Sundae Girl

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘How was the exam, Jude?’ Dad asks, unlocking the car. ‘Did you play well?’

  ‘Good of you to ask,’ Mum says, even though she forgot to ask herself, earlier. ‘But then, I forgot, you’re only a part-time father, aren’t you, Bobby?’

  The piano exam seems about a million years ago, something from another lifetime. ‘It was OK,’ I tell Dad, in a small voice.

  Mum slides into the back seat. Toto and I scramble in beside her. ‘Nice,’ she says. ‘You certainly know how to live, Bobby. Of course, the money it’s costing to hire this old crate could keep your daughter in piano lessons for a year …’

  Dad sighs, heavily. ‘I’ll talk to the hotel,’ he says. ‘We’ve booked a twin room for Jude, just along the corridor from us. They’ll probably let you stay too, if I explain things. You’ll have to sneak Toto in, though.’

  Toto, hearing his name, starts to whine.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Victoria asks, as Dad starts the engine and slides the pink Cadillac out into the traffic. ‘The dog?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I mumble. ‘It was a long train journey.’

  And Toto, who has spent the last few hours eating crisps, crusts, ham and chocolate, moans gently and pukes all over the candy-coloured carpet.

  ‘Oh, Toto, not in the lovely pink car,’ Mum croons. ‘Naughty!’ But when I look at her in the dark I can see she’s grinning, like it’s the funniest thing she ever saw.

  I feel like I’ve slept for a hundred years. I wake slowly, my head fuzzy, wrapped in a blanket of dread.

  Toto is stretched out beside me, head on the pillow. He twitches and whimpers in his sleep, chasing rabbits maybe, or cats. Mum opens the curtains and turns to face me, munching toast.

  ‘Come on, Jude,’ she says, brightly. ‘We don’t want to be late.’

  I close my eyes again, remembering. When we arrived at the hotel, Dad checked us in. The lobby was crowded with partygoers, and Mum walked across it in her red shoes, head held high, with Toto loping ahead of her like a film star’s dog. Nobody stopped them.

  I remember pouring water into a saucer for Toto, feeding him custard cream biscuits from beside the kettle. My travel bag was there already, the candyfloss dress hanging up in a blur of pink. I rang Grandad from the hotel phone, but Mum wouldn’t speak to him.

  ‘Tell him I was only trying to help,’ she sniffed.

  ‘You tell him,’ I said, but she just reached into the minibar and pulled out a whisky miniature. I told Grandad I loved him, and Gran, then slipped under the covers and fell into sleep.

  It’s past ten o’clock.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ I wail, stumbling out of bed.

  ‘I told you it was late,’ Mum says, smugly. ‘Come on!’ She pushes the bridesmaid’s dress into my arms, shoves me towards the bathroom.

  I seem to have slept in my clothes. I peel off crumpled school uniform and step into the shower, uncapping a bottle of complimentary hotel shampoo. The water’s lukewarm, but it shocks my skin awake. At least the towels are soft and fluffy. I dig out tights and undies, slip into the dress. Red fringing swishes merrily above my kneecaps.

  ‘Nice,’ Mum says, nastily, when I venture out. ‘Is this a wedding or a circus?’

  Tears prick at my eyes. I rub at my hair with the hotel towel. The clock says 10.25. The wedding is just over an hour away.

  ‘What about my hair?’ I panic. ‘Victoria was going to style it for me, backcombed, with flicks!’

  Mum raises an eyebrow. ‘So that’s what she wanted,’ she says. ‘The silly woman called at eight, wittering on about hair. I told her we’d manage ourselves. I mean, eight o’clock!’

  It’s Victoria’s wedding day, and thanks to Mum, her bridesmaid has jumped ship. Great. ‘You should have woken me!’ I growl. ‘I’m going to be so, so late!’

  ‘Rubbish,’ says Mum. ‘I’ll do your hair. It’s what I do best, isn’t it?’

  Apart from wrecking other people’s lives, yes, I guess so. Mum plugs in the hotel hairdryer and makes me hang my head upside down while she dries my hair. She produces styling gel from her handbag and sprays it through the ends, blowdrying them into a dramatic flick-up. My hair looks great.

  ‘Make-up,’ I say.

  ‘You’re far too young for make-up,’ Mum huffs.

  ‘Mum!’

