by Maeve Haran
To Claudia’s relief, Gaby said nothing more about getting her friend Beth to give her away, and certainly nothing about calling off the wedding.
Across the tea table loaded with scones, clotted cream and cake, Claudia caught her father Len’s eye. They both smiled with unspoken relief that her mother had emerged from the long dark tunnel.
After the last crumbs were polished off, Gaby announced that she and Douglas were heading for the pub.
Don raised an enquiring eyebrow at Claudia to see if she wanted to join them. Memories of Daniel jostled into her mind, but all she felt was foolish and embarrassed rather than sad or regretful. She shook her head.
‘It’s a lovely evening,’ Don suggested, ‘why don’t we take Vito for a walk? They’ll be an hour at least.’
They collected the dog from the cottage and strolled out over the fields. The corn was pale gold, rippling in the wind like billowing silk.
‘It really is lovely here.’
Don looked at her in surprise. ‘I thought you still preferred London, that I’d tricked you into leaving under false pretences and trapped you here against your will? Don’t you regret leaving any more?’
Claudia turned to face him. ‘No, Don, I don’t. And neither should you. I think we should both start again. Together.’
He said nothing but kept on walking. Above them skylarks soared and sang their mysterious hidden melody.
‘Like happiness,’ Claudia sighed. ‘Near but just out of reach.’
‘Let’s grab it, then,’ Don replied, taking her hand. ‘Soon we’ll be old and ill. If we’re ever going to be happy it had better be bloody now!’
‘That’s the most romantic proposal I’ve ever had,’ Claudia announced.
‘Come on, you old boot, beat you to that stile before we both need hip replacements!’
Together they ran, breathless and laughing, while Vito barked deliriously at this mad and unfamiliar new game.
By the time they got back to the cottage, they were surprised to find no sign of Gaby and Douglas.
‘Must have stayed in the pub. Hang on, there’s a note on the table.’
He picked it up, full of misgiving that the wedding would be cancelled after all.
‘It’s just a message. Ella rang; she’ll be here at 8 a.m. tomorrow with the flowers. Ditto the Flying Carpet people.’ He looked up, grinning. ‘The happy couple have gone upstairs for a snooze and will see us later. Looks like there’s going to be a wedding after all.’
The following day, respecting the fragile peace, they all kept out of each other’s way. By the time Ella’s hired van, loaded with flowers, pulled up outside their cottage, Claudia almost leapt on her.
‘My God, am I glad to see you! I thought we weren’t going to have a bloody wedding.’
‘That’s a relief since I’ve spent a small fortune on crème de la crème roses and calla lilies! Why ever not?’ She handed Claudia a huge cardboard box to carry inside. ‘Now where are we going to keep these? These are the bride’s and the bridesmaids’ bouquets.’ She indicated two more. ‘That one’s for the pew ends, the other is the centrepieces. The big decorations for the church are still in the van.’
‘So why did you think there wouldn’t be a wedding?’ They were carrying the boxes of flowers into a shady outbuilding so that they wouldn’t wilt.
‘Oh God, Ella, where do I start? Gaby found out Don had been texting his old school flame and it turns out that he knew about my crush on the choir master all along. I think we both were just cross with each other and had stopped caring.’
‘Are you and Don all right now?’ Ella asked sternly. ‘Out of the four of us, you’re the only one who’s still married, so get your act together, girl!’
‘I think we’re OK now. I hope so, which is at least progress.’
‘In case you were thinking of leaving, can I tell you something? It’s quite tough on your own.’ Claudia took the flowers from her friend. Ella was the last person to complain, even when fate had played the dirtiest of tricks. ‘I don’t advise trying it, unless you absolutely have to. Especially at our age. Look at it this way, women live a lot longer than men, so even if he has got annoying little habits like falling for someone he hasn’t seen for forty years, he doesn’t know that she has fur on her face, grey hair, and never lost her baby weight. Stick with him if you can. Right, end of lecture.’
