Mothers and Daughters (13 page)

She finds another coffee and sits trying to relax, but
her mind is in turmoil. She has rehearsed this moment
over and over again. Now her mind keeps flitting back
into the past, to the bad old days before she did a Neville
on the family
.

‘Only connect,’ said E. M. Forster. How many times
has she used that quote to students?

Yet the seeds of all her troubles were surely all
connected to those tumultuous years after Mama died.
What else do you expect from a rudderless dinghy lost
on a turbulent sea, drifting through the uncharted
waters of first love towards a rocky shore?

Connie lost herself in sixth-form life in the following months and became an ardent Beatles fan. There were lots of new girls like herself who were keen on politics and jazz in school. They all wore black duffel coats and striped school scarves like proper students. No one else except Dr Friedmann seemed bothered about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or interested in her black and white CND badge. No one laughed at the jokes in
Private Eye
.

Joy was full of preparations for her spring wedding to Denny Gregson. This engagement came as no surprise to the family apart from Connie. She was so wrapped up in her own life, Joy’s excitement had passed her by. Rosa was in the chorus of a touring musical in Southampton. It was nearly Christmas and memories of Mama’s death were painful, but she buried her head in work.

Somewhere between school and Division Street she tried to switch off student politics and tune back into Waverley gossip. The best bit of news was she’d been signed on to deliver the Christmas post and was meeting up at the sorting office with old school friends who were back from college to earn some dosh for the holidays.

Tramping the streets delivering cards was a slog in this terrible winter. Connie was too fussy to wear wellies and soaked her best winkle-picker boots, which rubbed her toes and caused excruciating chilblains.

Who should be following the round in the postal van but Paul Jerviss, who, seeing her discomfort, gave her a lift. This time she didn’t refuse. He introduced her to his gang of postmen and they all went for tea in the canteen to thaw out.

He was two years ahead of her and about to start his first medical wards. He was full of life at Leeds University Medical School. Connie was struggling to keep her end up but, being a mere schoolgirl, was not going to tell anyone how hard she was finding her studies, so she played the silent game. He asked her out with his crowd but with all her baby-sitting jobs and presents to buy there wasn’t money left for nights out and she made one lame excuse after another until he got the message that he was not her type. Pity, really, because the more she saw of him alone, the more she sensed he was quite a right-on guy.

Joy and Connie were still being cool to each other but exchanged gifts. Connie bought Joy a fantastic baker-boy cap in red corduroy, but it was obvious that Joy’d expected something for her bottom drawer.

‘Do you like my ring?’ Joy shoved it in her face for the umpteenth time. It was a flashy solitaire diamond. There was no point in telling her about the exploitation of African workers in diamond mines.

‘Very nice,’ Connie muttered. ‘Aren’t you going to wait a bit longer before getting hitched?’

‘Why? We love each other. Denny’s got a big match coming and I want to go down to London as his wife, not his girlfriend.’

‘But you hardly know him. It’s only six months since you met.’

‘So? Remember
West Side Story?
One day it’ll happen to you and you’ll know what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m not sure about that. Look what happened to Tony and Maria.’

‘Trust you to pour cold water over everything. I was going to ask you and Rosa to be my bridesmaids but if you feel like that …’ Joy snapped.

‘Hang about! I was just making a comment, not a criticism. Has Rosa agreed?’

‘Of course. And you?’

‘Of course, I’d be honoured,’ Connie said, sensing Joy was doing it out of duty, not desire. How would it look if Rosa was a bridesmaid and not her?

Later that winter Rosa promised to come back for a dress fitting but none of them was prepared for the snow and blizzards that swept the north and the Pennines. The roads were blocked, schools were closed, pipes froze, the streets were piled high with snow, and everyone was struggling to keep warm. It was the worst winter on record.

Suddenly it was April and still the snow hung around on hills and side paths. Rosa’d not managed to get home to try on the dress. Auntie Su rang to remind her, and even Neville who was an usher, had called to make sure she got home early. Everyone was panicking about the snow piled up on the pavements and the freezing smog. There was nothing for it but to pray she caught the Trans-Pennine.

‘Hurry up, Connie! Your taxi will be here soon,’ shouted Auntie Su from the stairwell of Waverley House on the big day, shivering in her gold brocade dress and jacket two-piece. Her pillbox hat, decorated with golden feathers was perched on a chignon at the nape of her neck.