  I find shell-pink lippy and black eyeliner in my travel bag and Mum helps me put it on. Her hand shakes a little as she slicks the eyeliner under my lashes. It’s ten past eleven.

  ‘Shouldn’t they have called for me by now?’ I ask. ‘Mum? Shall I ring them?’

  ‘I told them we’d meet them there,’ she says coolly, clipping on Toto’s lead and picking up her pink leather jacket from the bed. ‘Better get going.’

  My heart is thumping. ‘Mum, you can’t come,’ I tell her.

  ‘Who wants to come?’ She shrugs. ‘I’m just taking you there. Get moving, Jude!’

  We bundle out of the door, along the softly carpeted corridor. The lift doesn’t come, so we run down the stairs, across the lobby.

  ‘Excuse me!’ the receptionist calls over. ‘Is that a dog?’

  ‘It’s a llama,’ Mum calls back. ‘Very young one. Pedigree.’

  The receptionist starts ranting about there being no need for sarcasm, and that dogs are not allowed in the hotel at any time.

  ‘He didn’t like it anyway,’ Mum says. ‘He’s used to five-star accommodation.’

  We run down the road and cross at the junction. ‘It’s somewhere around here,’ Mum insists. ‘The Old Smithy place. Not far – just over the road, apparently.’ She stops, hands on hips.

  ‘Jude!’

  Andy, one of Dad’s old band-mates from his long-gone Fab Four days, rounds the corner, jogging towards us. He still has the dodgy moptop haircut and the collarless suit. It looks kind of weird on a forty-something bloke, but hey, I am used to weird.

  ‘Jude! Where have you been? Everyone’s waiting!’

  ‘A lady is entitled to be late,’ Mum says.

  ‘The bride is,’ Andy corrects her. ‘Not you lot. Come on!’

  He grabs us by an elbow each, steering us along the pavement.

  ‘Not going to say hello, Andy?’ Mum asks, coyly. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Hello, Rose,’ he says grimly. ‘I won’t ask you what the hell you think you’re doing here. I’m too polite. Just hurry!’

  Just round the corner we spot the pink Cadillac, festooned with fluttering ribbons and pink net, parked on a gravel driveway beside an old building that proclaims it’s the Old Smithy. Mum grabs a handful of ribbons as we rush past, ripping them off to fix on to Toto’s collar.

  ‘You’re not going in,’ I warn her as we push through the black doors.

  ‘No?’ Mum asks.

  A sea of faces turns towards us. Some of them are dressed 1950s style, with quiffs and Teddy-boy suits and circle skirts with net petticoats, some are dressed 1960s style, with lurid shirts, skinny suits, pastel minidresses. It looks like a particularly sad and unruly fancy-dress party for the middle-aged.

  A grey-haired couple I recognize as Victoria’s parents huddle in a corner, looking bewildered. I know how they feel.

  ‘Jude!’ A couple of Victoria’s workmates rush towards me, terrifying in matching pink-marshmallow wigs. ‘Where have you been? Vic and Bobby are in the office, doing the paperwork. We’ve all been here since quarter past. Bobby’s been ringing your room non-stop …’

  There were no calls. I look at Mum. A small smile tugs revealingly at the corners of her lips. She must have pulled the phone jack out of the wall.

  ‘Quick, these are your flowers …’ Someone shoves a bouquet of white roses at me, and I clutch them, heart pounding. I’m to carry white roses, Victoria pink, I remember.

  ‘Go on, Jude.’ Andy propels me forward. ‘I’ll look after your mum.’

  At that moment, a big wooden door opens and a tall, bespectacled man appears, Dad and Victoria behind him.

  ‘
If the guests and the groom would take their places …’ he says, frowning slightly and ushering everyone towards a tiny, cave-like room in the distance.

  ‘Jude, over here!’ Victoria, alarming in her towering black beehive wig, frothy net veil and white sequinned minidress, grabs my hand and pulls me back. The guests file past us. ‘Are you OK? What happened?’

  ‘Mum happened. She took the phone off the hook and I slept in …’

  Dad strides up in his new white satin catsuit. ‘Nightmare,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. Where is she now?’

  ‘Andy was with her. I think he’s keeping her out of the way.’ I look around me, but Andy, Mum and Toto have vanished without trace.

  ‘Good old Andy,’ Dad says.

  Victoria takes my hands and holds them tightly ‘It’ll be OK, Jude. You’re here now, and you look lovely.’

