‘Are you reading me a story at bedtime again?’ asked Luke.
‘Not tonight, mate. I need Pom all to myself,’ said his Auntie Tracey then.
‘Come on, Luke, we’ll make Auntie Tracey and Pom a coffee and you can be biscuit monitor,’ said Elliott, rising from behind the table.
‘Yaaayyy,’ replied Luke, putting Plum down on the rug and running over to the cupboard to get out a plate.
Tracey strode off into the erstwhile sewing room and Sophie followed. There she was met by the sight of a mannequin wearing a deformed satin dress. One shoulder was longer than the other and there was a seam running down the front like an abdominoplasty scar. It was worse than Sophie had imagined, and that really was saying something.
‘I think I’ve put the back where the front is and sod knows what I’ve done with the sleeves.’
‘Do you have a picture of what it should look like?’ asked Sophie.
Tracey scrabbled around on the table until she found a printed-out sheet. ‘Here you go, this is the photo that was up on the eBay site.’ The dress looked very nice, but didn’t resemble what the poor old mannequin was wearing one bit.
‘What’s this?’ asked Sophie, picking up a drawing, a very good one too.
‘That’s what she originally wanted, but she couldn’t find anything remotely similar, at least not with a price tag Steve could afford. I was going to try and alter the one she bought so it was more like it.’
‘Really?’ There was no disguising Sophie’s disbelief.
‘I know, I know,’ Tracey winced. ‘It was ambitious but I thought I could do it.’
Ambitious was not the word Sophie would have used. Lunacy came closer.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘How long do we have?’
‘The prom is two weeks tonight.’
Sophie bit off an expletive as Luke came in, carrying a plate of biscuits as carefully as if he were walking down an aisle behind a bride with them. Instead she said, ‘Well, let’s get the bad news over with first: I think you’re better off starting again from scratch.’
Tracey gulped. ‘Okay, if I must.’
Sophie’s eyes came to rest on the curtains with the wonky swags and tails and the hems that were so far away from the carpet, they looked as if they’d had a serious row with it and were no longer on speaking terms. ‘Did you make the curtains here by any chance?’
‘Yes, why do you ask?’
They had a big problem.
‘Ah. Right. Do you have Jade’s measurements?’
‘Only her waist, bust and hips. Do I need more?’
‘If you want her dress to fit her like a prom princess, you do.’
‘No, I don’t have them. Oh farts, I’ve really cocked up. I can’t do this.’
‘Maybe not, but I can. I can sew the dress that Jade drew.’
That claim landed like a massive rock in a pool. Tracey’s smile spread as she was joyously splashed with relief. ‘No way! Can you? Would you?’
‘Yes, I will. Let’s have a coffee . . . and a delicious biscuit of course,’ Sophie said for Luke’s benefit, ‘then I suggest that we go and measure Jade properly. I’ll pretend that . . . I’ll think of something that explains why I’m helping.’
‘When?’
‘The sooner the better, really.’
‘I’ll ring Steve, make sure she’s in,’ said Tracey, crossing her brother’s path as she dashed out to the kitchen and he came into the study, carrying two coffees.
‘So did you go to Briswith then?’ he asked.
‘I did.’
‘You find it’s changed much?’
‘Yes, but it also felt the same, if you know what I mean. It was lovely to be walking around it again. I have so many wonderful memories of the place, but it was bittersweet, too. It made me realise how much time has passed since I was there last.’ And how I’ve never managed to be as happy since. ‘I shall go and look up my old friends when I . . . when I get back on the internet.’
‘You can always use my computer,’ offered Elliott.
‘Thank you, but no. I’ve enjoyed being away from the world wide web and I’m no rush to get back on it.’ Web being the operative word, because sometimes she felt caught up in the internet, trapped in it as if it were a real net.
‘It’s a mixed blessing isn’t it – all this technology?’ sighed Elliott. ‘I sometimes wonder how much further it can go. Kids today seem so much more outwardly confident, but inwardly insecure. I worry for them.’
‘Yep, she’s in,’ said Tracey, bouncing back into the room.
