The Wedding Day

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh yes, a few times, but that’s not the same.’

  ‘Really? But you are getting married?’

  I laughed. ‘Yes, but I assure you that wouldn’t impinge on Adam’s consciousness one iota. He couldn’t care less if I stripped naked and fornicated in front of him.’ I swirled the ice around in my drink. ‘Probably join in.’

  ‘That’s not what I observed.’

  I glanced up sharply. ‘What d’you mean?’

  He shifted his weight on to his other thigh and crossed his legs. ‘Annie, in my experience, middle-aged men only flaunt their extremely young girlfriends in front of their ex-wives for a reason. He didn’t have to bring her along today, did he? Could have picked Flora up alone?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose, but –’

  ‘And all his derogatory remarks about your fiancé: he wouldn’t bother to denigrate him unless he was jealous or unhappy, believe me. He should be relieved you’ve found someone, relieved to have you off his conscience and have his guilt assuaged, but he doesn’t look like a blissfully happy man to me.’

  I stared at him intently. Suddenly I laughed. ‘Nonsense. Adam doesn’t give a fish’s tit about me. Not in any real sense. Oh, he likes the idea of the nuclear family and would prefer to live with his wife and child and he’s sad about the break-up of all that, but that’s the only reason he’d want me back. He fell out of love with me years ago.’

  Matt shook his head. ‘People don’t bother to hurt each other unless they care.’

  I regarded him, slumped casually in his chair, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully over my shoulder into the sunset, cradling his glass in his hand.

  ‘In your experience.’

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘As a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Well, no, not just that. My experience of life too.’

  ‘Ah yes, life too.’ I took off my glasses, the better to see him. ‘Which, according to my sister, has not been so smooth. Not that dissimilar to mine. A few casualties along the way, I gather. A wife and child?’

  He smiled. ‘Ah yes, your sister. Very different to you, if

  I may say so. A very … direct lady. Forthright. In control.’

  Well he was spot on there, but – what, and I wasn’t? ‘And they’re over here, I gather?’ I went on doggedly. Yes, quite forthrightly and in control, actually. ‘Your family?’ I was determined to pursue my line of chat rather than his. Show him I wasn’t that easily deflected.

  ‘They are,’ he conceded. ‘In Cambridge.’

  ‘Ah, so –’

  ‘My wife and I are separated,’ he interrupted shortly. ‘As I’m sure Clare told you.’ He regarded me steadily over the rim of his glass. ‘And Tod, my son, lives with her. And with her boyfriend, an English psychiatrist by the name of Walter Freedman. He’s a doctor at the University Hospital there.’ With that he threw back his drink, draining the glass.

  I watched him. Right. So that hurt. ‘She … left you?’ Awful, but I wanted to know.

  He looked down at the ice left in the glass. Swirled it around. Then glanced up. He seemed about to say something, but didn’t.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have –’

  ‘Walter Freedman and I had an exchange professorship going on, d’you know what I mean by that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘The idea was that I’d go to Cambridge for six months and work alongside him, see how his department ticked and how he ran it, which I duly did, and then he’d come to Harvard to work alongside me, which he duly did too. Except that – and this is where he deviated wildly from the script – when he went home, he took my wife with him.’ He smiled wryly. ‘That wasn’t part of the deal. And no, before you ask, I wasn’t tempted to take his wife, neat though that would have been. Her penchant for small yappy dogs and her ample backside were not to my liking.’

  ‘Oh, how awful!’

  ‘Her ass?’

  ‘No! Your wife.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And she took your son with her?’

  He glanced down. I realised he couldn’t speak for a second. ‘Yup. Took Tod too.’ I saw his eyes penetrate his glass to the grass below. He recovered. ‘He’s not far off the age of your Flora, as a matter of fact – who’s a great kid, incidentally.’

  ‘Flora?’ I beamed. Knew he wanted to change the subject, but he’d chosen a good one. ‘Yes, she’s getting there. Gradually. She’s had some tough times though. You know: me and Adam … the split. You can’t always shield them …’

  ‘Oh sure,’ he nodded. ‘And neither should you. Not entirely.’

  ‘But she’s coming through. And David’s helped enormously. It’s just … she’s so anxious.’

  ‘Sure she is; I’ve watched her. She has some compulsive obsessive tendencies, but it’s understandable.’

