Bride Required

by Alison Fraser

  The truth was she was content to live in limbo for the moment. The days went by pleasurably, and Baxter was always home by six-thirty. The evenings followed on from that. He turned out to be something of a new man—well, as far as the kitchen was concerned. He could cook, so he did, while Dee took care of the dogsbody parts, the vegetables, setting the table, washing the dishes. Joseph, when home, was excused from duties to study; he hoped to go to medical school if he achieved refugee status.

  After dinner they went for a walk or played chess; they were surprisingly well-matched, Baxter and her, but Joseph could beat both of them. Or they just sat around, talking about everything and nothing.

  Weekends started on Friday, when Baxter drove her to the supermarket. The first few times she had done a list, but Baxter maintained that took the pleasure out of it and they did it his way, going up and down aisles, selecting at random. Saturdays were spent sailing, as often as not, unless Morag talked Baxter into a trip to the zoo or the latest Disney film, and then he had Dee come along for moral support.

  It didn’t help to get over him, of course, going so many places together. It might have, if he’d been stuffy and boring, but he wasn’t. He was sharp and witty, and the coolest, most laid-back person she’d ever met. He knew what was important and didn’t bother with the things that weren’t.

  The fact was, he was her soul mate.

  The trouble was, only she recognised the fact.

  He never seemed to get beyond seeing her as the skinny kid with the cropped hair and the multiplicity of earrings, despite her current mass of blond waves and the subtle studs in her ears, and the filled-out figure that had other men noticing.

  How she wished she were older! Yet, when her birthday came around, she didn’t tell anyone. ‘Older’ wasn’t eighteen, and she didn’t want him reminded of the age difference.

  He found out anyway, the next day. It was Saturday, and he collected the post from the doorstep, bringing it upstairs to the breakfast table. He removed the elastic band holding it together and, after throwing a couple of circulars straight into the bin, came upon a large yellow envelope.

  ‘For you.’ He handed it to Dee.

  She knew what it must be from its shape, and a glance at the postmark told her who had sent it.

  When she made no move to open it, he said, ‘It’s not your birthday, is it?’

  ‘No, it was yesterday,’ she replied in dismissive tones.

  ‘I did not know.’ Joseph gave her an apologetic look from across the table.

  ‘Ditto.’ Baxter gave her a frown.

  ‘Happy birthday, Deborah,’ Joseph added in his formal way.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dee smiled shyly.

  ‘Yes, many happy returns,’ Baxter agreed, but there was an edge to his voice. He indicated the envelope discarded by her plate. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She did it with some reluctance.

  She drew out a stylish card with ‘18’ on the front. The message inside wasn’t exactly warm. Just ‘Love, Mother’. No invitations to come home. The cheque, she supposed, was compensation.

  ‘Your stepfather?’ Baxter surmised.

  She met his eyes. They reflected the disdain in his voice. He still imagined she’d had some kind of relationship with Edward.

  ‘No, it’s from my mother,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Along with this.’

  She showed him the cheque. She felt she had to. He let her stay here because she had no money. Five hundred pounds changed that.

  ‘That’s good. I’m pleased for you,’ he said, his tone warmer.

  ‘Well, at least I’m not broke any more,’ she replied with a heavy heart.

  She waited to see if he would say anything. Such as, Why don’t you use it to move out?

  He gave her a wry look instead. ‘For a week or so, anyway.’

  Dee took a moment to catch his meaning. ‘You think I’d go and blow it, just like that?’

  ‘Why not?’ he shrugged. ‘That’s what money’s for—well, when you’re eighteen, anyway,’ he qualified. ‘You can take us out to the pub tonight, celebrate your new legal drinking status.’

  ‘Yes, okay,’ Dee agreed quite readily, then realised she couldn’t. ‘No, I forgot. Your sister’s asked me to babysit.’

  He made a slight face. ‘You can’t let her down, I suppose.’

  Dee wished she could. Going to the pub with Baxter and Joseph was hardly high living, but at least it would be something to mark her coming of age. She’d spent yesterday feeling very sorry for herself.

