The Unknown Bridesmaid

by Margaret Forster

  Now there she was, in the car, on the way to the mysterious appointment with Carlo, who kept clearing his throat, as though in preparation for making an announcement that never came. Julia had decided not to speak to him. He’d forced her to come, but he couldn’t force her to talk. She kept her eyes focused on the road ahead and ignored every attempt made by Carlo to chat. After ten minutes, he lapsed into silence and more throat-clearing, and then, when they were nearly at their destination, he said, ‘This is for your own good, Julia. You need to see someone. Someone needs to find out what’s causing all this behaviour, and sort it out.’ Julia was tempted to ask what he meant by ‘this behaviour’, but she wasn’t going to weaken and talk, and argue about it. They had already had the row about the burning of the wood, and she’d apologised.

  Carlo parked in the car park in front of the building. Julia thought about refusing to get out but then decided that kind of obstinacy might lead to him pulling her out forcefully. There was a tension in his attitude to her that made her wary, though she had never felt wary of Carlo before. He led the way, but it soon turned out that he didn’t know where he was going. He stood in the entrance hall, looking about him, adjusting his tie nervously, and in the end had to knock on a door labelled ‘Reception’. The door opened suddenly and a woman stood there. ‘Yes?’ she said, sounding annoyed to be interrupted. Carlo said he had an appointment for Julia – he gestured towards her – and named a Mr Someone. ‘Up the stairs,’ the woman said, ‘first floor, second door on the right.’

  Again, Julia contemplated refusing to obey. The woman receptionist was still standing in the doorway, looking at her. It didn’t seem worth the fuss there would surely be if she refused to go up the stairs. Carlo was already climbing them, in a hurry to keep the appointment, and clearly not wanting to remain under the scrutiny of this unfriendly, staring woman. Julia went as slowly as she could, plod, plod, head down. The stairs were wooden, uncarpeted, and the noise of Carlo’s shoes was loud. She went up on tiptoe herself, holding on to the iron banister rail which was immensely cold to her touch. Carlo was at the first floor quickly, and stood waiting for her. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of,’ he whispered. Julia smiled, a great broad smile, lips clamped together, to show him it was laughable for him to imagine she was in the least frightened – resentful, yes; embarrassed, yes; but frightened, no. She hoped he got the message.

  Another closed door, with a card fitted into a slot above the doorknob. This time, when Carlo knocked, a man’s voice, a deep voice, shouted, ‘Come in!’ They went in. A man, quite an old man, Julia reckoned, got up from behind a desk and held his hand out. ‘John Messenger,’ he said. Carlo shook his hand, seeming surprised, Julia thought, to be offered it. She wondered if her own hand was going to be shaken too. It felt hot and sweaty at this thought. But she got a smile instead. ‘Hello, Julia,’ John Messenger said, and she said hello back but didn’t smile.

  They were told to sit down on the chairs to the right of the desk, which Julia thought odd. They were obliged to turn to look at John Messenger. She’d rather have been facing him directly. He asked Carlo some questions, all of them factual, and Julia could tell he knew the answers anyway. He had a sheet of paper in front of him, and kept looking at it, as Carlo talked, nodding his head. Julia stopped turning to look at him. She studied the picture on the wall opposite. It was of fields, yellow and green fields, with hills in the background. She thought it was a watercolour but couldn’t be sure. Then she studied the floor. It was linoleum of some sort, a beige colour, quite cracked in some places. It looked as though it could do with a good scrub. She imagined being on her knees, scrubbing it, a pail of hot, soapy water at her side, and a scrubbing brush in her hand. A metal pail . . .

  Carlo was standing up. He shook hands with this John Messenger again, and patted Julia on the shoulder as he said, ‘See you in a minute,’ and left the room. Julia felt herself stiffen. She waited. John Messenger waited. The silence extended itself until it began to seem like a test. Who would break it first? Not I, thought Julia, not I, said the sparrow. She hoped she would be asked what she was thinking of and she could say a sparrow.

  ‘Well, Julia,’ John Messenger said, ‘do you have anything you’d like to tell me?’

