Two Weddings and a Baby

by Scarlett Bailey

  Tess pressed her lips together and squirmed in her seat, Jeff Dangerfield studying the back of his hand with great care, as she thought.

  ‘Very well,’ Tess said. ‘I’ll extend the temporary care order on a rolling basis with weekly reviews. But she will have to be seen by a GP, not a vet, today, in my presence, and I need to see where she is sleeping, go through her feeding regime and make sure you know what you are doing.’

  Tamsyn blanched, as she clearly had no idea what she was doing, and they didn’t really have a place to sleep at present, apart from the sofa in the snug, which she suspected wouldn’t qualify.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Sue said, setting down a huge, thickly filled Victoria sponge in front of Tess. ‘Well, you have a piece of that, and a nice cup of tea, and I’ll just see if Dr Morris can get over from St A’s. He owes me a favour, you know. I lent him one of our cats when his surgery was overrun with rats. You sit tight, and I’ll sort it.’

  Sue winked at Tamsyn so dramatically that Tamsyn was sure that Tess, Dangerfield, Kirsten and all of the various dogs at their feet must have noticed it.

  ‘And while you’re at it, you think about your act for tonight.’

  ‘My act?’ Tamsyn blinked.

  ‘Yes, I’m putting on a show, right here,’ Sue said, ‘in the great hall, to cheer everyone up. And also to match people in need with people who can help them. I’m hoping for a bit of a skill swap: carpenters, painters and decorators, that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Tamsyn conceded. ‘Jed’s looking for a stained-glass expert.’

  ‘Oh well, darling, this is Poldore. There’s about ten of those,’ Sue said.

  ‘And you couldn’t do that without the singing and dancing element?’ Tamsyn asked her, imagining that her mother would insist on doing something from the burlesque-ercise class that she went to for her ‘turn’!

  ‘Well, I could, Tamsyn,’ Sue said. ‘But seriously, where would be the fun in that?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘And that’s where they’re sleeping,’ Sue said, leading Tess and Alex out of her and Mo’s new room, which had materialised quite suddenly in another turret. Comfortably furnished with a double bed, with a little crib next to it, it was situated opposite a bathroom, which Sue assured the social worker would only be used by Tamsyn and Mo. And Tamsyn had to admit, she loved the room, though its velvet curtains were worn and its carpets threadbare in places. If the scent of frenzied Febreze’d vacuuming in the air was anything to go by, it had recently been full of some of Sue’s treasures, but it still had enough glamour about it to make Tamsyn smile.

  ‘Very nice,’ Tess said, nodding her approval. ‘And even a little fridge and a bottle warmer so you don’t have to go up and down the stairs.’

  ‘Yes, that’s courtesy of my daughter, Meadow,’ Sue said. ‘She’s very kindly donated you the drinks fridge she has in her room, not that she knows it yet.’

  ‘And a changing station. You know you mustn’t leave B … Mo unattended on it, don’t you, Tamsyn? Even at a few days old there’s a chance she could wriggle off and hurt herself.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tamsyn said, although she had known no such thing. As far as she was concerned, Mo might stay just as she was for the next year or so, or start walking any time next Tuesday, the developmental milestones of children and what they should do having so far passed her by, even when she was a child.

  ‘Good,’ Tess said, ‘and the GP’s happy, so I’m happy to go ahead and extend the temporary care order, subject to police checks.’ She paused for a moment, and then rested her hand gently on Tamsyn’s upper arm. ‘I know you want the best for Mo, Tamsyn. But, well, you know you will still have to say goodbye to her at some point. Don’t get too attached.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Sue said, hooking her arm through the social worker’s and leading her back downstairs. ‘Now tell me, Tess, do you tap-dance?’

  Tamsyn waited for them to go, and then sat down on the edge of the once-gilt-framed bed and looked out of the window. A wave of exhaustion engulfed her, and she barely noticed that the pale blue sky was beginning to fill at its edges with dark purple bruises of clouds yet again.

  ‘Well, Mo,’ she said, placing the slumbering child in the crib and leaning back. ‘We might as well rest our eyes for a minute.’

