Daughters (26 page)

All the same.

Imagine
… air cooling her skin as she shrugged out of her
clothes. Her reflection in the mirror as she waited for a toile to be lifted into place over her head.

She forced her thoughts into another channel. What mattered was Duncan, not a dress or a wedding. What mattered was how she tackled life – with reason and rationality, strength and confidence. The contemporary female.

Lara made Eve turn around slowly. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Darling Eve. I wonder.’

Eve turned a questioning countenance on her, and Lara frowned. Again Jasmine felt the beat of her stepmother’s anxiety.

‘Eve,’ said Lara, ‘before you make up your mind … I’m wondering if you’ve considered a softer style, something a little more romantic?’

Ivanka tapped the pen against her teeth.
Click.

‘Why?’ asked a flushed Eve. ‘Don’t you think …?’

Jasmine went to Lara’s aid. ‘Evie, you know I was thinking the same.’

‘But I love this.’ Eve repeated the swaying movement. ‘It’s how I saw myself.’

Ivanka selected one of the abandoned sketches. ‘See?’ she said. ‘Juliet, before the tragedy. Long fluid lines. High waist. Beautifully draped.’

Lara exclaimed, ‘That’s it! That’s lovely. That’s how I …’ She corrected herself. ‘But, of course, you could only wear this dress once. Whereas the other …’

‘I have an idea,’ said Ivanka, and issued an order through the curtain. The assistant appeared with a second toile, this time made up in muslin. She waited with a patient smile while Ivanka denuded Eve of the first.

‘This was made for a customer last year,’ Ivanka explained, and helped Eve into it.

It dropped into place. The black dressmaker’s marks on it were – clearly – the imprint of another woman.

‘Did she wear the dress?’ asked Jasmine.

‘Shoes, shoes.’ Lara seemed distracted. ‘You’ll have to take care choosing the right shoes for a dress like this.’

‘A little shaping in the bodice.’ Ivanka patrolled around Eve.

‘Did she wear the dress?’ repeated Jasmine.

Ivanka lifted her gaze. ‘The other bride … In the end she didn’t use it.’ She gestured to the assistant. ‘The wedding didn’t happen.’

The assistant dropped to her knees to pin up the trailing hem.

Eve had become a still white statue.

‘Do you like this better?’ asked Ivanka. ‘I would make changes so it is yours.’

Eve turned sideways to assess her profile, and the toile flowed with her. ‘Which material?’

‘There’s chiffon, georgette, marocain … They’re good for draping.’

What kind of veil?

Which flowers?

‘Wait,’ said Ivanka. She whipped down a length of veiling from the rack and threw it over Eve’s head. Its hem drifted to the floor. ‘There.’

Suddenly, her sister was a phantom, summoned from the shadowy habitats of dreams and fantasies.

Lara went very pale, and Eve swayed.

Jasmine asked sharply, ‘Are you all right, Eve?’

Eve turned her head, and the train undulated. ‘Yes, I am.’

Marker in hand, Ivanka circled the shrouded figure. ‘Here,’ she said, lifted the veiling and drew a small circle on Eve’s left breast. ‘That’s where we embroider the rose on the under-dress. Every dress we create has a hidden rose. It’s part of the dress.’

What sort of rose? White, red … the colours of death and love? A rose with a thorn?

‘Oh,’ said Lara, faintly.

Eve peered at herself in the mirror. Then she lifted her hand and the veiling drifted around her. She cast a look at the discarded toile. ‘Which?’

The nervy, steely irony of Eve’s first choice – a throwback to the sharp lines and tough charm of the sixties – or the nostalgia and contrasting delicate charm of the second?

It didn’t matter, thought Jasmine. There were no rules.

Lara said, ‘Don’t let us influence you, Eve.’

Eve slipped off the shoes. ‘The Juliet dress,’ she said.

‘
Don’t
call it that,’ said Lara, sharply. She sat down on one of the chairs and rubbed her ankle. ‘It’s
your
dress.’

There was a short silence.

Lara snatched Eve’s hand and held it to her cheek. ‘You’ve been very clever. And it’s all good.’

Eve smiled enigmatically. ‘By that, do you mean I’ve been clever enough to find a partner with an income and, conveniently, a house?’ She was only half joking.

‘No,’ said Lara.

Ivanka snapped the laptop shut. ‘Are we agreed?’

Lara appeared to come to a decision. ‘Eve, why don’t we think about it for a day?’

‘Why?’

‘Please.’

‘OK,’ said Eve, but she was puzzled.

