by Adale Geras
‘Jocelyn,’ Emily heard her mother say, ‘but please call me Joss. Everyone does. And this is Bob, my husband.’
‘Delighted,’ said Bob. Emily felt proud of her father, who was not exactly pushing sixty but sort of waving at it as it came closer. He was still quite good-looking, with, as he put it, ‘all my own hair and teeth’. He was getting a bit thick around the waist, and no one could call him really handsome, but he had a pleasant face and Emily noticed that Maureen was one of those women who turn up the wattage when they have a man in front of them at whom they can direct their smiles.
‘I must apologize for my husband,’ she purred. ‘You’re at the mercy of the system in his work. He’s an anaesthetist in a big hospital. I always think that’s such a terrifying responsibility.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Bob, and then, ‘I’ll go and get us a glass of wine, shall I? Shan’t be long. And I’m sure you two have a great deal to talk about.’
Emily caught the panic in her mother’s eyes, but she needn’t have worried. Maureen had turned her attention to what was outside the open French window.
‘This is a really amazing house and garden, isn’t it? For Clapham … ’ Was there a suggestion in her voice that Clapham was some kind of shanty town, Emily thought, or am I being uncharitable and imagining it? No, it was there all right: a badly disguised astonishment that an urban house could be so relatively spacious and have such a huge garden.
‘Charlotte inherited it from her husband, who died about ten years ago. They were devoted.’
Emily noticed that Ma wasn’t going into detail about how that husband had been Charlotte’s second, and wondered whether Adrian had said anything to his mother. She assumed that Zannah must have told him about Charlotte’s past, but maybe not. I’ll ask her tonight, she thought. Surely even Adrian with the ‘high standards’ he kept going on about wouldn’t let something that was so far in the past and of so little relevance to anything, make a difference to his marriage plans?
‘How very sad!’ said Maureen. ‘But this is a splendid house. And so well-maintained … ’
She was fishing. Emily could see it in the way she was bending her head, as if she wanted to absorb any information that might be forthcoming. How, it was clear she was longing to ask, did a woman of over seventy manage? The pristine state of the decoration in Charlotte’s house had always been a topic of amusement in the Gratrix family. Ma and Pa, Emily thought, believed in basic cleanliness and Ma wanted beautiful things around her and sort of believed in tidiness, but any kind of painting, wallpapering, carpet-laying skills, any DIY know-how whatsoever, had passed them by. The ‘make your house gorgeous’ gene was totally missing from their DNA.
Her father had an excuse. He was a professor. Papers and books over every surface was part of the job description. Sheets of notes and tottering piles of books obscured almost the entire surface of his desk. His computer was covered with dust even though it was constantly in use. The joke at home was: you couldn’t see Pa when he was typing furiously for the clouds rising from the keyboard. His study had been a no-go area for years. But her mother … well, Joss had very strong views about what was beautiful (she was a poet, wasn’t she?) but she could easily get carried away gazing at the heavenliness of a vase of tulips on the kitchen dresser and miss entirely the fact that the whole place could do with a coat of paint. Artistic, imaginative, dreamy but impractical: that was Ma.
‘Charlotte has a lot of help in the house,’ she was saying now. ‘One of her lodgers … well, friends really … she has two friends who live here with her, both a little younger than she is. Anyway, one of them, Edie, has a son who’s very good with his hands and that’s been useful. And Val … that’s her other friend, Valerie … is a passionate gardener herself and gets help with the heavy work.’
‘What a stroke of luck!’
Emily thought she detected a note of rather grudging envy in Maureen’s voice but perhaps, she conceded, she wasn’t being fair. Joss was busy explaining Charlotte’s domestic arrangements and making a muddle of it. Emily longed to interrupt and say something along the lines of: She’s got a chap who helps Val in the garden and someone else who comes to clean and Edie’s son helps in all sorts of ways. And she manages very nicely thank you, with the money Gus left her and what the others pay her to live here. They play bridge with Nadia who lives down the road and have a whale of a time. So there!
