The Brimstone Wedding

by Barbara Vine

  Stella did laugh, but not unkindly. In my family we all respect the powers that guard us, my nan and Mum and my sister Janis and my brother Nick and even my dad, though he denies it. But if refusing to change your sock if you've put it on inside-out and blaming your troubles on a green car aren't superstition, I don't know what is. Still, it's not a word we like. We prefer to talk of supernatural powers or the weird. Stella hadn't noticed the date, I suppose, or wouldn't have thought much about it if she had. It made me feel I needed special protection, I needed luck that day, for I needed the good thing to happen in the evening. And unless I took steps what chance did I have on the 13th?

  When I'd finished the bed, I collected up Stella's washing for the laundry. She always folds everything and puts it in the laundry bag so that it's no trouble. Something unusual that morning was that she was watching me, and watching me intently. I sensed it even when I wasn't looking at her. I began to have a really powerful feeling that any minute she was going to break through the barrier and say she wanted to talk seriously to me. I was growing more and more uncomfortable by the minute. I went into the bathroom and replaced the towels with fresh ones, touching wood all the time, the underside of the counter, the roller the toilet roll was on, even Stella's wooden-backed hairbrush. When I came out she'd turned the will over, or turned a page of it over, and she looked up at me and smiled.

  I didn't want that to happen, what I knew was going to happen. Let's face it, in these places old people are always being well, manipulated is the word, I think – to remember the nurse or the carer in their will. In the years I've been at Middleton Hall I've seen it time and time again, I've seen Lena herself try it on with at least two of the residents. Maybe she succeeded with Edith, we shall see, but she was always talking to her about disposing of one's money to do the maximum good and remembering those who had been of real service ‘in the evening of one's days’. That, and telling her she could have her solicitor come to Middleton Hall if she wanted to, just say the word. I've seen enough to make me resolve to have nothing to do with it. It made me shiver to think there were some who'd say I only spent so much time with Stella because I was after her money. It made me sick to think I might have to face up to the fact that perhaps I had – if I was in that will.

  So I was going to take care I wasn't in it. I was going to get fierce and maybe rude, and of course I didn't want that, I dreaded that. But why else would she have got on to her solicitors to send her the will? And who else would be a what-d'you-call-it, a beneficiary, but me that only the day before she had called her friend? So I didn't smile back at her. I asked her if she would like the french windows open, it was going to be another hot day, and she just nodded and said yes please.

  Opening those windows, I hung on to wood. I pressed my fingers into the wood, scared to take them off, and I thanked my stars, my guardian angel, that I'd put on blue.

  Stella said, ‘Genevieve?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, sounding really gruff.

  ‘Do you know how pretty you are?’

  What a shock! You see how touching wood works. Something had deflected Stella from that will and what she'd intended to say. The powerful wood had turned her purpose and my blue clothes had protected me. Of course I didn't answer, I didn't know what to say.

  ‘Not pretty,’ she said, ‘no, that's the wrong word. Beautiful. You're a beautiful girl, Genevieve.’

  ‘I'm not a girl,’ I said. ‘I'm thirty-two.’

  She laughed. Her voice was as sweet as honey and innocent as milk. ‘That's very young, though you don't know it now. It's a pity you don't know it.’ She sighed, I don't know why. ‘Sit down a minute, Genevieve.’

  ‘I mustn't be long,’ I said, which is not what I usually say when she asks me to stay for a bit. But I had my eye on that will. It seemed to be getting larger. I could almost read ‘This is the last will and testament of…’ on it. ‘We've got a busy morning,’ I said, ‘on account of me and Lena and Sharon all going to the funeral at two.’

  ‘Is your husband in London this week?’

  ‘Coming back on Friday,’ I said.

  ‘What exactly are the builders doing?’

  I told her about the three big houses on the edge of Regent's Park that were being gutted and turned into luxury flats. She wanted to know where the men stayed, if it was a hotel or a hostel, and I told her it was a B. and B. in a place called Kilburn. It's been going on for weeks now and they don't expect to be finished till Christmas.

  ‘You must miss him.’

