The Wedding Day

by Catherine Alliott

  I instantly swooped and hugged him hard. I’d never seen him so upset. Felt bewildered by it. ‘Everything’s not going wrong,’ I soothed, stroking the back of his neck, ‘it’s all fine! We’re getting married soon, and – and then we’ll have a baby. Which is, after all, the right way round. You’re just tired, darling.’

  He raised his head. I saw him swallow. Compose himself. ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ he nodded. ‘I am very tired. I must find a way to reduce my workload.’ He sighed, pinching between his eyes with thumb and fingertip. ‘Been working much too hard. Sorry, darling. Let’s go to sleep.’

  We lay down and held each other close. We stayed in each other’s arms for a while that night, facing the same way – David behind me, nestling into my back – like two spoons, fitting perfectly together. We hadn’t done that since we first met. In those days, it was me who needed the reassurance. Tonight, I felt it was him. Before I dropped off, I heard Matt climbing the stairs up to the top floor. Heard the taps running in the little bathroom up there, then his door softly close. David was asleep, and I gently disentangled myself and moved across to the other side of the bed. For a long while my eyes were wide open as I lay on my back, staring into the darkness. Eventually, I fell into an uneasy sleep.

  The following morning, David seemed much chirpier. The three of us, David, Flora and I, had breakfast in the garden together, sitting at the table on the terrace and looking out over the clover and the buttercups. The morning, unlike the last few, wasn’t yet sunny, but if anything it threatened even higher temperatures with an already muggy feel to the air and an insistent pale haze over the horizon. David had got up early and been out to buy croissants and fresh bread which we sat down to now. Flora reported that she’d seen Matt and Tod go off fishing together early, and Clare too, it seemed, had risen and left for Mum’s before I was awake. Rather tactful of everyone, I thought nervously as I sank into my cappuccino. Not crowding David out on his first day.

  Mmm … proper coffee. Well, naturally, I smiled, now that David was here. And a table laid with a cloth, complete with marmalade, jam, cups and saucers.

  ‘You’re a little wonder.’ I twinkled at him over my cup. ‘Normally we sit in a slovenly fashion on the back step in our jim-jams, eating greasy bacon and beans.’

  He winced as he buttered his croissant. ‘Not convinced my digestive system could cope with that. Silts up my arteries just thinking about it, actually.’

  I grinned and regarded him over his propped-up Telegraph, leaning back in his cane chair. He looked different. But then I’d never seen him in holiday gear. Never seen him in shorts. They were pressed, and khaki, and his legs were very white. His deck shoes were pristine, as was his pale pink polo-shirt, still with two fold creases down the front, and likewise his hair, parted immacul

  ately. I giggled. ‘Presumably you didn’t feel out of place in the bread queue this morning?’

  He glanced up, smiled. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was just remarking on your sartorial splendour. Very North Cornwall.’

  ‘Hm. I don’t know about that.’ He went back to his paper. Winked at me over the top of it. ‘Unlike you, you mean.’

  I glanced down at the faded orange T-shirt of Flora’s I seemed to be wearing with inexpertly cut-off jeans. It had occurred to me that one leg might be longer than the other.

  ‘Working gear,’ I retorted. ‘Quite right,’ he grinned, still reading. ‘And will you be working this morning?’

  ‘Oh no. Since you’re only here for a couple of days, I’ll give it a miss.’ I wiped my mouth with the napkin he’d thoughtfully provided. ‘I can start again when you’ve gone.’

  ‘Won’t lose the thread?’ he murmured.

  Thread? What thread? ‘Er, no. Don’t think so.’ Didn’t sound terribly professional, did it? ‘Anyway,’ I hurried on, ‘what would you like to do today, David?’ I put my cup down eagerly. ‘We can show you the creek, or any number of beaches –’

  ‘Oh yes, Polzeath!’ said Flora, looking up from her book. ‘You’d love it, David, the waves are huge!’

  ‘Well, I know it sounds dreary’ – he scratched his head bleakly – ‘but I’ve actually got to work this morning. I’ve got a load of calls to catch up on.’

  ‘Oh, David!’

