Daughters-in-Law

by Joanna Trollope

  She had wept a great deal too after he died. She had been married for almost forty years, and he was leaving her with a pleasant house and enough money, which she had done nothing to earn, even if she had contributed immeasurably in less quantifiable ways. She was used to him, used to being a wife, and she wasn’t at all sure how she would—even could—make the transition to being a widow. Apart from anything else, she was bone-tired after three long years of steady nursing, and seemed to have lost herself in the process of sublimating herself to Gregory’s personality in illness. For well over a year after his death, she moved about the house mindlessly, forgetting what she had gone upstairs for, carrying a ball of string pointlessly from room to room, gazing out of the window down the lawn to the pond without taking anything in. And then Charlotte, her lovely, adorable Charlotte, who had been such an anxiety to her father because he believed her looks could only spell trouble, came home one weekend, lit up like a Christmas tree, and said, almost before she was in the door, that she had met someone. Seriously.

  Her announcement had the effect of waking Marnie from her post-Gregory trance. It galvanized her. Both Charlotte’s older sisters, Fiona and Sarah, rang each other constantly to say what a relief, isn’t it amazing, can you believe, have you ever seen Mummy like this? Everybody adored Luke of course, so good-looking, so tall, so besotted with Charlotte, so sweet to Fiona and Sarah’s children, so polite to Marnie, such a good tennis player, so interesting to have Anthony Brinkley as a father. Marnie’s house ceased, almost overnight, to be a place resonant with Gregory’s powerful ailing presence and the girls’ long-gone childhoods and became the energetic headquarters for a wedding. Charlotte wanted everything—frock, marquee, cake, flowers, speeches, champagne—that Marnie could have wished, that she had had herself, that Fiona and Sarah had had, although in modified form, since Fiona’s husband had been on brief leave from the navy, and Sarah’s husband had refused to be married in anything but specifically secular circumstances. The registry office in Beaconsfield had done the ceremony beautifully, of course, with great dignity, but Sarah wore a short dress and her husband was in a lounge suit and there was a distinct absence of—well, magic was the word, really. But Charlotte wanted magic. She wanted magic by the sparkling bucketload, and she had looked to her mother, as trustingly as she had looked to her for praise or comfort when she was small, to give it to her.

  And she had. She knew she had. Marnie could still look back on Charlotte’s wedding day with complete satisfaction, just as she could look back on the months that preceded it with the pleased certainty that the house had come alive again, that the children and their children were constantly there, that the tradition of Webster-Smith hospitality—Gregory had been famous as a host—was as vigorous and welcoming as ever. It had been a wonderful summer. The spare beds hardly seemed to have had time to cool between occupants. The fridge was full of beers, and there was a liter bottle of vodka in the freezer. Guiltily, Marnie sometimes wondered if she had ever been so happy.

  But now this. Now Charlotte—who it transpired had already been pregnant even before her wedding day—was sobbing in Marnie’s arms about how unkind Rachel had been to her. Marnie didn’t know Rachel very well—there had been only a couple of elaborately orchestrated meetings before the big day—but she had struck Marnie as the kind of person she would expect Luke’s mother to be. In Marnie’s experience, mothers of sons were, broadly speaking, either excessively feminine or forthright and capable. Rachel had seemed to fall into the latter category, and although Marnie had never seen her house she knew Charlotte was impressed by its bohemian ease and color and the way life revolved around cooking and painting. Charlotte was awed by Anthony’s studio. Marnie had never ever considered a studio. Gregory had bought her a pretty rosewood table—reproduction, but beautifully made—that fitted into the deep bay window of the sitting room. He said that, while he was watching racing, or golf, or cricket on the television, in the afternoon, as he liked to do, she could paint at her table, across the room from him, and that way they could be together.

  Rachel, Charlotte said angrily, had asked her if they couldn’t wait to start a family.

  “She didn’t say it in a nice voice,” Charlotte said. “She said it as if she was furious. As if she was . . . disgusted with us. She thinks we’re careless. She sounded as if we’d kind of insulted her, let her down.”

