The Wedding Day

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Flora!’ I panted, looking frantically around. ‘Where’s Flora? I –’

  ‘Here,’ she said, as she rounded the same bend, carrying a bucket of water and sloshing fish, jeans rolled up, feet bare, with Tod beside her.

  ‘Oh, darling!’

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’ She too looked bewildered. ‘Matt, I’m sorry, I –’

  I turned back, but the damage had been done. I saw it in his face. I saw him stiffen too, as he suddenly looked beyond me over my shoulder. He’d glimpsed Madeleine, standing at the top of the garden, high up on the terrace steps, her brown curls blowing in the breeze. His eyes hardened.

  ‘Tod,’ he said softly, keeping his eyes on her. ‘Tod, listen.’ He reached a hand back to grasp his son’s arm, but Tod had already seen her.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he breathed, backing away.

  Matt turned to him urgently. ‘Tod, you can do this.’

  ‘I can’t!’ he gasped, pulling away. ‘Sure you can.’ Matt reached out his other hand and, in one swift movement, grabbed Tod’s shoulder and pulled the boy to him with not a little force. ‘And you know what?’ he said, his arm tight around his son, his face close but his eyes back on Madeleine. ‘We should have done this a long time ago. This isn’t the way, Tod. Sneaking around like this, hiding. We need to face her, OK?’

  ‘She’ll make me go back,’ he whimpered.

  I’d never seen him so small, so scared. ‘Not if you stand up to her. Come on. It’s time.’

  ‘I can’t, Dad, you know I can’t.’

  Flora and I watched in astonishment as this normally cheerful, albeit shy boy shrivelled before our eyes. We followed at a distance as father and son walked up the path, Matt’s arm round Tod’s shoulder, then up the lawn towards her. As they got closer, Madeleine suddenly flew down the terrace steps, ran down the garden and scooped Tod up in her arms. She lifted his feet off the grass for a second, as if he were a small child. I saw the tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh baby. My baby!’

  Tod seemed to go limp in her arms. Then she let him go and stood back, holding him at arm’s length, her eyes scanning his face anxiously. ‘You OK, honey? He hasn’t hurt you or anything?’

  Tod shook his head.

  She shook his shoulders impatiently. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure,’ he muttered. ‘OK then,’ she breathed in relief, clasping him briefly to her again. ‘Let’s go. I’ve packed all of your stuff up from your room, got your backpack and everything and put it all in the car. Let’s get going and we’ll ring Walter on the way. He’s out of his mind with worry. We’ll call him on the way back and tell him you’re safe and we’re on our way home.’

  I watched in disbelief as Tod, without a backward glance at his father, or me or Flora, let himself be led up the garden, his shoulders encircled by his mother’s arm, up the terrace steps and towards the car in the drive. I swung around to Matt.

  ‘Matt, surely …’

  Matt followed but didn’t attempt to stop them. He seemed to have lost all colour in his face.

  ‘Tod …’ he called softly. His son didn’t turn. ‘Madeleine, wait, please.’

  ‘For what?’ She spun round abruptly, spitting the words out, her eyes no longer wet, but bright and furious. She reached into her bag, pulled out the airline tickets, and tossed them angrily in the air. They fluttered to the ground. ‘For you to abduct my son?’ Her voice rose shrilly. ‘For you to take him away from me? What are you, some kind of animal, Matt, that you’d take him out of the coun- try without even telling me? Away from his mother, his family. What were you thinking of!’

  ‘I bought those tickets over a month ago,’ Matt said carefully. ‘Because Tod asked me to. Emailed me. Asked me to come over and get him. Said he couldn’t take it any longer and was desperate to come home. It wasn’t supposed to be as furtive as that, but we knew of no other way. He’s not a child any more, Madeleine. He’ll be thirteen in the fall, old enough to decide, with or without the court’s blessing, who he chooses to live with. And he chooses to live with me.’

