Daughters (23 page)

Bill hesitated – and Jasmine’s lip twitched. She knew he knew he had a tricky situation on his hands and she recognized his detached, sitting-on-the-fence expression. It used to madden her.

‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘haven’t we enough to worry about with getting the house and garden ready?’

Sarah ploughed on: ‘Sunflowers will be cheap. I’ve checked.’

A strangled gasp escaped Eve. ‘Sarah, I’ve already agreed with a florist. We’ve begun work on the concept.’

Sarah was puzzled. ‘Concept?’ Long pause. ‘I had no idea. I thought one could use what was in season and plentiful. But I could do a
concept
for nothing. Isn’t it very much the same as a simple flower arrangement?’ Having thrashed through this verbal maze, she turned to Bill. ‘Do you mind paying for a concept?’

‘Dad and I have talked about the budget,’ said Eve.

‘You never mentioned it, Bill.’ Sarah began to clear the
plates in an offended way and Jasmine leaped up to help her.

She followed Sarah into the larder, which opened off the kitchen. ‘Sorry about that, Sarah, but Eve is very particular.’

‘Your father should rein her in,’ said Sarah, crossly. Unlike her. ‘She can’t have everything. I mean …’ she gestured to the scummy wooden shelving and the tiny window, whose mesh needed replacing ‘… we don’t.’

‘Jas,’ her father had once confided in a rare instance, ‘people can muck things up badly, and there’s no way back. So, you must be careful. I wasn’t. I thought I could manage the situation with you girls, provided Lara and I were civilized.’ The conversation had gone no further, but he had made a glancing allusion to it later. ‘Even with the best intentions, it doesn’t necessarily pan out.’

‘Dad should have talked to you,’ she said.

Sarah picked up a bowl of trifle with unnecessary force.

Back in the kitchen Lara took the bull by the horns. ‘Why don’t we discuss the guest list?’

‘Ah, yes.’ Sarah placed the trifle, which was stiff with cream, on the table and spooned it into bowls.

‘Only a tiny bit, please,’ Lara said.

‘Minute for me,’ said Eve. ‘Here are the numbers. We divided the list into quarters. Andrew and I take half, Andrew’s parents have a quarter and you and Mum have a quarter between you.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah. ‘That suggests we can only invite about ten people. I was hoping my brother and his family, and the Kirbys –’

‘But they have nothing to do with us,’ said Eve.

‘But they are to do with me and, now, your father.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Eve.

‘Bill, what do you say?’

Eve cut him off. ‘Sarah, please don’t ask people who don’t know us. I know I’m plotting a big splashy wedding but it is
our
day.’

What was happening? Jasmine shot a look at Lara. Sarah was the soul of moderation and tact but both had deserted her.

‘You’re the central attraction, of course, Eve,’ Sarah said. ‘But, in my opinion, ownership of a wedding goes wider. Particularly …’ she glanced around her appalled audience ‘… since it’s being held here.’ She placed a particularly large helping of trifle in front of Eve. ‘Don’t you think?’

In the car on the way to the wedding fair in the nearby town, Eve, Jasmine and Duncan discussed the metamorphosis of the gentle Sarah.

‘Frankenstein or what?’ Glad to be shot of the politics and tensions, Duncan drove at a smartish pace. ‘Here be monsters.’ He poked Jasmine’s thigh. ‘That’s a warning. Weddings change people.’

‘You know something?’ said a fired-up Eve in the back. ‘You’re right.’ After a minute, she said, ‘Could you slow down a bit, please? All that trifle’s made me feel sick.’

They were still laughing as they paid the entrance fee to the wedding fair. Within minutes of entering, amusement turned to … not distaste but close.

‘We’re in the wrong clothes,’ said Jasmine.

‘Yup,’ said Eve.

Attendees were predominantly female, decked out in checked two-piece suits with fringed hems and gold chains. They were mostly over forty. A few brides tried on dresses in inadequately curtained-off booths – some of which were replicas of medieval jousting tents – while the loudspeaker played Mendelssohn’s Wedding March over and over.

What?
Jasmine thought.

There wasn’t a fresh flower to be seen or a bridegroom, but there were plenty of raised voices, with pink plastic, rampant consumerism and one-upmanship.

