And meanwhile, the wedding was enough to occupy her mind. She’d never imagined that getting married could involve so much activity, so many decisions. True to her philosophy, she was savouring the experience to the full, applying herself enthusiastically to the cake and the dress and the marriage service. And to tracking down guests. She’d been good at keeping in touch with people over the years, and it was amazing how easy it was to find lost friends on the internet. As she lay in the dark, soothed by the silence that was never quite silent in this house, a procession of names accompanied her mind towards sleep. Olivia Conafray. Grace Darwin. Eve de Perreville.
Chapter 7
When the letter arrived announcing Sarah Brewster’s engagement, Olivia’s first thought was that it was bound to end badly. She stared at the letter for a moment, propped against her tea cup among the remains of breakfast. An unaccountable reaction, she thought, when she knew almost nothing of the circumstances, or of the bridegroom-to-be. Something to do with that curlicued schoolgirl handwriting, perhaps, or the recollection of Sarah’s eager, guileless face.
We met at the clinic where I’m working now, Sarah had written. He was a patient, and funnily enough it wasn’t me who noticed him first. As she skimmed through the lines again, the account of the brief courtship, Olivia couldn’t stop her mind running forwards through gradual disenchantment to a terrible moment of truth, and then (an unforgivably selfish thought, this) a need for Sarah’s old friends to rally round and pick up the pieces. She imagined them all – their faces hazy, at this distance – wishing Sarah well at the wedding, all those people she hadn’t seen for so long, and her heart sank.
Olivia frowned at the sheet of notepaper (white, perfectly innocuous) as if it might be responsible for her malice. But it wasn’t the first time, lately, that she’d been surprised by a vicious note in herself. Like the Wednesday Club piano, she thought, unpredictable in tone outside the safe middle of its range.
She got up, setting down her mug on the side and running hot water into the sink for the porridge pan. Did this release of spite date from the attack on the bridge? She baulked at that idea: her sense of propriety disliked psychological clichés. But it was true that there had been, since that day, surges of strangely pleasurable anger; an occasional alluring feeling that violence of a specific, limited kind might be liberating. She’d driven her trolley sharply into someone’s legs in the supermarket last week when they’d failed to notice her wanting to pass; she’d made a jibe, barely covered by humour, about Robert’s growing paunch. Perhaps it wasn’t her assailant who’d acquired a taste for hurting people from that incident, but her.
She turned back to the table to gather up the plates abandoned by her departing sons, and her eyes scanned the scattering of bills and flyers and unsolicited catalogues, the forgotten homework left on the side. This surveillance of her surroundings had become a reflex too; a deliberate act of anchoring herself, as if the detritus of family life had a talismanic power to keep the world under control. But looking at the mess and clutter now, evidence of so many lives dependent on her, she wondered how anyone could choose to take all this on so late in life, when they’d been used to the tidy existence of a single woman. Did she pity Sarah, though, coming so late to marriage, or resent her claiming her share of domestic bliss after those years of freedom? Olivia didn’t know what she thought, these days, or where her feelings came from.
As she loaded the dishwasher, she turned her mind towards safer ground. She’d heard from Sarah from time to time over the years. She knew she lived quite near Oxford, recalled news of flats bought and sold: she remembered, one Christmas, registering a prick of pity when she opened her card. Poor Sarah, not much to show for her life. Sarah was a person you ought to like, Olivia thought, but all through school she’d found her a bit much. All that enthusiasm, that wide-eyed certainty. She was like a character who’d found herself in the wrong kind of film, cheerfully playing it straight in the black comedy of life. And having a go now, it seemed, at the romantic lead.
The cat appeared, as he often did at this time of day when the house fell quiet after the morning rumpus. Winding himself around Olivia’s legs, he made small noises of consolation and entreaty, and she bent to pick him up. Big baby, she murmured into the thick ruff of fur at his neck. Life’s all right, isn’t it? She carried him across the kitchen to the drawer that held odds and ends of stationery. An engagement demanded formal communication, she thought: a letter, an envelope, a stamp. It was an old-fashioned business, getting married. With the cat on her knee, Olivia sat at the kitchen table and filled a card with enthusiastic congratulations.
