Mothers and Daughters

by Howard, Minna

  ‘That’s hardly fair, darling, but I’m glad you’ve found someone else, someone who is not attached,’ she finished lamely, hoping that was true.

  ‘So it’s all right if he comes then?’ Evie demanded.

  ‘I suppose so. Will he pop in while I’m here? You know I’ve got to go back early the day after tomorrow. Laura’s coming down for the last fitting and we’ll go back together.’

  ‘He might, he’s working very hard,’ Evie said, ‘but you’ll meet him at the wedding.’

  ‘Does Laura know him, have you asked her if he can come?’

  ‘No… I’ll ask her when I see her tomorrow. He won’t take up much room and it’s only one more person.’

  Alice refrained from asking if he was a midget or a ghost. ‘Laura and Douglas know the numbers, square it with her when you see her,’ she said.

  Evie showed no interest when Alice told her Freya had asked her to pop over for a drink.

  ‘Perhaps she’s going to say she doesn’t want to come to the wedding.’ She watched Evie for her reaction.

  Evie shrugged, pushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘Don’t know, I haven’t seen her or Nick for ages. Don’t know why Laura asked them anyway, they’re not exactly family.’

  ‘They are old friends and now sort of family,’ Alice said. ‘And apparently Lexie begged to be a bridesmaid and Laura found it difficult to refuse her.’

  ‘There’s lots of friends we haven’t asked, and anyway there’ll be more champagne for Luke if they don’t come,’ Evie said, handing Raffi to her to kiss goodnight before taking him upstairs to bed.

  Alice drove over to Freya, wishing she didn’t have to go out again especially as it was dark now with winter setting in. She felt apprehensive about the meeting. She’d driven down from London that morning and gone over to Edith and Amy with all the fabrics, trimmings and such for the baskets this afternoon and now here she was, just when she’d like to curl up with a glass of wine and a gossip with Evie, driving the five miles or so over to Freya.

  The house was in turmoil. As Freya led her through to the living room, she heard sounds of squabbling coming from the back of the house and a voice saying, ‘Oh Lexie, stop being such a brat.’

  They had just sat down together when there was the sound of small stomping feet coming down the passage and the door was flung open dramatically and Lexie, in a purple feather boa, one hand hitching up her pyjama bottoms, wailed, ‘Jonty won’t let me have the cherry on the top and I’m the littlest and I should have it.’

  ‘Lexie, it’s very rude to disturb people like this, say hello to Alice nicely and stop being silly. If you can’t behave you can go to bed, it’s time anyway,’ Freya said wearily. ‘Tell Jonty to come here now, please.’

  Pouting theatrically, Lexie stomped off again chanting, ‘Jonty, Mum wants you and she’s very cross.’

  Freya raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Sorry, she’s such a drama queen, like her father really, though not the queen bit.’ Her smile was bitter.

  Alice smiled weakly back, wondering what it was Freya wanted to talk to her about. It was going to be difficult if her children were going to disrupt them all the time. She wondered if Raffi would have inherited some of his father’s traits, though Evie was a drama queen too, so, poor baby, he might have inherited a double dose.

  Jonty a tall slim boy, looking like a mini Nick came in, his expression defiant. ‘She’s such a pain, Mum. Rowan has eaten the cherry anyway.’ There was a howl as Lexie had obviously just discovered this. Jonty smiled at Alice, ‘Hello.’

  She smiled back, wondering if he knew that she was the grandmother of his newest brother?

  ‘Alice and I want a bit of peace,’ Freya said firmly, ‘see that we get it please.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Jonty said darkly, leaving the room and shutting the door carefully behind him.

  ‘Lovely boy,’ Alice said.

  ‘He is and very artistic. I don’t want to push him but he’s great at painting.’

  Alice was about to tell her about Evie’s painting, how as a child she drew everywhere, the margins of newspapers and magazine, school books, even the blank flyleaves of books, but she stopped herself in time. It would be tactless in the circumstances. Oh, these complicated relationships.

