The Fethering Mysteries 06; The Witness at the Wedding tfm-6

by Simon Brett

  “Yes. Thanks. Bye.”

  Slightly odd, thought Jude. But not that odd. Backs, she knew, worked by a logic all their own.

  Half an hour later she tiptoed up again to the spare room.

  Gita Millington was out cold, her face more relaxed and younger in sleep. The short-sleeved nightdress revealed what the tracksuit top had hidden.

  A bandage held in place a dressing over the slashes on the inside of her left wrist.

  ∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧

  Three

  “Hi, it’s Gaby. I spoke to them.”

  Not expecting the phone call, Carole couldn’t think what her future daughter-in-law was talking about.

  “My parents,” came the explanation. “I’ve talked to them about us getting together.”

  “Oh yes, of course.” Their lunchtime conversation in the Crown and Anchor came back.

  “I suggested us meeting in London. Hope that’ll be all right with you?”

  “Yes, fine. Halfway.”

  “Well, Harlow’s a bit nearer London than Fethering, but…”

  “It’s not a problem. When did you have in mind?”

  “They could do next Tuesday. Rather make it lunch, if it suits you. They’re not very keen on going back on the train late.”

  “Lunch on Tuesday would suit me very well,” said Carole, wondering for a moment how old Gaby’s parents were. There had, of course, been talk of her father’s pension. But then again, Carole herself had a pension. And she too would try to avoid late-night trains if she could.

  “Haven’t worked out where yet, but I’ll give you a call in the next couple of days.”

  “Fine,” said Carole, already starting to feel nervous at the prospect of the meeting ahead.

  “I’ll be there, of course, but I’m not sure whether Steve will be able to get away from work. Everything seems pretty frantic there at the moment.”

  “Well, be nice to see him if he can. But if he can’t, he can’t.”

  Another potential cause for disquiet loomed up in front of Carole. “Erm…will you be inviting David to the lunch?”

  Gaby sounded surprised. “I hadn’t intended to. I mean, he has already met Mum and Dad.”

  Yes, of course he would have done, thought Carole with another pang of jealousy. “But I could invite him, if you like?”

  “No, no. No need at all,” came the hasty response. “Well, I’ll really look forward to meeting your parents. I’m sorry, I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned what their names are.”

  “Oh, haven’t I? No, you’re right, I probably haven’t. Well, they’re Marie and Howard.”

  “Marie and Howard, right.”

  “And they’re…” Gaby hesitated, uncertain how to put the next bit. “They’re very…quiet. I mean, not flamboyant people. They live a sort of…” no other adjective offered itself “…quiet life.”

  “That’s fine. So do I.”

  “Yes, but I mean even quieter than yours. I – ” But the words wouldn’t come to describe exactly what Gaby was trying to say. “You’ll know what I mean when you meet them.”

  “Fine. As I say, I’ll look forward to it,” said Carole with even less conviction than she’d had when she last used the words. “Oh, by the way, I gather you’ve talked to Jude.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. How is the back now?”

  “Much better, actually. I almost feel a bit of a fraud. It’s always better in the evening. Steve and I have had a good dinner at the hotel and I’m feeling more relaxed.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “In fact, I’ve rung Jude, and cancelled our appointment in the morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.” There was a silence, as if Gaby was about to say something else.

  “Well, I’d better be getting on,” said Carole. “That is, unless there was anything else.”

  “No. No…Well, just…”

  “What, Gaby?”

  “Carole, please be very gentle with my parents, won’t you?”

  Which, to Carole’s way of thinking, was an extremely odd thing to say.

  Carole had spent the rest of the following day putting it off. Gulliver had no idea why he had had an extra-long walk that afternoon, but he was delighted anyway. By the evening, though, Carole knew there was no escape. She’d made the decision and she had to go through with it.

