Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues (35 page)
‘I was fond of little Charlie, too,’ I said, thinking how our shared secrets were slowly winding ties of friendship and consolation around us.
His embrace tightened slightly crushingly before he released me. ‘Well, “there’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,”’ he said heavily. ‘I’d better get back.’
But before he went I poured us both a large glass of Meddyg and we drank a toast to old tragedies, new tragedies and unfaithful lovers.
When he’d gone, I went back to listening to Aunt Nan, hoping she had by now digressed into some soothing description of local traditions, or her favourite subjects of food and cooking. But no, she was still on about my mother, Immy, and it was all a bit painfully relevant.
‘
Immy came here when she discovered she was pregnant – which was a bit too late to terminate it, or I’m sure she wouldn’t have hesitated, because she’s never been the least bit maternal. Then off she went leaving me literally holding the baby. I came downstairs in the morning and she’d left me a note and gone.
’
That was a detail I hadn’t known before, but I wasn’t surprised in the least.
‘
But it turned out well, because Tansy’s been the greatest gift anyone could have given me,
’ Aunt Nan added, and tears filled my eyes again.
Ivo playing his melancholy music didn’t help, either, though when I went to bed I fell asleep feeling comforted by the idea that he was just the other side of the wall. In fact, I put my hand flat against it and imagined that he was doing the same … then told myself I was an idiot, and cast myself adrift into a sea of strange and confusing dreams.
I think Ivo’s wife sounded very like my grandmother Violet (or Viola, as she always called herself) and Immy: not very maternal and probably afraid of ruining her figure.
As soon as Bella arrived to open the shop next morning I told her about Justin’s phone call and the DNA test, and his threat to tell Lars, but of course I didn’t share what Ivo had confided in me – and she, I was convinced, was holding something back too, though I was so full of my own woes that it took me a while to notice.
I suspected it was about Neil, but there was no time to try to persuade her to open up since it was yet another hectically busy Saturday and we didn’t even close the shop for lunch any more, just took it in turns to grab a bite and a cup of coffee.
When we’d finally closed and cashed up, I cornered Bella and asked her what was the matter.
‘You’ve been like a wet weekend all day.’
‘Neil asked me to move in with him,’ she confessed.
‘He
did
? I didn’t think you’d got to that sort of stage yet.’
‘Well …’ she blushed slightly, ‘I have seen a lot of him lately, though only as a friend, and I keep telling him I’m not looking for a serious relationship. But last time I saw him, when he dropped me back home he said he could see how difficult living with my parents must be and he’d love it if me and Tia moved into his cottage.’
‘As … lover or lodger?’
‘On any terms I liked, but I think he was hoping if it was as a lodger that the relationship would turn into the other anyway. I think he’s a stealthy sort of person, really, quietly devious. I turned him down flat.’
‘I can see where you’re coming from,’ I said, not really surprised: I mean, look what happened last time she fell in love and moved into her boyfriend’s house. ‘But you do like him a lot, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes. But once bitten, twice shy,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep saving towards a deposit on a little place of our own, where no one can kick us out.’
‘You could both move in here with me anytime.’
‘I know, and it’s very kind of you, but if I did, I’d scupper your budding romance with Ivo Hawksley!’ she teased. ‘I’m sure you’re not telling me the half of it, because he seems to be coming and going in the cottage as he likes.’
‘Don’t be daft, there’s no romance! I don’t think he’s over his wife yet, though it’s complicated …’ I sighed. ‘And I’d like to move on and try to forget Justin ever existed, except that he won’t let me.’
I’d texted Justin early that morning, asking him again not to tell Lars about the whole sorry business, but just let it go, though the only reply was a message on my answering machine telling me to leave everything to him.
I’ve encouraged Tansy to see her mother over the years, of course, and she’s even spent holidays with her, when it’s taken Imogen’s fancy to have her to stay for a while, but they’re chalk and cheese, and Tansy’s always been more than happy to come home to Sticklepond and her old aunt Nan again
Middlemoss Living Archive
Recordings: Nancy Bright.
