A Bad Bride's Tale (11 page)

1. “Oh, is that noise normal?” asked Katy, reaching for Seb’s hand and gripping it tightly, her head cocked onto his shoulder in a dis- play of girlish nerves.
   

   “You’re not scared of flying, are you?” Seb asked curtly. “You never used to be.”
   

   “No, I didn’t, did I?” Was she that transparent? Yes, part of her wanted to arouse feelings of protectiveness in Seb. She may not have been scared of flying, but she was scared of other things and the fears were all getting muddled up, projecting onto each other. “All that airport security freaks me out.”
   

   Seb massaged his angular shoulders into the seat. “You’re never happy.”
   

   A year ago, Katy would have called Seb out on this nasty com- ment. But her tongue was hiding. Her spirit was hiding. The words never came. Instead, she smiled and dug her manicured fin- gers into her large brown Mulberry bag for Seb’s favorite confec- tionary choice (bought surreptiously from Boots in Terminal Four). Seb took the red-wine gum without thanks, almost resentfully, as if he felt manipulated in some way by the offering of the sweet. Katy always wanted something in return.
   

   Resisting committing to further eye contact, Seb stared at the map on the back of the seat in front of him—highlighting oddly ir- relevant places, Banbury, Halifax, Godthåb—and the trajectory of the plane, arching away from England, little England, like a pea
   

   from a shooter, out into the big wide world of his boyhood—the world of Willard Price and Phileas Fogg and strong-jawed men of derring-do and cosmopolitan, twenty-first-century global citizens like himself. Traveling between London and New York had given him a totally different understanding of time and distance: He could easily lose six hours at home with a bad TV program, supper, and a row, yet this was the amount of time it took to jump from one life to another, to hop across the Atlantic into a different self. It was ex- traordinary. Seb settled back on his seat, enjoying his own lack of fear at the jolting turbulence, his familiarity with the flying experience, pleased that row K was under the hostess duties of a pretty brunette with a bottom fat enough to bite. At 37,000 feet now. Climbing, climbing. Now 44,000. Ah, it should be a fine flight, if only Katy would stop gabbing on and buffing her nails.
   

   katy watched seb sleep,
   his dry airplane breath lifting his wispy brown bangs slightly. It annoyed her that he was asleep, rather than excitedly discussing their vacation, hinting at the pleasures in store. But men were different, weren’t they? There was absolutely no way she could sleep, not when her guts told her she was close, so
   very
   close, to the inevitable proposal. Would it happen over dinner? By the pool?
   

   Katy chewed a squeaky unsalted almond, fast and hard, in the corner of her left cheek, avoiding the fillings on her right. Remind- ing herself that she had to appear in a bikini within hours, she resis- ted the waxy muffin and the cheese triangle, perfect and plastic in its wrapper. Instead, she picked on a bag of nuts that she’d tucked into her handbag as a gastronomic displacement activity from the real business of lunch and concentrated on drinking as much water
   

   as the beauty editors advised, which meant disturbing the snoring man to her left by venturing to the loo every fifteen minutes.
   

   So, how would she answer him?
   

   1. “Yes.”
      

   2. “Can I think about it?”
      

   3. “You going to make me?”
      

   4. “Oh, God, yes, Sebastian. Yes!”
      

   5. “I thought you’d never fucking ask.”
      

On reflection, Katy thought, A would be the chicest reply—less is more. E would be what she was actually thinking.

What would she be wearing?

1. Chloé mocha-brown bikini with shell ties
   

2. Matthew Williamson rainbow dress
   

3. Terry hotel dressing gown
   

4. Nothing
   

Katy crunched into another almond. She would like it to be B, but feared she might have to resort to D.

What would their child look like?

1. Blond, blue-eyed, fine-featured like her mother
   

2. Elle Macpherson’s adorable brown-eyed boys
   

3. Like Sebastian, but with a large nose (a very large nose)
   

C reared up. At vulnerable moments, the scepter of genetic in- heritance haunted Katy because what she knew, and Seb didn’t, was that their child would be extremely likely to inherit her nose,

her
real
nose; her large and triangular as the airplane cheese nose, the genetic signature of the Norris family, passed from grand- mother to mother to daughter like a monkey’s paw curse. It was a nose that Seb had never seen, by virtue of the fact that she’d had it done six months before they’d met. Seb thought she’d escaped the Norris nose. In fact, her barely-bigger-than-a-nipple “nosette,” as he fondly called it, was the most-kissed body extremity in those first heady few weeks. She’d never quite felt brave enough to tell him it was not her nose, not exactly. That little white lie—no worse than knocking a few years off?—had not mattered at all then. But now that they were looking at a future together, at mar- riage and babies, it did. Part of her felt that Seb had a moral right to know. After all, she didn’t want him thinking it was another man’s child.

