Sue was delighted to see how relaxed and happy her sensitive, younger daughter appeared. The bride bubbled and glowed as she grasped her groom’s arm possessively, waltzing him round the room showing him off to their family and friends, allowing herself to be kissed and congratulated, over and over. Barely taller than the girl, his bald head gleaming and stout frame encased in a morning suit, Neal too glowed with love and joy. He looked so supremely happy that, at last, Sue allowed herself to be convinced that this was indeed a true love match and her daughter had every chance of lasting contentment.
There was a guffaw of laughter from the far end of the room. Despite her in-laws, Sue thought.
The Blaydon’s wedding present to their son and new daughter-in-law was a honeymoon in Hawaii.
*
Stephanie felt quite dazed at first by the new and different society of the business art world. Some fellow pupils in her art classes were school leavers, but a fair number were mature students with much the same ideas and intentions as herself. At first she found it extremely hard working to order, snipping away with scissors at shapes and colours, pasting together unrelated objects, blending them with her pen into what were intended to be eyecatching designs. She was disappointed and baffled when two of her favourite creations were met with bland and unenthusiastic comment, and totally bemused when the disaster she was about to screw up and hurl into the wastepaper basket, was hailed as a work of near genius. But the days she enjoyed most were those spent acting as dogsbody in offices and studios for “work experience”. Though she stood more often at the coffee machine churning out cups for workers than at a drawing board, she loved the intensity of drive and direction, the camaraderie. These people were true artists, yet so capable applying their talents to business markets, relating mental images to customer requirements. A shaded wash of single colour, a reverse negative and half a dozen brush or pen strokes suddenly became a superb insert for a glossy magazine. The retail whizzkid about to set up in business who came in with a vague idea of presentation, within minutes was staring at inspirational logos, while someone else bounded into the room with crisp slogans. But more inspiring even than the products themselves were the people: lively, fun people with agile brains, mobile features, and hands full of expressive gestures. What was more, they seemed to like her, invited her to join them after work for drinks and even asked her to their homes.
Those homes in themselves were different. Different from La Rocquette de Bas, portraying a totally alternative concept of living, they tended to be open plan. Gone was the formality of a dining room, kitchen suppers ruled. Barbecues were in, set on smart patios amid cascading flower pots and hanging baskets. Settees with throw rugs stood on pale polished floorboards under a tall bamboo palm or potted lemon tree. Clean, tidy, studied carelessness, an atmosphere in which to relax, laugh and exchange ideas . . . Stephanie couldn’t stop herself thinking back to the commune, to the utter indiscipline of “waiting for inspiration”, to the pretence of unity which did little to hide the petty jealousies, the irresponsible attitudes and irritabilities, the irrational arguments, the dirt, poverty and degradation . . . and nor could she stop herself from shuddering at the memory.
Time after time Stephanie wondered how her mother had managed to show so little reaction to the conditions in which her daughter and granddaughter were living, and still faced making return visits, keeping faith, smiling . . . and loving. And yet at the time she, Stephanie, perhaps because of her underlying guilt, had searched Sue’s face for a hint of criticism on which to feed her antagonism and resentment. Why? Why had she resented her mother’s very existence all these years?
*
In front of the cameras, Sarah was a natural. A flowergirl for the second time within months, on this occasion in a confection of pink taffeta with a mother-of-pearl headband which tended to slip forwards over one eye, she positively pranced up the path to the church alongside her mother, Stephanie, who had been invited to fill the role of her sister’s bridesmaid.
Hilary was regal in her Paris couturier dress and three-quarter length coat, and a hat fit to grace the front cover of Vogue. Justin sat with his family, and Debbie was relieved to find she could look at him with scarcely a twinge of pain. Clinging to Neal, she was convinced that even that would pass in time.
Sue had not attempted to compete with the mother of the bride. She had found a very smart silk two-piece dress and jacket at Creasey’s in High Street and, for once, quite admired herself in her chosen hat. She was delighted when Stephen, who didn’t usually notice these things, remarked that she looked stunning. Which was true. At forty-eight she had retained her figure, mainly thanks to the tennis court, not a single grey strand of hair was to be seen and only when she laughed did the deepening crow’s feet betray the years. Both her daughters thought she looked marvellous, and said so.
The slightly ivory tone of raw silk did little for the bride’s complexion. Jane had tried to oppose her mother’s decision but the result was inevitable. Nevertheless, with her hair softly waved and after the judicious application of make-up, Roderick, waiting beside his best man Alex Grolinski, thought she looked fantastic as she approached him up the aisle. He spoke his vows boldly, and though hers were barely audible to the congregation, he heard them well enough, which was all that mattered.
The formal line-up at the Royal Hotel seemed to last forever as two hundred guests were greeted. Lord Hartwell, an old friend of the Tetchworths, had been invited to toast the bride and groom, his title intended to make up for his lack of gifted oratory.
Jane was longing for the opportunity to start married life in Roderick’s tiny cottage, but instead allowed herself to be hustled up to the airport amidst a shower of confetti, en route to their honeymoon in Corfu.
