In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  “No!” Meg almost shouted. “She didn’t. Sasha didn’t.”

  “OK,” I said, feeling as if I had finally got a handle on what Meg was trying to tell me. “Gideon’s ex-fiancée Sasha was having difficulties in her relationship with him that were caused by Marjorie and she, Sasha, thought that you might join forces with her to try to outwit Marjorie. Is that right?” I summarised.

  “That’s what I said isn’t it?” said Meg.

  “Yes,” I concurred for the sake of amity, “that is exactly what you said. I was simply clarifying things for my own sake. So what did you tell Sasha?”

  “That I was in!” Meg punched the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “Marjorie, you see, was interfering, like she always does, and making life very difficult for Sasha. But then she, Sasha,” Meg said this slowly, presumably to make sure I was keeping up, “decided that she wasn’t up for it, which was a shame. She really was a gorgeous looking creature. She and Gideon would have had the most beautiful children.”

  “That’s hardly relevant,” I replied, somewhat tetchily.

  “I suppose not, but they would have been very lovely.” Meg sighed while looking wistfully into the middle distance.

  “The thing is,” I said, determined to move the conversation on, “everything is fine with me and Marjorie. I have no need of an accomplice to help me outwit her.”

  “So why did you follow me all the way down the King’s Road?” Meg responded. “And I could you know, help you to outwit her that is.”

  “I was interested to meet you.” I replied. “And now I have. But I don’t need your help, thank you very much for offering.”

  “So you think you can outwit her on your own?” Meg looked at me through narrowed eyes.

  “Who said she needs outwitting?” I said airily, as if the matter was of no importance at all to me.

  “You did,” said Meg.

  “I said I didn’t need help outwitting her, not that she needed outwitting.” I clarified. We were beginning to sound like a couple of owls, what with all the outwitting.

  “You obviously don’t realise what sort of a monster my sister is,” Meg muttered darkly.

  “Tell me then,” I was intrigued I must admit, despite my recent molehill/mountain reflections. “What sort of a monster is she?”

  Meg proceeded to tell me about some of Marjorie’s more, in her mind at least, nefarious crimes. As children Marjorie had dropped Meg’s copy of The Wind in The Willows in the bath and not replaced it, she had stolen a lavender mohair cardigan that it had taken Meg months to save up for and only returned it once it had shrunk in the wash, and she had copied Meg’s homework on a regular basis and then handed it in first, making it appear that Meg was the plagiarist (although how anyone could fall for this more than once was beyond me).

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “It! It!” she shrieked. “I have loads more where that came from.” An affronted Meg pursed her lips at me in frustration. Her resemblance to Marjorie when annoyed almost knocked me sideways.

  “I’m sorry Meg,” I said as gently as I could, “but lovely though it’s been to meet you, I think I’d better be going.”

  “You’ll change your mind, you’ll see. Take this,” Meg thrust a piece of paper into my hand. “It’s my address. Send me a card when you do and we’ll talk.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “you will definitely be the first person I turn to if,” I emphasised the ‘if’ quite strongly, “I ever decide I need an accomplice to plot against my boyfriend’s mother.”

  And with that I stalked off, quite certain I would never see the mad old bird again. I did keep her address though, as you never can be completely certain how things will work out.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Does it really matter if they don’t come?” I asked Gideon, on hearing the latest news from his family. It was a few days before wedding two point zero and Marjorie had phoned that morning to say that she wouldn’t be coming. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to come, she had explained, it was that she simply couldn’t. She was, she professed, delighted to be welcoming me into the family, but she and Helen had had some major falling out which she couldn’t bring herself to talk about, but which precluded her from being in the same room as her daughter, even for Gideon’s sake. I honestly couldn’t have cared less if neither of them came, I just wanted to get married but Gideon didn’t, it seemed, share my feelings. He had therefore invited Marjorie around for coffee in an attempt to get to the bottom of the problem, but we were none the wiser following her visit.