Claudia felt chastened. Ella was so no-nonsense that they all tended to unburden themselves to her instead of wondering how she coped with life alone.
‘And while you’re about it, why don’t you go away together, Paris maybe? Get the old radical Claudia back.’
‘I think I was only a radical by accident. By the way, Ella Thompson, has anyone told you lately that you’re a wonderful woman?’
‘No one who isn’t wearing a bobble hat and is up to his elbows in fertiliser.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now.’
They went to fetch the last of the flowers from the van. Ella noticed her phone next to the driving seat and checked it for messages. Still no word from Tim McAuley. She’d better forget all about it or it would end up spoiling the wedding for her.
The excitement at the arrival of the Flying Carpet Company struck Claudia as akin to the stir caused by a medieval mummers’ play. Everyone in Little Minsley came out to watch the drama. But then it wasn’t every day that an Indian-inspired marquee appeared in an English village, complete with garlanded arches, birdcage chandeliers, brightly coloured rugs and acres of gold-tasselled velvet curtains.
And even she had to admit the result was highly dramatic. Down one end of the marquee round tables were set out, dressed in ruby and magenta silks, and at the other end a Raj bar, complete with a burnished brass counter top. In between was a small dance floor which would be rolled out and extended for the party afterwards.
Outside, in front of the marquee, a row of harem couches completed the exotic vision. And behind everything the unlikely setting of rolling English acres.
Despite her misgivings, Claudia had to admit it looked amazing.
‘And you haven’t seen the bridal boudoir yet,’ Claudia whispered to Ella. ‘It’s a big secret, even from the best man, because you don’t want an apple-pie bed in a boudoir. But sssh! and I’ll show you.’
‘Wait a minute and I’ll bring some flowers. There’re a few spare I brought to freshen the centrepieces.’
They sneaked away through the patch of woodland beyond the paddock where the marquee was sited, down an overgrown path into the dip beyond a nearby hill. And there, nestling in a hidden dell, was a jewel-bright Bedouin tent. Inside was a king-size bed, a table and two chairs, red and purple rugs and dozens of tea lights in coloured glass containers.
‘They even come and light the candles for you later.’
‘It’s fabulous!’ Ella congratulated, making Claudia feel better that she’d given in and agreed to it even though it had meant cashing in an ISA. ‘Though why they all bother with wedding nights when they already live together, I don’t know.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like my mother.’
Ella laughed. ‘I’m beginning to feel like your mother.’ She sat down on a stool and began arranging the posy she’d bought.
Claudia sat beside her. ‘You’re not feeling old, are you? You’ve always been like the bunny on the TV ad with the long-life battery.’
‘Well, my battery’s running down a bit. I think I’m ready for slippers by the fire and supper on one of those special trays in front of the telly.’
‘Ella!’
‘Is it breaking the Coven Code if I want to admit I’m nearly sixty-four and feeling it? I’m beginning to long for the days when sixty was sixty and not the new forty.’
‘We’d better get back. The bride will be surfacing. Time to deck her out in all her non-virginal glory.’
Sal and Lara were sharing a leisurely breakfast at the comfortable country hotel two miles from Little Minsley which Lara had found on the Inter
net.
‘So, when are you going to tell them about your mastectomy?’ Lara handed over the basket of patisseries. ‘Promise me one thing. You are going to tell them.’
‘They’ll probably guess anyway. Claudia saw me with you at the hospital, remember, and Ella’s got a lawyer’s eye for noticing everything. She’s already been asking why she hasn’t seen me for so long. I have to be careful, though. This is a wedding, it’s supposed to be joyous, even when people only give the couple a month. I don’t want to spoil things.’
‘Tell them. They’ll be angry if you don’t. You have a major operation next week, for heaven’s sake! They will want to stand by you.’
‘I know. The trouble is, I should have told them at the beginning.’
‘Remember your boss. She was fine about it. Maybe they will be too.’
‘That’s true.’ Sal brightened. ‘I will tell them, as soon as the right moment arrives. Now, which of my cancer-distracting outfits do you think I should wear?’