  ‘I could take you tomorrow night,’ she suggested.

  ‘Fine by me,’ Baxter accepted.

  ‘And I,’ Joseph said in his precise English.

  ‘It’s a date, then,’ Baxter confirmed.

  A date. Dee silently echoed the words, wishing it were true. But then how would she feel if he really went on a date—with someone else? It had to happen soon. Cat had said it was rare for him to go so long without female company. What if he brought her here? Slept with her upstairs…?

  Dee shut her eyes on the thought. When she opened them again, it was to see Baxter’s face go grim as he sorted through the rest of his mail and came to an official-looking letter.

  ‘Home Office—the result of your appeal, I suspect.’ He offered it to Joseph.

  The younger man swallowed hard. ‘You read it, Doctor, please.’

  No birthday card, this; Dee tensed, too. She watched Baxter read and reread the typed letter with the Home Office heading. Not good news, either.

  Joseph must have gathered that, too. When he next spoke, it was in some language Dee didn’t recognise. She assumed it was Kirundian.

  Baxter answered in the same tongue, fluent from the years he’d spent there. His face was grave. He was holding out no false hope.

  Joseph was clearly struggling with some strong emotions. Rather than display them, he got up and left the room.

  Dee’s impulse was to follow, but Baxter laid a detaining hand on her arm. ‘Joseph comes from a proud people. He won’t thank you for seeing him upset.’

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘The last chance he had of staying?’

  A nod from Baxter confirmed it. ‘They’re giving him a couple of months’ grace to prepare for deportation.’

  Dee was a little stunned. She’d been aware of Joseph’s predicament from the outset, but she’d naively believed he would keep getting reprieves.

  ‘We have to help him,’ she stated, and, knowing only one way she could, added, ‘Dee is willing.’

  Baxter slid her a hard glance, but remained silent. She wondered if he understood the literary allusion.

  ‘It’s from Dickens. “Barkis is willin”’. It means—’ she began to explain.

  ‘I know what it means,’ he cut across her, his face tight. ‘I just don’t find it funny.’

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’ Dee had joked merely to cover any doubts. ‘I will do it… It’s why I’m here, after all.’

  He stared at her briefly, but if she’d expected him to be grateful she was sadly mistaken.

  ‘No, it isn’t, not any more.’ He scraped back his chair, heading for the door as he said, ‘I have some calls to make, then I’m going out.’

  Dee was left feeling wounded. It had been his idea that Joseph marry a British citizen, yet, when it came to the crunch, he didn’t trust her to do it. Did he think she would mess it up somehow and betray them all?

  Dee veered between self-pity and anger, and in the end anger won. Because he was wrong—wrong on all counts. This wasn’t about how he felt or what he thought of her. This was about Joseph rapidly running out of options. Surely it was his choice?

  It was in that mood Dee approached Joseph later, taking a sandwich up to his room. Despite everything, he’d returned to his studies. Maybe it was his mechanism for coping.

  ‘Joseph, has Baxter ever told you why he brought me up here?’ she asked him outright.

  Joseph frowned a
s if he considered it an odd question. ‘You had an injured leg.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dee tried again. ‘Well, has he ever talked to you of marriage as a solution to your problem?’

  ‘Marriage to a British citizen?’ Joseph showed he understood. ‘He joke about it once, but it is not possible. I know no one to marry.’

  Clearly he had never regarded her as a candidate, and Dee hadn’t done so herself lately. There was only one man she imagined marrying, but that was fantasy. This was reality.

  She took a deep breath, before saying, ‘You know me.’

  Joseph looked uncertain, then decided it must be English humour, and laughed.

  Dee remained unsmiling. ‘I mean it.’

  He still treated it with disbelief. ‘You cannot marry me. Baxter would not permit, I think. You are his chère amie.’

  Dear friend? Dee wondered what ground such a term covered in Kirundi. Lover? No, that would be amour.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ She forced a laugh, as if it was nonsense.

  Joseph, however, wasn’t so naive. ‘I see you look at him. I see him look at you. Perhaps you ask him to marry you instead,’ he suggested.

