White Wedding

by Milly Johnson

  Then Bel moved the dress to the side and took out the other one on the rail behind it, the one she had bought online. It was a gown so plain and boring the coathanger holding it was yawning. Round neck, straight sleeves, no detail on the bodice, no bow on the back – even a puritan bride would have expected more. It was cheap, dull and exactly fitting for the occasion to come.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Bel said, turning her head upwards. ‘I can’t wear your dress. I have to wear this one. Stay with me. Keep me strong, Mum. I love you.’

  Chapter 9

  While Max was stuck on the internet that afternoon, gorging herself on pictures of gypsy brides and hunting for ideas, Violet was on her way to the new ice-cream parlour to meet with the painter. She loved it so much and couldn’t wait to start up business again. Previously she’d leased a shop near the park, but it was dropping to pieces inside and the landlord was a nightmare. When her lease was up, she hadn’t renewed it. It meant that there would be a few months of not trading, but she was sure it would be worth it. As soon as Violet had viewed the lovely new conical building in the Maltstone Garden Centre, she knew she had to have it. The rent was considerably higher than her last place, but her new – and much more amenable – landlord said that he would let her have one month rent-free and two months at half price if she decorated it after the builders had finished with it. Plus, the footfall would be high all year round as the garden centre also had a flower shop, a furniture shop, a nursery, a coffee shop – which, by agreement, wouldn’t sell ice creams – and a beautiful gift shop too.

  She’d had an instant vision of the shop as soon as she walked in. Carousel. Golden poles, pictures of carousel horses around the walls, even fairground music. The only trouble was that she couldn’t paint for toffee.

  Violet unlocked the door and walked into her new kingdom. She might have to abandon her vision of the horses if this painter couldn’t give her what she wanted. So far no one else who had rung and offered their services painted murals. And there had been no take-up when she’d asked at the local art college.

  She was just trying to imagine how the place would look with plain walls when there was a knock at the door. Through the glass Violet could see a dark-haired young man standing there, carrying what looked to be a huge board.

  Violet sprang to open the door for him and knew that the pupils in her eyes must have widened to the size of crop circles. The man who stood there was like the sexy brother of Christ. Tall, wide-shouldered, heavy black stubble the same colour as his loose-curled hair and eyes like blue lagoons à la Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth.

  ‘Miss Flockton,’ he said in an accent that she couldn’t place, but it wasn’t British. Heaven, possibly. ‘I am Pawel Nowak, here about the painting of the horses.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Violet, standing aside to let him in, hoping that her legs wouldn’t wobble so much that she fell over in front of him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, striding past her into the shop.

  He had a long, powerful-looking body and the muscles on his thighs pushed at the material of his jeans. Athletic and strong. Not what Violet had imagined the artist to be like, from reading his email. Actually she’d envisaged someone with Elton John glasses and a mincing walk, who spoke like Alan Carr. This man – Pawel – looked more like a builder who had worked the hod since he was old enough to lift it. Admittedly that couldn’t have been very long ago, though; he must have been only in his early twenties.

  He put what was not a board but a huge art folder down on the counter and then held out his hand for Violet to shake. He had a strong handshake to say the least. Violet felt the crush on her fingers long after he had released them.

  ‘I have brought my portfolio to show you what I can do,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like a coffee or a cup of tea, Mr Nowak?’ asked Violet.

  He paused for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Thank you, but it’s fine. I’m okay.’ She felt he wanted one but was being polite.

  ‘I’m having one,’ she smiled, going into the kitchen to put on the kettle. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  He relented. ‘Yes, please. Coffee, please. Black no sugar, thank you. And please, call me Pav. Everyone does.’

  While Violet busied herself making two coffees, Pav prepared to impress her, spreading out his portfolio on one of the tables. Violet’s phone rang in her pocket. Glyn again. She pulled it out and switched it impatiently to silent. She noticed she’d apparently missed another call from him ten minutes ago.

  She carried over the coffees, placing Pav’s well away from his artwork. She looked down at the first picture and her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Wow,’ she said at the floor-to-ceiling artist’s impression of carousel horses: nose to tail, brightly coloured, golden spikes rising from their backs.

  ‘Now I can see the walls, I have a better vision of what you want,’ he said.

  ‘This is just what I want,’ said Violet breathlessly. In fact she lied, because this was much much better than she wanted. ‘You can paint these horses? On my walls?’ His artwork was on par with that in the Sistine Chapel.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Pav, as if it would be the easiest thing in the world to do that.

  ‘How much do you charge, though?’ asked Violet, getting ready to cringe.

  ‘Ten pounds an hour.’

  ‘Ten pounds?’ Blimey, thought Violet – he’s giving it away.

  ‘Is too much?’ Pav sounded concerned.

  ‘No, no,’ said Violet, suddenly thinking that it might not be such a bargain if it took him all day to paint one horse’s eyeball. ‘How long do you think it would take you?’

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ he said. ‘I will have to work after I finish my day job. I am a builder. Maybe some full days at the weekend. When are you planning to open?’

  ‘First week in August,’ said Violet.

  ‘Yes, it will be ready for then,’ said Pav.