Sal had brought two: a bluebell-coloured trouser suit with a Nehru collar and tiny buttons, and a fuchsia-pink sheath dress. ‘The thing is, I want to wear the pink wig. In memory of Rachel.’
‘Are you sure? The other wig looks more natural.’
‘Screw natural! What I need today is chutzpah!’
‘You’ll certainly need that,’ Lara replied dubiously.
Sal took her hand. ‘Today I am intending to tell my three best friends that I have cancer and also that I have a wonderful, beautiful daughter. Wearing a pink wig will help me keep my nerve.’
‘It had better be the blue trouser suit, then, or they’ll think you are in – how do you say it in English – fancy dress?’
Laura was feeling too short of cash to indulge in a hotel and she intended to get a lift back from Calum after the party, but she did allow herself a new hat.
Trying on hats was one of those irresistible temptations she always indulged in whenever she was passing through a department store. Unlike most people, hats suited Laura. She had no idea if it was the shape of her face, the fact that people told her she was a ‘pretty’ woman, or the simple fact that she enjoyed wearing them, but she was definitely a hat person.
So she had spent a happy half-hour trying out feathered fascinators, enormous straw hats straight from My Fair Lady, and tiny pink pillboxes complete with jewelled veils. She settled on a taupe straw creation that perched jauntily on the side of her head, giving her the air of an optimistic wartime bride. It would go very well with the silky wrap dress she had last worn on that disastrous trip to Brighton which had heralded the end of her marriage. There was no reason to waste the dress just because the marriage didn’t work out.
She paused for a moment in the shoe department that took up an entire floor and eyed the perfect suede slingbacks. Then she saw the price tag. They’d probably only hurt her feet and she’d take them off anyway. Laura sighed. But she wasn’t given to bitterness and bile, so she decided to concentrate on the thought that for the first time in months she and her friends would be together again. She hoped they would all be at the same table and that Claudia hadn’t succumbed to that irritating hostess-like habit of putting them with interesting new people when all they wanted was to gossip with each other.
On the way back to the car she had to pass through the flower shop. A bunch of bright parrot tulips caught her eye. They were red and purple with exotic stripes of green and yellow. They were so extravagantly colourful, so shamelessly alluring, that she longed to buy them, but there was no way she could justify the cost.
If her marriage had continued, she could have had flowers like this in every room.
But all the tulips in Amsterdam couldn’t compensate for a miserable marriage.
Her phone buzzed and she checked it. There was a message from Helena Butler, the woman who’d approached her at LateExpress, asking her to call back.
Maybe things were looking up.
Claudia looked up at the sky above the gloriously gaudy marquee. Thank God the weather seemed to be holding out. She and Ella were putting the centrepieces out on each round table. ‘They’re perfect, Ella. Thank you so much.’
They sat down side by side on one of the harem couches, Claudia’s rollered hair hidden under a scarf. ‘The bride’s having hers done first, then all the bridesmaids. Why don’t you and I have a glass of champagne while we’re waiting?’ She went and fetched a bottle and two glasses from behind the Raj bar. ‘We never went for all this wedding extravaganza stuff, did we? Don and I were hitched in the registry office then went for a curry.’
Ella took a slug of the champagne. ‘Laurence and I didn’t get married at all till after Julia. Weird how they all want to go rushing down the aisle in white dresses.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t. I look terrible in white, anyway.’ Claudia looked at her watch. ‘Eleven o’clock. I’d better get back and start behaving like the bride’s mother. I wonder if Gaby will want all that something borrowed, something blue stuff.’
‘Claudia,’ Ella shook her head in mock disbelief, ‘of course she will. It’s in the handbook.’
Claudia picked up the bride’s and bridesmaids’ bouquets. ‘Let’s hope everyone’s still talking to each other.’
Relative harmony seemed to be reigning when she got back to the house in time to help Gaby with her dress. The bridesmaids had had their hair done and were dressed and waiting.