And when Sarah rang up, a few days later, Olivia invited her to supper with her fiancé.
“Couldn’t you put them off?” asked Alastair, as Olivia searched her cupboards in vain for tinned tomatoes.
Olivia turned to smile at him: Alastair the thoughtful one, the sensible second child. Alastair who might have been her favourite, if she’d been allowed to have one. “I would if I knew her better.”
“What do you mean?”
Olivia sighed, abandoning the hunt. “I’m afraid she’d guess I wasn’t all that keen on the idea in the first place.”
“Ah.” Alastair frowned.
Any of the others would have asked why that mattered, she thought.
Olivia could almost believe that Fate had conspired to repay her ungenerous instincts over Sarah’s engagement by making this occasion as difficult as possible. The timing had proved comically inconvenient: Robert was away; Tom was about to leave for a university taster course; Benjy had been off school all week with an ear infection. She’d spent the last few days carrying hot drinks up the stairs, finding lost forms and fielding Robert’s calls from the States. The house was even more of a tip than usual, the washing was piling up, and it seemed the cupboards were bare.
“What about a takeaway?” Alastair suggested.
Before Olivia could reply the front door slammed. Angus, back from after-school football training, stomped down the hall and threw his sports bag across the kitchen. His brothers looked up as it thudded into the table leg, knocking over a glass of orange juice.
“Oh dear.” Olivia took in his furious face. How many times, she wondered, had he come home like this? She reached for a cloth to mop up the spilt juice, and her eyes flicked cautiously to Benjy, curled in a chair at the far end of the kitchen with his Nintendo.
“That’s the last time I’m going to football,” Angus announced, his voice dangerously calm. “He’s a complete arse.”
“Who is, darling?”
Olivia moved towards him, but Angus shied away, as if dodging a rugby tackle. He hadn’t grown as fast as his brothers: he was short, for thirteen, but stocky. Strong as a pack pony, Robert’s mother said admiringly, recognising her own sons in him, the Scottish farmers’ genes.
“Mister So-called Sweetman. I’m the best striker in the squad, but does he care? He’s totally got it in for me.”
“Just like all the other teachers?” said Benjy, without taking his eyes off his game.
“You can shut up, Mummy’s boy. Wait ‘til next year when you’re out of baby school. You won’t last a minute.”
“Leave him out of it,” said Alastair; but to Olivia’s relief Angus was heading out of the kitchen again, towards the larder in the hallway.
“At least I’ve got friends,” Benjy called after him.
They had a long history, her youngest sons. Benjy’s birth had been complicated – a placental abruption and an emergency Caesarian – and he’d been a delicate baby. He was doing fine now, but he still aroused Olivia’s protective instincts, and Angus had been swamped by jealousy from the moment Benjy was born and claimed so much of his mother’s attention. Not that he’d ever admit it, of course. Not that he was ever anything but the tough guy, these days.
The phone rang while Angus was out of the room. Sarah; of course it was Sarah.
“We are still on for this evening?” she a
sked, picking up the note of hesitation in Olivia’s greeting. “You are expecting us?”
“Yes, of course,” Olivia heard herself saying.
While she explained the one-way system, the intricacies of the residents’ parking scheme, violence erupted in the kitchen. She didn’t see how it started, but within seconds, it seemed, Benjy and Angus were pelting each other with potatoes. Peeled potatoes, grabbed from the convenient supply of missiles she’d left in a bowl on the side.
“Sounds lively there,” said Sarah, as a Jersey Royal caught Olivia just below the shoulder. “By the way, I did tell you I don’t eat meat? But don’t worry: I’m very happy with just the veg.”
Not when they’re already in a casserole with several pounds of braising steak, thought Olivia, juggling conflicting urges to laugh and to scream. Not when the potatoes are under the table now among the crumbs and the pencil sharpenings, no longer the wherewithal for a meal but a mess to clear up.