  “I simply cannot bear to see your sister, not now, not under any circumstances,” Marjorie had declared when she arrived. “I’m only sorry that you have been caught in the middle of our family’s problems,” she had said turning her attention to me while patting my hand and looking with what I supposed was meant to be infinite regret into my eyes. Looked more like she was about to sneeze from where I was sitting.

  “But you won’t have to talk to her Mum.” Gideon pleaded. “You can sit at different ends of the table. Please, for my sake, can’t you put this aside, just for one day?”

  “I can’t Gideon, not even for you, and you know that I’d do anything in my power for you,” Marjorie paused to look deeply into Gideon’s eyes. “I’d do anything for you,” she repeated. “But I can’t do that.” I wouldn’t have had Marjorie down as a Meatloaf fan, but she had just quoted the refrain from one of his most famous songs almost word for word, so perhaps she had a hinterland I could never have guessed at.

  “I know you would Mum,” Gideon replied. How he could fall for this guff was beyond me. If someone says they would do anything in their power for you and then refuses to sit down for a very few hours in the same room as their own daughter I think you have reason to doubt their sincerity.

  “I don’t want to stop your sister coming to your wedding.” Marjorie continued, dabbing at her nose with her ever present tiny hankie. “I know the children are very excited about it, and I wouldn’t want them to miss it on my account.” Her concern for the happiness of her grandchildren was touching, if a little out of character. She had always seemed supremely uninterested in them as far as I could tell. She literally never mentioned them and had barely spoken to them on the one occasion I had seen them together (although that had been at the Christmas dinner when Dominic had rather dominated the conversation). “I hate to do this to you Ian, and you dear Evie,” Marjorie turned to me, a quite ghastly smile contorting her face. Evie? Where had that come from? No one calls me Evie, not more than once anyway. “But you know that I wouldn’t do this unless I felt I really had no choice,” she concluded, her eyes cast down to denote the great sadness this caused her.

  Gideon was clearly falling for this charade hook, line, and sinker. I, on the other hand, was rather less impressed by Marjorie’s act. Never, they say, bullshit a bullshitter and my finely tuned bullshit detector told me that the whole thing stank to high heaven of bullshit. So, having left the details of the falling out between mother and daughter sufficiently vague Marjorie departed, wafted away on a cloud of what I was convinced was faux regret.

  “It’ll be interesting to see what Helen has to say about all this.” I observed as we stood at the sitting room window watching Marjorie drive away, the roof of her very expensive sports car open to the elements and Meatloaf very possibly pumping out of the stereo.

  “There’s no point in asking Helen anything.” Gideon replied, rather sharply.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’ll be something and nothing,” he replied, not very helpfully.

  “What does that even mean? It’s something or it’s nothing. It can’t be both.” I reasoned.

  “Oh yes it can,” Gideon responded vehemently. “Helen,” he continued, “gets stupidly upset with Mum over silly things. She always thinks Mum’s having a pop at her, when all Mum’s trying to do is help. Helen will have got upset over something she thinks Mum has said or done, and which Mum
is too kind to mention.” Gideon, supposedly, knew his mother and sister far better than I, but this sounded nothing like the behaviour I would have expected from the pair of them. If anything, what Gideon suggested was the exact opposite of what I would have supposed to be the case. And a few days later I learnt that I was right and he was wrong.

  “I am so sorry Eve,” Helen said, having phoned me on my mobile. “I wouldn’t have done this to you for the world, but I had no choice.”

  “What do you mean, no choice?” I asked. I was whispering very quietly as Gideon was in his study, which is next to the sitting room where I was taking Helen’s call.

  “Mum told me that either she or I could go to your wedding, but not both.” Helen explained.

  “I know that much,” I replied. “What I don’t know is why. What did you argue about?”

  “We didn’t,” said Helen, “she just rang and told me what she was going to do and that I had to back her up. I’m sorry. Don’t tell Gideon though because he won’t believe you. I just wanted you to know. I feel really bad, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Who was that?” asked Gideon a few minutes later.

