The Wedding Day

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh, and the hat. The hat makes it.’ Clare got it out and placed it carefully on her head. Adjusted it, then stood back to admire.

  I forced a smile at Mum; my mum, standing proudly before me, with her mother-of-the-bride outfit.

  ‘Lovely,’ I gulped. ‘Mum, you look gorgeous.’

  She bent her head and stroked the cloth reverently. ‘It’s silk,’ she said in wonder. ‘Never had anythin’ like it in my life, not even when I married your dad. But Clare insisted, so I took out some savings an’ your sister chipped in half.’

  ‘Cost a fortune,’ affirmed Clare blithely, whipping the hat off her head and putting it back in its box. ‘But as I told Mum, it’s an investment. It’ll never date.’

  I nodded. Couldn’t speak. ‘And you did cheat us out of a wedding the first time round,’ Clare warned. ‘Oh, and we saw a lovely dress for Flora, didn’t we, Mum?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Flora came in breathless, being pulled along by Ralph who’d clearly got his second wind. ‘Oh Clare, look at you! You look like Cruella de Vil!’ She giggled.

  ‘It’s for your mum’s wedding,’ Clare said proudly, giving another twirl. ‘And actually, if Mummy says it’s OK, I’ll take you into Exeter and see if you like this dress I saw. It’s a floaty Ghost number, not twee at all. I think you’ll love it.’

  ‘Oh, cool! Can I, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I breathed. My throat felt inexplicably dry, constricted.

  ‘I was wondering what I was going to wear,’ said Flora. ‘Do I have to have a hat?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, love,’ said Mum, ‘but, Annabel, you ought to ring that girl who’s makin’ your outfit. See if it’s finished. You’ve only got a few weeks to go now.’

  ‘Yes, you should have a fitting,’ agreed Clare. ‘You might have lost a bit of weight; most brides do. She’s somewhere in the Fulham Road, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, somewhere there.’

  ‘And what are you having exactly? Ivory silk?’

  ‘Yes. It’s … a shift dress.’ I stood up, ostensibly to pour some more tea, but actually to turn my back to them. My hands were trembling. The window was open but it felt airless in here. I moved to throw open the back door.

  ‘With pearl buttons?’ Clare was prattling on. ‘Yes. Down the back.’ I gazed out of the back door at the hills rising in the distance. I wanted to be out there now, on top of the furthest one. Biggen Tor, the one I’d always taken Ralph’s mother Pippa to, clambering right to the top, flopping down for a rest in the rough grass, Pippa racing round me in circles, barking with excitement, then running down together, the wind in our hair.

  ‘Flora, love,’ Mum was saying, ‘come and help me get your bags from the car an’ I’ll show you your room. It’s the usual one, up in the rafters, with the wood pigeons for company. Lunch isn’t for an hour, you two,’ she warned. ‘Clare, put those in the bottom oven for me, would you?’ She nodded at the quiches on the Rayburn as she went out with Flora in tow.

  Clare pushed up her pink sleeves and gingerly picked up the brimming pastry cases. She giggled. ‘I feel like Fanny Craddock, dressed like this.’

  I watched her, and felt my heartbeat come down slightly, now that Mum had left the room.

  ‘You’re chipper,’ I remarked, sitting down again. ‘Much more chipper than when I last saw you.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blushed. Shut the oven door. ‘Yes. Well, Michael got my letter. He called first thing this morning, as soon as it arrived.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And … nothing earth-shattering, but he did agree to talk.’

  ‘Did you tell him about Theo?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said: “Ah, just a fumble. That makes us even.” ’

  I smiled. ‘Told you.’

  ‘Yes. But he also … laid down a few conditions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as I give up work.’

  ‘Clare!’

  ‘But I’d already decided to do that anyway,’ she said quickly.

  I blinked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, this job, anyway. And no, before you suggest it, I can’t just cut down my hours, it’s not that sort of job. It’s all or nothing. But I’ll do something else. Something part-time.’

  ‘But you love that job!’