“No trouble,” she said. “Look forward to seeing you.”
The doorbell rang ten minutes early. Olivia opened the door onto rain in the street, her guests bedraggled in plastic macs. The happy couple, she thought. She blushed momentarily, remembering her reaction to Sarah’s letter. They looked too ordinary, too well-meaning to become enmired in doubt and recrimination.
“Welcome!” she said. “I’m afraid Robert’s not here: he’s been held up in Boston. A business trip.”
“Oh dear.” Sarah hung back for a moment. “You should have put us off. We could have come another time.”
“No, no. I’ve been looking forward to it.” Olivia extended her hand to the tall man at Sarah’s side, holding himself a little awkwardly in the doorway. They didn’t look entirely at ease with each other yet, but they made a handsome couple, nonetheless. Each had the kind of physiognomy that ages well in their sex: Guy lean and tanned, with close-cropped curly hair that was greying attractively, and Sarah still plump, strawberry-blonde, girlish. Guy had been a mountaineer, Sarah had told her, until the accident a year ago that left him with a limp and a lot of metal in his legs.
“I really am sorry Robert’s not here,” she said. “He was excited about meeting you.”
“Oh, well–” began Guy.
“My celebrity fiancé.” Sarah beamed. “You look well, Olivia. How have you stayed so slim, after all those children?”
Olivia was floored: should she respond in kind? She was out of practice at these exchanges. She smiled, then turned, gesturing down the corridor to the kitchen. “I have a confession,” she said. “I had a bit of a mishap earlier, so we’re having takeaway curry. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve reached the point where …” she lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “I can only do quantity these days, not quality. The boys simply don’t notice what they’re eating.”
She flushed as she reached the end of this speech, aware of sounding unnatural. Of sounding just like Sarah, in fact. A bad habit, she thought: did people notice?
“How many boys?” asked Guy.
“Four.” Sarah got the answer in before Olivia. “Tom, Alastair, Angus, Bertie?”
“Benjy,” said Olivia. “I’m impressed.”
“I adore curry,” Sarah said. “And we’ve come to see you, anyway. What can I do?”
“Nothing. Sit. Have a drink. There’s wine and beer in the fridge. Here, look: help yourselves.” Olivia put bottles, glasses, corkscrew on the table. For a moment she felt flustered again; she’d hoped Alastair might reappear so she could ask him to pour the drinks, but now she was ashamed of the idea that she couldn’t manage on her own.
“What will you drink, Olivia?” asked Guy.
“Perhaps a glass of Verdicchio in a minute, when I’ve got this lot in the oven. Sorry about the noise, by the way.”
An insistent beat could be heard through the ceiling, and the surge of canned laughter from the next room. The boys had ordered pizzas earlier, and seemed to have understood that their mother was best left to herself this evening. Not that it ever took much encouragement to scatter them to their separate entertainments.
“I’d get the boys to come and say hello,” Olivia went on, “but – you know; a moment of peace.”
They didn’t know, of course. They smiled at her, wine glasses in their hands, and Olivia smiled back, struck by the brief silence, the tableau frozen for a moment. Here they were, she thought: Sarah and her fiancé, large as life. And was Sarah just the same as ever? Olivia wasn’t sure she could tell. Less certain, perhaps? Less exuberant, but you’d expect that. It was like watching the Sarah she’d known play an older version of herself, an imaginary adult. But who was she to say the portrayal wasn’t convincing?
“So, what excitement!” she said. “A wedding to plan. A winter wedding!”
The smell of spices filled the kitchen as she prised the lids off plastic containers.
“Epiphany’s a traditional time for a wedding,” Sarah said. “And people don’t go away much in January.”
“Sarah wants a big party,” said Guy. “She’s busy ferreting people out.”
“You’ll never guess who I saw last week.” Sarah raised her eyebrows, catching Olivia’s eye. “Eve.”
Olivia’s hands halted for a moment.
