by Beth Morrey
‘About a hundred, I think.’
‘God, how monstrous. Cowpats from the Devil’s own satanic herd.’
‘What I love about you, Melanie, is how grateful you are.’
‘Mother, we all know there’s very little you love about me.’ She said it in her usual droll way, but found her mark all the same. I was too jaded to spar with her though, so instead stared at the painting above the altar, The Adoration of the Magi. Was that what Mel wanted? Adoration? Whereas I’d given her canapés and a live band, at her father’s request.
Mel got to her feet. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’
Back in the Hall, the tables had been rearranged and people were carrying flowers and candlesticks around. A drinks table had been set up at one end and I went to inspect it and pour myself a surreptitious glass. It was five to six, after all. Surveying the room, I thought how curious it was that Leo was so keen to celebrate Melanie’s birthday but not our anniversary. Thirty years this year too, since we were married right here. But he was away on the day and when he came back he brought me a Navajo Indian pendant. A pretty thing, but turquoise; not right at all. Thirty years is Pearl. I bought him a letter opener with a mother-of-pearl handle and when he opened it, he said, ‘what a funny thing!’ as if the significance was utterly lost on him. Yet Mel got King’s Hall, its oak panels, oils and echoes.
Halfway down the glass my headache started to subside and as the first guests arrived and the food came out, I rallied. Ali would be back soon, and there would be other anniversaries. Leo was playing the attentive host, bottle of champagne in hand, while Mel was surrounded by old friends from her college, all patting her on the back as if they were congratulating her on something more than simply existing for three decades. My back to the wall, I allowed the waiters to keep me topped up, and started counting down the minutes.
Then Leo was in front of me, beckoning as the band started to play. I took his hand and the last of my headache melted away along with everyone else; it was just us, his hand at my waist, eyes crinkling as he looked down at me. I knew that some of this was for show – proud parents on display – but while I was in his arms it didn’t matter. We could both hear our song, and for once it drowned everything else out.
‘Well done,’ he said, twirling me round. ‘It’s a good party. Even the wine’s not bad.’
I laughed. ‘Not the ’59 vintage, I’m afraid.’
‘I know you worked hard. I’m sorry Ali couldn’t be here.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘I’d better get ready for my speech. Make sure you stand at the front, Mrs Carmichael.’
The heat and noise was intensifying, and when Leo tapped his glass and we all jostled to one side to listen, I felt crushed and disoriented after our moment alone, unable to focus on his words as he congratulated himself on having such an accomplished daughter, with her PhD and her research fellowship; following in her father’s footsteps … I drifted off; turquoise, the talisman of kings, the Turkish stone to protect you from falls. Maybe it was better than pearl after all. I gazed at Leo, still addressing the throng, and smiled when he raised his glass to Melanie, and then he joined me in the crowd as Mel made her way to the front, her friends hollering and whooping. At first, so pleased to have him by my side, I didn’t notice she was leading someone by the hand. Her friend – Octavia? Jolly woman, winked a lot. And suddenly I realized what was about to happen and stepped forwards as if to stop it, but this fall from Leo’s grace was one I couldn’t prevent. So I stared at the rim of my glass, while my husband stiffened beside me.
Mel’s speech was short and to the point. Octavia stood next to her beaming, and the reaction from the crowd was mixed – roaring approval from her friends, polite bewilderment from ours. I could feel Leo’s consternation emanating from him, trying to look jovial and relaxed, as if this wasn’t the most immense shock. So oblivious, locked away in his ivory tower – I could see his dream of her marrying some eminent professor and having wildly overachieving children dying before his eyes.
Amidst cheering and some bemused clapping, Leo, his face fixed in a grin, nodding to guests, hissed at me out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Did you know?’
I shrugged, burying my face in my glass.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I swallowed my wine, and waved at Tristan’s wife Isabel, who was raising a puzzled toast in my direction. ‘I wasn’t sure. She never said anything.’
‘You should have warned me. What am I supposed to do now?’
‘It’s not my fault. We’ll just have to make the best of it.’
