Daughters (16 page)

‘Why not? It’s what they looked like,’ said merciless Maudie, shaking her hair free.

Jasmine rang to give her report. ‘Dad seemed happy and Sarah kept flashing her hand around. Food wasn’t that good. And,’ she sounded amused, ‘guess who was there? Shrinking V., looking a bit raddled. I thought that might interest you. The raddled bit, I mean.’

Did it? She wasn’t sure.

She finished talking to Jasmine, and the phone immediately rang again. It was Eve’s turn. All three girls. Any dark doubts she occasionally entertained about her role in their lives disappeared. She pictured the three of them, sitting at the table as they had done when they were small – baby birds – and smiled with pleasure.

‘The flowers were OK, mostly pale blue, which I didn’t like that much. Sarah wore a nice coat and hat but her lipstick was the wrong colour.’ Eve was seldom malicious and her opinions were occasionally funny, or stringent, but usually straight. Sometimes Lara shuddered for Eve. Not everyone wished to benefit from the straight opinion.

‘I took notes.’ Knowing Eve, she had probably made sketches as well. ‘I’ll email them. The white wine was first class. I’ve alerted Andrew to track it down.’

‘OK. Any gossip?’

‘Sarah gave a speech along the lines of how one had to wait for the best things in life. Dad turned a bit pale at that one.’

‘Was he happy?’

‘I think so. He laughed a lot.’

At her end, Eve was shuffling paper. ‘Mum, it was nice. I hope my wedding is as nice.’

Flashback.

She is waiting for him when Bill wheels the girls into the café in Marazion where she is working the afternoon shift.

Such a nice café, the Dog Fish: fresh paint and fresh fishy smells. Outside on the beach, summer light bounces off the sea – with its turquoises, greys and foamy whites – and the sands.

She is wearing a see-through linen shirt bought on Skopelos, tiny shorts and gladiator sandals with thongs twisted up to her knees. Stomach as flat as a surfboard.

Bill hands her three-month-old Eve while he wrestles with two-year-old Jasmine. Eve is sopping wet. The sensation on her bare thighs is unpleasant and it’s too cold to be wearing tiny shorts. Gooseflesh runs up and down her limbs, like electric shocks, but she does her best. She offers to change the nappy and, afterwards, bends over to kiss Eve, quite forgetting she has slathered her mouth in lip gloss, which leaves a sticky blob on the baby’s cheek. Grains of sands stick to it. She seizes a paper napkin and dabs them away, which makes Eve cry.

Bill has fled to Penzance. Running away, he says, from his grieving in-laws and trying to get a handle on caring for two tiny girls. Both objectives are over-ambitious (his words). Yet she understands the intentions behind them. He isn’t a man to take to child-care, plus he’s shocked, exhausted, incapable of rational thought, and angry about everything, both large and small. Some of his anger focuses on the gladiator sandals.

‘It’s Penzance not Delphi,’ he snaps

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she replies, as an extraordinary sensation flowers in her chest. Love? Sexual frenzy? ‘I understand.’

‘What?’

‘I know you’re angry because you’re sad …’ Bill holds on to Jasmine and raises his eyes to the Cornish heavens. ‘I know the sandals represent what you’ve lost. Freedom and youth …’ Throwing herself into the drama of loss, she continues in this vein, laying bare Bill’s psychic landscape with all the authority of a girl who has known him for just a couple of afternoons.

She thinks he hears her out from pure astonishment.

On her lap Eve wriggles. She adjusts the baby’s hat as if her future life depends on it.

Which it does.

Those were the memories that flowed through her mind: a warm, happy, unthreatening stream. Like the one of Bill driving her away from their wedding, and the shape of his hands on the wheel. Those hands with their surprisingly slender fingers had seemed beautiful and reliable. How she had loved them.

It was the other memories that wielded a whiplash – memories that were hard and savage.

She shook them out of her head.

Take stock.

She searched in the fridge. No milk. Lara snatched up her purse – leather, battered, darkened by countless handlings, bulky because she had been to the bank – and hastened to the corner shop. There, she queued to pay.

Robin was right. Bill had not left her. Nor she him.

On the way out she stopped to examine the bunches of flowers jammed into tin holders on a stand. Of late she had become more conscious of flowers. Their colours and structure had become points of interest. They repaid her study. How come the stamen was so shaped? What dictated the shape of the rose petal, the showy hollyhock and the lavender’s spike?

