Margy was still standing by the little kitchen work station, the note in her hand, when Ed came out.
‘Thought you asked if I wanted a cup of tea just now,’ he said.
‘You thought nothing of the sort!’ Margy said. ‘But I’ll make you one if you want one. I was talking about this. A letter from an alcoholic.’
‘Come again?’ Ed said. ‘I know the old ears aren’t what they were but that’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to struggle with.’
Margy handed him the note.
‘And there’s a bottle of Rio… something or other to go with it. Rio-jar or something.’
Ed took the bottle from her.
‘Rioja,’ he said, giving it its correct pronunciation.
‘Obviously you’ve never bought me enough of it if I don’t know how to say it,’ Margy admonished him, eyebrows knit-together, mock-cross.
‘Not going to buy you one now either,’ Ed said, ‘seeing as we’ve got this.’ He read the note again. ‘Can’t understand how people can’t put a hand over their glass after two but there you go, some of them can’t. Poor Caroline I’d say. And here on her own too. There’s no “and whoever” on the end of her note.’
‘No,’ Margy said. ‘I wouldn’t want to be here without you, Ed.’
All her good spirits and the cheeky banter she’d been sharing with Ed evaporated. She knew why they were here. To get married. Their three daughters thought they already were. Their ten grandchildren had been told they already were. There was even a photograph on their mantelpiece back home of Margy wearing a costume and a hat at a jaunty angle and Ed in a dark-grey suit he’d bought in a sale at the Co-op that they’d had taken on a day out in Lyme Regis. They’d told everyone it was their wedding photo. They’d eloped, they’d said. The truth was they hadn’t wanted to get married. It would have been a shotgun job and Margy hadn’t wanted that – a photo of her stomach in a satin frock looking like she had a baby seal under it and all the pinched looks and pursed lips and disapproval of their respective mothers in all the photos because all the neighbours would know. Goodness, but how different it all was today. Did anyone get married today?
‘And you’ve missed a cue,’ Margy said. ‘You were supposed to say you wouldn’t want to be here without me either, but you didn’t.’
‘I was waiting to find out why your balloon had deflated. You went all serious there. Like the time you put your foot through one of my paintings when you were tidying up – unasked, I don’t need to remind you – and didn’t know how to tell me.’
‘I told you in the end. And I’ve never gone into your shed to tidy up your paintings ever again, have I?’
‘I haven’t painted much either. What with the kids and then the grandkids there’s not been a lot of time.’
‘You could take it up again.’
‘Maybe,’ Ed said. ‘But maybe not. I was never very good.’
‘But you’ve never forgotten I did that, have you? Put my foot through a painting. It’s not like you to bear a grudge, Ed.’
A little shiver of unease rippled up Margy’s spine – what other grudges might he be harbouring? She was too afraid to ask. Too afraid that if it was something they might go on to row about – not that they ever argued much these days, if ever – Ed might pull out of the wedding.
‘It’s not, and I’m not. And all forgiven. Forget I brought the subject up.’ Ed plonked a kiss on top of her head. ‘I don’t know why I did.’
‘Why did you then?’ Margy asked, unable to stop herself.
‘Nerves probably.’
‘You? Nerves? What about?’
‘This wedding thing. I might stumble over the words. Say the wrong ones or something if I don’t hear properly. I’ll have to wear my glasses.’
‘Is that all!’ Margy laughed. She knew Ed had never liked the idea he had to wear glasses these days. ‘Anyway, there’ll be a card to read it all from as well as the person taking the ceremony saying it. I’ve checked.’
‘You’re not letting me off the hook then?’ Ed said, with a wink so Margy would know he was only joking.
She hoped he was only joking but he’d planted a few seeds of doubt in her mind now and she hoped the damned things didn’t germinate any time soon.
‘No,’ she said, blowing a kiss at him. ‘I’ve got a great big hook on the end of my line and I’m going to reel you in!’
‘That’s that sorted then,’ Ed said. ‘That kettle’s boiling its head off, by the way.’