‘Right, then,’ said Sophie, taking a long glug of coffee then whipping a jam ring from the plate whilst winking at Luke. ‘This sea air is making me eat like a horse as well as sleep like a log.’
‘Just as long as it makes you sew like a machine,’ said Tracey, gathering up a tape measure, pad and pencil. ‘I will owe you my life if you get me out of this pile of sh— . . . cat poo.’
‘Auntie Tracey nearly said sh—’
‘Luke Bellringer, do not use that word,’ warned Elliott, lifting up a finger. ‘Auntie Tracey is a naughty lady.’
‘Auntie Tracey knows that only too well,’ said Auntie Tracey.
Jade stood with her arms outstretched, pout firmly in place.
‘How come I’m having all this done again?’ she asked.
‘Because Tracey’s worked out a way to give you the exact dress you want, from the drawing that you did,’ said Sophie, noting down Jade’s waist measurement. ‘And she wanted me to ’elp because I . . . I know the way of material.’ Spoken with a French accent, the deliberately nebulous phrasing passed muster.
‘What happened to the eBay dress?’
Behind Jade’s back, Tracey and Sophie traded glances and Tracey blurted out, ‘It’s not good enough for you.’
‘I’ll send it back and get a full refund.’
Tracey made a horrified face. There wasn’t much chance of that in its present condition.
‘I’ll buy it off you and save you the hassle. I’ll slim into it. It’ll give me something to aim for when I’m dieting,’ she said, knowing that, even if she could restore it to how it was, she had more chance of getting into the SAS than she did that gown.
Steve, in the kitchen, called Tracey’s name and she excused herself from their company.
‘She’s leaving it a bit late, isn’t she?’ said Jade to Sophie when they were alone.
Sophie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘If you know what you are doing, it won’t take a long time. It will be ready. Are you sure about the colour?’
‘Yeah, why? What’s wrong with red?’
‘Nothing,’ said Sophie. ‘But with your name being Jade, I wondered if you had thought about green. Especially with your beautiful hair and your grrreen eyes. It would be your colour, I know. Now stand up straight, with your arms down.’
‘I hadn’t thought about green,’ said Jade, thinking about it now.
‘’Ave you bought your jewellery and shoes yet? Red is very hard to match. So many different shades.’
‘I was going for black accessories anyway. I’m off shopping to Whitby with my mates tomorrow.’
‘Black would look very nice with green. Dark jade green, I think. Trust me, I am very good at putting colours to people.’
‘I didn’t know until I’d ordered it that this posh girl in my class has got a red dress. Her parents took her to London for it – some big designer place. It cost over a thousand quid. I started worrying people might compare us but Tracey said mine would be better than hers by the time she’d finished altering it.’
‘Why set yourself up for a comparison? You both should feel like the only princess in town. Hair up or down?’
‘Up, I thought.’
‘Yes, I think so too. Make sure all your accessories are the same black. There are variations of that colour too.’
Jade was seriously mulling over Sophie’s suggestion. ‘I don’t think anyone else I know is wearing green.’
‘Yep.’ Jade’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘Is Tracey making this or you?’
‘Tracey, of course,’ returned Sophie, as if that were the most stupid question in the world. ‘She is going to make you the queen of the prom. I am only here in an ’elping capacity. She wanted to double-check everysing because she knows ’ow important this is.’
Jade bent to whisper in Sophie’s ear. ‘You haven’t told anyone about you-know-what, have you?’
‘Not a soul. Living or dead. Although Kitty ’Enshaw probably knows already. Entre nous, as I promised.’ And Sophie tapped her nose.
Half an hour later and back at the vicarage, Sophie studied the dress on the mannequin, shuddered then stripped it off and put it down on the desk.
‘Jade has decided on a green dress,’ she announced. ‘We will go and find some material tomorrow. Where’s the best place?’