Katy tossed three almonds into her mouth as a fresh wave of anx- iety and hunger broke. Hell, what was she thinking? She must
stop
this daydreaming now. They were
not
married. Not yet. It could wait. She furrowed around in the seat pocket, picked up a glossy in-flight magazine, and started reading an interview about Lindsay Lohan which she knew she’d forget within seconds of finishing the last sentence. The pilot put the
fasten seatbelts
signs on and the plane began to bronco-buck. Then it dropped. Her hands, slip- pery with sweat, gripped the armrests like claws. Gosh, how pre- carious it all was. Some deranged terrorist two rows behind could be putting a match to his shoe and she’d know nothing about it. This could be the last two minutes, or thirty seconds, of her life. And she wouldn’t know.

Katy had had these calamity crash thoughts on previous flights, but they hadn’t bothered her. She would always reconcile herself with platitudes such as, “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to

happen . . .” or “When your number’s up . . .” But now that she was thirty-five, the pathos of her death hit harder. How tragic to die without ever having had children, or marrying or making a proper home for your own family. Yoga and good sex and Prada just wasn’t enough in the end. Increasingly, Katy felt that everything that her twenties and most of her thirties represented was empty. Even her beauty. Ultimately, it would crack. It was no legacy.

The muffled sounds of Seb talking—at first the dribbly ram- blings of a drunkard—rumbled her out of her morbidity. Her heart lightened a little: She missed Seb when he was asleep.

“Seb? You awake?”

Seb’s head fell onto her shoulder, but his eyes remained shut and words, largely indecipherable, seemed to escape from his mouth rather than be projected.

“Sweetie, I think you might be talking in your sleep.”

Seb’s hand smacked limply against his cheek, as if dozily trying to swat a fly. “I’ll have it on the rocks.”

Katy laughed and gazed at Seb adoringly. He was just like a lit- tle boy when he was like this. Just like a little boy.

“Sucked not stirred.” Katy frowned. What? “Charmaine, baby.”

The seatbelt around Seb’s waist lifted an inch in response to the stiffening beneath the zipper of his trousers. Katy jolted, composed herself, and smiled, as if playing to the audience of the seat back. Her tongue agitated in her mouth. No, no, it was nothing. It couldn’t be. They’d gotten this far. The future was plotted out and no airborne hard-on would nudge it from its course.

FOURTEEN
Æ

stevie noticed just in time. meg had swapped the
place names on table number eight. The cheek of it! Meg was so
not
going to sit next to Sam. He was reserved for Lara. She swapped the name tags back to their original positions—on such things do des- tinies rest—and scanned the room for her friend.

Ah, there she was. Leaning against a ribbon-wrapped post, Lara, looking a bit like Scarlett Johansson—all curves and lips—was drinking champagne and eating iced mini-cupcakes and giggling, no, flirting, with Toe, of all people. Meanwhile, Mr. Eligible, Sam Flowers, was doing his duty chatting to a boring old aunt while check-out-my-shins Meg hovered nearby waiting for a break in the conversation in which to penetrate the group. Lara! Christ, you can lead a horse to water . . .

“Please take your seats, folks!” shouted her father. “Food is served.” The buffet was impressive. Patti had organized a Moroccan- themed feast, provided by Café Maroc near the railway station: tagines of couscous, lamb skewers, hummus, salads, and spiced stewed beans. Guests lined up drunkenly at a long low table—

Patti’s craft table covered with white cloth and scattered with daisies from the garden—and piled their plates high, laughing and joking. Table number eight was the first to sit down. Sam pulled out Lara’s chair for her. Lara looked pleasantly surprised at the gen- tlemanly gesture, noted Stevie, from her vantage point behind Auntie Annabel’s large gray-feathered Philip Treacy hat. Yes, yes, she’s definitely giving Sam more attention than the other romantic option Stevie had seated strategically on Lara’s right, cousin Joseph (a bit tubby, in IT, but nonetheless single and sane). Sam and Lara—their names alliterate well, she thought—were now a fork- width apart. Lara twiddled a blond curl. Sam laughed. She won- dered what was so funny.