‘You make the tea,’ Margy said. ‘I’ve got lists to write.’
Now they’d registered their residency in the area and booked the registry office for two weeks’ time, all Margy had to do was find a dress to wear, and shoes, and a bag. Oh, and sort flowers. Her head was fizzing with all the possibilities and the romance of it, if she was honest. The young thought they’d invented romance, didn’t they? They shivered in disgust to think about anyone over forty feeling frisky, and being sexy, and just being plain romantic. Ha, if only they knew!
‘What sort of lists?’
‘For the wedding.’
‘Remind me again who’s getting married,’ Ed said.
‘We are!’ Margy laughed. Honestly, Ed found it hard to take anything serious, sometimes, and while that was good in many situations, she wished he’d meet her halfway over this wedding because, so far, he’d left everything to her. ‘So I’ve got my list. Dress, shoes, bag of some sort. Flowers.’
And then, of course, there was the little matter of witnesses to find, seeing as they knew not a single soul in the area.
‘So,’ Margy said, ‘how are we going to go about this?’
‘Go about what?’ Ed asked.
Ed, driving carefully in the narrow lanes towards Totnes, slowed down rather than overtake a cyclist. Margy had her list on her lap, a biro in her hand.
‘Witnesses,’ Margy told him. ‘We have to find some.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, we!’ Margy snapped. She sighed heavily. Honestly, Ed wasn’t taking this seriously enough, was he? Leaving it all to her, as per usual in the fifty years they’d been together. They’d be marrying on their fiftieth wedding anniversary had they had a wedding in the first place, but it would be fifty years since the day they began their life together.
‘Are we having a row?’ Ed asked. ‘Because if we are, could it wait until I’ve safely parked the car?’
Ed couldn’t even take a potential row seriously. Not that they’d had many rows. Only disagreements over how to discipline the girls – or not – when they were younger.
‘No, we’re not having a row,’ Margy said, perhaps a bit too sharply because Ed took his eyes off the road for a brief moment and stared at her before jerking his head to a forward position again. ‘It’s just that I’m not sure your heart is in this wedding.’
I’m goading him, I know I’m goading him. I do it all the time and I wish I didn’t. I’ve got to stop. Now.
‘It’s not,’ Ed said. ‘Weddings are women’s stuff. When has a bloke ever enjoyed planning a wedding? Weddings and marriages aren’t the same thing. And that’s all I’m saying until I’ve parked this bloomin’ car and we’re sitting in some dippy hippy café having coffee and, with a bit of luck, a doorstep wodge of carrot cake or whatever sort of vegetarian stuff they cook up around here. Totnes, the hippy capital of the world, so you said, eh? The things I do for you, Margy Grey!’
‘Not Margy Grey for much longer. I’ll be Margy Ford soon. Legally.’
Ed did a ‘zipping-up’ gesture in front of his mouth and drove on in silence.
‘What’s next?’ Ed said. He ran a tongue around his lips, licking away every last crumb of cake.
‘See, that wasn’t a half bad bit of cake, was it?’
Margy couldn’t help smiling. Ed had rolled his eyes to be told the only cake on offer was courgette and carob because the café had sold out of everything else. Margy had given him one of her looks, not to start complaining or rubbishing
it off – albeit in a jokey way – before he’d tasted it.
‘It was all right. I wished you hadn’t told me what it was though. Courgettes in a cake, for crying out loud. I don’t even eat the watery old things as a vegetable! And what the heck is carob when it’s at home? Who’d have thought it! I kept my eyes shut, though, and told my brain it was chocolate cake because it was vaguely that sort of colour.’
‘And didn’t you look daft doing it?’
‘You know what you’re marrying then, don’t you?’ Ed said, grinning at her. ‘Now, leave a man to get over the shock of courgettes in a cake and whatever else that mystery ingredient was and go and do what we’ve come here to do. What’s first?’