  “I expect,” Marnie said carefully, “that it wasn’t what she’d planned for you—”

  They were together on the big sofa in the sitting room, Charlotte half lying against her mother. The sofa was in a different place from where it had been in Gregory’s day, and so was the television and the chair he used to sit in to watch it, which now had a new cover in a bold russet check, which Fiona had chosen for her, advised by a friend who had a small soft-furnishings business.

  “She had no business to make plans for us!” Charlotte cried. She blew her nose and pressed her face against her mother’s arm. “It’s not her life! It’s ours! And . . . she sounded so horrible. Her voice was horrible.”

  “Oh dear,” Marnie said, as lightly as she could.

  Charlotte took her face away from her mother’s arm and stared at her.

  “Aren’t you angry with her? Don’t you hate her for speaking to me like that?”

  Marnie was conscious of a warm glow, induced by being the parent who was behaving well, the parent who was seen as the ally, not the enemy.

  “I’m trying not to, darling.”

  “Why? Why aren’t you angry? Don’t you believe me?”

  “Utterly, darling.”

  “Well, then—”

  “The thing is, she feels about Luke as I do about you. Luke is her son—”

  “Luke is mine,” Charlotte said, blowing her nose again. “Luke is my husband. First.”

  “Sometimes people take a while to get used to that.”

  “That what?”

  “That . . . transference of allegiance.”

  “Well, she’ll bloody well have to. He’s not her little boy anymore.”

  Marnie waited a moment. She pulled a clean tissue from the box and expertly wiped mascara from where it had smudged below Charlotte’s eyes. She said, “Of course he knows you’re here.”

  Charlotte looked past her mother at the wall behind the sofa.

  “Not . . . actually.”

  “Luke doesn’t know? Where does he think you are?”

  “Work.”

  “And where does work think you are?”

  “In bed. With a tummy bug.”

  “Oh, Charlotte,” Marnie said.

  Charlotte looked back at her. Her lower lip was very slightly pushed out. She said, “Why d’you say it like that?”

  Marnie hesitated. The truth would have been to say, “Because that’s the first lie of marriage that you’ve told Luke. And it’ll be followed by years of half-truths. Years,” but Charlotte did not look as if she could either hear or accept that. So she said instead, “It doesn’t make muddles better if you muddle them further,” and Charlotte said loudly, “I didn’t start this.”

  “I know you didn’t—”

  “Rachel did, Rachel ruined my lunch party, Rachel’s the one treating us as if we were stupid little kids. Luke and I are married.”

  “Marriage doesn’t change how you feel about your children,” Marnie said. “Maybe it does, in time, in your head. But not in your heart, really. You go on feeling just the same, and maybe some of those feelings are not as reasonable as they might be.”

  Charlotte sniffed. She said, “Did Daddy feel like that?”

  Marnie laughed. She had a fleeting image of how Gregory would have reacted to Charlotte’s story, storming out of the house to get the Mercedes out of the garage and roaring off to Suffolk.

  “Daddy, darling, would have been ten times worse.”

  Now, examining the dahlia—it really was a rather awful color, like cheap butter—Marnie reflected, with more relief than guilt, that Gregory would h
ave been no help in a situation like this. He would have shouted, “I told you so!” when he heard of the unintended pregnancy, and then he would have got very sentimental over Charlotte and unhelpfully defensive of her outrage at being spoken to without the customary admiration and approval.

  Charlotte had been a willful little girl. Fiona and Sarah had been nine and seven when she was born, and she had been pretty from her first breath, her little round head thatched with thick primrose-colored down. Probably we spoiled her, Marnie thought, probably all four of us did, and she thrived on being spoiled except that she can’t take anything other than praise, she can’t deal with opinion that doesn’t coincide with what she wants to do anyway. And yet, Marnie told herself, putting the flower down and picking up her 3B sketching pencil, she had agreed—or, at least, not disagreed—when Marnie suggested she go straight home and tell Luke where she had been. She’d stood in the doorway, jingling her car keys, and said, “Well, I’ll try. But she made us quarrel! Can you believe it? She actually made us have a row!”