  Julia shook her head.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  She shook it again.

  ‘How about,’ John Messenger said, ‘telling me what you can remember about your father?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ Julia said quickly. Too quickly. She sensed immediately that John Messenger now had the advantage.

  ‘You were – let me see – almost five when he died, and you’re sixteen now, so it’s only eleven years ago.’

  Julia did not react. She’d made one mistake, and was not going to make another.

  ‘No memories at all? No fleeting impressions? The sound of his voice, perhaps? No little things? You’ve blanked him out, perhaps?’

  ‘No,’ Julia said, before she could stop herself.

  ‘He has just disappeared from your memory then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said.

  John Messenger wrote something down. ‘Do you think of Carlo as a stepfather?’ he asked, his tone of voice gentle, as though the very words might be offensive to her.

  ‘No,’ Julia said.

  ‘How do you think of him then?’

  ‘He’s Iris’s husband,’ she said.

  ‘Quite important in your life, for the last few years.’ John Messenger’s tone of voice was not so carefully gentle.

  She didn’t think this needed an answer. It was a fact. He was stating a fact.

  ‘What about Iris?’ he asked. ‘How do you think of her?’

  ‘She’s my cousin.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’ She didn’t say it rudely, but the words sounded rude.

  ‘So,’ John Messenger repeated, ‘so, do you think of Iris as a sort of mother?’

  ‘No,’ said Julia, ‘she’s my cousin. My mother is dead.’

  There was another silence. Her heart was pounding and the fields were all merging into each other. She blinked, and blinked again, and they settled down. She wanted to get out of the room and away from this man asking his questions, hating his detached air, the way he could ask about her father and her mother in that kind of way. ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ she said, and stood up.

  John Messenger nodded. ‘First door on the left at the end of this corridor,’ he said. ‘Can you find your way there and back OK?’

  Julia nodded and left the room hurriedly without replying. She had no intention of returning. That man, John Messenger, was stupid. She thought how much cleverer her own questions would have been, if she’d been in his position. She’d seen exactly what he was after, and she’d successfully foiled his clumsy attempts. It made her think she’d be good at his job, but she wanted to be a scientist, though she didn’t know what sort. Something solid and practical, nothing to do with thoughts or feelings, the sort that filled her brain till she felt it might burst.

  There seemed to be far more school visits than there used to be. Sometimes, the school would surprise Julia, proving far more agreeable than she’d anticipated, but most, in London, were daunting in their size and architectural ugliness. The playgrounds were bleak areas of tarmac and concrete, with never a bit of grass or a shrub or tree to relieve the dreariness, and once inside the buildings the worn nature of paintwork and floor coverings increased the feeling of gloom. Efforts were made, she could see that, with artwork covering the battered walls, but it was a losing battle with the general decrepitude of most schools. The head teacher’s room was often an oasis of comfort and brightness among all the general drabness, with some plants on windowsills and desks, and maybe a few choice prints on the walls, which themselves would be clean, and almost always painted magnolia, and a comfortable chair or two with patterned cushions carefully arranged upon them. Julia was glad to reach these rooms, and perfectly happy, if necessary, to si
t there and wait.

  Head teachers liked to keep her waiting. It showed that they were busy people who barely had time to see Julia, whose function they distrusted. She was ready for the doubt and anxiety, if it lingered in the air, and knew how to deal with it. She disarmed with her direct approach, her plain speech devoid of jargon, and her quick summarising of what she already knew about the problem. Head teachers, on the whole, became quite friendly. ‘Best to try to deal with any difficulties as soon as they arise,’ Julia would say. The head teachers were relieved to agree. ‘We don’t want things to escalate,’ they said, and Julia nodded sagely. She knew how sensitive these people were ever since the riots of 2011, when it was widely reported that the lawlessness on display had started in the schools, where allegedly there was no longer any discipline, or punishment for misdemeanours, where standards of right and wrong had been eroded, and where a so-called ‘feral’ underclass was not taught how to be civilised – all the fault of schools.

