In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  When he did eventually join me at around midnight, I was still awake. If I couldn’t sleep alone I certainly couldn’t sleep with him next to me. I therefore pretended to be asleep until I was pretty sure that he actually was (thankfully he goes out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow so I didn’t have to wait long). I slipped out of bed and went into the spare room. The bed was a mess, having been occupied by Dominic the previous night, but I got in anyway and looked forward to a sleepless night. I must have slept eventually because I woke up in the morning, but I felt dreadful and wasn’t much looking forward to what the day might bring.

  Breakfast was a sullen affair. I bashed and crashed around, slamming things down on the table while huffing and puffing in a fashion designed to elicit questions about my wellbeing but Gideon failed to deliver on that front. He was calm, polite, and totally uninterested in my emotional wellbeing, the bastard. After several minutes of this I could contain myself no longer.

  “So,” I demanded to know, “are we going to talk about this?”

  “Talk about what?” he enquired calmly, which only maddened me further.

  “You know very well what about.” My voice was in serious danger of going wobbly again, a lack of sleep and a surfeit of emotion not being conducive to reasoned discussion.

  “What more is there to say? You seem intent on defending your brother, while I believe my mother to be the wronged party. There’s nothing to discuss. I am going out.” Gideon got up from his chair and, having delivered a perfunctory “see you later” he left. Just like that. The urge to throw something at his retreating back was almost more than I could resist, but resist it I did.

  Having spent the previous afternoon and night in an agonising state of purgatory, unsure of what was going on, it looked as if I was going to have another day of the same. Well sod that, I thought. I decided to get, quite literally, on my bike. When they tell you that exercise is good for improving one’s mood (whoever ‘they’ are) they are right. After two hours of vigorous cycling, accompanied by a good deal of yelling at the few drivers inconsiderate enough to also be on the roads, I was feeling much better. Arriving home I had a bath and then lay down for a couple of hours during which I slept.

  At the end of this process I had come to the conclusion that I was completely ambivalent about the outcome of my first major row with Gideon. If he was the kind of man who could treat me with cold disdain while siding with his mother (who was clearly the driving force behind this whole debacle), I was better off without him. I had survived very well before I met him and I would survive very well after he was gone. I didn’t need a cold hearted, weak willed mummy’s boy in my life. Never had, never would. Any idea that he might actually be the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life was obviously a chimera of my own making. I was relieved to have come to this conclusion. I was almost looking forward to ending it all as quickly as possible. It would be like pulling a plaster off, quick and painful but easily recovered from. It was a much calmer me therefore who welcomed Gideon on his return. It was late afternoon by then, and already dark.

  “Been anywhere nice?” I enquired as Gideon, still in his outerwear, entered the sitting room and sat down heavily in an armchair. I was determined to be neutral. If it was going to end, it would end with dignity. But on seeing him I realised that I didn’t want it to end, not one little bit.

  “Walking, mainly, around London. I went to the South Bank and then walked north. Ended up at Hampstead Heath.” He looked less closed off than before. His face had returned, almost, to normal. “And you?”

  “Cycling, bath, sleep,” I said, before adding emphatically, “and packing.”

  “Packing?” That had certainly made him take notice.

  “I can’t go today,” I said, “but it won’t take long to find somewhere. There’s no point in drawing this out any longer than necessary.” I picked at the fringe of a cushion I had recently bought as part of my ongoing guerrilla redecoration of the flat. “I’ll leave this,” I said, indicating the cushion.

  “Don’t be so ridiculous Eve, we’re not splitting up.”

  “Aren’t we?” I asked. Relief flooded through me, but I still replied as haughtily as I could manage.

  “No, we’re not,” he said, decisively. “Quite frankly you can be a complete pain in the arse, and I heartily dislike your brother but, and it is a fairly big but, I’ve never met anyone quite like you before. And I mean that in a good way. And if we did split up you could have that cushion, it’s horrible. So, why don’t you go and unpack your stuff and then we can have something to eat?”

  “No need. And it’s not, it’s lovely.” I replied, stroking the cushion.

