In-Laws and Outlaws

by Kate Fulford

  “I have cancer,” Marjorie spoke more quietly than I had ever heard her speak before. I had to lean in to hear her.

  “Yes, I got that,” said Gideon.

  “Don’t hurry me Ian,” Marjorie said, clearly preparing to milk this for all it was worth. “The doctor said I may . . .” Her voice cracked and she started to sob before she had to commit to any specifics.

  “Said you may what?” Gideon prompted.

  “I don’t want you to worry,” Marjorie ignored Gideon’s question, and continued in the same barely audible tone. Her usual harsh nasal quality could cut through pretty much any soundscape so this was something of a departure. “I’m going to get a second opinion,” she continued. “Next Thursday.”

  And there it was, my suspicions were confirmed. How convenient that her appointment should fall on the very day of our wedding. “I’m going to see the top man in the country for this kind of . . .” Marjorie’s words were lost in more sobbing, undoubtedly to obscure having to say anything more specific about what was wrong. “I shall be going privately, of course. I’m not going to let those butchers in the NHS get hold of me.”

  “I think it’s the same doctors Mum.” Gideon said.

  “Not where I’m going it’s not, I can assure you.” Marjorie’s voice had regained much of its normal strength.

  “Where are you going?” Gideon enquired.

  “I told you,” Marjorie almost snapped, “to see the top man. But let’s not talk anymore about this. You don’t need to worry, I will deal with whatever hand I am dealt.” This little speech was accompanied by some stoical sniffing. “There is, however, something I have to say, now that I . . .” her voice trailed off to allow Gideon to fill in the blanks.

  “What do you have to say Mum?” Gideon asked.

  “I have something I have to get off my chest.” Marjorie replied.

  “Yes?” Gideon coaxed.

  “I am not happy about your marrying Eve,” she said, the words coming out in a great rush, as if she had had to pluck up her courage to say them. “It would be very bad for my health if any major changes occurred while I was ill, I’m sure you understand. Wendy said you would.” And there it was, the pay off, the real reason for her early morning call.

  “Wendy? Who’s Wendy?” Gideon glanced across at me, a look of puzzlement on his face.

  “Wendy is my psychologist,” Marjorie announced. “She has been helping me through some issues I have been struggling with.”

  “What issues Mum?” Gideon asked. “You mean coming to terms with your diagnosis?”

  “My what? Oh yes, my diagnosis. No, it’s not that,” she murmured, her voice apparently cracking with emotion. “I have unresolved feelings about Eve, I’m sorry, but that’s just how I feel.” Marjorie spoke as if she had been holding back a great torrent and could no longer take the strain. The dam had burst. I was almost relieved to have Marjorie’s real intent laid bare. This time she was planning to do far more than simply postpone our wedding. This time she was determined to wheel out the big guns and blow the whole enterprise out of the water once and for all.

  Gideon looked at me nervously. I knew he was wishing that he hadn’t included me in the call, but he could hardly shoo me away now, and I wasn’t about to go anywhere. This was dynamite.

  “I’m not at all sure that she’s the right woman for you,” Marjorie continued. “She can be . . .” Marjorie paused as if searching for the mot juste, “ . . . charming, very charming indeed. And she’s certainly attractive, in an obvious sort of way, but something’s not quite right. I can’t quite put my finger on it,” she paused as if puzzling over an intractable crossword clue. “Something about her,” she resumed, “makes me uneasy, very uneasy indeed. You must have wondered . . .” Gideon interrupted her before she could go any further.

  “No Mum, I haven’t wondered,” he said firmly before reaching for my hand. Gideon is not usually given to affectionate gestures, so I took it as a good sign that he wasn’t being swayed by Marjorie and her suspicions. “And this hasn’t got anything to do with your cancer Mum.” Gideon tried, fruitlessly as it turned out, to get his mother back to the subject in hand. “Let’s focus on that shall we?”

