by Rosie Orr
‘Great.’ Sam was still beaming. ‘And this is Lucy’s dad. My mum.’
The small pasty man sitting beside Lucy stumbled to his feet and leaned over the table, his hand eagerly outstretched. ‘Mrs Hardy.’
‘Anna, please.’
‘Eamonn.’ He took in the short skirt and ankle boots and looked away, blushing. ‘Well, this is a surprise. I must say I expected Sam’s mum to look more like a … er … mum.’ He blinked at Sam. ‘If I may say so, she’s an absolute …’ He glanced at his wife, and was silenced with a look. He sat down quickly.
Sam was pulling out a chair for her. ‘Sit next to Mrs O’Shaughnessy, Mum, you’re bound to have loads to talk about.’
Anna eased herself into the high-backed pink plush velvet chair and risked a glance at Lucy’s mother. She had picked up a menu and was perusing it suspiciously. Anna cast about for something to say. ‘Well, Mrs O’Sh– ’
‘Tina.’ She went back to the menu.
There was a silence, in which nobody looked at anybody else. Lucy passed Anna a menu. ‘The whitebait here are terrific.’
Anna loathed whitebait; she couldn’t bear all those tiny eyes staring accusingly up at her. ‘Whitebait? Mmm, great! Fantastic!’
Sam smiled at her encouragingly.
The wine waiter had approached and was hovering at Eamonn’s shoulder. Thank God; she’d kill for a glass of wine. ‘Perhaps you’d like to order some drinks, sir?’
‘Well, perhaps …’ He took the wine list. ‘As it’s such a special occasion …’
Tina’s head whipped up. ‘What in the name of the Sacred Virgin are you thinking of, Eamonn? Have you forgotten you’ve taken the Pledge? Whatever would Father O’Malley say?’ She shot out a veined, manicured claw, snatched the wine list from him and scowled at the waiter. She scanned the pages briefly and ordered a bottle of Sancerre.
The grower’s name was familiar. Anna thought it was one she’d read about in a Sunday supplement recently whose wines cost more than a hundred pounds a bottle.
‘And a large gin and tonic for me.’ Tina sighed heavily. ‘Not that I shall enjoy it, but the doctor insists I have it for my nerves.’
‘Anna, what would you like?’ Lucy smiled encouragingly.
‘I’d love a very dry –’
Tina frowned. ‘Now you don’t want to be spoiling your palate for the wine.’
Anna sank back in her chair.
Tina inclined her head graciously at the waiter. He bowed, and tiptoed away.
Eamonn removed his glasses very carefully and began to polish them.
Anna smiled brightly at nobody in particular.
The evening had begun.
‘The bridesmaids in pink taffeta, with mauve hair bows. There are eight, of course – did I mention that? I haven’t made a final decision on their shoes yet, though I rather think they’ll be gold lamé kitten heels.’
‘Actually, Mummy, I –’
‘Pass the cream, Eamonn.’
Anna lifted her wine glass to her lips, forgetting that it had been empty for the last hour (the bottle had been made to stretch between five) and set it down again. Her face was stiff with smiling. Tina had monopolised the conversation for the entire meal, alternating details of her plans for the wedding with a series of impertinent questions. ‘What is it you do, exactly? Art World Culinary Advisor? Money in that, is there? Brighton? Renting, are you? No chips? Trying to lose a bit of that fat before the wedding, are you?’ A pitying glance. ‘Me, I’m lucky with my figure, I can eat anything I like.’
Determined not to let Sam down, Anna had done her best to be pleasant. Now and again he flashed her a smile, which made it all worthwhile. Eamonn remained mostly silent, though now and again he sent Anna a sympathetic look and she could have sworn that when Tina called for her fourth gin he made a most unseemly observation to his trout. Thank God there was just the coffee to get through now, before she made a quick exit for the ten thirty-five, pleading work in the morning. Suddenly, Tina flung down her spoon and hauled herself to her feet, her platinum ankle chains rattling.
‘Just off to the little girls’ room.’ She bared her teeth at Anna threateningly. ‘When I come back, I’ll tell you about the hat I’m going to wear. People are going to be very impressed, I can assure you.’
She tottered away on her lizard-skin Manolos.