  “No it’s not,” he said, “and I said go and unpack and I meant it, and quickly, I’m starving.”

  “I meant there’s no need for me to unpack. But I would have gone and packed really quickly if you’d been foolish enough to split up with me.”

  “You know something?” Gideon asked, looking at me appraisingly, “I love you.” It was the first time that he’d ever said that to me.

  “I can’t say I blame you,” I replied. “I’m lovable.” I should have told him that I loved him too, but I had said it too many times before to too many people and it had always been a lie. I was strangely scared to say it now because this time, for the first time, it actually felt like it might almost be the truth.

  CHAPTER 8

  So after all that, the invitation to Marjorie’s Burns’ Night party seemed to signal a welcome rapprochement, as it would be the first occasion on which I had seen Gideon’s parents since Christmas Day. The party was already in full swing when we arrived, if the term ‘full swing’ can be applied to a group of people standing around in an uncomfortably warm room making small talk. There were four other couples, excluding our hosts, making us twelve in all. I am not sure if there is a recognised scale, like the Beaufort or Richter, for social gatherings but to my mind this constituted less a party and more a large dinner, but perhaps they view things differently in Sheen.

  Malcolm greeted us at the front door as if nothing untoward had occurred over Christmas, and as if a kilt (for that was what he was wearing) were his normal party attire. Gideon and I were, it turned out, the only people not dressed in some outlandish tartan rigout that night. All the women had some form of tartan about their person ranging from a little piece worn as a cravat to a skirt entirely comprised of the stuff. The men were all wearing tartan ties, a couple were wearing tartan trousers, and one had gone so far as to add a tartan waistcoat to his ensemble but none, wisely in my opinion, had followed Malcolm’s sartorial lead. There was, as yet, no sign of Marjorie.

  “And Melissa has just achieved grade eight at piano,” a large woman, whose name I hadn’t caught, was telling me about her many, highly talented grandchildren. Why I should be interested in the aptitude at the piano of a child I would never meet was beyond me, but the woman whose granddaughter Melissa was seemed to believe that Melissa’s accomplishments deserved as wide an audience as possible and right now I was that audience. Clearly labouring under the misapprehension that I knew all about her family, Melissa’s grandmother went on to share with me the fact that Hugo could now walk almost completely unaided. It was only after I had expressed the socially appropriate level of delight, adding “Isn’t it hilarious to see them tottering around at that age?” that I discovered Hugo was her ninety eight year old father and currently recovering from a knee operation, not another grandchild. The only way out of this conversational quagmire was to exclaim that I simply had to try the delicious looking canapés, plates of which were balanced precariously on side tables around the room. They were surprisingly good and so had probably come from the same place as Christmas dinner. I had just picked up my fourth, or possibly fifth, when my hand was slapped quite hard. So hard, in fact, that I dropped the tiny roast beef and horseradish topped Yorkshire pudding that I had been about to stuff in my mouth, which was a shame as it looked very tasty
.

  “Don’t touch the canapés!” said Marjorie, who was the slapper (for want of a better word). She had taken the tartan theme much further than any of her guests and was dressed in the stuff from head to toe (literally, she was wearing a Tam o’Shanter and had tartan bows on her shoes). “It might,” she exclaimed “have oats in it and Eve doesn’t eat oats.” She broadcast this last piece of information to the entire room just in case, I suppose, anyone should be tempted to force feed me oats. “Everyone, carry on, please. Malcolm, drinks,” she barked and then, mission accomplished, disappeared back into the kitchen where she was presumably putting the finishing touches to the Burns’ Night supper. Piercing the film, removing the lid, that sort of thing.

  A few minutes later she reappeared to call the assembled throng into the dining room where place names indicated where each of us should sit. My heart sank when I saw that Melissa’s grandmother was seated directly opposite me, as it meant that I would undoubtedly be hearing about another of her grandchildren, or possibly her most recent holiday. She had grabbed me by the elbow as we walked across the hall and told me, sotto voce, that she simply had to tell me about Devon, so it could have been either.