  She looked at me squarely, eyes wide and frank. ‘I love my husband more. And my children. And that hasn’t come to me in a blinding flash; I’ve always known it, Annie. And I can’t have both. Don’t want to have both. Not if it means going at it all half-cocked, half-crazy with tiredness and not enjoying any of it, which was what I was doing. I’m going to take a break, and then … well, then we’ll see.’ She grinned. ‘Maybe I’ll enjoy being a mum at home. I always envied you doing that, and it’s not as if we need the money. Michael’s doing brilliantly. And he wants me to help. You know, entertain his clients, give dinner parties, that sort of thing.’

  I blinked. Entertain her husband’s clients. The very vocabulary would ordinarily have had Clare retching into her briefcase, but she looked calm. Happy.

  ‘We’re a team, Annie, or should be. Not two breakaway factions trying to compete with separate bank accounts. If I bothered to go to the opera with his clients more, got tarted up, had my hair done, I could be a real asset to him.’

  ‘Golly, Clare. The corporate wife.’

  She laughed. ‘Trophy wife even, and why the hell not? I’ve worked bloody hard; I deserve a break. Deserve to go to Wimbledon and Glyndebourne. Let him bust his balls. Anyway,’ she mused, ‘this is all hypothetical. We’re still at pre-negotiating stage, but I thought, if I put my cards on the table, it may help? Help him take me back?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Ye-es, except he may not want to lose total sight of the girl he married. You’ve got a lot to offer, Clare, intellectually. I’m not convinced you’ll flourish at the hairdresser’s or making vol-au-vents like some fifties housewife. Some middle ground might well be what he wants. What you both want.’

  ‘Well, exactly, something part-time, but I’m certainly taking a year off first. I tell you, just a couple of days here with Mum and no husband and kids has made me realize this is the first proper holiday I’ve had in years. Even though my marriage may be breaking up, this is the first time I’ve felt – well, like me. Not someone’s wife, or mother, or boss.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound as if your marriage is breaking up.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see. We’re having dinner tonight, in Exeter,’ she said shyly.

  ‘Oh Clare, I’m so pleased,’ I said, relieved. ‘He wouldn’t have agreed to that unless he was reconsidering, surely?’

  She shrugged. ‘Either that or he’s going to issue me with divorce proceedings over the prawn cocktail, but he did say the kids were missing me. He also said that they were breaking all the rules: putting milk bottles on the table and throwing leftovers away without covering them in cling film and putting them in the fridge.’ She grinned.

  I smiled. At least she could laugh at herself. ‘And, Clare’ – I took a deep breath – ‘if it does work out, don’t go back to the kids all guns blazing and –’

  ‘I know,’ she interrupted quickly. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Not so full on. Turn it down. Less beach volleyball. Let them all chill. Let them lie on the floor picking their noses with their feet up the walls. I know, Annie. What d’you think I’ve been doing on these windy hilltops these past two days, apart from reassessing my life? I tell you, all this fresh air is very good for the soul; I highly recommend it. It’s forced me to confront some very uncomfortable home truths.’ She went to the sink to rinse the teapot out, then turned back to eye me carefully. ‘Although I wasn’t aware that you were in need of this place’s healing properties.’

  I glanced quickly down at my tea. Aware of her gaze still on me.

  ‘What brings you down to the rehab clinic then? What made you hurtle down to Exeter’s answer to The Priory at such
short notice, hm?’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Luckily Mum and Flora came back at that moment, and I didn’t have to answer; I could get out of the beam of her enquiring stare and back to ordinary things, like making a salad and laying the table for lunch.

  The day drifted on; Clare washed her hair and lay in the sun to dry it and top up her tan like a girl on her first date, then she painted her nails, all in preparation for her dinner that evening with Michael – the first they’d had alone, she confided to me guiltily, since their wedding anniversary three years ago. She’d been away on business for the last two. I lay beside her on an ancient, creaking sunlounger in the back garden, breathing in Mum’s carefully tended stocks and lupins, and asked her about Ted Philpot.

  She shrugged. ‘Mum’s said nothing. All I know is her attitude’s changed towards him. She says his farming methods are different from Dad’s, more modern, but that that’s no bad thing, and that now he’s on his own, she asks him in for lunch most Sundays. Says a man can’t be expected to fend for himself all the time, and that it’s only neighbourly.’