  The funny thing is that I did in a sort of way. You can't understand how I did in my situation, how I could love one man and miss another when he was away, but I was half-glad I missed Mike. On the other hand, I hated to be a hypocrite. I just couldn't sit there and tell Stella I longed for my husband, I couldn't wait till Friday. She was looking at me in a really penetrating way, and I thought, how can I tell her? It was crazy thinking I could tell her, even that she was the one person I could tell. What does she know? Married, widowed, got these two kids, she's so old. She'll have forgotten what sex is, even if she ever liked it, and lots of her generation didn't.

  Then she gave me a shock.

  ‘You told me once you wanted to have children,’ she said. ‘Is there some reason you can't? Perhaps I shouldn't ask. If I've been impertinent you don't have to answer.’

  Nobody had ever, not ever, asked if they'd been impertinent to me before. It made me laugh. I couldn't help it. Her eyebrows went up and she made a funny little cautious sort of smile. I had to say something, so I said, ‘You know how it is, you leave it so long, I mean, thirteen years with us, you just keep putting it off. Don't want to lose your freedom, I reckon. You think to yourself, OK, one day, there's plenty of time, but there's not really, is there?’

  ‘No.’

  Nearly everything I'd said wasn't true. The truth would have taken half an hour to tell and I didn't know what reception it would get. I stood up and as I did so she slipped that will back into the envelope. It was quite a relief, I can tell you. I said, ‘I don't suppose you'd want to come this afternoon, would you?’

  ‘To Edith's funeral?’ She sounded surprised, as well she might. I'd only asked to get off the subject.

  ‘There's a spare seat in the car. You wouldn't have to go in the crem if you didn't want. It's going to be a lovely day and the crem's got beautiful gardens.’

  ‘The crem?’ she said.

  It took me a second or two to understand she didn't know what that was. ‘The crematorium,’ I said, though it's a long word to get one's tongue round.

  She shivered. You know how sometimes when you're cold you hunch your shoulders and give yourself a shake, you do it purposely, I suppose it must make you warmer. Stella didn't shiver like that but as if something from outside affected her and made her body first jump, then tremble.

  ‘Why on earth didn't she choose burial?’

  ‘I don't know,’ I said. I didn't even know if she had chosen or if Lena had made that decision. ‘Cremation's more hygienic.’

  Stella said, quite violently for her, ‘It's horrible!’

  ‘I expect that's a matter of opinion, I said. ‘We can't all feel the same. So you won't come then? You could sit outside in the shade.’

  ‘I don't think so, Genevieve. The garden here is quite beautiful enough.’

  She didn't say it but I knew it was because she doesn't like being in a car. She'll go in one for necessity. I mean, she had to when she came here for instance. The nearest train's at Diss and that's ten miles away, so she didn't have a choice. But she'll never go in a car for pleasure, I don't know why not, perhaps she gets car-sick. I wouldn't ask, it's not my business.

  My nan says that blood must always be shed at a funeral. If it isn't the dead person's ghost will walk. Well, I know there's a lot in these things, I know you've got to protect yourself and others in this life, but there are limits. It turned my stomach after my grandad's funeral seeing a big cut on my nan's hand where she'd let her b
lood to stop him walking.

  Still, having said all that, I had my doubts after we'd watched Edith's coffin slide away and the chapel curtains close. It's a small thing really, but not so small if you don't do it and then something bad happens. So while Lena and Sharon were sort of leaning forward in their seats and covering up their faces to say a prayer, I unpinned the brooch from my jacket lapel, took a deep breath and stuck the pin into the ball of my thumb. It only hurt for a second. A big bubble of blood came welling out.

  We all got back into the car and it was as hot as an oven on mark seven due to having been locked up in the full sun for three-quarters of an hour. Sharon sat in the front beside Lena and I was in the back, which was no hardship to me, as Lena drives like a madbrain. Mike calls where Sharon was sitting the suicide seat, and my dad calls it riding shotgun. Whatever you call it it's the most dangerous seat in a car, yet car-sick people usually feel ill through sitting in the back. Maybe Stella was once in a car accident and that's where she was sitting, in the suicide seat.