  ‘I wanted to discuss the wedding invitation with you,’ Freya said, ploughing in before they were disturbed again. ‘It was very kind of Laura to ask us and ask Lexie to be bridesmaid but I wondered if you really wanted us there… well Nick really. I mean, Evie and the baby are sure to be there or is the baby being left behind?’

  Now was the time to say that Nick’s presence might be embarrassing. Freya looked as if she expected it, even hoped for it. Alice admired her even more for asking her opinion, though she knew it would probably be a worse embarrassment for Freya than for them, and who could blame her for wanting to stay clear of it? But Alice found herself floundering, saying that Laura and Douglas had the guest list and as Laura was coming to Suffolk tomorrow perhaps she’d like to talk to her.

  ‘No, it’s you I want to discuss it with. I saw Laura in the street and made some remark about her wedding and Lexie pushed herself forward. You know how the bride hardly notices the day, it goes by like a blur, my wedding day did anyway, but I want to know what you feel, Alice.’ She leant forward a little in her chair as if she were a doctor enquiring about her health.

  ‘I probably won’t notice either,’ Alice said, ‘but I’ll discuss it with Laura tomorrow, but it’s you I worry about, Freya, I don’t want to cause you any more pain over this. Evie tells me…’ She paused, wondering how much to tell Freya and if it would be some comfort to her, ‘She’s met someone else. I haven’t met him yet, Luke his name is, a sculptor. Do you know him?’

  ‘Luke Morgan, I expect. I know who he is. Oh…’ She looked surprised, filling Alice with more anxiety, was he some weirdo, someone else likely to cause yet more drama and disruption? ‘He’s young and, as far as I know, not in a relationship. He’s a bit here today and gone tomorrow, doesn’t really settle down enough to his work to show how talented he really is, but perhaps with a steady relationship he might improve. Evie might make him more committed.’ She threw her a pitying smile. ‘These relationships are the devil, aren’t they? I’ve got them all still to come with my brood, though their father has led the way spectacularly.’ She sighed. ‘Still, Laura seems happy; do you like the man she’s chosen?’

  Her eyes were sharp on her face and Alice had the unwelcome feeling that Freya was a little jealous of Laura, though why, she couldn’t think, unless it was because she seemed to be on track for a happy, uncomplicated life.

  ‘Douglas is very nice, divorced with two children – I suppose that’s pretty common these days. His ex-wife is high-powered and was head-hunted to Hong Kong.’ Even as she said it, Alice realized that Freya knew it was not what she wanted to hear. She went on, ‘Julian’s death seems to have caused such extreme reactions in the girls, Evie with Nick and Laura rushing into marriage with Douglas.’

  ‘So you don’t approve of him?’ Freya asked.

  ‘He is nice…’ She was not going to admit she found him dull. ‘But I just wish she’d wait awhile before she commits herself to him and his children. It’s a lot to take on and she’s no experience of children. They are quite sensitive, well the boy is, he needs a lot of care with his mother gone, though she does come back and see them, loves them I’m sure, only her work comes first.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if their father’s work came first,’ Freya said. ‘Even today, in these enlightened times, women, even if they are more successful than their husbands, are criticised for putting their work before their children. Most of these jobs only have a small window of opportunity and they must grab it or lose it forever.’

  ‘I know, it is difficult.’

  ‘If I hadn’t grabbed that chance with the V and A, I’d have lost it. There are so many talented people in the creative world and someone else would have jumped
eagerly into my place. I worked very hard to get there but perhaps I should have kept more of an eye on Nick.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Freya. Evie is old enough to know better than to go after a married man,’ Alice said.

  ‘Maybe, but I know how persuasive Nick can be,’ Freya said darkly. ‘I want my pottery to take off. I’ve put a lot of effort and time into it, and I suppose I knew deep down that if I gave too much attention to it, it would mean I’d have less time for the family. Nick is only supportive up to a point and the children are still young and I feel he should help out, it’s not as if he is tied to an important office job. He can fit his garden jobs round them sometimes and even take them with him to help dig and prepare the ground, Rowan is good at planting.’

  Perhaps Freya hoped by encouraging Nick to take his children on site he might be dissuaded from scattering his own seeds around, Alice thought acidly.