  “Then don’t let her.”

  Charlotte glanced at her mother.

  “D’you really feel that calm? D’you really feel it’s okay for her to talk to me like that?”

  Marnie smiled at Charlotte.

  “Actually,” she said, still smiling, “I want to kill her,” and she could still hear Charlotte laughing. She’d laughed all the way across the drive to her car, and then she’d got in and turned on the ignition, and music suddenly belted out of the car’s speakers, and Charlotte drove away in a whirl of noise.

  Marnie bent over her paper. The thing was, with parenting grown children, you had to learn to hold your tongue. If you wanted them to tell you anything, that is.

  “It’s Luke,” Luke said into the intercom.

  “Luke!” Sigrid said, surprised.

  She was in the kitchen, ironing. Mariella was in bed, and Edward had gone out to meet Ralph, who had suddenly appeared at his office that afternoon and said that he needed help.

  “What about now?” Sigrid demanded.

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say till we met later. I’ll buy him a beer and a steak and put him on a train back to Suffolk.”

  “Your family—”

  “I won’t be late. Kiss Mariella for me. And count your blessings.”

  “What blessings?”

  “The loving-family-in-another-country one—”

  “Are you okay?” Sigrid said now over the intercom to Luke.

  “I’m fine. Can I come in?”

  Sigrid pressed the door-release buzzer. She heard the door slam behind Luke, and then his rapid footsteps on the stairs down to the basement kitchen.

  “Hi,” he said, coming over at the same speed to kiss her cheek.

  “Where’s Charlotte?”

  “At a girl movie. With mates. Is Ed here?”

  “He’s with Ralph,” Sigrid said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Luke said, “except that since that Sunday Char can’t seem to calm down and I’m going mental.”

  Sigrid switched the iron off and motioned to a chair.

  “Have a seat. Coffee?”

  “Better not,” Luke said, “I’ve drunk too much today, I’m twitching. I’d love a beer.”

  Sigrid crossed to the fridge. She said, “So you wanted to see Edward?”

  “Well, sort of. Either of you. Both of you. I just need a bit of help—”

  Sigrid handed a bottle of beer across the table to Luke.

  “That’s what Ralph said to Edward—”

  “Can we not think about Ralph?”

  Sigrid took a chair on the other side of the table. Luke looked very young and very tired, and she noticed that his nails were bitten. She didn’t think she’d ever noticed before.

  “Are you a nail biter?”

  Luke took a swallow of beer from the bottle and rumpled his hair with his free hand.

  “I’m everything right now. I’d be a pusher’s dream market if I dared!”

  Sigrid picked a grape off the bunch in the fruit bowl in front of her. She said, “Is it the baby? Are you worried about having a baby?”

  Luke closed his eyes briefly.

  “I am absolutely ecstatic about the baby. I don’t care that we’ve only been married a couple of months. I’m thrilled. It’s not that. It’s . . . well, it’s Mum and Charlotte of course, and Charlotte thinks Mum despises her because (a) she’s pregnant so soon and (b) she isn’t Petra, and she doesn’t live in Suffolk and can’t draw. And now—” He stopped.

  “Now,” Sigrid said. She ate another grape slowly.

  “Now,” Luke said wearily, “she wants Mum to apologize.”

  Sigrid laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?” Luke demanded.

  “That’s not going to happen!”

  “No.”

  Luke said despondently, “She told her family about the baby two weeks before she told mine. She said that’s what you do. She says the mother’s mother is different from the father’s mother, and now she says that the way Mum behaved just proves it, and if she is going to have any kind of relationship in the future with Mum, Mum has got to say sorry.”

  He tipped up his beer bottle to his mouth and drank. Sigrid went to the fridge and took out a second one. She put it down on the table near Luke. She said, “What do you think?”

  Luke sighed. “I think Mum was well out of order, but it’s kind of time to forgive and forget, now.”