“Eve de Perreville?”
Eve had hovered at the periphery of her thoughts since the day she’d seen James, but it was a long time, a very long time, since she’d spoken her name out loud. And Sarah had seen her? Eve hadn’t even liked Sarah, in the old days.
“She’s living in Maidenhead,” Sarah said. “Working as a GP.”
Olivia kept her voice light. “I thought she went abroad? Married an Australian doctor?”
“She’s divorced. Second time, actually. I was surprised you weren’t in touch.”
“No. I haven’t seen her for years.”
Olivia slid a tray of food into the oven. She’d written to Eve once, during the month she’d spent in Dubai with her parents at the end of that summer tour, a careful letter that Eve had never replied to. The following year Olivia had heard, with a shameful rush of relief, that Eve had gone to Australia with a visiting doctor she’d fallen in love with, and then she’d heard no more. There was still a small vacuum deep inside, in the space that Eve had once occupied, curiously empty of feelings now.
“I saw James – “ she began – but the phrase was cut off by a crash from overhead, and in that second she thought better of it. Sarah had never known James; Olivia wasn’t going to explain. She still wasn’t even sure it had been him she’d seen. She’d been over it in her mind again and again, reminding herself that she’d been suggestible after the assault.
“How old are your sons?” Guy asked, glancing in the direction of the noise.
“Between ten and eighteen. All addicted to screens of one kind or another. Sorry – “ Olivia strode over to the playroom door, flung it open and shouted, “down, please, just a bit.”
“Goodness.” Sarah was at her shoulder, peering into the boys’ lair. In the darkness, two bodies were sprawled half on, half off the sofa; the floor was scattered with dirty plates, sweet wrappers, split-open files. Your perspective could shift in an instant, Olivia thought: one minute it was cheerful clutter, the next chaos and dissolution.
“This is my friend Sarah,” she said.
“From school,” said Sarah, and Tom and Angus glanced away from the television for a moment to look her up and down, then back to a scene of bloody massacre.
“That looks like fun,” said Sarah; and Olivia could tell she meant it, at some level, but also that she couldn’t begin to connect these hulking creatures with any child she might have herself. The thought made Olivia feel depressed and smug at the same time.
“Tom’s about to leave school,” she said, shutting the door again. “Amazing thought, isn’t it? The same age you and I were when we last saw each other, Scabs.”
“The same age I was when I was last called Scabs,” said Sarah. But she looked pleased. Grinning, Ol
ivia thought, in the same over-effusive way she used to when there was a place for her at their table in the school dining room. Poor old Scabs. Nicknames had been important, a sign of belonging, but somehow Sarah’s had always had a different implication, even if its origin was innocuous enough. Sarah Catherine Brewster: Scabs. Eve’s invention, of course. Olivia had another unaccountable thought: that they were partly responsible, she and Eve and the rest, for the years it had taken Sarah to find a husband.
“So Robert’s heard of Guy, has he?” asked Sarah, when they sat down at last.
Olivia smiled at Guy. “I bought your book for him to read on the plane.”
“It’s very dull, I’m afraid,” said Guy. “Have you done any climbing?”
Olivia shook her head. “Too scared.”
“Fear’s important,” Guy said. “Climbing is most dangerous when you have no fear.”
“Did you stop because you weren’t afraid any more?”
Guy laughed, and Sarah answered for him. “He was ready for a change. He’d never had time to think about anything else, had you, darling?”
The endearment, an unexpected quaintness in Sarah’s tone, caught Olivia off guard. Another image entered her head: seabass and samphire, twenty-five years ago. Wondering how well two people knew each other. Then, like one wave following another, a wash of emotion: envy and regret and longing. And guilt, of course. There was always guilt, when she looked back.
“He was forever busy planning the next expedition,” Sarah was saying, somewhere in the background. “But the accident made him realise what he was missing.” She reached out a hand to squeeze Guy’s. “He decided to settle down, and he settled on me.”
The Partridge and the Pelican Page 6
