A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  “Marvellous,” I replied. “Be yourself, but then again, don’t.”

  By now Jeremy was busy negotiating with London traffic. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, glancing into the rearview mirror. “That wanker’s been tailgating me the whole way. Look round for a parking space, will you? That’s the house, on the corner, and I don’t want this idiot to beat me to a spot if it becomes available. Which it never will, at this hour.”

  “Just hover until somebody goes out of one,” I advised. Jeremy pulled aside, forcing the tailgater to go on without him. Miraculously, within minutes, a man came down the steps of a nearby building, flashed his keys, climbed into a car and drove off. “That was lucky,” I said. “But then again, maybe not. Now we really do have to go in, and face-the-music-and-dance.”

  Jeremy swooped the car into the space expertly, turned off the ignition, leaned over and kissed me, then said, “Okay, Alice in Wonderland. Let’s go.”

  Grandmother Margery’s house was one of a series of white-pillared beauties that were set back from the sidewalk, and framed by a low, stone wall topped with a wrought-iron fence that went all the way around the corner. Her house had particularly lovely windows, especially the ones on the main level, which was reached by a short flight of steps.

  From across the street, I could see that the party was already in progress, unfolding like a movie, as glamorous figures moved to and fro in the window, illuminated by a cozy yellow light. It was the kind of view that normally would have made me wistful, wishing that I could be invited to such parties. However, in all my fantasies, I never imagined myself as the conspicuous interloper in a group of people who’d known one another for a million years and who were not, by nature, particularly welcoming of newcomers. But Jeremy, keeping his hand lightly and reassuringly at my elbow, now ushered me across the street and up the steps.

  We entered, stepping into a small hallway where a butler took our coats and put them into a closet. We peered into the room on the left, which was the scene I’d glimpsed from the street, where some of the guests were milling around with their drinks in hand, their laughter buoyant from the cocktails. These folks were young and snappy and urbane in their dark suits and fine shirts. I saw that, in contrast to the French party, this one was much less formal. Guests were constantly arriving or departing, speaking in brief loud bursts of conversation in passing bites, like the delicate finger-food they nibbled on that was carried about on gold trays by the uniformed servers.

  Jeremy waved to the guests and we exchanged a few greetings, but he led me farther down the entry hall, pausing to say brief hellos to the people we passed along the way. I actually wished we’d lingered longer in that front room with the younger members of this set, for I could see, as we progressed farther back, that we were heading toward an older crowd.

  And I knew what that meant. We were getting nearer the inner sanctum, a drawing room at the rear of the house, where Jeremy’s grandmother was holding court. With more hellos and speculative glances from the guests, Jeremy’s mere presence parted the crowd, who were watching for Margery’s reaction as I approached her.

  “Grandmother,” Jeremy said, “this is Penelope Nichols. Penny, this is Margery.”

  She was not an apple-cheeked and cozy granny-ish widow, not nearly. Something about her did not even seem very elderly, as if she would not deign to grow old. Margery was very thin, straight-backed, with pale powdered skin. She was expensively but conservatively dressed in cream-colored cashmere, with low-key gleams of gold and diamonds on her fingers, a long pearl necklace and pearl earrings. She held a cigarette-in-a-holder in one hand, and a glass of scotch in the other, which, despite her stiff correctness, gave her an unexpectedly defiant air.

  “Y-e-e-es, how nice of you to stop by,” Margery said with a faint, distant smile, as if I’d just taken it into my head to pop over here, instead of having been summoned by her. Aware of her watchful friends, she extended a thin welcoming hand and clasped mine briefly, then asked a few polite, inconsequential questions about how I liked London.

  “And your parents?” she inquired. “They are living in America?” She said this as if the United States was still one of those far-flung colonies of the empire, where the lesser folk who couldn’t cut it in England were sent to make something of themselves. She inquired about my “line of work” and smiled tolerantly, less in the manner of the Alice-in-Wonderland queen, actually, and more like the real Queen of England, in that Margery behaved as if she were accustomed to patiently receiving visitors who could only be her inferiors. She observed me through slightly slitted eyes, making a quick assessment of me, which I sensed would stick forever.