  ‘How dare you!’ she breathed. She was trembling with emotion and her grip tightened on her son’s shoulder as Tod continued to stare at the ground. ‘How dare you tell such flagrant lies in front of him, put words into his mouth, when you know he adores me, would do anything for me. My God, Matt, I’m well aware of your capacity for emotional blackmail, and I’m quite sure you persuaded him to spend time with you because you pulled every heart-rending string in the book, but to lie and suggest it was his idea –’ She broke off and gazed down at her son’s bent head. Brushed the fair hair out of his eyes. ‘Tod? Honey, you want to come home now, don’t you?’ She gave his shoulder a little squeeze. ‘Home with Mom?’

  There was a silence. We waited. ‘Tod?’

  He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t do this to him, Madeleine,’ said Matt in a low, dangerous voice. ‘Don’t play this card. He came here of his own volition, because he wanted to. He stays with me.’

  ‘The hell he does!’

  ‘He’s staying here.’ Matt took a step towards her.

  Her hand flew into her shoulder bag and she pulled out her mobile. ‘You take one more step towards me, Matt, just one step, and I’ll call the police.’ She flicked it on. ‘I swear to God I will.’

  ‘Dad, please,’ whimpered Tod. ‘I’ll go. Please, just let me go.’

  Matt looked at his son’s white face. Madeleine raised her chin in triumph.

  ‘OK, son.’ Matt nodded. ‘Sure. I understand.’

  ‘But he wants to stay here!’ cried Flora suddenly, shrilly. She came out from behind me and took a step towards him. ‘I know he does, we’ve talked about it loads of times and he’s told me. Tell her, Tod. Tell her where you want to be!’

  She gazed at him incredulously, but Tod’s eyes were blank. Expressionless. He looked beyond her to the woods, to some abstraction in the fields on the other side of the creek. Then, abruptly and rather absently, he bent down and began mechanically to tie the laces of his trainers, which were wet and trailing from the boat. As he straightened up, he carefully pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Then, wordlessly, he set about picking up a book from the table where he’d been sitting on the terrace, a CD, his Walkman.

  ‘Ready, honey?’ murmured his mother. ‘Ready,’ he said flatly.

  Without another look at his father, he allowed himself to be guided down the terrace steps, around the side of the house, towards the car. Madeleine still had her arm around his shoulders and when they got to the car, she opened the passenger door for him and helped him in, protecting his head with her hand, rather as one would for an elderly person. After she’d shut the door, she quickly ran around to the other side, got in, and snapped her belt on. Without a backward look, she started the engine and drove off down the drive in a cloud of dust. Flora and I stood and watched in astonishment. When the car had disappeared from sight, I turned.

  ‘Matt, I don’t understand. Why –’

  But he’d gone. I just caught a flash of his faded blue T-shirt as he disappeared around the side of the house. I hurried after him but he was moving fast. I was just in time to see him walk quickly down the garden towards the woods, heading for the creek.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ‘Mum, I don’t understand.’

  Flora turned huge eyes on me. ‘What’s going on? Why has he gone with her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I stared through the gap in the trees where Matt had disappeared. Then I swung round to her. ‘What’s he told you?’

  ‘Tod?’

  ‘Yes, Tod!’

  ‘Well, that he’s scared of her. That she’s manipulative, controlling.’

  ‘That he hates her?’

  She thought carefully. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, not that.’ I nodded. ‘Wait here,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll be back.’

  I set off quickly, following Matt’s tracks down the garden, through the woods
and to the creek. He’d walked fast though, and despite plunging pell-mell down the path through the trees, when I emerged out into the dusk on the other side, I found no trace of him. The tide was low, and the creek one long stretch of grey wet sand, with only the gulls and cormorants poised, one-legged, heads tucked under wings, on sandy mounds waiting for night. Further out, the main estuary swelled with a turning tide and as I swung about desperately, narrowing my eyes in the gloom, I thought for an awful moment he’d kept on walking, right out there into the dark water. Then all of a sudden I saw him sitting on some rocks at the farthest point of the creek, arms locked around his knees. I started quickly towards him, running clumsily through the claggy sand, then scrambling over rocks, slipping and tearing my espadrilles on the barnacles to reach him. I was almost there – when something made me stop short. I steadied myself, wobbling precariously on the slippery rocks.

  ‘Matt?’

  He must have heard me, but stayed motionless, head turned resolutely out to sea. I felt my heart lurch in my throat. I’d doubted him, you see. Pulled away from him in the wood. I was about to turn back, misery rising within me, when he said my name.