The postman delivered a copper pan (28cms), a chef’s stainless-steel pan (24cms), a gingham tablecloth, a rose damask tablecloth (137 x 183cms), plus a set of table mats adorned with tasteful scenes from Ancient Rome.

When she returned from work, Lara bore them upstairs where they joined the growing pile. Hand on hip, she regarded them with dread and apprehension.

Back in the kitchen, she took a packet of steak out of the fridge, ready to make a stew to freeze for the weekend. As she chopped and fried the onion, she listened to the radio commentary on the general election. Very soon, a buttery-oniony smell filled the air. She added a sprinkling of thyme, sherry, tomato paste and – the
coup
– a couple of anchovies, to transform a watery liquid into a thick, velvety sauce.

Maudie sidled into the kitchen and dumped her book bag on the table. She sniffed. ‘Is that stew? Oh, Mum, it’ll have gravy.’

‘You can pick the bits out.’ Under the cover of cooking, Lara assessed her. ‘You’ll have to learn to like gravy.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Think hominy grits and gravy in the States?’

Maudie’s face lit briefly with yearning and excitement. ‘Unfair, Mum.’

Maudie was impatient, snippy, tired. Blue was smudged under the mascaraed eyes, and the strands of hair at the nape of her neck, usually so shiny, appeared lacklustre.

Lara softened. ‘You OK?’ she asked. Maudie wound a lock of hair around her finger and tucked it into the barrette anchoring the rest. ‘Did you sleep?’

‘Sure.’

Mental note. Buy vitamin supplements, fish oil and Horlicks. Insist that Maudie had an eye and tooth check (teeth always went under stress).

‘OK,’ she said, and checked the time. ‘Eve will be dropping in.’

‘Oh, Lord.’ A mixture of exasperation and impatience. ‘I’m not sure I can stand it at the moment.’

Lara said, ‘Come here,’ and caught Maudie round the waist. ‘Just so you’re straight on the subject, Eve cares for you. Very much.’ She peered into Maudie’s face. ‘You care for her a lot too. Don’t you?’

‘Stupid question, Mum.’ All the same, Maudie was sceptical. ‘But we’re different.’ When Lara released her, she resumed tackling her hair. ‘Why wouldn’t we be?’

Shortly afterwards, Eve arrived and took charge of the presents, writing notes and stowing them carefully. She had already spring-cleaned the wardrobe – ‘That’s where moths lay their eggs, Mum’ – and vacuumed every corner of the room. ‘I have to get it sorted for Andrew, otherwise he mixes things up.’

‘Isn’t it going to be awful always having to negotiate over everything?’ asked Maudie. ‘Togetherness and all that …’

‘I don’t know,’ said Eve. ‘Haven’t done it yet.’

With some awe, they watched her stack boxes, sort out pieces of china and grade the linen. A tea-strainer was logged in under the returns section of the list, and the most hideous vase in the world stowed carefully with the china.

‘Who’s given you
that
?’ asked Maudie, in shocked tones.

Eve replied seriously, ‘Carla and Charlie Kirkwood. It’s very generous of them.’ She added, ‘People
are
generous.’

‘Are they?’ Maudie was frankly derisive. ‘IMO, the vase should be a social outcast.’

Eve sent her a look dating from childhood. The one that said,
You are an irritating child and in my way
. She placed her hands on her hips. ‘And?’ She was cross. ‘Since when did you have any taste?’

‘How dare you?’

‘Very easily,’ said Eve.

‘Shut up.’

The vase gibe had driven deep. ‘It’s always the same, Maudie. You always have a go. Whatever have I done to you?’

‘Quite a lot, actually.’

Lara observed them both: the concept of non-dualism (Buddhist, she recollected) preached that there is no hard line between pleasure and pain. ‘Stop it, you two,’ she said. ‘
Now
.’

Eve returned to her lists and Maudie retired to the kitchen. Peace broke out in the bedroom.

‘How’s Andrew?’

‘He’s fine, I think. Haven’t seen him for a couple of days.’

‘Are the building works going OK?’

‘Yes. But you should see the garden. Builder’s yard. It’ll take work to restore it. But it’s tiny, as you know, and I shall love doing it.’

An image rose of the garden at Membury as Lara had first seen it – in its frozen suspension. ‘You and your father both.’

Eve shuffled and reshuffled the haul. Clink went one plate against another. Paper rustled. Her biro moved across the Notebook. Her question, when she posed it, was uncharacteristically tentative: ‘Do you think Dad was happy with either you or my mother?’

