‘What is it?’
‘Oh shit,’ says Rufus again, ‘it’s my mother.’
He does a duck-flip and swims to the bottom of the pool, grabs his bathers and my bikini top and surfaces in a rush, shoves them into my hand. ‘Get these on, for God’s sake.’
I don’t need telling twice.
The voice approaches. ‘Huh-looooo! Is anyone at home? Rufus? Huh-looo! It’s Mah-meh!’
The crimson tinge to his face comes from fear and embarrassment, now, rather than passion. He looks absurd, struggling to get his feet through the legholes of his trunks, getting caught up in the net lining, spluttering and cursing. I, meanwhile, am hooking up my top and going: ‘Where are my bottoms? Rufus, where are my bottoms?’ Eventually, I spot them, right over on the far side of the pool where, I now vaguely remember, he threw them in one of those grandiose gestures you nearly always regret later. I’ve got no choice, really: Rufus is still tangled up and I can hear the click of heels on the lounge floor-tiles.
I dive beneath the surface, eyes stinging with salt and chlorine, and swim for the cossie, arse to the sun. And when I surface, I find myself face-to-face with my new mother-in-law.
Chapter Eight
How’s it Going?
The first thing I see is a pair of elegant ankles, clad, despite the heat, in low-density tan stockings and a pair of medium-heeled patent-leather Gucci pumps. Then I work my way up and see a tailored skirt in lightweight pink-and-green tweed, cut off just above the knee to show off the fact that the legs are exceptionally toned and slim on a woman in her mid-fifties, a matching jacket with a little, tasteful flourish of self-coloured satin edging on cuffs and collar, a cream silk blouse slightly opened at the neck to show a single strand of pearls and just the faintest hint of well-trained cleavage. There’s a tiny gold watch on the left wrist and, on the fingers, a plain gold band and a solitaire diamond the size of a milk tooth.
It takes me a while to force my eyes up to look at the face. I’m at something of a disadvantage and I have to get myself organised and decent before I can look up.
And when I do, it’s a surprise. Lady Mary Callington-Warbeck-Wattestone, far from being the battle-axe I’ve had in my mind’s eye ever since Rita Zammit and Marija Boffa exchanged knowing looks across the dinner table at Giannini, is the quintessential English rose. She has that slightly papery peaches-and-cream complexion you can only get from living in a permanently damp climate, blue, blue eyes like a china doll, surrounded by a slash of the long black eyelashes she’s obviously passed on to her son. It’s a well-preserved face, the face of a woman who’s watched her weight throughout her life, who’s never gone through any sag-inducing expansions or reductions but has stayed the same, maintaining her looks with cold cream and a solemn refusal to allow her emotions to register in her expression. She has well-defined eyebrows, mid-brown, a pinky mouth that curls up slightly at the edges, neat little ears touched with a pair of screw-in gold-and-pearl studs, and a girlish bob in Light Ash Blonde. I guess I’d been imagining that reinforced-concrete look affected by someone like Margaret Thatcher. I’m taken aback.
‘Mummy!’ Rufus says, splashing on to his back into the middle of the pool, now that he’s finally found his way into his trunks. ‘We were just …’
She keeps her eyes averted from my indecency. ‘Having a lovely swim,’ she says, fanning herself with a hand, ‘So I see. Very wise. Gosh, it’s still so hot, darling, isn’t it? I feel grimy after the helicopter. I do wish they’d sort out some better way of getting into the terminal than walking past the petrol pumps.’
There’s not a fleck of grime on her whole person. She may as well have just walked out of a beauty salon.
‘You look lovely,’ says Rufus, hauling himself up the ladder in the corner of the deep end, ‘and what a lovely surprise to see you! What are you doing here?’
Lady Mary squeaks like a flirty kitten, waves him away as he approaches and pokes a cheek as far from her body as possible to receive a kiss. ‘Don’t you dare touch me, you foul creature!’ she cries. ‘You’re dripping! No! You bad child!’
The son bends to plant the salutation. ‘Why didn’t you call?’ he asks. ‘I would have come and got you from Luqa. And how did you get here from the heliport? There are never taxis.’