She watched Duncan pale. ‘You’ve brought me to a horror movie.’ He grabbed Jasmine’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’

A girl modelling a wedding dress stalked past. Her face and shoulders were bright orange and the dress was skin tight.

Although she agreed with him in principle, Jasmine said, ‘People have to earn a living.’

‘I’m not wasting one more second of my life on this.’ With that, he retreated to the car.

Eve and Jasmine wandered up and down the aisles.

‘There’s nothing here,’ said Jasmine.

Eve swallowed. ‘If I ever turn into one of those,’ she pointed to a bride having a stand-up row in a fake medieval booth with her mother, ‘you’re to shoot me.’

At Membury, Lara helped Sarah with the washing-up. This was accomplished mostly in silence.

When the last plate and glass had been put away, she said, ‘Sarah can we clear the air?’ Sarah turned her back. ‘About the flowers.’

Sarah fiddled with a saucepan. ‘It’s fine,’ she said, meaning the opposite. ‘I’ve got the message.’

‘Shall we talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Right,’ said Lara. ‘I’ll go outside for a bit.’

She fetched her jacket and let herself out of the back door. The kitchen garden was in the rudimentary renovation phase. A row of onions had been set, while spinach and carrot shoots pushed through the earth. A sieve overflowing with pebbles and stones had been abandoned on the path, a garden fork beside it.

Hand on hip, she surveyed the husbandry. These were things, basic, honest things, on which she would like to fix, garden business and routine, not the terrible anxiety that was plaguing her.

She made for the sunken garden, the planned site for the marquee. To do so, she had to cross the lawn in front of the house. A figure stood at the french windows leading on to the terrace. Bill. She quickened her pace and went around the yew hedge. The sun played on her face and, after the city, the air was sweet and felt … She searched for the word. It felt
expectant
.

What was it about Membury that had so crept under her skin?

A couple of days ago, Robin had left a postcard on her desk of a myrtle tree blooming in Damascus: ‘Further to the Membury myrtle. You might like to know that a sprig
of it was traditionally tucked into a bride’s bouquet and it has a long association with the goddess of love. Venus is said to have worn a garland of it (and not much else) when she rose from the sea …’

She had rung him up. ‘You’re being very sweet.’

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Trying to divert me?’

‘Possibly. Or part of a campaign that I was so rude to you about …’

The pulses sprang into action. A Mexican wave of them.

‘I’ve said no,’ she murmured, with real regret.

‘Skirmishes are all part of a campaign. There can be one. There can be many. I leave the thought with you.’

In the sunken garden, she paused and looked up to where the myrtle grew.

Its DNA issued from the heat and dust of the east, which Robin understood. The person who had planted it had also understood its lineage, and its needs, and placed it prudently in a sheltered spot near the wall – but it looked as though it had battled hard to survive the winter. It was alive, but she knew that it yearned to be sending its roots down into Mediterranean terrain. ‘But you made it through,’ she informed it.

‘Lara?’

‘Go away, Bill,’ she said, as he came up behind her. ‘I don’t want witnesses to my madness.’

‘You haven’t lost the habit of talking to yourself.’

‘No, and I don’t suppose I ever will.’ She didn’t want to look at him. ‘I saw you watching me from the window.’

‘I want to talk to you.’

The old tensions rose to the surface. ‘Is something the matter?’ Reluctantly, she turned. ‘If it’s Sarah, I’ll get Eve to repair relations.’

He had changed into a shabby pair of cords and a jacket with torn sleeves, clothes he wore as easily and comfortably as a second skin. ‘I wanted to talk about Maudie.’

‘You could have rung.’

‘I could have done.’ Someone – Bill? – had been digging the flowerbeds. A pot full of stones stood on the path. Bill bent down, hoicked up another from the freshly dug earth and tossed it in with the rest. ‘I know I’ve said this before but we must make more of an effort to talk about Maudie. I would have liked
some
say in her decisions.’

‘You and me both,’ she flashed back. ‘Have you noticed? Maudie is now a law unto herself. Have
you
talked to her?’

He scuffed a shoe along the flagstone. ‘Not really.’

‘You’re her father.’

He raised his eyes. ‘Walk with me, Lara. I think it’ll be easier.’

Her gaze drifted over the garden. Underneath its bones life was in full throttle. She could almost hear its pulses, the beat of its growth – the basic, honest things. ‘Actually, I need to talk to you too … I must talk to you.’