  ‘You look great too, Victoria,’ I tell her. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘The bridegroom, please!’ a stern Scottish voice calls down from the Marriage Room. ‘We’re all ready!’

  Dad takes off towards the cave-room, his flares crackling with rhinestones as he walks. Victoria’s dad links her arm, and she pulls me up close on her other side. A wailing, yowling screech erupts, and a bearded piper steps from the shadows to pipe us along to the Marriage Room. I’ve never heard ‘Love Me Tender’ (by Elvis, of course) played on the bagpipes before.

  We set off towards the cave-like room, clutching our bouquets, heads held high, the piper wailing behind us. As we approach, I can see the huge iron anvil in the middle of the little room, the rows of fancy-dress guests behind it. A few people make soft, cooing sounds, and someone at the back blows their nose loudly. When we reach the front, I squeeze Victoria’s hand and let it go, moving back behind the anvil. Victoria’s dad does the same.

  Bobby and Victoria are centre stage now.

  The caterwauling bagpipes die away, the registrar clears his throat and a hush descends on the room. Suddenly, off to our left, a shrill voice cuts into the silence.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ Mum is saying. ‘I’ve come all this way.’

  ‘Rose, be sensible,’ Andy’s voice protests. ‘You don’t want to do this, really you don’t.’

  ‘I do,’ comes the response. ‘I do, and I will. Do you think you can stop me? Get off me! Leave me alone!’

  Victoria puts a hand over her eyes and bites her white-painted lips. Dad’s shoulders slump.

  ‘Can we have a minute?’ he asks the registrar.

  ‘A minute,’ the bespectacled man says with a sigh. ‘No more.’

  The guests are whispering now, craning their necks to see what’s going on. Dad strides out into the corridor, just as Mum and Toto march into view.

  ‘Hello, Bobby,’ she says crisply. ‘Congratulations. Or should I say April Fool?’

  ‘I tried to stop her!’ Andy protests, hobbling into view. ‘She just won’t listen. She kicked me!’

  The piper steps into the corridor, tactfully trying to block the scene of the disturbance from general view as he squeezes a mournful Scottish tune from the bagpipes. Sadly, I still have a perfect view over his left shoulder.

  ‘Rose, you promised you wouldn’t do this,’ Dad is saying wearily.

  ‘Promised!’ Mum barks. ‘Well, we all know you’re not known for keeping your promises, don’t we, Bobby? Anyway, it’s not you I want to speak to. It’s her!’

  ‘Victoria?’ Dad blinks. ‘Victoria has nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Too bad. I have something to say to her.’

  Victoria appears at Dad’s elbow, trailing clouds of white net veil. ‘It’s OK, Bobby,’ she says softly. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  She walks past Dad, takes Mum by the arm and tries to steer her down the corridor, out of earshot. Mum shakes her off.

  Dad walks back into the Marriage Room, clears his throat and tells the startled guests there will be a small delay. ‘Five minutes?’ he pleads with the registrar, who rolls his eyes and sits down on a rocky window sill. Mum has dropped Toto’s lead, and he is running around the Marriage Room, sniffing excitedly, his pink ribbon bow askew.

  I edge into the doorway to get a better view of Mum and Victoria – and to stop the rest of the guests doing the same.

  ‘Bobby lets people down,’ Mum is saying. She scrabbles in her bag for a cigarette, finds one and balances it on her bottom lip. ‘He’ll break his promises and break your heart and leave you with nothing. Don’t marry him. He’ll ruin your life.’

  ‘Rose, he won’t,’ Victoria says gently. ‘I know he won’t.’

  ‘You think you’re so special?’ Mum laughs, flicking her silver lighter on and off, trying to find a flame. ‘You think you’re so different? Don’t kid yourself. You make me sick with your smug little smile and your idiotic sixties wedding! What do you think you look like?’

  ‘Rose, please …’

  ‘Rose, please …’ Mum mimics, harshly, and I cringe at her nastiness. ‘What are you, forty years old? Who told you this piece of tat looked good on you?’ She waves a hand towards the white shimmery dress, still flicking the lighter for a flame. ‘It’s a joke! And this … this ridiculous wig! Don’t you know they’re all laughing at you? Darn it, what’s wrong with this lighter?’

  Suddenly, Mum’s lighter flashes into life, a big blue flame leaping up from her fingertips. As we watch, the flame flashes across to Victoria’s veil, searing along the frothy white net like a snake, curling, sizzling, melting.