  Not to be daunted, I studied her back, noting that, yes, because she was blonde and green-eyed, she did bear some resemblance to Aunt Sheila . . . minus the warmth.

  Once she’d dispensed with a reasonable greeting to me, she turned her full attention to Jeremy.

  “What a charming girl,” she told him, looking inscrutable.

  I watched for Jeremy’s reaction, but he appeared just as inscrutable, although he received the compliment by smiling at me, and then saying to Margery, “Yes, I’d like to introduce Penny to your guests, shall I?” while putting his arm around my waist. The warmth of his touch was bolstering, as if he were ready to leap to my defense if necessary. But why should that be necessary?

  “By all means,” said Margery, and Jeremy quickly steered me back through the crowd. As an older gentleman came over to shake Jeremy’s hand, Margery floated off to resume her hostess role.

  Wow, I thought. That was fairly painless. Since we’d gotten through the introduction to Margery well enough, and we were now navigating more friendly encounters with a few other guests, I figured we were doing okay . . . until I overheard one of the older female guests say, with ill-concealed glee, “Of course, Margery’s being very big about it. You know she adored Jeremy’s first wife.”

  Jeremy heard it, too; I guess he was meant to, since these old darlings were chatting in troublemaking stage whispers. But his neutral expression revealed nothing, and I didn’t think anyone guessed that he’d heard. There was a time when I might have been fooled by that impassive look, too. But now I simply copied it as best I could, pretending to be raptly attentive to a jovial male member of Parliament with a booming, nonstop voice and the chubby cheeks and moustache of a walrus. He was what the French call un vieux beau, the kind of older guy who likes to stand really, really close to younger women.

  Jeremy steered me away from the walrus, and, knowing that I’d overheard the old biddies, he murmured, “For the record, Margery detested Lydia, and only started saying nice things about her when it was absolutely certain that we were getting divorced, just so I could feel like a loser.”

  “Why would she want to make her own grandson feel crummy, when getting divorced is bad enough?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Sport,” Jeremy muttered. “Habit. And opportunity, not to be missed. The trick is to keep moving here, don’t stay in one spot too long. Stick with me and we’ll get through it.”

  As he guided me through the labyrinth, I saw that this was actually a fairly swish and sophisticated affair, with loads of impressive guests, young and old, who all felt obliged to show up at Margery’s cocktail party or else face dire consequences: an earl here, an ambassador there, a music conductor there . . . but Aunt Sheila was not here. Her younger brother Giles was, however.

  “Uncle Giles, this is Penny Nichols,” Jeremy said in the tone of a man determined to run the gauntlet and be done with it.

  When Uncle Giles turned round to see me, I tried not to grin, for he actually looked a bit like Jeremy. True, there were significant differences: Uncle Giles was older, heftier, with green eyes like Aunt Sheila. He had a silvery-blond receding hairline, and the tightly wound body of a man who worked out religiously at his private gym. This was very different from Jeremy’s natural slenderness, and deep blue eyes and dark hair, which he’d inherited from his Italian-Amer
ican father. Nevertheless, Uncle Giles made certain expressions involving the eyebrows, nose, mouth and jaw exactly as Jeremy did; and the bone structure and shape of the face was undeniably similar, so there was definitely a family resemblance here, which I had not seen with Grandmother Margery. Perhaps it came from the English grandfather, who was no longer alive.

  “Ah, so this is ‘the one’,” Uncle Giles said. “Penny Nichols! Whoa, you won’t be saddled with that name much longer, eh?”

  “Actually, we rather like it,” Jeremy replied, nipping that old joke in the bud.

  I’d been intending to call myself Penny Nichols Laidley once we were married, but I said nothing, mindful of Jeremy’s warning not to volunteer information about my own thoughts. I figured that this caveat extended to uncles as well. Still, how could a man of this century automatically assume that I’d dump my maiden name? Didn’t he know any career women at the office, for Pete’s sake?

