‘There are,’ he told her. ‘There’s seven of us. We were quite a brood. Four brothers, three sisters. Let me introduce you. These are the girls, Anne, Maureen, Gill. You’ll remember Gill. She’s the little one with the loud voice.’
‘I love you too,’ Gill said to him as she shook hands.
All three women were as blonde as their children and very friendly. They smiled and teased and laughed a lot, and none of them made any mention of the wheelchair or her injuries because they were too busy looking at Sue. ‘They’re a lovely couple,’ Anne told her. ‘We’re ever so fond of them.’
Presently Andrew arrived with a glass of wine and a rug. ‘See you got here safely,’ he said. ‘Try that.’ He handed her the glass.
She accepted the wine happily but bridled at the sight of the rug. There was no need to treat her like an invalid. ‘I’ve got a coat,’ she said. ‘I shan’t need that.’
He laughed at her. ‘It’s to keep your toes warm while we walk to the pub,’ he said, ‘and you’re not to argue about it. We’re all going across on foot, so that we can drink, and it’s a fair old way. You can take it off the minute we get there.’ And when she grimaced: ‘Trust me. I’m a doctor!’
Somebody was calling over the din. ‘All set?’ The blonde girls were putting on their jackets. They all seemed to be wearing the same – short, black and padded with black fur collars – as if they were in uniform. Then people began to drift into the hall, depositing glasses on chairs and tables as they went, and Gemma looked at her wine and finished it quickly.
‘Come along everybody,’ Sue said, appearing at her side. ‘More drinks when you get there.’
But just as they were all moving through the hall, the phone rang.
Sue answered it on her way past, holding her free hand over her ear so that she could hear. ‘Yes?… What?’ Then her face bloomed into a delighted smile and she turned to quieten her guests, flicking her fingers at them. ‘It’s Chris! Shush! Shush! It’s my brother from Canada … Chris. Yes. Lovely to hear you. No not yet. We’re on our way out now … Yes, it has. Wonderful … He’s here. Do you want to speak to him?’
Then there was a long pause while her guests stood around in the hall, waiting patiently and trying to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping.
‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s what we all think. You know Dad. We’re quite proud of him actually. I never reckoned he’d make much of a gardener, anyway. Did you? … No … Hasn’t got the patience … Yes, yes. I will. Love to Lorraine. And the kids. Yes … Thanks for ringing.’
‘He was phoning from the conference centre,’ she explained as she put the receiver down. ‘They’ve just broken for lunch so he thought he’d phone and wish us many happy returns. Wasn’t that nice. Sent his love to you, Dad. He’s heard about the broadcast.’
Nick strolled out of the drawing room. ‘Didn’t want to speak to his little brother, I see,’ he pretended to complain.
Sue pulled a face at him. ‘You haven’t been married fifteen years,’ she said. ‘What d’you expect? Come on everybody or we shall be late.’
So the party set off along the winding road, Gemma in her wheelchair, Nick walking ahead talking to his father and the kids singing and dancing as they went. It was clear to Gemma that this was going to be a great party, even if Nick didn’t approve of her being there. And equally clear that Chris’s phone call had set the seal on it. They’re all so fond of each other, she thought, tucking her hands under the rug, and the thought made her warm.
The Fox turned out to be a large pub, set well back from the road so as to allow the maximum space for parking cars. They trooped through the ranks of Fords and Vauxhalls and into the building, still singing. Gemma had a vague impression of a bar and a narrow corridor full of legs and backsides, and then they were in a long beamed dining room, hung about with fairy lights and crammed with people who were milling about among the chairs and tables set ready for dinner. To make the crush worse, there were four brick columns rising in the midst of the tables, cheerfully abounce with balloons. They took up a lot of space and would make it difficult for her to manoeuvre the chair. She had a glimpse of a group of black-clad waiters and waitresses standing behind a serving bar to her right and, peering through the crush, saw that there were two large curved windows on the far wall, cosily curtained, and between them a disco going full, light-pulsing blast.