  Sigrid said, “Not so easy—” and stopped.

  Luke looked at her. He said, “You haven’t had a run-in with Mum, have you?”

  “It was a long time ago—”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “And you won’t know now,” Sigrid said. “Maybe we just say that sometimes your mother is careless, a little.”

  “Are you angry with her still?”

  Sigrid hesitated.

  “Wow,” Luke said, and then, after a moment, “Aren’t you going to have a drink too?”

  “Maybe some tea,” Sigrid said, moving towards the kettle.

  “Charlotte’s got a bit fixated on this Petra thing now, too. It’s not just Mum, saying what she said, but also how can anyone compare to Petra.”

  “Yes,” Sigrid said.

  She took a mug and a packet of valerian tea bags out of a cupboard. Luke said, “You don’t feel that, do you?”

  “Yes,” Sigrid said. She turned round to look at Luke. “It’s a problem.”

  “But Petra’s like . . . like a kid, like a kind of half sister—”

  “She had the seal of approval,” Sigrid said.

  “But she was pregnant when they married.”

  “Logic isn’t a part of this. And your Charlotte isn’t used to family difficulties, she isn’t used to being anything except the center of the family.”

  “She’s the center to me,” Luke said.

  “Tell her that.”

  “I do. I do, but she says I can’t mean it if I go on defending Mum.”

  Sigrid came back to the table.

  “Do you defend her?”

  Luke glanced at her unhappily and then looked away.

  “I can’t . . . attack her. Can I? Does . . . does Edward?”

  “There is something between the two,” Sigrid said, sitting down again. “Not defending, not attacking, but not leaving your wife to feel alone, either.”

  There was a pause. Then Luke said, half appalled, “Do you feel alone?”

  Sigrid looked at him. He seemed suddenly too young to be anyone’s husband, sitting there with his clear complexion and his bitten nails.

  “Sometimes,” she said.

  When he had seen Ralph off in the direction of the station, Edward went back into the pub where they had had supper and, on impulse, ordered a brandy and soda. He carried it across the room to a small table in a corner with a single chair next to it, customers having taken all but that one to other tables. The table was full of dirty glas
ses with empty crisp packets wedged in them, but Edward didn’t mind. He sat down with his back against the wall and tipped the whole bottle of soda water into the dark puddle of brandy at the bottom of his glass.

  In some ways, Ralph had been quite restrained. He’d drunk a single pint of beer, eaten his steak with salad and without chips, and he’d worn a suit and a shirt, which must have been new since Edward could see the sharp horizontal creases where it had been folded round its packaging. He also made Edward quite a civilized speech of gratitude about helping him to obtain this new job, and said, unexpectedly, that he wouldn’t let Edward down, and, in fact, he hoped that Edward would come to feel pretty pleased about his performance. He said he was feeling really fired up about starting employed work again, and that he knew he was bloody lucky. He then put his knife and fork down and said that there was a problem.

  “I was waiting, actually,” Edward said.

  “It’s Petra.”

  “Yes,” Edward said.

  “I can’t talk to her. She says that the money means nothing to her and that she can’t, now, live anywhere except by the sea.”

  Edward sighed.

  “Oh God—”

  “I’ve explained how life and money works. I mean, she knows that, she’s not a fool, but when things get rough, or she doesn’t like something, she goes into inert mode, sort of eludes facing the problem, till it’s over. But this one won’t be over until she looks at it.”

  “Have you told the parents?”

  Ralph fiddled with a side plate.

  “Don’t really want to—”

  “Wouldn’t they help? Wouldn’t Petra listen to them, especially Dad?”

  Ralph said, “I’ve let Mum in too far already. She’s beavering away finding houses and schools and stuff. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I think it’s put Petra’s back up, although she won’t say so. She won’t say anything much. She’s gone silent on me. It’s the way she thinks she’ll get me to change my mind.”

  “Or,” Edward said, “she’s genuinely withdrawn. She’s always done that. Dad said she never spoke at all, the first year he knew her. She’s probably miserable.”