by Minnie Darke
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘As I’m ever going to be.’
They set off along a country road that led past the orchard where the wedding was to be held, and where a small marquee had already been erected in a clearing between long-established plantings of apple and pear trees. Nearby on a low stage, a band was doing a sound check, startling some nearby cows with sudden bursts of guitar and squeals of feedback.
The guesthouse was further on, and before Arie and Evie were even three-quarters of the way there, she had an inkling that these particular shoes had been a mistake. But, in the time-honoured fashion of women everywhere, she convinced herself that they were going to be totally fine.
As they turned into the driveway of the guesthouse, Evie could hear the shouts of the children Arie had referred to as the neven en nichten, his nephews and nieces: the many children of his two elder sisters. She followed as Arie searched out his parents’ room, where Malcolm Johnson – spectacles low on his nose – was yanking inexpertly on the zipper pull of his wife’s bright, floral dress.
Ilse Johnson was a tall and generously proportioned woman with large blue eyes and the look of someone who’d spent the morning at a salon. Her fair hair was sprayed into submission, although a few carefully controlled curls had been allowed to escape from the elaborate bun at the nape of her neck.
Malcolm was altogether more angular, with dark hair and eyes the same brown as Arie’s, and also that same smooth olive-toned skin. Glancing from one parent to the other, Evie understood that Arie looked more like his father, but that his mother’s contribution to his appearance was a certain softening of his features. He had, in Evie’s opinion, done rather well in the genetic stakes.
‘Oh, look at you, handsome thing,’ his mother said, catching sight of Arie in the doorway. ‘And this must be Evie?’
‘Hello,’ Evie said.
Arie’s dad glanced over the top of his glasses. ‘You’re a patient soul, to put up with such a long drive.’
‘It’s fine. I actually love a road trip,’ she said.
‘Well, we’re glad you could come,’ Ilse said. ‘So glad. But for heaven’s sake, Arie, can you do my zip? This boerenkinkel is going to tear my frock open in a minute if he’s not careful. Ow!’
Malcolm walked away from the situation with some relief. ‘All yours, mate.’
‘It fitted two weeks ago,’ Ilse complained.
Arie wriggled a segment of trapped fabric out of the teeth and took the zipper pull back to the bottom to start again, and as Evie watched, she was visited by an image of him helping Diana into a red gown. Evie could imagine her holding her hair out of the way while Arie wrangled the zip. Diana would have needed two hands for all that hair, and Evie could picture the way it would have fallen in a ginger-blonde mass when she’d let it go.
‘The secret is to breathe out, Mum,’ Arie said. ‘Not in. Out. Okay, ready?’
When he was done, his mother turned from side to side, looking at herself in the mirror, pleased. She kissed Arie’s cheek.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Arie asked his mother.
‘Outside with the photographer. You go on. We’ll be down in a minute.’
In the grounds of the guesthouse, a photographer was training a long lens on various small children, some of them climbing the low, inviting branches of the gum trees that lined the driveway, others investigating a flowerbed where, so they were all shouting, there was a blue-tongue lizard. Eschewing it all was a tall girl in the vicinity of twelve or thirteen years of age, who sat listlessly on the seat of a tree-swing, clearly wishing that she was anywhere else in the world but here. Evie could remember that time of her own life. One day, this girl would look back on this phase too, possibly with the help of the photo Evie saw the photographer take from a distance.
The little boys wore tweedy waistcoats and bow-ties, and the girls wore chocolate-brown linen dresses with broderie anglaise frills at the hem. There was, however, one notable exception. A thin girl of seven or eight, her white-blonde hair cropped close in a pixie cut, was wearing nothing but her underpants and singlet. A clump of brown linen and broderie anglaise lay on the gravel beside her, and she was shrieking at a tall, buxom woman who looked the way Evie imagined Arie’s mother would have looked in her late thirties.
‘No!’ the child yelled.
‘Put it back on, right now,’ the woman demanded, but Evie could see that the battle lines had been well and truly drawn. The child’s tear-streaked cheeks gave Evie the impression that there had already been several failed rounds of entreaty, threats, bribery and steely determination.