‘Well, if you would ever pick up the phone,’ she replies, with an edge of reproach, ‘I could have done that. But who cares, darling? It’s hardly beyond me to find my way half a mile from the heliport. Marija Boffa got her brother to collect me.’
‘Marija Boffa?’
‘Yes. Yes, feckless offspring.’
I’ve never heard anyone talk like they’re in a Mitford novel before.
‘After,’ continues the mother, ‘she rang me yesterday with some absurd story about you getting married and not telling a soul about it!’
‘Bloody hell.’ Rufus folds his arms across his stomach and looks down as he traces a pattern with his toe on the flagstones. ‘What did she do that for? I wanted to tell you myself.’
‘And when was that going to be? Next year? After the hunt ball? On my deathbed?’
This is said with nothing but an edge of light teasing. It’s a verbal nudge in the ribs. She’s talking as though everything in life, including this, is some great big Girl Scout lark. It’s weird. I know my parents won’t react like this. That’s another reason I’ve put off calling them.
‘So is it true, then, perfidious creature? Have you run off and got married like a thief in the night?’
I’m in my bikini now, but I feel seriously awkward. I don’t really know what to do. Do I get out of the pool and approach, dripping, without permission, or do I wait and look rude, splashing about in the shallow end like I don’t give a damn? Eventually, I decide to make for the ladder, which is closer to where they’re standing than the shallow-end steps. As I’m on it, belly sticking out with the strain of pulling myself out of the water, Rufus, typical bloody bloke, no sense of appropriate timing, turns, waves a hand towards me, and says: ‘Ma, I want you to meet Melody Katsouris. My wife. Melody, this is my mother, Mary.’
Painfully aware of my half-naked state, of the fact that my hair’s a mess, that my bikini has seen better days and that there’s probably a tuft of hair escaping from the bottoms, I cross the courtyard, holding out a hand to the aged relly. ‘How’s it going, Lady Mary?’ I say, ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
To my surprise, I find myself being bussed warmly on both cheeks, though a firm grip on each arm keeps my dripping body away from the immaculate ensemble. Then she steps back and examines me, thoughtfully, as you might a new artwork. And then a smile reblossoms on her lips.
‘Well, my deah!’ she cries, releasing me. ‘You’re a picture! I can see why my son’s been swept away! And Aw-stralian, to boot! I love Awstralians. A breath of fresh air! I always say that, don’t I darling?’ She looks up at her son for confirmation, bats – I swear; I’m not imagining it – her eyelashes at him.
‘You sure do,’ says Rufus, looking pleased. She turns back to me. ‘Well, welcome, Melody! Welcome to my family! I just know we’re going to be the best of friends. And for heaven’s sake, please don’t call me Lady Mary! You’re my daughter-in-law now, even if it is all rather sudden! I’m Mary. Just Mary.’
‘OK,’ I say, gratified, ‘Mary.’
‘Now – oh, gosh!’ she says, and her hands fly to her face. ‘I don’t know what to say! I really don’t! I have a daughter-in-law! My son – my darling son – has a wife!’
I apologise for the shock.
‘No!’ she says. ‘No! No! No! I’m made up, ruhr-leh I am! But what naughty, naughty children you are! I would have killed to be there. I s’mp-leh can’t bear it! Rufus, I’ve ruhr-leh got to register a protest! How could you marry this chah-ming gel and keep it a secret? I’m so sorry, my dear! My son behaves as though his family are the most dreadful embarrassment to him, when really all we are is simply country bumpkins! Can’t think why you’ve taken him on, but I c
an only be grateful that someone has at last!’
I think I’ve got my mother-in-law’s measure. She’s the sort of woman whose every phrase, if it’s not an interrogative, ends with an exclamation mark! She’s one of those people who has been raised to inject positive sounds into every remark as though they will magically transform the situation to their liking. You went to the shops? How extraordinary! I went to the shops too! I’m surprised we didn’t bump into each other! Cup of tea! Mah-vlous! Do you know? Talking like this makes me sound really, really witless!
I’m feeling increasingly vulnerable in front of this chic woman. I’ve left a sarong on the painted metal table in the corner of the courtyard, decide that it would be better to risk insult by breaking away to cover myself up than it would be to stand here dripping like a model on a peanut display card.
