The Godmother

by Carrie Adams

  Suddenly four trumpeters appeared. Claudia, Al and I stifled more giggles, silently agreeing that the pudding was now definitely being over-egged. One more “Thanks be to God” and, to the tune of “Oh When the Saints,” we heirs of the promise of the spirit of peace were free to go and get drunk.

  Outside in the sunshine, everyone was smiling. There was a lot of milling about and calls for photos. We lined up along the cemetery wall and smiled into a dozen lenses. Still the twins slept, even through the trumpeting, which I thought was odd. Everyone said how incredibly good they were being. I watched Marguerite, Helen’s mother, approach the newly baptized twins and noticed that even Helen’s nemesis could not dim my friend’s dazzling smile. Helen was protected by layers of christening gowns, delicious baby smells and the love of her friends. Yes, I thought, giving Neil a kiss on the cheek. Maybe the means was worth it. Not for me, but for Helen. I was happy for her. I was happy for A1 and Claudia who were now entwined in each other. I glanced at my watch. Yes, I was happy, happy, happy—now, surely, it was time for a drink?

  No one was making any obvious moves towards the gate, so I loitered and smiled some more.

  “Tessa King,” said an accented voice I knew too well. “Are you alone?”

  No, I’m standing here with my imaginary friend, what does it look like? But then Marguerite knew that. She is brutally aware of the power of words. It is her forte.

  “Marguerite,” I said, smiling as I turned. “You must be very proud of your daughter today. She looks absolutely ravishing. Honestly, I think she gets more and more stunning as she gets older, and to think she only just gave birth.”

  Marguerite matched my smile but I knew the scoreboard read one-all. Marguerite never appeared to pride herself in her daughter’s beauty. She never prided herself in anything Helen did. We all knew the interior design course Helen had started would come to nothing, but at least she had tried to turn her hand at something. Helen was fantastically cultured. Jetting between her warring parents, she had had the chance to visit every major art gallery in the world, most historical sites of both the modern and ancient world, and had picked up an amazing eye for beautiful things. Her house in Notting Hill was a testament to that taste. But Marguerite had slammed interior design as the playground for dizzy, rich blondes. Helen never recovered and left the course halfway through.

  I studied my friend’s mother, so different from my own. Her long grey hair was plaited down her back. She wore Nicole Farhi grey cashmere trousers and matching wrap secured in place by a hunk of amber. The collar of a crisp white shirt framed her long neck. She was and always had been the epitome of elegance. Marguerite wore Farhi. It was like a signature thing with her, along with the short, rouge-noir-coated nails. She also wore heavy, dark eye makeup and could still get away with it. She was Helen, without the Chinese gene. There were many things I knew about this woman—she was vain, she was selfish, she could type 110 words a minute, she liquidized most of her food and she should never, ever have bred.

  “I don’t really understand the need for all of this,” said Marguerite, her accent still carried a hint of her Alpine youth. “Of course, it’s wonderful that she has managed to have children, but did we really need the trumpeters?” She smiled conspiratorially.

  I resisted the urge for a little bitch. “Nothing wrong in wanting to show off your achievements,” I said, looking over at the bundles of lace.

  “Tessa, do you really think having a baby is an achievement? Anyone can do that.”

  I looked over at Al and Claudia. He was standing behind her, his chin resting gently on her head, his arms wrapped around her, their four hands resting on her belly.

  “Not everyone.”

  Marguerite was watching Neil take slaps on the back from other small white men in dodgy suits. “You know what I’m saying. The baby bit is easy for most people. Let’s see how they do as parents. Perhaps it’s not as easy as she thinks.”

  That was probably the first time I’d heard Marguerite refer to her own mothering skills, however obliquely.

  “She has Rose to help her,” I replied, not letting her off that easily.

  “Rose. Of course. But you know, having too much help is something she should be wary of.” She looked back at me. “You have to learn to cope by yourself in the early days or you may never be able to. I was surrounded by my ex-husband’s family, jabbering away at me in Chinese, grabbing Helen all the time; I had no idea what to do.”

  Was I supposed to feel sorry for her now? No way. Not after all the years of mental torture I’d witnessed. “I think twins are a bit different. I barely see her as it is, and that’s with help. She’s completely ensconced in babyville.”

  “She wanted a girl, you know. Can you imagine why?” Marguerite sucked in her cheeks. I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to go there.

  “Poor girl got twin boys instead. What are we going to do with boys? They are so primeval. They have to be exercised like dogs.”

  “She loves those boys,” I said.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course,” I replied, without even thinking about the question. “Don’t you? They’re your grandsons.”

  She scowled. “Why do you always make everything so personal. It’s very dull.”

  “Oh dear, Marguerite.” I smiled jovially, teasingly, but I was trying to claw back some ground. “Finding the notion of granny a little hard to take on board?”

  “Tessa, you know you are more intelligent than that, please don’t play dumb for me. My point, which you are choosing to miss, is that maybe you only see what you want to see, what you expect to see. Helen has a husband and children, ergo she must be happy. Am I right?”