  ‘What?’ I looked at him sharply. ‘Compulsive what?’

  ‘Obsessive. But hey, so mildly. Nothing major. And most kids have it in some small way; they grow out of it. You know, the way you see lots of kids who won’t step on the lines of the sidewalk, or have to eat their food in strict rotation: peas, carrots, chicken. Well, Flora won’t pick up something she’s dropped unless she counts to ten first. And she has to tap her spoon three times on her bowl before she starts her cereal. I’ve seen her.’

  I stared. ‘Yes, you’re quite right. Both those things. And more.’ God, he’d noticed all that, already.

  He grinned at my anxious face. ‘It’s fine, relax. Trust me, she’ll grow out of it.’

  ‘Will she?’ I panicked. ‘Not necessarily. I mean – God, look at me. I can’t sit down for a meal without reciting my Latin grace from boarding school under my breath, and I still can’t get into a strange bed at night unless it’s pushed right up into the corner of the room with walls on two sides. It used to drive Adam mad, and now Flora’s exactly the same, spinning like a top before she gets into bed and muttering Hail Marys. We’re freaks, both of us, Flora and me,’ I concluded miserably.

  ‘Quirky,’ he said. ‘Not freaks. Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of those, and that, lady, you ain’t.’

  ‘And horribly impulsive, too,’ I went on, knocking back the Pimm’s and sinking deeper and deeper into my gloom, ‘which David just can’t understand. He’s so organized. So steady. And I just get carried away on the back of – I don’t know – a strange impulse. I do things, like –’

  ‘Throw all your clothes away?’

  I was startled. ‘Yes. Exactly! Things like that, or that stupid car wash, or –’

  ‘Your clothes are in the closet, incidentally.’

  I blinked in astonishment. ‘Which closet?’

  ‘The one in the spare room. I found them in the garbage can on your floor and took them out. Figured you might regret it later.’

  ‘Oh!’ I stared. ‘Oh, well, thank you. I looked, actually, but assumed the dustmen had been and … Thank you.’ I regarded him for a moment. Glanced down at my navy blue linen and silk ensemble. ‘I hate all these new clothes, actually,’ I confessed, tugging viciously at my top. ‘So conservative. I feel like a prison warder.’

  ‘You look like one.’ I giggled. ‘Thanks.’

  The atmosphere had indeed lightened perceptibly. Whether it was the drink or just the fact that our jaw muscles were loosening with practice, I don’t know, but when he refilled my glass I didn’t try to stop him. I thought how much better I felt than I had done an hour or so ago, and how much more pleasant this was than sobbing on my bed. He was rather convivial company once a few barriers had been broken down, and his angular features had softened a bit too in the hazy evening light. Either that or it was my hazy eyesight. There was still something forbidding about him, though, I decided as I played with the mint in my glass. He had a distancing technique which made it hard to get beyond a certain point. I glanced up.

  ‘So when are you going to see your son?’ I asked, suddenly brave. ‘I mean, is he coming down?’

  He took a moment. ‘
He is,’ he said carefully. ‘In a couple of days.’

  ‘Oh! Great. That’ll be nice. Nice company for Flora. I mean – assuming you don’t mind this arrangement,’ I added hastily. ‘We could still get the bungalow, maybe, or –’

  ‘Forget the bungalow,’ he cut in. ‘I don’t mind at all.’ Something in his tone brought me up short. Scared me, even. ‘Good.’ I smiled.

  Every time I mentioned his son he changed the subject, but the drink and pure nosiness made me persevere. ‘So, is his mother bringing him? I mean, how’s he getting here?’

  ‘Yes. His mother is bringing him to Bodmin. To his aunt’s house.’

  ‘He has an aunt in Bodmin?’

  ‘She’s my cousin, actually. Louise is married to an Englishman, a GP. Tom was a friend of your Gertrude’s late husband. That’s how we met Gertrude, two years back. My family and I were visiting Tom and Louise when we lived in Cambridge.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. I remember Gertrude saying now.’ I waited. No more was forthcoming. ‘And … he’s staying there in Bodmin? Your son? Or here?’

  He hesitated. ‘That’s where Madeleine – his mother – thinks he’s staying. For a week. Louise has three boys, you see. But I’m gonna pick him up from there as soon as she’s dropped him off.’

