The Whole World (15 page)

CHAPTER 6

I
had two opportunities to shove Richard into the river, and didn’t act on even one.

Do you see the kind of restraint I put on around our family?

The first chance to push him was as everyone boarded their punts. It was darkish already, and the boats were lit by candles in glass lanterns. Thank goodness the driving rains of the past week had stopped.

This time of year, Scudamore’s doesn’t do daily business, so there isn’t any crowding. We were our own crowd, though, around the weir of the Mill Pond. The women had high heels on, and narrow or short dresses, so boarding was a comedy. I got Gwen and Dora in, and then leapt up to Alice’s other side. Gwen and Dora are my responsibility, and Alice is Richard’s, but this was their day, so I helped. They’d just been married at a church in the city centre. Richard was in his only suit. How did my brother get to forty-two with only one suit? And a casual scarf that must have come from Alice, or from our mother. And a coat because it was bloody cold.

As Alice stepped in, dozens of cameras clicked like popcorn.

Richard leaned over, to hand champagne bottles into the punts, to pass out hot water bottles for guests’ laps, to tuck a blue plaid blanket up over Alice’s skirt. I could have turned around to hand him something and knocked him off the end of the dock into the water. He would have been fine. There would have been shrieks, then everyone would have laughed. He would have changed into something unsuitable, which would have ended up being funny. Ruining the groom’s clothes is nothing like ruining the bride’s.

Of course I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it in the middle of the river either, when we were trading places. That was my second missed opportunity. We had chauffeurs, but everyone goaded Richard to punt, and me too. I stood at the back, pushing us through the water, and then it was his turn. For half a minute we both stood at the end together, and the front of the boat sat up and begged like a dog. I had to get the pole into his hands and get myself back crouched into the body of the punt again. And it all went without a wobble because I don’t take out petty frustrations by bullying my brother.

I take them out passive-aggressively on Gwen. She loves psychology! She’d say that admitting it is the first step!

In a normal family, I would have been the child who had grown up and done everything right. It’s not normal to want your kids to be all in their heads forever, right? Because all I want is for Dora to not make any permanent mistakes in her teens, and then for her to get an education, and have a good job, and choose a man who has sense and kindness. This is pretty basic stuff. For some reason, in our family it’s a good thing to still be living at university as a grown man, theorising. In a normal family, actually doing something would be expected and appreciated. But in this family, we applaud thinking. Thinking about thinking.

I went to university. I thought. I was good at it too. But when I hit statistics, I just couldn’t fake it anymore. I managed the calculations, I understood why the numbers worked. I just couldn’t get past the meaninglessness. One thing being more likely than another is irrelevant to what actually is. Someone is dead or alive. Someone is here or gone. Statistically, the truth may be unlikely, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Potential life has statistics; real life is binary. Things are or aren’t. That something shouldn’t have happened doesn’t change that it did.

I finished my exams, but I did something practical with them. I have a real job and I do real things. Richard thinks about potentials. He theorises the origins of life, he lets his religion interfere, and he qualifies everything he proposes, citing “scientific humility.” Atheists hate him, and so do fundamentalists. The people who like him mostly misunderstand. Students take his advice, which baffles me. Two women have married him.

My family should have seen it coming. Me, I mean. Even choosing Churchill instead of Magdalene—Dad had been at Magdalene—had been a rebellion. I chose a Cambridge college with no history or architectural significance. Ha! Take that, family!

They acted like it didn’t matter.

Dad died within a year of my signing on with the force. And the point, the whole point, of joining the police had been to be able to actually do something about what happens in this world. But he died on a research trip outside the country. Nothing nefarious, just a bad accident. There was nothing to solve. I’d been as useless as the rest of them.

When the punts arrived in Grantchester, Richard was the first to step out. He helped Alice out, then our mother. I think he would have stayed there, personally emptying the boats of every guest, but Alice nudged him away. She pulled him to the field path, where waiters stood in the tall grass with champagne. The men had jackets, while the female servers shivered in their blouses. The drama of this setup was the doing of Alice’s parents. Their daughter’s first, they hoped only, wedding.

Gwen’s shoe heels sank into the wet ground with every step. She clung to my arm. We’ve been married for sixteen years.

At last reaching The Orchard, a rustic tearoom tarted up with lanterns, there was one last hurdle. I’d forgotten about that stile. Two benches had been stacked and threaded through the fence to make a way over. Keeps the cows out. People can clamber over it. I didn’t mind, but if Gwen ripped her tights I’d hear about it all night. Richard set the bar for the rest of us by lifting Alice over. Great.

Next came photos and the smell of dinner. The canvas sling folding chairs in the garden were nearly dried out from the past week’s rain. The mud under the grass stuck to everyone’s shoes.

“Dora!” Gwen hissed to our daughter, miming buttoning up. Dora has cleavage now. She pretended to misunderstand and continued in conversation with some boy. He’s older than her, I think. Most boys her age are shorter, but he had an eyeful from his height.

“It’s all right,” I said automatically.

Richard waved us over to get into a picture, so we went. He put his arm around my shoulders. That’s the kind of person he is: making sure people feel comfortable and included. Which makes me uncomfortable.

