The Tangling of the Web (8 page)

With bile rising in her throat, Sally finally recalled how she was forced to concede that Margo’s wedding would be a day to remember. This had come about when only a week after Harry had given his promise to Margo he had breezed in and, doing a jig around the room, announced that his darling daughter would not only drive in state from the church to the Albyn Rooms on her wedding day, but instead of it being on a Monday hadn’t Ginny offered to accommodate them on a Saturday. This statement not only astonished Sally but caused her sleepless nights, wondering why Ginny was being so benevolent.

Margo had insisted that Bobby, her thirteen-year-old brother, be her chief usher, whilst relegating her fourteen-year-old sister, Helen, from bridesmaid to flower girl. The reasoning behind this was that Margo thought Helen, whom she considered to be less attractive than herself, had what her granny called ‘a gift from the gods’ – charisma – so she was afraid her younger sister would take attention away from her. Sally was still reminiscing about this when she felt a touch on her arm.

Looking up into Bobby’s green eyes, she was pleased that everyone in attendance would be able to see how he resembled his dad. He had Harry’s athletic build – true, his hair was fairer than Harry’s, but it did have the same curly kinks. She smiled when she remembered that only yesterday he had told her that having to have your shoes built up was all the rage now. Even his pal, Ron, had bought some platform-soled shoes – in Ron’s case it was to make him seem taller than his five feet three inches. ‘Mum, are you listening to me?’ Sally nodded when she realised he was asking her to accompany him to the back of the church. Rising to follow him, she became aware that throughout the congregation a whispering had started – she knew they were speculating as to why she had been summoned.

As the click-click-clicking of her heels echoed ominously on the church floor, she felt panic rising in her breast.
What is wrong? Has Margo at last come to her senses and decided that life with the Souters won’t suit her? Or, more likely … ?
Now she had allowed her fertile imagination to take control, Sally found herself breaking into a run for the last few yards. This was because she now believed the problem wasn’t with Margo but with Harry!
Oh yes
, she screamed inwardly,
Dr Hannah was wrong when he advised me that Harry was as fit as a fiddle and now … and now. Oh no, please God, don’t let him be like his father and die long before his time.

Bolting through the doors and into the vestibule, a tearful Sally stopped abruptly before sinking against the wall. Relief seeped in. Thankfully Harry was standing beside Margo. Sally thought he had never looked more handsome and debonair. The greying of his hair at the temples gave him an air of sophistication, and somehow he had thrived on the wedding preparations and lately he had walked with an air of confidence – unlike herself, who was consumed by a feeling of impending disaster.

‘Mum, look at me,’ Margo pleaded. ‘What do you think? Will I do? And Mum, what if I’m not doing the right thing?’

Sally looked to Harry for guidance, but he deliberately turned his gaze away.
But then,
she asked herself,
has he ever taken any of the awkward family decisions? No.

Drawing on the inner strength that up till now had never failed her, Sally took Margo’s hand in hers. ‘My darling child,’ she murmured, ‘without a doubt you are the most beautiful bride I have ever seen. And know something else?’ Dropping Margo’s hand, Sally now stepped back to get a full view of her daughter. ‘The dress and the veil,’ she mused, ‘I now admit are worth every penny. Oh aye, a right royal princess you look.’ Drawing Margo into an embrace, Sally then whispered in her ear, ‘So come on, girl, don’t you disappoint your audience. Go in there and knock them dead.’ Then to herself she said,
And don’t you worry, if marrying Johnny Souter is the wrong thing for you, which I fear it might be, just come back home and I’ll arrange a divorce – quite the fashionable thing to do these days so I’m told.

It came as a surprise to Sally that the wedding, with such diverse guests, was an outstanding success. She knew the meal provided by the Albyn chefs would be something most guests would savour and talk about for weeks to come. The only complaint about the food came from Margo’s new mother-in-law. Ella, who gave the impression she was truly upstairs when in reality the deluded soul had never got her foot above the first step, had asked in a voice that could be heard at the foot of Leith Walk, ‘Why have we been served half-cooked sirloin steaks, crème caramels and coffee in ridiculous wee cups when everybody with an ounce of breeding kens it’s steak pie, sherry trifle and a cup of strong Lipton’s tea that is served up at decent weddings?’

