The Wedding Day

by Catherine Alliott

  Clare, looking much more buoyant than usual, and slightly less tight around the eyes and mouth, was striding confidently back down the lawn towards us.

  ‘Lovely house,’ she conceded as she approached. ‘Charming.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I smiled. If she could flatter, I mustn’t crow too much. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘And he’s sweet.’

  I sat up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Matt. In the study.’ She sat down beside us, curling her legs efficiently under her.

  ‘Oh Clare, you didn’t go in, did you?’

  ‘Certainly I did.’

  ‘But he’s working!’

  ‘Yes, on some paper or other. Golly, Annie, do grow up. You haven’t got the American president locked up in there, ironing out the Middle East peace treaty or something. Anyway, I wanted to find out more about him. Can’t have my little sister living with just anyone, can I?’

  ‘So what did you say?’ I breathed. ‘You … knocked first?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said wearily, ‘I knocked first, and stuck out my hand politely and said: “Hi, I’m Clare Faraday, Annie’s sister.” So he stood up and introduced himself and was perfectly pleasant. And you’re right, he is married, but separated. His wife is living here in England, in Cambridge, with their son.’

  ‘Oh!’ My jaw went slack. ‘But … hang on, he said his wife was coming. He said –’

  ‘Well, perhaps she is, perhaps she’s delivering the son or something, perhaps she’ll stay the night. Golly, I don’t know, Annie, I don’t know how friendly they are, didn’t get that far. I’m not that nosy.’ She smartly swatted a fly on her leg. ‘Gotcha. Anyway, I asked him to come to our barbecue tomorrow night, and he said he couldn’t. Got too much to do, apparently.’

  ‘Blimey, Clare!’ I snorted. ‘You might have asked me first!’

  She blinked. ‘Well I rather assume you’re coming.’

  ‘No! I mean, if you could ask him!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well … I don’t know,’ I blustered. ‘I just … anyway, he’s not coming. That’s a relief.’

  ‘Why? I thought you liked him?’

  ‘I do, I just – well I don’t want to get too matey, Clare. We’re lodgers, for crying out loud!’

  ‘Lodgers?’ Clare raised her eyebrows. ‘Right. I’ll remember that. Remind him of his place, next time I meet him.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Anyway, who’s coming to this barbecue you’ve organized within two minutes of getting here?’

  ‘The world,’ murmured Rosie sotto voce, blowing dreamily at a dandelion clock.

  ‘Well, all the friends we met on the beach today, obviously. The Elliotts, the Fields, the Todds –’

  ‘Ah, the Todds.’ I couldn’t resist it. She ignored me and swept on.

  ‘The Frasers, hopefully, you and David –’

  ‘Oh no, David can’t come down this weekend.’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’

  ‘He’s working.’ I said shortly. Later, I’d tell Rosie. Definitely. But not Clare. No, not Clare. Oh, she’d be terribly supportive, say how ghastly it all was and that of course it wasn’t poor David’s fault, but secretly, might she not feel a little frisson of delight that all was not going so well? Or was that just me being a cow?

  I gave myself a little inward shake, confused. ‘Um, no, he’s too busy. But he’ll be down the weekend after, for sure, and that suits both of us, actually. I’ve got so much to do.’

  ‘Ah yes, the famous book,’ she drawled. ‘How’s it coming along?’

  ‘Lucinda got her rocks off yet?’ asked Rosie sleepily from the grass.

  ‘Lucinda? Who’s Lucinda?’ demanded Clare, irritated that Rosie knew more than she did.

  Rosie turned her head in the grass. ‘The manicured wife of Henry the investment banker, who’s been caught in flagrante with some tart from the office. Isn’t that it, Annie?’

  ‘Investment banker? Tart from the …’ Clare stared. ‘Right,’ she said softly. She licked her lips. ‘So it’s about me, is it?’

  I stared back, horrified. ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘Really? But he’s a City boy, is he?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘And she goes to work in Armani suits, I take it?’

  ‘Well, she wears Armani, but no, for God’s sake, of course it’s not about you!’ I was appalled.

  ‘Three or four children? Large house in London?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Shops in Harvey Nichols?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Great,’ she fumed. ‘Really, really great, Annie. Terrific. Positively sisterly of you. Loyal.’ She stood up. She was trembling, she was so angry. ‘And this is the one they’re so enamoured with at the publishing house, is it? This is the one they’re awaiting with bated breath, holding the Booker Prize for, jacking up film deals?’