‘The dress first.’ Margy didn’t have the first idea what sort of shops were in Totnes. All she’d read was that the place embraced alternative living in a big way, with therapists of all sorts and communal living and the like. A throwback to the sixties. Maybe she’d find something appropriate here? Something to remind her of what she might have worn had she got married back then?
‘Count me out,’ Ed said. He tidied the cups and saucers and cake plates into a neat pile ready for the waitress. ‘See how well you’ve trained me over the years!’ he quipped.
Margy ignored the quip.
‘What do you mean, count you out?’
‘I need time to recover after that cake,’ Ed said. ‘And anyway, it’s unlucky, isn’t it? For the groom to see the bride’s dress before the big day.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Margy said, a frisson of something she didn’t quite understand in her stomach, like a blob of ice cream dropped into a glass of lemonade. And then a thought hit her – what if their relationship went hideously wrong after all these years? She’d read enough stories in magazines and newspapers about couples who’d been together for years only for their relationships to flounder once they’d made the union legal. That wouldn’t happen to her and Ed, would it?
‘I’m not being daft,’ Ed said. ‘I’m being sensible. When have I not liked a dress or a blouse or whatever that you’ve bought?’
‘You’ve never said you didn’t like something.’
‘There you are then. You could wear what you’re wearing now and it would be all the same to me because I know what’s underneath.’
‘Ed! Keep your voice down. Someone might hear you!’
‘I didn’t mean that sort of underneath. I meant who you are inside whatever fancy rig you cover yourself up with. I meant you, the person I’ll be marrying.’
‘Oh,’ Margy said. This was a strange sort of conversation they were having because Ed didn’t normally do ‘emotional stuff’ as he put it. Or compliments for that matter. ‘That’s nice to hear, but just for the record I don’t remember you ever saying you liked anything I’ve bought either.’
‘Women! I’ll never understand ’em as long as I live! You can take it as read I’ve liked everything. So far. And if I don’t like what you buy I’m not daft enough that I’d tell you. Now off you go. Same as usual? I sit with a pint in a pub somewhere and wait for you to pitch up with half a dozen bags? Then we do lunch?’
‘You’re driving. I know that’s what we do at home but we always go by bus, don’t we?’
‘We do. But you could drive back.’
‘What? Through all those little lanes?’
‘Yep. The same little lanes I drove down to get here, only in reverse. Not the car in reverse, I mean…’
‘I know what you mean!’ Margy said, a bit more snippily than she’d meant it to sound. But maybe Ed did have a point about it being unlucky for the groom to see the bride’s dress before the big day? And why shouldn’t she drive? Ed had driven for six hours to get to their holiday chalet and would drive back. ‘All right. I’ll give the driving some thought. After I’ve bought my dress.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Ed said and tapped Margy on the bottom as she got up to leave.
Girl? Goodness!
It seemed strange shopping for clothes without one of her daughters with her. They kept her in check. Stopped her getting too ‘beige’ in her choices as she got older. Stopped her buying cardigans unless they came in bright, jewel shades and were made with some sort of randomly shaded wool or knitted up in complicated, fancy patterns.
Margy wandered in and out of charity shops. You could get a good class of clothes in some charity shops and the ones here seemed to echo that. After all, why spend a fortune on something she’d wear only once, she told herself, at this stage in her life? Ed was going to be wearing a pair of cream chinos with a blue-and-white striped shirt and navy jacket. She considered a multicoloured Monsoon, ankle-length dress in the second charity shop she went into. But it was as though she could hear her middle daughter – Louise – saying, ‘No, Mum, you’ve got great ankles, don’t hide them.’
‘Not that one either,’ she heard her eldest – Libby – say in a shop called Susie’s.
‘What’s wrong with lace?’ she said.
And it was only when the saleslady said, ‘Nothing, madam. It will look lovely on you,’ that Margy realised she’d spoken out loud.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Margy said, as lovely as it was – shell-pink with a deep V neck and asymmetric hem. At least one of her ankles would be on show so Louise wouldn’t be able to admonish her for hiding them.