  ‘He’s on his own?’

  She waved her nails in the air to dry them. ‘His wife died last year. Didn’t you know that?’

  I didn’t.

  I gazed thoughtfully into the valley beyond; long shafts of light filtered through the copse at the bottom of the garden where a squirrel jumped from tree to tree, then leaped headlong to the ground. I was aware that behind me in the kitchen Mum was baking a cake with Flora and keeping a watchful eye on her daughters through the window. However much I was considering her, she was considering me more. It occurred to me too that this was the first time the women of the family, indeed the only surviving members, had been alone together since Dad had collapsed with a heart attack in the hay barn four years ago.

  Naturally Clare and I had dropped everything then – she having more to drop than me – and driven at breakneck speed together from London, staying on a week to help with the funeral. Clare, despite her sadness, or perhaps because of it and all the other compli c ated emotions that had made up her relationship with Dad, had gone into overdrive. She’d taken charge and whirled like a dervish, informing the vicar of his duties, instructing the undertakers, putting notices in the papers, delegating me to organize the flowers, whilst Mum, helpless with grief, had retired to her bedroom and left us to get on with it. It was on that day that I’d felt the dynamics of the family change; Dad had gone, so naturally we all felt eviscerated in the way that people do when others die suddenly, when they seem to scoop themselves out of you, but I also felt a more subtle shift: I felt the surviving parent become the child and the children the carers, and, to some extent, that relationship had continued ever since.

  Mum was on her own now, and isolated, so naturally we worried; we rang her religiously – daily, in Clare’s case – whereas before we’d call if we missed her, or needed something; never dutifully. But lately I’d wondered if Mum had grown tired of Clare’s vigil ance. Had been glad of it at first, but would now like to retire from her scrutiny. Timely, perhaps, that another shift was now taking place. That as recently as a few days ago, the pendulum had swung the other way, and both her daughters had tugged on the umbilical cord and rushed precipitously to her farmhouse. Although Mum would not wish any grief on her children, it seemed to me she’d reached instinctively – and almost gratefully – for the reins again.

  Later that afternoon, I fed the ducks with Flora by the pond in the yard. Ted Philpot was unloading ewes from a trailer in the birthing pens, and made a point, I felt, of pausing in his work to come over and chat to us. He was a tall, gentle man with rheumy hazel eyes, and a shy habit of twisting his cap in his hands and looking beyond one into the distance. Anyone more different from Dad – who’d been wiry, spry and alert, and whose sharp eyes had pinned you to the wall – you couldn’t imagine, but nice, I thought. I said as much to Clare when I went back inside. She was at the sink peeling carrots.

  ‘I agree,’ she said, surprising me. ‘I mean, he’s not going to set the world on fire, but he’s pleasant enough company and he’s kind. He mended all the plumbing, you know, when the pipes froze solid this winter, and he chops all the logs for her.’

  ‘So … is there something?’

  ‘You tell me. You know Mum, she wouldn’t say, but her attitude has certainly softened towards him. She was there, you know, when his wife died.’

  ‘What, not literally?’

  ‘No, but he came running over when she collapsed. Asthma, apparently. Mum called the ambulance. Helped Ted cope. And then she and his sister helped him with the funeral.’

  I sighed. ‘Convenient, I suppose. Both losing their partners and living at neighbouring farms …’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing wrong with convenience. Look how many happy marriages are born of it. Mum only married Dad because their parents were best friends, and again, had neighbouring farms, and how many people meet someone at work or on holiday? I met Michael on holiday and – Why are you going all pink?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, hiding my face as I bent spuriously to tie the laces of my deck shoes. ‘Anyway, Mum will make up her own mind. Nothing we think or say will make any difference, happily.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Later that day, as I drifted aimlessly about, wandering from the house to the garden and back again, Mum shooed me out for a walk.

  ‘Go on, love,’ she said shaking a tea towel at me kindly. ‘And take Ralph with you. The air will do you good.’