‘Slattercove, probably,’ suggested Tracey. ‘There’s a market on Saturdays. You’d think with the popularity of proms these days that someone would have opened up a shop around here where you can buy dresses for them from; I mean, there’s loads of schools in this general area. There’s only a stuffy old bridal place in Slattercove and failing that you have to go miles to one of the big cities for a gown shop. One of the girls in Jade’s class went down to London for hers, but then her parents are loaded so it’ll have the designer tag in the back. It’s a lot of money to pay out when you don’t have it to spare, especially just for one night. What do you suggest doing with that?’ She nodded towards the Frankenstein-patched red dress.
‘Dusters?’ said Elliott which made them all laugh.
‘Remind me to stick to what I’m good at. Pulling pints and selling crisps. I always knew my English Lit degree would come in handy. I’d better go and relieve Dave of his duties. I asked him to stand in for me for a bit. What about a pattern for this super-dress then?’
‘I’ll make one,’ said Sophie. ‘Leave it to me.’
‘You can do that as well?’ Tracey’s mouth was agape with admiration.
‘I’ve had a lot of practice. If I can see it in my head, I can sew it. If Elliott will let me use the desk in his study for an hour or so now, I will have it ready so we know how much material to buy tomorrow.’ She looked expectantly at Elliott.
‘Be my guest,’ he replied.
‘And if you have any large sheets of paper, that would be good, or some A4 and a roll of Sellotape.’
‘We’ve got some spare wallpaper lining,’ he replied. ‘Luke uses it to draw on.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Please don’t leave and go back down south until you’ve done this, Pom,’ said Tracey, suddenly serious.
‘I can promise you that at least,’ replied Sophie.
Eventually Sophie had a pattern which would make Jade’s design a reality, with a few enhancements of her own thrown in. The dress would be sleeveless, halter neck, to make the best of Jade’s perfect shoulders, with a ruched bodice and a fishtail skirt to lend her slender frame a more shapely silhouette. There would be some sparkling detail: she had no idea what, yet, but she would know the right thing when she saw it.
Luke had long gone to bed when she walked into the kitchen to say she was finished for the night and found Elliott working at the table there.
‘I told him not to disturb you,’ said Elliott. ‘I had quite a battle about it.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ said Sophie.
‘Thank you for doing this for Tracey,’ said Elliott. ‘She would have been in a proper mess if you hadn’t been here.’
‘I haven’t made it yet. I might have been lying to you both about my sewing prowess.’
‘I trust you,’ said Elliott. He was smiling, but then Sophie rarely saw him without a smile. Even if it wasn’t a full-blown one – as now – there was always merriment dancing around the corners of his lips, lifting them. It was a different sort of smile to John’s, a smile that came from the heart, not from the brain.
‘I’m writing my sermon for Sunday: The Prodigal Son,’ said Elliott, indicating his notebook. ‘We haven’t had that one for a while. Can I get you a drink? Hot chocolate?’
I’d better go, she said in her head but somehow it came out as ‘Yes, why not,’ because as welcoming as the almshouse was, she wanted to stay and have a hot chocolate and sit at the table and chat to him. Just for five minutes. She should have bid him goodnight because although the voice in her head was now saying, ‘Why shouldn’t you have a hot chocolate?’, she knew exactly why she shouldn’t. Because this man touched her hand and awakened something in her that she didn’t even know existed and his eyes were blue and beautiful and warmed her like the sun. That was why.
‘Do you have sisters – or brothers?’ Elliott asked her as he waited for the kettle to boil. ‘And if so are they as exhausting as my own?’
‘Two sisters,’ replied Sophie. ‘And I wish they were more like Tracey but they’re sadly not. They’re entitled and condescending and, in case you haven’t gathered, we aren’t close. They wouldn’t have done what I did.’
‘No rebellious streak then?’
Is that what she had? A rebellious streak? She wouldn’t have thought that she had one of those. Apart from risking exclusion by throwing Irina’s gang in a pool all those years ago and standing on a doorstep to tell a bunch of microphones thrust in her face that her husband was a total shit, she’d always played the game. That’s why her actions two weeks ago had shocked everyone so much, because they came crashing in from left field. Miss Palmer-Price had said to her after the pool incident that she was going to ‘quench that fire within her for her own good’ and she hadn’t had a clue what she was talking about.