  ‘Annie.’ Softly.

  Relieved, I turned back. I picked my way over the rock pools and sat quietly beside him, following his eyes out to the horizon, sensing he was fighting with emotion and didn’t want me to look at him. The sun had gone behind the water now, and an evening wind began to stir, swelling the silent estuary and the sea it flowed into. The green hills opposite were losing their colour, turning to iron grey in the twilight, seeming to swallow the little stone church in their soft folds. The warm fragrance of midsummer still hovered though; gentle, like the touch of a hand. Eventually, Matt broke the silence.

  ‘So. It’s over.’

  I fought to comprehend. ‘But … why, Matt? I don’t understand. Why did he go? When it’s so perfectly obvious to even the most ignorant bystander that he wants to be here, with you. Why does he go when she snaps her fingers?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re assuming he hates his mother. For taking him away from me, for forcing him to live in England, but he doesn’t. He loves her. She’s his mom. The only one he’s got, and, for all her faults, he won’t hurt her.’

  ‘But Flora says she’s manipulative, that she scares him. He’s told her that!’

  ‘And so she does, sometimes. But he deals with it. Has to. And she’s frightened too, you know, of what she’s done. And Tod knows that. Pities her. Feels sorry for her.’ He struggled to explain. ‘You can’t just reject your parents, Annie, because they’re not perfect, because they don’t match up. You darn well get on with what you’ve been allocated. It’s a question of allegiances.’

  ‘Yes, I agree, but he does have a choice. He has you!’ He shrugged. ‘Just as Flora has Adam. And even though he’s a womanizer and a fly-by-night, he’s the only dad she’s got, so she sticks with him.’

  ‘Yes, but the point is she wouldn’t choose to live with him!’

  He turned to look at me. ‘Did you ask her?’

  I faltered. ‘Well … no. But then I’m –’

  ‘Her mother. Exactly. And that’s how it works. That’s how the world turns, socially and biologically.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I never had the advantage of the umbilical cord. A child’s attachment to its mother is a universal force, and pretty well indestructible. Something has to go seriously wrong for it to break.’

  ‘Yes, but something has gone seriously wrong, and now he’d rather live with you!’

  ‘But he won’t tell her that,’ he said patiently. ‘Won’t hurt her to that extent. He’s too … kind. He’s all she’s got, you see, and he knows that.’ He sighed. ‘And to be fair, she did bring him up. I worked too hard – for them, of course, always the father’s sad plea – but long hours and weekends, and they were alone a lot. The bond between them is very strong, even though he sometimes hates her. He was the only child she could have, and she loves him with a passion. Too much, probably. We both love him too much. And children can’t cope with that sort of spotlight,’ he added soberly.

  There was a silence as we listened to the rhythm of the sea.

  ‘Flora’s said that too,’ I reflected sadly. ‘That sometimes I overdid it. That she longed for a brother or a sister to take the heat off her.’ I glanced down and picked at a shiny black mussel on a rock. It stuck resolutely. ‘Says she looks longingly at families with three or four children, where the love and expectation is more spread out, less concentrated.’

  ‘Of course she does. These solitary kids, they’re aware of the microscope upon them. Aware that every picture they bring home from school is a potential masterpiece, every sack race an Olympic achievement, and it’s hard for us as parents not to overreact like that.’

  ‘But not good for them.’

  ‘Hell no. Not that sort of pressure.’

  I sighed. Rested my chin on my knees. ‘It was one of the reasons I agreed to have more children with David,’ I said. ‘Even though I secretly knew my body wasn’t up to it and I was only shoring up more grief for myself. I desperately wanted some company for Flora.’ I smiled wanly into the sunset. ‘Although I realize a twelve-year age gap isn’t exactly what she had in mind.’

  He smiled. ‘No. I’m not sure the little guy in the diaper would be up to chucking a frisbee with her, or sharing her first illicit cigarette.’

