A Passionate Man (16 page)

Liza had a new suit for the wedding. It had a velvet collar and cuffs, and gunmetal buttons like regimental buttons, and it fitted her like a glove. It had been very expensive. Liza had wanted a dress, a dress with a full skirt and then, perhaps, a jacket that would go with it, and afterwards with lots of other things. But Diana Jago, who had been shopping with her, had said, ‘Come on, come on – what do you want to look like? A country doctor's wife?' It had been fun, shopping with Diana; far more fun than shopping with Clare, who had expected to be asked and had been aggrieved when she wasn't. Diana whirled through shops like Marina did, saying, ‘Don't touch that, too dire for words,' and, ‘Put that straight back, common
and
boring,' while the assistants loved her and stopped making hopeless suggestions. And here Liza was in her curvy little suit, and a small hat with no brim and a feeling that today would cement the new dimension she was developing. It was giving her such strength, this dimension. Blaise's letter lay, still unopened, in the kitchen drawer where she kept the cellophane circles for jars of jam, and freezer bags, and the icing set – a kitchen drawer, not even a romantic drawer full of underclothes or handkerchiefs. At the end of term, Liza had said to him, ‘Happy Christmas,' and kissed his cheek in full view of Mrs West and June Hampole, and had then done the same to Commander Haythorne. That was three days ago. Turning slowly in front of the mirror, Liza thought that he would probably telephone soon.

Archie, hosing mud off the car to make it more suitable for London, resolved to stand no nonsense from himself today. He had kept his word to Liza and had not referred to the forthcoming wedding again, and had endeavoured to look as he wished he felt. He had bought a silk Paisley tie. He had not only taken his one good suit to the dry cleaners but had collected it, too. It hung upstairs now, waiting for him, to be worn to his father's wedding. In a drawer or a cupboard somewhere, he had a photograph of his father's wedding to his mother. He hadn't looked at it for years, but he remembered it as both poignant and dismal, as amateur a business as today's promised to be polished. The spaniel came out of the house and stood looking despondently at the car. How do dogs always know, Archie thought; how much do they suffer from these huge instincts that dominate them so?

‘Nelson,' he said. ‘We will not be long, and when we come back it will all be over. For me, it will be like a headache lifting. I'm sure of it.' The spaniel sighed. ‘Don't sigh,' Archie said. ‘It's catching.' He splashed a last sweep of water across the windscreen and turned off the tap. Liza was calling. ‘Coming,' he shouted. ‘Coming.'

Accept things, people said; don't break the rules. But who, except the unhappy, should ever want to do otherwise?

The Register Office was full of flowers and smelt of furniture polish. The registrar had a perfect hair cut and an irreproachable suit. Archie, Liza and the children stood in a row slightly to Sir Andrew's right, and behind Marina was one of Louis de Breton's grandsons, who had flown over from America especially, and the woman from whom she had rented her flat, who made an exhausting point of never doing business without friendship. The grandson wore a pink carnation as big as a small cauliflower in the lapel of a plaid wool jacket, and the muscles of his jaw flickered faintly over the chewing gum inside. Liza thought it was perfectly sweet of him to come. She planned to make her thought very plain to him over lunch. She felt excited, standing there behind these two people sounding so positive in their promises, excited with a breath of anticipation as if a hidden door was about to open and she, in her new chic suit, could just slip through. Who knows, she thought, admiring Marina's graceful back, who knows what may happen now?

Even Imogen was being good. There was enough to look at, enough amusement to be gained from standing on a chair seat (usually forbidden), which made her taller than Mikey, to distract her. There was also her father, just beside and half behind her. She could feel her father going up for ever towards the ceiling and all the way down to the floor. If she jiggled too much his hand came down on her like a clamp, but, when she tossed a glance at him, he wasn't even looking at her as she expected, he was looking straight ahead out of a window criss-crossed with little black lines. She beamed at him, waiting for his response. Then she shut her eyes and opened them up at him very, very slowly. He never moved. Nobody was looking at her; not Mikey, not Thomas; nobody. Imogen bent her gaze and stared down over the gathered curve of her front to the just-visible toes of her patent-leather shoes. In their shine, she thought she could see the ears of her hair ribbon. She leaned forward, a little bit, a little bit. ‘Stand up,' Archie hissed. Imogen leaned a fraction more and fell forward with a crash.