  I was confused. ‘But why? Why doesn’t he just come straight here?’

  ‘Because he’s not allowed to. I’m not allowed to see him.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Because we had to go to court over Tod. Madeleine got sole custody.’

  ‘Sole custody? God, how awful! But presumably you can still see him occasionally? I mean –’

  ‘No. I have no access.’

  Suddenly the garden seemed very still. Very quiet. I went cold.

  ‘But why? I mean … why won’t they let you see him? At all?’

  ‘Because Madeleine has a scar at the base of her throat. Which I allegedly inflicted on her when I attacked her with a piece of glass.’

  I felt ill. ‘You … attacked her?’ I said, appalled. ‘I said, allegedly. Of course I didn’t. It happened the night Madeleine finally told me about her and Walter. We were back home, at our house in Marblehead. It was late, around eleven, and Tod was asleep upstairs. She was sitting opposite me on our deck overlooking the sea. We’d been having a brandy together after dinner, which was quite normal. There was nothing unusual about the evening at all.’ He narrowed his eyes into the distance. Went on softly.

  ‘I can see her now, perched on that calico couch, elbows on her knees, hands clasped purposefully, talking to me softly – calmly even – as she sat there in the moonlight, telling me her plans. Breaking my heart. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That she loved another man, that she was planning to live with him in England. That she was leaving me. When she told me she was planning on taking my son too, I slammed my hand on the table between us and put my fist right through the glass. A great shard flew up and hit Madeleine in the neck. Cut her badly. There was blood everywhere, and she was screaming as it ran down her throat and chest, soaking her white silk shirt. She was covered, and I was trying to help her, when Tod came running downstairs in his pyjamas. Madeleine was crying hysterically, pushing me off and pointing a quivering finger at me.’

  ‘God. And he believed her?’ I whispered.

  He shrugged. ‘His mom was covered in blood. At the time, I think he probably did, because that’s what it looked like, but not now. Now he knows. But what Tod believes isn’t the point. The courts are behind her, you see.’

  ‘She went straight to court?’

  ‘Oh sure. To get an order. And when she got up there, in the witness box, her neck still bruised and bandaged, her wrist too where more glass had slashed her, this tiny, petite figure with a quavering voice, telling the judge how I’d come at her, attacked her, how she’d put up her hands to protect herself and her wrist was slashed … Oh boy, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. She was good. She gave an Oscar-winning performance. And she had to. She had to fight dirty like that, because she knew she’d broken up the happy home, knew she was the adulteress. She was the one leaving, going to England, taking her son out of school, and she also had a full-time job lined up, whereas I, on sabbatical from Harvard and writing this book, could quite easily have looked after Tod. Kept his life on track. The cards were stacked against her and she had to use every trick in the book to get that judge alongside her. And boy, did she.’

  ‘But surely that wasn’t enough? I mean … OK, you’d had a fight, hurt her, allegedly, but you hadn’t hurt Tod. So surely –’

  ‘When Tod was four months old I put him on a changing mat on a table at our flat in Boston to change his diaper. Madeleine was at work. I left him, stupidly, to grab the wipes from across the room, for – oh – two seconds, and he moved. He fell off on to the kitchen floor. He seemed fine, but I was horrified and took him to hospital just in case. Sure enough, he’d sustained a hairline fracture. All the doctors were really understanding and sympathetic and said it could have happened to anyone, but none the less, you go on their records as a risk.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh yes, for sure. And a good thing too, as a matter of fact. You wouldn’t believe the number of “accidents” that occur, and then a baby dies after just one too many. No, it’s a good procedure. Anyway, Madeleine told the court I’d dropped him deliberately. Said I’d admitted it to her later.’

  I stared at him, horrified. ‘That’s unbelievable!’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Yes, on the one hand it sounds it, but at the time … I didn’t find it so unbelievable. What lengths would you go to to secure your child, Annie? What lengths if it were Flora? If Adam wanted her? Madeleine was desperate. She wouldn’t give up her man, and she wouldn’t leave her child, either.’ He paused. ‘But there are limits. And I was the one who stopped short.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘She wanted Tod to go in the witness box. She was going to get him to say he’d seen me attack her as he came downstairs.’

