Olivia’s Luck (2000) (28 page)

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Imo, in no rush, still happily chatting away, and I wanted to say, “Look, Ursula. Knowing Imo as we all do, don’t you think that nothing is going to make her run a mile more than this sort of pressure?” But I didn’t. She was happy and excited, and dreaming of a society wedding in New College Chapel, orange blossom tumbling from the pews. So instead I dutifully followed Molly and Hugh to the loo, to the coats, to the door, to the cars, and thence, to the Abbey.

Any qualms I had about venerable old cathedrals being used as venues rather than places of worship were quashed as I joined the glittering throng that waited outside to enter the Abbey. It looked fabulous, lit up and glowing in the clear night sky, and the chattering, excited crowd that jostled politely to get through the huge oak doors couldn’t have been more appreciative, ooh-ing and ah-ing as they strained their necks to get a glimpse of the vast, vaulted ceiling. I suppose if The Man Himself were to burst through the double doors and demand to know what the devil we were doing, tanked up, bejewelled – armed, even, in Hugh’s case – and awaiting entertainment, we might have had our work cut out convincing Him, but tonight I was happy enough to join the ranks of the great and the good – who were no doubt pious to a man, and who were out in force. I spotted the High Sheriff, the local MP, a brace of High Court judges with their wives, but also quite a few students, eager to hear the London Symphony Orchestra doing their stuff.

“Blimey, I had no idea,” muttered Molly, reading a poster as we went in.

“Me neither,” I admitted. “No wonder it’s so packed.”

As I went up the steps, dutifully escorting Rollo, I couldn’t help noticing the young couple ahead of us. They were no more than seventeen probably, in duffel coats and college scarves, close, but shy, as they studied a programme together. He bent his head to hear what she was saying, as she, blushing into her straight fair hair, enthused falteringly about the pieces we were about to hear. He nodded, smiling, turned shining eyes on her, encouraging her. I felt a stab of pain. They were only just embarking, but already they’d found each other. And how lucky they were. For finding is everything.

In the area just within the doors, people milled about talking loudly, waving programmes above their heads to friends they’d spotted in the crowd, and despite frantic attempts of officials to try to guide them to their seats, there was a general unwillingness to move on. This was too much of a social event to hurry, too much of an occasion. With elbows tucked in, and taking tiny pigeon steps, our party gradually made its way through the chattering throng, with Ursula, beckoning us on madly from the front like a wild-eyed scout leader, keen to get front-row seats. As I nudged through – “Excuse me, so sorry, oops, can I just squeeze through,” – I stopped suddenly. The back of a woman’s head, a few feet away to my right, looked terribly familiar somehow, but I just couldn’t place her. I peeled off from Rollo for a minute, took a quick peek around the side – and gasped. Stopped dead in my tracks. It was my mother. Except that I hardly recognised her. Her face was lightly made up and shining as she smiled and chatted. She was wearing a peach linen coat dress with peach lipstick to match, and her hair, which had been lightened and subtly streaked, was swept off her face in waves, tucked behind her ears, before curling softly at the edges. At her throat was a turquoise necklace which matched the bracelet on her wrist, and, I noticed, the sparkling gems in her ears. There was no dark helmet of hair, no pale, dramatic make-up, no navy-blue shift dress, and not a pearl in sight.

“Mum!” My mouth, literally, hung open.

She turned. Saw me. “Oh, hello, darling. I wondered if you’d be here.” She kissed my cheek. I stared. For a moment I simply couldn’t utter. Then I untwisted my tongue.

“M-Mum – what are you doing here!”

“Hmm?” She looked surprised. “Oh well, I was invited, of course!”

“Really?” I looked around. The women’s group? Or the church perhaps. “But, Mum, this isn’t our church, so – ”

“Oh no,” she laughed, “no, not the church, darling. Howard asked me.”

“Howard?”

It was then that I realised there was someone standing right beside her, right by her arm. I just hadn’t connected them. He was mid-fiftyish, tall, with a hint of a paunch, silver-grey hair and a moustache to match, and he was smiling proprietorially down at my mother.

“Howard, this is my daughter, Olivia.”

“Oh!” I gazed, shook his extended hand, but couldn’t speak.

“At last,” he grinned. “I’ve heard so much about you but, I must say, I was keen to meet the real thing. You get a great press from your mum. Talk about proud mother and all that!”

