The Real Liddy James (29 page)

“Time for the druidic priest to arrive,” said Liddy, glancing at her watch.

Will looked at Storm. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not the one Roberta
met on the retreat in Clonakilty—the one that married the woman to the dolphin?”

Storm rolled her eyes and nodded.

“Is it legal?” asked Will, looking at Liddy.

“It is,” said Liddy. “Roberta and Harvey, that is. Not the woman and the dolphin. The druidic priest is a solemnizer as well as a white witch.”

“Oh well, there goes another chunk of the inheritance,” said Will.

“What happens if you wanted to divorce the dolphin?” asked Storm, turning to the expert among them.

“Human-animal marriage is not recognized by law in any country,” said Liddy. (Curtis had once raised it in a partners meeting under the heading of new business.)

“Yeah. Imagine trying to divide the marital assets!” said Will. “By the way, I hear Chloe
fleeced
Sebastian!”

“Don't say that in front of Liddy. She was Chloe's lawyer, but she was only doing her job,” replied Storm.

Will looked confused for a moment, but given that today was already full of confusing things, he decided to let it go.

“And honestly, what did the apartment mean to Sebastian apart from bad memories?” Storm added.

“An awful lot of money, I expect,” said Will. Storm elbowed him.

Liddy consulted the day planner.

“One of you has to pick up your mother and Harvey from the hotel. And we still need a broomstick for them to jump over,” she said.

“Oh, Storm, get the one you use every full moon!”

“Ha bloody ha!”

The two siblings dissolved into childlike giggles.

“Greetings in the bounty of Mother Earth!”

A gray-bearded man in white robes was approaching.

“Jesus Christ, it's Gandalf,” muttered Will, reaching for his cigarettes.

“Remember the elven greeting!” said Liddy. She nodded at Cal, who walked forward with his right hand outstretched, his fingertips to the sky.

“Blessings, friends,” said the man. “I am Brian the Druid.”

“I am Liddy . . . the lawyer,” she replied. “Here are Roberta's children, Storm and Will, and my son Cal. We were just talking about broomsticks.”

“Any twigged besom will do,” said Druid Brian. “I have brought my own handfasting. Storm and Will, does your mother intend to be monogamous?”

“Until she meets husband number seven, I guess,” said Will.

Will and Storm burst out laughing again. Liddy shot them a cold-eyed look. She was beginning to find the sibling hilarity rather challenging, particularly as there were still ten trays of sausages to be cooked before four o'clock that afternoon.

“For a monogamous coupling we use a tight handfast,” continued Druid Brian. “A polyamorous or open couple will opt for a loose handfast.”

He stared hard at Liddy. “I am polyamorous.”

In all her research, Liddy had not discovered the correct way to respond to that. She tried nodding understandingly. Druid
Brian was still staring. “Do not be afraid of your shadows, Liddy the lawyer.Your aura tells me you are at one with this place, a true Being of Light, a friend and follower of Nature.”

Liddy was gratified. She always liked being the best in any group.

“Now I must bless the sundial with oil and water.”

He lifted his robes to reveal socks and sandals and walked off. Will and Storm were now laughing so hard they were barking like foxes.

“Honestly, you two,” said Liddy, exasperated. “How are we going to get everything done if you don't take it seriously?”

“Yes,” said a male voice behind them. “I mean, our sixty-four-year-old mother's getting married for the sixth time in the charred ruins of our ancestral home and she's asked a druidic priest called Brian to officiate a ceremony that includes the fertility ritual of jumping over a twigged besom. The problem is definitely that we're not taking it
seriously.
”

“Sebastian!”
screeched Storm, leaping into his arms and hugging him.

“Hello, Sebastian,” said Liddy, stung. When she had imagined the completely unexpected but completely thrilling moment of seeing Sebastian again, this was not how it was meant to go. Disoriented, she flipped into her default settings. “Come on, I've got a schedule.”

“Sounds like a military operation,” said Sebastian.

“Well, my ex-husband did once compare me to a Sherman tank!” said Liddy brightly, then immediately wished she hadn't.

“When I saw you just then I couldn't decide if I recognized you or not,” he said. “Now I definitely do.”

“Oh,” said Will cheerfully. “The two of you
are
friends. Not
friends
friends . . .”

“Don't be such an idiot, Will,” said Storm. “How could Liddy be Seb's
friend
friend? She's a top lawyer like him. She's not his type at all!”

“Good news for me,” said Will lasciviously. “Right, I'm off to collect the happy couple!”

Cal came over and took Liddy's hand.

“And who is this?” said Sebastian.

“This is my younger son, Cal,” said Liddy.

Sebastian leaned down and offered his right hand formally to shake Cal's.

“Yes, he looks like you,” he said.

“He looks like my father, actually.”

“He must be a good-looking man.”

“My mother says he was ‘the handsomest buck ever came to Belmullet.'” Her accent was spot-on. Liddy glanced at Storm, who laughed.

“By the way, Liddy,” said Sebastian. “I don't think your phone's working. The line's dead.”

“I threw it in the lake.”

“That seems rather . . . uncharacteristic.”

“I know,” Liddy said, resisting the urge to say,
See, I can be a spontaneous person.

“Are we staying in your house?” asked Cal.

Sebastian nodded politely.

“You need a swimming pool,” Cal said.

Liddy noticed Sebastian was wearing jeans and a white linen shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. The sight of the top of his chest and the line of his collarbone and the strands of dark hair below it distracted her.

“How do you feel about giving a speech, Seb?” said Storm.

“Don't push it. I'm here, aren't I?”