  ‘Sis! You’re needed urgently,’ Cordelia burst in through the door, startling Mo and causing her to scream furiously. ‘Oh my God, you’ve got your own room, and it’s much nicer than mine, you bitch!’

  ‘I’m needed for you to urgently complain to?’ Tamsyn asked her, scooping Mo up in her arms. ‘Nothing changes.’

  ‘No, not about the room, although, frankly, yes about the room. But there’s a massive emergency going on downstairs, more massive than abandoned babies, historical storms and wrecked churches!’

  ‘What is it?’ Tamsyn said, concern shaking her awake, and thinking first for some reason about Jed.

  ‘Alex’s wedding dress? And all the bridesmaids’ dresses?’ Cordelia paused for dramatic effect. ‘Totally ruined!’

  Alex was sitting in the old battered armchair in the nook, with Buoy at her side. Sensing her mood, he had rested his head on her thigh as a sign of solidarity, a demonstration that he, a dog who did his level best to avoid a bath more than once every two to three years, totally understood what despondency a set of ruined bridal garments could inspire in a human woman. She wasn’t wailing or crying, nor were there tears, as there had been earlier in St Piran’s. She was just sitting there, slumped, her arm dangling to one side, letting Skipper gently nibble her fingers as if they might be food.

  ‘I’m sure we can do something,’ Gloria was saying as she gingerly picked through a heap of soaking-wet, muddy satin on the table. Tamsyn surmised that this was the remains of one wedding and five bridesmaids’ dresses. ‘Ah, here’s the expert.’

  ‘I design dresses,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I have never yet resurrected any from the dead.’

  Alex’s laugh was dry, mirthless.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if I’m wearing jeans and a jumper. If I get to marry Ruan the day after tomorrow, surrounded by my friends, then what does it matter if I’m wearing the only wedding dress that I could find that I loved, and that took months and months to choose, and which made me feel graceful and beautiful and special? What does it matter at all, really? After all, it’s not as if I am the sort of person to get superstitious about all the bad omens, or start to think that the whole thing is doomed, is it?’

  Her voice rose with each word, finishing in a sort of strangulated shout of restrained misery. If this was her Bridezilla act, she needed to work on it a bit. Bernard had once designed a wedding gown for a countess who ripped out a large handful of the dresser’s hair after she accidentally stuck a pin in her. There had been a court case and a large payment made to the dresser, who gave up dressing and went to live on a yacht in Capri, but the countess was not the least bit repentant. Now that was Bridezilla.

  ‘Do you have a nice frock you can wear instead?’ Gloria said, gently, going to her daughter and sitting on the arm of the chair to embrace her. ‘OK, well, you don’t have any frocks, but I’ve got loads. You could wear one of those, perhaps. What about that nice little number with the leopard print?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mum, I really want to get married in my mother’s cast-offs,’ Alex said unhappily.

  ‘Or the boutique,’ Lucy said. ‘What about Purple Hearts? They always have the most beautiful dresses in the window, although I have literally no idea who buys them or why anyone would need a full designer ballgown in a seaside town, but still. One of those?’

  ‘They don’t make designer dresses for women with breasts or hips,’ Alex said, taking a moment to narrow her eyes at Tamsyn, who had to admit that this was true.

  She picked up what would have been a bridesmaid’s dress, the oyster-grey satin utterly ruined, and then looked at Alex’s dress, which was in an even sorrier state. I
t had been a plain ivory organza over satin, light, simply cut to make the most of her figure. It would have suited Alex, Tamsyn thought, but there was no way that any sort of cleaning would get the stains out now.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jed appeared, and seeing Mo reposing in a baby rocker that Cordelia had brought down from the attic, picked her up and cradled her, kissing the tip of her nose.

  ‘Well,’ Sue said, ‘I was organising a little mood-raiser talent show for tonight, but then the girls returned from Gloria’s having found that a tree has left a whacking great hole in Gloria’s roof on its way through, and although the dresses were in her bedroom, they are totally ruined.’

  ‘So, oh dress designer of greatness,’ Keira said, keeping an eye on her boys as they chased a crazed Skipper around the courtyard, along with Sue’s children and a huge poodle. ‘Any ideas? Any miracle fixes?’