  ‘Oh, surely he wouldn’t have done that!’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe not. But he was living full-time with her then, remember. And I guess she’d talked to him about never seeing Mommy again if the courts ruled against her, about how she’d be in England and they’d be so far apart … I don’t know, Annie. At the time he was only eleven. Scared. Terrified, probably. But I wouldn’t let him go in that witness box. Wouldn’t let him perjure himself, go through a barrage of questions, trembling, crying. I gave him up at that point. And that was the point at which Madeleine won. I gave in, and the judge took that to be evidence of my guilt.’

  ‘So when did all this happen?’

  ‘Over a year ago.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘Haven’t seen him since. And let me tell you, Annie, you think you’ve got it tough sending Flora off with Adam and that bit of skirt every couple of weeks, but Jeez, I look at you guys, shuttling that child between you, exchanging glances to ensure she’ll sleep well at night and not be frightened in the dark, and I think: Hey. That’s civilized.’

  I swallowed. There was a silence. ‘So … that’s why you’re here? To see Tod?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. You think I’d come all the way from New England to Cornwall otherwise, pretty though it is? My cousin, Louise, arranged this place for me, after that meeting with Gertrude way back. She mailed me your aunt’s address and I wrote to her, reminded her where we’d met, reminded her that she’d mentioned this house. She mailed me back a bill, and a key.’

  ‘So, Madeleine has no idea? That Tod’s coming here, to this house?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘But Tod does?’

  ‘Oh sure. We email regularly.’

  I nodded, getting the picture. ‘He wants to see you.’

  He looked stunned. ‘Sure he wants to see me, we miss each other like –’ He stopped. Licked his lips. ‘Listen, Annie, he’s my son
. I’m his father. I haven’t seen him in over a year. And I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing, other than look after him all his life, and his mother. Love them, protect them. I’ve done nothing that warrants my life being in pieces like this.’

  He looked very pale. Suddenly I realized what the tough mask was all about. What a vulnerable core he was protecting by distancing himself. What the habitual darkness in his face, which only occasionally lifted, was hiding. It was pain. A pain that wouldn’t go away, and was so deep-rooted it wouldn’t abate for a moment, either. A huge hole had been blown in the landscape of his life and, as a result, he was reeling down a far-away precipice of horror I couldn’t even begin to contemplate. He’d lost his wife, and then his child, in one fell swoop. He was watching me.

  ‘Tod’s coming here on Sunday, Annie. But that’s not on general release. No one else knows. Aside from Tom and Louise, of course. It’s a secret.’ His blue eyes regarded me intently. ‘And I need to know that you can keep it that way.’

  Chapter Twelve

  That night I went to my room feeling full of sorrow for Matt. How ghastly to lose your wife and son in one nightmarish moment, and what an appalling woman she must be to pull a stunt like that. I knelt up on my bed and shut the wooden shutters tight against the wind which was whipping up from the sea, then lay down and pulled the covers up around my chin. On the other hand, I thought as I lay staring into the blackness, as he’d said, who knows what desperate lengths one would go to to secure a child? What if Adam had tried to get custody of Flora; would I have lied, claimed he’d abused me? And what about mental cruelty? I’d certainly suffered plenty of that in my time as a spectator to his blatant philandering; might I not have exaggerated a bit, said he brought his women into the house, fornicated with them in front of me and Flora? If I had been really desperate? I shivered under the duvet and gazed into the total darkness that the shutters afforded, the windows rattling in their frames behind them.

  I turned over and tried to sleep, but my mind’s eye repeatedly conjured up the scene on the deck of the beach house. I saw her, Madeleine, cool in her white silk shirt, smooth blonde hair (I imagined) swept back in a band, perched on the calico sofa he’d described, not dissimilar to the ones I’d seen in Elle Decoration that graced the decks of prosperous American waterfront houses. Then I saw Matt, opposite, perhaps slightly more groomed in those days when there was a wife around, his dark hair shorter and brushed, in a chambray shirt, shaved and tanned. And I heard her low Boston Bay voice as, with jewelled hands clasped, she quietly gave him the shock of his life. Calmly unfolded the horror story no man wants to hear when they get home from work. That his English friend and colleague, the one who no doubt had shared meals with them at that very house, perhaps a brandy afterwards, just as they were doing now, had stealthily muscled in on his family, betrayed him, stolen them from under his nose, and that they were all leaving for England. How angry would he be? How justified in putting his fist through the table?