  Carole Seddon had an almost photographic memory for figures and especially phone numbers. She could still remember most of the numbers she had dialled regularly during her Home Office career, and at home never resorted to the use of the storing facility or quickdial on her phone. There was one number, however, to which she had never given houseroom in her mind, so she was forced to look it up in her address book.

  He answered straightaway.

  “David, it’s Carole.”

  “Ah yes. Stephen said you might be calling.”

  So the stage management had been busying away on both sides of the divide. His voice, even in the few words he had spoken, opened a Pandora’s box of unwelcome emotions, but Carole pressed on. This was just something that had to be done. “I’m meeting up with Gaby’s parents next Tuesday.”

  “Yes…erm. So I gathered.”

  She always forgot about the ‘erm’ until she heard it again. David’s erm was a nervous tic. He uttered very few sentences that didn’t contain at least one. Carole remembered the agony of anticipating its inevitable appearance, like waiting for the second shoe to fall. He hadn’t seemed to do it when they first met, at least not so much. But when their relationship soured, as David became more nit-picking, the erm-rate increased. It was like a symptom of his fastidiousness, a necessarypunctuation while he selected his next word. Carole had forgotten how much the erm had infuriated her.

  “Well, I was thinking,” she soldiered on, “if I am going to meet Marie and Howard – ”

  “You won’t find them any problem,” David reassured her. “They’re…erm…well, they seem to be very good people.”

  Good? If ever there was a word that damned with faint praise, thought Carole. “What are they actually like, David?”

  “Well, it’s…erm…They’re difficult to describe. But you won’t dislike them. They’re not difficult or…erm…” But this erm failed in its function. David didn’t seem able to find a word that encapsulated the Martins.

  Carole’s anxiety about the following Tuesday’s encounter increased. But even that wasn’t as distasteful as the task she was about to perform.

  “David, we’ve been apart for quite a long while now…”

  “Yes,” he agreed cautiously.

  “…and we’re both grown-up people…”

  He didn’t deny this.

  “…so I’m sure we would be able to meet up now without any particular animosity.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m…erm…I’m sure we could.”

  Carole felt she was floundering. The breezy words she had planned to say to him didn’t seem to be coming out right. She tried to get control of herself and as a result sounded too forceful when she announced, “The point is that we’re definitely going to meet on the fourteenth of September, when – for both Stephen and Gaby’s sakes – we really must present as united a front as we can.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  “And no petty animosities between us must be allowed to spoil their big day.”

  “I couldn’t…erm…agree more, Carole.”

  “So I was thinking we ought to meet before then – just to talk – clear the air.”

  Again the words came out too aggressively. Carole knew she sounded hectoring, the archetype, in fact, of the nagging wife. But David didn’t seem fazed by her manner.

  “I was…erm…going to suggest the very same thing myself,” he said.

  “Good. Well, do you want to fix a time now?”

  “Erm…”

  She remembered another infuriating habit of her ex-husband’s. He was very bad at making arrangements on the hoof. S
he had always had to plant the idea of a social engagement, then give him a little time to assimilate it. A few days later, once he had taken the suggestion on board, he would then raise the subject himself and be ready for the fine tuning of dates and times.

  Wishing to give him time to go through this essential routine, and by now desperate to get off the phone, Carole said quickly, “Think about it. Get back to me after Tuesday, when I’ve met the Martins.”

  “Yes. I think that would be…erm…a good scheme.”

  “Fine. I’ll hear from you then then. Goodbye, David.”

  At least, Carole thought as she put the phone down, the idea has been broached. I have reestablished contact – that was always going to be the most difficult one.

  But ‘difficult’ is a relative term. She wasn’t actually looking forward to the subsequent contacts that would inevitably follow.

  ∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧

  Four

  Jude hovered by the front door. In her hand was the brightly woven African straw basket she used for shopping. She was dressed in her usual warty style – a long Indian print skirt in burgundy tones, a voluminous amethyst silk jacket over a pale pink T-shirt. The blonde hair was held up by an insufficiency of chopstick-like wooden pins.