Stephanie stood at the airport window with the crowd who had followed them up, waving till the plane was out of sight. She didn’t feel the least twinge of envy. There was no man in her life, at present, with whom she particularly wanted to spend an evening, let alone a lifetime. She gathered her darling, sleepy daughter into her arms and bore her out to the waiting cars.
Chapter Ten – A United Family
“Solomon and Sheba are very lively for Golden Retrievers,” Stephanie remarked. She was sitting in a comfortably cushioned cane chair on the verandah at the back of La Rocquette de Bas. There had been one or two changes to the house in recent years. The verandah, had been extended to nearly twice it’s original width and glassed in, turning it into a conservatory, though everyone still referred to it as “the verandah”.
Sue sat with her, a tray of tea between them on a glass-topped table. “They are still only pups. I have no doubt that within a couple of years they will turn into animated doormats like Troilus and Cressida were.” She sighed as she always did, thinking about the two beautiful dogs who had been so much a part of their family life for more than fourteen years.
Stephanie read her thoughts. “You’ll grow to love these two just as much, Mum.”
“I do now, really. They are such bright, loving characters, and they are so good with Sarah, aren’t they?”
The two women watched as the five-year-old climbed onto Solomon’s back, trying to coax him into fulfilling the role of pony. His response was to roll over onto his back with his feet in the air, sending the child tumbling across the grass, grumbling indignantly.
There were shouts of triumph from the tennis court. Bobbie was over on vacation from university with three pals, all equally keen on the sport; that and surfboarding at Vazon where the rollers could be quite spectacular. The gate to the court clicked and the tall, bronzed young men crossed the lawn to the open conservatory.
“We’ll just help ourselves to some juice and then be heading off to Vazon, if that’s okay, Ma?”
“Of course, Bobbie. Have fun, all of you. Will you be in for supper?”
Tony, the chunkiest one, grinned. “That sounds good, Mrs M. If it’s not too much hassle.”
“No hassle at all,
boys. See you later.”
“Mum, you are a barefaced fibber!” Stephanie declared when they had gone.
“Why?”
“Feeding those four hulks three times a day, every day for a week! What on earth do you give them?”
“Food that is unimaginative but filling!” Sue laughed. “Sausages, mash and peas, tonight, followed by tons of bread, cheese and fruit.”
“They look a nice bunch.”
“They are. Bobbie is lucky to have met up with such a likely crowd so soon. Especially ones who are all keen on tennis.”
Stephanie sipped her tea, watching Sarah throwing an old tennis ball for the enthusiastic dogs. “I suppose we would all describe our concept of the ideal friend quite differently.”
Sue thought for a minute. “Perhaps. Yet on the other hand, wouldn’t the universal requirement be loyalty and amiability?”
“Oh yes. But there is so much more. A sense of humour would be important to me, but I doubt if it would be Roderick’s first priority.”
Sue smiled. “True.”
There was a pause, then Stephanie asked, “Do you think one should allow oneself to idolise people?”
“My mother considered idolatry to be dangerous. But I think that was through seeing it from a religious viewpoint. Not much difference in her eyes between worshipping a mere mortal or a graven image.”
“Then what difference is there between worshipping and loving a person?” Stephanie was gazing into space, the palms of her hands cradling her cup.
A frown divided Sue’s forehead as she considered the question. “Loving a person surely means warts and all. You know them, admire their strengths, understand and make allowances for their weaknesses, whilst not necessarily giving in to them. Worship, on the other hand, I see as a kind of blind faith. To worship God is good because he is immortal and perfect. But no mere mortal can be perfect; therefore if you worship one it is because you imagine quite wrongly that they are perfect. Blind to their faults, you may well turn them into atrocious tyrants.” Sue paused, thinking she was getting a bit heavy. “Some parents idolise a child to the point of turning it into a fearful, precocious brat that no one else can stand.” She laughed.
Sarah had mis-thrown the ball and Stephanie jumped up out of her chair to fetch it down from high in a bush which was threatened with destruction as the dogs scrambled to retrieve the missile. When she returned she asked, “Was I a fearful, precocious brat?”
Sue snorted. “Good Lord no! What makes you ask that?”
“The fact that I cannot remember Daddy ever scolding or correcting me.”
“Jonathan? Really? Come to think of it I don’t suppose he did. Not any of you.”
“Did you know that I worshipped him?”
“You did? Are you sure that it is not more a matter of sanctifying his memory? You were very young when he died.”
“Not too young to feel desperately sad for him, seeing him crippled and in a wheelchair.”
Sue studied her daughter’s face. It was as strong as ever, but her grandmother’s big, amber eyes had softened in recent years: the obstinate contrariness had gone. And the long, wavy brown hair no longer hung down in strands over her eyes but was swept back either into a ponytail or a neat, Chinese style chignon on top of her head. “And I suppose you thought I was very cruel to him?”
Silently, Stephanie nodded.
“Perhaps I was.”
“Why?”