Catherine reappeared and led her to the head of one of the side tables where a space had been left for her chair. She noticed that Nick had taken himself off to another table on the far side of the room and was nodding in conversation with two men on either side of him. But then a man in a red shirt stood on a chair and yelled ‘Happy Anniversary!’ and the guests cheered and the party began and there wasn’t time to think about him or anything else.
Food, wine, muzak thrumming and throbbing, a confusion of voices, speaking party platitudes. ‘I’m a neighbour. That’s my little boy, Kevin, down the end.’ ‘Have you come far?’ ‘Oh that’s a long way!’ ‘How did you get here?’ And speeches – from a man with a beard, saying what a fine couple the Pengillys were – from Dr Quennell, saying fifteen years hardly seemed any time at all to him, although he knew Naomi and Helen wouldn’t agree with that – the two little blonde girls calling out ‘No, we wouldn’t, Grandpa’ and getting a round of applause – and finally from another bearded man in a checked shirt who thanked everyone for coming and told them the bar would be open while the floor was being cleared.
There were several minutes of such utter confusion as tables were cleared and pushed to the sides of the room and chairs were carried about and rearranged, that Gemma thought it politic to get out of the way and drove herself off to the disabled toilet.
It was already occupied and there was a queue of children gathered beside the door and jigging to the music.
‘What have you done with your leg?’ one of the boys asked. It was such a sudden and unexpected question it made her catch her breath.
‘I broke it,’ she said, looking down at the plaster sticking out from under her skirt.
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘The other one. The one that’s missing.’
She’d known this was the sort of question that would come sooner or later, and tried to steel herself to face it, but it gave her a shock even so. ‘I lost it in a rail crash,’ she said.
They were all very interested, gathering round her chair, and staring at the bandaged stump.
‘What happened to it?’ a little girl asked.
‘It was crushed.’
‘Where?’
‘Under the train,’ Gemma said, adding before they could ask her, ‘They had to cut it off to get me out.’ Now maybe they’ll have had enough.
But there is no end to the natural curiosity of the young.
‘What do they do with people’s legs when they chop them off?’ the first boy asked. ‘Do they bury them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gemma admitted. It was the first time she’d thought about it. ‘I don’t suppose there was much of it left by the time they came to clear the tracks.’
‘Ugh!’ the boy said, delighted. ‘Was it squashed to bits? Did they have to pick all the bits out? Ugh!’
For a sudden and terrible second, Gemma had a vision of her legs as they’d been when she last saw them, long and elegant in her new jeans, lovely, strong, elegant, striding legs. And she would never see them again. Never be long-legged and striding again. Then she realised that she was on the edge of tears, that if she stayed with these awful prying children another moment she would be howling. She looked around wildly for a way to get clear of them.
The loo door was opening. Rescue was at hand. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, propelling the chair past her innocent tormentors. ‘My need is greater than yours.’ She got into the cubicle just in time.
Tears streamed down her cheeks in a terrible outpouring of grief and mourning. She couldn’t stop them and she didn’t try to. Her leg was gone. She was stuck in a chair. No
thing would ever be the same again. And there was nothing she could do but cry. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Presently she became aware of women’s voices outside the cubicle.
‘Hop it, you lot. You’re not disabled.’
‘Neither are you,’ a boy’s voice said cheekily.
‘We’re old. We got privileges. Hop it.’
‘Who’s going first?’
‘It’s engaged.’
‘Oh bugger. I thought we could jump the queue. Who’s in there, do you know?’
‘Could be the kid in the wheelchair.’
‘Yeah. ‘Spose so. Poor little devil.’ The voices were receding as they walked away. ‘What happened to her? Does anyone know?’
‘She’s the one in the Wandsworth rail crash. The one that was in all the papers. You remember.’
‘Well I never. I thought her face was familiar. Well good luck to her, poor kid.’
Their sympathy stanched Gemma’s tears. Right, she said to herself. You’ve had your cry. You knew this would happen, and it has, and you’ve coped with it. Now you can stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not going to let anyone feel sorry for you. You’re going to get back in there and show them.