  ‘I felt the children’s needs were a priority and Nick felt left out and…’ she shrugged, ‘you know the rest, after all you’re a grandmother now, not, I assume, in the way you hoped it to happen.’

  ‘You’re right, but is it so strange to want one’s children to conform, settle down with lovely, uncomplicated and unattached people and have children with them?’ Alice said with a sigh.

  ‘Of course not. And in your case, you had the perfect marriage to such a special man. You must miss him dreadfully, especially with all this going on,’ Freya said with sympathy. ‘All the women round here envied you for having him, and he loved you so.’

  Before Alice could answer, the door burst open and Lexie stood there, hands on her non-existent hips. ‘Jonty says I’m not going to be a bridesmaid at Laura’s wedding but I am aren’t I, Mum? He says I’m too brattish, but I’m not am I? Am I, Alice? Laura said I could, be so I am?’

  Alice, confronted with this resolute little person knew, like Laura before her, she could not refuse her.

  41

  It was two weeks before the wedding. Laura’s beautiful wedding dress waited for the big day in her cupboard, the menus were decided, the venue booked and the cake baked and ready to decorate and it was full steam ahead. As the day crept forward, Alice kept her misgivings to herself. Laura, who’d moved back home, seemed happy enough, but she was not shining with passion and excitement, but then that wasn’t really her style, and how could she tell if Laura’s nerves were not dampening down passionate feelings of love for this kind but to her mind dull man?

  As the days slipped by, Alice could not help but compare the two of them to her and Julian in their early days together, their love and passion for each other all consuming, but then the sick feeling gripped her. It was not quite as rosy as she thought. She must give Laura more credit for her choices. She was going into this union with her eyes open, coping with an ex-wife, a difficult mother-in-law and two children, one, if not both, needing extra support. Laura was not some naïve adolescent; both of the girls had been encouraged to choose their own friends and Laura had chosen Douglas and wanted to marry him, and she must accept him into the family with open arms and do all she could to support her daughter, instead of wasting her energies on wishing it wasn’t happening.

  Petra came round to help her decorate the cake; she’d done a course in cake decoration and was brilliant at it. As they grappled with mounds of white icing sugar – the kitchen seeming to be powdered with sweet-scented snow – they gossiped, mainly about Margot and Glen.

  ‘How do we know what these men are up to in their offices all day?’ Petra started. ‘We have to trust them to be doing what they say they are doing, and anyway how could Margot know if Glen was on the fiddle unless…’ She paused, a worried expression creasing her face, ‘I mean, she might have wondered why she could suddenly buy those ridiculously expensive handbags or be given new jewellery and fly first class to exotic places. I certainly would, when before, though money was good, it didn’t stretch to such luxuries.’

  ‘I’m sure he wasn’t fiddling, I mean some of these people in these financial firms do earn zillions these days with all those shares and bonuses and what not.’ Alice was concerned about them too, but she didn’t want to condemn Glen until it was proved he had done something wrong, though she remembered how he never talked about his job, saying he’d rather leave his work in his office. ‘But there are so many rules and regulations these days, I suppose one could get caught out,’ she finished.

  ‘Yes there are, but presumably you have to keep abreast of them,’ Petra said. ‘It’s amazing when there’s trouble in a company how many extremely well paid and senior people profess not to know anything about it. When Hugo was seducing every passable woman, no one seemed to have noticed at all,’ she sighed, thinking of the treachery of her ex-husband.

  ‘True,’ Alice smiled at her sympathetically. The fallout of Petra and Hugo’s marriage had been spectacular and very painful. Their daughter, then in her early teens, bearing the brunt of it, while Petra retaliated by indulging herself in a series of love affairs, surely to prove that she was a woman worth loving.

  ‘I wish Frank would tell us what’s going on, he’s reporting on the scandal, isn’t he?’ Petra regarded her intently. ‘You’d think he’d drop a few hints.’

  ‘I don’t expect him to, until his report is finished,’ Alice said.

  Frank had come round a couple of evenings ago looking pale and tired and Laura had asked him about the case.

  ‘Can’t say anything,’ he’d said with a weary smile. ‘It’s highly complicated, as these things often are, so I’m going to be hard at it for the next few weeks.’