  She looked across at the sofa. In the last forty-eight hours Gita had gained a bit more colour, but still did everything in a kind of slow-motion lethargy. She had retained the jogging bottoms, but the trainers had given place to smart grey sandals, and the tracksuit top to a well-cut loose denim shirt (whose sleeves were still long enough to hide her bandaging). There was the lightest of foundations on her face, a touch of mascara and a dash of pale lipstick. It wasn’t her full working war paint, and the white central streak was still in her hair, but it was a step in the right direction.

  “I was just off to the shops, Gita. Anything you need?”

  This prompted a sleepy smile. “You know there isn’t anything I need.” Her speech was still a littleslurred, as though the words were too big for her mouth.

  “Well…”

  “And it’s very unlike you, Jude, to be so indirect.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that what you’re really saying is: ‘Gita, are you sure you’ll be all right on your own here while I go to the shops?’”

  “All right.”

  Jude parroted, “Gita, are you sure you’ll be all right here on your own while I go to the shops?”

  “Absolutely. My emotions are so damped down by the medication that I’d hardly react to the news of an imminent nuclear holocaust. I’m OK. You don’t have to worry.” She gestured to the pile of women’s magazines on the sofa beside her. “I’ll be quite all right here, reading very slowly, checking out the opposition.”

  Gita was a journalist; a feature writer. A very good feature writer. Or at least she had been until recent events.

  “That’s good,” said Jude. “Well, I’ll have my mobile with me if…”

  “If what?”

  “If you think of anything you need at the shops.” There was another tired, wry smile from Gita.

  “Meaning: ‘If you suddenly feel bad and need me’.”

  “Well…”

  “This is really most unlike you, Jude. Look, OK, we both know what I did, but I can assure you I’m not about to do it again.”

  “No.”

  “And my staying here with you – for which I am more grateful than I can say – well, it’s not going to work if you’re constantly afraid of letting me out of your sight.”

  “No. Right. I accept that.”

  “Good. Off you go.”

  With a surprisingly sudden movement, Gita reached for her handbag. “Ooh, there is something I want you to get at the shops.”

  She handed across a twenty-pound note. “Convert that into Chilean Chardonnay, will you? My contribution to the Woodside Cottage domestic economy.”

  As she took the money, Jude grinned. “Thanks, Gita.”

  Carole got the feeling that a lot of thought had gone into the choice of restaurant for her encounter with the Martins. It was pricey – probably Stephen’s input – but reassuringly homely. Gaby wouldn’t want her parents fazed by menus they might need to have explained to them, by flamboyant waiters or an over-trendy clientele. So she’d homed in on a restaurant that specialized in traditional English cooking for traditional English people who wouldn’t respond well to it being called traditional English cuisine. So traditionally English was the food that many of the customers were Japanese and American tourists, under the illusion that their Burberry and Dunhill disguises would let them pass for the real thing. But it was the perfect venue for those in search of such delicacies as potted shrimps, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pie and bread-and-butter pudding.

  As predicted, Stephen was not there, but Gaby was already installed, sitting between her parents, when Carole was led across to the table. Marie and Howard Martin could not have been less alike. She was a tiny, birdlike woman, whose tight, greying curls accentuated her resemblance to Gaby. Thick glasses and vague, blinking eyes indicated extreme myopia.

  Her husband, by contrast, was huge, not fat, but very tall with a bulky body and gunmetal hair slicked back almost in the brilliantined style of the late forties. He looked like an old black-and-white photograph of a former boxer, and when he rose to greet Carole, he towered over everyone else in the room. He was a lot older than his wife, perhaps as much as eighty, and he had bulky hearing aids in both ears. Marie herself looked so washed out it was difficult to fix her age with any certainty. Still, given the fact that Gaby must be round the thirty mark, her mother couldn’t be less than fifty. Might even be my age, thought Carole.

  Howard Martin did not carry with him the assertiveness that might be assumed to go with his size. In fact, both he and his wife seemed paralytically nervous. Carole was nervous too, but she liked to think she wasn’t showing it as much as they were.