In a low voice, Arie told Evie, ‘So that would be Sara and her youngest, the indomitable Imogene.’
‘I’m guessing Imogene’s none too pleased with her frock.’
‘Imogene doesn’t really do conformity,’ Arie said.
‘You can’t make me!’ Imogene yelled, and she dashed away in a flash of silky hair and flushed cheeks, like a furious fairy – past Arie and Evie and into the guesthouse.
‘Argh!’ Sara exclaimed, walking in their direction, the crumpled dress in her hands. ‘That child. Honestly. Hello, dear you.’ She kissed Arie’s cheek, then turned to Evie. ‘I’m sorry you had to see all of that. She isn’t always so vile. Just mostly.’
Arie introduced them, and Evie could see Sara was trying her hardest to be polite and interested, even though she was preoccupied with the problem of her daughter’s role in the wedding party.
‘She’s supposed to hand over the rings. I guess she’ll just have to miss out. One of the others will have to do it,’ Sara said. ‘And one day, we’ll all be looking at the photos from Auntie Heidi’s wedding, and Imogene will say, “Where am I?” and I’ll say, “Chucking a tantrum, as usual!”’
From somewhere indoors there came the sound of a slamming door.
‘I could have a try,’ Evie offered.
‘You’re a brave woman,’ Arie said. ‘I wouldn’t be going there.’
‘Sometimes strangers have diplomatic immunity,’ Evie said.
‘Oh God. That would be amazing,’ Sara bundled the dress into Evie’s arms. ‘If you can do anything to get her into it, anything at all, you’ll have my eternal gratitude.’
Evie found Imogene in an attic room on the top floor, hiding in plain sight in the space beneath a tall, Bedknobs and Broomsticks-style bed. The little girl, upon seeing Evie arrive with the dress, decided to take the upper hand immediately.
‘You can’t make me either, whoever you are,’ she said venomously.
Evie sat cross-legged on the floor at a respectful distance. ‘Actually, I was just hoping you could tell me what’s wrong with the dress. I figured there must be a problem.’
‘It’s prissy and I hate it.’
‘Ah, prissy. Is it this bit that makes it prissy?’ Evie asked, indicating the ruffle of broderie anglaise at the hem. ‘This lacy bit?’
Imogene sniffed disdainfully. ‘Yes.’
Evie examined the seam that held the broderie anglaise in place, and then, in one swift decisive movement, she ripped it away. Imogene’s blue eyes went very wide and she made a stifled laugh of disbelief.
‘Does it look better now?’ Evie asked, holding the dress up at the shoulders.
Imogene considered, and Evie could tell she was wondering just how far this game could go. ‘It’s brown.’
‘Hm. Can’t do anything about that part, I’m afraid. Is there anything else?’
‘It’s too long.’
‘Well, we can probably fix that.’
Evie went downstairs and from the guesthouse owners she begged a pair of scissors, a needle, and a roll of red cotton that wasn’t ideal but would have to suffice. When she returned to the room, Imogene was surveying the dress that Evie had left lying on the counterpane.
‘How much shorter do you want it?’
Imogene fixed Evie with a look that was also a dare. ‘Here,’ she said, indicating a spot just beneath her ribs.
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br /> Evie frowned seriously. ‘I think that might be a bit too short. But here’s the thing. I used to have a pixie cut, so I know what goes with them. Girls with pixie cuts look really good in clothes that finish mid-thigh.’
She drew an imaginary line on her own leg, and Imogene tilted her head, assessing.
Twenty minutes later, Imogene was dressed in a re-styled brown smock dress. It would have taken a close inspection to reveal the tiny dots of red cotton that showed through on the right side of the garment from the hemming stitches. Imogene had, quite tastefully in Evie’s view, decided that the new version of the dress would look best with skinny jeans and a pair of brown elastic-sided boots. The shoes she’d been expected to wear were a stiffly brand-new pair of black Mary Janes, and Evie wasn’t at all surprised that Imogene said they pinched.
