Daughters-in-Law (12 page)

But Ralph had been like a sleepwalker. Ralph, who had always been perverse and willful and recalcitrant, seemed almost paralyzed by the thought of this baby, but happy paralyzed, as if he wanted to do whatever would be best for this baby who was going to be, he said in marveling and uncharacteristic tones to Luke, someone of his
own.
And when Luke had talked to his parents, he discovered that they didn’t want a marriage in order to be socially acceptable, but because they thought Petra was the only person who could understand Ralph’s singularity, and who would be prepared to support him in it, and that—although this was never expressed openly—they had invested too much in this child who had softened the blow of their own children leaving home to want to let her go.

Luke turned to look at Charlotte’s sleeping face, at the thick fans of her eyelashes resting on her cheeks. There’d been so much agitation around Ralph and Petra and their wedding that poor Kit’s arrival had been almost incidental, brushed over like the final scene of some uncomfortable drama. Luke had driven up to Ipswich to the hospital, to see Petra and Kit. Petra was lying in bed, looking about fourteen, with her hair tied up in a bit of brocade, and her black-lace mittens on, and Kit was parceled up like a solid white grub in a Perspex cradle, red-faced, with an explosion of dark hair. Luke remembered bending over him and thinking, funny little tyke. Looks like Ralph already, but he hadn’t thought, oh wow, this is a new life, this is a real person that Petra and Ralph have made between them, this is the
future
.

Which is what he was thinking now. His hand was warm on Charlotte’s warm leg. Just a few inches above where his
hand lay, something now—probably—stirred, some as yet small collection of cells that would evolve to become a baby, with ears and fingers and toes and, above all, a mind of its own. Tears began to fill Luke’s own eyes, brimming up, and spilling over, and running unchecked down the sides of his face into his ears. Please let it be true, Luke said silently into his dim bedroom, please let it be true. Please let there be a baby.

The doctor had confirmed that Charlotte was, indeed, pregnant. About nine weeks pregnant. She’d looked at Charlotte over the top of her reading glasses, and said that Charlotte’s age was an excellent age to have a first baby. She made it sound as if Charlotte had done something especially clever, and she smiled broadly and said, well, looking at the two of them, this was going to be a lovely child, and then she stood up and shook their hands warmly, and they went out in the street in a glow of self-congratulation and apprehensive excitement, to celebrate in a coffee shop, which was the limit of the stimulation that either of them were going to allow into Charlotte’s system from now on.

In the course of drinking their flat whites—decaffeinated in Charlotte’s case—they discussed the advice the doctor had given them about waiting to tell their families until the three-month mark of pregnancy was passed, and Luke had said, “Well, while you ring your mum, I can ring my parents, can’t I,” and Charlotte had spooned some of her coffee into her mouth and said, “No, after.”

“What d’you mean, after?”

“I mean,” Charlotte said, “that I’ll ring my mother and my sisters first, and when I’ve done that you can ring your family.”

Luke put his coffee cup down.

“Why not at the same time?”

“Because,” Charlotte said, as if what she was saying was perfectly obvious, “the mother’s mother is always the first to know. The mother’s family comes first.”

“
What?
” Luke said.

“The mother’s mother,” Charlotte said, “is the first grandmother. That’s how it works. My sisters told my mother first, and then their mothers-in-law.”

Luke leaned forward.

“But this baby is half me, half mine. It’s as much Mum and Dad’s grandchild as it’s your mother’s.”

Charlotte looked at him. Her gaze was clear and confident.

“No, it isn’t.”

“But it’ll be called Brinkley—”

“Don’t be so old-fashioned,” Charlotte said. “It’s not about names. It’s about—about the natural order.”

“Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it—”

“You haven’t got sisters,” Charlotte said, “and your parents have been very lucky, because Sigrid’s family live in Stockholm and Petra hasn’t got any.”

Luke thought for a moment. Then he said, “Are you
sure
?”

“Oh yes.”

“It doesn’t seem at all fair—”

“Nature isn’t fair—” Charlotte said severely.

“Could you—could you consider defying this natural-order whatsit and doing our own thing and ringing our parents together? For me?”

Charlotte took a swallow of coffee.