This lot were the day’s remnants and had a worn-out, hopeless look about them. Anemones, roses (clearly forced), ranunculus in pretty shades of pink, all drooping
tiredly. They needed care and nurture. Lara hefted her purse from hand to hand. Yes? No? On impulse, she bought the lot.

It was a long time since she had done something so extravagant.

Back home, she arranged them in vases and hummed a snatch from a song.

In their flat pumps, her feet felt lighter, her skin smoother, and her hair brushed pleasurably on the exposed skin at her neck. Her body was picking itself up, was instructing her to think of life, think of sex, think of the things that quickened the flesh and made one laugh.

A couple of days later, the postman delivered a package. It contained one bag of white and silver dragées, two types of confetti (delphinium and rose), three sample menus, and four lengths of ribbon that spanned the white spectrum. (All it needed was five gold rings and they’d have a Christmas carol.)

Lara seized the phone. ‘Evie. A package of stuff has been delivered. Think it should have gone to you. I’ll hang on to it until I see you.’

‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you,’ said Eve. ‘Sorry. Sweet Mum, do you mind? My flat is way too small to store stuff and the cottage is completely dismembered.’

Lara didn’t have to assess how small her own house was. ‘Just where do you imagine I’m going to put everything?’

‘Pretty please,’ said the practical Eve. ‘I’ll keep it in my
old room, and I’ll get everything out as soon as possible. Promise.’

She couldn’t resist: ‘Your father now has plenty of room.’

‘I know. I know. I just felt … what did I feel?’ For once, Eve was less than straightforward. ‘Well, Sarah isn’t you, is she? And you’re you.’

Pretty please, Mum
.

‘OK,’ she said.

Checking out the rest of the post, she discovered a postcard. The same one of the Krak des Chevaliers castle she had seen on Robin’s desk. ‘Please come,’ he wrote. ‘It’s a very good place to forget. Or, at least, to remember about other things that matter.’

The day was punishingly busy and she forgot about the postcard, arrived home late in the evening to discover Eve and Maudie at opposite ends of the kitchen table.

Hair anchored on top of her head with a biro, Maudie tapped into her laptop. Eve had samples of wedding stationery arranged in a fan in front of her. She lifted her eyes briefly from the task in hand. ‘Hi. Cream or high white laid?’

‘A glass of wine, actually.’

To Lara’s astonishment, Maudie leaped to her feet and fetched her one.

Eve was wearing her black coupe cigarette trousers and a sweater with tiny satin bows at the elbows. The effect was chic, Left Bank and carefully composed. Lara sipped her wine. ‘You have such a good eye, Eve.’

‘Goes with the job,’ said Eve. ‘Might look effortless but
I’m paddling hard under the water.’ For a second or two, she looked bleak. Then she smiled. ‘Don’t look like
that
, Mum.’

Lara considered putting the cottage pie waiting in the fridge into the oven. But the energy wasn’t there. Instead, she watched Eve and Maudie.

Eve was dark. Maudie was fair. Eve didn’t care much for literature, preferring walking, dancing, ashtanga yoga and extreme therapies involving oils that cost a fortune. She was such a busy person. Even sitting down, she gave the impression of supercharged energy. Maudie liked running, puzzles (the more intricate the better), word games, encryption, etymology, psychological thrillers and garage music.

Eve squinted thoughtfully at the high white laid. ‘Think that’s the one.’ She pushed it over to Lara. ‘Agree?’

Elegant and suitable. ‘Yes. How’s the website going, Eve?’

Eve slotted the paper into the Notebook. ‘Going nowhere but they still pay me.’

‘Job hunting?’

‘I should be, but the wedding’s sucking up every second.’ She eyed the wine bottle. ‘Shall I have a glass? It’s fattening.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Maudie. ‘
Have
one.’

‘Can’t think of anything but the wedding. The to-do lists.’ Eve gave in and helped herself to some wine.

Click-click, went Maudie’s fingers. ‘Brides are supposed to be radiant, soft, tremulous.’

Eve swivelled around. ‘And what’s that meant to mean?’

‘It’s all so businesslike. I thought you’d be madly loved up with Andrew but it’s all about which one of the many
million varieties of confetti you should choose and if you’re going to send save-the-date cards.’