  ‘How would I pay you?’

  ‘Cheque or cash is fine for me,’ said Pav, taking a long sip at his coffee. ‘I have a legitimate business. Everything goes into my books.’

  ‘When can you start?’ asked Violet, trying to appear businesslike and not as if she was fantasizing about what his arms would feel like round her.

  Pav smiled and Violet noticed that he had the beginnings of crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He must laugh a lot to have got those so young.

  ‘I can make poles for you too,’ said Pav. ‘A pole from the ceiling to the floor through the tables and painted gold like the carnival horses have. I can make them on a router – you know a router?’

  ‘Yes, I know what a router is,’ said Violet. ‘My dad was a joiner.’ Had he still been alive today, he would have been in this shop kitting it all out for her and loving every minute.

  ‘And that would be fantastic,’ said Violet. She could see the poles now. The excitement levels inside her for her new venture ratcheted up another couple of notches.

  Pav studied the walls hard then announced with contagious enthusiasm: ‘The horses will look as if they leaping out when I paint them.’ His hand made a flourish in the air. He had large square hands, long clean fingers.

  Violet’s heart was racing like a carousel at full pelt, just imagining it. She had dreamed of having her own ice-cream parlour since she was a little girl, but it was only three years ago that she had taken the bull by the horns, left the head-pastry-chef job she had in a Sheffield hotel and ventured out on her own. She had made her last place into a really successful little business, but the building didn’t have a fraction of the charisma of Carousel.

  ‘I’ll probably be here a lot of the time when you work. In the kitchen. Making stocks of ice cream and getting things ready, or doing my books in the room upstairs,’ said Violet. ‘I won’t be in your way, will I?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Pav. He took a tape measure out of his pocket and a notepad. ‘Excuse, please.’ He began to take the measurements of the walls and write them down with a
pencil so small it was lost in his hand.

  Violet drank her coffee and realized she wasn’t just watching him, she was appraising him. He had such a calm air about him, so different from the hyper-ness that surrounded Glyn. Pav’s eyes were darting around the space as he planned his masterpiece and scribbled down notes and ideas. She recognized the passion he had for his work because that’s what she felt about her ice cream, wanting to make the best in the world and then market it across the globe – although it sounded a little silly to admit that to anyone so she never had. Well, she had once – to the careers officer at school, who had laughed and told her to get her head out of the clouds and stop deluding herself. The echo of his words had rung loud and long in her head and served to hold her back from her true potential. It had far outweighed any encouragement her family and friends had given her, even though she knew it shouldn’t be that way.

  Violet snatched her attention away from Pav’s big frame and back to her coffee. She shouldn’t be eyeing up young men like that. He must be about ten years her junior. Cougar. Or, worse: cradle-snatcher. She would be married in eleven weeks and the part of her heart that might thud for another was destined to die.

  Chapter 10

  Glyn’s parents, Joy and Norman Leach, were the sort of couple who finished off each other’s sentences and wore matching home-knits with native American grey wolf heads on the front. They were joined at the hip, had the same dislikes and likes, and everything in their house, where possible, was labelled ‘his’ and ‘hers’. In a previous life they would have been a Twix. Norman painted small models of soldiers when he wasn’t gardening and Joy did cross-stitch pictures, usually of owls, which Norman then framed and hung on the walls for her. Joy thought she was being wanton if she had a glass of sherry at any time other than Christmas – and always Croft Original, never Harveys Bristol Cream. Norman reached the heights of ecstasy looking through Caravan Monthly magazine or buying seeds. They were kind and gentle people, if incredibly dull. They made a wet weekend in Grimsby look like a fortnight’s luxury cruise in the Bahamas.

  They’d had Glyn – their only child – considerably late in life. Joy was forty-two and they had both given up hope of ever conceiving. As such, he was their precious jewel and they worried about him constantly and still treated him as if he was five. When she was in town Joy was always buying him pants and socks.

  Their house was a remarkably neat and twee bungalow in Pogley, backing onto a dribble of a stream known as the Stripe. Their garden was immaculate and would have made Alan Titchmarsh’s head nod in approval. Everything about the Leachs was immaculate. Even Misty, their immaculately Persil-clean West Highland white terrier, always shat in the same spot in the garden – out of sight behind the aloe vera plant.

  They gushed out of the door when they saw Violet’s car draw up, waving and fussing. They were so pleased to see her that Violet felt more than a stab of guilt that they annoyed her so much with their over-the-top gratefulness to her for marrying their son. There was no harm in either of them, quite the opposite – they would help anyone with anything within their capabilities. They were wonderfully agile for a couple in their mid-seventies. The ill-health fairy had stayed away from their door, except for a heart scare for Norman last year, and the odd cold. Mental illness was something they couldn’t understand – and wouldn’t ever be able to – so they overcompensated and padded around Glyn on eggshells, not wanting to risk upset and send him back to the dark places he had visited during his breakdown.

  Norman rushed Glyn inside to show him the new TV they’d just bought for their caravan. Joy followed behind with Violet, taking slow pin steps and hoping for her usual ‘quiet word’.

  ‘How’s he been?’ she asked, her smile sad but hopeful of good news.