The night had progressed into a typical good Leith knees-up. The Master of Ceremonies knew his job. He had expertly judged the guests and therefore the dances were mainly waltzes and Scottish reels. For the first dance after the bride and groom and their attendants had taken the floor, Harry bowed to Ella before steering her onto the floor. The second dance he should have had with Sally, but as he progressed over the floor towards her, Ginny jumped in front of Sally and Maggie and said, ‘Oh now Harry, how did you know my favourite dance is a Gay Gordons, especially when I’m asked up by a handsome, debonair man?’ Embarrassed at being wrong-footed, all Sally could do was to start fulfilling her hostess duties. Fixing a smile on her face, she called at each table and thanked everybody individually for coming and sharing the family’s happy day.

No one, not even Ella, could say they did not enjoy the festivities, and when Harry got up to serenade the assembly he had to wait for two minutes until the applause stopped. However, instead of starting straight into his song, Sally felt a lump rise in her throat when he went over to Margo, who had now changed into her going-away outfit, and taking her hand in his he began to sing, ‘I’m Walking Behind You on Your Wedding Day’.

It was just after one o’clock in the morning when Sally, Flora, Helen, Bobby and Josie got home. Poor Harry had bundled them into a taxi, but he had to wait behind mainly because he said he would have to help the staff with the tidying up but beside that five was the limit for travellers in a taxi.

Harry was surprised when he arrived home at four o’clock that Sally was still waiting up for him. She had felt that she had to spend some time with him. After all, it had been a big day for them – their firstborn becoming a married woman. Sally smiled as she remembered that even although they had been together all day they never had seemed to find time to talk to each other. That was because her Harry, being the perfect host that he was, had spent all his time making sure everybody was enjoying the party. He had been so busy he hadn’t even found time to dance with her.

Setting himself down on a chair opposite Sally, Harry drawled, ‘It never occurred to me that you would still be up.’

Rising to go over and sit on Harry’s knee, Sally chuckled, thinking back to the old days when he would slap his knees as a signal that he wished her to jump up on his lap. However, the sound died in her throat when Harry arose and brushed past her. ‘Sally,’ he said, ‘now we are alone I think we should get some things straight.’

‘Straight? What do you mean?’

‘Just … Look … We have to talk. You have to understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘The way things are changing – or to be truthful – how they have, slowly over the years, changed between us.’

Sally gave a nervous little twitter. ‘Of course things change. Nothing stays the same, but you and I, Harry, we’ve grown in strength and our love …’

‘That’s just it, Sally, our love for each other is past tense. I cannot remember the last time you said you loved me and we slept like two spoons.’

This statement to Sally was so cruel that at first she decided not to answer it, but then she found herself quietly saying, ‘When the word “love” is spoken it means nothing. You see, when you love someone you don’t have to tell them every day – well, not if they are adult – they know you love them by all that you do for them. Like giving birth to their children, keeping their house, loving their mother as your own, nursing them when they’re sick. Oh yes, and love is patient, it does not fly into rages …’

Harry had listened enough. ‘Look, Sally, your guff has no influence on me. What I want is for you to love me enough to let me go. Give me a divorce!’

Sally started to whine like an injured puppy dog, but even her pitiful cries couldn’t stop him wounding her further.

‘Don’t you realise,’ he ruthlessly continued, ‘I wish to be free to marry someone who makes me feel like you used to. She is without a doubt the love of my life now.’

Pressing her hands over her lips Sally tried to hush the terror-stricken screams that were rising in her throat. Although there was silence for only a minute between Harry and she, it seemed like an eternity. Eventually she managed to mumble, ‘Harry, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re having a mid-life crisis or something.’ Her right hand swept around the room to add emphasis to her plea. ‘Look, really look, at what we have built up here. This is not only
our
home: it is our children’s, your mother’s, my sister’s place of safety – a place where they know they are loved and wanted.’

With a shake of his head and a wry contortion of his mouth, Harry snorted, ‘You still don’t see it, do you? This …’ he now indicated with a backward jerk of his thumb, ‘… is where all your lame ducks are welcomed. But me – for years I’ve realised that I’m just the one who goes out to two jobs to earn the money to keep them all in the comfort that they now think they are entitled to – but for no longer. Tomorrow I’m off into the arms of someone who thinks I’m the whole cheese and not just the smell.’