  And I did go. I walked all the way to Biggen Tor, waiting for Ralph occasionally, whose spirit was willing even if the flesh wasn’t entirely – which was my problem in reverse, I reckoned, as I bounded up the steep track which wound its way around rocks and boulders. Fizzing with nervous energy, my flesh was raring to go, but the spirit desperately wanted to be elsewhere.

  I went right up to the very top, where only a few intrepid sheep grazed, and then stood panting, holding my sides and gazing down at the glorious view before me. Devon was at its most biscuit-tin-like at this time of year: green and lush and gentle, with only a few grey farms sprinkled in the folds of the valleys. The wind was in my hair and the light moved in great curtains across the land which seemed sunk in afternoon sleep. This should have been my moment. I breathed in, willing it, knowing it could happen; knowing I could lose myself in this special place and find peace, had always done so, but it failed to work its magic. Still Matt’s face, his gentle blue eyes, his voice, the touch of his hands last night came to me. There was no escape.

  Give it time, I told myself grimly, walking back down, as troubled as when I’d gone up. I swiped savagely at grass heads with my hand along the way. Give it time. You’ve only been away a few hours. All will be well.

  When I got back, Mum was just putting down the phone in the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, you’ve just missed him.’

  ‘Who?’ I said stupidly, my heart pounding. ‘David. That was him callin’ you back, but he said not to ring just now, as he was dashin’ off for a game of squash with Jamie after work. He said he’d call you later.’

  ‘Oh.’

  That was good. A good sign. He only played squash when he was feeling up and buoyant, and it occurred to me he used to play a lot with Jamie, an old university mate, but hadn’t recently. Hopefully he’d got things more in perspective.

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘On good form. We had a lovely chat cos I haven’t spoken to him in a while, and he seemed pleased you were here, love. Told me you could do with some home cookin’. Needed feedin’ up a bit an’ havin’ a bit of spoilin’, and told me to persuade you to stay on a bit.’

  I smiled. ‘Yes, he would. And I think I probably will. D’you mind, Mum?’

  ‘Not a bit. I’d be delighted.’

  I had to get round Flora, of course, I thought, going slowly upstairs to my room, biting my nail. I paused at the landing window and gazed down at her on the lawn, chatting to Clare
, pinching her aunt’s nail varnish and painting her toes. But actually, she seemed perfectly happy now that she was here, with the chicks and the kittens and the prospect of a shopping trip in Exeter. She’d adapted quickly as she always did, and she’d always loved the farm. No, Flora wasn’t the problem. It was me.

  That night, knowing I wouldn’t sleep, I stayed up late when Mum and Flora had gone to bed and Clare had gone to meet Michael. I pretended to watch a late-night film, but lost the plot in minutes. When the final credits rolled I climbed the stairs, dreading the night ahead. In my old room, where I’d grown up, everything was as it had always been. The books were still where I’d left them in the shelves, and in the gloom, even with eyes shut, I could still put my hand on Noel Streatfeild, Josephine Pullein-Thompson, and E. Nesbit. The faded rose wallpaper, the dressing table with its floral skirt behind which I’d hidden all manner of secrets including letters from Adam, the ivy creeping round the window, the stain on the carpet where I’d dropped a mug of coffee, the cigarette burn on the bedside table: all were exactly as I’d left them. I remembered causing that burn when I was about fourteen, hurriedly stubbing out a cigarette and missing the ashtray as Dad, detecting smoke, came into my room. In one of his rare moments of intuition, he’d sat beside me on the bed, calmly got out his packet of Players, and lit one for each of us, insisting I smoke one with him, and deliberately making me feel so sick and uncomfortable I’d never smoked again.

  I turned on my side in the little single bed, feeling wretched with the exhaustion of willing myself to think about anything, anything other than what was really on my mind, and saw my laptop sitting on the dressing table where Mum and Flora had left it.

  Of course, I thought impulsively, flinging aside the duvet, which had wound itself around me like a coil, I could work. All night if needs be. Lose myself in pulp fiction.

  I set a chair at the dressing table, plugged myself in, and waited for it to boot up. I’d received an email from Sebastian Cooper yesterday, enquiring as to the progress of the novel, and ending: Incidentally, sapphic fiction all the rage now. How about slipping some in? Love and stuff, Sebastian.