Of course coats were removed for the photographer. Alice had on a dress that wasn’t big. It was almost a normal dress, not one of those bride dresses. It was normal, and it covered her up, but watching her take off her coat, watching Richard watch her … it was far too personal. It was like watching her strip. They’ve made this huge deal of not living together before the wedding, not sleeping together, which is why this wedding is in the winter, right? They didn’t want to wait. That’s what I think. Which is fine, whatever you want to do with yourself is fine. They’re getting married to sleep together; I got married because Gwen and I had been sleeping together and after six months she said the next step is a ring. Fine. It’s all fine. We’re all adults. We all know that marriage is a kind of containment system for sex, which … in my line of work I’ve seen enough of the crap that can come from messing with that. Sex can use some containment. So, all right. But still, I could do without the looks Richard and Alice were shooting each other. It was embarrassing.

Gwen came up from behind and circled me with her arms. “Do you remember when we got married?” she asked, her chin on my shoulder. Still tall, still well organised, still herself.

I wasn’t quick enough to answer. “At least pretend to be happy,” she whispered sharply, and walked away.

I patted at my suit pocket as if my phone had vibrated and waved to excuse myself out the gate. Across the road was that old church famous for its clock reading “ten to three.” To rhyme with “tea” in a poem.

I jogged up the street, and the wind pushed against my face. It felt great.

I turned in to follow the footpath. I’d walked it a dozen times. I used to come this way into Grantchester with my flatmates from Churchill: through Newnham and then fields and then to the Green Man pub. Once, I got so drunk that I couldn’t manage the cow gate between fields on the way back. You could walk over a kind of grate, or you could use the swinging gate, a “kissing gate”; either are too challenging for cows. I swear I was no better than a cow. You could have locked me up in a pasture with one of those. My friends couldn’t believe it. They
mooooo-ed
at me from the other side of the gate. I wouldn’t give in and use the grate side. I persisted with the kissing gate. All you have to do is push it forward, follow it in, step to the side, and then push it past back behind you. I kept thinking I was standing aside but I just kept pulling the gate into me. After a while I didn’t even try, I just pulled it into me, over and over, to keep everyone laughing. Then I’d climbed over it and fallen on my face.

I missed dinner. They were pushing back tables for the barn dance when I got back. More people had arrived. Gwen was busy but she would deal with me later. “Work,” I mouthed at her from across the room. She rolled her eyes.

“Dance with me,” said the bride, coming up behind me. Richard was paired up with his new mother-in-law. Our father is dead so … I would be the obvious counterpart. Where was Uncle Max, damn it? Or Albert—he counts, he’s a cousin. Why weren’t Richard and Alice dancing with each other anyway? No doubt Richard would say, “We can be selfish on our honeymoon, Morris, but the wedding itself is about our families, not only ourselves….”

“No, no, no …” I demurred. “I don’t even dance with Gwen. Sorry … Alice.” Damn. I hate that I still hesitate. It’s been long enough that I shouldn’t get caught anymore by Richard’s successive two wives having the same name.

She had noticed my pause. “Am I still the ‘new Alice,’ the ‘second Alice’?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” I quickly assured her, embarrassed that she knew we had ever referred to her that way. “You’re just Alice.” Richard’s first wife has been downgraded to “first Alice” or “other Alice” or “Mrs. Lapham,” which is her last name now. She’d married again too.

Gwen swooped in from behind. “You must dance with the bride,” she chided me. She took my coat. Apparently, I would dance.

The caller gathered us four forward. I put my hand on Alice’s waist and followed his instructions. Finally the music started up with a waltz and we made a swirl in the centre of the room that pushed the rest of the guests back. I willed them to join in rather than stare at us. “Sorry,” she said as we turned, obviously embarrassed by my reluctance.

“No, no,” I protested. “I don’t mind.”

Around and around. “You’re good at this,” Alice said over the music. I smiled in return. I’m not actually good at it.

Alice is kind. Richard knows what he’s doing; both his Alices were good choices. There had been a divorce, yes, but it had been more of a widowing than a divorce. Alice, the first Alice, had become a different person. Of course people were gossiping about that. Members of our family were telling it to Alice’s family (this Alice: Alice the doctor, Alice the bride). Dora is the worst about repeating it—she finds the story impossibly romantic and dramatic and tragic. She’s fourteen.

I thanked Alice for the dance. She nodded and caught her breath back and partnered with someone else for the next set of instructions. I wondered when she and Richard would dance together. At what point does selflessness become ridiculous? At what point does confidence become showing off?

Gwen appeared at my side, pulling me in to learn the reel. I knew it would go like that. If I danced with Alice, there’d be no excuse. Which is why I hadn’t wanted to dance with Alice. Do you see how these things go?

Eventually, the band took a break. Someone put on a CD to keep the music going. I was tempted to slip out again—Gwen would give me hell anyway, why not earn it—but the song pulled me up short. I’d played it before.

When I’d swapped classical violin for fiddle music, in my Churchill days, Richard had been the only one in the family ever to come hear me play.

We played mostly for folk dance groups. Supporting dancers has a different feeling to it from playing concerts. There’s more obligation to fit in, and less obligation to impress. It suited me fine.

Alice, the first one, had played flute with us. During the two months she’d been with us I’d been going out with the sister of one of my fellow constables, but it was nothing serious. I wanted Alice. She liked me too. She was casual but kind of deep, with long skirts and long hair. It was the eighties but she was still flower-child–like, and so pretty that I couldn’t really think straight. We’d already messed about once, not a lot, just kissing this one time that had been cut short. She was finishing up her last year at the local polytechnic, which she chose over university because she said she wanted to play music, not study it. I never in all my life would have thought there was something in her for Richard, who’d just that past spring handed in his thesis and was already a Fellow. Never.