In the ensuite bathroom, Evie washed the tearstains away from Imogene’s face. It was something she remembered her own mother doing: rinsing a facecloth under very hot water, then squeezing it out and laying it on Evie’s upturned face. Doing this for Imogene, Evie felt a rush of tenderness for the stubborn, independent child.
‘Did you come with Uncle Arie?’
‘I did,’ Evie said, locating a hairbrush in one of the toilet bags on the vanity.
‘Are you his girlfriend?’
‘No, just his friend.’
‘I thought that,’ Imogene said, in a tone that sounded wise beyond her years.
‘Oh?’ Evie prompted, curious. She turned the little girl to the mirror and carefully brushed her fairy-floss hair until it looked neat, but not too neat.
‘My mum says Uncle Arie will never fall in love again.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Auntie Lotte says he just hasn’t met the right woman yet. But Oma, she says the right woman would have to be someone who knew how to share with Diana.’
Evie felt stung. But she asked, ‘Oma?’
‘It’s Dutch for Grandma,’ Imogene said, with a sigh that indicated this was something she’d had to explain quite often in her short life.
‘You seem to know rather a lot about Uncle Arie’s love life,’ Evie observed.
‘You know what adults are like.’ She gave another of those exasperated sighs. ‘They think we’re not listening. But obviously we are.’
‘Do you want a bit of lip gloss?’ Evie offered, reaching into her handbag.
‘Yes, please.’
She showed Imogene how to apply it, and then treated her to a tiny helping of mascara on her pale lashes. The little girl looked at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, obviously pleased.
‘I wish you were Uncle Arie’s girlfriend,’ she said.
Evie smiled at her. ‘You look beautiful. Ready to have your picture taken now?’
‘If I must,’ she said, with an eye-roll for emphasis, but she skipped ahead of Evie down the stairs and out of the back door, where she rushed to join her siblings and cousins, eager to show them her modified flower-girl outfit. Evie had her fingers crossed behind her back as she re-joined Arie and Sara, hoping that Arie had been on the level when he’d told her this wasn’t a fussy sort of wedding.
‘Sorry about the dress,’ she said.
‘At this point in time,’ Sara said with a pragmatic grimace, ‘I’ll call that a win.’
Evie breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Brilliant,’ Arie whispered.
‘I’m just going to go and tell the photographer only to shoot her from the waist up,’ Sara said, striding away. But, quietly, Evie hoped that the photographer had the good sense to ignore her.
Heidi and Greg were married in front of a stand of gnarly old apple trees festooned with the red baubles of their ripe fruit. Heidi – in flat shoes and a cream dress with bell sleeves, a garland of flowers in her hair – was a beautiful bride.
One of Arie’s nephews read from Dr Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go, and at the right moment Imogene handed over the rings with an appropriately theatrical bow. Heidi herself did a reading from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, her voice quivering at times with emotion. The words she’d chosen were about the difference between being in love, which the author said could happen to just about anybody, and real love.
‘Those that truly love,’ she said, looking up from the page at Greg, ‘have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.’
Arie felt an ache in his throat. He heard a sob catch in his mother’s, and was fairly sure Evie was holding her breath in an effort not to cry.
‘De Schoonfamilie,’ Ilse said, embracing Greg’s father and stepmother after the ceremony. The in-laws.
The wedding feast, mostly vegetarian and served up on mismatched casserole dishes and plates, had been provided by various of Greg and Heidi’s friends, and the wedding cake took the shape of a mountain. It was covered in chocolate ganache at its base and had snowy white icing on its peak. A walking track with many steep sections, zigzags and backtracks had been marked out in shards of wafer biscuit. Two tiny figures – Heidi and Greg – stood at the bottom of this long and winding journey.
As the day’s light fell away entirely, the paper lanterns hung in the boughs of the apple trees began to glow. After the cake had been cut and the speeches made, the dancing began. Heidi and Greg chose Bright Eyes’ ‘First Day of My Life’ for their song, and Arie couldn’t think of anything that would have more perfectly captured the mood of the wedding. Then, as the band took over from the recorded music, more people drifted onto the section of grass that had been marked out for a dance floor.
Arie wasn’t a natural dancer, nor did he dance that often, but every now and then the mood or the music struck him in exactly the right way, or a few glasses of wine made him just disinhibited enough to enjoy it.