  I wanted to stick my tongue out at her, but that would make it three-one to her. She looked over at her grandsons. “I don’t think life is really as simple as that,” she said. “Of course, I am pleased to have grandsons. But you are asking me to jump for joy because my daughter has managed to do what women are programmed to do. These are babies we are talking about. Babies are not very interesting, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “Except to their mothers,” I said, digging again.

  “There are no guarantees for that, Tessa.”

  Clearly.

  Marguerite went on. “What if you discover you have a child but you don’t possess the martyr gene required to enable you to give up most of yourself to the upbringing of your child at exactly the point in your life when you are in position to take the benefits of your own upbringing and do something of note? Are we lemmings? Can we not break the pre-programming? Are we not allowed to be individuals? It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

  Marguerite was right about one thing. I did make it personal. I wished I didn’t, because then I could enjoy some of these debates, but I knew she was just justifying her abysmal mothering, when what she should really be saying was sorry. I think that’s all it would have taken. I don’t think Helen asked for much more.

  “Great women and good mothering don’t go hand in hand,” stated Marguerite.

  So that’s your excuse, I thought to myself. But I’m not as brave as I look, so kept mum.

  “You and I both know that Helen didn’t have many other options left to her. What else was she going to do?”

  Actually, your daughter had a great deal of potential, if only she’d been better directed.

  “It figures,” I said.

  “What figures?” she replied.

  “All the mothers of my friends with children have told me that they love their grandchildren as much as they did their own, if not more.” I paused. “Obviously it works the other way around.”

  “I know that there is a part of you that agrees with me, Tessa, whether you care to admit it or not, otherwise you wouldn’t still be single. Unless you’re another of those desperate women waiting for a man to come and take care of them?”

  She thought she’d cornered me, but she was wrong.

  “I think it’s more about takin
g care of each other.”

  “Christ, Tessa, if you want something to care for, buy a pot plant. But whatever you do, don’t be a lemming. It would be such a waste.”

  Marguerite left me strangely fascinated in the moss-covered stone wall. I picked at the soft green plant until she was safely back with the congregation. I knew she was mean, but sometimes I forgot that what made her such a dangerous opponent was her intelligence. With that final unwanted compliment, she’d taken the round. Now I definitely knew that I needed a drink.

  The basement of Helen and Neil’s house resembled Carluccio’s deli by the time we arrived, and I was quickly soothed by fabulous chargrilled vegetables, streaks of Parma ham and a fishbowl of Gavi di Gavi. I hadn’t moved away from the buffet table when I was joined by David, my co-godparent, the one with the spittle on his jacket and the plastic train in his pocket.

  “It’s Tessa, right?” he asked. I had a mouthful, so I nodded the affirmative.

  “So how do you know Helen and Neil?” he asked, helping himself to food and putting it straight in his mouth. I quickly swallowed. I wanted to make this absolutely clear. “Helen is my friend, I’ve known her since I was eighteen,” I replied.

  “Neil?”

  “Only met him after they got engaged.”

  “It was quite quick, wasn’t it?”

  Four months. You’re telling me. “When you know, you know, or so they say.”

  David shrugged. “So you and Helen were at school together?”

  “Actually, we met in Vietnam.”

  “Vietnam? I thought Helen was half-Chinese.”

  “She is. We were all backpacking.”

  “Helen backpacked?”

  “Well, not exactly, but it wasn’t Louis Vuitton either.” He still looked unconvinced. If only they knew what she’d been like. Was still like. Underneath all the gilding. “Don’t be fooled by the Gaggenhau kitchen and Manolos. Helen was the original wild child.”

  Since Helen was busy doing a convincing impersonation of Bree from Desperate Housewives, my fellow godparent did not believe me, but I really wanted him to know the Helen I knew.

  “Honestly, when I first met her she was trapped in a hammock, laughing her head off because she couldn’t get out. Lysergic acid had a lot to do with it.” David smiled. I went on. “Needless to say, we all developed a mammoth crush on her, and spent the rest of the trip a happy foursome, mesmerized by the sunsets, and sampling much of the local produce.”

  “By which you mean, that not sold in the market.”

  “You didn’t hear this from me.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It was one of the best times of my life,” I said, truthfully. I looked over at Helen and felt a pang of nostalgia. One of, or the best time, I wondered. Was that it? Was that what I was forever trying to recreate? China Beach. LSD. Freedom. All underlined by the raw pain of a broken heart that made me feel so alive? I looked around the room. Helen had moved on. That was clear enough. So had Al and Claudia. Friends once, so much more now. Just me, then. Standing alone on China Beach, always waiting for the sun to set? I looked up, lost in my own thoughts, to see Helen standing next to us.

  “What are you two looking so conspiratorial about?” she said with a smile.

  “Tessa here is filling me in on a few missing details about you.”

  “Oh?” Helen looked at me.

  “He’s exaggerating,” I said, obviously poking David in the ribs.

  “What was she telling you about? Because I can top any story about me with one about her…”

  “Well, there’s a challenge,” said David. “China Beach.”

  I thought Helen might lose her cool, but to my relief her smile broke into a laugh.