  Going to the crematorium we'd taken the by-pass but coming back Lena drove us through the village. Through Stoke Tharby, I mean, my village. She took the road that comes into the High Street by the pub and when I saw where she was going I realized we'd have to pass the house. It's called Rowans but for some reason – well, I know the reason – I call it the house.

  Lena came over the brow of the hill and down the other side at a good sixty. That's crazy, because the road is too narrow for two cars to pass. Her car's too old to have seat-belts in the back, so I held on tight to the seat in front and if Lena didn't like that she'd have to lump it. I was glad I'd pricked my finger at the funeral and I was glad I'd worn blue. There wasn't any wood to touch in the back of Lena's car, only plastic, plastic everywhere. Lena said it was exhilarating driving fast and she couldn't wait to get her new car that would do over a hundred with ease, and I knew she meant when she came into whatever Edith had left her.

  We got to the bottom without mishap. By a piece of luck there hadn't been anything coming in the opposite direction. Sharon doesn't come from round here, she commutes from Norwich, so Lena started pointing places out to her. That's where Jenny lives, she said, the council estate, though in fact the council has sold off all the houses including ours and everybody calls it Chandler Gardens. Everybody but Lena, that is.

  She showed Sharon the church, St Bartholomew's, and the rectory and our village hall. She'd slowed down to a snail's pace. They were thatching a cottage and she wanted Sharon to see. I used to hear about people – well, lovers – getting a big thing about the place or the house the person they love lives in. Like that song in My Fair Lady about the street where you live. I used to think that was crazy, how could you get that way about bricks and mortar? How could it be that a place like that looks bigger and brighter and more important than all the places around it? I didn't believe it, I thought it was rubbish. I know it's true now.

  And he doesn't even live there. It's a weekend cottage, but he and his wife don't even come every weekend. Of course he comes mid-week to see me, and once we met here. But why does my heart beat so hard just when I see the house? Why does my mouth go dry? I have to hold my hands tight to stop them shaking. If you rescue a bird and it dies in your hands, your hands will shake for ever. Stella wouldn't believe that but it's true. That's how I feel when I look at the house, Ned's house, as if I'll shake for ever.

  It's not a very nice house, it's not really old and it isn't thatched. Mainly it's made of wood and joined on to the brick one next door. Lena wouldn't look twice at it and she didn't. So why does the sight of it stun me more than any palace would? Why am I turning round and practically kneeling on the back seat to go on seeing it till it fades from view? Lena would have forty fits and so would Stella. My thumb has healed where I stuck the pin but the blood was shed. Tonight, if I'm lucky, oh, I must be lucky, he'll phone me and say when we can meet.

  I was gazing back at the house and nearly fell on to the floor when Lena took the turn too fast. If she knew we were coming into the major road she gave no sign of it. The High Street was lined with parked cars, the way it usually is, but I think Lena was looking at it with half-closed eyes.

  ‘Picturesque, isn't it?’ she said. ‘A wee bit chocolate-boxy, but that's a detail. It won the best-kept village in Norfolk contest last year, didn't it, Jenny?’

  ‘The year before last,’ I said.

  ‘And there's the quaintly named pub, the Thundering Legion. Now I wonder where that strange name comes from?’

  I didn't enlighten her. As a matter of fact I don't think even Mum knows. For years she thought the Roman soldier on the sign was a woman on account of him wearing a leather skirt. It was Ned told me – who else? Lena pointed out the Weavers' Houses and Sharon craned her neck to see, but I shut my eyes and held between my fingers the luck-bringing fern leaves I'd picked as we came out of the chapel.

  2

  When you deceive people you make fools of them. You make them act stupidly, act as if things which are aren't and things which aren't are. And that's what fools do or people who are mentally disturbed and we look down on them for it or if we're unkind we laugh at them.

  There's a film my friend Philippa's got on video about the sinking of the Titanic. It was a long time ago, eighty or ninety years, and in those days men used to treat women as if they were fragile creatures that had to be sheltered from unpleasant or horrible facts. In the film the men never tell the women that the ship will sink in an hour and there aren't enough boats. They keep saying, we'll be a bit late getting to New York, and so the women are ignorant of the true facts and look complete fools. They say it's so bad for the children to wake them up, and should they cancel a hairdresser's appointment.