She used the loo – pleased that the handrails were in the right place for her – washed her hands and her face, and repaired her make-up, very carefully. A brave face, she thought, examining it critically. That’s what you need and that’s what you’re going to put on.
But the party had another blow for her. While she’d been away, the floor had been cleared of tables, the chairs pushed back against the wall, and all the lights dimmed. The disco was playing pop and in the middle of the floral carpet there was a neat square of parquet where all the little girls were solemnly dancing, rocking and swaying on their thin legs, their huge boots clumsy as weights.
She felt such a yearning to dance that it made her chest ache. No, she thought, I can’t just sit here and watch. It’s too much. I’ll have to do it eventually. I know that. But not yet. Not just yet. I’ll go outside for a little while. Have a few minutes’ peace and quiet. Cool my face and clear my head. I wouldn’t like anyone to see I’ve been crying.
She turned the chair and headed off towards the corridor and the entrance, smiling at the people she passed. There’d been a ramp over the step when she came in and with luck it would still be there. Yes. It was. And so out, out, into the cold and reasonable air of a clear night.
Chapter 15
The garden was full of little boys. Gangs of them were swinging from the branches of a tree, two were belting after one another among the parked cars, and down on the sloping lawn of the garden an excited mob was playing an impromptu game of football, their shouts as sharp as barks above the pounding beat of the disco.
So much for peace and quiet, Gemma thought. But she couldn’t go back in again. Not while she was feeling so vulnerable. Then she saw one of the bearded men, the one in the checked shirt who’d given the welcoming speech. He was leaning against the trunk of a tree, smoking a cigarette, the red tip glowing as he inhaled. As she hesitated, he looked across at her. ‘You escaping too?’ he said.
He sounded so much at ease and was smiling at her in such a friendly way, that she went to join him. If he was her host, it was only polite. ‘Not for a smoke,’ she said. ‘It’s the dance I’m running away from. I used to love dancing and now …’
‘Ah! Is this your first party since the accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘The next one will be better,’ he said, smiling at her again.
‘Once I’ve got my plaster off and they’ve fitted my new leg,’ she said, reassuring them both. ‘It’s just at the moment it’s a bit hard.’
He drew on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke in two long white streams, like a dragon snorting. She noticed he was careful to blow them away from her direction.
‘I’m allowed one before the dance,’ he explained. ‘Then Sue and I have to lead off.’
‘I thought that was who you were,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure. I expect they introduced us but …’
‘Among a hundred and fifty others,’ he smiled. ‘It’s a wonder you can remember any of us.’
‘Well, thanks for putting me up. It’s very kind of you. And congratulations on your anniversary.’
‘You’re welcome.’ His cigarette was almost finished. ‘I think I’ll have just one more,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll take to the floor. Don’t tell Sue.’
There was something in the way he said ‘take to the floor’ that roused her sympathy. ‘You don’t like dancing.’ She understood.
‘Not much. It’s ironic, isn’t it.’
She looked at him, taking him in and trying to read him. He wasn’t the sort of man you would notice in a crowd, although he was tall and rangy in his jeans and that checked shirt. He wasn’t the most obvious partner for Sue, either, in her fashionable clothes and her diamond earrings. But he was attractive. There was no doubt about that. And all of a piece, his face still and composed, his hair and beard thick but neatly trimmed, the hand that raised the cigarette to his mouth long-fingered and delicate. He’s happy in his skin, she thought. That’s what it is. That’s why he’s so easy to talk to. There was a peacefulness about him, a sense of gentleness and repose. It was calming her simply to sit beside him.
‘You were an actress, weren’t you,’ he said after a pause. ‘Before.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sue told me. Will you go back to it?’
‘If I can land a part. It’s not a secure job at the best of times.’
‘Is any job?’ he asked, wryly.
She thought about it. ‘Probably not. Now.’
‘If you’ll take my advice,’ he said, ‘you’ll find yourself a second one. To be on the safe side. I tell the kids that. It’s no good thinking you can hold down one job for a lifetime. You have to be prepared to change, or you get left behind.’