It shocked Lara. ‘I’m sure he was with your mother. As for him and me, that’s complicated. But it’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. But, there were things … that are private to a marriage. You’ll have private things, too. We were happy at the beginning … very … and I’m sure your father would say the same.’

‘What you mean is … my mother didn’t live long enough for him to become disillusioned with her.’

She should have been quicker on the uptake. Too late, she said, ‘He
was
happy with your mother.’ She peered at Eve. ‘It’s true.’

Eve’s uncharacteristic introspective mood persisted. ‘Is it odd that so many of us have issued from Dad’s discomfort?’

‘You were wanted,’ Lara interjected. ‘
All
of you. We wouldn’t swap one hair of your heads.’

‘But he didn’t want Maudie or Louis,’ said Eve.

‘It wasn’t straightforward, Evie.’

Eve looked at Lara as if to say,
You’re forgetting I’m an adult
. ‘Dad went, and you couldn’t rely on him.’ She smoothed a page in the Notebook. ‘I don’t like to think about that.’

The sour smell of London earth – marked by the piss and dung of urban foxes and cats. Her grief as she knelt down in the garden. ‘He could say the same about me.’

‘I doubt it.’

Lara ran her hands through her hair.
The land of lost content
. ‘You wouldn’t know, Eve.’

Eve sorted and stacked. Full of foreboding, Lara watched. ‘Does Andrew let you get on with decisions about the cottage?’

Eve checked some sheets. ‘Thread count good … Funnily enough, Andrew has strong views. He’s into cooking and interior decoration.’

That surprised her. ‘You so often think you know someone, but you don’t. I don’t know Andrew and you’re marrying him.’

Eve turned her head away.

‘Still, a domesticated Andrew is good for when you have a family.’

‘A family?’ Eve sounded surprised.

‘You
are
thinking of having a family?’

‘I suppose we are.’ Eve fiddled with the sheets. ‘Of
course.
’

Should she speak?

Yes? No?

On her way downstairs, Lara stopped to wipe the window by the stairs. It was streaked with dirt, and the flowers
she had placed under it had died. She bore them away. The actions were calming … but not entirely.

Packing a lunchbox for Maudie, she failed to find the ham she had bought for the sandwiches and dropped the banana.

‘What’s up with you?’ asked Maudie. ‘All fingers and thumbs.’

Lara kissed her goodbye. Maudie kissed her back. ‘I can’t believe college and all that will soon be at an end, Mum.’

‘Make the most of it.’

To her surprise, Maudie held her tight. ‘I will.’

Lara waited. Upstairs, Eve was finishing. Patting, filing, sorting.

Lara sneezed, a sign of tension. The kitchen felt hot and she pushed open the window. She sneezed a second time, so violently her body recoiled from the shock. She sat down on the bench.
I must get something more comfortable to sit on in the kitchen.

Yes? No?

Got up again. For a moment, she was powerless to move. Eve’s tapping footsteps were on the stairs.

Coming down.

Eve appeared in the kitchen and headed for the kettle. ‘Evie,’ Lara managed to say. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘OK, OK …’ Light and carefree, the words danced. ‘Before you say anything, I want to show you this.’ She dived into her bag on the table and got out a tissue-wrapped object. ‘About the dress …’ Eve whipped round. ‘Look …’

Nestling in the tissue was a Cinderella slipper, as slim and confected as the fairy tale.

Lara summoned courage. ‘Is everything OK between you and Andrew? We haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Is that what you want to discuss?’ Eve looked astonished.

‘Sort of.’

Eve thrust the shoe at her. ‘Do you like it?’

Elegant, with a minute heel and satin ribbons to tie around the ankle, the shoe told Lara that Eve had definitely decided on the Juliet dress. ‘Evie, it’s lovely.’

The hand that was holding it out to her trembled a little. ‘Mum, what do you mean you haven’t seen Andrew?’

‘I just wondered. Have you talked to him properly lately? Do you know what he’s thinking? Is he happy with all the arrangements?’ Lara cleared her throat, which felt constricted. ‘It’s important to keep in touch.
Properly
in touch.’

Eve’s expression remained pinned in place. But … oh, those years of knowing Eve’s every mood. Lara sensed she flinched. ‘Andrew knows what I feel, and I know what he feels.’

Lara captured the shoe and twined her fingers in the ribbon. ‘But when did you last have a proper, serious conversation?’

A pair of big, cool-looking eyes trained on her. ‘Why should I answer that, Mum?’

‘You might have last-minute doubts.’

‘No,’ she said flatly.

‘Sure?’

‘Why on earth are you doing this?’