Daughters (35 page)

‘You’re not listening, Maudie.’ Lara hauled herself up onto the edge of bed. She smoothed the sheet. ‘Mary died having a baby and he was there … It wasn’t that he didn’t want children, he just didn’t want to face the risk. Once you arrived he was besotted. What neither of us had reckoned on was that I would have a difficult time, too. I ended up having transfusions. It was unlucky and coincidental, but your father found it almost impossible to deal with.’

Bill holding a tiny Maudie.

‘Isn’t she enough, Lara?’

‘Fear is a powerful thing but I didn’t quite understand that then. I do now. I couldn’t accept what he wanted. I was desperate for more children and …’ she looked up at Maudie ‘… I got pregnant without his agreement.’

Easy. Far easier than arriving at the decision to deceive. Take one bottle of wine. One balmy evening. One
still-slim girl hungry for more children and a man who loved her.

Easy.

Maudie moved restlessly. ‘So?’

‘You know what happened.’

‘Louis,’ Maudie said. She let out her breath with a soft hiss. ‘So that’s …’

Wrapped in a soft white shawl. Washed. His tiny hands curled like limpets. Dark hair.

‘That was the beginning of the end.’

‘All that … sadness …’ said Maudie, and the fjord eyes were dark with the unwelcome revelation. ‘But he shouldn’t have left you for
that
 … What sort of man is he?’

Lara joined Maudie at the window. She discovered that her hands were shaking and her legs had emptied of their stuffing. ‘You’re too young to understand, Maudie. In one sense, you’re right. But when you lose trust in someone … it taints everything, even the smallest actions. Your father lost trust in me. He was frightened, profoundly so. So was I. Then we had to face the worst … and … it was my fault. And the worst destroyed … us.’ She was trying hard to bring her hands under control. A cool, critical Maudie observed her struggle. ‘Remember that.’

‘
Why
have you never told me?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Of course you could. Didn’t I need to know?’

Lara caressed Maudie’s cheek. ‘It was private.’

‘No, it wasn’t because it affected us.’ Her eyelids dropped. ‘It affected the whole family.’

‘Each time I talk about Louis, and people are kind about it, I feel I’m using their sympathy to smooth away the fact of his death. And it can’t be smoothed away. I don’t want it smoothed away.’

‘No.’ Maudie fell silent. ‘No.’ She hunched over the windowsill. ‘I still think Dad’s a monster.’

‘No, he isn’t,’ she said. ‘But I’m telling you this so you can think it over. I was wrong in what I did. But it happens to people and they do irrational things. Stupid things, too. When you’re up against it, you don’t know the lengths to which you might go. Bear that in mind.’

Maudie shrugged.

The hard-won confession was over and done with, and Lara’s head and heart felt lighter for it. ‘But you know something, Maudie? The wedding has made things easier. Because of it, your father and I have had to speak to each other regularly. It’s …’ she retreated to the bed and picked up a pile of T-shirts ‘… it’s been a good thing. You must say goodbye to him.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You must.’

Maudie did something she rarely did. She began to cry.

The day before Maudie’s departure, Lara paid a visit to the new consulting rooms. The workmen had just finished the painting and it was possible to step from one light, airy room into a second light, airy room. She checked the plans for the furniture – desks and (important this) comfortable chairs – and ran an inventory of the cellophane-wrapped deliveries. Whoa, she thought, for the
fumes of new paint and new carpet were so strong that she felt a little high on them.

Disregarding the plastic wrapping, she tried out a chair. ‘“Everyone needs to accept what they are, and to live without fear and without the oppressions of guilt and lack of self esteem …”’ she quoted aloud from a well-known expert.

Kirsty rang. ‘I’ve slipped,’ she wailed. ‘Two glasses of wine and a bar of chocolate.’

This society was crazy. Somehow wine and chocolate had turned into sins as shocking as apostasy in previous eras. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ Lara asked.

‘Starve myself.’ Kirsty was desperate.

‘Make sure you turn up for your appointment,’ she said.

She cast around the spanking new consulting room. Would spanking newness help Pauline, Ralph and herself to help others make sense of their lives? (It had better. The bills were large enough.)

And, then, seriously …

Her newspaper lay on the floor. ‘IED blew off my interpreter’s legs,’ ran the headline.

