by Fiona Walker
‘I meant, are you excited about the wedding?’ Alexandra laughed. ‘Not long now, huh?’
‘No, you’re right,’ Tash sighed. ‘I haven’t got long at all.’
Twenty-Six
* * *
LE MANOIR CHAMPEGNY GLOWED like hot, buttered toast in the evening sun, its medieval turrets pointing manicured fingers to the sky.
Bumping the hire car over the cattle grid at the entrance of the long front drive – once neglected but now restored to its endless, straight-spined splendour – Tash glanced across at Niall and noticed that he had finally woken up and was staring at the house in rapt awe, his mouth open.
‘I always forget how stunning it is,’ he murmured. It was the longest sentence he had spoken to her since they had got off the train, so she supposed she should be grateful.
The sun was now so low that it just peeked over the horizon, blushing furiously and squinting through the pollarded poplars that lined the drive, striping the pale Tarmac with shadows like a humbug.
Alexandra was in her usual state of crisis, surrounded by panting spaniels, fabric swatches, wedding magazines and faxed florists’ quotes, but still looking radiant in a bubblegum pink tunic dress. She’d recently had her sleek bob cut into a neat pageboy’s mop, revealing her face and adding yet more to her awesome, age-defying glamour.
‘You look wonderful, Mummy.’ Tash raced forward to give her a hug.
Finally pulling out of the clinch so that she could look at her daughter properly, Alexandra longed to be able to say the same thing in return but found she couldn’t. Tash looked tired, drawn and spotty; her hair hung lankly and her eyes were dull and spiritless.
‘You look rapturous, Alexandra,’ Niall said flamboyantly, giving her a stubbly kiss which Alexandra noticed had a strong taste of Irish distilleries about it.
‘I’ve embarked on a long term tart-up programme for the wedding,’ she explained. ‘I’ve been slapping on tightening, softening, smoothing and invigorating balms every morning after my shower. Pascal is convinced I’m going embalmy.’
Both Tash and Niall took a couple of beats before they laughed along with her. They were impossibly tense-necked and nervy.
‘You must be quite exhausted, you poor things,’ she soothed. ‘You’ve both been working so hard lately. You simply have to loll around and relax this weekend – I insist.’
She led them through the ornate, echoing house to her favourite retreat, the China Room, which was packed to the skirting boards with all manner of pots and vases like a hollow Giant’s Causeway across the floor with paths between to allow access to the furniture.
‘Now sit down while I fetch you a drink.’ She pushed yet more wedding magazines from a threadbare red silk sofa. ‘Pascal is in Paris today – he can travel back with us all tomorrow night.’
‘He can what?’ Tash watched her mother in confusion as she dashed out of the room.
She looked at Niall quizzically, but he was too busy saying hello to the spaniels to have heard. He still had his sideburns from playing Huntingdon, although the shoot had been wrapped several weeks earlier. He had grown rather attached to them now and had an irritating habit of stroking them absent-mindedly with the back of his finger so that they stood out like fans. Tash loathed them.
‘What did you mean about Pascal travelling back with us tomorrow, Mummy?’ she asked as Alexandra wafted back into the room with a bottle of local Blanc de Saumur and three rather smudgy glasses. ‘We’re already here.’
‘Oh, didn’t I say?’ Alexandra laughed gaily, placing the glasses on a low table and gazing around for the corkscrew – Pascal was famous for keeping one in every room, like Liberace’s pianos. ‘I’m going to drive you to Paris tomorrow morning. You have an appointment with the dressmaker at three,’ she explained breezily. ‘So I’ve arranged to meet Sophia, Ben and Pascal at Le Grand Véfour for a boozy lunch, then we girls can leave the chaps to their brandies while we get you kitted out before driving back here in the Espace. It’ll be fun.’
‘Kitted out?’ Tash repeated weakly.
‘A dress-fitting, darling!’ Alexandra exclaimed disbelievingly. ‘You can’t expect to get away without one, surely? Sophia simply can’t believe we’ve left it so late as it is. She and Ben have come over here specifically because she wants to be on hand to advise you, which I think is jolly kind, darling, don’t you?’