  “That’s probably all true, the bits Tessa can remember, anyway,” said Helen. “But ask old innocent here about hitching a lift on the back of a Honda Eagle in the red-light district of Aix-en-Provence and driving topless through the countryside with a saxophone player…”

  I pointed at Helen. “I wasn’t alone.”

  “Nor was I on China Beach.”

  She turned to David. “Or when I got stuck in a mountain bar drinking schnapps and had to ski home with the pisteurs by torchlight…”

  She rubbed her chin. “Or when I got chatting to a pilot and hitched a ride in his plane…”

  Helen put her finger on her temple. “Or when I was in transit in Bali, on my way home from backpacking around Australia, and decided to stay after seeing a certain world-champion surfer walk towards Customs…”

  “Or when I—”

  “All right,” I laughed. “You win. I’m a reprobate too.”

  “They say youth is wasted on the young,” said Helen. She shook her head. “But not in our case, hey, Tessa?” She kissed me lightly on the cheek.

  “Sounds like you two had a bloody riot.”

  “The benefits of being an heiress and a perennial student.” Helen winked at me.

  “What have you studied?” David asked Helen.

  “Not me. Brains over here.” Helen linked her arm through mine. “Tessa was at university, then law school. It was great for me because she got lots of holidays.”

  “Lots of bloody work,” I retorted.

  “That’s the amazing thing about you, you’ve always managed to do both so convincingly.” Helen turned to David. “So, David, have you ever been to Vietnam?”

  He shook his head, smiling dumbly. I recognized the expression. I’d come across it a million times over. My fellow godparent had just developed a crush on the mother of his charges.

  She touched him on the arm. “Well, you must. Take the kids, it’s so easy over there. And the food…” She closed her eyes a moment, reminiscing again. “We had the best time.”

  I smiled too. Because we had.

  “When I die, I think I’d like my ashes to be scattered on China Beach.”

  “Helen! A wholly inappropriate topic of conversation at your sons’ christening!”

  “It’s important,” she insisted, her expression quite serious. “You never know what’s around the corner.”

  I shook my head. “China Beach will probably be like the Gold Coast by the time you pop your clogs, all casinos and girly bars.”

  “OK then, any beach would do.”

  “My wife comes from ridiculous aristocratic stock,” said David. “The family all hate each other, but when they die they’re all put in this huge vault whether they want to be interred or not. Personally, I like the idea of being scattered on a beach. Will I be able to? Not unless I get divorced, which I’m not planning on doing, or our kids don’t get their slice of the pie.”

  “You’re joking?”

  He laughed. “Some old madman made it a stipulation of the money.”

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  Helen smiled and made her excuses like the professional hostess that she was. We watched her flow effortlessly into another group of guests and work her magic on them. “That’s the first time I’ve really chatted to Helen,” said David. “She’s so different from what I expected.”

  “Told you.”

  “You just wouldn’t know it,” said David, staring after her.

  “That’s because you’re a friend of Neil’s.” It came out sounding more detrimental than it was meant to. “I mean, you know, there are some things you don’t tell your husband, I guess…”

  David looked back at me.

  “You’re not his mystery brother, are you? God, I’m always doing things like this.”

  “I didn’t know Neil had a brother.”

  “No one does, that’s why he’s a mystery.”

  Neil walked past with a bottle of champagne in his hand. I tried to silence David, but it was too late. I knew why Neil didn’t see his family, Helen had told me. He was embarrassed by them.

  “Hey, Neil,” said David. “Is your brother here?”

  “God, no,” said Neil, without stopping, though I swear I saw him bristle. “He and I are
not alike. Trust me, you wouldn’t like him.”

  But I’d love him. My thoughts obviously registered on my face because David smiled at me again.

  “What?”

  “You don’t approve of your friend’s choice of husband, do you?”

  I grimaced. “No, I mean, yes…Of course I do. She’s really happy…”

  “Oh, don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. To be honest, I don’t really know the bloke that well.”

  “Huh?”

  He leaned a bit closer. “I work at the BBC. We’ve done some things together a few times but I wouldn’t describe us as proper mates.”

  “Why did he ask you to be godfather, then?” I asked, probably being a bit slow on the uptake.

  David looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, we’re not doing too badly. We think they’re hoping for good gifts.”

  I shook my head. “They’re pretty well off themselves, I don’t think that’s it. What do you do at the BBC?”

  “Head of comedy.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Ah, indeed.”

  “Why did you say yes?”

  “How can you say no?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. Just when I was beginning to feel warm, happy feelings for Neil, I was reminded just how awful he was. Of all the men in the world Helen could have married, why on earth did she marry him?

  “Don’t worry,” said David. “My wife is great, Al and Claudia seem really nice; we’ll just have to stick together and get horribly drunk at all their birthday parties and take it in turns to forget Christmas.”

  “What about godfather number two—are we not going to be getting pissed with him?” I whispered.

  “Not unless you want to spend all day talking about Michael Kramer.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  A woman leaned over David’s shoulder. “Hello. I don’t need to ask who you’re bitching about, do I?”

  “Tessa, my wife, Ann.”