She groped for antidotes to such troubling facts. And there it was … Into her uneasy thoughts dropped an image of the garden at Membury. There, the tussocky grass grew unimpeded, the bees worked, the myrtle struggled to survive, the stream flowed and, in the places where she had walked, poppies and ox-eye daisies bloomed. Memories, delicate and powerful, on which to draw. Memories that would nourish and sustain her.

The plastic covering on the chair imprinted red patches
on her legs, like jellyfish stings. She reached into her bag, found the phone and dialled. It clicked to answerphone. ‘Robin. I hope you’re OK. I just want you to know …’ She paused. ‘I want you to know that I’m using the bag all the time.’ She snapped off the connection, only to redial. ‘Please get in touch.’

On the way home, she stopped at the pillar-box to post a stack of wedding invitations, including one to Robin.

On the day of her departure, Maudie got up, washed and dressed. All normal. She stripped her bed and took the sheets downstairs, put them into the washing-machine and switched it on.

Her mother was standing by the window. She looked pale and tired. ‘What about some porridge?’ she asked. ‘It’ll keep you going.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Maudie.

Afterwards she threw away her old toothbrush, bagged up the sweaters she was leaving behind against moths and threw away a couple of used-up mascaras.

Not normal.

Later, at the airport, her gaze flittered from one thing to another – like a maddened fly. The check-in desk. The automatic ticket machines. The coffee bars. The two stuffed suitcases waiting to be checked in. A hammer knocking in the region of her heart added to a sense of unreality.
She was going away.

Her mother slipped her arm through hers and spoke softly. As usual, she was concentrating on practical things – insurance, medical certificates, bank orders. Maudie
listened carefully to the cadences of the well-known voice, committing it to memory, but took in nothing of what her mother was actually talking about.

Impossible to concentrate.

Huge piles of luggage. A man balancing three cups of coffee. A girl with dyed blonde hair.

Jasmine and Eve turned up. Jasmine kissed Lara – but Eve didn’t, which seemed odd. Her family watched while she checked in two suitcases and a rucksack, so stuffed with books that Maudie found it difficult to lift.

‘Promise me,’ said Lara, ‘that you won’t attempt to carry it. Promise me that’ll you get a taxi from the airport.’

Maudie had a sensation of swimming through deep, hazy water. ‘Don’t fuss.’ She wanted to get the goodbyes over and done with – which, since everyone had made the effort to turn up, was difficult. Having packed the rucksack awkwardly, she made a great play of rearranging the stuff.

Something was missing. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Or, rather, she could but didn’t wish to spell it out.

Eve’s embrace was careful and affectionate. ‘I’ve got something for you, Eve.’ Maudie delved into her bag and produced a small package wrapped in tissue paper.

‘Maudie? Can I?’

Maudie nodded and Eve unpeeled the tissue to reveal the garter Maudie had made – a length of lace threaded with a blue ribbon. ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,’ said Maudie. ‘This hits the new and blue.’

Eve raised a glowing face. ‘You made it for me? You
made
it?’

‘I thought we could all wear it,’ said Maudie, awkwardly. ‘In our turn.’ She grinned. ‘Not that I plan to get married.’

Eyes welling, Eve wrapped the tissue around the garter. ‘It’s beyond price, Maudie. Do you know that?’

‘Oh, Evie,’ said Maudie.

Jasmine surged forward. ‘Maudie, be a good girl. You’ll love it over there. Don’t forget us.’

Her mother echoed, ‘Don’t forget us.’

It was time to go through to Departures. Maudie picked up her bag. Saying goodbye was hurting far more than she had imagined it would and she was far more frightened than she had thought she would be. She wanted this bit to be over. She wanted to be far away. She wanted to leapfrog over this year of her life and land experienced and settled in.

Once there, she would cut her hair. Why hadn’t she done it before she left? Why wasn’t she leaving shorn to symbolize the pilgrimage she was making?

She shouldered her bag and stuck her boarding pass into her pocket.

‘Give me another kiss,’ her mother begged.

‘You can come and visit me,’ Maudie muttered, into her ear.

She raised her eyes from her mother’s shoulder. They widened.

No? Yes. Her father
was
weaving his way at speed through the passengers towards them.

Remember what her mother had told her. This was the man who had been frightened and racked. Just as … just as … she was. The point of connection flared like bright
phosphorus in her mind, and burned away the old grievances.

At the sight of him, she realized how much she had wanted him to come.