Eve said stiffly, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ There was a tiny pause. ‘Andrew and I are fine.’

‘Did I say you weren’t?’

‘Stop it, the pair of you,’ said Lara. Goaded, she heaved herself to her feet and stuck the pie into the oven.

But Maudie was on a winning streak. ‘Aren’t you tempted to whisk into the nearest register office and get it over and done with?’

Eve threw her look:
Are you mad?
Her small, manicured hands shuffled the remaining stationery samples into a pile, which she slipped inside a plastic folder.

‘The happy bride,’ said Maudie.

‘Such a myth, happy brides.’ Eve gave a discernible gasp, then clasped the manicured hands to her cheeks. ‘God, I don’t know what’s got into me.’

Over breakfast, Lara gave Maudie a talking-to. ‘It’s important that you sisters keep on good terms. You never know when you might need each other.’

Maudie wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t see that happening. But, hey …’

‘It might come as a shock but it’s a difficult time for Eve. Being a bride is not easy. I’m not sure she gets on with Andrew’s parents. There’s all that business with the cottage, and I know they’re disappointed that Andrew isn’t getting married from their house. It all makes for tensions.’

Maudie sent her one of her looks. ‘I’m not sure she’s gets on with her bridegroom.’

‘Maudie, that’s plain malicious.’

‘And if it’s true?’

Curiosity triumphed over prudence. ‘OK, what makes you think that?’

‘Have you ever heard either of them say, “Go away, everyone, we want to be with each other”?’

‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’

‘Is it?’

Maudie’s mouth clamped. This was surprising for she could chase a subject to death. Pointing to Robin’s postcard, which had been propped up by the jams on the sideboard, she said, ‘You should go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re worth it?’ Maudie could be good at a sarcasm. ‘Why do you think you should go?’

What would it be like … a Mediterranean spring? A shudder of the cedars in the breeze, an explosion of jasmine, the butterfly released for a few days of life to glide on scented air.

‘It’s a thought.’

‘Which means you’re not going to think about it.’ Maudie retreated to a document on her phone.

‘Anything interesting?’

‘An essay. “
Pride and Prejudice
as a Revenge Novel”. Alicia’s. She got a prize for it.’

‘Ah.’

Lara focused on Maudie’s bent head. The moment at which she’d realized she irritated her children had been one of the more profound epiphanies and jolts – among many – of motherhood. Perfectly normal, of course.
Grandmothers, mothers, daughters connected to each other in a long, peevish line down the generations – each woman in turn thinking,
If I am clever and sensitive, I can avoid this happening to me.

She propped her chin in her hand. ‘Do you remember when you ran away to your father?’

‘Yes,’ said Maudie. ‘What a mistake that
was.’

Flashback.

‘Bill, have you got Maudie?’

‘I have.’

‘For God’s sake, I didn’t know where she was. Send her home.’

‘Actually, Lara, she says she wants to live with me and I think it’s a good idea.’

‘It’s the worst idea ever.’

‘She says you hate her. She also says she hates you.’

‘He didn’t want me, did he? Couldn’t cope with his own daughter.’

She went a little cold. ‘It obviously still rankles.’

‘Why wouldn’t it?’

Lara’s phone rang but she made no move to answer it. With an exclamation Maudie picked it up. ‘Lara’s phone … Who? Oh,
Robin
, of course …’ With an infuriating expression, she pushed it across to Lara.

‘Hi.’

‘For your information, there’s a flight to Damascus after Easter and I’m on it. I thought you might like to come too, see the city, take a trip to Krak des Chevaliers and – top, top option – I’ll take you to the market for a bag.’ Pause. ‘It’s a no-brainer, Lara.’

Maudie was eavesdropping unashamedly.

This was the first time in years that she had been propositioned. At least, she assumed it was a proposition. But it was hard to tell.

‘Robin, I can’t leave Maudie at the moment.’

‘Yes, you can,’ said Maudie, in a voice penetrating enough for Robin to hear. ‘I can stay with Aunt Lucy.’

‘You could if you wanted. Work can be sorted and the wedding isn’t till September.’

She tried to organize her thoughts. ‘Sorting the wedding feels like a campaign.’

‘It’s always amuses me how people think they know what a campaign is. They should come along on one some time.’

It was uttered lightly enough but it was a small rebuff.