They trod down the steps, walked across the lawn towards the area where the grass grew thick and tangled, and Lara said, ‘You underestimate Maudie.’

Bill inspected a mole heap – a brown upheaval amid the wet green stalks. ‘I used to stamp on these as a child. I wouldn’t do that now.’

‘Good.’

‘As I grow older, I find it impossible to kill anything.’

She looked around. Garden. Sky rippled with cloud. New foliage. ‘How can one think otherwise? Especially here.’ The tips of her shoes were coated with mud. ‘Membury is special.’

With sudden passion and eagerness: ‘You see it?’

Like old times. All those occasions when Bill and she had sat at a table with the children, both of them working frantically to feed one or another, or to mop up. There had been a togetherness in their actions, a sense of shared purpose. Sometimes he would glance at her lovingly. At others he would smile or make a joke.

‘I do. Rather, I
feel
it.’

They studied the mole heap.

‘Bill, will you make an effort with Maudie? Don’t be like …’

‘Like?’

‘I was going to say like us.’

Point taken?

‘I plan to.’ His eyes met hers. His were rueful. ‘But I’d like to know what you think about it all.’

‘I accept Maudie’s decisions.’
Be truthful
. ‘I think.’ They moved on from the mole heap towards the stream. It was – more or less – a companionable progress.

House, garden, sky and trees … There was unity in what she was seeing and, suddenly, she realized that an important element was missing.

‘Time for us to sort things out, too, Bill?’

He had shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Is that possible?’

‘Why so sceptical?’ Her gaze rested on the spread of vivid green grass under the copper beech. ‘With Evie … with Evie getting married, it’s a good moment.’

Bill’s lips tightened and he glanced at the house where Sarah was, no doubt, brooding miserably on what had happened over lunch.

She touched his sleeve. ‘Bill?’

He wheeled around. ‘It’s all been said and done.’

The rapidity of his attack told her that he thought about it still.

Flashback

‘Please, Lara,’ he says. ‘No children when we marry. It’s a big thing to ask you, and I understand if you can’t accept it.’ She recollects his frightening grief for Mary, so intense still at this point. ‘I can’t go through that again. I … I can’t fight it.’

‘But that is such a big promise,’ she says.

He smoothes back the hair from her face. The beloved face, as he often called it. ‘Yes, it is. That’s why it has to be clear now.’

She loves him too much to accuse him of being frightened of life. Or, rather, now that she is with him, there is no need to do so. She understands his fear, and agrees to the bargain. After all, having children killed Mary.

She marries him.

How ignorant she proves to be. Deeply ignorant of the longing that almost overnight takes root – a wordless song, a drumbeat in her blood.

Somehow, she persuades Bill to have what turns out to be Maudie and, despite the trauma of her arrival, Bill survives the episode, loves and wants his third daughter.

This is Lara’s mistake. When she is up and about again, cooking,
cleaning, mothering, she is clutching new-found knowledge delightedly to herself: the bad luck has moved on and found somewhere else to roost.

‘Isn’t Maudie enough? Aren’t we enough, Lara?’ he blazes at her, when she tells him Louis is on the way.

Bill now repeated, ‘It’s been said and done, Lara.’

They were standing very close – as close as in the early days when his proximity had set her senses dancing – and a little of the remembered electricity crackled between them.

‘We never really understood each other’s point of view.’ After all these years, the confession was a relief. ‘I can finally admit it, Bill. But I was desperate … 
desperate
.’

She felt him distance himself.

There were all sorts of things that might be said.

Such as: ‘It was complicated. Louis died, or rather he never lived. You went … and we ended up hating each other. I don’t know how the bad feelings could have been avoided.’ She would fight the urge to fold her arms across her chest and defend herself from the arrows of hurt, betrayal and bereavement raining down on her. She could also say: ‘Bill, you didn’t have to leave me. You could have stayed and we could have dealt with the situation.’

He could reply: ‘I felt you’d made it impossible.’

‘But we should have tried, Bill.’

‘Lara, I
did
try.’

The truth was, they had never talked properly about their situation. She had been too wrapped up in guilt and grief, Bill too angry.

He paced about under the beech, this way and that. Even now she felt his anguish. Finally, he swung round.
‘Can
you
understand what it’s like to be responsible for a dead wife and a dead son?’