  ‘Clare …’

  ‘Well, good on you, Annie. Well done. Nice to know at least someone’s going to benefit from this family’s misfortunes!’

  And with that she turned on her heel and strode back down the hill to the boat.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Rosie.

  ‘Bloody, bloody hell,’ I agreed.

  We watched in shocked silence as Clare crashed through the wood, brushing branches roughly aside, pulling innocent saplings up with her teeth no doubt, muttering angrily as she lost a shoe. ‘Sod it. Sod it!’

  ‘But you didn’t, did you, Annie?’ Rosie swung round to me bewildered when she was out of earshot. ‘I mean –’

  ‘No, of course I flaming well didn’t!’ I said hotly. ‘Not deliberately, anyway. Would I do that?’

  ‘No, but … subconsciously?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I ran my hands despairingly through my hair. ‘Who knows what goes on up there amongst the grey matter and the dust and the pigeons?’ I put my hands over my eyes. ‘Ooh God, I’m sure I didn’t, though,’ I moaned as, just at that moment, Michael appeared at the top of the hill through a gap in the trees. He looked shocked and flummoxed.

  ‘Well, bugger me.’

  ‘Michael!’

  ‘I’ve just met Clare flouncing down that hill,’ he said, wide-eyed, ‘and all I said was I was just popping up to say hello to you, Annie, and then perhaps we’d better think about getting back to the children, and she told me to fuck off!’

  ‘Ah, yes. She would have done.’ I nodded solemnly. ‘Sorry about that, Michael. My fault, I fear. How are you, anyway?’ I got up to kiss my poor beleaguered brother-inlaw.

  ‘Thoroughly pissed off and insulted, since you ask.’ He rubbed the back of his head bleakly, where it was thinning slightly. ‘What’s that all about then?’ He turned again to stare down the hill at his departing wife’s back. I told him.

  ‘Shit, Annie.’ He looked appalled. ‘You can’t write about us!’

  ‘I’m not!’ I wailed. ‘At least, not intentionally, it’s just the way Clare’s taken it. But, Michael, what am I going to do? I can’t change it now, they love it at the publishers, they’re clamouring for more!’

  ‘Easy,’ said Rosie suddenly. ‘You just change the characters a bit. Instead of Lucinda being a successful businesswoman in a Holland Park mansion, she’s a – I don’t know – a Colour Me Beautiful rep. In Leighton Buzzard. Chigwell, even.’

  I blinked. ‘Colour me what?’

  ‘Beautiful. You know, they pick out the colour that suits you, tell you what to wear; that sort of thing. Waft different coloured scarves in front of your face, then boss you into lilac because of your insipid complexion. Just the sort of thing Clare would have done, actually, had she not been a banker. And the husband,’ she went on, warming to her theme, ‘doesn’t have to be a City chappie like Michael, does he? He could be … I don’t know …’

  ‘A Burger King chappie?’ Michael put in caustically. ‘With a Big Whopper?’

  ‘Yes!’ she agreed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘As long as he’s the
manager,’ Michael murmured, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully at the horizon. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’m not having him doling out the cheese-burgers.’

  ‘It’s not you, Michael, remember?’ I snapped. ‘Oh, er, no. Quite right.’ He looked momentarily disappointed. ‘Shop floor then.’ He nodded.

  ‘You think that has the same cachet?’ I asked, biting my thumbnail nervously as I sat down beside Rosie. ‘I mean, d’you think my editor will go for that?’

  ‘Well, it’s not cachet you’re after, is it?’ Rosie insisted. ‘It’s raw human emotion. Pulsating passion played out in sensual suburbia with real people doing real jobs – catching buses, picking their toenails, that type of thing. Oh no, this is much more gritty and realistic, Annie. Much better than sex among the smart set. And the guy that the betrayed wife gets the hots for,’ she went on, eagerly, ‘cos presumably you need that little revenge motif before it all ends happily, he needn’t be a theatrical type like Theo Whassis-name.’ She caught my horrified eye and hastened on. ‘He could be – I don’t know – different. From Kosovo, or something. A refugee!’

