeth, feeling fear literally clasping her heart, longing for Simon more than she could ever remember. “Oh Mr. Taylor, is it going to be all right?”
“Of course it is,” he said. “The baby’s heartbeat is extremely strong. It just wants to get out. Now try to keep calm, I’m going to get that blood pressure down a bit, and we’ll do it late afternoon. You haven’t had any lunch, have you?”
“No. Breakfast though. And a cup of tea about—oh, about one.” Her mouth felt very dry; she was shaking violently, her teeth chattering. “I—I want—” she said, and then started to cry, for she knew she couldn’t have what she wanted, what every woman in labour wants, her husband with her.
Mr. Taylor was very sweet; he sat down beside her, took her hand and said, “You’re going to be fine, Elizabeth, just fine. And so is your baby. Now, is there anyone you’d like to have with you, who could come and be with you for a bit?”
And, “No,” she said, and that made her cry harder than ever, her aloneness spelled out by that small, awful word. “The children are all at a wedding and I don’t want to spoil their day.”
Mr. Taylor looked at her and smiled. “Elizabeth Beaumont,” he said, “you are a trouper. World-class. And you’ll just have to make do with me.”
Nigel was about to have a bath when the florist phoned. They were simply devastated, but it appeared that the pair of bay trees, destined for Weybridge that afternoon, had not after all been delivered.
“Well, do it now,” he said, and they replied that they couldn’t because their drivers had all gone home, and would the morning do? He had been about to say yes, when he thought he really did want them to arrive that day, he had envisaged them at the entrance to the marquee, had indeed written that on the card, giving him some kind of presence there, and thought then that it would only take him an hour at the most to drive them over himself; no need to go in, or to announce that he was there, he could deliver them and then drive away. And when the trees arrived by taxi at his flat, in square white wooden tubs with large white bows tied around the trees—“We might remove those, I think,” he said to the totally disinterested cab driver, “bit vulgar”—he put them in the back of his Volvo and set out for Weybridge.
Catherine wasn’t sure if she was enjoying the wedding or not. Of course it was all very lovely, and Lucinda looked gorgeous and so did the garden and the house and the marquee; and the string quartet was playing the most delicious music, and everyone was being very nice to her, and Caroline and Freddie had both been extremely good—although they were now being slightly less good and haring about the garden shrieking with Lucinda’s nephews and nieces—but the fact remained that she did feel very lonely. Again.
The wedding was accentuating that, rather. Everyone was in couples, not just the young ones, and halfway through the reception, and before the meal, she began to feel tearful, and decided to go for a walk round the garden. She was looking rather hopelessly for Freddie and Caroline and consequently not at where she was going; and managed to walk straight into one of the waiters, his tray laden with glasses of wine.
Catherine looked down at her pale pink suit, now liberally spattered with red, tried not to cry and fled up to the room where she had got ready. She would just have to change; she had a linen dress with her, it was hardly festive and a bit creased, but it was at least all one colour and didn’t smell like a winery.
She put it on, trying to keep positive—all would be lost if she gave in to self-pity now—and was just reapplying her makeup when she saw in the drive what looked remarkably like Nigel’s Volvo. And not only did it look like it, it was Nigel’s Volvo, and what was more, he was getting out of it and removing first one and then a second bay tree from the boot and handing them over to a man in charge of the gate.
Catherine watched him, as he looked up at the house rather wistfully, all on his own, as she was, not dressed in wedding finery as she no longer was, and knew with absolutely clarity what she had to do. She leaned out of the window and waved and shouted, “Nigel! Nigel, wait!” He didn’t hear her.
She raced out of the room, down the stairs, out of the door and down the drive, through the gate: to see the Volvo moving away, quite fast down the tree-lined road.
“Oh Nigel—oh God, no,” she said, and because it really did seem like more than she could bear, she sank onto her haunches and started to cry, her head buried in her arms.
And then suddenly she heard him say, “Catherine? Isn’t it?” He must have reversed up the road, for she looked up and saw him, leaning out of the window, clearly very concerned.
And, “Oh yes, it is, it is Catherine,” she said, grief and relief making her stupid; and he got out of the car and came across to her and squatted beside her and put his arm round her.
“Whatever is it? What’s the matter?” he said, and she really started crying then, sobbing quite loudly, and he stood up and helped her up too and led her across to his car and put her into it and drove very slowly down the road, away from the house and the noise and the curious eyes.
“Now then,” he said finally, pulling to the kerb and turning off the engine. “Now then, tell me what the matter is. Thank goodness I spotted you. I can’t bear to see you like this, Catherine, I really can’t. Has someone upset you?”
And Catherine l
ooked at him, at his face, even more mournful than usual, his pale-blue eyes full of concern for her, and said—because she had to know that first—“Nigel, are you…are you still in love with Lucinda?”
And when he said, Good Lord, no, no he wasn’t, not at all, thank goodness—although he was still very, very fond of her, of course—she said, “Because you see, I think…” God, this took courage, huge courage, she felt terrible, so scared and so foolish, but it was her last chance, she knew, and a chance she wanted so much, “Nigel, I think I—I might be in love with you.”
And after that it all became very simple.
At roughly the same moment, Mr. Taylor was stroking Elizabeth’s hair back gently from her face as she surfaced from the anaesthetic, and smiling down at her—really he thought he might be a little in love with her himself—and telling her that she had a very fine and extremely noisy new son.
The meal had been wonderful, the speeches very funny—especially Charlie’s—and the dancing had begun, when the maître d’ walked up to Lucinda who was chattering at one of the tables, and whispered something in her ear.
Whereupon she said, “Oh my God!” and began looking wildly round the room. And then ran over to Toby, who was dancing, really rather badly, with a ravishing black girl, who was dancing rather well, and said, “Toby, Toby, she’s had it, your mother’s had her baby, it’s a boy!”
And was alarmed to see Toby standing first stock-still, completely emotionless, and then bite his lip and his blue eyes, so like his father’s, fill with tears.
And then he punched the air with his fist and shouted, “Yesss!!” and Tilly came rushing over and Annabel too, and they all three stood there, hugging one another, crying and laughing at the same time. And then Annabel said, “We must go to her at once, can someone get us a cab?” and the maître d’ said he would, right away.
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