  ‘What?’ This time Dee didn’t have to force a laugh. The idea was genuinely absurd. ‘Is that what happens in Kirundi? The woman asks the man?’

  ‘No, Kirundi is very traditional. Man asks father, gives goats.’ A smile acknowledged possible flaws in such a custom. ‘But in Britain girl can choose. You do not want Baxter?’

  Dee wasn’t expecting a question so direct, and felt her cheeks flame.

  ‘I am sorry.’ Joseph detected her embarrassment. ‘I do not mean to offend.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ Dee said, recovering. ‘It’s just not an option, Baxter and I. In fact, it was his suggestion, initially, that I marry you.’

  Joseph looked amazed, then puzzled, before shaking his head. He didn’t understand Europeans. He liked them, but they often made no sense to him.

  ‘Anyway, I have no plans to marry anyone else,’ she continued. ‘So, if it would keep you here, I’d be willing.’

  ‘Tu es très gentil.’ Joseph lapsed into French as he applauded her kindness. ‘Je ne sais… I do not know what to say, but I must ask the doctor.’

  So much for cutting out the middle man, but Dee didn’t try to persuade Joseph otherwise. She supposed any marriage would need the doctor’s co-operation.

  She told herself she didn’t care what he thought, but was relieved that he was still absent when Ewan came to fetch her for babysitting. Cat had invited her to sleep at their cottage, and it suited Dee. If Joseph spoke to Baxter that night, he might have cooled down by the morning.

  Cat noticed her distraction when she arrived and asked if anything was wrong, but Dee just shook her head. Cat had her own problems. Over seven months pregnant, she felt heavy and tired most of the time, and was not looking forward to a business dinner involving clients of Ewan’s management consultancy.

  ‘I look like a beached whale,’ Cat declared, in her long caftan dress.

  ‘You look beautiful.’ Ewan’s eyes lingered on his wife’s face, telling her he meant it.

  Cat glowed with pleasure even as she murmured, ‘Liar.’

  Dee watched with genuine fascination. They’d been married over ten years, but love had clearly not been eroded in that time. Dee didn’t know anyone—her parents, her friends’ parents, her parents’ friends—who had a marriage this happy.

  ‘You give me a row when I lie,’ Morag pointed out as her mother bent down to kiss her.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Cat laughed back. ‘Daddy’ll be getting his just deserts later.’

  Ewan gave a fake leer at the prospect, while Morag took it quite literally and wanted to know why Daddy was getting a pudding for telling fibs.

  The adults all laughed, and Cat was saved any further explanation as a taxi arrived to transport them to the country club where they were to have dinner.

  Dee had babysat Morag often, and had grown to like her despite her precocious ways. They played a little Junior Monopoly before Dee took her upstairs and read her a pile of books until she finally nodded off. Then Dee went downstairs to the guest bedroom, turning in early, and willed herself to sleep rather than lie awake worrying about Baxter’s reaction to her proposal to Joseph.

  She woke with a start some time later, roused by persistent knocking on the front door.

  Still drowsy, she padded along the corridor, calling out, ‘Just coming,’ as she turned the key. She’d left it in the lock, which she assumed must be why Cat and Ewan couldn’t get in.

  Only it wasn’t Cat and Ewan—a fact she didn’t realise until she opened the door and Baxter strode past her.

  Once in the hallway, he let his gaze rake her from head to foot as she stood, sleepy-eyed and barely dressed, still using one of his shirts as a nightgown.

  He launched an attack before she even had time to draw breath.

  ‘Have you any idea what this is for?’ He shut the door and held up the chain on it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you any idea how it works?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dee shot him a look of resentment. She wasn’t stupid, and he knew it.

  ‘But you still answered the door, half-awake and half-naked.’ He let his gaze rest on the cleavage revealed by the loosely buttoned shirt.

  Dee’s hand went to her neck and pulled the sides of the shirt together. ‘I thought it was Cat and Ewan.’ She stated the obvious.

  ‘I could have been anyone,’ he countered, in the same tight, angry voice.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Dee stopped trying to defend herself. He was right. She had been careless. ‘What do you want, anyway?’ she asked instead.

