by Simon Brett
The ordering had used up only a few minutes, and the lunch yawned ahead of Carole. Marie and Howard didn’t seem about to offer any further topics for discussion, and in their presence Gaby too was uncharacteristically subdued. Carole realized that, unless the meal was to pass in total silence, she was going to have to take on the role of conversational initiator.
“Now, I’m sorry to say,” she began boldly, “that I know almost nothing about you. Just that you live in Harlow…”
“Yes, we do,” Marie agreed. “Very nice and quiet, Harlow.”
Howard didn’t take issue with this assessment. He nodded, but said nothing.
“And I do remember Gaby saying that her grandmother lives in France…”
“Yes, that’s my mother,” Marie acknowledged.
“The South of France, I gather.” Carole was having difficulty matching the undeniable drabness of the senior Martins with her image of the South of France – rich people with yachts.
But Gaby quickly put her right. “It’s the south-west, actually. Lot-et-Garonne. Near Villeneuve-sur-Lot.”
Her French accent was impeccable. “That’s where Grand’mère grew up. But I doubt if she’ll be able to make it over for the wedding.”
“No, Maman is far too frail,” her mother agreed. “And she can hardly see at all these days. Her eyesight was always very bad.”
“Yes,” said Gaby glumly, “and I’ve inherited that. Can’t see a thing in the mornings till I’ve got my lenses in.”
“Well, Maman was only in her forties when she started to have to read large print books.”
“Thanks, Mum, that’s really cheered me up. Something to look forward to in ten years’ time. I wonder if Steve realized what he had taken on when he asked me to marry him.”
Having met the Martins, Carole was rather beginning to wonder that too.
“Still,” Gaby went on, “I must try and get out to Villeneuve-sur-Lot before too long. Ideally with Steve – if he can get the time off work. I really want to introduce my fiancé to Grand’mère.”
“I’m sure she’d like to meet him,” said Marie automatically.
The chasm of silence once again gaped before them. Carole gamely bridged it. “But that’s about all I know about your family. Oh, and, of course, that you were brought up in Worthing.”
Marie Martin looked alarmed. “How did you know that?”
“Gaby mentioned it.”
Marie’s daughter received a look of pained reproach for passing on the information. Carole persevered. “Which is of course very near where I live. Do you remember Fethering?”
“No. I don’t remember anything much about the area. I didn’t live there long.”
Which was a very clear ending to that subject of conversation. Carole struggled on. “But I do feel I still know very little about you. For instance, I don’t even know whether Gaby has brothers and sisters.”
“I have a brother,” said Gaby, looking at her mother, as if expecting to prompt further comment. But none came. The ball was back in Carole’s court.
“As you probably know, Marie, Stephen’s an only child. I sometimes think it’d have been nice to have had more, but…well, I had a full-time career andthen…” Time to bite the bullet. “I’m divorced. Did Gaby tell you that?”
“Yes, she did.”
But again Marie Martin didn’t volunteer anything else. No judgement, no reaction.
“So what’s your son called?” asked Carole desperately.
“Phil.”
“And is he older than Gaby?”
“Oh, no. Pascale came first.”
“I beg your pardon?”
It was Gaby, rather than her mother, who provided the explanation. “I was christened Pascale. Changed my name when I was in my teens. You know what teenage girls are like, unhappy with everything about themselves, about their home, about their family – so I became Gaby. And it kind of stuck.”
“Not with me, it didn’t,” said Marie, with more vigour than she had shown before.
“Well, I like the name. And the rest of the family have accepted the change, except for Grand’mère who still calls me Pascale. Anyway, all my working life I’ve been Gaby Martin, so that’s the way I’m going to stay.” This was said defiantly, but her mother did not rise to the challenge.
“So how old is Phil?”
“He’s twenty-nine. Only eighteen months younger than me.”
“It must have been hard, when they were little, having two children so close together.”
Carole had said it as an all-purpose platitude, but Marie Martin seemed to take the comment more seriously. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was a very hard time.”
“They go so quickly, the childhood years,” Carole went on, with continuing banality.
Marie nodded, but didn’t speak. Howard shadowed his wife’s nod, though Carole wasn’t sure that he could hear much of the conversation. His large face was impassive most of the time, only showing animation when someone looked at him or addressed a direct question. He sat still, isolated in the muffled world of his deafness.
“So what does Phil do?” asked Carole, sticking to her role as conversational initiator. “Is he in show business like you, Gaby?”
She laughed dismissively. “It’s hardly show business. But Phil doesn’t do anything like that. He works in a warehouse.”
“He’s a checker,” Marie added, as if this were important.
“And is that near you, in Harlow?”
“Near Harlow. Hoddesdon.”
“Ah.”
“He’s got his own flat there,” Marie volunteered, with something approaching pride. “In Hoddesdon.”
“Well, I’ll look forward to meeting him.” Carole saw a look pass between Gaby and her mother at this, but she couldn’t interpret its subtext. “I look forward to meeting all the rest of your family and friends at the wedding.”
“There aren’t many others.”