  ‘Well,’ she hesitated, not sure how to deliver the final death blow to all hope. ‘There are a few patches here and there that I could cut out, but even then I don’t think I’d have enough material to make one wedding dress. I’m so sorry, Alex, there’s not much I can do for these.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Alex shrugged, the tears rolling down her face, so that Buoy heaved himself up onto his back paws and began licking her cheeks. ‘They’re only clothes, after all. I don’t even know why I care. Everyone knows I don’t care about things like dresses.’

  ‘You are allowed to care about your wedding dress,’ Gloria said gently.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Keira said. ‘Tamsyn, perhaps you could have a look at what we have got, dresses and things, and put something together, like a stylist.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tamsyn said. ‘But Alex is right; to really look her best she needs something bespoke: she’s tall and curvy. She’s maybe a twelve on the bottom and, what, a sixteen on top? Her legs are long, and her arms … It’s unlikely that a borrowed dress is going to make her feel any better than she does in her favourite pair of jeans.’

  ‘Harsh,’ Cordelia said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be harsh,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I just wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable on your big day.’

  ‘Could you make her something?’ Jed said suddenly. ‘I mean, I know you’re a designer, but can you sew too? We have a sewing circle in Poldore, and about eight machines, a whole host of embroiderers and seamstresses that I’m sure could help.’

  Tamsyn looked at Mo, whose care she had just promised to commit to, and wondered if she could in all conscience take on a last-minute wedding-dress commission, even if she had the materials, which she didn’t.

  ‘You could do it with Mo at your side,’ Jed said. ‘And I can do feeds, and change nappies …?’

  ‘In between cleaning up the church?’ Tamsyn asked him.

  ‘I’ve got twenty volunteers on that already. They’re doing the first clean and then are coming up here for the show,’ Jed said. ‘And Keira’s already been down to have look at the church and made some drawings about what she is going to do with it.’

  ‘It’s going to be wonderful,’ Keira said, her eyes alight in a way that Tamsyn rarely saw these days.

  ‘But even if I could make six dresses in a day and a half, I don’t have the material, or any beads or crystals, or even a pen or a tape measure.’

  ‘I know exactly what you need,’ Sue said, triumphantly. ‘Follow me. For once again, I, Sue Montaigne, have the means to save the day.’ She positively smirked at Rory, who Tamsyn hadn’t even noticed was lurking in the corner, looking decidedly green around the gills, probably coming down with the Poldore bug too. ‘Hoarding, my arse,’ she said.

  Tamsyn, Alex and Gloria followed Sue into the depths, or more accurately the heights, of Castle House once again, leaving Keira and Cordelia to attempt to wrangle the children, while supervising the roasting of several meats for an after-show party.

  ‘Rory might moan about it,’ Sue said. ‘But I’m glad I just can’t throw anything away. I think it must be a Montaigne trait dating back generations. Up here.’ At the end of the first landing there was a door secreted in the panelling, which opened on to a narrow, dark staircase that had to lead into some attic space, Tamsyn supposed.

  ‘I was only twenty-two when I officially inherited the old girl. Funny, I grew up in this house, but there were so many locked doors that even I’d never seen behind. Father was a dear, dear man, but he never could cope with the size of the place. He used to pretend he lived in a four-bedroom semi. Shut off rooms, whole wings even, covered stuff with sheets, it was terribly sad. Although a good deal cheaper. Anyway,’ she paused at the stop of the stairs looking down on her followers with a typical Sue-style sense of drama, ‘the first thing I did when I got the keys was to open every single locked door I could find. This room was the room I discovered last.’ She pushed the door open. ‘I think Mother must have been up here quite a lot; the latest period seems to be from the sixties.’

  Tamsyn gasped as she walked into the dark, vaulted space, lit only by a few weak light bulbs and dirty windows, but she didn’t need to see better to know that she was in a room filled with clothes. There were racks and racks of clothes, and chests, too: old-fashioned ocean liner-style chests, as well as older-looking oak and leather chests that dated back even earlier, most of them emblazoned with the Montaigne crest, piled one on top of the other from floor to ceiling. This had to be how Howard Carter had felt when he’d opened Tutankhamen’s tomb, Tamsyn thought.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ she exclaimed in sheer delight. ‘Oh, I’ve died and gone to fashion heaven.’