  ‘What do you think I want?’ he threw back at her.

  A fight, Dee judged by the deep scowl on his brow, but found it hard to summon up an appropriate response. It took a moment or two before she even recalled what offence she’d committed this time.

  ‘Joseph,’ she finally sighed.

  ‘Yes, Joseph,’ he grated back. ‘What else?’

  Dee shrugged in response, as if it could have been one of many things.

  ‘Is there something else?’ he added seeing her expression.

  ‘Who knows?’ she replied wearily. ‘You pretty much disapprove of everything I do.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he denied, then grabbed her arm when she would have walked away from him. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘The kitchen,’ she replied shortly. ‘Unless you want to wake Morag with your shouting.’

  ‘I…am…not…shouting!’ He bit out each word in suppressed temper, then added, ‘Right. The kitchen.’

  Dee found herself being propelled in that direction, and her own temper started rising.

  She put the table between them and, dry-mouthed, poured a glass of water for herself.

  He helped himself too, but, in his case, it was to a glass of whisky from a bottle he took from a cupboard. He obviously knew his way round the kitchen.

  He drank it down as if in need of it, then caught her eye on him. ‘Do you want a glass?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t drink spirits.’

  ‘How abstemious.’ He mocked her tone and poured another for himself. ‘Or maybe you just haven’t had the time to acquire a taste… What is it? Forty-eight hours since you’ve been legally entitled to get legless?’

  ‘I’ve been drunk before.’ Dee wasn’t setting herself up to be holier than thou. ‘I just didn’t like it.’

  A shadow briefly crossed her face as she remembered. That New Year’s party. Tipsy on wine. Kissing that boy. Then Edward kissing her. The shock had sobered her up quickly enough. She hadn’t got drunk again.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Nothing apart from her life changing for ever. But Dee wasn’t in the confessing mood. Nor was he in a listening mood.

  ‘What about this afternoo
n? What happened then?’

  ‘With Joseph…?’

  ‘Yes, with Joseph,’ he clipped out, impatient at her vagueness. ‘Unless, of course, you proposed to more than one person today.’

  ‘Not as I recall.’ She adopted a bored air against his sarcasm, and saw the knuckles of his hand clench on his whisky glass.

  But Dee wasn’t scared. Not physically. She’d lived with Baxter Ross long enough to know some things. He would never hit her.

  ‘Is this some kind of game to you?’ he demanded, rapping the glass back on the work surface. ‘To get at me through Joseph?’

  Dee frowned. She genuinely didn’t understand.

  ‘I don’t see that it’s doing anything to you,’ she replied. ‘It’s Joseph I’m marrying.’

  ‘For the money?’ he returned harshly. ‘Is that it? Because if it is—’

  ‘You can keep your money!’ Dee matched his contempt.

  ‘Then why?’ He hadn’t conceived that she might be moved by Joseph’s plight.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she drawled. ‘It’s other people’s perception that’s important. And who’s to say I haven’t fallen in love with Joseph? We’ve been living in the same house for long enough.’

  Dee felt it could be a convincing scenario.

  Too convincing perhaps, because Baxter threw back, ‘Are you saying you have?’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Fallen in love?’

  Dee felt her cheeks go pink. Oh, she’d done that all right. Just not with Joseph.

  ‘No, of course not.’ She hid behind scorn. ‘I told you— I don’t believe in that crap.’

  He grimaced at her language, before saying, ‘So why would you be doing it, if not for the money?’

  ‘Use your imagination,’ Dee suggested.

  The point was, she’d used hers and she still couldn’t see it—Joseph, with a Kalashnikov in his hands, and dead eyes like the other young men in the newsreels he and Baxter compulsively watched. She refused to see it.

  ‘It was your idea, remember?’ she added.

  His face darkened. ‘I didn’t know you then.’

  ‘And, now you do,’ she concluded, ‘you don’t trust me to carry it off. Well, fine! Great! Let Joseph get his head blown off rather than risk it.’

  Dee meant it as her final word, and stalked towards the door.