I can feel both of their eyes on my back as I cross the flags. And just for a moment, I feel as though the Death Star is beaming a destructaray directly at planet Melody. But when I wrap up, turn and look at them again, all I see is beaming smiles. Funny. I guess I’m a bit paranoid, what with the abnormality of the circs.
‘Do come here,’ she says, ‘and let me have a look at you.’
I smile and try to stand there looking relaxed.
‘But, my dear,’ she repeats, ‘she’s chah-ming! Nothing like I would have expected, but utterly chah-ming!’
‘Thank you,’ says Rufus complacently, as if I’m some personal possession picked out from the shelves of a design shop. ‘Can I get you something to drink, Mummy? You must be dry as a bone.’
An exaggerated, languorous sigh. ‘Why, darling, I thought you’d never ask!’ she proclaims to the world. ‘Is it unconscionably early for a G and T?’
He is already heading for the kitchen door, laughing over his shoulder. ‘You must have been in transit for a good seven hours already, haven’t you? That makes it well past yardarm, in my book. Darling, do you want anything?’
‘Yeah, I’ll just have a glass of water, thanks,’ I say, then, too late, realise that I am no longer a guest in this house, that I should be doing the hospitality thing myself. Especially if I’m not going to come a gutser in front of the new family. I scuttle over to the foot of the steps, say: ‘Honey, I’ll give you a hand.’
‘No, no,’ says Rufus, ‘go and sit down. It’ll only take me a minute.’
‘Well, then,’ I say in a loud voice, ‘you sit down. I’ll sort it out.’
The minute we’re inside the door, he wraps me in a big warm hug and plants a kiss on my forehead. ‘I told you!’ he whispers. ‘I told you it would be all right! She loves you!’
‘She’s great,’ I reply, because, you know, I think she probably is. It’ll take me a while to get used to the way she expresses herself, and maybe I think she’s a little – well, silly – but she’s nothing like the gorgon that had been materialising in my mind. ‘I’m so relieved!’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he asks. ‘Didn’t I? Oh, Melody, I love you so much!’
‘We’d better get her drink, or she’ll be in wanting to know what’s happened. Go on, darl. You go out and keep her company. I’ll get them.’
‘You sure?’
‘Too right, mate. She’s your mother.’
‘Well … OK,’ he says. ‘Go on.’
And he kisses me again.
‘Go on yourself,’ I say.
‘In a minute.’
‘Now.’ I take hold of his shoulder, spin him on his heel. ‘Get out of here. Go, you dill.’
‘OK. Thank you, darling.’ He walks away from me, raises his voice so he can be heard from outside, and something about the tone of his voice suggests indulgence of my whim to play house rather than gratitude for a chore taken over. ‘That would be kind. Can I have a G and T as well?’
I do a small ironical forelock tug. ‘Your wish is my command, oh lord and master,’ I say. And, lower, ‘Watch it, buster.’
He vanishes into the light, and I set about making drinks while I listen to the sound of the two of them settling down at the table. They are the kinds of voices that would be hard to avoid eavesdropping on. I should think that half of Xewkija is listening in right at this moment.
‘So tell me everything, you wicked boy,’ she says. ‘Where did you meet this blissy creature? Where did she sweep you off your feet?’
Blissy creature? I’m not a fucking Pekinese. I feel my shoulders tense. Rufus’s voice, less distinct, begins to tell her whatever the suitable story is. I hear the words ‘salt pans’ and ‘drowning’ and ‘kiss of life’, but precious little else. I don’t suppose he’ll be telling her about how we spent the first twenty minutes in this house screwing on the outer stairs because we lacked the self-control to get any further.
The limestone that makes up these islands soaks up and retains heat as though warmed by a million little underfoot furnaces. And though the nights have cooled enough now that you can turn the fan off between two and seven, the days are still blazingly hot. Not the tropical hot I’m used to, but a dusty, paper-dry hot that sucks the moisture off your skin. But nerves have made me break out into a sweat despite this and I take a moment, when I open the freezer to get out some ice, to stick my head inside and try to cool down. This isn’t the way I had imagined spending the first day of my honeymoon. And I’m mortified about the sort of impression I must have made at first glance.