  ‘I know, love, but patients don’t take kindly to holidays. I’ve got to enquire about hospital beds, operation lists, that sort of thing, but it won’t take long. Why don’t you work for an hour or two, Annie, and then I thought we could all go to Tintagel? It’s only forty minutes away, and there’s a terrific ruined castle there reeking of Arthurian legend. Flora would love it, and I haven’t seen it since I was a boy.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said in surprise. ‘But it’s going to be boiling hot today, are you sure you wouldn’t rather flop on a beach?’

  He cast his eyes about. Narrowed them warily out to sea over the treetops. ‘Not much of a beach man, to be honest,’ he reflected. ‘The sea doesn’t do that much for me, either.’

  ‘You sound like Dan,’ I laughed. ‘Doesn’t do much for him. They’re down here, you know. We might see them later, have supper with them or something. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said evenly. ‘But it’s you I’ve come to see, Annie.’

  He got up and ruffled my hair as he went past. ‘I’ll be on my mobile in the dining room. I can spread my papers out in there. That is, since Matt seems to have commandeered the study.’ It was said lightly, but I glanced nervously after him as he went in.

  ‘Mum, do we have to go to that castle thing?’ hissed Flora, the moment he was out of earshot. ‘Tod and Matt are going to Polzeath later, the surf’s meant to be wicked today.’

  ‘Well, yes, I think we do, darling. If that’s what David’s got planned.’

  ‘Oh Mu-um!’

  ‘Although …’ I hesitated. ‘Maybe he’d like some time alone with me.’

  ‘Exactly!’ she said eagerly. ‘He would, of course he would. I’ll go with Tod and Matt.’

  I looked at her expectant face. ‘Hang on.’

  I got up quickly and nipped inside, through the kitchen to the dining room, hoping to catch him before he started his calls. The door was shut. I knocked and went in. David swung around quickly, mobile to ear.

  ‘Oh, sorry, darling.’ I turned to go. ‘Hang on, Hugo,’ he said into the mouthpiece. Smiled at me encouragingly. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘It’s just …’ I hovered in the doorway. ‘Well, Flora quite wanted to go surfing with Matt and Tod today, and I wondered if you’d mind. Thought we could have some time alone together.’

  He frowned. ‘I think not, Annie. We’re a family, after all. No, I think Flora comes with us.’ He turned and went back to his phone call. ‘Sorry, Hugo …’

  I gazed at his back for a moment, feeling like a fourth-former in the headmaster’s study. Dismissed. Right. Well, no, quite right, actually, I decided. I shut the door quietly, and went back to Flora in the garden, biting my thumbnail.

  ‘Um, he thinks not, sweetheart. After all, we are a family now.’

  ‘But, Mum, you said!’

  ‘I said I’d ask him, darling. But actually, I think he’s right. We are a family, and –’

  ‘And a boiling hot car all the way to some crummy castle is just what we need to bring us together, is that it? To bond us? Terrific!’

  She grabbed her book and ran off into the house.

  I sighed as I watched her departing back. Heard her thump-thump-thump upstairs. Waited for the door to slam. There. Hormones, I decided wearily, picking up a tray from the grass and clearing the table, had an awful lot to answer for.

  In the event, of course, she was right. We didn’t set off until nearly midday, when the sun was at its hottest, since David’s phone calls took longer than expected. Flora had stayed in her room all the while, with a book, and I’d got so bored with hanging about I’d taken to the summer house, even though I didn’t feel remotely in the mood for work. We
ll, I can just sit here, can’t I, I thought petulantly, slouched in my chair in an immature fashion. Pretend to work. I bit my thumbnail. Who’s fooling who? my dad would have said. Or – and I could hear his voice now – ‘Don’t do me any favours.’ I sighed, snapped on my screen, and tried hard to concentrate; not look too wistfully out to sea.

  Trouble was, Lucinda De Villiers seemed like such an old tart this morning. Trying to seduce her gardener in the potting shed, I ask you. Didn’t she know there was more to life than a quick bonk? Yesterday that had seemed exactly what she needed, but today … Oh, today, as I gazed out of the window, over the treetops to the beckoning water beyond, knowing it was lapping at the shore, shimmering out there in the sunshine, full of sparkle and promise, today she needed more than that. She needed romance in her soul, passion. Love, even …

  Hastily I had her retrieve her button from the floor of the shed, along with a few shreds of dignity, and enquire as to whether Terence would like a latte on the terrace. Yes, that’s it, I thought, tapping away confidently. Get to know him first, Lucinda.