  “No one,” I said, “or rather a wrong number. Coffee?”

  So, I thought, I am lying to Gideon about talking to his sister on the phone. May be Marjorie was a mountain of a problem rather than a molehill after all. I had no real idea what was going on, but the time had come, I felt, to neutralise Marjorie’s influence. If only I knew someone who knew a lot about Marjorie and who would be willing to help me . . . hang on just a god damn minute!

  CHAPTER 15

  “We are going to have to find a way to neutralise Marjorie,” I explained to Meg.

  “Neutralise her? What good would that do?” She looked mystified. “She’s already well past child bearing age.”

  “Neutralise,” I explained, “not neuter. She’s not a cat.” While Meg was hopefully going to be very useful to me she might also, I sensed, test my patience.

  “Oh yes, I see, of course, silly of me.” Meg said. “So how will we neutralise her?”

  Meg and I were sitting in the cafe of a favourite haunt of mine. Having sent her a postcard asking her to call me we had arranged a day out. London, big though it is, has far too many people in it for comfort. You can, in London, go for literally years without seeing anyone you know but as soon as you are either somewhere you shouldn’t be, or with someone you shouldn’t be with, it is guaranteed that friends and acquaintances will start to rain down on you like confetti. I was once on the Northern Line (the Northern Line!) when I should have been in school (in Norwich) when Mrs Litton, my Chemistry teacher, got into my carriage. She shouldn’t have been there either, and she shouldn’t have been with Mr Lawrence, my History teacher, so I didn’t get into trouble for playing hooky. As a matter of fact I did much better in both my Chemistry and History mocks than had been expected, but my point still stands.

  I had already had reason, however, to regret going out in my car with Meg as she had nearly caused a major accident even before we left Chiswick. I had picked her up from a bus stop near Chiswick roundabout, but as I couldn’t stop for any length of time in case I got a ticket she hadn’t had time to put the huge bag she always seemed to have with her in the back of the car. She had therefore shoved it into the footwell in front of her where, I presumed, it would stay. As I pulled back into the traffic my eye was caught by a strange movement from within the bag. I thought I was imagining it and turned my attention back to the road, but as I extended my left hand to slip the car into second gear (while looking over my right shoulder to make sure it was safe to pull out), instead of my hand coming into contact with the cold hard plastic of the gear stick, I felt something warm and furry. I screamed in alarm and, having instinctively moved as far as I could to the right of my seat, I also managed to turn the steering wheel to the right as well. The upshot of this was that I only just missed having a head on collision with a bus that was coming the other way.

  “What the f . . . !” I screamed.

  “Silly Pookie,” said Meg, interrupting my expletive.

  “Who are you calling Pookie?” I yelled, having managed to swing the car back to the left in the nick of time and pull in again at the curb.

  “This little fellow, the silly ickle wickle lickle Pooker.” Still muttering this gibberish Meg shoved the smallest dog I have ever seen into my face.

  “What the f . . .” I began to say again, only to be interrupted again by Meg.

  “We go everywhere together, don’t we my ickle pickle . . .”

  “That’s enough of that,” I snapped. “Put Poo . . . whatever back in the bag and keep it out of my way while I’m driving.”

  “He’s a he.” She said before beginning to mutter gibberish again. “Aunty Waunty Evie Wevie doesn’t like lickle Mr . . .” I’ve no idea how long this went on as I stopped listening at this point, but I do know it was over by the time we reached the M40 when I tuned back in. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, I’ve just never had time for them, or for cats for that matter, except Mr Perkins of sacred memory. It was all I could do for much of my life, particularly when I first returned to London at that age of sixteen, to look after myself, without taking on the responsibility for hangers on.

  The dog safely stowed back in its bag we did, thankfully, manage to make it to our destination without any further life threatening incidents.

  “Ooh,” said Meg, when she saw where I had brought her, “this is absolutely heavenly!”