‘You mean I will.’
He moved away, shaking hands and squeezing shoulders as he strode towards his daughter. I saw him jerk his head in the direction of the door, and they both sidled off, stopping to be congratulated by various groups as they threaded their way out. Just as they exited, she looked back at Octavia and rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of satisfaction – Mel had crossed the Rubicon, the alliance splintered. I put down my wine and followed them.
Out on the lawn by the river, they were arguing furiously, hands waving in a symmetry that belied their hostility.
‘How could you?’ Leo was saying. ‘In front of all those people? Our friends?’
‘I’m not ashamed!’ Mel shot back. ‘Are you?’
‘That’s not the point. You should have told me you were planning to …to … It wasn’t supposed to be about that.’
‘Then what was it about? You toasting the continuation of your legacy?’
He was silent for a second, and I had to suppress a smirk at such an effective skewering. I thought of our gift, nestling amongst the others on the table in the hall. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I had gone out there to smooth things over, but they didn’t notice me – as usual – and I started to back away again, leaving them to it. Maybe this was just what they needed – not a severing of the link between them, but a fraying. And once it was done, I could be there to pick up the pieces, to comfort Leo and maybe even, for once, be the more tolerant parent. So I drifted off back to the party, and nodded appreciatively when people told me Mel was terribly brave, what a courageous young woman, going her own way.
Gradually, guests started to say their farewells, the staff discreetly began to clear up, Mel and Octavia got swept off to King’s bar to carry on their celebrations. In the end, it was just Leo and me in the car again, back seat loaded with leftover bottles and flowers. In the darkness he leaned his head against the steering wheel for a second then looked across at me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said ruefully. ‘I know it’s not your fault. I just wish …’
I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I know.’
He sighed. ‘A few years ago there was this nice chap at Caius who wrote to me for advice about Disraeli, and then we met at Alan Taylor’s eightieth, and I thought, “that’s the kind of man …”’ He tailed off and stared into the distance.
‘No use wondering what might have been,’ I murmured, sliding my hand up to rub the back of his head, my fingers moving through the still-lustrous greying locks.
‘But you hope, don’t you …’ He looked sideways at me. ‘That they’ll find … what we found.’
There in the dark, in our cold car, my heart inflated like a party balloon. I wanted to say … so many things. To ask him exactly what we found – had we found the same things? To tell him what I’d found – my home, my oikos, my song answered. I wanted to savour this moment, and enrich it, and soothe him, but there was too much to say, so I stumbled over it. ‘I’m sure this Octavia is very nice and clever as well.’
Wholly inadequate. He straightened in his seat, rearing away from my wandering hand. ‘She’s from your old college,’ he said, slightly accusingly. And as he started the engine to back up onto King’s Parade, the car stalled and jumped, and—
—and I was awake, in Angela’s living room again, the clock on the wall showing it was nearly eleven. I blinked and uncurled on the sofa, my joints stiff and unyielding.
As I creaked to my feet, the key turned in the door and Angela herself came in, barefoot, holding her shoes by the straps. When she saw me she raised her eyebrows enquiringly.
‘All fine,’ I said, rubbing my eyes. ‘He was asleep by eight. Your tree surgeon? Was he nice?’
She pulled a face. ‘It turns out trees are really boring.’
‘That bad?’
‘We had a pizza and split the bill, I put a tip down and he picked it up to cover the cost of my Pinot Grigio.’
‘Oh dear. I’m sorry.’
‘Not to worry. Other fish in the sea. Or trees in the forest. I’m just going to check on Oat.’
I followed her in as she padded through to the bedroom. She pushed open the door, and Otis rolled over, blinking.
‘Hello, Mummy,’ he said drowsily. ‘Missy told me a story where everyone was murdered with arrows.’
‘Sorry,’ I said from the doorway. ‘It was the story of Achilles.’