Gaby grimaced. “As I say, Grand’mère’s unlikely to leave France.”
“Very unlikely,” her mother agreed. “Which may be just as well.”
“Oh?” asked Carole casually.
She looked at Marie, but it was Gaby who supplied the explanation. “Mum means Granny would disapprove of my not being married in a Catholic church.”
“Ah yes, I’d forgotten you said your family was Catholic.”
“Brought up Catholic, but none of it means anything to me now.”
“Well, it should,” Marie asserted feebly.
“Why? Why do you say that? When did you or Dad last step inside a church of any denomination?”
“I may not be very good at church-going and what have you, but at least I’m not disrespectful to the church. And, when he was younger, your father was a very devout Catholic.”
Marie Martin was now, by her standards, quite animated, and Carole intervened to avert the incipient row. “Does this mean, Gaby, that you and Stephen have decided on the church where you are going to get married?”
“It looks like we have, yes. Most of the ones round Fethering were already booked for the fourteenth of September, but one vicar thought the wedding on that day was about to be called off.”
“Oh?”
“He sounded a bit vague, but he’s going to ring us in the next week when he knows for sure.”
“And which church is this?”
“The one in Fedborough. All Souls’.”
Carole knew it. She had also met the vicar, the Reverend Philip Trigwell, when she and Jude had become involved in an investigation into a human torso found in one of the town’s cellars. That he should ‘sound vague’ about arrangements was entirely in character. She had never met a man so indecisive or so unwilling to express a firm opinion.
“Oh well, I hope it works out. All Souls’ is a lovely church.”
“Yes,” Gaby agreed. “If we’ve heard from the vicar by the weekend, we’re going to come down on Saturday and check out some venues and caterers.”
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br /> “Maybe I’ll see you again then.”
“Maybe.”
The conversation was once again becalmed. “So,” Carole battled on, “I now know about all your immediate family, do I?”
“Except, of course, for Uncle Robert.”
“Oh yes – Uncle Robert.”
In her echo of Gaby’s words, for the first time Marie Martin displayed genuine enthusiasm, and also her French origins – the ‘t’ at the end of the name was silent.
“He’s Mum’s brother.”
“Always a very lively person to have around. And he’s always adored Pascale. Having no children of his own, he thinks of her almost as his own daughter. You’d like him, Carole. Everyone likes my brother Robert. Don’t they, Howard?”
Her husband nodded, though quite possibly he hadn’t heard the question.
“Yes, Robert’ll certainly be at the wedding. He’s areal live wire. We must get him to do a speech. He’s very funny when he does public speaking – just a natural at it.”
Inwardly Carole flinched. Over the years she’d suffered from too many public speakers who were naturals at it.
“Actually, I’ve had a thought…” Now her brother had been mentioned, Marie Martin seemed quite happy to take over the conversation. “Perhaps Robert could give you away, Pascale.”
“No.” The suggestion stung Gaby. “Dad will give me away. It’s always the father who gives the bride away. You only get someone else to do it if the father’s not around.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” But Marie sounded disappointed. And her next words made it seem as if she was trying to convince herself. “Your father’ll do it absolutely fine.”
“It’s all very exciting,” Carole observed meaninglessly. “Everything about the wedding.”
“Yes. You will like Robert,” Marie repeated. Her brother seemed to be her prize exhibit. As a couple, the Martins might not have much to show for themselves, but they did at least have Robert. “It’d be nice if you could meet him before the wedding.”
“Yes. I’d love that.” Unease encouraged fulsomeness in Carole.
“I know!” Her mother’s sudden boldness was so out of character as to prompt a curious look from Gaby. “We’ll give an engagement party for you and Stephen.”
“Oh, I don’t think we really want that.”
But Marie Martin was impervious to the warning in her daughter’s eye. “Yes, you’ll love it. It’ll make your dad and me feel better about not making the wedding arrangements.”
“Mum, you don’t want the trouble of anything like that. It’d be a lot of hassle.”
“I’m not suggesting we do it in the flat. We’ll go to one of the local hotels, and get them to cater it.”
“I really don’t think – ”
“There was that hotel you went to that function at, wasn’t there, Howard? You remember, last Christmas.”
Her husband opted for a ‘Yes’, which he reckoned was a safe response to most questions.
“What was it called now?”
This he seemed to hear, because he replied that he couldn’t remember.
“We’ll find out when we get back home. And I’ll have to sort out a date when Robert’s free. But it’ll be such fun.”
If it was anything like the lunch, Carole wasn’t so sure about that. But further discussion of the engagement party was stopped by the arrival of a waiter with the three starters. When conversation was reestablished, Marie, after her brief flurry of animation, had shrunk back into her shell.
Still, there was one topic on which Carole genuinely wanted to check the Martins’ opinion, and this seemed as good an opportunity as any to broach it.
“Marie, Howard, I’m sure you’ve already had this discussion with your daughter – but I wondered whatyou thought about a newspaper announcement of the wedding?”