  ‘Who’s wondering if he’s wearing too much lilac?’ I ventured, drily. ‘Is that how they meet?’

  ‘What?’ Michael was looking totally bewildered now. ‘Hang on, why has this Lucinda woman got the hots for anyone in the first place? And what’s Theo Todd got to do with it?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said quickly, glaring at Rosie. ‘It’s just Rosie getting carried away.’

  ‘I mean,’ he struggled, ‘surely Lucinda’s husband has apologized, hasn’t he? For whatever he’s – you know – done? So surely it’s all over and done with?’ He sat down beside us and lit a cigarette nervously. ‘Surely that particular raw nerve was smoothed over months ago, and now she’s forgotten it and forgiven him, hm? Particularly since the poor chap was as pissed as a fart when it happened and can’t remember a bloody thing about it,’ he added miserably.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I soothed. ‘You’re quite right.’

  Rosie laid a hand on his arm. ‘You smoke,’ she said in awe, her eyes huge.

  ‘Only in secret,’ he admitted. He turned equally huge eyes on her. ‘Don’t tell her,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised. She gazed at him in silent respect and they exchanged a conspiratorial look like a couple of Resistance fighters hiding an airman in the attic.

  ‘Anyway, this won’t do,’ Michael said abruptly, taking another quick drag. ‘She’ll be alone down there, pacing the beach, wishing she had the children to take it out on and panting to be taken back. There’ll be steam coming out of every orifice. Come on, Rosie, let’s go.’ He stubbed the cigarette out quickly on the grass. ‘We’ve still got the shopping for the barbecue to do yet, remember,’ he warned. ‘We were told to do that this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh God, so we were,’ said Rosie nervously, getting quickly to her feet. I’d never seen her move so fast. ‘But will I see you before then?’ She gave me a pleading look.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I promised. ‘But obviously now that I’ve got to rewrite my entire novel, time is not exactly on my side.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered and, looking severely chastened, tottered after Michael in her inappropriate wedged shoes. She followed him down the hill through the trees.

  ‘But make sure you come to the barbecue!’ she yelled back at me. ‘I’m not bloody doing that without you!’

  I watched them go. After a while, I heard subdued voices coming from the creek, and the sound of a motor starting. Hopefully Clare had calmed down a bit and wasn’t actually killing anyone yet. Probably waiting until they were out at sea and she could tip Michael smartly over the side, dusting her hands off efficiently afterwards.

  I wandered back to the summer house, shut the blistered green door behind me, sat down at my little bamboo table, and stared at the screen. Could Lucinda become Lorraine, I wondered? Not pacing her Persian carpets, but nervously touching up her roots in Chigwell? And could Henry really look dashing in a polyester shirt complete with Burger King logo and a jaunty little red and white paper hat? And would Tanya still want hot sex with him if he reeked of Tom Ketch? I wasn’t convinced.

  On the bright side though, I thought, chewing a pencil, at least the blue-collar worker Lucinda was poised to have a ding-dong with – who naturally couldn’t be an asylum seeker or whatever ludicrous idea Rosie had come up with – could now become a sizzling ski-tanned executive with pads in Mayfair and Miami. But then there wouldn’t really be a critical plot dilemma, would there? Surely Lucinda would just stick two fingers up to Henry and his quarter-pounder, and swan joyously into the sunset with her square-jawed smoothy. And where would that leave the dénouement? Or the kids for that matter? (For Lucinda’s offspring would now surely be kids, not children.) Wherein lay the feel-good factor, as Lucinda packed her Braun hair-styler and ran down the path to her boyfriend’s Ferrari, leaving Henry, tearing his paper hat to pieces, with three bairns to feed – bairns now, mind – and all on a minimum wage from a fast-food outlet?

  No, I decided firmly. Clare could think what she bloody well liked. I was keeping my Holland Park ménage – who, to my mind, had never remotely resembled my rather boring sister and brother-in-law – and she could lump it. This was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  I tapped away furiously – and eloquently, actually, now I’d got up a head of steam – with purple passages flowing. I’d just got to the bit where Henry, having finally fallen out of a taxi outside his house at two in the morning, is mounting the stairs looking pissed and post-coital, while Lucinda awaits him in the marital bedroom looking wide-eyed and vulnerable between the toile de Jouy sheets, quivering in her Rigby & Peller nightie, when someone rapped loudly on the door.