Archie had seized her and was hurrying her from the room almost before she had breath enough to scream. The scream burst from her as she and Archie burst out on to the pavement.

‘Stop it,' Archie said. ‘Stop it. You aren't hurt.'

‘Knee,' Imogen wailed. ‘Knee. Knee.'

They inspected both.

‘Not a mark,' Archie said. ‘You are a hellkitten.'

‘Bang,' Imogen said, still sobbing. ‘Bang knee.'

‘I told you to stand upright. If you had done what you were told, you would not have fallen.'

He set her on her feet.

‘Kith knee,' Imogen said hopefully.

‘No,' Archie said. ‘You kiss me for causing all this trouble.'

Imogen rubbed her wet face against his hand.

‘Is that a kiss?'

She nodded, curls and ribbons bobbing.

‘Good now,' Imogen said doubtfully.

‘Are you sure?'

He stooped to pick her up again.

‘Imo,' he said. ‘I love you.'

She regarded him. She put her thumb in.

‘Blow nose,' he said, fumbling for a handkerchief. ‘Isn't it odd to think that one day you'll have an awful Imogen of your own?'

She leaned into the handkerchief and snorted. He carried her up the steps and in through the double doors, past the waiting room and in, once more, to the room where his father was being married. Had been married, in fact. They were all kissing each other and shaking the registrar by the hand. They were laughing. It was over. I want to go home, Archie thought, clutching Imogen, I want to drive out of London, away from all this – this cold, urban competence. I want to go home.

Lunch was very glamorous. It was in a hotel, with velvet armchairs for everyone, even the children, and tablecloths that came right down to the floor, and napkins so big, Mikey discovered, that he could cover himself completely with his from his head as far as his knees. He let its starched folds slide down until he could see over the top, until he could see Thomas sitting between Marina and the young American. ‘(Hi, you guys,' he had said to them. ‘We're all in it together now.') Thomas's ears were red. Thomas was excited.

‘Sit up,' Archie said.

Imogen was next to Liza, on an extra cushion. Liza was not paying her much attention because she was being nice to Marshall, Marina's stepgrandson. He was in law school. He had had a narcotics problem but he was all straightened out now, he said. He thought Marina was a great lady, the kind of lady, he said, who was rare in our country. He said that a good deal, ‘in our country . . .' His clear blue eyes were blank and mad.

‘Hi, sweetheart,' he said to Imogen, craning round Liza.

She turned her head away flirtatiously.

‘She's in deep disgrace,' Liza said. ‘She disturbed the wedding.'

‘You don't have to pay attention to weddings,' Marshall said. ‘They come and go. In my family they have them all the time.'

‘Have you had one?'

‘I'm celibate,' Marshall said seriously. ‘Since Aids.'

‘But that doesn't prevent you marrying.'

‘I can't test for sexual compatibility. Not any more, since Aids.' He looked at the smoked salmon on his plate. ‘Does this have chemical colouring?'

Miriam Bliss, who owned Marina's flat, told Archie that there was no profession she admired as much as medicine.

‘People only say that,' Archie said, ‘when they have been lucky enough not to have to test our limitations.'

‘But you see, you and your father,' Miriam went on, ignoring him, ‘represent medicine's private and public faces between you. That's what I find so thrilling. Don't you agree? I mean, here you are, the hands-on GP, and there's your father, an absolute laboratory wizard. And we couldn't do without either, could we? So fascinating.'

Archie leaned his chin on his hand and looked at her.

‘Is property owning fascinating?'

She coloured.

‘Are you making fun of me?'

‘No,' he said. ‘But I fidget when people begin on the fascination of medicine. They get reverent. I can't bear it.'