She was impressed by the sense of it. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘the college I went to trained us to teach drama as well as act. If everything else fails, I suppose I could do that.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Not much,’ she said honestly. ‘But it would be better than nothing.’
‘We’re all in the same boat now,’ he went on. ‘No job’s really safe. Bank managers used to be, executives, people like that. Not any more. It’s the age of insecurity.’
She wondered whether his garden centre was at risk but didn’t feel she could ask. Probably not. He didn’t seem to be insecure about anything. But then she hardly knew him and he could be the sort of man who kept his problems hidden.
‘We must go in,’ he said, stubbing out his second cigarette. ‘Or you’ll take cold and I’ll take a scolding.’
Gemma couldn’t imagine anyone scolding him. He seemed too gentle. She decided to watch and see how he would be received when they got back into the dining room.
The Quennell family were sitting at the bar, drinks in hand and head to head in conversation.
‘So that’s what I reckon,’ Sue said. ‘I’m being head-hunted. Three lunches in a fortnight. It has to be that.’ She was a little the worse for drink or she wouldn’t have been confiding in them so freely. Not at this early stage anyway. But now that she’d begun, she was glad she’d spoken because her mother looked so proud.
‘Is it a much better job?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes. Much better. Tougher, natch. But the pay’s astronomical.’
‘It would be,’ Nick laughed at her.
‘You’ll be able to look after us in our old age then,’ Andrew teased.
‘From what I hear you’ll be able to look after yourselves,’ Sue teased back. ‘Aren’t you the guru of the Health Service?’
He preened but tried to answer modestly. ‘So they say.’
‘What with you and Gemma,’ Sue said, ‘there’s hardly room for anything else in the papers these days.’
‘They’re leaving her alone at the mom
ent,’ Catherine said. ‘Which is just as well. They really hounded her when she was in St Thomas’s.’
‘But wasn’t that because of the compensation?’ Sue asked.
‘That was a fairy tale,’ Catherine told her.
That was news good enough to sober her daughter. ‘Was it?’
‘So she says. Her mother told the press, apparently. It was all wishful thinking.’
‘Then she isn’t going to sue?’
‘Not for half a million, anyway,’ Andrew said. ‘She’s not that kind of girl.’ And when Sue made a doubting face. ‘Oh come on, Sue. Look at her. She’s not greedy.’
‘I can vouch for that,’ Catherine put in. ‘She’s a giver, not a taker.’
Nick made a wry face. You should have seen the way she was going on in the car, he thought. But his parents were concentrating on Susan and didn’t notice.
Susan sipped her Martini. ‘I wish you’d told me this at the beginning,’ she said. ‘It would have made my life a lot easier. We spent a lot of time at the inquiry wondering what she was going to do.’
‘I didn’t know myself until yesterday,’ Andrew said. ‘She told us at dinner, didn’t she Kate?’ He was glancing round the room, looking for Gemma. She’d been gone for rather a long time. ‘Where’s she got to? She ought to be back by now.’
And then suddenly there she was, motoring into the room with Rob beside her, smiling and talking. ‘I thought you’d been kidnapped,’ he said, as she joined the group.
‘Only by me,’ Rob told them.
Sue smiled at him lop-sidedly. ‘Ready?’ she asked. When he nodded, she linked her arm in his and led him to the dance floor. Her elegant head was so close to his shoulder that she was almost resting on it.
That’s a love match, Gemma thought, watching them. And she was even more sure of it when they began to dance, for Sue moved into his arms as if that were the most natural place for her to be, and although he danced awkwardly, shuffling his feet, he held her with an obvious tenderness.
Their appearance on the dance floor changed the mood of the occasion. The band began to play ‘The Anniversary Waltz’, all the other couples stood aside, the children were called off the floor to make way for them and their guests applauded as they danced alone in the centre of the room—and of everyone’s attention. And as if that were the most natural thing in the world too, Rob bent his dark head and kissed her.
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