Tash noticed Niall was tweaking his sideburns rather maniacally now.
‘Christ!’ She gaped at Niall, who was still offering no reaction. ‘I didn’t know about any of this.’ But Alexandra’s mind had moved on to menus as she started to lay out prospective ideas in front of Tash, catering for vegetarians, diabetics and Hay Diet followers.
Half an hour later and Tash and Niall were briefly relieved from discussing the various merits of turbot over salmon by the distant ringing of a phone.
‘Drat – I’ll be right back. Think about wild strawberry mousse with three-chocolate sauce while I’m gone, will you?’
‘Shit – she’s turned into Sophia,’ Niall groaned after Alexandra had left the room. ‘I always wondered where your sister got it from. I’ve never seen so many lists – it’s like being trapped with a manic production secretary.’ He picked up several menu mock-ups and waggled them around in despair before throwing them over his shoulder.
‘It’s all got a bit out of hand, hasn’t it?’ Tash winced. ‘I had no idea they’d done this much – and on this scale.’
‘Well, it makes it bloody tough to back out now.’ He stood up and grabbed the wine bottle. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Tash watched him stepping out of the high french windows and on to the terrace, now swamped in darkness. Soon his footsteps retreated and she could only hear the creaking of the crickets outside, sounding as though they were all tipping back and forth on individual rocking chairs as they enjoyed the evening air.
It was the first time Niall had broached the subject of calling the wedding off – however glibly. Tash felt as though she had been punched in the chest. Relief was drenching her with heat, but it still hurt so much that tears kissed her eyelids.
She closed her eyes. She had known for ages that she and Niall were no longer communicating properly, talking honestly or making one another happy. They hadn’t had a decent conversation or laughed together in weeks. If they had argued endlessly, Tash would be able to understand things better, but it seemed they had simply stopped caring for one another in that delightful, mutually reliant way they once had. Outsiders might blame it on wedding nerves and stress from so much planning, but it was evident that neither of them had done any planning at all; they had simply allowed others to assume the task, hoping that somehow, if they ignored it, it would go away. And now that they were less than a month away from the day itself, they were both completely appalled that it was really happening after all. It was like getting into a drunken conversation at a right-on party and casually agreeing to do some voluntary work for a charity, only to find weeks later that one’s flight was booked to a war-torn African state, the bullet-proof vest ordered and a date fixed for swamp-fever immunisation.
Weeks ago, during Niall’s giddy Huntingdon phase, they had travelled to Marlbury for a boozy lunch with his agent, Bob Hudson. Two bottles of wine up and giggling like kids, they had filled in a marriage notice at the register office. Their names had been pinned up outside ever since, along with those of countless other young local couples. On the odd occasions Tash had passed by, she had longed to take a great, black marker pen and cross them out. Calling everything off had seemed that simple but in reality it was infinitely more complicated, and she had absolutely no idea where to start. She felt desperately alone.
The prospect was made even harder after a day in Paris.
Niall elected to stay behind at the manoir and lounge by the pool, claiming exhaustion. Tash envied him, settled in a sun lounger with a long, cool drink and a hot, hot sun overhead.
Insects danced in Pascal’s ramp
ant, overgrown garden and the only noises that split the warm, dusty air were the distant grumble of a tractor criss-crossing a field and the rhythmic lapping of the pool against its tiled edges, tempo as leisurely as a tired, drunken blues band.
In contrast, the tooting, hooting traffic en route to Paris was a fanfare of mosquitoes hungry for blood. Endless rows of cars stretched out along the heat-hazed roads, as shiny and colourful as the long strips of plastic-encased bon-bons that hung outside the streetside shops.
Feeling sick the entire way, Tash alternately breathed in the lung-freezing, plastic smell of the Espace’s air conditioning and then buzzed down the window for a hot chestful of fresh exhaust fumes.
Alexandra didn’t once stop talking about weddings.