Maureen and Joss had now stepped out on to the terrace, which was always called that and not the patio. Patio, Zannah declared, was too Brookside for words. In Emily’s opinion, this flagged space was rather small for a terrace but definitely bigger than a patio. Three steps led down to the lawn, which was smooth and unmarked and stretched for quite a long way to the hawthorn bushes blossoming into clouds of pink near the high wall at the end of the garden. The borders were crowded with plants whose names Emily didn’t know, interspersed with rose bushes, just on the point of blooming, ceanothus (fluffy flowers exactly the same colour as a blue liquorice allsort) and camellia bushes (some with the odd cluster of pink petals still hanging on but mostly just glossy leaves). It was hard to tell from Maureen’s back whether this sight was impressing her. All Emily could see was the rear view of the blue silk jacket she was wearing, and the almost helmet-like perfection of her hair, swept up into a French pleat of totally non-brassy and almost insufferably subtle blondeness. This signalled a fortune spent at some salon that you had to put your name down for practically at birth. Her own mother’s thick, dark, short hair, which was beginning to show grey in places, shone in the sun. It was well, if unimaginatively, cut by Maggie, who’d been doing it in exactly the same style for years and years. From behind, though, Ma seemed much younger than Maureen: almost like a girl with her slim figure and her rather Bohemian style. Maureen looked definitely middle-aged. I’m glad she’s not going to be my mother-in-law, Emily thought and longed for the party to be over so that she could discuss her with Zannah.
‘You all right, Chick?’
‘Pa! Stop it!’ Emily grinned at her father, who, she knew, had come to her in refugee mode: fleeing the social chitchat he would have had to make with other people. ‘I’m too old for Chick.’
‘Not for me you’re not. You’re my baby and always will be. How d’you feel about Zannah’s wedding faradiddle? Is your nose even the least bit out of joint? Your secret is safe with me.’
‘I’d rather be put in the oven with an apple in my mouth, if you want the honest truth. It’s not my thing, but Zannah likes it, so … ’ She let her voice fade away.
‘You’re being kind and supportive. Good for you.’
‘Well, only up to a point. I’m enjoying my role as Devil’s Advocate. I’m the one who points out other things she might do instead of pouring large quantities of money into this wedding. Does she listen? Three guesses. She might look pretty and wafty but you know how stubborn she is. Not in a nasty way, but like a cat. They never do what you want them to do either, do they? But they’re so elegant and lovely that you indulge them while they pursue their own furry agendas. That’s what Zannah’s like. She does what she wants, but in the nicest possible way.’
‘She relies on you a lot, you know. So do I. Who else would sit and sort out bits of old pottery with me for hours?’
‘I don’t do that much any more, though, do I? It’s hard to sort pottery long-distance.’
‘I know you’re with me in spirit,’ said Pa. ‘That’s the main thing. I’d better go and socialize, I suppose. Much rather stay here with you, but needs must.’
Emily was watching him make his way towards Charlotte (another easy conversational option) when someone touched her shoulder.
‘You’re miles away, Em,’ Adrian said, smiling at her, ‘but I’m about to make an announcement I’m sure you won’t want to miss.’
He was holding out a glass of champagne and Emily took it obediently, then went to stand with everyone else on the terrace. She remembered, with a small twinge of pain, the row
dy evening in the local pub when Cal had told a gang of friends that he and Zannah were about to get married. No fuss, no parents around, and an unassuming agate ring bought from the local health-food shop, which did a cool line in semi-precious stones set in silver. Friends, pints of beer and cider, laughter, casual clothes. Zannah was radiantly happy and I was miserable because I knew that Cal would be out of reach for ever. How awful it had been having to act ecstatic because of not wanting to hurt Zannah.
‘Okay, everyone,’ Adrian said. ‘I’ll ask you all to drink a toast to Suzannah, who has made me the happiest man in the whole world by agreeing to marry me.’
Cliché watch, Emily thought. Let’s count ‘em. She knew she was being unkind. If you couldn’t use clichés on an occasion like this, when could you? Everyone did it, so why should Adrian be any different?