Angela flashed me a grin over her shoulder, and turned back to Otis. ‘Did she now? Lucky you. Now back to sleep before she tells you another one.’ She patted the duvet around him and tucked his hair behind his ear. Otis didn’t need to be dunked in a river by his heel to protect him; there were no gaps or weaknesses to begin with. Men and women, women and women, mothers and sons, even old ladies and dogs. Love was just love, that was all. Flawed, uneven, complicated, overlapping, but still essential.
‘Sorry,’ I said again, as we went back into the living room. ‘On reflection, it probably wasn’t all that appropriate.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’ She noticed the empty bottle on the coffee table. ‘Not a drop left, you fecking bastard.’
I smiled and started to gather my things, but at the door I turned back, my fingers on the latch. Angela was slumped on the sofa, bare feet propped on the table, munching leftover pretzels.
‘Just so you know,’ I said. ‘Otis doesn’t need a father. He’s fine as he is.’ And I slipped out and closed the door behind me before she could reply.
Back home I let myself in to Bobby’s rapturous welcome and realized I hadn’t opened that morning’s post, so went through to the living room and settled on the sofa to flick through it. It was mostly bills as usual, but last of all was a thicker envelope postmarked Cambridge. I slid a fingernail into the slit and dragged it along. Inside were a couple of photographs and a scrawled note from Mel: ‘Thought you’d like these.’
They were both photos from the wedding. Melanie and Octavia, still going strong, nearly thirty years after that party. The first photo I remembered, taken on the lawn with Bobby, just after we’d met Alicia. I was standing between the happy couple, looking stiff and self-conscious, Bobby tugging at her lead, mostly out of shot. But the other one had been taken unawares, just as we were leaving. We were walking down the corridor towards the photographer, Bobby pulling ahead, grinning towards the camera, all of us bathed in the light spilling out from the party. Angela was carrying Otis, his smiling face against her shoulder; she was turning towards me saying something, and my head was flung back as I shouted with laughter. What was it she’d been saying? I couldn’t remember, but I’d never seen myself like that before.
The first photo summed me up, mostly, but the second had exposed my other self, the tiny part of me that could laugh like that. I wanted to poke my way into that part like I’d delved into the envelope, widen and open it up so that it overwhelmed the stiffness and self-consciousness and all the other weaknesses I despised. To be that relaxed, animated woman, put her on display and leave the other one stuffed away.
But then, like Angela said, nobody’s perfect. Not Leo, not Melanie, and certainly not me. I propped the photos on the mantelpiece, the first tucked behind the second. Tomorrow I’d find frames for them both.
Chapter 27
In September, Otis started school and as the weeks went by, I found myself at a loose end. I’d grown used to our mornings together; more often than not they stretched into the afternoon, or Angela would stay for tea and a gossip when she came to pick him up.
Bobby and I still had our strolls, met other dog walkers for coffee and occasionally went round to Sylvie’s for a chat, but I missed Otis, and the anchor of his visits to look forward to. Angela said he was doing well at school and one day she even took me to collect him. We stood outside the classroom and when the door opened promptly at three-thirty he came hurtling out, his book bag swinging as he flung himself into her arms. Then he turned to me, said, ‘Missy!’ and put his arms round my knees. We took him to the library and I read him a story while Angela went to look for Maeve Binchys. On the way out she pointed at the noticeboard.
‘Look, you should do that.’
It was a notice advertising for readers at the Children’s Storytime on Thursday mornings.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. That’s for out-of-work actors. They won’t want an old dear like me.’
‘Bollocks,’ she replied. ‘You’re really good at reading. You’ve got one of those voices.’
I harrumphed and shrugged, yet found myself thinking more and more about it at home. Leo always said I had a nice speaking voice, and back in the late 1950s when I was working at the University Library, a charity approached me to record a talking book. But reading to a group of over-excited children was a different matter, and I wasn’t sure I had the necessary temperament. Still, it stayed in the back of my mind and the following week when on my wanderings I found myself outside the library again, after a great deal of dallying, I went in. The notice was still there.
‘Can I help you?’
A middle-aged woman with Iris Murdoch hair, glasses on a string round her neck, was peering in my direction. I indicated the noticeboard.