In central Paris, the tourists were out in force, clogging up the roads in hire-cars, taxis and coaches, and grid-locking the pavements in a shuffling, sight-seeing crocodile of bad-taste shirts. Alexandra drove around in endless circles searching for somewhere to park close to Palais Royale. As a result they arrived at the restaurant almost an hour late, to find Sophia holding court as she was fawned over by Ben and Pascal, and even her young half-sister, Polly, who was eight and had recently developed a keen, if eccentric, fashion sense. Allowed to run amok by her indulgent father, Polly was wearing a bizarre orange rubber t-shirt, lime green velvet hot pants and a pink beret. Finished off with Lolita sunglasses and badly applied red lipstick, she looked like a paedophile’s hot date. In contrast, Sophia was even more understated than ever in knee-length, bias-cut Galliano.
‘I keep telling her to wipe that stuff off, Mummy,’ Sophia greeted her mother with a kiss and a hiss. ‘But she just slaps more on – and it’s Lancaster. I assume it’s yours?’
‘It must be,’ Alexandra greeted Pascal and Ben with a kiss before enveloping her daughter in a big hug. ‘Chérie! Did you have a good week at school?’
‘Oui, Maman.’ Polly kissed her mother’s nose, leaving it port-drinker’s crimson with lipstick. ‘I kissed two boys and I get ze top mark for my histoire.’
‘Well, I’m delighted for you on both counts.’ Alexandra let her daughter struggle free as she raced to Tash for a hug. ‘Have you ordered for us, darling?’ She looked to Pascal. ‘So sorry we’re late.’
‘Ees okay,’ Pascal patted the seat beside him. ‘But I order for Niall too – he coming, non?’
‘No,’ Alexandra dropped her voice furtively, checking that Sophia and Ben were still busy talking to Tash about the awful traffic. ‘All is definitely not right there – both the pour souls look washed up, over and out. We must talk later.’
Pascal nodded tactfully.
‘Still dieting?’ Sophia asked pointedly as Tash fiddled later with her cherry clafoutis. ‘You’ll have to stabilise your weight once the dress is fitted, you know – for God’s sake don’t do a Princess Di and walk up the aisle with enough room for Will Carling in your bodice.’
The wedding-dress fitting was something Tash could never have dreamed up during all her youthful illusions of fairytale weddings and floating silk organza – most of these involving Hugo waiting for her at the altar, eyes ablaze with love.
The design house was halfway along avenue Montaigne, and one had to ring a bell and wait to be shown in by a very sleek woman with a huge bun as shiny as patent leather and green suit cut so sharply, Tash was afraid she would gash herself on it as she brushed past. Upstairs, they were ushered into a large, overtly Baroque cream room littered with plump footstools, curvaceous sofas and hour-glass mirrors. The whole effect was as succulently feminine as a Rubens nude. Tash was terrified to tread on the plush cream carpet for fear of staining it. The place horrified her – it was like a sterile, man-made cream womb.
She was ordered into a cubicle with vast mirrors set in each of its cream marble walls and told to strip. Waiting in her bra and knickers – thankfully a matching pair, although she was ashamed of their three-year-old M & S status – she almost fainted as the door was whipped open and she was tutted at by Patent Bun before it was slammed closed again. Moments later, items of cream silk underwear were being thrust at her, price tags swinging. One garter belt cost more than a winter coat.
Outside, Tash could hear Alexandra and Sophia chattering, but above them was the unmistakable squeak of rubber as Polly approached the door.
‘The lady, she ask you to leave your pants on when you put on the lingerie,’ she translated. ‘But she wants the full effort – I mean, effect, oui?’
‘Oui.’ Tash struggled into the underwear, which was far more complicated than her usual type – all cross-lacing, multiple hooks and delicate ribbon ties. Once she was ensconced, and feeling like a trussed turkey, she was fitted into a part-silk, part-calico mock-up dress which was full of pins, loose stitches and strange holes. It was like clambering into a kinky S & M kit, although she doubted they usually came with a watered cream silk fish-tail skirt.
Tripping out of her changing room – pleased to move away from so many reflections of her sun-reddened face and dreadful hair – she was greeted by muted reactions from Alexandra and Sophia, although Polly wolf-whistled and expressed admiration for the pins.
‘It’s a bit of a tent on her, isn’t it?’ Sophia tilted her head. She and their mother were sitting on a cream chaise-longue, drinking espresso from tiny ivory cups. Tash was certain that, had she been holding one, she would have thrown it over the hated dress – and legged it towards the gare du Nord and the Eurostar express.