Alarm flickered instantly in Gaby’s eyes. “Steve and I have talked about it further, Carole, and we’ve decided we don’t want any announcement.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t going to be stopped by that. “I just wondered, though, what your parents thought. I mean, to me, an engagement doesn’t seem complete until it’s been trumpeted abroad in the national press.”
Marie Martin’s face had lost the little colour with which it had started the lunch. Her eyes widened as she murmured, “No. I don’t want it in the press. Nor does Howard. We don’t want anything about it in the press.”
And Carole realized that what she could see in the woman’s face was not just self-effacement, but fear. And that, indeed, except for the brief moment when she had proposed the idea of an engagement party, Marie Martin’s predominant emotion throughout the lunch had been fear.
There was something of which she was desperately afraid.
∨ The Witness at the Wedding ∧
Five
“And the phone has been ominously quiet too.”
“Gita, all your friends know you’ve been ill.”
“Thank you for the word ‘ill’.”
She smiled wryly. “But I wasn’t actually thinking about my friends. It’s been very silent on the professional front too. No editors ringing me with offers of work.”
“Time enough for that.”
Gita grimaced. “Not that much time. I am a freelance; I need some kind of income.”
Jude grinned. “I would say this is very encouraging news.”
“What?”
“The fact that you’re worrying about work. It shows you’re getting back to normal. Come on, let me top up your wine.”
“You know, on the instructions for the pills, it says one should avoid alcohol.”
“Yes, I know it says that, but I’m afraid you’ve ended up in an environment where you can’t avoid alcohol. You’re here in Woodside Cottage with me. No escape. Social decency, apart from anything else, demands that you accept my hospitality.”
“Well…”
“Besides, you’re not about to drive or work heavy machinery. The worst that can happen is that you feel drowsy. And if you feel drowsy, then all you have to do is fall asleep.”
“Which is what I seem to be doing most of the time, anyway.”
“Exactly. It’s your body telling you it wants lots of lovely, delicious mindless sleep.”
“Hm.”
“Which can be assisted by copious draughts of alcohol.”
“In that case…” Gita shrugged, and held out her glass, which was topped up with Chilean Chardonnay. “Cheers.”
There was a silence after they had both taken substantial slurps. Then Jude spoke. “If there are people you want to see – you know, people you want to invite down here, that’s fine.”
Gita gave a strained grin. “Thanks, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for that.” She looked troubled. “There are people I need to see – people I must see – but not yet.”
“That’s fine. Just go at your own pace. Don’t rush yourself. There’s no pressure.”
“Except, as I say, the financial pressure of making a living.”
“Don’t worry about it. As I say, time enough.”
“Mm.” Gita reached out and took her friend’s hand. “I’m not going to spend every minute while I’m here saying, ‘Thank you, Jude.’ I’m going to save it up for one big eruption of gratitude when I leave. But I would just like to say it now – a little keep-you-going thank you. Thank you very much, Jude.”
“Gita, it’s my pleasure.”
And she meant it.
The phone rang. “Hello?”
“Jude, I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Gaby Martin.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Look, I’m going to be down in your area at the weekend. Steve and I are staying in a hotel overnight, and your Carole’s cooking lunch for us on Sunday.”
“And the back’s still giving you pain, is it?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Well, I can do any time on Saturday.”
“About eleven?”
&nb
sp; “That’d be fine.”
“There’s just one thing…”
“What?”
“Could you not tell Carole I’m coming?”
“OK. If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t really mind her knowing, because after all it was Carole who put me in touch with you, but I don’t want Steve to find out.”
“Gaby, your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you very much for sorting all this out, Mother.”
Stephen gestured to the spread of brochures and flyers laid out over the dining-room table at High Tor.
“No problem. Glad to do it.”
And Carole had been. Finding out details of potential reception venues andcaterers was a nice specific project, which made her feel that she was contributing something to the ongoing wedding planning. When she had worked for the Home Office, Carole Seddon had always been attracted to tasks that had a finite end.
“And you say Gaby’s coming down later?”
“Yes. Had some stuff to do in London, so she stayed in her flat last night, and she’s getting the train to Fethering round lunchtime.”
Stephen and Gaby were not yet fully cohabiting. She still kept on the Pimlico flat she shared with an actress friend called Jenny, but she spent much of her time – and all weekends – at Stephen’s house in Fulham.
Carole indicated four brochures. “I thought those were the most promising for what you said you wanted. They could all currently do the fourteenth of September. Two are hotels, so obviously would cater the reception themselves. The other two are just venues. Both have caterers they recommend, but equally would allow us to bring in our own caterers if we wanted to. I’ve rung round. We can have a look at any of the venues any time today, though the hotels would rather we avoided lunch and dinner time.”
“You have been busy, Mother. Thank you very much.”
That Saturday morning, without Gaby present as a catalyst, Stephen seemed all formality again. Carole wondered, with a pang of envy, whether he was more relaxed with his father than he was with her.
“This one at least you’ll recognize.”
She proffered an elegantly printed brochure for the Hopwicke Country House Hotel, where Stephen and Gaby had stayed a few months previously, and where a murder had taken place. “Though that’d probably be pretty pricey.”