  All conversation was, however, rendered impossible for a few minutes almost as soon as we were seated. That Marjorie made claim to Scottish heritage (royal Scottish heritage no less) had not been unknown to me. That she would make Malcolm carry a haggis aloft into the dining room accompanied by a recording of what I supposed were bagpipes but which sounded more like a pair of foxes mating in an echo chamber did take me somewhat by surprise. It took some time for me to recover the power of speech, although Melissa’s grandmother was made of sterner stuff and filled my silence with a very detailed description of her second home, a charming little cottage on the north Devon coast.

  Oats being the mainstay of any Burns’ Night dinner, Marjorie had, in an act of thoughtfulness I had not been expecting, prepared a small crumble topped meat pie for me.

  “I made it myself,” she said, as she plopped it in front of me. I wasn’t sure how to take this. Was it a shared joke or a snide remark intended to shame me? Either way, the pie was surprisingly tasty. For pudding everyone else had cranachan, which is basically just raspberries and cream to which oats have been unaccountably added. Marjorie did, however, give me a bowl of raspberries and cream sans oats, which was also very thoughtful. Perhaps she was feeling bad about making such a fuss over Dominic’s behaviour at Christmas and was trying to make it up to me. Whatever the reason I went home feeling as if I was back on track with my soon to be in-laws, especially Malcolm who despite (or perhaps because of) his ridiculous rig-out had been quite the life and soul of the evening. I had initially taken him for a very dour chap, which he generally was in Marjorie’s company, but as soon as the social circle expanded he became quite a different man altogether.

  The next morning my kind feelings were, however, sorely tested when I awoke to find a chemistry lab had been installed in my stomach during the night. It bubbled away, causing me to belch noxious gases through every possible orifice and generally feel terrifically unwell. I knew exactly what the symptoms meant. How, I wondered, had any oats sneaked through my usually impenetrable anti oat barrier? Was it possible that Marjorie had deliberately slipped oats into my food? Surely not. I mean, why would she want to do such a thing?

  CHAPTER 9

  Whether or not Marjorie had deliberately fed me oats, the events of the next few days conspired to push any thoughts of her right out of my head. I had heard nothing more from Dominic about the court case he was supposedly bringing against Sophie. I had therefore assumed that, like so many things Dominic has absolutely committed to do, it had come to nothing. Turns out I assumed wrong. I suppose I should have realised that something was up when I got a call from Sophie asking me to spend the day with her and Pixie. While this doesn’t, on the face of it, sound very suspicious Sophie (like Dominic) generally only calls me when she wants something.

  “So I was wondering if you would be, you know, a witness.” Sophie, Pixie, and I had spent the entire morning shuffling at a snail’s pace through the dinosaur exhibition at the Natural History Museum (not because we simply couldn’t get enough of the dinosaurs but because seemingly millions of other adults and children were also doing the same and so progress was very slow). We had, eventually, escaped and made our way to Hyde Park and were now sitting on a bench by the Serpentine, wrapped up warmly against the cold and eating the picnic Sophie had brought with her. I had offered to bring the food but Sophie was in the midst of one of her many health regimens (they are really diet regimens as her acting work tends to rise and fall in inverse proportion to her weight, but for Pixie’s sake she always talks about health rather than thinness). I have no idea what the basis of this latest diet was, but the food she proffered was unappetizing in the extreme. I’m quite sure I used up more calories eating it than it could possibly have provided. It really wasn’t what one needed on a cold day.

  “Be a witness to what?” I asked. I was pretty sure I knew what Sophie meant but I wanted her spell it out. I had learnt to take nothing for granted when Sophie, Pixie, and Dominic were involved.

  “Why don’t you go and feed the ducks sweetheart?” Sophie directed this last comment at Pixie who, while she clearly couldn’t have been less interested, was nonetheless party to our conversation being only a few inches away from her mother.

  “Do I have to? Ducks are boring.” Pixie was kicking her heels against the legs of the bench and staring listlessly into the middle distance.

