Olivia’s Luck (2000) (4 page)

“Don’t tempt me!” he’d shout, “Oh God, it’s too late – help me Johnny – ‘Oh fl-o-wer of Sco-tland…’ and off he’d go, standing up on his chair, belting it out, head back, roaring at the ceiling, with the rest of the table – son, daughters, family, friends – joining in the bits they knew.”

My mother had raised delicately plucked eyebrows when I’d foolishly let this slip back home.

“Singsongs,” she’d murmured. “How delightfully rustic. Do they light a campfire too, I wonder?”

But she could sneer all she liked, I’d fallen in love with the entire family, the whole, compulsive package. Never in my life had I come across such warmth, such unbridled fun for the sheer hell of it, such a house that rocked, almost literally, with laughter, and in the middle of it all, of course, the golden boy, Johnny.

But the summer didn’t last for ever, and that October, after a final, wild goodbye party at the McFarllens’, Johnny and the boys went off to university. Molly and I still had another year together at school, but Imogen, being bright as well as beautiful, went up to Oxford a year early to read Fine Art. Coincidentally, Johnny also went up to Oxford, to read Classics, and funnily enough, within a week or two of term beginning, he’d asked Imogen out.

Looking back, I wonder why on earth it hadn’t occurred to us before, why it came as such a huge shock. He’d waited for her, you see, waited all summer to make a move, to claim his prize, but being too much of a gent to pluck her right from under Molly’s nose in full view of everyone, had hung on until the right moment. And that moment had to be away from the rest of us, out of the spotlight, far from the madding crowd, where Johnny could swing into full, wooing mode, and let the romantic, thirteenth-century hallowed cloisters of Balliol do their damnedest.

Naturally it came as a severe blow to me, losing, as I suddenly had, my partner in rejection, but it was a colossal blow for Molly. She was distraught, understandably, and spitting blood for a while too. She wouldn’t speak to Imogen or Johnny when they first came back at Christmas, wouldn’t even acknowledge Imogen’s letters. Gradually, though, after a couple of months, it all calmed down. It had to. Molly, Imogen and I had known each other since we were seven. We’d played in each other’s bedrooms, been in the same netball teams, copied each other’s homework, listened to each other’s records, borrowed each other’s clothes, and Molly was neither stupid nor vindictive. It was easy to forgive Imogen because she loved her, and she wrestled with her pride to forgive Johnny too, which was harder, because she loved him more.

Imogen and Johnny went out for three years, all their time together at Oxford, whilst Molly and I kept watch from less traditional, more redbrick, seats of learning. And they were surely the golden couple: Imogen, tall, slim, with her sheet of blonde hair slipping silkily down her back, slanting blue eyes and high forehead – cruising for a First with an icy cool nerve – whilst Johnny held up the more extrovert, exuberant side of the partnership. A raucous rugby blue, a man’s man, partying and drinking till all hours, playing sport until he dropped, scraping a Two-two – “A gentleman’s degree,” he told us with a broad grin, “means I’ve had a good time” – and always with the serene, unflappable Imogen on his arm. Deliriously happy, yes, but when they came out of university together, still very young, Still only twenty-one. And, of course, no one had even given a thought to marriage.

∗

As I sat in my tiny, makeshift scullery kitchen, I blew a stream of smoke at the faded old photo on the fridge. Yes, it was funny really, I reflected. Molly had claimed him, Imogen had loved him, but at the end of the day, it had been me who’d married him.

T
here wasn’t a great deal of joy in the house I grew up in. My father had left home when I was four, but before he’d flown off to Canberra with Mum’s best friend, Yvonne, he’d thoughtfully provided for my education by leaving the wherewithal for me to stay at The Sacred Heart Convent School until I was eighteen. I wasn’t too sure if he was even a Catholic – in fact I wasn’t too sure of any of the details about my father, aside from a blurred old photo I’d found in Mum’s dressing-table drawer of a man in RAF uniform – but the convent was no doubt a last-minute, guilty sop to Mum, who was as devout as they come.

Whether her religious fervour was as strong before Dad’s departure as it was after, I’m not sure, but I do know that once deserted, alone and grief-stricken, she’d transferred any passion she had left in her soul to God, the Royal Family and Jean Muir, and not necessarily in that order.