  The Old Barn Vintage and Antiques Centre (or OBVAC as it’s known to regulars like me) is one of my very favourite places in the whole world. It is housed, as the name suggests, in an old barn (or several old barns to be precise) and is chock full of the kind of bits and bobs that I adore. It has everything from vintage (old) clothing, to reclaimed (junk) furniture as well as china, glass, old jewellery, table linen, old kitchen equipment, I could go on. I was thrilled by Meg’s response and could almost forgive her having smuggled a mutt into my car and nearly killing us both as a consequence. It was the kind of place I just knew Marjorie would hate. She only ever wanted shiny new things, the more expensive the better, while I adore old stuff, worn out stuff, stuff that has a history. I suppose I feel an affinity for it, having a bit of a history myself.

  Meg and I spent a happy, companionable hour wandering around the barns looking at the vast array of things on offer, and finding that we shared a lot of the same tastes. Meg would pick something up, maybe a champagne coupe, or a decrepit cheese grater and say “isn’t this gorgeous?” and I would agree. If only Marjorie were more like Meg, I thought, how much easier my life might be. I did notice however, that one or two of the items that Meg picked up didn’t make it back on display. Luckily she needed the loo just as this idyll came to an end, so I retrieved everything from her bag, which she had asked me to hold along with Pookie, and shoved the bits and bobs back on to the nearest shelf.

  “So,” I said, once we were settled in the OBVAC cafe. “Let’s begin shall we?” I took out a notepad that I had brought with me, ready to get down to business.

  “What’s that?” Meg looked horrified, a forkful of carrot cake halfway to her mouth.

  “It’s a notepad.” I explained.

  “I can see that,” she said. “What’s it for?”

  “For taking notes.” I replied.

  “Do you have to take notes?” Meg looked aghast.

  “Of course I do!” I exclaimed. “I can’t possibly remember everything we might talk about, and I might only realise the importance of something when I look back over my notes.” Phillipe Merlot had drilled me constantly on the importance of good note taking and I had on many occasions been grateful to him for inculcating me into this practice.

  “All right then,” said Meg. “In for a penny in for a pound I suppose.”

  We spent some time discussing the past, what Marjorie had been like as a girl (pretty much the same unpleasant so and so she was
as a woman it seemed), and Meg regaled me with numerous incidents of Marjorie’s unkindness and manipulation, but there was very little of substance. Nothing in fact that gave me any idea where to start looking for something that might neutralise her.

  “What exactly do you mean by neutralise?” Meg asked, having just finished telling me a story about how Marjorie had encouraged her to cut off all her hair only for it to provoke the fury of their father who hated short hair on girls.

  “There must be something that Marjorie has done,” I explained, “something that she wouldn’t want anyone to know about. She must have some secret that, if revealed, would reduce her influence on Gideon, and,” I added hurriedly, “everyone else, obviously.”

  “Hmm,” said Meg rubbing her chin with one hand while stroking Pookie, who was on her lap, with the other. “I’ve always thought there was something funny about the time when Gideon was ill.”

  “What do you mean, ill?” I asked.

  “Unwell, sick, in need of medical treatment.” Meg explained.

  “I know what ill means,” I replied, “What sort of ill was he?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but it was quite serious.” Meg explained. “He was in and out of hospital for months.”

  “So you don’t know what was wrong with him?” Gideon had never mentioned any childhood illnesses so this was news to me.

  “No idea, I’m afraid.” Meg was stroking and nuzzling Pookie, who was clearly loving all the attention and displaying his pleasure by farting like a dairy cow. “But there was definitely something funny going on.”

  “What do you mean by funny?” I asked.

  “Odd, unusual, out of the ordinary,” Meg explained. I wasn’t about to tell her that I knew what funny meant just as I had known what ill meant.

  “In what way funny,” I asked, as patiently as I could manage.

  “It was funny that it was only when Gideon was actually getting better that she told me that I was to have nothing more to do with her or her children,” said Meg.