  ‘Well, I dunno, like,’ stammered Terence, twisting his hat nervously in his hands. ‘I’ve never ’ad one.’

  ‘Surely they serve them at Harvey Nichols?’ said Lucinda, a trifle irritably. ‘It’s just a milky coffee. Come.’ She called him crisply to heel and he fell in meekly as they adjourned to the terrace.

  Without Consuela to help, though, Lucinda couldn’t work the wretched machine, so they ended up with lemon barley water, which Terence gulped down in one go, making a rather common ‘Ahh …’ noise as he drained the glass, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Golly, a very rough hand, thought Lucinda nervously. Didn’t he use an emollient?

  ‘You were thirsty, Terence,’ she purred. She was sitting alongside him in a steamer chair.

  ‘Terry,’ he grinned, stifling a burp. ‘Only me mam calls me Terence.’

  ‘Is that right, Terence?’ Lucinda said distractedly, her eyes narrowing into the distance, her mind suddenly on other things. Justin Reynolds, for instance; the neigh-bouring artist, who even now was up in his studio again, looking down at her from the top-floor window. She shivered. But something stirred deep within her. Writhed, almost. Was it her fallopian tubes? What exactly were her fallopian tubes?

  Terence was easing back in his chair a mite too casually now, Lucinda thought. Any minute now he’d swing a leg over the arm and scratch his armpit like an ape. She felt rather relieved she hadn’t let his tongue loose in her throat, or his hands on her silk undies. The dear boy was beginning to get on her nerves. She turned on him a dazzling smile.

  ‘My husband called, Terence, from New York. Asked how his water feature was coming along. Any progress?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ Terence got stammering to his feet. ‘’E asked me to plant it out for ’im. Only, I don’t rightly know if ’e means with bog plants, or aquatic.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she purred, eyes back on the studio window. But it was empty. Justin had gone. She felt an odd little pang of disappointment, again somewhere rather agricultural.

  ‘Aquatic? You think?’ Terence asked anxiously, hovering over her.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said dismissively.

  Heavens. She sat up. Was that her garden gate opening? Down there, in the wall? Her heart pounding, she watched as Justin Reynolds emerged, framed in the gateway. Tall and chiselled, his arty chestnut curls blew in the breeze. He paused for effect, before making his way up the garden towards them.

  ‘See, I’m not an aquatic lover, meself,’ Terence was saying. ‘It’s the devil’s own job to keep the mildew off ’em, whereas bog plants –’

  ‘Fine, bog it is. Go now, Terence,’ she breathed as Justin approached.

  ‘– are more flexible, like. You know where you are wiv bog –’

  ‘Yes, bog. Bog! ’ hissed Lucinda, gripping the chair arms and going pink in the face.

  Justin stopped short, embarrassed. ‘Have I … called at an inconvenient moment? Do you need to avail yourself … of facilities?’

  Lucinda stared at him, horrified. ‘No. No, of course not!’ She got up, and turned smartly to her gardener: ‘Terence, just piss off, will you?’ she hissed, then back to Justin, patting her hair and trying to collect herself.

  ‘I’m sorry to barge in like this,’ he murmured, looking deep into her eyes, ‘but I’m having an exhibition at the Le Touche Gallery on Friday, and I wondered if you and your husband –’

  ‘We’d love to,’ she broke in happily. ‘At least, I would. My husband’s away. All week, in fact.’

  ‘Is he indeed!’ said Justin huskily, his dark eyes smouldering. Lucinda basked in his warm gaze, feeling the heat penetrate her very bones.

  ‘I’ve got a stiffy for you,’ he murmured.

  ‘A – what!’ she gasped, as he pushed a stiff, formal in vita tion into her hands. ‘Oh! Oh, a – a – gosh. How lovely, yes!’

  ‘Blimey, who’s Justin? I thought she was getting her rocks off with Terence?’

  I swung around to find David peering over my shoulder.

  ‘David!’ I stood up quickly, knocking my chair over in my haste. ‘You startled me.’ I scrambled to pick it up.

  ‘Could have sworn you told me it was Terence the gardener she was after.’ He grinned. ‘Now that she’s sussed her husband’s such a rat.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it was,’ I flustered, fumbling for the switch to turn off the screen. ‘Is, I mean.’