The bizarre Jean Muir fixation had come about because in her previous, normal working life – before she took up tormenting teenagers – she’d worked as a fitter in the fashion world. During this period she’d spent some time in Miss Muir’s couture house, and such was the impression it had made, that from that day on, she dressed solely in navy-blue shift dresses, with only a single string of pearls and earrings as adornment, her hair styled neatly in a dark, black bob, all very chic, all very à la Jean.

She was also half French, as she never failed to remind me, picking me up from school and greeting me with a cool “
Ça va?
” – to which I was supposed to respond accordingly. Mostly I did – every day in fact – but one day it got on my nerves and I snapped, “Oui, ca va bloody bien, OK?” She never said it again and that memory fills me with remorse.

Mum’s standards were high, and, frankly, I found it hard to live up to the Almighty, the Royals and Jean, and privately staged my own mini rebellion, deliberately skipping my Hail Marys, wearing a ‘Sod the Royal Wedding’ T-shirt under my jumper, and dressing as sloppily, and as unlike her mentor as possible. All very adolescent and futile, but I think because I looked very like Mum – small-boned, dark and petite – I was rather afraid of ending up like her, and made a supreme effort to be different. Genes will out, though – Parisian ones particularly – and however baggy my clothes I still had an unhappy knack of whipping a scarf around my neck and tying it just so, adding a good, chunky leather belt, some unusual earrings, some witty little shoes, so that according to Imogen and Molly I always looked ‘together’.

Looks were everything to Mum, and she hoodwinked the world quite successfully, so that it always came as a surprise to people to realise we were poor. After all, I went to an expensive private school and Mum looked like she’d fallen out of
Vogue
, so it was only when people came to the house – a tiny, Victorian terraced villa with threadbare carpets and cheap furniture – that the dawn came up. On the flip side, though, Mum equally loathed ostentation. I remember one occasion, just after I’d left university, when, as usual I was off to a party at the McFarllens’ and hastily bolting a cheese sandwich at the kitchen table, waiting for Johnny and Imogen to pick me up. She’d stood over me, fingering her pearls more nervously than usual.

“You’re off to those McFarllens again then, are you?” she sniffed.

I didn’t bother to look up. “You know I am, Mum,” I muttered, stuffing in the sandwich, knowing she was rotating the earrings now, radiating disapproval.

“Well, you know my views.”

I chewed on in the silence, and at length she tried again, walking around the table so she was facing me on the other side. She rested her palms on the Formica.

“You haven’t met many nouveau riche people, have you, Olivia?”

I cleared my throat. “Quite a lot of the girls at school had money, if that’s what you mean,” I said smoothly.

“Yes, but they didn’t flash it about, did they?” she retorted quickly. “Imogen’s parents, for instance – they’re wealthy, but you’d never know. They’ve got far too much breeding.” She shuddered. “Unlike these, dreadful people.” I munched on in silence. New money was quite a theme of Mum’s, as if we had any old. She sat down opposite me, flicking an imaginary speck of dust off her immaculate skirt.

“I saw him in the paper the other day,” she said tartly, “splattered all over the back page. Tie askew, hair standing on end, holding a bottle of champagne and grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. Now if
Dick
had won the handicap stakes – ”

“Hang on.” I looked up. “
Who
did you see in the paper the other day?”

“Whom, actually. Oliver McFarllen, of course.”

“Oh, right, and
whom
, exactly, is Dick?”

“Major Dick Hern,” she said patiently. “The Queen’s trainer.”

Ah yes, of course. Just plain Dick to Mum.

“Now when
Dick
wins,” she went On, “he just smiles politely, tips his hat everso decorously, and bows out of the ring to let the owner take all the glory. None of this posing around to get his face in all the papers lark.”

I nodded. “Quite right. Thanks, Mum. Remind me to give Oliver that little tip.” He’ll be
everso
grateful, I thought privately, then hated myself for it.

Johnny hooted his horn from outside. I jumped up. “They’re here,” I said quickly, grabbing my bag and giving her a guilty peck on the cheek. “See you later, Mum,” and I flew off down the passage and out of the front door, leaving her to shut it behind me.

As I ran down the path to his bright red Morgan, Johnny looked past me in amazement to the vision standing in the doorway.

“Blimey,” he said as I squeezed in behind Imogen to the tiny space in the back, “is that your mother? She looks like one of those Dior fashion plates.”

“Oh, she’d love that,” I said, hugging my knees up in the obligatory garden gnome position. “I’ll tell her when I get home. She might change her opinion of you.” As soon as I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t. He turned round, startled.