“Sausage rolls?” said Liddy, thinking,
I'm not spontaneous about the cooking times of raw meat, of course.
Storm, sensing a change in her brother's mood, dutifully scuttled off.

Liddy looked at Sebastian. He looked away. She turned back to the wedding arch, where Cal had run and was preoccupied, tying ribbons around the dog's collar.

“Why does my mother have to keep making such a fucking mess of her life?”

He spoke very quietly. Liddy could only just hear him above the sounds of the water and the wind and the birdsong that were silence in this place. She walked toward him and he reached out his hand. And as she took it and felt the warmth of his palm, she experienced the disorienting state of erotic excitement she had felt the first time she had ever met him. She shook her head a little. Who could have guessed the banal yet bizarre truth about aging, that fifteen years later she would still feel exactly the same way?

“I can't lecture anyone on that. Can you?” she said.

Sebastian stared at her. “I told you I was a pessimist.”

“How was your trip?” she asked.

He answered with a noncommittal grunt, then curled his fingers into hers. “How are you?” he said.

Because she felt nervous, she had to suppress the urge to jump around manically with her hands clamped to her sides as if in a straitjacket.

“I've got over my funny turn, thank you,” she said, instead.

“You gave me a bit of a scare. It wasn't the pain-in-the-ass Liddy James I'm used to.”

“Some people find me very accommodating. We've just always rubbed each other the wrong way,” she said.

“Don't be daft.”

“Sebastian . . . you're the one who called me a
nasty woman.
”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “It's okay. I know what you meant.”

“That's good,” he replied. “Because I bloody well don't.” He looked around. “Do you remember being here when you were a kid?”

“I do, actually,” she replied, although she was finding it difficult to concentrate.

Now he tilted his head and smiled his roguish smile. “Maybe we walked past each other years ago? Maybe we snogged each other at the youth hostel disco?”

“I wasn't a very snogging type of young woman,” said Liddy. “You should have seen me.”

“I bet you were beautiful.”

“No,” said Liddy. “I was five foot eleven at age thirteen, with braces and a concave chest.”

“I got my tongue stuck in a girl's braces once.”

“Ouch!”

“Yes. Sorcha Lennon. Unforgettable, for the wrong reasons.”

He turned and walked a few paces, still holding her hand. On the lake, two gray herons rose in the air and called to each other, the distinctive croak echoing.

“I knew you would like it here,” he said.

“Is that why you invited me?”

He didn't reply. She looked down at her feet. She flicked her hair behind her ears.

“I thought maybe you had a bit of a . . .
thing
 . . . for me?” she said.

He looked at her. “Maybe I do?”

I'm flirting
, thought Liddy delightedly. She seemed to be getting it right this time. She was more mature, of course, and her life had taught her how to have sex for fun. Then it occurred to her that she was quoting his ex-wife and stopped.

“This is surreal,” he said. “I feel like I'm here but not here. Like the walking dead.”

Liddy knew exactly what he meant. When she had arrived in her state of shock and exhaustion, and walked along the narrow paths beside the water and beneath the sky, she had felt it too.

“I need to clear my head. I'll stroll round the lake or something,” he said.

Reluctantly, she pulled her hand away. They stood very still for a moment. The herons croaked again.

“Don't be too long,” said Liddy.

“Why?”

“The ceremony's at four p.m.” Liddy looked down to consult her planner, and when she looked up he was standing in front of her.

He lifted her chin with his left hand and kissed her.

“Why did you do that?” she said.

“I thought you needed kissing,” he replied.

It was only after he had walked away without another word that Liddy realized she had kissed him back.

With the elven greeting and the surprise guest, not to mention the unexpected kissing, it took all of Liddy's Liddy-ishness to get herself showered, changed, and standing beneath a willow tree—her handsome boys on either side of her—in time to watch Roberta Stackallan and Harvey Browne pledge their troth under the wedding arch. Druid Brian blessed their union in the three realms of sky, sea, and land, and told them to run down the lawn between the box hedging and jump the broomstick, which Matty had balanced on the heads of two ornamental stone frogs.

Roberta, clear-eyed and sinewy in a white pantsuit (a testament to Gyrotonics and an irrepressible love of life) gamboled off, but Harvey's hip replacement failed him at the critical moment and they ended up in a tumbled heap next to the pet graveyard. As a concerned throng gathered around them, Roberta leapt to her feet, a champagne bottle suddenly in her hand. She ripped the gold foil off the top and ceremoniously unscrewed the wire, sending the cork flying through the air, straight at Liddy, who ducked and fell into the delighted arms of Druid Brian.

“Only chorus girls cringe, dear!” exclaimed Roberta in Liddy's direction. Then she turned to Harvey and kissed him on the
mouth for an embarrassingly long time to the extravagantly thespian whoops and bravos of the guests, a varied group of all ages and sizes with the four stepbrothers and their families, druids, and actors, including one dressed like a geriatric Ophelia, who was running around the lake throwing flowers in the air. When Roberta came up for breath, she shouted, “Where's Sebastian!”

Liddy extricated herself from Brian's beard (to his obvious disappointment), and watched as Sebastian moved into the engulfing embrace of his mother. He towered over her, her arms reaching around his waist, then spun her round as if she were a child.

“You've lost weight, but it suits you,” Roberta said firmly in her magnificent voice, a combination of English actorly pronunciation with the soft inflection of her native brogue beneath it. “How d'you think I'm looking?”

She glanced around, pouting a little.

“You look marvelous, Mother, and you know it,” said Sebastian. “‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale, her infinite variety.'”

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.