  ‘But now she’s got her eyes on someone else?’

  In my haste I pulled out the socket. Damn, it might not save now. Probably just as well. I turned, pink-faced.

  ‘Um, no. No, not really. Are you – you know – ready?’

  ‘All present and correct.’ David smiled, straightening up and clicking his heels together, which he did occasionally. It slightly drove me mad, but then he had been in the Blues and Royals. ‘And ready to drive the O’Harran contingent to Tintagel Castle.’ He offered me his arm and grinned. ‘Shall we?’

  I beamed back, took it and, with my heart pounding mightily, sailed out of the summer house beside him, and up the lawn to the house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flora’s words were worse than prophetic. Horribly accurate, in fact. We finally crawled through the castle walls – having sat in a two-mile queue in order to gain entry – and emerged from our metal box in the car park, gasping with suffocation and dripping with sweat, at half past one. Flora crowed but got short shrift from David and me, because, by now, we’d both decided that this trip was going to be a success if it bloody killed us. Paying no heed, therefore, to her gasps of protest and her entreaty to ‘lie down in the shade just for ten minutes, please,’ we mopped our brows, paused only to glug down some warm Evian water from the boot of the car, and set off on our sightseeing tour.

  As we paid for our tickets at the little kiosk at the bottom of the hill on which the castle sat, I gazed around, marvelling at the spectacular coastline, the gulls circling and cawing in the bright blue sky, the waves crashing against the rocks below. It was all rather majestic and suddenly I felt a bit more jaunty and optimistic.

  I grinned at Flora. ‘This isn’t so bad, is it?’

  She scowled wordlessly back. ‘All right, my party?’ called David, who’d gone ahead to another booth to secure the guide books.

  ‘Fine!’ I smiled, marshalling Flora onward.

  The jaunty optimistic feeling was short-lived, however, as it soon became glaringly apparent that if this castle was to be viewed properly, it could only be done so by mounting the five hundred granite steps that led to the ruin itself.

  As we embarked on the first hundred, falling in behind David who had a camera slung around his neck and was looking about, smiling appreciatively and bounding up the steps like a gazelle, Flora muttered in my ear, ‘I’ve seen it before. I remember now.’

  I stopped in my tracks, peering ahead into the sun. ‘D’you know, I think you’re right. Looks awfully familiar. I think we came
with Mum, when you were little.’

  ‘We did, on a cooler day,’ agreed my daughter bitterly. David turned back, a few steps ahead. ‘Come on you two, what are you belly-aching about now?’

  ‘We’ve been here before,’ called Flora, before I could stop her.

  ‘Have you? You didn’t say.’ David regarded me with surprise.

  ‘Um, no. I didn’t realize till we got here. Forgot the name of the place.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh really, darling. There aren’t that many ruined Norman castles in North Cornwall, surely?’

  ‘Er, no. I suppose not.’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d said,’ he added a trifle petulantly. ‘We needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘No, but you haven’t seen it, so come on.’ I walked quickly past him, gazing brightly at the piles of rubble and stone where the walls must once have been. ‘Looks terrific.’

  And so it would have been in Arthurian days, perched as it was right up on the highest cliff top, looking out imperiously across the sapphire sea, lord of all it surveyed, daring anyone to come close, let alone threaten to invade. Now, its proud fundaments had crumbled and only its shell remained, but it was still possible to cast one’s mind back a few hundred years and imagine the terrified French foot soldiers scrambling up this steep slope, heads down, roared on by their commanders from the boats, and simultaneously being felled by arrows that came winging over the battlements from the fearless Brits, and collapsing in a heap – rather as Flora was doing now – as they struggled but failed to reach the first set of ramparts.

  ‘Drink!’ moaned my daughter in a very fearful, unBritish fashion. ‘Now!’ But David was soldiering on ahead of us and I lugged her bodily back to her feet.

  ‘No, darling, come on, we’ve only just started,’ I insisted. ‘Make an effort.’

  She grumbled hotly but complied, albeit hanging on to my arm, and we toiled onwards and upwards under the boiling sun, me practically carrying her. And neither were we alone, I couldn’t help noticing. The place was crawling with other pilgrims who, unaccountably, had also deemed this the perfect day, at thirty degrees in the shade, to climb a one in four gradient, and all, it seemed, much happier about it – and ergo much fitter – than we were.