Gaby had opted to do her own make-up. ‘I’d rather Douglas could recognize the woman he’s marrying – which is more than you can say for most brides once the make-up artist’s finished with them.’
Her veil was draped over a chair next to the circlet of fresh flowers Ella had made her. Next to it the dress, discovered by Gaby on the Internet, just as she had sourced her husband, rippled to the ground in a waterfall of ivory silk.
Claudia helped her to step into it.
She rested her head on Gaby’s bare shoulder for an instant as they both surveyed the effect in the mirror.
‘You look perfect.’
Gaby smiled. ‘I’m glad we didn’t call the whole thing off.’
Claudia grinned. ‘So am I.’ And she realized she meant it. ‘Would you like to wear my sapphire earrings? They could be borrowed, old and blue all in one fell swoop.’
‘And I’m wearing a new thong I just bought, so that’s got that covered.’
The rest of the bridal party, still a little strained, had gathered outside to wait for the cars. Len and Olivia got in first, with Douglas’s parents, followed by Claudia and the maid of honour, with Don and Gaby in the final one.
‘My little Gabriella,’ Don murmured, misty-eyed and unable to say more as Gaby appeared in all her bridal finery.
Ella stayed out in the sunshine drinking another glass of champagne, hoping things would be all right when Neil and Wenceslaus found they were both at the same party. She took one last quick look at the arrangements on the pew-ends to make sure they hadn’t wilted.
No, they were beautiful.
The terrifying thought suddenly invaded her mind that she might soon be homeless. She could renege on the sale, but that would be against her personal code.
Maybe she’d better have another drink.
The wedding was at four and by three-thirty, following the maxim ‘Never be late for weddings or funerals unless you’re the bride or the corpse’, the guests started arriving, just as Ella finished the tour of all her flower arrangements. She slipped out of the side door and ran back to Claudia’s to change.
Finally it was all going ahead.
Claudia found she could breathe properly for the first time in days. She was seated in the front row, the music had started up and her only child was walking down the aisle on her father’s arm in her perfect yet ludicrously expensive dress, looking blissfully happy while her bridegroom smiled at her over his shoulder.
And Gaby had been right about the church. While the Flying Carpet Company might perfectly deliver an extravagant eastern fa
ntasy for the reception, there was nothing like a small country church to provide the perfect mix of gravity and simple beauty for the wedding service.
‘Great dress,’ a voice whispered.
Claudia turned to find Ella behind her in a fetching feathered hat. ‘Must have cost a bomb to look that simple.’
Pachelbel’s Canon drew to a close and it was finally time for the exchange of vows. Gaby and Douglas in turn made their solemn promise to love each other ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health, to love and cherish, till death us do part’.
Throughout the church the congregation sniffed, acknowledging how very hard to keep these vows were, how they themselves had mostly failed, and, at the same time, hoping that this young couple might be different and manage it.
In the row behind, Laura was struggling to remain in control. The wedding vows, so familiar and yet so powerful, were proving too much for her. When she had uttered them to Simon at her own wedding, she had meant every word. She had imagined a life bound together through good times and through bad, with death, not divorce, as their only parting.
A hand gently tapped her, offering a handkerchief. Laura thanked the giver and was directed to someone who was watching her from two rows behind. It was Sal, and for some bizarre reason she appeared to be wearing sunglasses and a pink wig.
‘I love you, Gabriella,’ Don whispered to his daughter as she stood at the church door waiting to greet her guests, ‘I think you’ve picked a better man than me.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ Gaby blew him a kiss.
Outside in the churchyard a small group of musicians playing ancient instruments led the guests back along the village street towards the marquee while people all along the street threw open doors and windows and waved good luck to the newly wedded couple.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Sal squeezed Laura’s arm, ‘I feel as if I’m in some medieval woodcut of a wedding. Are you all right now?’
Laura nodded tearfully. ‘I didn’t even bring a hankie. I thought I’d seen through the values of marriage for good and all.’