  “Do you remember my birthday?” Marjorie continued as if Gideon hadn’t spoken. “We invited her to join us at that lovely restaurant, the one in town, and she was late. No one is ever really late, not according to Wendy. It always means something,” Marjorie paused again, as if all this had only just occurred to her and she was working it through as she spoke. “The intention is to send a message. That’s what Wendy says, and she should know.” There had been a burst water main on the Cromwell Road which meant that my bus was delayed. The message that my lateness was sending was that buses can’t float.

  “And whenever we go for a walk,” Marjorie wasn’t done yet, “she always races ahead. She never wants to walk with me. I see you running to keep up with her. What do you think that means?” What it means is that I am trying to keep up with Gideon who has very long legs and hurtles along at a terrific pace.

  “This is all very trivial Mum,” Gideon said firmly. “I really don’t see what it has got to do with the current situation.”

  “I’m afraid it has got a great deal to do with the current situation.” Marjorie said very forcefully. It was clear she was having trouble getting Gideon to come with her on this one so she decided to up the ante. “If I’m going to die . . .” Die? Who’d said anything about dying? We didn’t even know what sort of cancer she (supposedly) had.

  Having quelled a new bout of sobbing Marjorie resumed. “If I should . . . well, I would need to do so with a clear conscience. I would be failing in my duty as a mother if I didn’t try to warn you against making a quite catastrophic mistake. Quite catastrophic,” she repeated emphatically. “I’m only saying this because Wendy advised me to. If it was up to me I’d have kept quiet. I would have kept my worries to myself Ian. But Wendy told me that would be selfish. And I can’t be selfish, not where you’re concerned, I just can’t.” Marjorie was throwing her all at this. The whole speech had been delivered as a rising crescendo and had ended on a quite theatrically impassioned note.

  “So what’s the prognosis?” Gideon was still focused on the cancer, or ‘so called’ cancer as I had already dubbed it. Marjorie no more had cancer than she had a soul.

  “The prog what?” Marjorie had obviously not come across this word before.

  “What has the doctor said the outcome of your condition is likely to be?” Gideon clarified.

  “I don’t know!” Marjorie replied brusquely.

  “How can you not know Mum?” Gideon asked, almost impatiently. “Surely you asked him?”

  “Don’t badger me Ian,” she snapped, “I have enough to worry about. He’s the doctor, why should I ask him all sorts of questions? He knows what he’s doing.” If she was so sure her doctor knew what he was doing, I wondered, why the need for a second opinion.

  “The point is that you must listen to me,” Marjorie persisted. “I may not be around for much longer so . . .” She let the threat of her imminent demise hang in the air.

  “Surely the point is that you have cancer and you want to get better.” Gideon said tersely. I was glad to see she was finally testing his patience.

  “The point is I want you to be happy and I’m far from sure Eve is the woman to make you happy.” Marjorie wasn’t going to give up easily. “I’m your mother, Ian, I only have your best interests at heart. If I should . . .” She was rather over doing the death angle, but she didn’t have much else to work with I suppose. “I’m sure,” she continued, “that Eve might be the perfect wife for any number of other men,” nice one, Marjorie, “but you, you should be with someone that you can be sure of. I’m not sure, I’m not sure she can be trusted. There I’ve said. I’m sorry, but it’s how I feel. I mean,” Marjorie was on a roll now, “what do you really know about her? Her name isn’t really Evangeline, did you know that Ian?”

&n
bsp; “That’s hardly a reason not to marry someone is it Mother?” Gideon was certainly coming up trumps in the face of his mother’s assault.