  Julia was their ally. She was with the teachers in wanting to prove this accusation mistaken. The council was trying, the school was trying, and Julia was trying – they were all trying to help the children. But this was a particularly tricky case. The head teacher wanted to exclude a pupil, a girl of twelve. There were a rising number of exclusions and it was Julia’s job, or part of it, to find ways of troublesome children being kept in school.

  ‘Let’s go over what happened,’ Julia said, ‘from the beginning.’

  IX

  JULIA WENT TO Caroline’s wedding after all, but she didn’t join in the hen night the week before. It embarrassed her even to contemplate such an event, the horror of women, in their late forties mostly, dressing up in berets and striped jumpers in an attempt to look French. Why had Caroline allowed it? Why did she have anything to do with such a plan? ‘It’ll be a laugh,’ the bridegroom’s sister, who was organising the evening, had said when she rang Julia. ‘Will Caroline think it a laugh?’ she asked, restraining herself from adding that it was hard to believe, unless the Caroline she knew had changed dramatically.

  But maybe she had. The old Caroline would not have got married in a church. The old Caroline would not have worn a long white dress. And the old Caroline would never have married Simon Carr, who struck Julia at once as brash, loud and full of himself. ‘So this is the famous Julia,’ he said, when Julia was introduced to him as his bride-to-be’s oldest friend. ‘The wicked Julia,’ he added, roaring with laughter, ‘a law unto herself, eh?’ Julia smiled. She knew the smile was stiff, but the alternative was to tell him not to be so silly. What, she wondered, had Caroline been telling him, so that the ridiculous remark about being ‘wicked’ could be made? But now she was being silly herself, reacting to an inane comment like that, so she unstiffened her smile and made it genuine, and told Simon he was a very fortunate man. ‘Oh, I know,’ he said, and slapped Caroline on the back as though she were a prize horse.

  There really was not much to talk about. Julia asked polite questions, which Simon answered in great detail. He didn’t ask Julia any questions except what was her favourite food. Julia said she loved a good green salad. Simon, roaring with laughter again, said was she joking. No, Julia said, she wasn’t.

  The wedding reception itself was an affair so lavish and glittery she could hardly believe it. The table settings alone seemed to her ridiculous and vulgar – large, twisted stem glasses filled with blue lights and beads and blue decorative grass – but they were being widely admired. In front of her, when she sat down, was a tiny silver bucket. Looking down the table, she saw that everyone had a tiny silver bucket in front of them, even the male guests. Nervously, Julia picked hers up. Inside was a bottle of nail varnish with the label Butterfly Kisses on it. It was a lurid purple. She saw that the men’s buckets contained a miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. But nobody was laughing, or shooting mocking glances at each other. Suddenly, Julia longed for her mother to be there, or even Aunt Maureen.

  Caroline, though, seemed unfazed by all this glitz. She appeared to be enjoying herself, as a bride should. Her dress had been chosen for her by the same sister-in-law who had organised the hen night. She worked for a firm called Bridal Dreams and had got it ‘at cost’. Julia thought that if the sister-in-law had tried she couldn’t have come up with a dress less suited to Caroline. It was made of ivory satin, and had heavily embellished beading to the bust. Caroline’s bust was very large and the beading, to Julia, had the appearance of chain mail. She had a veil too, waist-length, scattered with crystals. The bridesmaids’ dresses, strapless and full-length, were red, and they too had crystals all over the skirt. Julia was glad she had declined the honour of being one of them.

  She didn’t stay long after the meal – which was very good – and the speeches. Simon’s was surprisingly witty, but then Caroline had said he had a real sense of humour, once you got to know him and could appreciate it. And his family, she’d added, though a bit overwhelming en masse, was individually kind and welcoming.

  ‘They’re all thrilled Simon is getting married at last, so that’s in my favour.’

  ‘I should think there’s a lot in your favour,’ Julia said.

  ‘Well,’ Caroline sighed, ‘I’m too old to have children, so that’s not in my favour. But they have six grandchildren already, his parents, so it isn’t too much of a fault.’

  ‘A fault?’ echoed Julia.

  ‘Well,’ said Caroline, ‘some people would think so.’