‘I’m putting my duffel over my dress. I don’t care how I look. We’ll catch our death of cold in this chill,’ Connie replied, looking out over the white rooftops of Division Street. A few stalwarts were gathered in the road waiting for the procession of black Daimlers decked with white ribbons to make their way through the rutted tracks in the snow to the parish church for Joy’s wedding.

Auntie Lee’s outfit was a sensible saxe-blue two-piece with matching hat; something that was serviceable, not gawdy like Auntie Su’s concoction, which would gather moths in the wardrobe until there was another wedding in the family.

The water pipes had blocked up in Sutter’s Fold so Gran Esme had to decamp to the Waverley. Everyone was slipping and sliding on the ice, and poor Joy’s wedding dress was so flimsy that Auntie Lee had run up a white velvet cape edged with swansdown to stop her from freezing to death in the draughty church.

It was a good job Rosa took the hint and managed to get home earlier in the week as the Pennine railway was later closed. Connie had to admit that even Division Street looked beautiful in the snow. Auntie Su emptied the guesthouse to make room for any family to stay, decorating the hall and stairs in bright orange and brown wallpaper especially for this occasion. Connie was just glad to have Rosa as an ally in this lavish extravaganza. They could feed the starving of Africa for a month on what was being spent on this show.

No expense was being spared for ‘the royal wedding’, as Neville called it. ‘Miss
Mercury
to marry Mr Football’ read the headlines in the paper when the engagement was announced. It was all part of the run-up to the Cup Final and the Grasshoppers going all the way to Wembley, which had set the town afire with pride.

You’re too young to be wed, Connie wanted to scream to Joy, but no one would take a blind bit of notice. If she put a damper on the whirlwind romance of the year, it would be seen as sour grapes. It had already been noticed that she hadn’t got a young man in tow as a guest.

Joy now inhabited another planet; the world of
Brides
magazines and
Ideal Home
. Denny had the cash to put down on a new chalet bungalow on the Moorlands Estate. Was this the height of Joy’s ambition? Connie mused.

Auntie Su was busy refitting the bridesmaids’ dresses. Rosa and Connie only managed one dress fitting apiece. Connie made excuses it was too freezing to strip.

Connie’s outfit was a fitted dress with sticky-out skirt the wrong size, with matching satin slippers. The colour was peacock blue but she’d never wear it again.

‘I can’t wear this,’ she groaned, but Auntie Lee took some pins to the waist. ‘This is not your wedding; just smile and look like a bridesmaid,’ she said.

‘Marriage is an outmoded bourgeois habit,’ Connie replied, quoting one of the leaders of their student debating society. Gran, who was helping, had a mouth full of pins and shook her head.

‘We didn’t make sacrifices so you come home spouting rubbish. If you’ve nothing positive to say, just be quiet. It’s Joy’s big day.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll make you proud one day,’ she replied, but getting married in Grimbleton was not high on her list of ambitions.

‘I hope so,’ Gran nodded.

Connie thought that bridesmaids were about as much use in all the nuptial preparations as chocolate fireguards. They were there just to frame up the bride in all her glory.

Gathered in the hallway for a few brief minutes it was like the old days, chattering and bragging, trying not to shiver by the paraffin heater and wondering how to protect bare arms from the cold.

They were putting the finishing touches to their faces. A dab of powder to take the shine off the nose was all Connie normally did, but Rosa was making up as if for a big stage spotlights. ‘Come here,’ she insisted, and painted her face up like a clown.

All the preparations for the wedding had everyone on edge. Gran was trying to keep Auntie Su calm, who was trying to keep Joy eating and resting, who was rushing round like a demented chicken so that everything would be perfect for her big day, while the Gregson family sat back and did bugger all but swank about their guest list.

There was something about Denny Gregson Connie didn’t like. They’d got off to a bad start and perhaps he thought she was a bad influence on his fiancée. Connie worried that Joy was being taken over by an alien. She never came out when Connie made
the effort to include her in plans. She sometimes got the impression that he wanted to isolate her from her former friends.

He was charming when he wanted to be. Since he picked up Joy at the Press Ball they’d been inseparable. But there was a snobbish edge to the whole lot of them that annoyed Connie. Gran said that his mother, Irene Gregson on meeting Auntie Su had made it plain they were doing her a favour in taking Joy off her hands.