  “And that story about winning a pony in a competition? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous!” Marjorie’s voice had regained its fingernails down a blackboard quality, all whisperiness vanquished by her annoyance at my pony winning exploits. And while we’re at it, where the hell had she got that from? The funny thing was that it was actually true, I had won a pony in a competition. As a child all my favourite television programmes featured horses – Black Beauty, White Horses, Follyfoot – and all the children in these programmes seemed to be having a much better time of it than I was. The common theme seemed to be that they all had horses. I reasoned, therefore, that if I could get hold of a horse my life would be better too. That I had never seen a horse in real life didn’t dampen my enthusiasm one bit. Luckily WH Smith ran a Win a Pony competition every year. The competition questions were ridiculously easy, but then you had to write a few words detailing why you should be entrusted with the care of an actual pony. I let my imagination get the better of me one year and detailed at some length the wonderful life I would give Beauty (I had already named the pony so it was practically mine already), on the small holding I shared with my parents and three equally pony mad siblings. All of us would share in the care of Beauty, with the possible exception of my little brother, River (we were that kind of family), who was too small and more interested in tractors anyway. I was obviously very persuasive because on this, my fourth attempt, I finally won. I was then horrified to find myself ignominiously stripped of my prize when it became clear that I had lied and had nowhere to keep a pony and no idea how to look after one even if I had. So heinous was my deception considered to be that I didn’t even get the premium bonds given in lieu to winners unable to care for that year’s pony. I have, ever since, felt an enormous sense of gratitude to WH Smith’s and frequent their shops whenever possible, as they taught me a very valuable lesson. Lies, I learned, are only as good as your ability to see them through successfully to their conclusion, whatever that conclusion may be. How, I wondered, was Marjorie going to get away with not dying of cancer? I would be interested to find out.

  “So you go to see the consultant on Thursday?” Gideon said, ignoring the pony story and making a ‘but what can I do about it?’ face at me. You could, I thought, tell her that you were sorry she wouldn’t be able to be there but the wedding was going to go ahead as planned. But I knew he wouldn’t, hence my pre-emptive cancellation. One bloody kidney she donated. It was years ago, and she’s got another one, get over it already I wanted to scream.

  “Yes,” Marjorie confirmed. “Thursday.”

  “What time and where?” asked Gideon.

  “I’m suddenly very tired,” Marjorie said, weakly, “I think I’d better lie down. I’ll call again if we have any further news.”

  “Where did all that stuff about me come from?” I said once we were off the phone, and doing my best to look astounded by Marjorie’s comments. I shook my head gently from side to side while raising my eyebrows and letting a glum little smile play around my lips. We were in the sitting room, still in our pyjamas and drinking tea. In high summer all the east facing rooms in Gideon’s flat are filled with sunshine, but it was winter and the sun had barely managed to make it above the roofs of the buses parked outside.

  Would I see another summer here I wondered? I would do my very best to make sure that I did, and not just because I loved the view. I also loved the man who was sharing it with me, even if he did have the most awful mother imaginable.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Gideon, “she’s in shock. One thing I would like to know though.”

  “Mmm?” I said non-committally.

  “What is your real name?”

  “It’s Evelyn,” I replied.

  “Well, that’s nice too. Anything else I should know about?” Gideon asked, a wry smile on his face.

  “I’m not descended from Charles Darwin.” I said, having found an appropriately innocent lie to come clean about.

  “Why did you say you were?” Gideon took a sip of tea. He didn’t, I was relieved to notice, seem very perturbed.

  “Your mother was telling me how she was descended from the Royal House of Stuart, because she was a Stuart with a u, not Stewart with a w. Do you remember?” I explained.

  “Of course I remember.” Gideon said.

  “Your father said this was rubbish. He’d done some research on her family tree and her great something grandfather changed the spelling because he was a Jacobean.”

  “Jacobite,” Gideon corrected me.

  “Potato, potarto, who cares? Anyway, your mother was a bit annoyed about this.” I say annoyed, I thought she was going to rip Malcolm’s head off using nothing more than her bare hands and the cake fork she was gripping very tightly at the time. “So I thought it would be a good idea to change the subject. I was trying to defuse the situation.”

  “So you thought lying about being descended from Darwin was a good way to end a row between my parents?” Gideon asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “And it worked. I meant to say Charles Dickens but once I realised I had said Charles Darwin it was too late to go back on it without looking stupid.”