But, aware that her mother was spending a fortune on it, she said nothing.
‘You’ve lost so much weight since I took your measurements last Christmas,’ Alexandra sighed, watching as Patent Bun twitched around Tash, pulling pins from between her teeth and tightening the fit.
Tash felt as though she was being fitted into a strait-jacket. With every tuck and fold, she lost a little more freedom.
Patent Bun was waffling on about the need for further fittings, but Alexandra shook her head. ‘C’est impossible – ma fille demeure en Angleterre.’ She raised her hands in apology.
Eyes narrowing, Patent Bun thrust a pin deep into Tash’s bottom.
There then followed a trail of head-dresses, veils, shoes, stockings and jewellery which Tash couldn’t hope to take in. She listlessly picked several at random and then acquiesced as Sophia and her mother argued her towards others. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to marry Niall. This was all an awful, expensive mistake and she wanted to scream it in Patent Bun’s face as she frisked around as attentively as Cariola attending the Duchess of Malfi during her last desperate hours of life.
As soon as they were out of the cosseted cream womb, Tash grabbed her mother’s arm. ‘I need to talk to you, Mummy – can we go for a coffee?’
Looking at her watch, Alexandra grimaced. ‘You were due at the salon quarter of an hour ago, sweetheart. And I said I’d go and fetch Pascal and Ben while you’re there.’
‘Salon?’
‘The top hair-stylists in Paris,’ Sophia corrected. ‘And I’m being done too, so we can sit and gossip beneath the drier – I’m dying to know which of Niall’s famous friends are coming to the wedding. Has Brad Pitt said yes? He’s frightfully dishy.’
Twenty-Seven
* * *
WHEN THEY RETURNED TO the manoir, Niall was already two-thirds of the way down a bottle of wine, and fell about laughing when he caught sight of Tash.
‘Christ, angel, you look like Crystal Tips!’ He bounded over to kiss her and say ‘hi’ to the others, spinning a delighted Polly around and around in an exuberant hug until she was screaming with laughter, her rubber-top squeaking.
Despite the disastrously unflattering new cut, Tash cheered up considerably; his mood was much, much cheerier than the night before. Relaxed by a long sleep in the sun and a ramble down to the village bar for a baguette and beer at lunchtime, he was bright-eyed and animated.
Outside on the terrace, Tash sat in one of the last patches of evening sun, finding
herself between Sophia and her mild-mannered brother-in-law, who was having considerable difficulty erecting a wooden Raj chair which collapsed every time he sat in it. Once he was finally on board, its long leg rests swung round and trapped him inside like a child in a high chair. Not seeming to care, he placed his drink on the wooden bar in front of him and donned a pair of scratched dark glasses that made him look like a blond Hank Marvin.
‘You seen much of old Hugo lately?’ Ben asked her, scratching his chin with the rim of his glass.
She shook her head, watching Niall wander towards a balustraded wall to stare out across the darkening valley, his dark eyes crinkled against the sun so that he almost looked to be wincing in pain.
‘He’s been keeping a pretty low profile lately,’ said Tash, unwilling to say too much. ‘I saw him at the Blewford trials last week, but he left early.’ He had fallen off a novice that day, cracking a rib and consequently scratching all his other entries and leaving in a high old rage. Stefan, who had also been competing, had been forced to beg a lift back to Maccombe with the Moncrieffs after Hugo had sulkily abandoned him.
‘You won a couple of classes there, didn’t you?’ Ben tried to cross his legs and found that the bar in front of him prevented it. Instead he sat knock-kneed like a bashful debutante.
‘Just one.’ She took a slurp of her drink and winced as she realised how strong it was. Alexandra always poured pastis as though it would evaporate on contact with the glass. ‘I won an intermediate class with Mickey Rourke.’
‘Is that the chestnut beast?’ asked Sophia, who never kept up with Tash’s horses.
‘Dappled grey,’ she corrected. ‘Hugo bought him from Gus a while back, but they didn’t get on, so he’s given me the ride. My new sponsors are covering the cost.’