“Oh!” I said it again, gormlessly too, aware that my mouth was still open.

“Howard’s a doctor,” offered Mum, helpfully. “We met when I took my usual stack of old magazines into the hospital.”

He grinned. “The nurses kept telling me about this glamorous lady who was keeping them, not only in English
Vogues
, but in French and Italian ones too. I’m ashamed to say they plotted our meeting in an orthopaedic waiting room and I was an entirely willing participant!”

I gazed. Don’t say ‘Oh’ again, you moron, just don’t. “S-so you’re a doctor then?” I stammered.

“Well actually, I’m a urologist.”

I racked my brains. “Ears?”

He laughed. “Not even close. If I said that renal canals were a speciality, would that help?”

“Oh! Yes, it would!”

We laughed.
Mum
laughed. Mum, who couldn’t even mention a front bottom without pinched lips, was laughing at renal canals? I gaped at her. And the
peach
number! I just couldn’t help it.

“Mum – the clothes!” I blurted out. “I mean – I’ve never seen you in anything remotely like that, ever!”

She laughed. “I know, isn’t it strange? But Howard said he couldn’t be doing with all that navy blue. He bullied me out of it, said it reminded him of one of the sisters on his ward.”

“A particularly repressed one,” put in Howard, with a sly grin. “Rumour has it she keeps a cane in the dispensary cupboard, to whip the other nurses into shape.”

I giggled. I loved him. Oh God, I loved him already.

“So what d’you think?” Mum glanced at me shyly and for a moment I thought she was asking about Howard. She smoothed down her coat.

“Gorgeous!” I enthused. “I love it, Mum. You look fab! I just can’t wait to tell Claudia. She won’t believe it!”

She laughed, blushed a little too. “Go on, darling, catch up with your party. I saw Imogen go past ages ago.”

I turned, realising that the rest had gone on, but that Rollo was still hovering, not exactly beside me, but quite close, studying a programme. I hesitated. No, I couldn’t introduce him, not after Howard. It would be such an anticlimax.

“See you later, Mum.” I kissed her warmly and beamed at Howard. “Goodbye,
so
good to meet you.”

“You too,” he smiled, and I’d swear he winked too.

“Sorry, Rollo,” I muttered, as I fell in beside him, “got – caught up.”

“That’s OK,” he smiled, tucking the programme away.

We walked on in silence. Maybe I should have explained. Explained that that was my mother, only I hadn’t recognised her because she’d changed beyond all recognition and I’d been too astonished to introduce him. I realised, with a pang, that I hadn’t seen her for ages. Oh, I’d spoken to her, sure, but hadn’t seen her for – what, golly, weeks now, probably. I’d been so preoccupied lately, I hadn’t even stopped to think how she was. But then, she was always…the same. I turned back and caught a glimpse of them finding their seats, Howard ushering her along a row, his hand gently guiding her peach linen elbow, handing her a programme as she straightened her skirt beneath her to sit down, both chattering away the while, smiling. I turned back, shook my head in wonder. My God. For years now my mother had been pained, irritable and bitter. Could it be that one man was changing all that? Could it be that one, single, beating heart had caused her to transform herself, to come alive again? What power! Just as one had snuffed her out, all those years ago, another, years later, was lighting the blue touchpaper again. I didn’t know if that depressed or elated me, because whilst it was wonderful to see her like this, all those wasted years hurt. So many years! And wherein lay the moral for me? Was it that I’d better move fast? Turn those years into months, at the very least? Seize the disastrous dental arrangement beside me, or maybe the blond Adonis back in the caravan, or even the slick salesman lurking in the BMW showroom – pick one of them up and run with it? Make the best of it? God Almighty! I shuddered. And what about a career, a child, both of which my mother had had – shouldn’t all
that
have been enough? Shouldn’t that have filled the need? Or was it simply that, in the words of The Beatles, love is all you need?

I wandered on, lost in thought, and almost walked past her, I was so distracted, until I realised she was actually plucking my sleeve.

“Olivia!”

It was Angie.

“Oh – hi!” I peeled off from Rollo once again.

She was looking stunning in a pale, silver-grey suit, and as I went to greet her I realised two of her daughters, plus husbands, were with her as well. I glanced around fearfully. Surely not Johnny too? I couldn’t help it being the first thing I said as I kissed them all.

“Johnny isn’t here, is he?” I murmured anxiously to Angie.