Ivo had volunteered to help me move the chicken house and run to a different spot on Sunday afternoon after our high tea, and we’d just finished when damned if a hired car didn’t pull up at the back of the house and disgorge Mummy Dearest, as unannounced and unwelcome as Lady Catherine de Bourgh in
Pride and Prejudice
!
‘Justin’s mother – what on earth is
she
doing here?’ I whispered to Ivo, as Mrs Garvey paused and looked at the back gate and slightly muddy path uncertainly, then caught sight of us and came on through. Flash, who had been lying on the grass ignoring the hens, slowly rose to his feet and looked as if he didn’t know whether to attack or flee. Ivo caught hold of his collar.
‘This is a surprise, Mrs Garvey,’ I said, then introduced Ivo, though she spared him hardly a glance.
‘I have come all this way in order to talk to you, Tansy! It shouldn’t have been necessary, but I hope I know my duty as a mother.’
‘I only wish you did,’ I said, squaring up to her, ‘because he’s all grown up now, and it’s long past the time you cut the leading reins and let him toddle off on his own.’
‘I’ll shut Flash in my garden with me for a while,’ Ivo said tactfully, and dragged him off while I reluctantly invited my almost-mother-in-law into the cottage.
‘I can’t imagine why the driver brought me to the back of the house rather than the front,’ she said, looking around the kitchen as if she was not quite certain what it was for.
‘You can’t drive to the front, it’s accessible only by a passage from the High Street,’ I explained.
‘How quaint – but very inconvenient, I would have thought.’
‘Do sit down and I’ll make some tea,’ I suggested, wondering if several teaspoons of sugar in it might sweeten her up slightly.
‘Please don’t bother: I want nothing and what I have to say won’t take long.’
She did unbutton her camel cashmere coat and sit down, though, fixing me with her beady stare. ‘I know
all
!’ she said, with great significance.
‘Really?’ I replied cautiously. ‘Justin has told you … everything?’
‘If you mean about the child, then I’ve known about it for years,’ she said, and then it came out that Rae had actually visited her with little Charlie soon after he was born, spinning some tale about Justin promising to marry her but then falling for me instead!
‘She swore me to secrecy, but of course we both hoped Justin would eventually come to his senses, see where his heart truly lay and do the Right Thing!’
I wondered if Mummy Dearest was secretly addicted to Mills and Boon novels, despite her unyielding aspect, though perhaps this plot was more suited to a Victorian melodrama. It struck me dumb, anyway.
She continued ‘I did tell him I had met Rae accidentally once or twice and that she was much more the kind of girl I’d hoped he would marry, but he was too besotted with you to see it. And now poor Rae tells me he refuses even to support the child because you have persuaded him Charlie isn’t his after all, which is manifestly absurd: he’s the image of Justin at that age.’
‘I haven’t persuaded him of anything,’ I protested. ‘Rae’s sister, Marcia, put the idea into his head, which made him decide to have a DNA test done – and Charlie really isn’t his.’
‘Such utter rubbish! They must have got the result wrong. I don’t trust these things.’
‘I don’t see what Rae had to gain from telling you about Charlie,’ I said, puzzled, ‘because she met him for the first time only after I got engaged to him and I’m sure she never wanted a long relationship with him, let alone marriage! She was just piqued and scoring points off me.’ I paused, thinking it through, and then asked incredulously, ‘
You
haven’t been giving her money too, have you?’
She looked defensive. ‘I have made her a small loan from time to time. What Justin was giving her was barely adequate for the child’s needs, and he is a Garvey, after all.’
‘That’s complete rubbish,’ I said, but when I told her exactly how many thousands of pounds Justin had actually paid out, she didn’t believe that either – or that I had no intention of ever getting back together with him.
‘You must have given him some encouragement, because he’s planning to transfer to a hospital up here and set up home with you. I understand that you are carrying on your aunt’s business and refuse to live in London any more.’
‘In his dreams!’ I said forcefully. ‘I keep telling him we are over and I certainly don’t want him to move up here. It would be entirely pointless.’
‘I don’t believe you, or he wouldn’t be so set on it. Promise me you will phone him today and tell him you will
never
marry him.’