  “I didn’t believe you anyway.” Gideon laughed as he recalled the conversation. “It just sounded hugely implausible and you didn’t seem to know the slightest thing about Darwin. You thought his ship was called the Bagel.”

  “It could have been.” I said. “The captain might have been Jewish.”

  “He might have been.” Gideon replied, clearly not convinced. “So why were you going to say Dickens? Do you know any more about him?”

  “I know all the words to all the songs in Oliver.” I replied.

  “That’s pretty much the same thing I suppose,” he agreed.

  “I’m glad you can see that.” I said.

  “Yes, yes I can. I would suggest, though,” Gideon went on, “that you give up lying from now on as you are clearly very bad at it.”

  “All right,” I agreed, “seeing as it is not one of my top skills I will never lie to you again, I promise.” This was a lie, obviously, but one told with the best of intentions.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” said Gideon, “is where this all is coming from. Mum, I mean, saying she doesn’t trust you. I thought everything was going really well with you two. I think,” he continued, “that she must be a bit unbalanced at the moment.” Gideon looked thoughtfully into his tea. “I don’t think we should take anything she says too seriously for the time being,” he continued after a long pause. “She’s sick and scared and it’s making her behave badly. And I am going to marry you, just not, it seems, this Thursday.”

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘Cat now’ said the text I had just received from an unknown number. What cat and why now? I wondered. I was on the point of deleting the text when Gideon (who had been marking essays in his study) came into the sitting room. I was glad of the interruption as it meant I didn’t have to go back to the book on science I was supposed to be reading. Gideon had given me it to me to read instead, he said, of my usual idiotic trash. He is simply mad for science, but I would happily have left this book where I had thrown it on the floor. If only it had been a little bigger I might have been able to conceal a magazine behind it and everyone would have been happy.

  “Read this,” he said, laughing as he handed me his phone. ‘Call me he you hate time’ it said.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “It’s from Mum. She’s got a really old phone and no idea about predictive text. It’s supposed to say ‘call me if you have time’.”

  It wasn’t very funny, but I knew Gideon was trying to make things seem normal after Marjorie’s recent ‘I have cancer and you can’t trust Eve’ bombshell.

  “Oh, right.” I said, not laughing. I couldn’t find it in myself to find anything Marjorie did amusing at the momen
t. “Are you going to call her?”

  “Not right now, I don’t hate time.” Gideon threw his phone down on the footstool next to me. “Fancy a coffee?” he asked.

  “I would absolutely love one!” I responded, just a tad too enthusiastically. I had just realised that Gideon’s phone might hold the answer to the cat riddle. As soon as he left the room I grabbed it and, as I suspected, the text was from Malcolm. He was telling me to act now.

  “And what, Eve, are they?” Marjorie was glaring at me from what I supposed was her sick bed. She was propped up on a huge pile of pillows, a large box of chocolates open by her side. I had gone round as soon as I could manage after getting Malcolm’s text.

  “Hello Eve,” Malcolm had said when he opened the front door, “I suppose that you have come to see how Marjorie is.”

  “Yes, Malcolm, that is the sole purpose of my visit.” He didn’t, as he had promised, acknowledge that anything about our relationship had changed. And now I was standing at the end of Marjorie’s bed shaking a set of keys at her.

  “These, Marjorie, are keys.” I said.

  “Thank you Eve, I can see that,” Marjorie replied. “Why are you standing at the end of my bed waving keys at me?”

  “I am returning them to you, Marjorie.”

  “What, Eve, do those keys have to do with me?”

  “They are, Marjorie, the keys to your home.” I replied.

  “The what?” she exclaimed. Fifteen love. I had not only surprised her, but she had been the first to drop the use of the other’s name in every sentence.

  “Have you been spending a lot of time in bed recently, Marjorie?” I asked.

  “I am unwell, as I’m sure Gideon has informed you,” she replied while reaching for a chocolate. She didn’t offer me one.

  “Comfortable, is it, Marjorie?” I asked.