“I’m afraid he is, my dear.”

“But not with us,” put in Serena quickly. She squeezed my arm. “We couldn’t stomach him being in our party, told him to sod off on his own. I’m sure you won’t see him. They’re way down at the front.”

“They?” My mouth dried.

She nodded, tight-lipped. Hugged me hard. “Bastard,” she muttered in my ear.

Lovely Serena, quite the prettiest of all, with her husband, Angus, who laid a sympathetic hand on my arm. Gosh, it was almost as if he’d died, wasn’t it? And for a moment, I wished he had. It would be so much easier to bear, somehow, so much more clear cut, and I could have had some dignity as a widow. Instead of which, half the county was crammed into this church – many of whom I’d grown up with, many of whom were bound to know us – and he’d seen fit to bring her along, to what – to torture me? To humiliate me? I lived two seconds away, for Christ’s sake; there was an odds on chance I’d be here, surely? In an instant Imogen was beside me. I held her arm, felt genuinely giddy.

“He’s here,” I whispered.

“I know, I’ve just seen him. Came to find you.”

“Imo, I’m not sure I can do this. I’m going to slip out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she hissed. “He might have already seen you and you can’t just disappear, it looks wet. Stick that head up high and walk with me. I’ve seen her, and she looks like a dog’s dinner and you, my darling, have never looked better. Come on.”

I took a deep breath and walked down the aisle with her. When we got to about four rows from the front, she bundled me in, sandwiching me between her and Rollo, who’d already taken his seat.

“Where is he?” I gasped, as I sat down.

“Other side of aisle, about two rows ahead of us to the left. I’ll tell you when to look.” She paused. “Now.”

I shot my eyes across and saw Johnny, in a dark suit, blue shirt, spotty tie, tanned and very handsome, of course, his blond head bent with hers over a programme. She, Nina, had her hair pushed back in a velvet hairband, very average blue shirt, grey skirt too short for her legs, twenty denier tights. All of this I took in in a nanosecond, then looked away. Their heads. Touching like that. I had to breathe very deeply. Felt sick, physically sick.

“OK?” Imo squeezed my hand.

I shook my head. “No.”

“You’re fine. You’re doing fine.”

I watched in a daze as the orchestra, high up on a specially constructed platform in the nave, tuned up. Tears threatened. I raised my eyes to the heavens and concentrated hard on the intricate painted panels of the choir ceiling. I’d read in a guidebook somewhere that years ago, they’d been restoring this particular area of ceiling, and whilst they were up there on ladders and scaffolding, carefully cleaning away, they’d discovered this, an older, much more beautiful ceiling with a medieval painting on it, underneath. I tried to imagine the excitement that must have caused, the shouts of joy from way up there as the restorers unearthed the vision I gazed at today, and gradually I felt the bile go down. I swallowed hard, slowly lowered my head. Happily, Rollo was engrossed in his programme.

“But this is very exciting,” he was muttering as he read avidly. “It says here that this is the first time this piece of Faulkner’s has ever been performed.”

I nodded politely, couldn’t speak. He leant across to Imo.

“Imogen, is that right? That this is the first time this symphony’s been performed in this country?”

I spread my programme across my lap to catch the drips. Imo leant in eagerly for a meeting of minds.

“Yes, apparently he wrote it some time ago but recently changed it, and has only now allowed it to be performed.”

“But that’s amazing, because he hasn’t written anything of any note since that marvellous overture, has he?”

Despite my turmoil I was dimly fascinated to observe that Imo wiped her wet face without even appearing to notice. They were on a higher intellectual plain, of course, where things like personal hygiene were too trivial to worry about.

“No, nothing at all,” she said excitedly, “and of course that was premiered at the Festival Hall with Simon Rattle conducting, remember? We all went in our final year. Gosh, this is such a treat!”

A treat? Really? They sat back, on tenterhooks, and I reached resignedly in my handbag for a tissue. I wiped my programme with deliberate ostentation, but he didn’t appear to notice. Oh yes, I thought bitterly, tucking the hanky away, such a treat. Particularly for me, of course, to be closeted here with my husband and his floozie, for all the world to see – maybe even my mother, I thought with a sudden pang – and with my consolation prize of Spitty Dicky beside me. I caught Molly’s eye further down the row and she grimaced sympathetically in Johnny’s direction. I nodded and raised my eyebrows indicating that yes, I too had clocked them.