‘But, my dear,' said Miriam Bliss, recovering herself, ‘there is a magic to medicine; you can't deny it. You aren't just engineers, you are engineers with hearts. Don't you agree? And in this caring age—'

‘It isn't,' Archie said, craning towards her as a plate of duck-breast slices, fanned out in a shiny pool of russet sauce, was put before him. ‘It isn't caring. We have compassion instead of religion, but it's a social compassion. It's guilt.'

Miriam Bliss said to herself that for such an attractive, articulate man he was strangely difficult to talk to.

‘Guilt?'

‘Over losing God and finding Mammon.'

‘Is this chicken?' Mikey hissed.

‘No. It's duck.'

‘Duck!' He paused. ‘Do I like duck?'

From across the table, Thomas said clearly, ‘When I went out to lunch with Fanshawe we had duck his father had shot.'

Mikey began to eat voraciously.

‘Adorable children,' said Miriam Bliss.

‘I adore them,' Archie said. ‘I don't really expect anyone else to.'

‘Marina does. My dear, you should hear her talk about them.' She looked at Imogen who was eating matchsticks of carrot with her fingers. ‘Divine. Really divine.'

‘Am I what you expected me to be?' Marina said to Thomas.

He thought not. He had been expecting someone more grannyish, with grey hair and boring shoes.

He said aloud, ‘I didn't think you'd laugh so much.'

‘I used not to. It's what happens when you are happy.'

‘Sometimes,' Thomas said, ‘I laugh when I'm frightened.'

‘People, I mean grown-up people, make the great mistake of thinking that being very young is amusing. It isn't. I remember, as a child, being mostly excited or afraid. Do you feel that way?'

Thomas nodded.

Marina said, ‘If you had your eyes closed, would you know you were eating duck, not chicken?'

‘Not really.'

‘I don't know,' Marina said. ‘These fancy places. Think that they can get away with anything. What is your absolutely best food?'

‘Baked potatoes,' Thomas said.

‘With sour cream and crispy bacon bits and chives?'

‘I've never,' Thomas said truthfully, ‘had them like that.'

‘I'd rather have a baked potato right now, wouldn't you? Look at Imogen. She's flirting with the waiter.'

‘Don't look,' Thomas said. ‘It makes her worse.'

‘Do we dare give her a mouthful of champagne with pudding?'

‘Champagne!'

‘Certainly.'

‘I've never had champagne,' said Thomas with glowing ears.

‘I don't expect you have been to a wedding before. There's usually champagne at weddings. Look.' She held out her left hand to Thomas and showed him a thin band of pale, shiny gold. ‘I'm married to Grandpa now. I am your stepgrandmother.'

She bent and kissed him.

‘And I'm so pleased about that.'

The champagne came in a bottle as tall as Imogen. She stood up on her chair and squealed. Then a cake came, a frothing white meringue cake with a silver vase of white freesias on it.

‘You are so sentimental,' Sir Andrew said to Marina. ‘How could you order such a fearful thing?'

‘For Imogen. And she loves it. Look at her.'

A waiter lifted off the vase of freesias, and put it down in front of Marina. Then he removed a single flower and went round the table and threaded it into Imogen's hair ribbon. Rapturously, she lifted her skirts to stuff them into her mouth and revealed her ruffled petticoat. From the next table came a round of applause.

Marina cut the cake with an immense silver scimitar. It was pale inside, speckled with glacé fruits. The children watched with intense interest. Archie watched Marina. In a moment he would have to propose a toast to the health and happiness of his father and stepmother. It seemed superfluous. They were both way beyond needing the gentle benison of others' good wishes.

The waiter was filling tall glasses from the extraordinary bottle. Mikey counted. There was one for him. Imogen poked her finger into the soft sweet mess of her cake and then sucked it loudly. Marshall de Breton told Liza that he didn't eat sugar any more. Liza was tired of being kind to him and said that there was sugar in champagne.

‘Natural sugar,' Marshall said reprovingly.

‘Only a sip,' Liza said to the waiter putting a glass in front of Imogen.

‘All!' Imogen shouted, leaning forward. ‘All! All!'

Archie pushed her glass out of reach. With one hand holding Imogen hard against the back of her chair, Archie raised his own glass with the other.