  ‘Well, I’ve spent a few happy hours up here,’ Sue said. ‘I think the earliest garment I’ve uncovered is perhaps Regency, but there is so much. Surely in here you’d find something you could update, adapt, customise, cut up even, to make the dresses?’

  Tamsyn ran her hand down a rail of garments that looked as if they were from the 1950s. ‘It would be a sin to cut some of these up. Were these your mother’s? She had beautiful taste. I can see Dior, Chanel … simply stunning.’

  ‘Oh, they’re only old clothes!’ Sue said casually. ‘You can do what you like with them: take them in, let them out?’ she suggested.

  ‘No, that wouldn’t work. Women of that era were just smaller than us. But there’s so much here. I’m sure I can find some garments to work with, bring them new life.’ Tamsyn’s eyes glowed as she looked around the room. She felt her heart pumping, and even in her state of exhaustion discovered that she was filled with the most overwhelming joy.

  ‘I’ll need a big table,’ she said.

  ‘Dining-room table seats forty,’ Sue told her.

  ‘Very sharp scissors, and a pencil, 4B, sewing machines, helpers – lots of helpers, people who know their way around a pattern. But only the best ones, the ones that really care; I don’t want do-gooders, or amateurs. They will have to submit a sample of their work for me to OK.’

  ‘Good.’ Sue nodded approvingly. ‘Good.’

  ‘I need Alex and all the bridesmaids’ measurements, their actual ones. Not to the nearest centimetre, but to the last millimetre.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Sue said, with grim determination.

  ‘And I need some time alone in this room, to see what there is,’ Tamsyn added finally, although what she really meant by that was she needed time alone to dance around like a little girl who’d just been given the keys to a toyshop.

  ‘Right, come on, girls.’ Sue bustled Gloria and Alex towards the door.

  ‘Wait.’ Alex stopped and turned round. ‘Tamsyn, what’s happening?’

  ‘Alex,’ Tamsyn’s smile could have lit up the whole town, never mind the attic. ‘I’m going to make you a Tamsyn Thorne original. I’m going to make you the wedding dress of your dreams, and the first time you are going to see it will be on your wedding day.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tamsyn was sitting amid a whirlpool of fabric, having selected a half-dozen likely candidates for recycling during her initia
l rummage through the treasure trove of fashion, when Ruan opened the attic door, ducking to come in, and stood there in silence for a moment, taking it all in.

  ‘It’s like the mother of all jumble sales,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it’s so much more than that,’ Tamsyn smiled, lifting a length of teal-coloured silk to her face and rubbing it against her cheek.

  ‘You look different,’ Ruan said, smiling a little.

  ‘It’s the hair, the revenge part two, and this time it’s beyond help. I think it’s taking its vengeance on me for so many years of straightening. This hair does not want to go back in the closet.’

  ‘I like it,’ Ruan said. ‘But it’s not that. You’re happy here, aren’t you? In your element. I’ve never seen you doing what you really love to do before.’

  ‘Although strictly speaking, rolling around on the floor in vintage dresses isn’t exactly what I do in Paris,’ Tamsyn said. No, Paris wasn’t nearly so much fun as this.

  It was nice to have this conversation with him, as cautious and careful as it was, although the room soon fell into silence again, and Tamsyn wondered if now was the right time to say what she had to say. Did she have the courage? Was that why he’d sought her out, to try and lay their ghosts to rest?

  ‘Ruan, I’ve …’

  ‘The thing is …’ he interrupted her. ‘The reason that I came is that Mo’s missing you a bit. Jed must have walked her about forty-five laps of the kitchen table, but every time he sits down she starts wailing again. He won’t let anyone come and get you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tamsyn. ‘Well, I think I’m nearly done.’

  ‘Already?’ Ruan asked her.

  ‘No, God no. Choosing dresses and fabric to make into gowns … There’s so much here, Ruan. I could live up here; it’s just like when we used to play dressing up as kids. Do you remember when Keira and I dressed you up as a princess, and Lucy did your make-up? You were such a pretty girl!’

  Ruan grinned. ‘Yeah, Dad was horrified.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t really,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I think Dad was a bit of a glam rocker in his day.’