The Unknown Bridesmaid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Are we finished?’ she asked. ‘All this talk is silly.’

  ‘Not stupid? Silly, but not stupid?’ Julia said, risking a smile.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Hera said.

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ Julia said. ‘Shall I tell you what I think you mean. Shall I? Are you interested?’ Another shrug. ‘Well, Hera, this is what I think you mean.’

  There were so many kinds of tiredness. The tiredness she felt now was nothing like the physical exhaustion she remembered feeling when she was a teacher. This kind of new tiredness drained her, but her body was refusing to sleep. The exhaustion was in every limb, in the crevice of every line on her face, and still sleep would not come to rescue and replenish her. It was not that her mind raced. There was no thudding noise of repetitive thoughts in her head. She felt quite calm, but this calmness did not tip her over into the oblivion she craved. Instead, she lay and stared at the ceiling, a blur of white in the semi-dark of the curtained room and she began to count the tiles. They were made of some kind of polystyrene stuff – she had never known the proper name – unpleasant to touch. She knew this because one had fallen off and she’d been surprised how brittle it was. She’d never replaced it. There were ten tiles by ten. The missing tile was luckily in the darkest corner, hardly noticeable.

  Hera counted things. Julia had guessed she did when first she saw the girl staring at her own feet with such care, as though obliged to follow markings on the floor. And then, when making a display of ostentatious boredom during Julia’s questioning, she was looking so intently, left to right, right to left, along the books on the shelf behind Julia that Julia knew she was counting them. Was this obsessive? Julia, counting her ceiling tiles lazily, didn’t think it necessarily so, not in the way it was currently termed as obsessive compulsive disorder. It was a strategy, that was all. Something to do to avoid doing something else – no, that was not right. The tiles above her blurred and a wave of dizziness seemed to sweep through her, delicious, welcome.

  In August, the summer little Reggie was born, Julia and her mother moved to Manchester. Julia never understood the reasons for this major upheaval. Nothing was explained and her opinion on whether this move was a good thing or not was never sought. Just one day her mother told her to pack up her things because they were going to Manchester to live.

  She would be going to a new school in September, it was all arranged. Her mother had been born and brought up in Manchester and, it appeared, had never wanted to leave and come further north to the country, to where Julia’s father was going to work, but she had had no choice.

  Saying goodbye to her friends at school wasn’t as sad as Julia thought it might be, but then she herself realised that none of these friends mattered much to her, except possibly Sandra. Sandra envied Julia going to Manchester, where she said there would be more ‘life’. Julia wasn’t sure what this meant, but nodded sagely. Her teacher gave her a book of poetry, a selection called Poems of Lakeland, and hoped she would continue to do as well at her new school as she had done at this one. Julia, she said, showed great promise. Julia repeated this to her mother, who merely commented ‘Time will tell’.

  The day they left the house where Julia had been born, and where she’d spent all her nine and a bit years, it rained heavily. She and her mother got soaked just going from the front door, which had to be locked, and into the taxi, and then soaked again, collecting the cases from the taxi and carrying them into the station. All short periods spent in the rain but enough to drench them because this rain was relentless, what Julia’s mother called ‘the wetting sort’, sheets of it falling from the dark sky. There was a clap of thunder as they stood on the station platform waiting for the train and her mother said thank goodness we’re leaving this place. Julia wondered if this meant that there was no rain and no thunder in Manchester, but she didn’t ask. ‘Best not to ask anything’ – the rule of her young life. Best to wait and see what happened.

  III

  IT WAS A relief, after the tussle with Hera, to have Camilla in front of her. Julia felt grateful. This was not necessarily how work went. A difficult case could be immediately followed by an even more difficult one. Her mind was still full of Hera. She had not by any means cleared it of the worry that she had not, after all, understood the girl. There was still something missing, which she would have to return to thinking about soon, before the final report was written.