“Really? Why, what does she think of me then?”

“Oh well, she hasn’t really met you, of course,” I said quickly, “but she’s – well, she’s always had a bit of a thing about…” I hesitated.

“She thinks you’re a flash git,” put in Imogen helpfully.

He roared with laughter. “Does she? Christ!” He blinked. “Well, she’s probably right!”

“Probably?” murmured Imogen, raising her eyebrows as he overrewed the car.

He laughed. “All right, Miss Ice Maiden, I haven’t heard you complaining much.”

She lit a cigarette and gave him a secret smile, and he reached across and squeezed her knee in return, territorial gestures that Molly and I were still getting used to.

“Still,” he mused, glancing admiringly at me in the rear-view mirror, “I can see where you get ‘the look’ from, Liv.”

“Oh, Liwy was born chic,” commented Imogen. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was doused in Saint-Laurent talc as a baby and snapped into Chanel nappies.”

I’d laughed, but I couldn’t help feeling pleased, too. I’d spent my entire youth wishing Mum wouldn’t stand at the school gates in navy-blue couture, complete with gloves, hat, and pigskin handbag, and be like the other mums in a tracksuit, trainers, a Sainsbury’s carrier in one hand and a buggy with a toddler in the other, but for the first time in my life, I felt a rush of pride for her. And of course, I liked Johnny all the more for admiring her.

The venue that particular night was the McFarllens’ barn, and the occasion, the youngest sister, Tara’s, seventeenth birthday. Johnny had rigged the place up in a parody of a seventies disco, with flashing strobe lights and a juke box belting out Abba in the corner, and Tara and her friends were giggling in flares and headbands. Entering into the spirit of the thing, Molly, Imogen and I pranced about around our handbags, whilst the boys played imaginary guitars, shutting their eyes and banging their heads together in mock ecstasy. While we danced, I remember looking out through the open barn doors to the house beyond, which as usual was lit up like a vast beacon in the night sky. Through the dining-room window a dinner party was in full swing, with twelve or so people around a table awash with silver and crystal, and Angie and Oliver at either end. As I watched, I saw Oliver get up, take the decanter around the table, and pause to kiss his wife on the back of her neck before refilling her glass, laughing in the candlelight.

Later, after we’d all piled out of the barn and into the swimming pool, hot and exhausted from dancing, they’d joined us; Angie, ostensibly leading her guests out through the French windows for a drink by the pool, but secretly anxious lest one of Tara’s friends had had too much to drink and sank to the bottom, and Oliver, puffing on a cigar, following soon after. I recognised a few racehorse owners from the yard: complacent, florid, mostly overweight men, pleased with themselves and laughing too loudly, with younger, trophy wives on their arms. They were all pretty tanked up too, and as they watched us swim relay races, one particularly loud, portly individual peeled off his dinner jacket and prepared to join us, making a fool of himself in his Union Jack boxer shorts. As he jumped in, suddenly a shout went up from Johnny, and he and his sisters rushed to ambush him, intent on debagging. Amid the inevitable splashing and shrieking, I crawled out of the other end, laughing and enjoying it all but, as ever, not wanting to get too involved. Oliver was beside me. He handed me a towel, and as I wrapped it around me, shivering – giggling as fat man got his comeuppance – I wondered where on earth my own clothes were. I knew it was pretty late and I had to get a move on. I turned to go.

“Perfect, aren’t they?” he murmured.

I glanced back and followed Oliver’s gaze to where Johnny and his three sisters were still streaking through the pool, their tanned, lithe bodies glistening in the moonlight.

I smiled. “Perfect.”

Then I turned and scurried off, picking up a skirt here, a shoe there, a bra – where was my bra? – oh God,
there
, on the rose bush, then climbing back into them all before dashing back and badgering Molly for a lift home, living in fear of the navy-blue avenging angel arriving to collect her daughter, breathing fire over the hedonists in the pool, a rolling pin in one hand, pigskin bag swinging wildly in the other.

I mention this partly because I remember it well. It was the last one, you see. Because a couple of weeks later, something happened that was to change all our lives. On an equally balmy, hot August evening, Oliver McFarllen left his stifling bedroom, wandered downstairs, and pausing only to get a drink of water, went out of the back door into the night. He walked quite a long way, apparently, right across his paddocks to the edge of his land, where, on reaching a far corner of a distant field, he put a gun to his head and shot himself.