‘But how thrilling!’ Mary, I notice, has a very slight speech impediment, pronouncing her Rs as Ws in the middle of words. I have no idea how much this is going to put my teeth on edge in the future. I guess it’ll depend how our relationship progresses.
I manage to find three vaguely similar highballs in the cupboard, sling half a dozen lumps of ice into each, slice a lemon, pour over the gin and polish off the tonic bottle in filling the glasses to the brim. A good thing I only wanted water. Then I take the tray out from under the coffee maker and carry all three out through the French doors to the sitting room.
‘No, no, darling. You’re completely wrong. I couldn’t be more thrilled! I mean, obviously, we can’t help feeling a little excluded, but …’
Oh, well. I suppose it’s inevitable that this is going to be a theme for a while.
‘That wasn’t what we meant to do. I just … I couldn’t wait, you know? Maybe you don’t. I don’t know, I just … It’s hard to explain.’
Lady Mary looks up. She has put on a pair of dark glasses while I’ve been gone: the type that are darker at the top than at the bottom because they’re supposed to be more flattering.
‘Well. We’ll just have to have a party when you get home. Introduce her to the county. Ah! There she is!’
I put the tray down, hand the drinks around. The mother-in-law takes her glass and lays it down on the table, looks at it for a moment and then turns her full-beam smile on me.
‘So tell me something about yourself,’ she says. ‘What brought you to Gozo in the first place?’
I shrug. ‘Oh, you know. Just travelling. It was going to be part of a bigger trip. I’ve already been to Cyprus, where my dad comes from, and I was going to catch the ferry to Sicily and do Europe when Rufus got in the way. I didn’t,’ I say, and laugh ruefully, ‘exactly come here with a plan to snare myself a husband.’
I anticipate a laugh in response to the attempt at levity, receive instead a slight flicker of the eyebrows. ‘I never understand,’ she says, ‘with you young people. This “just travelling” thing. Finding yourselves. We didn’t really have time for finding ourselves in my day.’
I shrug again. ‘Well, I think, you know, it’s something a lot of Australians and Kiwis have to do. I mean, there we are, a Western culture stuck out on the tippy-tip of the other side of the world from everyone else like us, and most of us have at least one parent, often two, who’ve come from a background that’s so completely alien to the one they’ve raised us in …’
‘Yeee-sss,’ she says. ‘Is that so with you?’
‘Uh-huh. I mean, my dad
’s a Greek Cypriot, and my mum’s folks came from Scotland, originally, though via South Africa, but I don’t really have the first idea about where I come from, as it were. I think a lot of us are like that. Plus, I think a lot of the children of emigrants have a stronger sense of choosing where they end up, even if where they end up is the one-pub beach town they grew up in.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and I’m surprised to detect what I think is a slightly sharp edge to the comment, ‘but aren’t you a little old for this sort of gallivanting?’
I can’t tell if Rufus has picked up on the bitchiness in this remark.
‘Not really,’ I tell her. ‘I’d got to one of those crossroads and it felt like a smart thing to do before I got committed to something else and never did it.’
‘Yes, but. This hippy thing is the sort of thing that most people do before their first year at university.’
‘I never went to university.’
I’m surprised to see a little twitch. You’d have thought she’d like this in a girl. I’d be willing to bet a few thousand dollars that Lady Mary Callington-Warbeck-Wattestone never graduated anything more than finishing school. Oh, and riding school.
‘Oh,’ she says faintly. ‘So what do you do with your time?’
‘I’m a reflexologist.’
The debutante staccato begins again. ‘A reflexologist? How fascinating!’
I waggle my head, take another mouthful of water. ‘Yeah, it can be pretty good. You get to meet some pretty interesting people, and it’s a portable skill, you know? I can take it pretty much anywhere in the world and it won’t take all that long to build up a client base. I spent a couple of summers working the beaches in Bali and Thailand, and it was pretty cool.’
‘I’d have thought it was jolly hot,’ she says. D’oh. ‘So tell me, what is a reflexologist?’
‘It’s sort of like – you know acupressure?’
‘Well, we don’t get much of that sort of thing in deepest Gloucestershire.’
Simply Heaven Page 5