  “My wife, Amelia,” Giles was saying. “She ran a sewing magazine, years ago. Before she married me and had the kids, of course.” Ah. That would be that, then.

  Amelia had the carefully straightened, blonded hair identical to so many of the other women her age in the room. She studied me with a friendly but wary look that she probably used with all new females. “Welcome to the family,” she murmured.

  “And what have you two been up to lately?” Jeremy asked quickly. To my surprise, this caused Giles and Amelia to launch into a recitation of what schools their kids had gotten into, where they’d spent their last vacations, the styles of their new cars (his and hers), the endless remodeling of their house in the suburbs, and what lovely misfortunes had befallen their mutual acquaintances.

  I grinned at Jeremy, who carefully avoided smiling back. It was as if he’d just pressed a button, and the conversation went into automatic pilot. It was restful, in a way, since the spotlight had moved off us. But then Jeremy’s mobile phone rang, so he vanished into a nearby study to take the call.

  By now I was approaching this party with the interest of a bridal anthropologist doing research on a foreign tribe she’d just stumbled across on some remote island. Marriage was very big in this neck of the woods, I could see that. But what did it mean to them? The joint recitation of Giles and his wife seemed designed to prove what sterling trophies they were for each other in a “perfect” marriage: he as a big moneymaker, and she as a well-placed society girl with a father retired from the diplomatic service. They were hugely pleased that they’d outlasted all their friends without the taint of divorce; yet whenever one of them spoke of a hobby (her tennis club or his favorite cricket team) the other wore a look of resigned patience, as if they each knew the other’s best anecdotes and could perhaps recite them verbatim. Particularly Amelia, calmly but absently listening as Giles nattered on about his investments.

  When Jeremy rejoined us and spoke to Giles about businessmen they both knew, Amelia turned away from the guys and said to me, “How nice that you and Jeremy are getting married. I envy you!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’re just starting out,” she said. “You’re free and unfettered. Enjoy it. It won’t last.” She took a deep sip of her white wine. “Well, you’ll find out what I’m talking about, soon enough,” she said, in the manner of a fortune-teller predicting cards of doom that could not be avoided.

  “How did you two meet?” I asked, trying Jeremy’s trick of keeping the focus off myself.

  “Oh, school and chums,” Amelia replied, as if an unimaginative god of destiny had arranged the whole thing. “Practically everybody here grew up with everybody else.”

  I wondered if Giles and Amelia had ever been giddy-in-love. Surely they had, for there was definitely a partnership here. And, despite her stoic attitude that the glow of excitement invariably wears off after the knot of marriage is tied, I saw a flicker of spirit in her eyes, as if she possessed a lingering romantic hopefulness. This made me like her, and I suddenly had one of those inconvenient moments when I feel sorry for the whole wistful world.

  “You and Jeremy seem to enjoy each other,” she noted. “But, you have to work at it,” she added in a lowered voice, eyeing the guys. “You have to be really organized with husbands, and tell them exactly what you want. They don’t actually like to discuss things endlessly.”

  We both fell silent, staring at our menfolk. And, as I said, they did look a bit like each other. Could Giles be what Jeremy would become, a decade or two hence? And would I end up pouncing on “new” brides and wishing on them the same slightly disillusioned life I had? As we all stood there nibbling canapés, I experienced a small, clammy sensation of dread. I began to feel trapped, restless. We’d “done” the entire group now, and some of the guests were already departing for the theatre or other engagements. Surely we might escape as well.

  Jeremy apparently thought so, too, because he managed to steer us away from Giles and Amelia; and I was sure we’d be able to slip out gracefully in all this flux, but no such luck, for Margery was moving purposefully toward us, this very minute.

  “Jeremy, stay,” she said firmly as she spied us edging toward the door. “I want a word. Let’s go into the study.” I wondered if this was as ominous as it sounded. Jeremy remained impassive as we marched into a small room beside the stairs, but he instinctively closed the door behind us.