  “I’m sure they feel very much the same way about you,” I said, “but if you take them this,” I handed her the plastic box containing the remainder of my lunch (which looked far more suitable for ducks than humans anyway), “I’m sure they’ll perk up. But,” I added, “don’t get drawn in if they start arguing about who gets the biggest portion or you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Ducks don’t argue,” Pixie responded, “they can’t even talk!”

  “Oh, they do,” I said, very earnestly. “And they hold grudges. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Of all the aquatic birds native to these islands, the duck, and more specifically the mallard, which is what those ducks over there are,” I pointed to some ducks that may have been mallards, “is the bird most likely to hold a grudge for a minimum of one mating season, but often for much longer. Swans are pretty bad, that’s why they break people’s arms so often, but mallards are the worst.”

  “Really?” Pixie looked at me in utter wonderment.

  “Yes, really,” I confirmed before watching as she headed off, rather warily, towards the water.

  “A character witness.” Sophie wasn’t as easily distracted as her daughter unfortunately. “To say I’m a good mother to Pixie. That I would only ever put her interests first.”

  “I don’t really want to . . .” I began, but Sophie interrupted before I could finish.

  “Dominic can’t be allowed to get away with it, he just can’t!” She was clearly close to tears.

  “Get away with what?” I asked.

  “Joint custody, he wants joint custody of Pixie. He says she should live with him one week and with me the next. And he wants her for the whole of each school holiday! The whole of every holiday! That can’t be right, can it?” Sophie looked at me imploringly. I had to hand it to her, she did implore very well and for a moment I almost weakened.

  “Of course it’s not . . .” I didn’t want to say anything that might be used against me later so chose my words carefully, “likely to happen.” I concluded weakly.

  Dominic no more wanted joint custody of Pixie than I did. He just wanted to get back at Sophie for banning overnight stays, but I couldn’t see how his ploy could possibly succeed, so equally I couldn’t see why I should get involved. “The thing is Sophie, my relationship with Dominic isn’t great at the moment,” it’s never great so I was on safe ground, “if I were to get involved in this . . . well, it would only
make things much worse than they already are. And I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. He won’t go through with it, and even if he does he won’t win.”

  “But how can I not worry? It’s not about me, it’s about Pixie and her safety.” Sophie grabbed both of my hands in hers and looked at me even more imploringly. She really knows how to implore, but I am made of pretty stern stuff.

  “Do you actually think Pixie’s not safe with him?” I asked. I knew he could be thoughtless but I had never thought Dominic was a danger to Pixie.

  “You don’t know what he can be like with her.” Sophie said, still clutching my hands.

  “Tell me then. What can he be like?” I asked, gently removing my hands from her grasp. I always find it awkward when someone impulsively grabs a bit of me as I’m never sure how much time I should let pass before I can retrieve my body part.

  “Pixie told me that he used to leave her in the bathroom on her own while she was having a bath.” Sophie looked at me, her eyes like saucers.

  “She is getting to that age though, isn’t she?” I replied. “She might well not want her father, or anyone for that matter, in the room with her.”

  “It was nearly four years ago! She was five, Eve, five! She could have drowned!” Sophie was clearly very exercised by this incident, although she had never mentioned it before. “My solicitor says that alone could be enough to cut off Dom’s access.”

  “Then you don’t need me, do you? I mean you’ve got enough on him already. What use would it be if . . . .” Again Sophie cut me off, but this time it was to let out an almost inhuman wail. I had never heard anyone make a noise quite like it before. It sounded like something from a wildlife documentary. Painful though the sound was to hear I couldn’t help but feel that Sophie was overreacting somewhat. It was, after all, quite some time since Pixie had been left unattended in a bath and no harm had come to her. Sophie, however, was still wailing, and had now leapt up from the bench and begun waving her arms around wildly. It was as I was wondering how she ever got any work (she really was hamming it up terribly) that I realised that she was pointing to something behind me. Turning around I could see nothing that could possibly cause such alarm. Then I realised that I couldn’t see Pixie either, but that there was something thrashing around in the water a few feet from the shore.