The band was a bunch of local guys at the outer margin of middle age: a well-oiled unit, happy to have a tilt at whichever requests came their way. Their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ was the first tune to hit a collective nerve. Arie, seeing his mum and dad hit the dance floor with some moves that would have been bang on trend in the late seventies, searched for Evie.
When he held out a hand of invitation to her, he saw a flash of wariness in her eyes, but it seemed to dissolve when they began to dance – close, but not too close. She’d taken off her shoes, so he knew he’d have to be careful of her feet.
Evie’s hair swung forward in two dark curves as she let the music move her, her dress slipping easily over her hips and thighs. Arie’s hands only brushed the shimmery green fabric, and although she didn’t reach for him at all, she kept contact with her eyes. In his peripheral vision, Arie caught sight of his three sisters watching and conferring, and he didn’t have to wonder what they were talking about.
The night wore on, and while Evie wasn’t always at his side, Arie seemed always to know which way to turn to find her again. He watched her on the dance floor teaching Imogene the moves for the Nutbush. When next he looked, she was dancing with the best man, Greg’s younger brother – a deeply tanned surfer type – and although Arie saw that they made a handsome couple, he also noted the way she kept just a little more distance from him than she had from Arie. Every now and then, too, he saw her look about to locate him, as if her attention was lightly tethered to his.
His sister Lotte came towards him, wine glass in hand, her long brown legs visible beneath the short hem of a burgundy shift dress. She’d inherited their father’s angular features, and was the most polished of his sisters, the only one given to hair colour or nail polish, and tonight she looked the kind of elegant that would have fitted right in at the horse races.
She stood beside him and poked the point of her chin into his shoulder the way she might have done when they were teenagers, just to let him know she was there, and remind him that she still retained a slight advantage, both in age and height. He and she were the closest, in years, of the four siblings
. Sara was three years older than Lotte, and Heidi six years younger than Arie, but only fifteen months separated the middle pair. While Sara had marked out her territory as the classic oldest child – bossy and ambitious – and Heidi had been a quintessential youngest – unconventional and idealistic – Lotte and Arie had competed for every inch of the middle ground. They’d not always had an easy time of it when they were children – they had assayed the equivalence of every slice of cake, every glass of soft drink and every Christmas gift of their young lives – but it remained the case that Lotte was the sister who knew him best.
‘I like her,’ Lotte said, glancing out towards Evie on the dance floor.
‘Yeah. Me too.’
‘It’s a good woman who can capture Miss Imogene’s heart.’
‘I know.’
‘So, will we be seeing her again?’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’
‘Why not? She seems perfect.’
Lotte was tougher than him, more practical, and always had been. If he tried to tell her that his heart felt weak and out of practice, she’d only tell him to ‘person up’ and get on with it. Instead he told her, ‘She’s quite the traveller. Only passing through, I think.’
‘I see. And you’re just going to let her go, are you?’
It was well past midnight when Heidi and Greg said goodnight to their guests, and Arie and Evie set out on the walk back to the cottage. The moon was maybe one night or two short of full, and while Evie wasn’t in the world of drunk, exactly, she had for some hours been hovering in its tipsy borderlands. She carried her shoes by their straps and hobbled a little in her bare feet when the grassy bank got too steep and forced her back onto the edge of the gravel road. Altogether, she felt warm, mellow and careless.
‘So, what did you make of your first wedding?’ Arie asked.
‘I thought it was beautiful,’ Evie said. ‘Really beautiful. There was something . . . I don’t know . . . I want to say “ancient”, about it.’
‘Ancient?’
‘Maybe it’s the wrong word. Maybe I mean “pagan”. You know, the tribe all coming together to celebrate. Did you see the older couples, the way they were with each other? It was like they had this beautiful thing to give to your sister and Greg, this knowledge, but at the same time, tonight was about them, too. They were giving their blessing, but they were getting something as well. Maybe they were remembering their own weddings, but it was more than that. They were looking back on it, but from this new, deeper place. It’s like they really know, now, what they were doing back then. They understand it now.’