Dodging the obstacles, he reached the group. Tall, weathered, slightly shabby, these days, dressed in his garden jacket, he
seemed
safe, solid, father-like … and Maudie longed for him to be so. Yes, she did. She did. Eve and Jasmine grinned like Cheshire cats. Lara stepped aside.

‘I didn’t expect you,’ said Maudie.

‘You didn’t think I’d let you go without saying goodbye?’

‘I did.’

Her father frowned. ‘But I’m here.’ He drew Maudie to him and gave her an unpractised hug. ‘Goodbye and good luck.’

Maudie buried her face in his shoulder and inhaled the aftershave, a whiff of bonfire smoke, and a suggestion of an aromatic plant. She felt it was a place where she was protected, a place she had missed for most of her life. ‘Goodbye, Dad.’

A week to go.

According to the timetable, Eve was due for a last fitting at Ivanka’s workshop.

Lara checked the final-countdown list.

She had tried hard to arrange a meeting, but Eve was having none of it. Except for the barest of communications, she refused to talk to Lara. In one email she wrote: ‘You’ve said enough. Don’t make it worse.’ Neither had Lara been invited to the fitting.

For a long time, she lay awake. Questioning. Andrew? Eve? What more could she do to protect Eve?

Had she protected Eve – or merely exposed her to pain? How thin the line ran between morality, practicality and the deceptions necessary for survival.

Sleep when it came was fitful, and she fell into the dream where she was running down the path clutching her torn veil. This time she knew it was imperative to save Louis. But how and where would she find him? Panicked, she attempted to run faster, but her feet were too heavy. The veil whipped across her face and crept into her nose and mouth. Its lace patterns imprinted themselves on her tongue. She knew she was suffocating and she knew she must find Louis – but she also knew she was doomed not to.

She woke exhausted, but resolved on what to do.
Against every precept of her professional life, she cancelled her two morning appointments and took a taxi to the
atelier
.

The neat, grave assistant with the pincushion on her wrist ushered her into the fitting room. Today there were white roses in a vase on the table, and a new sofa upholstered in white and pink. Jasmine’s bridesmaid’s dress, a scaled-down version of Eve’s dress with ribbon lacing through the sleeves was hanging on the rack, alongside the pretty frilly frocks for Andrew’s nieces, the flower-girls.

Pinned to the notice-board beside them was a full-page newspaper article about a wedding featuring one of Ivanka’s dresses.

The dress was beautiful – which was not surprising. But it wasn’t the main focus of interest in the article. In it, the entire wedding party had been assembled in their wedding outfits for a group shot that was headed ‘A Family Wedding’. Arrows zoned in with chatty captions. ‘Bride, groom, bridesmaids’. That was simple enough. The rest was not. ‘Bride’s stepmother’, ‘groom’s step-sister’, ‘step-grandmother’, ‘bride’s mother’s third husband’. It was, Lara perceived, a clever, funny deconstruction of the complicated lines of the modern family.

‘What are you doing here, Lara?’

Eve entered the room, so thin these days she was almost noiseless. She had changed into her bridal underwear – beautiful, lacy, boned and expensive. A wrapper was draped over her shoulders.

Lara made no attempt to kiss Eve. ‘I thought you might need a second opinion.’

Eve opened her eyes wide. ‘Did you?’

‘I did.’ Lara took a seat on the spindly sofa.

‘I haven’t forgiven you, Lara.’

She winced. ‘I know.’

‘I could ask you to leave,’ Eve said calmly, but Lara noticed she was shredding a tissue. ‘OK, stay …’

Lara was forced to strain to hear what she said. ‘But if you utter
one
word about Andrew.’ At that moment, Ivanka and the assistant backed into the room carrying the dress and, without a beat, Eve continued, in a perfectly normal tone, ‘You’ve just missed Jasmine’s fitting and the flower-girls’. It’s a pity.’ The shredded pieces of tissue had formed a ball she placed carefully on the table. ‘Such a pity.’

‘The smaller one is trouble,’ said Ivanka. ‘Big trouble.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Eve. ‘Her mother will be keeping watch.’

She shrugged off the wrapper.

Ivanka in her black T-shirt and tight trousers, her violet eye makeup as pronounced as ever, made an incongruous contrast with the light, white room and spumy foam of the dress she was hanging up on the peg. ‘Now,’ she said, and signalled to the assistant.