  Julia wondered how soon she could leave the reception. She tried hard to circulate and talk to other guests, but not counting Caroline’s mother and her brother, there was no one else she knew, and it was exhausting introducing herself and establishing how all the other people were connected to Caroline and Simon. Caroline’s mother was the only one the least bit interested in her. She knew exactly what Julia did, and had also heard from Caroline that she’d become a magistrate. ‘Who’d have thought it, Julia?’ she said. ‘Not that I’m being insulting, but just remembering what you were like as a teenager, you’ve turned out so well, you’re so steady and stable and successful, a real credit to yourself.’

  Each word seemed not only misplaced but deadly. Why did Caroline’s mother think she was steady and stable, never mind successful? What had Caroline been saying to her? It made Julia think of other descriptions recently applied to her: serious, trustworthy, efficient, reliable . . . all somehow not only wrong but an insult.

  She didn’t want these labels attached to her. They bothered her.

  Julia had booked the Quiet Coach for the train journey home. It was empty when she boarded the train and gratefully settled herself, assured of peace and quiet for the next few hours. But just before the train left the station four young women got on, laughing and calling out to each other to come on, let’s sit here, at a table, and then there was a great flurry of activity as their bags were deposited in the luggage space at the end of the carriage and the rest of their belongings piled around them. There wasn’t the faintest hint that they were aware they were in a Quiet Coach. I must speak up, Julia thought, but as she rose to go across to them one of the women answered her mobile. ‘We’ve been put in the Quiet Coach,’ she yelled down her phone, ‘so look for coach D, not E. E was full, there were no seats, so they’ve put us here, OK?’ Julia was by then standing, looking towards the group, unsure whether to issue a reminder that this was still a Quiet Coach, but she saw one of the women nudge the others, nodding and smiling in Julia’s direction, and reckoned the message had been received and understood.

  For the first half-hour, the young women tried to respect the implied rules of the coach. They spoke in whispers, and shushed each other when any of them giggled. But they were clearly in high spirits, and gradually their voices rose and Julia was obliged to hear, in snatches, what they were saying. They were going to a wedding where they would be bridesmaids. All of them disliked their dresses, but they had been paid for by the bride, who it seemed had never had much taste. ‘Pink!�
� Julia heard. ‘At our age, my God.’ Another member of the quartet said consolingly that the pink was more of a lilac, and at least the design of the dresses wasn’t fussy. The response to this was a long and loud bout of laughter which was so puzzling that Julia assumed there was either some private joke in the word ‘fussy’ or she’d missed some vital other words. The bride was pulled to bits. None of her bridesmaids, it appeared, had ever really been close to her. None of them could understand why she had been asked to be a bridesmaid, and it was only hearing the names of the other three that had persuaded each of them to accept. That, and the location: London. ‘Have you met him?’ one of them asked (meaning, Julia assumed, the bridegroom). Two of the others had. ‘Balding, short, specs,’ said one. More hoots of laughter. ‘But devoted,’ said another, ‘he adores her.’ There was a short silence after this statement, which Julia found interesting but couldn’t quite interpret. Did it indicate respect? Or doubt? Or possibly envy? Immediately afterwards one of their phones went off, and then the drinks and sandwiches trolley came round, and the ticket inspector, and it was a while before general conversation among the four was begun again.

  ‘It’s not my idea of true love,’ one of them said, her intonation conveying that she was using the words ‘true love’ satirically. ‘They’re settling for each other, that’s all.’ There was some mild objection to this judgement by the other three. One of them asked the speaker how she could tell. ‘How can anyone tell what true love looks like?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t something you can see, is it?’ There was then mention of some names which meant little to Julia, but she picked up that some famous celebrity couples were being talked about, couples held up as supremely romantic, the embodiment of true love, but who had recently parted, their love not being true after all. ‘What a lot of cynics we are,’ one girl said. ‘No,’ said another, ‘we’re just realists, that’s all.’ A bottle of wine was opened at this point and once it had been drunk – frighteningly quickly, it seemed to Julia – there was a lull in the noise level. Then the announcement came that Euston was approaching and there was a general gathering up of their stuff by the group.