“No,” she said firmly, and she didn’t add, “Sorry.”

Luke had been strangely unsettled by this exchange. He was besotted with Charlotte, and thought her family were terrific, and refreshingly different from his own, with their sporty, clean-limbed approach to life, and his mother-in-law’s neat painting confined to an ordered table in the sitting room,
where it made no mess and left no smells or atmospheres. But all the same, they were very other than his family, and his family was as deep-rooted in him as his own DNA, however exasperating and demanding and disordered they might be, and when he thought of how his parents might feel if they ever knew that the accepted grandparental pecking order put them firmly in second place, his heart simply smote him.

Luke knew without a shadow of doubt, and had known it all his life, that his parents were on his side, as they were on Edward’s side, on Ralph’s. At school, and later at uni, he’d seen friends who were not unreservedly loved and supported as he and his brothers were, and if he ever reflected on his childhood, he recalled a period of unquestioned security, even if not, both inevitably and properly, of improbable unalloyed happiness. He also thought, now that he came to consider it, that his parents were pretty good grandparents, indeed wonderful grandparents to Kit and Barney and as wonderful to Mariella as distance and differing ways of life permitted. Thinking of the injustice implicit in Charlotte’s attitude, Luke grew quite heated, and although it was almost impossible to imagine getting angry with Charlotte herself, it was very easy indeed to get angry about the stupidity of a social class or habit that had allowed such thinking to harden into an apparently perfectly acceptable custom.

It was at the end of a long day churning these thoughts about in his mind that Rachel rang again.

“I just wondered,” she said, “if we could make a plan for you to come up to Suffolk?”

“Oh sure—”

“We’re sitting at the kitchen table,” Rachel said, “with the diary, and it looks as if the next three weekends are free, give or take the odd minor thing, so pick any—or indeed all—of them, why don’t you?”

Luke said guardedly, his eye on Jed, absorbed in his screen across the studio, “Can I call you a bit later?”

“Why not now?”

“Well, I’m working, and I’d also like to consult with Charlotte.”

There was a fractional silence at the other end of the line. In it, Luke heard his father say, “Leave it, Rach,” and then his mother said to Luke, “Let me just pencil something in—”

Jed raised his head and shot Luke a swift glance.

Luke said, “Okay. Pencil in two weekends from now. I’ll call you later.”

He put the phone down. Jed said, his eyes back on the screen, “You should have stayed single, mate.”

“Oh no I shouldn’t. Nobody in their right mind would have passed on Charlotte—”

“True. But there’s all the baggage. All those mummies and daddies and competition.”

“There’s no competition,” Luke said. “I won’t let there be.”

Jed smiled at the screen.

“Good luck, dude.”

Later, up in the flat, pouring out water for Charlotte and Coke Zero for himself, Luke told her he’d agreed that they’d go up to Suffolk for the weekend in a fortnight’s time. Charlotte was on the sofa, with her feet on the coffee table, looking as relaxed as some syrupy African wild cat lounging nonchalantly along a branch. She accepted her water, to which Luke had added ice cubes and a slice of lime.

She said, “It’d be more fun to have them here.”

Luke settled himself beside her and laid an arm along the sofa back behind her shoulders.

“You’re sweet. But they want us there to feed us, and have an ooh-and-aah session with the photos.”

Charlotte took a big swallow of water. She said sweetly, “But I don’t want that, angel.”

Luke put the back of his hand against her nearest cheek.

“I thought you liked going to Suffolk.”

“I do. I love it. I especially like your dad’s studio.”

“Well, then.”

Charlotte turned her face slightly towards him. She said, “I want the first time we see them when we’re married to be here.”

“Why?”

“I want to be here in charge of it—”

“What do you mean?”

“I want them to see that I can do it. That I can make a home for you. I want your mother to see that I can cook.”

Luke took his hand away. He said cautiously, “That might be a bit difficult.”

“Why?”

“Well, we didn’t go there that last weekend, and we’ve been married five weeks, and there’s been all the Ralph stuff. And I think Mum wants to welcome you there as her definite daughter-in-law and spoil you a bit and all that. I think, in her way, she wants to make a fuss of you.”