For a moment nobody spoke. Then with a collective sigh of relief, they all sat back in their chairs; Anna was pretty sure the others didn’t even realise they’d done it. The moment Tina was out of sight, Eamonn beckoned the waiter over and muttered in his ear. With a grin, the waiter scurried away and was back almost at once with a tumbler full of pale amber liquid. Eamonn tossed it back as if it were medicine, thrust a couple of folded notes in the waiter’s willing hand, and winked at Anna. Hell, she wished she’d thought of that. Sam and Lucy were whispering sweet nothings to each other and pretending they hadn’t noticed; Anna guessed that it probably happened all the time. Looking much refreshed, Eamonn leaned forward. ‘She’s booked in for liposuction on Friday. Always makes the old witch even rattier that usual.’
Anna smiled, and he asked her with genuine interest about her job. She had begun to like him, as well as feel sorry for him, and she wanted to cheer him up. Since the anecdote in no way conflicted with Sam’s fancy description what she did, she told Eamonn about the party of French pensioners who had spent the afternoon happily touring Avant Art in the firm belief that they were visiting Tate St Ives.
Eamonn laughed immoderately at this, his enjoyment possibly enhanced by the sudden rush of neat malt whiskey. He was shaking his head, gurgling quietly to himself when Lucy touched Anna’s hand lightly. ‘How’s the poetry going? Sam told me you wrote – he said you’d had quite a lot published. I’ve often wondered, how do you actually go about writing a poem?’
Anna glanced at her son in astonishment. She’d always thought he’d have preferred it if she’d been into crochet, or bowls, or singing in the church choir. He was smiling at her proudly. With a lift of her heart, she began to answer Lucy. ‘I don’t think I ever actually plan to write anything. I just see something, and it sort of connects to something else, and –’
‘Really, you’d think they’d have brought the coffee by now.’ Tina plumped down in her chair, enveloped in a cloud of perfume so strong it made Anna want to gag.
‘We haven’t ordered it yet, dear.’
Tina scowled at her husband, clicked her fingers at a passing waiter, ordered coffee and another gin and began to rummage in her sequinned clutch bag.
Anna turned back to Lucy. ‘With a poem I wrote recently, “Red Peppers”, I suppose it was the link between the red juice spilling on the chopping board while I was preparing them and –’
With a cry of triumph, Tina whipped a fan of taffeta samples in various violent shades of pink from her bag and riffled through the samples. She held it out to Anna. ‘That’s what I’m planning for the bridesmaids. Set my lime brocade off a treat, so it will.’
Anna noticed that since the last dose of gin Tina’s cut-glass vowels had broadened considerably. Also that despite her recent visit to the Ladies, one of her false eyelashes was coming slightly adrift.
‘Actually Mummy –’
Tina frowned irritably at her daughter. ‘Oh for the Lord’s sake, Lucy, you’re not going to start in again about wanting ’em in cream organdie and carrying posies of forget-me-nots or some such rubbish, I do hope?’ She swung round to Anna. ‘To be sure, have you ever heard of anything so dull?’
Anna thought cream organdie and forget-me-nots sounded absolutely perfect. She was about to say so when Sam, plainly sensing that trouble was imminent, leaned forward quickly. ‘So, Mum, what are you planning to wear yourself?’
Anna could see that he regretted the words as soon as were out of his mouth. He was probably afraid she was going to say something embarrassing, like a red satin basque, or a flesh-pink PVC micro. He needn’t have worried; she could see by the grim
set of Tina’s mouth and Lucy’s anxious expression that this was no time for fooling about. Reluctantly passing up the opportunity to upstage Tina’s lime-green brocade with electric-blue leopard skin, she uttered a carefree laugh. ‘Honestly, darling, I haven’t even thought about it yet.’
It was immediately clear that this was the wrong thing to have said.
Tina clutched at her throat. ‘Not thought about it?’ She thrust her head closer to Anna’s, eyes wide in horrified disbelief, as if Anna had admitted to a predilection for S&M, or a lifelong heroin addiction. Even Lucy was looking mildly surprised.