  All deception is like that. The deceived person asks if you're ill or tired when you won't make love to him. You didn't hear the phone when he phoned last night because you weren't there but he's been deceived and he says maybe we should have a bedside extension, you can't always hear it ring when you're upstairs. Unless you're a complete bitch you don't let yourself think he's making a fool of himself, but the thought is there deep down. It's the beginning of contempt. I hate saying these things and I hate doing what I have to do, but I do have to do them. For a while. Until something changes.

  Mostly, I don't lie to Mike. That is, I don't make untrue statements. I just don't tell the whole truth. When he comes home and asks what I've been doing, I tell him everything but that one thing. But I'm not such a lost soul that I don't know that's lying too, that's deliberate deception. One thing, I resolved I'd never let Ned come to our house that's half Mike's house. I've been to his once. It was dark and I was careful but next day when I went in the Legion with Mum's shopping she was alone behind the bar, they'd only just opened, and she said,

  ‘Shirley Foster saw you go in Rowans last night.’ She gave me a narrow look. ‘I said you'd popped over with their eggs.’

  Mum keeps a few bantams, so I reckoned that was all right. ‘OK, I'll remember,’ I said.

  ‘You want to watch your step.’ She was very cool. She's had two husbands since my dad and the second one caught her in bed with Len that she lives with now, so she's not likely to lecture me on morals. ‘Don't you even think of having Prince Charming to your place. Myra Fletcher'll have it all over Norfolk by next day.’

  I didn't know what to say. Mum's all right and she'd never say a word or drop a hint to a soul, but I couldn't confide in her. I couldn't say, I love him, I have to see him, we have to meet, because it's like food and drink, and without him I'd starve to death, because she'd laugh. She'd give one of her great belly laughs and tell me he'd got it made, hadn't he? A wife and kid in Norwich and a girlfriend in the country who's got to be discreet because she's married too. No expenses but his petrol, can't even take you out for a drink. Oh, I know what she'd say and she wouldn't believe me if I told her it wasn't like that, that he feels just the same as me, that I am all his life and without me he'll
die. I can just imagine her comment on that. How old are you, Jenny? Are you thirty-two or are you fifteen?

  Since then we still meet down here but not at his house and of course not at mine. He drives down mid-week and because it's summer time and a lovely summer I find places for us to go that most people don't know about, hidden places in the fen and the woods. We never see another soul. Farm workers aren't out in the fields like they used to be when I was a little kid, it's all machines now, and people don't go for walks any more. The countryside is empty and in the summer evenings we lie in the long grass or in a clearing among the trees and make love. Hardly anyone builds haystacks these days, the hay gets rolled up in those swiss roll shapes, but the thatchers do, they grow the old-fashioned long corn for roofs, and last week I found us a haystack with an opening like a room inside. The summer evenings are long and warm and I try not to think about what will happen when winter comes.

  I didn't say any of this to Mum, of course. I changed the subject. But as I was leaving she came after me and made me put on her quickthorn charm. Thorn is supposed to be lucky because they say Jesus was born under a thorn tree, though I've lived in the country all my life and I've never seen a hawthorn growing inside a stable. Mum's charm is a bit of carved wood you hang round your neck on a thong and not very attractive but I kept it on to save me and Ned from the Shirley Fosters and Myra Fletchers of this world. I was still wearing it next day and Stella remarked that it ‘looked interesting’.

  That started me off again wanting to tell her about Ned and me. It would be a great relief to talk and there's no one to talk to. And when she mentioned Mike and wanted to know if he was going to be away from me for another week, it was on the tip of my tongue to say something. What stops me? I think it's something innocent in her eyes, almost childlike. She's not childish, I don't mean that. I've never heard her say a silly thing or have any sort of tantrum. But her voice is soft with a really youthful intonation, simple and genuine – I mean there's no side to her, and those clear blue eyes look at you as if they don't know what secrets are.