  Gaby was maintaining a professional front, but she couldn’t hide her own unease. Her body language was taut and jumpy. She sat awkwardly on the edge of her seat. When she’d rung Jude she’d claimed her back was better, but Carole reckoned the problem had now returned with a vengeance.

  As soon as they were all seated, Gaby suggested drinks. The situation needed an injection of some relaxant, and alcohol was traditionally the most reliable ice-breaker.

  But ordering drinks did not ease the atmosphere. Marie Martin said all she really felt like was mineral water, and Howard agreed, “Yes, I could go along with that.” But Gaby wasn’t satisfied. She was going to give them a slap-up lunch, whether they liked it or not. “No, we’ll have some wine.”

  “Well, I won’t,” said her mother, with self-effacing firmness.

  “You prefer white, don’t you, Carole?” asked Gaby as she perused the wine list.

  “Yes, but if I’m the only one, I’m very happy with mineral – ”

  “I’m drinking too,” Gaby announced firmly. “And Dad’ll probably have a glass or two when the bottle’s actually here.”

  “I might at that,” Howard Martin conceded.

  Gaby attracted a waiter’s attention with practised ease. Her job as an actors’ agent involved a lot of professional lunching, so she knew her way around restaurants. Her familiarity with the milieu seemed only to point up the discomfort of her parents. And yet why were they so ill at ease? Marie was half-French. They spent their Augusts in France. Surely they should be used to eating out? Still, Carole wasn’t about to get answers to those questions. On with the social niceties.

  “Well, I must tell both of you how delighted I am about the engagement.”

  “Oh yes, we’re very pleased too.” Marie Martin spoke cautiously, as if in danger of using the wrong word. “It’s very good news.”

  “Very good news,” her husband agreed.

  And that seemed to be it. Neither had anything further to add, so Carole, forced to be more than naturally fulsome, went on, “
No, I’m so pleased for Stephen – that he was lucky enough to meet Gaby.”

  “Yes,” Marie agreed, and Howard nodded. Carole decided that their hesitancy had nothing to do with disapproval of the proposed union. The Martins just weren’t people who were used to expressing their emotional reactions.

  “The fourteenth of September doesn’t seem far away now, does it?”

  This elicited no response, but fortunately Gaby came to the rescue. “No, and there’s still so much to do.”

  Marie seemed to take this as a cue. Hesitantly, and blushing furiously, she began. “I would like to apologize, Carole, that Howard and I haven’t offered to do more in making the arrangements for the wedding.”

  The way she spoke suggested that she was embarking on a prepared speech.

  Carole was embarrassed at the prospect of hearing more of it. “Not a problem,” she said. “Stephen and Gaby have explained everything to me. Quite honestly, at their age, it makes much more sense that they should do it all themselves. Then they can have exactly the kind of day they want.”

  Marie seemed not to hear this, but pressed on with her text. “The fact is, we’re not very good at public events. We tend to keep ourselves to ourselves very much. It’s not something we’re proud of, but that’s the way we are. So we thought it better that I should explain that to you now, so’s we don’t get off on the wrong foot.” That was the end of her speech. To emphasize the point, she said, “That’s all.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Carole reiterated. Making the statement had been such agony for Marie that it had been agony for her too. The conversation needed to be moved on as quickly as was humanly possible.

  Gaby came to the immediate rescue with the menu, and some time was spent choosing what to eat. Her mother insisted that she “didn’t want much, not a big eater at lunchtime.”

  This was true of Carole too, but, seeing how determined Gaby was to make the meal an event, she ordered much more lavishly than she normally would. Chef’s pâté, followed by Dover sole. Gaby ordered two courses as well, and Howard was persuaded to go for a prawn cocktail before his prime sirloin of beef. But his wife wouldn’t be shifted from her decision to have “just a cheese omelette and I probably won’t eat all of that.”