  ‘What!’ I barked, swinging round in annoyance in my chair.

  ‘Sorry, Mummy.’ Flora turned to go. ‘Oh! No, darling. Sorry. I was miles away. What is it?’ God. Constant interruption. How on earth had Jane Austen managed it, I wondered? Had sister Cassandra barged repeatedly into her sanctum? Twirling her parasol and imploring her to take a turn in the garden?

  ‘I was just wondering if you wanted to come for a swim. The tide’s right up now, Mum, and it’s amazing out there. Really deep, like our very own swimming pool, and you can swim straight out from the bank!’

  I took a deep breath. Squared my shoulders and forced a smile. ‘Lead on, Macduff. Nothing I’d rather do.’ I glanced longingly at my screen as I turned it off. ‘I’ll just nip up to the house and get my things, and then I’ll see you down there.’

  ‘Got them!’ She smiled smugly, holding a towel and swimsuit aloft – albeit an ancient one I’d brought as a spare. ‘And we can change in here, can’t we?’ She hopped inside, glanced around, and in seconds was peeling off her leggings.

  We could, and we did, and then, taking our clothes with us, picked our way gingerly in bare feet down the granite steps and the twisting sandy path, to the water’s edge. As we emerged through the trees, I was startled by the transformation. As Flora had said, the sand and mud flats had completely disappeared and the creek had become a winding river. Deep and limpid and overhung by rustling trees which crowded darkly to the water’s edge, it snaked invitingly before us, glinting in the sunlight.

  ‘Oh!’ I breathed. ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’

  But Flora had already raced ahead of me, running a little way along the bank to a rock. Moments later, she’d climbed up and dived off into the water. I, meanwhile, shrieking my way in gingerly from the bank, held my arms up high as the water crept up my swimsuit.

  ‘It’s freezing!’ I gasped, turning blue with cold. ‘Not once you’re in. Come on!’ She did a splashy crawl across to me, grabbed both my hands and pulled. I shrieked again as we both went under, but she was right, and after the initial shock, we were both swimming delightedly in beautifully clear water.

  I lay on my back and floated dreamily out to the middle of the creek, savouring
all its drowsy, midsummer beauty, my face turned, salamander-style, to the sun. On the opposite bank, the land was lush and open: pastures dotted with Friesian cows, or golden stubble fields bare and shorn, their bounty already tied up in neat bundles for the harvest; our side though seemed more secret, more primeval, as the woods reared up to the house, its old slate roof just peeping above the tops of the trees. I trod water and gazed about. I could see now that as the creek narrowed inland and the trees crowded ever more thickly to its banks, it dwindled finally to a stream, which twisted mysteriously into the woods. I turned the other way, where the mouth gaped wide open to the broad waters of the estuary, and where, on the hazy blue horizon, windsurfers and boats dodged and weaved about, but didn’t trouble our little creek.

  ‘Isn’t this heaven?’ I shouted to Flora, bobbing beside me.

  ‘Total!’ she yelled back, and I could tell she meant it. ‘You were so clever to get this place, Mum.’

  Despite the freezing water, I glowed with pleasure. We ducked down and swam to the sandy bed below, trying to do handstands and pick up shells, then soaring up and breaking through the surface to the cloudless sky. When we were beginning to feel the Cornish water penetrate our very bones, we clambered out, laughing and gasping, on to the bank again.

  ‘That was brilliant,’ I panted. ‘And presumably we can do that every day, at high tide.’

  ‘Exactly, and then lie on the bank to get dry!’ She flopped down. ‘Ouch. Quite prickly, though.’

  ‘This isn’t the Mediterranean, Flora,’ I said, trying to dry myself on the ineffectual scrap of towelling she’d brought down and watching her shake with cold. ‘Where’s your towel?’

  She shivered. ‘Only brought one.’

  ‘Oh Flora!’ I threw it at her. ‘Come on.’ I picked up my clothes. ‘Back to the house to get dry, and then you can come back down later.’

  She got up, not unwillingly, shuddering with cold now, and, clutching our clothes, we picked our way through the tangled wood, along the little path.

  ‘That towel’s hopeless, Flora,’ I scolded, watching her white shoulders shaking in front of me. ‘Just a bit of rag. Why didn’t you bring our beach towels?’