“Do you really want to know? Do you want to hear about the constant tongue lashings I received from morning till night, often in front of hotel guests and staff? Do you want to know that I worked all hours God gave until I was down to skin and bone? But it was never enough. That try as I might I could never do a thing right? Not until he knew he had terminal cancer did he change, and then we had a most marvellous year together, of loving, caring and mutual respect, until he died. He was wonderful to me, to us all, during that year.”
Stephanie kept her face averted from her mother so her swimming eyes would not betray her feelings. “What about Stephen?” she whispered. “When did he come into the picture?”
“During the very bad times. I think he saved my sanity. Mind you,” she added, “The relationship we had had made me feel extremely guilty, later, when your father’s attitude changed. When he became caring again.”
Stephanie’s sigh became a long, shuddering gasp. “And now it’s my turn to feel guilty. Oh Mum! I am so sorry. I got it all wrong.” And when she turned to offer a wan smile, Sue saw her lashes were wet, her eyes brimming over.
“Let’s have another cup of tea.”
“Yes. And you can tell me about Daddy and Stephen: the good things, but how they were different.”
Tea freshly poured, Sue began. “It is so difficult to judge people. One can idolise a person one has never met . . . like President Jack Kennedy of the United States. Millions of people, worldwide, idolised him, followed his administration and his family life with close interest. And like so many of those people, I can clearly remember exactly where I was standing, near the television set, when the programme was interrupted with the announcement of his murder. And like millions of others I wept. Yet in the years since his death, and the death of his brother, Bobby, there has been so much sleaze written and said about him. He appears to have had the most awful downside to his character; to have been a shameless manipulator and adulterer. A thoroughly weak man, not the wonderful man of strength as his publicists portrayed.”
“Perhaps he was a mixture of both – strength and weakness, good and bad,” Stephanie suggested, thinking back over all the people in the commune, her old school associates, the new crowd who had become her friends in the business art world, here in the island.
“Stephen has none of the forcefulness and drive of your father, yet the strength of his gentleness and love is felt and remarked on by nearly everyone who knows him. Because of the war, Jonathan became a man before he was through his adolescence, yet looking back, I think much of the hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie, his driving force and laughter when we first met, were just a shell, a mask covering his actual deep sensitivity. No one was allowed to know how easily he could be hurt. But that hurt turned to such anger and resentment after his terrible accident that his character became almost unrecognisable.”
“How sad, Mum. And how different things might have been if that kid hadn’t lost control of his car that evening, so many years ago.”
“Yes, so sad. Yet one cannot play the game backwards. But for that I would have had so much more time to spend with my children, instead of being tied to running an hotel. On the other hand I would never have had Bobbie. Obviously, for your father’s sake I regret what happened, but I have no regrets for myself.”
“Good. I should hate to think you had.”
“Mummy! Granma! When is tea?” Little Sarah clambered up the steps to join them. “I’m hungry and Solomon and Sheba want some biscuits.”
“Teatime is right now,” Sue declared, pushing herself out of her chair. “Let’s go into the kitchen and see what we have in Gran’s cake tins.”
*
The two octogenarians sat at a table in the window of the golf club, beer mugs in hand, complaining about the course, the club and the standards of behaviour of some of the newer membership: a well-worn theme, latterly.
“Standards are slipping all the time,” George Schmit grumbled. “I actually saw someone walk into the bar last week not wearing a tie!”
“They think we are old-fashioned,” Greg Gaudion snorted. “But in fact we know they are just slovenly. They’ll be coming in here in shorts, next!” He drained his glass. “Want another?”
“Just the half,” George pushed his mug across the table.
When Greg returned he asked, “Have you come to terms yet, with being retired?”
“Of course not. Never will, though I have to admit that your boy, Richard, is coping very well. He’s selling a lot of fast boats to all these young money manipulators in the
banking business. They must be earning huge salaries because the maintenance isn’t cheap. None of them seem to do any work on their boats like we used to; it’s straight to the yard for the least thing. I don’t believe many of them could screw on a cleat!”
“I was down at the Town marina the other day watching some young fellow trying to put a reverse turn on a fender. He never did get it right.”
They watched a fourball putt out on the eighteenth.
“You’ve never had any more trouble from those Frenchmen over the Billy Smart affair?”
“None at all. But I tell you what, your Richard has been doubly careful to check every last word on the registrations in our brokerage department.”
“Has Gelly’s sister heard anything of Billy?”
“She gets a card or letter from time to time, posted in various parts of England. Always says he is doing fine and means to bring his girlfriend over to meet her, but of course he never comes. Knows he’ll be copped the minute he sets foot on the island.”
“What for? You paid off all his debts.”
“True. But he doesn’t know that. Anyway, I doubt he would have the nerve to show his face.”
“So you think Richard makes a good managing director of your business?” Greg prompted, loving to hear praise of his son.
“I have to say I didn’t go along with some of his new-fangled ideas at first. But they seem to have worked. The shop he has added to the south side of the sheds brings in a lot of chandlery trade, and the smart new office has seen thousands of pounds worth of brokerage and insurance already.”
“I don’t suppose he has much time for physically working on the boats, now?”
The Guernsey Saga Box Set Page 72