‘Well, no.’ Christ. Suddenly her eye fell on the wine list, which still lay on the table – Anna thought the young wine waiter had probably been too scared to retrieve it. Embossed in gold letters on the pink leather cover beneath ‘Chez Gaston’ was the legend ‘le choix juste’. Anna covered it casually with her napkin. ‘Though obviously when I say no, that’s not precisely what I mean. Absolutely not. I mean that naturally I’ve been giving the matter a great deal of very weighty consideration, and it’s just that I feel I haven’t arrived at le choix juste yet.’
Tina looked at her uncertainly and reached for her gin, the glittering charms on her bracelet jangling, the white leather fringes on her sleeve trailing in the purplish remains of her summer pudding.
‘For me, it’s a decision that will take time.’ Should she risk it? She remembered the look Tina had given her when she arrived. Hell, yes. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t all been blessed with your unerring good taste, you know.’
As Tina nodded and took a slurp of gin, the eyelash detached itself altogether and fell on the tablecloth, where it lay like a dead spider. Anna hurried on to stop herself laughing. ‘But you said you were going to tell me about the hat you’ll be wearing?’
Tina set down her glass with a thump and wagged a finger in Anna’s face. ‘It’ll be the talk of the wedding, to be sure. Picture a magnificent mauve and lime-green cartwheel, with giant velvet cabbage roses all round the brim and …’
At last the evening came to an end. All in all it had gone rather well, Anna thought as she sank with relief into a corner seat of a carriage on the ten thirty-five. At least everyone had still been on speaking terms when she left, and Sam had breathed, ‘Well done, Mum’ into her ear as he kissed her goodbye. Job done, as Trish would say. Gazing out into the darkness through the grimy window she allowed her thoughts to drift to the more pleasurable memories of the day: six worn braid buttons on an eighteenth-century waistcoat, the soft green moss velvet thick with gold embroidery; a glowing slice of ripe, pink-fleshed fig in the Ancient Egyptian salad; the back of the head of a man in the queue at the National Film Theatre exactly like Jack’s, the same shape and the same shade of grey hair; the expression on the face of a small girl in the piazza as she watched a busking clown.
There was a hoarse shout from the guard. Doors slammed, the train began to move. As they clanked and clattered through the outer London suburbs Anna returned to the memory of the day that she most wanted to preserve. In one of the V&A’s Indian miniatures, a young girl waited at dusk in a tiny garden. The dark grass was richly studded with cornflowers and lilies, the trees were heavy with golden fruit, a crescent moon hung in the deepening sky. It was clear from the title of the piece that the girl was a princess awaiting her lover, but from the expression of agonised longing on her exquisite features the artist also made it painfully apparent that it was unlikely that her lover would ever arrive …
The train jolted its way over a set of points, jerking Anna back to the present. She’d missed Jack badly today. How she wished he’d been there to admire the waistcoat with her! If only it had really been him in the queue! How much easier dinner at Chez Gaston would have been to endure if he’d been at her side! Her thoughts returned to the Indian miniature; to the rich patterns and textures of the girl’s spangled gauze skirts, her sleekly oiled hair, her pomegranate-red lips, the two doves billing and cooing at her jewelled, painted feet, the wicker gate set in the corner of the bay hedge, standing invitingly ajar …
The train began to pick up speed.
Anna sat lost in thought until they hurtled through Haywards Heath.
Then she began to hunt in her bag for her notebook.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Hey, look, Roxy – over there, in Future Shock’s window, next to the sign saying SALE.’ Anna grabbed Roxy’s arm.
Roxy’s eyes lit up. ‘The striped yellow dress? With the blue feather straps?’
‘Are you mad? Course not, stupid – the beige suit.’
‘Yeah, course.’ Roxy sighed. ‘The beige one.’
Anna glanced at her watch. ‘Come on, we’ve just about got time if we hurry.’ She hustled Roxy over the crossing and steered her through the crowd of lunch-time shoppers to Future Shock’s window. They stood peering at the display of zany, colourful garments, expensive even at sale prices. The one exception to the weird stuff was a simply cut beige suit, with cream collar and cuffs and horn buttons.
‘Hmm. ‘S’not that bad, I s’pose, though it still beats me why you’re so stuck on beige or bleedin’ brown. It’s a wedding, girl, not a funeral.’
‘Look, Roxy, I’ve told you a hundred times. I’m the sodding Mother of the Groom, OK, and according to Bride that’s the deal.’