  But Camilla Pearson was almost a pleasure to have in front of her. A sweet, shy child, her expression a little anxious, though she was quite composed, sitting perfectly still and attempting a smile. The smile wavered but it was there. She was nine years old, slight of build and very pale. Julia noted shadows under Camilla’s eyes, indicating lack of sleep, but the eyes themselves were bright enough, showing no signs of fatigue. Both parents had come with the girl, and sat now in the waiting room. They had seemed anxious about Camilla being seen on her own but had been persuaded of the need for this. Both had given their daughter a hug, and the mother added a kiss before she went into the room with Julia.

  ‘Camilla,’ Julia began, ‘we’re just going to have a chat about a few things, so I can get to know you a bit, OK?’

  Camilla nodded, the hesitant smile reappearing.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Julia said, ‘how you liked your new school?’

  Camilla said it was all right. The ‘all right’ was grudging.

  ‘Did you like your last school?’ Julia asked. The nod was enthusiastic. ‘What was good about it?’ Julia encouraged her.

  Camilla said she knew everyone there. She’d known them since they were all three in the nursery class. And the school was small, with a garden where they grew things. This new school was big, and there was no garden, and the playground was too hot and noisy and there were too many children and boys played football though they were not supposed to . . . the complaints tumbled out. Julia let them. Camilla had a long list of what was wrong with her new school and enjoyed going over it.

  ‘Is there anything better at this school than at your last one?’ Julia asked.

  First Camilla shook her head, and then she said that maybe the dinners were a bit better, but that she didn’t care about the dinners anyway. Her mother wanted her to have school dinners but she would rather have a packed lunch.

  ‘What would you like in your lunch box?’ Julia asked.

  Camilla again had a list ready. She would like a cheese sandwich, brown bread and Cheddar cheese, and an apple, a Granny Smith, and a tangerine.

  ‘No crisps, no biscuits?’ Julia prompted.

  Another energetic shake of the head. ‘They aren’t good for you,’ Camilla said, ‘biscuits are full of sugar and rot your teeth, and crisps are rubbish. We did it at my other school.’

  ‘It?’ queried Julia.

  ‘Diet, what’s good for you and what isn’t.’

  Very virtuous, and Camilla knew it. She was pleased with her answer, her expression almost comical in its knowingness.

  Julia switched tack. ‘Your mum works, doesn’t she, Camilla? What is it that she does?’

  ‘She’s a physiotherapist,’ Camilla said, ‘at the hospital where my dad works too. He’s an engineer.’

  Julia asked her if she had been to this hospital, if she’d seen her mother at work. Camilla said once, when there was a day off school, and her mother had taken her with her because there was no one to look after her and she was too young to be left on her own. Julia asked if she’d liked the hospital. No, Camilla hadn’t. It was too big and there were smells she didn’t like and once they had to walk past a man lying on a trolley, with blood all over him, and it was frightening. She’d sat on a chair watching while her mum got old people out of bed and showed them how to use a sort of walking frame and the old people didn’t like it and wanted to get back into bed. Then she and her mum went to another ward where there was a man who had to learn to use his arm again and he groaned and groaned.

  There was no stopping Camilla. A chatterbox onc
e started. Julia thought of directions in which the talkativeness could be usefully pushed. Here was a child who had twice been found a long way from home and apparently intent on travelling further if she had not drawn attention to herself and been questioned (in the first instance by a traffic warden, seeing her standing hesitantly at a crossing but never crossing, and in the second by a shopkeeper from whom she’d tried to buy a bar of chocolate with a 10p piece). In both cases, Camilla had been quite calm when challenged about what she was doing in an area such a long way from where she said she lived. She said she was just exploring. Taken to the nearest police station each time she gave her address and telephone number, perfectly self-possessed, and waited to be collected without seeming to have any worries about her parents being angry or distressed by her behaviour.

  They hadn’t been angry but they were bewildered. On one occasion, the parents thought Camilla safely at school, to which they’d delivered her themselves. She had slipped out at break time without anyone spotting her, though quite how she’d managed to do this when the playground gate was locked from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. nobody had established satisfactorily. The teachers didn’t yet know Camilla and none of them appeared to have noticed her disappearance until at least an hour later when for some reason there had been a name- or head-check, and one girl was missing.