‘Are you still looking for a reader?’
She beamed. ‘We are indeed! Would you like to volunteer?’
I don’t know why I signed up for it, but I felt that my laughing alter ego would have thought nothing of offering to read for a group of rowdy children. Of course, it led to a series of restless nights, watching the shadows and then dreaming that I’d gone out without any clothes on.
Later that week, I took Otis’s copy of Glenys the Itchy Witch to the library, quaking and cursing myself for being so foolhardy. By that point, the party animal in the second photo from Mel’s wedding had been thoroughly banished by the withered old shrew in the first. The last night had been the most sleepless, tossing and turning until even Bobby was disturbed, jumping off the bed and retreating to the floor in a huff, where she proceeded to fall asleep again and snore loudly, doing nothing for my insomnia. I lay and made shapes out of the silhouettes, wishing Leo was there to buck me up. Remembering Mel’s auditions at school, encouraged and buoyed by her father, I really had been very unsympathetic.
In the morning I couldn’t keep anything down but dry toast, and was ravenous by the time I arrived. The lady with Iris Murdoch hair, who was called Deirdre, greeted me with a cup of tea and a custard cream, then compounded my nerves by saying some of the children had already arrived. By the time I sat down in the story corner, my hands were shaking and my throat was arid. The children and their parents – mothers – were standing in the main part of the library, running around and chatting, respectively. Deirdre had set up little chairs and cushions in rows in the children’s section; she stood next to me and clapped her hands.
‘Sit down everyone, we’re about to begin!’
The children filed through and sat down on the cushions, still twittering away, while the mothers ranged themselves at the back. Why had I said I would do this? There was still a low hum of noise and I had no idea how to get them to be quiet. I took a deep, shaking breath.
‘The owl swooped down over the witch’s hat,’ I croaked.
Deirdre nodded encouragingly, and the children subsided, fingers twiddling, eyes sliding but occasionally focusing on me.
‘And with his beak he tweaked her plait.’ I had inadvert
ently worn my own long hair in a plait and remembered Otis calling me a witch – with Halloween coming up, it seemed appropriate. I flicked it, the children giggled, and then – finally – the laughing me woke up and started to take over.
‘The witch gave a hiss and flicked her cane, turning him into a weather vane!’
And so I continued, my voice carrying over the little corner and drawing in the children and their mothers as I switched between the characters in my story. I saw to my delight that they were transfixed, gazing at the pictures I held out towards them, whispering and pointing. The mothers were smiling at their little ones, Deirdre mouthing along. As we progressed, everyone joined in for the ‘Hiss!’ refrain and as I dived into the final lines finishing with a wicked whisper – ‘and with a snap of her cane, she was never seen again!’ – I looked up to a smattering of applause from the mums. Deirdre asked if I had another story, and I didn’t, but of course we were in a library, so we found a Hairy Maclary book and I read that too.
Afterwards some of the women congratulated me and Deirdre gave me another biscuit and asked if I’d like to go for lunch with her. We went to a café round the corner and over a baked potato she asked if I would like a job. It wasn’t much – she was particularly apologetic because by then she knew my employment history – but they needed a new Library Assistant. I was overqualified, and over the moon. I said I would think about it and walked home hugging myself, wanting to tell someone who wasn’t Bobby. I thought about texting Angela or Sylvie but didn’t want to sound hubristic. In the end, I emailed Alistair and texted Mel, who replied promptly and with typical pragmatism:
That’s great news, well done. You’ll need to get to grips with the new IT systems, maybe they can give you training?
Maybe it was a silly idea, to start working again at my age. All the technology had moved on, I was bound to make a fool of myself, with my Rolodex and Greek Lexicon. Bobby sat looking at me with her head on one side, listening to my monologue as I came back down to earth. Scratching her behind the ears, she gave a low grunt of appreciation. I’d better take her on a walk – now that the nights were drawing in, we had to get it done earlier – but as I picked up her lead, my mobile phone pinged again and a text from Angela popped up.