Charlotte said, looking straight ahead, and lightly, “She hasn’t done much of that yet—”

“No, but now you’re
married
to me, you’re a done deed. It’ll be different, you’ll see. It’s only fair to give her the chance, babe, especially as we went back to yours. We’ve got to be fair.”

Charlotte moved fractionally away from him. She said, “My mother doesn’t ask.”

Luke gave an ill-judged hoot of derisive laughter.

“Oh come on, babe! She doesn’t ask outright like Mum does, but she implies and hints all the time—”

“Shut up!” Charlotte said sharply.

There was a sudden and alarming silence. Luke took Charlotte’s hand, the one not holding her water glass. She snatched it back. He waited a few seconds and then he said in a low voice, “Sorry.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“Sorry,” Luke said, “sorry. That was completely uncalled for.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said with emphasis.

“We can’t fight about this. We mustn’t. We mustn’t let this family competitive thing get in the way of you and me—”

“No,” Charlotte said, her voice still distinctly unfriendly, “we mustn’t. Which is why I am not going to Suffolk before your parents have come to London to see where and how we live, and celebrate us being married and in charge of our own lives.”

Luke said unhappily, “Dad hates London.”

“Well, he’ll have to get used to it. Doesn’t he ever go to Ed’s house?”

“Not often,” Luke said. “Usually Ed and Sigi go to Suffolk.”

Charlotte turned slightly so that she could look directly at Luke. She said, “We’re going to be different.”

“I hope so—”

“We’re going to do things
our
way. We’re going to establish
our
lives.”

Luke said cautiously, “Does that apply to your family too?”

Charlotte took a deep breath. She leaned forward and put her tumbler down on the coffee table. Then she turned to look at Luke again.

“I don’t think you get it. My family wouldn’t ask me to behave in a way I didn’t feel was right for me. They just wouldn’t.”

“Oh.”

“I expect it’s being all girls,” Charlotte said. “Daddy always
said we belonged to him and Mummy only until we belonged to someone else.”

“Are you implying something? About my parents?”

“I’m just saying,” Charlotte said, “that now we’re married we don’t belong to our parents the way we did before we were married. And I want to establish that by having your parents here, and cooking them a lovely lunch and showing them the photographs and, if it’s a Sunday, taking them to the flower market.”

Luke slumped against the sofa back.

“I don’t know why that doesn’t make me feel better—”

“It doesn’t make
me
feel better that you don’t want to show your parents our home and how we’re living.”

“I didn’t mean that—”

Charlotte pushed herself off the sofa and stood up.

“It’s what’s happening.”

Luke looked up at her. She looked astonishing, seen from his position on the sofa, tall and powerful and more than a little terrifying. He had got out of the habit of being terrified by Charlotte, since those seemingly long-ago cocaine-argument days, and he was horrified at the thought of going back to it. A clutch of panic seized him.

He said, not wanting to sound appeasing but conscious that he did, “Why don’t we just do one weekend in Suffolk to satisfy them, and then we’ll do it our way from then on.”

“No,” Charlotte said. She folded her arms.

“But we went to your mother’s—”

Charlotte almost shouted, “I
told
you why! I
told
you that it’s different for the girl’s family! We aren’t going to keep going there any more than we’re going anywhere, but I am not going to Suffolk until your parents have seen us in our own home and that’s
final
.”

“Final—”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. She unfolded her arms and put her hands to her face and Luke realized that she was crying. He leapt to his feet and pulled her into his arms.

“Don’t, angel, don’t, don’t cry, please don’t cry—”

Charlotte said something indistinct.

“What? What, tell me—”

“She thinks I’m such an airhead—”

“Who does? Who thinks anything like that?”

“Your mother,” Charlotte said. She pushed her damp face into his shoulder.

“She doesn’t, she couldn’t—”

Charlotte said unfairly, “Don’t make me go there—”

Luke sighed. He kissed the side of her head.

“We’ve got to, sometime—”

“I know. Just not this time.”

“Okay.”

“Please ring them. Ring them and ask them here. Say it would mean so much to us.”

“Okay.”

Charlotte took her face away from Luke’s shoulder and looked at him. She gave him an uncertain smile.