‘Are you looking for something for a special occasion?’ the saleslady asked.
‘Yes. A wedding. Mine.’
‘Second time around?’
‘No. First.’
And then, before she could be drawn further into a conversation she didn’t want about having daughters and grandchildren and wanting to tidy things up in the finance department before she and Ed became gaga with dementia or got some horrid illness, she fled the shop.
Only when she got outside did she realise she was crying.
Get a grip, Margy told herself as she stood staring into the shoe-shop window without actually seeing. All the shoe colours seemed to mash together, like a cracked kaleidoscope. She had to meet up with Ed later with something. Shoes would be a start. What was it the Duchess of Cambridge always wore on her feet? Beige heels? No, not beige – nude. Laura, her youngest, had corrected her when Margy had questioned why the Duchess always wore beige shoes.
‘They’re nude, Mum,’ Laura said.
‘Well, they look beige to me,’ Margy had countered. ‘You know, the same colour you won’t let me wear in cardigans or jackets.’
Laura had wagged a finger at her playfully.
‘Now, now, play fair. Wearing nude shoes means you can wear absolutely any other colour anywhere else on your body and there won’t be a clash. And besides, they lengthen the leg visually.’
‘That’s a mercy, that it’s only visually,’ Margy said. Her legs were so long she often had trouble finding jeans that ended at her ankles and not halfway up her leg. And crops were not a good idea in winter, however wonderful they might be on a hot day in summer for keeping her cool. Ah yes, jeans. Margy’s girls were proud of the fact she wore jeans still at sixty-nine. They forbade her to call them trousers, even when they were in white or turquoise or red or… dare she even think it?… beige.
‘Nude it is then, Laura,’ Margy said to herself as she made her way into the shop. It was as though she had Laura – dare she even think of her as her favourite daughter? – with her now. No, she loved them equally but she felt, perhaps, more protective of Laura, whose youngest son, Marco, was quite severely autistic. ‘High heels.’
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Ed asked when she eventually joined him at the King William for lunch. He was on his second pint and, if the packets on the table were an indicator of what he’d eaten, had munched his way through two packets of crisps and a bag of salted cashews.
‘I had a bit of a wobble in the dress shop,’ Margy said. ‘I suddenly missed the girls and I’m not sure now that we’re doing the right thing having this wedding without them. I saw something I liked but wasn’t sure – on
e of them would have told me had they been here.’
Ed put his hand over Margy’s.
‘Buckle up, buttercup,’ he said. ‘They’re lovely girls but they’re not always right, you know. Trust your own judgement. You were right about me, way back then, weren’t you? Despite your parents thinking I was the boyfriend from hell because I rode a motorbike.’
‘And a Barbour jacket that left wax up my fingernails.’
‘I bought you a crash helmet though, didn’t I? Even though it wasn’t the law that you had to wear one back then.’
‘You did,’ Margy said.
There had been quite a few new motorbike jackets for Ed – as he’d grown more portly – between then and now. And a fair few crash helmets as well as fashions changed.
‘I can still get my leg over,’ Ed said.
‘Ed! Keep your voice down. Whatever will people think, saying things like that out loud?’
‘I don’t know what’s going on in that saucy mind of yours but I’m talking about the motorbikes. I can still swing my leg over and kick-start the blooming things. Well, most of the time I can.’
Ed had six motorbikes – all vintage, all bought for a song years ago but worth a fortune now. They were his pride and joy, and he still rode them, in rotation, once a week when he met up with like-minded pals. Margy had got quite used to being a motorbike widow, the way some women were golf widows and the like. It was being a widow sort of widow she didn’t want to think about.
‘Oh dear, you’re looking a bit maudlin. What’s up?’
‘Nothing’s up. I was just thinking about you on a motorbike and us not getting any younger.’
‘Then stop thinking. How about we have some lunch? You have just the one small glass of something white and fizzy and then you walk it off before you drive me back to the chalet? We’ll go and look at that dress and…’
Summer at 23 the Strand Page 27