‘I would hardly class myself as a serial mutineer. Maybe running channels away my insubordinate tendencies, keeps me from boiling over.’
Elliott had his back to her as he poured the water over the chocolate powder but she could sense that her answer amused him.
‘When did you start running?’ he asked.
‘At school. Ah.’ She made a face, remembering the exact day. Maybe she had more of that rebellious streak than she’d given herself credit for. ‘One of the PE teachers held a running club after lessons and I was forced to join it for a week as a punishment for writing too short an essay on St Bathsheba of Whitby. Myself and my nemesis Irina Morozova, who was sentenced to two whole weeks of running club for referring to the saint in none too flattering terms.’ A boring old fart had been Irina’s verdict, as she remembered.
‘I would find it very difficult to write anything interesting about St Bathsheba myself,’ said Elliott, bringing over the mugs.
‘Thank you. And precisely. She was an absolute doormat, wasn’t she?’
Elliott nodded. ‘Not the most inspiring of the saints, I’ll give you that.’
St Bathsheba was a woman who sacrificed everything in her life – and ultimately her life itself – for her husband and was rewarded by being canonised for her devotion, although she was little known. She certainly wouldn’t have gone down well with any feminists, but then St Bathsheba’s was not a school that encouraged women to smash through glass ceilings.
‘I pretended that I’d misread the question and wrote about the biblical Bathsheba, who had far more appeal.’ Sophie cringed at her youthful arrogance. She’d been fascinated by that Bathsheba, a very beautiful (married) woman whom King David saw bathing and desired. He impregnated her and then called her husband Uriah back from the war to sleep with her so he would think she was carrying his baby. But Uriah didn’t want to violate the code of war and insisted on staying with his soldiers. So David engineered it so that Uriah went on the front line in battle where he would surely be killed – and he was. Then David married Bathsheba and their second son – Solomon – acceded to the throne, rather than Davi
d’s older sons, which led to all sorts of trouble and civil war.
‘We had a debate about Bathsheba – the unsainted one – in a philosophy lecture,’ said Elliott, remembering. ‘Was she powerless or powerful? David found himself quite helplessly attracted to her beauty, which started a train of events that ultimately corrupted him.’
‘Was her pregnancy an unplanned-for consequence of his lust, or designed by her to install herself as queen? Victim or agent?’ Sophie lifted up her hands as if they were scales, weighing the possibilities. ‘She definitely manipulated David on his deathbed to put their son on the throne, thus securing herself the potent position of queen mother. Was she then the power behind the throne or the throne itself ? My school would have believed the former, but I’m not so sure.’
‘She certainly is a very interesting character, who has divided opinion for centuries.’
‘Compared to St Bathsheba, who makes a wet blanket look dynamic.’
Elliott gave a hoot of laughter. ‘I totally agree.’
Sophie took a sip of the hot chocolate before speaking again. ‘This is all a bit deep and academic, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe. But it’s also very thought-provoking.’
‘I never get the chance to talk to anyone like this,’ said Sophie. ‘The women in my circle only ever want to gossip about each other, the press want to know whose dress I’m wearing and everyone else thinks I’m just a vacuous arm decoration for John.’ Despite her first class degree from Cambridge, she knew that many people didn’t consider her to have a working brain and that included her family. It felt good to be having a proper meaty conversation, a scholarly one with someone she felt respected her opinion and didn’t try to dismiss her as the equivalent of candy floss, totally out of her verbal depth.
‘That’s a shame,’ replied Elliott. ‘I love a good intellectual discussion, which is handy when you’re in my line of work because there are always a lot of questions thrown at you for debate.’ He took a drink and when he lowered his mug, he had a perfect Rhett Butler hot chocolate moustache that made Sophie snort with laughter.
‘Have you heard of the Bathsheba Syndrome?’ she asked him when he had wiped it away. She’d found that a very intriguing concept when she’d read about it.
The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew Page 23