Then Auntie Annabel reared up, hooting at a drunken joke. Her hat shook and moved to obscure the view, leaving Stevie no option but to pan in to her own table, the top table, a clash of genes and personalities and agendas sitting in a forced circle, and all rather wishing they were sitting with their friends. To her right was her father, bristling at her mother and drinking too much. To her left was Jez, his knee banging against hers when he laughed, frequently and too loudly.

jez leaned his bulk
back in his chair. Now that he’d sobered up a little, he felt his wits to be quickened by alcohol but not over- powered by it: He tossed sharp controversial opinions into the con- versation in between illustrative anecdotes about himself and jokes that popped with perfect pitch and timing. With a growing sense of triumph, Jez witnessed Stevie’s family’s mouths slacken in admi- ration at his playful verbosity. They sat in momentarily amused si- lence. He was in fine form.

Jez loved Stevie’s family. It was the kind of family, give or take the odd member, like Neil (who made him feel old), that Jez felt he rightfully should have been born into, instead of the rather unre- markable tonally gray family life he’d experienced in Amersham. He once told Stevie that it surprised him that she wasn’t more bo- hemian. But maybe that was why they got on so well. He was bo- hemian by nature, Stevie by nurture. They met in the middle somewhere. He turned to face his new wife. Deciding to combat Stevie’s wrath with good old-fashioned romance, he picked up her hand like an eighteenth-century courtier and lifted it delicately to his lips. He kissed it gently, playing to the gazes of the other guests. “I hope you are having the best day of your life.”

Stevie tried to smile beatifically. “Hmmm.” Being honest, the day wasn’t panning out entirely as she’d hoped. “Is Rita okay?”

Jez had momentarily forgotten about his mother’s accident. It had been such a mad, exhilarating day. Thank God he now had a wife to counterbalance and buffer him and make his mother com- fortable. “Ma, how’s the ankle holding up?”

Rita forced a tight smile. The painkillers had yet to kick in, and her foot was freezing, sitting as it was in a plastic bucket filled with ice and Waitrose frozen organic
petite pois
. “I fear it is not.”

Stevie looked concerned. “Oh, Rita. I’m so sorry. You must blame Toe.” She smiled. “Unfortunately named, considering, I know. Toe and Neil erected the tepees.”

Rita grimaced. “No one’s fault,” she lied. She blamed Patti. “Just one of those things.”

“You poor thing. Can I get you something more from the buf- fet?”

“I think I’ll resist, dear.”

Suddenly, a commotion of silk, a clatter of metal, and a ruffle of

air, like a parachutist landing. “Folks!” cried Patti, sweeping her peacock-blue embroidered shawl around her extravagantly as she stood up. “Your attention,
pur-lease
.”

Stevie should have known her mother would have the last word. Dad’s speech was ponderous and overintellectual. He’d said some- thing about how weddings could still be a symbol of light and hap- piness, even in dreadful times of famine and war and terrorism, and quoted Ezra Pound. He hadn’t struck quite the right note. But she eyed her mother just as warily. Alcohol and high spirits and the pressure of entertaining and proving herself to the more conserva- tive relatives was a fiery party cocktail where her mother was con- cerned. (She was a liability at Christmas, too.)

“Folks,”
repeated Patti over the drunken hubbub, pushing wings of black hair from her face and tossing them back. Since her last— fifth—glass of champagne, she had begun to feel extremely nubile. Two of Jez’s relatives had made passes at her. “As the woman of the house . . .” A round of whoops. “Thank you, thank you. As the woman of the house . . .”

“The master!” someone shouted from the back. Chris shrugged in mock defeat.

Patti put her hand on his shoulder. “Indeed. I’d like to welcome you to my home. And I want to welcome into the family dear Jez and his delightful mother, Rita.” She raised a glass to Rita, who re- turned a constipated smile. “Rita, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you.” At this exact second, with five units of alcohol singing in her veins and an adoring audience, she meant it. “And Jez . . . well, Jez. What to say?”

Jez covered his face with his hands. His friends whooped some more.

“Thank you for making an honest woman out of my daughter!