‘I’ve told him repeatedly.’
‘And that there is therefore no reason for him to move North.’
‘If you can tell me a way of getting that message into his thick skull, I’d like to hear it,’ I said drily.
‘You must promise me that you will call him as I have directed, then never speak, write or contact him in any way again.’
‘I’d love to, but your son seems so chronically unable to take no for an answer that he’s quite likely to turn up here uninvited anyway. He’s the one constantly contacting me, not the other way round.’
But Mrs Garvey was not listening to a word I said. ‘So you
won’t
promise?’ she demanded angrily.
‘I’ll happily promise not to contact him, but if he catches me on the phone, or turns up uninvited, I
can’t
promise to maintain a Trappist silence – that’s unreasonable.’
She got up. ‘I see I have wasted my time!’
It seemed she’d also been wasting her money on Rae too, but I tactfully didn’t say so. I only hoped Justin didn’t find out or I expect he’d be threatening to take Rae to court to get his mother’s cash back, too.
Mrs Garvey was looking pale, tired and cross. She was no spring chicken and had had a long fruitless journey, so I said more gently, ‘Look, let me at least make you a cup of tea. Did you stop for lunch on the way up?’
‘I was not hungry, nor do I want anything now,’ she declared grandly, but then had to admit that she would like to use the bathroom before she left, which rather spoiled the effect.
When she finally came down (just as I had begun to think she intended roosting up there for ever) she’d entirely resurfaced her face and painted her thin lips scarlet. She still looked like an elderly Bacchae disguised as a matron, but a sharper-edged version.
I’d made her a cup of tea anyway and put out a plate of fruit fairy cakes, but she refused my gesture and tittupped off down the crazy paving path again in her smart camel-coloured city coat and stiletto-heeled court shoes, which, like Mummy Dearest, were not built for the country.
She totally ignored Ivo, who was standing by the gate in the fence holding on to Flash, shied violently away from Cedric, who was leading his ladies on a foraging expedition up the garden, and practically flung herself into the awaiting car.
‘“Exit, pursued by a bear,”’ Ivo said.
I’m sure Justin had no idea his mother was going to come up here and he
certainly
didn’t know she’d been giving Rae money, so I hoped he didn’t find out about either. Her visit did stiffen my resolve to continue ignoring his many texts and emails and to let the answering machine pick up any phone calls first. Perhaps even my occasional terse, discouraging replies have given him hope.
When I told Ivo what Rae had been doing, he said she was quite a piece of work, but I’m not sure he realised that Marcia was not that much better!
As far as I knew he’d let no visitors into the cottage except for Raffy, and Marcia must have been getting quite frustrated, for one morning she sneakily came up the back lane and caught him in his garden. I was up in my workroom, looking out from time to time, so I spotted her – and he should have been writing anyway, so it served him right, really …
From the body language I thought he didn’t really want to invite her in, but had no alternative, but she still hadn’t emerged when I went down to make Bella some lunch.
Later he told me she’d pressingly invited him over to her flat in Middlemoss. ‘She means well, but she doesn’t understand that I’m here to get away from the acting world for a while and I don’t want to hear all the gossip. And, of course, being Kate’s best friend, seeing her brings everything back again …’
‘Yes, but she’s never been one to take a hint,’ I said.
‘No, she certainly isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘She wanted to take me out to lunch because she thought I needed feeding up, so I told her she didn’t need to because you were a brilliant cook and already doing your best. That really seemed to annoy her.’
‘I expect it would.’
‘But she said she was sorry about you and Justin breaking up because you were really the perfect couple,’ he said, looking at me keenly.
‘A perfect couple of opposites,’ I said. ‘I only hope she doesn’t try any more meddling, because she’s done enough harm.’
‘I think she means well. Her heart’s in the right place,’ he said.
He truly hadn’t got the measure of my sweet stepsister yet.
When I related all this to Bella later she said she was sure Marcia was still hoping I’d take Justin back, because she suspected Ivo was getting interested in me and she wanted him herself. ‘And she’s probably still keeping Justin’s fires and hopes stoked high and that’s why he’s so impossible to get rid of,’ she added.