  Julia had listened patiently while all this was described by the parents, who blamed the teachers for being ‘slack’. They ought, in the father’s opinion, to have been keeping a watch on a new pupil. He didn’t know how this school had been rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, if a nine-year-old girl could just leave it without anyone noticing for more than an hour.

  ‘And the second time Camilla wandered off?’ Julia asked, knowing this time the school could not be blamed. Camilla had been at home. It was an hour before her parents realised she was not watching the DVD they’d left her (they thought) engrossed in.

  ‘We were decorating,’ the mother said, ‘we were painting the bedroom.’

  Julia nodded. She looked at Camilla, who returned her gaze with a slight smile.

  ‘Why does she do this?’ her father asked. ‘Why doesn’t she tell us why she does it? I mean, think what could have happened? It’s dangerous, we’ve told her that, we’ve tried to tell her without, you know, scaring her. We can’t trust her any more, she won’t promise never to go off again just when she feels like it.’

  There was a lot more in this vein. Julia listened, and watched Camilla, who appeared entirely unworried.

  Visits to see little Reggie became regular. Julia and her mother now lived only ten minutes’ walk away from where Iris still lived with her parents. Often, Julia and her mother babysat while Maureen and Iris went out. It was, Julia discovered, a deeply boring pastime. Hours, she seemed to spend, standing dutifully in the garden watching over a sleeping little Reggie. There was a canopy over his Silver Cross pram but this might not protect him from the attentions of stray cats even if it guarded him adequately from the sun. It was Julia’s job to chase away any interested cats, and look out for wasps and bees. A bee sting, she was told, could be ‘fatal’ for such a young baby. If a bee started to hover round the pram, she was to move its position at once. It occurred to Julia that, since bees flew, they could fly after the pram and it would be no good moving it, but she didn’t mention this obvious fact. To do so would have meant being called ‘argumentative’ by her mother.

  Little Reggie was still very little. Julia listened to the conversations about his weight. They were interminable. Iris fretted about her baby’s lack of substantial weight gain whereas Maureen saw nothing worrying about little Reggie only having put on a couple of ounces since regaining his birth weight. Julia’s mother, however, supported Iris. Little Reggie was taken weekly to the baby clinic where all three women watched the scales intently while he was weighed. The nurse who did the weighing was reassuring, saying little Reggie was perfectly healthy, but Iris was sometimes tearful on the way home. Maureen and Julia’s mother nudged each other when this happened, and cleared their throats, and began talking over-brightly to each other, until Iris recovered.

  It was the last week of the school holidays. The weather went on being hot and sunny, but Julia didn’t enjoy it much. She wished she could be at the seaside, any seaside, or at least near a lake or river. Their new home had a small garden but this consisted merely of a parched plot of grass and a ragged border full of weeds and not much else. Julia’s mother clicked her tongue at the sight of these weeds but said she had no time to do anything about them and certainly couldn’t afford a gardener. Julia wished they had a garden like Maureen’s but as they didn’t she stayed mostly inside, out of the sun. Go out and play, her mother urged, but there was no one to play with and outside it was too hot. Go and explore, her mother suggested, get to know the way to your new school. But Julia knew the way. There was no need to explore. The use of that word irritated her. ‘Explore’ sounded exciting, and walking the roads round where they now lived was not in the least exciting. She would have liked to explore the canal at the back of the houses, but the gate onto the towpath was locked.

  She was worried about starting her new school. On the one hand, she wanted the holidays to be over because she was so bored, but on the other she was nervous because she would know no one. She would be the new girl, and she had seen what it could be like to be a new girl. She’d be an object of great curiosity at first and then this interest would fade away and she’d be left struggling to break into groups and partnerships formed by the others long ago. She was resolved not to care about this isolation, but she was not looking forward to experiencing it. She didn’t bother voicing her anxieties to her mother, knowing she would only get a bracing lecture on facing up to things. What her mother didn’t appreciate was that in her imagination Julia had done just that and hadn’t liked it. She had envisaged the faces peering at her, seen the crowd surrounding her in the playground on her first day, and her heart had started to beat loudly. She felt taut with apprehension. She could feel herself inside the heads of the other girls. Knew what they would be thinking about her and what they would say. She practised over and over again how to react.