  ‘Fine,’ nodded Violet. ‘In good spirits.’ She didn’t add that his paranoia seemed to be getting worse. That if she was out of the house for longer than an hour without reporting in, he would get in a flap. Some things were best left unsaid. The Leachs were Olympic champions at worrying.

  ‘You are making sure he takes his anti-depressants regularly, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Joy,’ said Violet, psyching herself to ask what had been on her mind to say for weeks now. ‘It might . . . it might help if you encouraged him to go out and get some fresh air and stretch his legs. Occasionally.’

  Glyn’s diet wasn’t the healthiest and the fact that he got absolutely no exercise bothered Violet. Especially because her concern seemed to gratify Glyn and made him doubly reluctant to do anything about his increasing waist measurement. ‘It’s not good for him to be so inactive, Joy. I wish you’d say something to him about it. He won’t listen to me.’

  Joy’s eyes nearly sprang out of their sockets in horror. ‘He needs to rest, surely. At least for the time being. It’s early days, Violet. A breakdown can take years to get over. I got a book from the library about mental health. He goes out in the garden, doesn’t he? He tells us he’s planted all sorts of flowers. Daddy’s given him all manner of seeds.’

  ‘He has, yes,’ conceded Violet. The flats all had individual patches of garden at the back. Patch being the operative word.

  ‘And he’s growing some violets for you, I hear.’ Joy grinned at the romance of it all.

  ‘Yes, he’s growing some violets,’ echoed Violet, knowing now that she was on the highway to nowhere by asking Joy to help her gee up her son.

  ‘Violet, dear, I know Glyn feels bad about not being strong enough yet to get another job, because he’s always had such a professional work ethic. But, for the moment, he’s enjoying being at home and looking after you. And that can only be a good thing – if he’s happy.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Violet. ‘I wasn’t implying he was lazy, it’s just that . . .’

  ‘These modern marriages have a lot to be said for them when the wife is happy working out and the husband is happy working in.’

  Violet didn’t say it but she felt that wouldn’t have been the natural way round of things for Joy. She couldn’t imagine either Joy mowing the lawn or Norman ironing. But Joy had obviously tried hard to rationalize the situation so that it made sense to her tradition-loving brain.

  Glyn wasn’t idle, but he was doing himself no favours ‘institutionalizing’ himself in his flat. His therapist had said the same, until he stopped going to see her. Violet was now totally on her own trying to get him back to being part of the bigger world again.

  She followed Joy into the chintzy roast-pork-scented kitchen, where a warmed teapot was waiting under a crocheted cosy. Pans of vegetables were bubbling away on her old electric hob.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ asked Violet as Joy slipped her apron back on. She always felt duty-bound to ask though she knew that Joy would sooner gouge out her own eyeballs than have anyone help her in her kingdom. Unless it was after the meal when Norman had the customary duty of drying the washed plates.

  ‘No, dear, it’s all under control.’

  Joy stirred the gravy with one hand and tipped the teapot over her china cups with the other. It looked a struggle and Violet watched her awkwardly. It was uncomfortable to be so redundant. Both here and at home.

  ‘We’ve brought you some of that non-alcoholic wine,’ said Glyn.

  ‘Oh lovely. We’ll have that with pudding,’ replied Norman.

  ‘It’s ready,’ trilled Joy as a choir of buzzers all went off at the same time. ‘Daddy, would you carve?’

  ‘Certainly, Mum,’ saluted Norman, and he picked up the meat and the electric knife and then carried them into the dining room.

  ‘Go and sit down, dear,’ Joy instructed, juggling pans with the panache of a top-of-the-bill circus act.

  Violet followed Norman and Glyn into the wood-panelled dining room. The decor of the house was immaculate but dreadfully dated. She was sure the Leachs had injected all the furniture with formaldehyde because it was all so fabulously preserved.

  The table was set with frilly doily place m
ats and beige cloth napkins and an ancient silver cruet stood in the middle of the table, sharing space on a wooden trivet with a milk jug and sugar bowl. In one corner of the room was the old hostess trolley that Joy still occasionally used when they had visitors; in another corner stood an upright piano polished to a dazzling shine. Neither of them could play it. It was a relic from the music lessons Glyn had taken between the ages of seven and fifteen.

  ‘Dad has asked us if we want to borrow the caravan for our honeymoon,’ said Glyn, with the excitement of someone who had just found a Rolex in the street.

  Violet gulped. ‘Oh. A honeymoon? I didn’t even think about that. I presumed you wouldn’t be able to manage one.’

  ‘We should at least consider it. And quickly,’ said Glyn. ‘The wedding will be here before we know it.’

  ‘Seventy-six days and counting,’ chuckled Joy, ferrying in dishes of vegetables. ‘You might as well have a nice holiday, just the pair of you, before the babies come along.’

  ‘Babies?’ Violet nearly choked.

  ‘You don’t want to be hanging about at your age,’ said Joy. ‘The younger you are when you have children, the more energy you have – trust me on that one. If you’re thirty-three now, even if you caught on straight away, you’re going to be halfway to thirty-five by the time the first one comes along. Then you’ll need a rest before number two . . .’