Sally felt as if she was in a nightmare from which she must escape, so she picked up the loose skin of her left hand and pinched it so severely she howled, but still she didn’t awaken. ‘But Harry,’ she heard herself saying, ‘if you go I won’t be able to pay the mortgage and we, that is our Helen, Bobby and your mother, will all become homeless.’

‘And I hope you don’t think with the way you have indifferently treated me these last few years that that will change my mind. Listen again, but this time listen good. I am leaving you – I need a speedy divorce. So I am going to make you an offer that you would be foolish to refuse.’ Harry, who seemed oblivious to Sally’s utter distress, continued. ‘As you are aware, I am listed as the owner of this house here, so this is my over-generous proposal: everybody residing in the house is to vacate it within fourteen days. I will then immediately put it up for sale and provided you don’t give me any further grief I will give you, and take note I do not require to do so, 50 per cent of the selling price.’

Picking the bread knife up from the table, Sally leapt in front of Harry. ‘You unfeeling bastard,’ she screamed. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses or something?’

Sheer panic gripped Harry and he became mesmerised as the brandished blade came ever closer and closer to his face. Gulping and gasping, he kept swerving away in an effort to defend himself. Ashen-faced and buckling at the knees, with great effort he managed to splutter. ‘N-o-o-o. Not lost my senses – j-j-j-j-just come to them.’

‘That right,’ Sally screeched as she endeavoured again to slash at Harry’s face. ‘Well, if you think you can get away with this then think again. Oh aye, and have you thought what people will say about you not only flinging me and your kids out onto the street but also your very own mother?’ Sally felt someone at her back wresting the knife from her. Turning, she came face to face with Flora. Spinning round to face Harry again, she spat, ‘Look at her, Harry. See what the years of going out to scrub and clean to get a bob or two to help us get by has done to her.’

Drawing Sally into an embrace and tossing the knife into the fireplace, Flora, her face contorted with grief and anger, then looked at her son and he was left in no doubt about the contempt in which she held him. ‘So, fornicating coward that you are,’ she sobbed, ‘you have at last told her about your scandalous, sordid affair – and with someone whom she had given houseroom to because nobody else would.’

‘Mum, you know I cannot make you homeless. You have a house in Smithton. A house that is big enough for you, Sally and the bairns. You could even give room to …’

Sally was so distraught she hadn’t at first comprehended that a person close to her was his paramour. Breaking free from Flora’s arms, Sally fled towards the basement flat to confront Josie.

Throwing open the door and bounding down the steps, she kicked open the door to Josie’s bedroom. It had been her intention to drag Josie from her bed, but Josie was not abed. She was standing up dressed in her outdoor clothing, hands clapped over her ears and weeping profusely. Being younger and therefore more agile than Sally, Josie sprang up on the bed when she became aware that her sister was out of control and that she could be on the receiving end of her wrath.

‘Come here, you man-mad bitch,’ screeched Sally while she attempted to grab hold of Josie. ‘How many times have I told you not get entangled with married men? How many times have I had to sort out your problems?’

Josie did try desperately to find the right words to placate Sally, but she could think of nothing. Sally was about to leap onto the bed beside her when Flora entered. ‘Sally, why are you trying to attack Josie?’

‘I’ll tell you why,’ was Sally’s hysterical response, ‘because she has stolen my husband’s love and he wants to leave me and our bairns for her – bloody hoor is what she is.’

Flora managed to get herself in between Josie and Sally. Without warning, she smacked Sally firmly on the face. The act of violence, as Sally saw it, caused her to sink to the floor, and sobs racked her body. ‘Och, lassie,’ Flora began, ‘your feckless sister is not the harlot who has her claws into Harry. Sure, when she discovered what was going on between Harry and that wanton Jezebel, like me, all she did wrong was to try to shield you from the truth. Hoped in vain, the both of us did, that sanity would return to him but …’ Flora paused as she became aware that Josie was becoming quite hysterical and required comforting. Going over to her, Flora took her in her arms. ‘There, there,’ she murmured while gently stroking her back. Agonising minutes elapsed before Flora had Josie suitably composed. Holding on to each other, both women looked for Sally, but she was nowhere to be seen.