  Mum screams, Victoria screams, and then the whole place erupts.

  I think I might faint with horror. Even in my wildest nightmares, I never imagined this. I can’t seem to breathe, and my nostrils clog with the stink of burning nylon.

  ‘Bobby quick!’ one of the pink-wigged women shrieks. ‘The veil’s stiff with hairspray, and so is the wig. If that goes up …’

  Dad shoves past me and thunders towards the beehive inferno in a blur of white satin. The piper, meanwhile, has thrown down his bagpipes, pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and is spraying the corridor.

  It’s Mum who saves the day. She grabs the smouldering wig, complete with flaming veil, wrenches it from Victoria’s head and hurls it to the floor. Then she jumps on it, stamping out the flames with her pointy red shoes while the piper squirts fire-extinguisher foam all over it.

  ‘Jesus, Rose!’ Dad whispers, his face almost as ashen as my own.

  But Victoria, looking strangely naked without her wig, mousy hair scraped flat and clipped out of the way, puts an arm around Mum’s shaking shoulders. ‘It was an accident, Bobby,’ she says. ‘Just an accident.’

  And Mum rests her head on Victoria’s shoulder and cries and cries and cries.

  The building is evacuated, the fire brigade are called and, once everything is declared safe again, the wedding is finally rescheduled for 1.30 p.m. The advantage of getting married on April Fool’s Day is that few people are stupid enough to want to, so there are hardly any other bookings. Victoria borrows a marshmallow-pink beehive wig from one of her bank-clerk friends.

  ‘Something borrowed,’ she says brightly. ‘Don’t think I’ll bother with a veil this time!’

  Her dad escorts her into the Marriage Room with me following behind, leading Toto in a haze of pink net and ribbon. The piper is absent – he offered to take Mum back to the hotel when her increasingly frantic apologies were threatening to halt the wedding for a second time.

  ‘You’re the hero of the hour,’ he told her gently, politely leaving out the fact that she actually caused the blaze in the first place. ‘Let me buy you a drink to calm your nerves.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mum faltered. ‘Well. OK, then!’

  So Victoria floats into the Marriage Room to a tinny CD version of ‘Love Me Tender’, which sounds a whole lot better than the bagpipe one, and the wedding goes without a hitch.

  It’s not a pretty ceremony, like the church weddings I’ve seen on TV soap operas. It’s kind of plain and ordinary and thankfully quick, and before I
know it the bespectacled registrar lifts up the heavy iron hammer at the foot of the anvil and lets it drop with an ear-splitting clang.

  He pronounces Dad and Victoria man and wife. They pose beside the anvil and a weird flashing erupts from the wall, which panics me briefly, but it’s only a camera, not Mum with her pyromaniac lighter. It’s done, all over, finally, without disaster.

  We straggle back along the street to the hotel, where the reception is now more than two hours overdue. ‘Wasn’t it lovely?’ people are saying, brushing confetti from their hair as we walk along. ‘Something different, something special. A real day to remember.’

  Well, it was that, all right.

  The pink Cadillac cruises past, tin cans, old boots and what seems to be a slightly charred white net veil tied on to the back bumper.

  Back at the hotel, the manager swoops on Toto. ‘I told the lady earlier, no dogs on the premises,’ he says grimly. ‘We have health and safety rules, you know.’

  ‘Can’t you make an exception, just this once?’ Dad asks politely. ‘This dog’s an important guest at the wedding, and he’s travelled a long way to be here today. He’s very highly trained!’

  Toto is sniffing the back of the manager’s trousers.

  ‘I can’t help that,’ the man says primly, trying to step out of sniffing range. ‘We cannot have dogs in the hotel – it’s against all our rules. And your “highly trained” dog has already left a little … message, shall we say? In Room 201, behind the armchair.’

  ‘Oops,’ I say.

  So Toto is shut into the pink Cadillac. His ear-splitting yowls can be heard throughout the wedding meal and the yawn-making speeches. Everyone drinks a toast in pink champagne – everyone except Victoria. And me. We stick to lemonade.

  The wedding cake is a mountain of chocolate profiteroles with an Elvis action figure and a Barbie Doll with a beehive and a minidress perched on the lower slopes. Surprise, surprise, the band are Dad’s old mates, the Fab Four, Andy on lead guitar, playing countless dismal songs from long, long ago. At least they drown out Toto’s distant whines.