  Margery sank onto a wheat-colored sofa, and said directly to him, “I want you to talk some sense to your mother.” She grimaced with displeasure in a way that pulled down the corners of her mouth, making her look momentarily like a grim fish. “Sheila simply cannot bring that ridiculous man to the wedding and make a fool of herself to all of London, when, as it is . . .”

  She didn’t bother finishing the sentence, but even I could figure out the ending. As it was, Aunt Sheila had insulted everyone in this crowd by not adhering to their rules, living on her own and enjoying London in its rock-and-roll heyday. But good heavens, were there still people who hadn’t gotten over the 1960s? And what did Margery have against poor old Guy, Aunt Sheila’s nice little horologist? I tried to picture Guy Ansley at this party. Perhaps he might stick out a bit, but, so what? He’d surely fail to notice, and Aunt Sheila would probably just defiantly turn up that pretty nose of hers to anyone who scorned Guy. So where was the harm? Besides, it wasn’t Grandmother Margery’s wedding. It was mine.

  “Oh, Guy’s okay,” I said unwisely. This, apparently, wasn’t even worthy of a cold stare. Margery just looked momentarily startled, then ignored me and focused on Jeremy.

  “It must be done immediately,” she said emphatically. “We cannot have that buffoon in all the wedding pictures, because you’ll have them forever, long after he’s been purged from Sheila’s life.”

  Oddly enough, Jeremy didn’t protest. He only said, “Well, Mum is surely aware of your feelings on the subject, but I will convey your thoughts to her.” He rose, as if to put an end to it.

  “Another thing,” Margery said in a resentful tone at his attempt to flee, “I have your railroad all packed up for you to take with you. So please see to it now. It’s upstairs.”

  This totally mystified me. At first, I wondered if they were talking about railroad stocks and bonds. But Jeremy rose, muttered to me, “I’ll be right back,” and disappeared. Into the attic, I guess, judging by how long it took him to return with a big cardboard box, which he carried straight outside to the car, without a word. Then he came back, methodical as a moving- man, and went right back upstairs, and did the same thing. Over and over. The look on his face was so sober that I felt a strange urge to giggle. But Margery had further business to conduct—with me.

  “Sit down, dear,” she commanded, gesturing toward the other end of her sofa. There was a low table before us. She picked up a pair of gold-framed reading glasses and perched them on her thin nose.

  “Now, Penny,” Margery said briskly, uncapping a slender gold pen, and reaching for a white leather planning book from the table before her, “as to the we
dding.”

  I glanced up sharply, watching her open the leather book. “I want you to know,” she said as if she were doing me a tremendous favor, “that I’ve had a long talk with the vicar, and he has managed to juggle his schedule to allow us to have the wedding at our church in the Cotswolds. Jeremy tells me you’re thinking of September.”

  “Yes,” was all I could manage.

  “Well, of course, that’s out of the question. But if we move quickly, we can still book an early November, with a brunch reception at a local inn. I know the owner and he owes me a favor. So, a late-morning wedding would fit the schedule nicely . . .”

  I gulped. Aunt Sheila was such a great future mother-in-law, not the least because she couldn’t be bothered with conventions and had a full life of her own. So, foolishly, I’d imagined I was home free. I hadn’t factored one imperious grandmother into the bargain.

  “Um, that’s very kind of you, but—” I began, but she didn’t even give me a chance to tell her that we might have the wedding in France. In September, damn it.

  “Not-tat-tall,” Margery said dismissively. “But to get a firm booking, you really must finalize the guest list this week,” she said crisply. Clearly, there was to be no shilly-shallying, and she flipped to the back of her book where, tucked in a folder, were several printed pages stapled together. These she handed to me, with no more ceremony than if I were her private secretary.

  “Here are the guests from our side of the family,” she said. “Jeremy may have a few others to add, but these are the important people. The invitations must go out to them in a week, or I can’t vouchsafe that they’ll come. I’ll take a look at a sample of your stationery and then we’ll move ahead.” She returned to the tablet in her leather book, with her gold pen poised above it. “Now then, where is your bridal registry?”