‘It’s a shame Doc’s not here yet, but I’m sure he’ll be along as soon as he can and, meanwhile, I know everyone’s getting hungrier and hungrier, so I’d just like to say, Zannah and I are going to be married and we’ve all been invited by Mrs Parrish … sorry, Charlotte’ (with a graceful nod and smile at her), ‘to celebrate the occasion. I did try to persuade my lovely bride to accept a diamond or two but she wasn’t having that. She’s more determined than she looks, which you all know, of course, and this is what she chose.’
He took Zannah’s hand in his, and slid a ring on to her finger. Emily had seen it but everyone sighed to indicate how lovely they thought it was, and how well it suited her. It was a large antique ruby in a simple gold setting: square and plain and just right with Zannah’s colouring. She held out her hand and turned it so that the stone caught the sunlight and Isis, Emily noticed, was struck into uncharacteristic silence, her eyes wide at the sight of such splendour.
‘We’ve agreed on a date,’ Adrian went on, ‘and I hope it suits everyone. The first Saturday of the May half-term, next year. In other words, a year from today. It’ll be May the twenty-seventh and Zannah will have a week away from school to go off with me on a short honeymoon. I’m not saying a word about where that’s going to be, but plans are afoot.’
Everyone laughed. They raised their glasses and drank to what Emily was afraid would be known, from this day forward, as the happy couple.
‘Zannah and Adrian!’ everyone said and Emily joined in the toast, smiling with the others. ‘Congratulations!’
*
‘Look, Mum,’ said Isis. ‘I put those bits of parsley round the mousse. Those ones.’
‘Lovely, darling,’ said Zannah.
‘And the strawberries. I helped put the strawberries on top of the lemon tart. That’s fiddly work, Charlotte says. You’ll see when it’s time for pudding.’
‘I’m sure they’ll look terrific, sweetheart,’ said Adrian, leaning across Zannah slightly and smiling, then starting to speak to Zannah before Isis could come back with another remark. She made a face and turned her attention to the food on the plate in front of her, which was much nicer than school food and nicer than Mum’s food too, though Isis decided not to say so because she didn’t want to hurt Mum’s feelings. They’d had green soup first, with cream swirled into it. Charlotte said it was made out of watercress. There were big plates covered with slices of ham and chicken decorated with green leafy bits that weren’t parsley, and the salmon mousse, which was what Isis liked best. In the kitchen, waiting to be brought in, were two huge round tarts in enormous glass dishes. One was apple and the other was the lemon one Isis had helped to decorate. The knives and forks were heavy to hold, but they were silver and probably the sort of things you’d have on your table if you were a princess.
Adrian and Mum had their heads very close together. Mum was blushing. She loved Adrian. Isis remembered how upset she’d been when Mum first told her this.
‘But you loved Dad once,’ she’d pointed out. ‘Maybe you could love him again, if you really tried.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, Isis,’ Mum said. She sounded sad. ‘You can’t help falling in love with someone. Adrian and I love one another. And we love you too, of course.’
‘Adrian doesn’t. He’s not my dad. How can he love me?’
‘He loves you because you’re my daughter and he loves me. After we’re married, we’ll be a family.’
‘What about Dad?’ A sudden terror seized Isis.
‘He’ll always be your dad. He’ll always love you best in the world. That won’t change. And you’ll still see him a lot, just as you do now.’
‘And will Granny Ford still be my granny, even though you and Dad aren’t together?’
‘Of course she will. Dad’ll take you to see her, don’t worry.’
Isis felt a little better after that, and remembered those words whenever Adrian annoyed her, which he did sometimes, even though mostly he was nice to her and brought her small presents practically every time he came to the flat. She’d noticed that when they were alone together, he didn’t speak to her. Not properly. He just made a remark about something he thought she might be interested in, but he never waited to see what she said back and he never went on with the conversation for longer than he could help. He found things to do: reading the paper till Mum was ready to go out with him, or turning on the TV and watching something boring like sport. Isis didn’t know if he did this because he was dying to see what was in the paper, or because he didn’t want to talk to her for any longer than he had to. As soon as Mum came into the room, he changed and became all smiley and friendly. He even told her how pretty she was looking sometimes.