  The day before term started Julia and her mother spent the afternoon at Maureen’s. They had lunch there after Julia had watched Iris bathe little Reggie. Iris was very tired because little Reggie had woken up every hour all night. He seemed to be hungry but had only half emptied the bottle he was given. Theories as to the cause of the baby’s reluctance to accept all the milk were debated by Iris, Maureen and Julia’s mother. Julia’s mind wandered. She heard the voices of the three talkers but she didn’t take in the words. Asking if she could be excused (her mother had brought her up always to ask if she could be excused from the table), she stood up and took her empty plate to the sink and rinsed it clean, and then she wandered into the garden, kicking the gravel on the path, but carefully, quietly, so that nobody would hear her.

  Little Reggie was in his pram, finally asleep. Iris had said he would probably sleep for hours now, and his regular feeding pattern would be disrupted, but she didn’t care, she wasn’t going to waken him, he needed the rest and so did she. Julia peered into the pram, which as usual during this hot weather was under the pear tree, nicely shaded. She could only see the baby’s head, a still bald head, unless the new darker fuzz on it was counted as hair. He was lying on his back, his eyes, of course, shut but his eyelids occasionally seeming to flicker. Julia thought he must be dreaming, and wondered what a baby would dream about. She thought she’d gently rock the pram, as she had been taught, though there was no need to because little Reggie was asleep and perfectly quiet. The pram wouldn’t rock with the brake on so she released the brake. It now rocked satisfactorily. Julia looked back at the house. Her mother and aunt and cousin weren’t in the dining room any longer. They had either all gone to wash up or they’d retreated to the cooler sitting room at the back of the house. They weren’t watching Julia or the pram anyway.

&n
bsp; Slowly, experimentally, Julia began to push the pram towards the gate. It was a broad wooden gate, painted green. When she reached it, she put the brake back on while she opened the gate. She would take little Reggie for a short walk, just up the road and back. It would only take ten minutes. She liked the idea of being in charge of the pram, of being capable enough to manage to push it without her mother’s supervision. She could be back in the garden before her mother or aunt or cousin came to check on the baby. Walking very erect, head held high, she negotiated the way through the open gateway skilfully, turning the pram neatly to face down the road. She didn’t close the gate. No need to, when she was going to be back in a few minutes.

  She was at the end of the first stretch of the road in what seemed like seconds. Once there, she hesitated. There was a kerb, and then another kerb, with a minor road leading to the canal joining the main road. Could she safely manage the kerbs? Yes, of course she could, and she did. On she went until she came to the very end of the road, where she was resolved to turn and go back. Faint pricklings of guilt and anxiety were beginning to trouble her. Any moment she expected to hear her mother or aunt or cousin, or all three of them, shouting down the road at her, wanting to know what on earth she thought she was doing, pushing the big pram on her own, yelling at her to come back at once. But there was no shouting. The road, at two in the afternoon, was eerily silent. Most houses had blinds or curtains drawn against the fierce sun. Nobody was in the gardens, nobody mowing the lawn or clipping a hedge. It was much too hot. Julia turned the pram round, again taking great care. Then she set off back to the house, the sun now in her eyes.

  Quite what happened she wouldn’t have been able to say. It was something to do with going down the first kerb. She’d already gone over two kerbs, one upwards, one downwards, each time gently tipping the pram at the right angle. But now something happened. She turned the pram round, with no difficulty, and then, pleased that this manoeuvre was so easy, she put her hands under instead of on top of the handle, and pushed, so that the big front wheels would slide over the kerb. Immediately, much too quickly for her to correct the angle, the whole pram seemed to stand on end, the hood hitting the ground, the handle in the air, her hands trying to clutch it. She could see that little Reggie had slid down into the interior of the hood, his head separated from the tarmac road only by the fabric of this hood. But he was still asleep there wasn’t a sound from him. Julia raised herself on tiptoes and pushed down on the handle with all her might. Thankfully, the pram righted itself and she pushed it across the short width of the side road and got it up the other kerb without mishap.