‘But …’
‘No buts. We’re going in. Anyway,’ Anna glanced at the suit again, ‘I rather like this.’
Roxy sniffed. ‘Yeah, that’s what you said about that chocolate-brown tent with the white sailor collar in Next yesterday, till it –’
‘Turned out to be a maternity dress, yes, thanks, Roxy, I hadn’t forgotten. Actually, I thought I looked quite nice in it.’
‘You looked like a ruddy Sherpa.’ She sighed. ‘Come on, then. Let’s do it.’
Roxy led the way into the shop. There were hardly any customers wandering about the vast, wooden-floored space, and as far as Anna could see, precious few clothes hanging on the rails. Presumably the watchword here was quality, not quantity, which made a change from the shops she and Roxy had spent their lunch breaks rummaging through during the past couple of weeks in a bid to find the perfect beige (or brown) garment. Roxy had insisted on accompanying Anna on these forays once she realised that Anna had been thoroughly demoralised by her visit to Chez Gaston. Anna had tried to laugh when she described the look Tina had given her when she arrived, but instead she’d burst into tears. Roxy spent hours trying to persuade Anna that the mad old bitch (Tina) had been jealous of Anna’s natural attributes, rather than critical of her clothes. When this failed, she decided that Anna would need moral support on her search for an outfit and resolutely set out every lunchtime with her, refusing to take no for an answer.
They’d started in the chain stores. Anna had spent almost all her savings on Sam and Lucy’s wedding present, which left very little for The Outfit. She’d been strolling in the Lanes the previous Sunday afternoon, and had stopped to look in the window of the antique shop where she’d seen the amethyst ring. If it was still there, maybe Jack …
It had gone, and set neatly in its place was a gold Victorian mourning ring. Anna was turning away, telling herself that only fools believed in omens, when she caught sight of a row of Venetian goblets on a narrow glass shelf to the right of the window. The tissue-thin globes were webbed with a delicate tracery of spun gold vine leaves, each faceted stem reflecting a rainbow of colours in the spring sunshine. She stood for a long time entranced, knowing that they were the perfect gift, and that she would buy them no matter what the price.
Unfortunately, the search for The Outfit had so far proved rather less rewarding. Spring was apparently the wrong time of year for beige and brown. Assistant after assistant bestowed pitying smiles at their lack of sophistication in such matters and suggested they return in October. In Oasis, Roxy lost her temper and informed the startled salesgirl that at this rate her friend would be in the loony bin by then. That had been last week. Since
then, they’d been forced to move gradually upmarket in their quest, and had begun the rounds of Brighton’s more exclusive boutiques.
Here, too, they’d drawn a blank. They’d just left Vanilla, a little store in the Lanes, where the assistant (who looked, Anna thought, more like a starving greyhound than a person) had barely been able to conceal her distaste at Anna’s request, indicating with a pained gesture the pale green watered silk creations in the window. They’d been wending their way back to Avant Art, feet aching, tempers short, when Anna caught sight of the beige suit in Future Shock’s window.
‘Yah?’ A stick-thin creature in a silver catsuit with inch-long purple-dyed hair was lounging against the counter, whispering seductively into a mobile phone. Anna blinked; she’d assumed the exotic creature was a customer. She glanced down at the faded jeans and pinstriped shirt she’d thought looked rather good when she put them on this morning; they now looked decidedly passé. And her hair could definitely do with a trim. She began to edge away. ‘It’s all right, thanks …’
Roxy nudged her sharply in the ribs.
Anna swallowed. ‘I mean I’d like to try on the suit in the window, please.’
The stick insect rolled her eyes and exhaled slowly, as if Anna had snatched her mobile phone from her hand, or demanded to try on the catsuit. Then, with the air of one exercising enormous patience, she cooed something into her phone, laid it on the stack of tissue paper beside the till and stalked over to the window. She wrenched the beige suit from the bald turquoise dummy, stalked back to Anna and thrust it into her arms. ‘I’m not at all sure this will suit, size-wise.’
‘Oh. Perhaps I could try another –’
‘Last one left.’ She sighed. ‘Cubicles over there, ’kay?’ She indicated a row of bleached calico curtains in the far corner.