  ‘Well, quite.’ I picked sadly at the mussel again. And then of course my mind flew insanely, ridiculously, to Tod. Tod, who would be up to it. I saw the pair of them tussling and laughing together in boats, on the lawn, at the table-tennis table, almost as if they were brother and sister, and then my mind cut loose from its moorings entirely and I imagined them bowling up to school together. A co-ed school – not the smart all-girls establishment she disliked so much in London – a much more relaxed environment, with Tod in the year below, and Flora saying casually to girls in her class: Oh, yeah, that’s my step-brother. To have a companion to seek out at lunchtime if her days were rough and friendless, to have someone to go home on the bus with, to discuss homework with, to – Oh no, Annie, no. I gasped almost audibly at my audacity. Too much. Far too much. There weren’t going to be any fairy-tale endings here, nothing so neat. Real life wasn’t like that.

  ‘But’ – I tried a different tack – ‘you say Tod wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t leave Madeleine, but he did go to elaborate lengths to see you. And wasn’t it his idea to buy the air tickets? What was that all about?’

  He sighed. ‘That was madness. I see that now. Tod and I emailed each other constantly, it was our private lifeline, and often he wrote saying how much he missed me, longed to be home, things that broke my heart. But one day, after a particularly bad row with his mother, he wrote: “Please Dad, please take me home. I can’t bear it here. I’m sinking.” ’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Well, impulsively, I went straight on the Internet and bought those tickets, to coincide with the end of my stay here. I kept them in my wallet for weeks, knowing we’d probably never do it, that Tod wouldn’t be able to hurt her like that, and just disappear from her life. I wasn’t convinced I was up to it either, but boy, it felt good. To have them there, in my jacket, next to my heart. Like – I don’t know – an insurance policy. I’d get them out and look at them from time to time; be having lunch in the hospital canteen, open my wallet to pay, and stare at them. It was like having him there with me. It kept me going.’

  ‘And did he know?’

  ‘That I’d bought them? No, because I thought it was too much pressure.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘He knows now, of course. Madeleine saw to that.’ He shifted position on the rock. ‘And you know, for all I know, his email could just have been a whim. On a bad day. We all do things like that, for Chrissake, and he’s only a kid.’

  ‘But you’ve talked?’ I persisted. ‘I mean, since you’ve been here together, fishing and surfing, when hopefully Flora’s given you a
moment’s peace?’

  ‘Oh sure, we’ve talked, and I know he’d prefer to be with me, Annie. I’ve always known that.’ He turned to look at me properly. ‘But when he’s ready to leave his mom, not with me prising him away like one of these god-damned barnacles. And one day, he will come to me. Maybe – I don’t know – maybe before he goes to college or something, maybe he’ll call one day and say: “Dad, can I crash in your apartment in Boston for a year or so?” And I’ll be delighted. Thrilled to bits. But … not yet. He’s not ready. I have to be patient.’

  I thought back to Tod’s white face as his parents faced one another defiantly on the lawn; Madeleine had been trembling with emotion, her fists clenched. And Tod had withdrawn. I remembered his face as he’d left; closed, expressionless. He’d retreated somewhere where no one could reach him. Suddenly I remembered something. I had to ask.

  ‘Matt, that scar. She showed me. It’s horrific.’

  ‘I know. Appalling. And I’ve wondered about that too. When I saw it in court, when she was asked by the judge to unbutton her blouse, when the huge colour photographs were passed around the jury, I almost passed out. I saw the disgust on those twelve faces. Felt disgust myself. Felt sick to my stomach that I could have inflicted that on her with one thump of a fist on a table. I crumpled. Clutched the chair in front of me, I remember, my knuckles white. And in that moment, I caved in and stopped fighting for Tod. I was never prepared to put him in the witness box – even though my attorney insisted it was the only way to win – but when I saw those pictures … oh man. That’s when I really threw in the towel. What sort of a person does that, I thought? What sort of a maniac are you, Matt Malone?’ He licked his lips. Paused reflectively. ‘But then later, you know, I got to thinking. And I sort of knew that I hadn’t. Hadn’t done it. That it wasn’t possible. A shard of glass flying at whatever velocity through the air wouldn’t have inflicted such damage, or caused such a long deep cut. So I asked a pathologist friend of mine at the hospital, and we went to see some forensic guys, guys who specialize in this sort of thing. Showed them the pictures. I even went so far as to put my fist through a couple of glass tables, and no. It couldn’t have happened.’