  ‘But you can still come to the wedding, give me away?’ Laura sounded anguished.

  ‘Of course, wouldn’t miss that for the world, but I’d have liked to spend more time with you all.’ His eyes skimmed over Alice and she’d felt a jolt of anxiety. Had he other secrets to tell her about Julian? ‘When are Evie and the baby arriving?’ he asked.

  ‘Next week, Tuesday,’ Alice told him.

  ‘She’s got a new boyfriend,’ Laura said.

  ‘Oh, is he nice?’ Frank turned to Alice to see her reaction.

  ‘We don’t know, we haven’t met him yet, but he’s her age and not married, or got any children,’ Laura said, getting up to fetch the wine bottle to pour them more wine.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Frank said.

  ‘You don’t know with Evie, he’s bound to have some complication in his life. Talking of complications, Frank, I can’t believe Dad had a son all the time. I wish he’d told us; I always wanted an older brother,’ Laura said. ‘Tell us all about him, Dad should have told us, but as he didn’t, you’ve got to.’ She eyed him fiercely.

  ‘Don’t bully Frank, he’s had a long day and it’s not really up to him.’ Alice didn’t want to hear any more about it.

  ‘She’s right; you should know everything,’ Frank said, ‘though there’s not much to say. Your father, long before he met your mother, had a brief fling with my sister, Sarah, and Ned was born in the US where she went to study. She met someone else and married him and Greg accepted Ned, brought him up with the other children they had later, though Ned always knew who his father was.’

  ‘But we didn’t, why didn’t he tell us? It’s not like he had a baby with some dreadful woman… Like a…’ she searched for a word.

  Frank jumped in, ‘No, it’s not, and I don’t know why he didn’t tell you. Ned was brought up in America until he grew up and came here occasionally to study and perhaps then it was too late to tell you. When your father married your mother, I assumed he’d tell her about him, and perhaps there never seemed to be the right time. I don’t know.’ He studied his wine glass as if he didn’t want to face Alice.

  ‘Does he… Ned know about us?’ Laura went on as if she were interrogating him.

  ‘I think his mother told him, but to be honest I don’t know how or when he was told. I didn’t see an awful lot of him when he was little, but when he came to London to do an internship I len
t him the flat. I didn’t see much of him then either as I was working all over the world, but you’ll all like him and we must arrange a meeting when he’s next over.’ He smiled as if they were talking about the son of a friend not the illegitimate son of her husband. Alice stayed silent afraid she might say something she regretted in front of Laura. She felt she no longer knew the man she’d loved and trusted all these years.

  ‘So Dad never talked about us to him?’ Laura asked sadly.

  ‘I just don’t know, Laura, I’m sorry. The few times I saw Ned when he was an adult we seemed to talk about the things he was studying, as I’m in the same field, or he’d tell me about some girl he’d met, film he’d seen. We didn’t see a lot of each other, but I’ll arrange for you all to meet up next time he is here.’ He finished his drink and got up. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to get back to my work. Ring me if you need anything and I’ll pop round when I can.’ Frank kissed them both quickly on the cheek and made reluctantly for the door as if he found it hard to leave the comfortable room with its pretty furnishings and the company of the two women.

  ‘Are you here for Christmas?’ he asked Alice as she followed him into the hall.

  ‘We thought we’d go to the cottage. I’ve ordered everything from the butcher down there. He makes the stuffing, puts bacon round prunes and sausages, all the fiddly bits. It costs a bit more but it’s worth it this time with the wedding. Laura and Douglas are coming as his ex-wife is over and she’s taking the children to her parents,’ Alice said, relieved that the plans had been made for her and she would not be alone.

  ‘And Evie and Raffi?’ he asked as he made for the door.

  ‘They’ll be there,’ she said, not knowing if Luke would be with them too. Everything she used to count on was changing and she must change with it.

  ‘And you, Frank, where will you spend it?’

  ‘Skiing with my children,’ he said. ‘I’d ask you to join us but you seem to be tied up already.’ He smiled, ‘We’ll go another time,’ and he kissed her quickly on her cheek and left.