The main good thing about Adrian was that he wanted the wedding to be a real, proper wedding with flowers and lovely dresses and best of all, a bridesmaid. That was what Isis was going to be and she was so excited by the idea that she’d long ago stopped worrying about whether she really liked Adrian or not. When Mum or Grandma asked her how she and Adrian were getting on, Isis always said that everything was fine. Which it mostly was.
All the grown-ups were talking: Em to Grandpa, Grandma to Adrian’s mother, who’d asked to be called Auntie Maureen, which was stupid, because she wasn’t an auntie, and also to Charlotte (who was Grandma’s auntie but liked to be called Charlotte) and Mum to Adrian. Adrian’s dad was late. Isis didn’t know his name but supposed he’d be Uncle Something. She picked up the heavy silver fork and began to eat the salmon mousse which was delicious and a really mega-cool colour. Perhaps, she thought, I could have a salmon-mousse-pink bridesmaid’s dress.
*
Zannah glanced round the table and recognized what she was feeling as happiness. She closed her eyes briefly, wanting to hold the moment in her mind; wanting to be able to bring it back and remember it over and over again. Darling Isis, Ma and Pa, Charlotte, Em, even Maureen … they all seemed absorbed in harmonious and delightful conversations. They’d have to get down to business later on; after coffee perhaps. This lunch was not just to get the two families together, but also to start a discussion about the venue for the wedding. Everyone agreed that this was the most important decision of all, and Zannah was determined that every arrangement should be made in an unhurried and unflustered state, where options could be rationally debated. She’d heard enough stories about families practically coming to blows over wedding plans and she was determined to avoid unpleasantness. Everyone, she was sure, would go out of their way to be helpful, but Em’s reaction when she’d told her this had dismayed her.
‘What you mean is,’ she had said, ‘you’re sure that everyone will roll over and do exactly what you want them to do. You don’t see how they could fail to agree with you. I reckon you might get a rude shock.’
‘I do not mean that!’ Zannah had retorted, but now, thinking it over, she could see there was something in what Em said. She had made up her mind about certain things and anyone wanting to change it was going to have their work cut out.
I won’t worry about that now, she told herself. The food is perfect, the house is beautiful. And Adrian. Thinking about him made Zannah fee
l faint. She remembered him beside her in bed last night and felt heat rising to her face. Sometimes, when a darker mood came over her, a tiny voice whispered in her ear saying, The sex is so good, Zannah. Are you sure you’re not being overwhelmed by it? Have you lost your critical faculties in a tide of lust? The answers, of course, were always the same: no, and no.
Adrian Whittaker was handsome, clever, and he worked for an investment bank in the City at a job he enjoyed. He was, he told her from time to time, ‘doing rather well considering I’m only thirty-one’.
Zannah thought he earned a ridiculous amount of money. ‘It’s not fair,’ she’d told Adrian, early in their relationship. Teachers work far harder than bankers, plus we’re dealing with kids, real people, all day long. You do nothing but stare at a computer and move notional sums of money around. You go out for a boozy lunch most days. I should be the one with a silly salary.’
‘When we’re married, darling,’ Adrian answered, ‘what’s mine will be yours. You can leave your school and become a lady of leisure.’
The offer, Zannah was sure, was kindly meant but at once she felt a prickle of resentment. ‘I’ll do no such thing,’ she said. ‘I love my job. I love being a teacher and I’d be a useless lady of leisure.’
‘You could paint. You’re always saying you wish you had time for that.’
That was true, Zannah reflected. She’d married Cal even before she graduated from St Martin’s School of Art, and had then become pregnant with Isis before she’d had a chance to try being an artist. She was pretty sure she didn’t have the talent to make it, but it would be good, she sometimes thought, to have the luxury of trying. Still, as things turned out, she found she did have a talent for teaching, and a genuine liking for the children in her care. What she’d said to Adrian was no more than the truth. Her college friends were in advertising and PR, and some were even teaching art, just like her. There wasn’t, as far as she knew, a single full-time artist among them. Only the Tracey Emins of the world actually made a living from Art, which, when she thought of it in this context, always had a capital letter.