She wanted to take over the whole wedding palaver herself until Joy had insisted that Auntie Su must be involved. In the end poor Su was given the sewing jobs and little else. It did not augur well. Auntie Su had come home one evening in tears, feeling so left out. ‘They say I can invite a hundred guests to fill the pews. I haven’t the money to invite a hundred guests. I not know a hundred guests. What shall I do?’ she cried.

Gran Esme was furious. ‘Who does Arnold Gregson think he is? Nothing but a jumped-up coal merchant with a son who happens to have a killer right foot. The Winstanleys and the Cromptons were quality long before he made his mint, and Irene Gregson seems to forget that she came from the backstreets of Burnley to be his bride.

‘Don’t you worry,’ she continued, ‘we’ll all chip in. If the Gregsons want to upstage us they have another think coming. The Winstanleys will pay their share
and fill their pews,’ Gran reassured her. Auntie Lee’s wedding had been a very modest affair, but such fun. This was going to be a bore.

In the end they filled the pews with Dr Friedmann and the Bertorellis, the Unsworths, Winstanley cousins and the Olive Oils.

The Gregsons insisted on putting their stamp on the whole caboodle: catering, hired dress suits, the Civic Hall, the lot, but nobody could control the weather. It was going to have the last laugh.

Half the football team turned up for the rehearsal, well oiled by the look of them and they carried Denny off to some club for a stag do. Joy looked tired and anxious, and the weight was dropping of her face and her bust again.

‘I hope you haven’t been starving yourself,’ said Gran, knowing only a grandma could say such things and get away with it.

‘No, Granny, I just can’t remember to eat. I’ve so much to do.’ Joy smiled.

‘That lad of yours will need feeding up if he’s to win the Cup for us,’ Connie offered. ‘The hopes of the town were resting on his shoulders.’

‘I hope he’ll make you a good husband, never mind the Cup. A wedding is easily arranged but a marriage takes much longer, Joy. You have to work at it – it’s not all satin dresses and confetti,’ said Gran as she hemmed Connie’s frock.

Trust her to preach at Joy, but she did look so frail
and vulnerable, so starry-eyed and not listening to a word Gran was saying that Connie felt a pang of fear for her.

Joy had never seen a marriage at work in her own family except Ivy and Levi, who were not much of an example. There was no man of the house to guide her in the usual ways of men. You certainly couldn’t count Horace Milburn.

At least Denny had sorted him out one night. When Joy complained that he was bothering her, he stormed into the Waverley, up the stairs, and bashed open the salesman’s door, gathered all his stuff and put it on the doorstep. The poor man was shivering in his stripy underpants. One look at Denny’s red face and he went without a whimper. Everyone just stood there watching the drama. You didn’t mess with Denny when his dander was up!

Dr Friedmann was kindly but distant and not your usual northern man. Once Gran had arrived in Division Street and was shocked to find Jacob doing the ironing while Su was out at the pictures. That was not normal behaviour in Grimbleton, but if Connie ever did get round to a serious relationship that would be what she’d expect from her lover.

Denny was too ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’ for her liking.

‘My door is always open, Joy. I want you to be as happy as I was with my Redvers.’ Esme patted her on the shoulder.

‘I know, Gran, but Denny and I were meant for
each other from the very first time we met. He’s so generous and buys me anything I want. I am so lucky,’ she replied.

Yuck, Connie thought. Joy had read too many Mills & Boons for her liking.

‘Rosa! Connie! Is your door frozen up?’ yelled Ivy’s dulcet tones from the landing, breaking this reverie.

They opened the bedroom door, ready to face the world.

Ivy had broken the bank with her coffee and cream lace concoction and a bucket of silk flowers stuck on the back of her head, Jackie Kennedy-style. Division Street was in for quite a fashion show as they made for their taxis without breaking legs on the ice.

Connie now stood by the door wrapped in a borrowed mohair stole, trying not to look bored. She was not enjoying this charade one bit, and was sad that Joy had never forgiven her for forcing Auntie Su to reveal their secret kinship. There’d been awkward moments when they went to register the wedding and Auntie Su coughed up Joy’s birth certificate and right-to-stay-in-Britain forms. The Gregsons were not impressed with a bastard daughter-in-law.

Connie’s red-golden curls shimmered under the lamp, those telltale Winstanley genes coming to the fore. The hairdresser had piled and pinned the curls on top of her head. The style was neatly finished off with a bow, and the peacock satin looked good on both girls. Now she must smile and pretend to be
enjoying Joy’s big day. Left to her own devices she would have turned up in a duffel coat with her long hair hanging down and blue jeans covering her thin legs.