Daughters (11 page)

Eve broke the pact. Straight away. ‘It’s not that I’m
angry
. No, I’m not.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘But I can’t help feeling Mum’s putting Maudie first.’ This was uttered in a brisk, matter-of-fact manner.

Jasmine wasn’t fooled. ‘I know.’

‘Do you?’

‘You know I do.’

‘Actually, I was looking forward to a summer wedding.’
Eve glanced down at her handbag resting in her lap. ‘Warm. Lots of flowers. I’m happier in the summer.’

‘You can be perfectly happy in September. It’s a known phenomenon. History is littered with happy September people. There’s fruit, colour. It often has the best weather. And …’ she whipped out the marshalling argument ‘… Dad and Sarah will have had longer to settle into the house.’

Round and round went Eve’s phone between her fingers.

‘Stop it, Evie.’

Eve smiled at her – a tight, determined smile.

They shared flesh and blood. All they had. (Odd how she never considered her father to be flesh and blood.) The spat over the wedding date had only emphasized their closeness.

Yes, yes, their upbringing had been the best possible, under the circumstances, but Jasmine reckoned she was the only one who really
understood Eve.

‘Do you ever feel that we don’t belong anywhere?’

Eve’s eyes widened and Jasmine knew her question had hit its target. Even so, Eve took her time. ‘Yes.’

‘Outsiders, that’s us.’

‘Yes.’ Eve shifted.

‘Do you talk to Andrew about it?’

‘Do
you
talk to Duncan?’

‘Not about that sort of thing,’ said Jasmine. ‘It’s a bit ridiculous. It’s not as though we were abandoned or anything.’

‘It isn’t ridiculous,’ said Eve. ‘It’s something you have to
get used to.’ They looked at each other. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that we manage to live with it.’

It was not a subject they had discussed often and it wasn’t easy. How could something seem so momentous yet so trivial? Jasmine always ended up asking herself.

The bus ground around a corner and she wriggled a finger into Eve’s closed fist. ‘Sorry about … you know.’

Just then Duncan rang. ‘Jas? Just to say I got home OK and I feel like hell.’

She considered. ‘Do I need to know this?’

‘Reporting in.’

The previous night Duncan had been out on the town. He had rung late from a nightclub. Sloshed.

‘Just checking,’ he had said.

‘What are you checking?’

‘That you’re not in a nightclub too. It’s a naughty place, but I have to be here, I really, really do. For work.’

‘Duncan. Will you do something for me? Go and put your head in a basin of cold water.’

In the background, she had heard a soft, sexy voice say, ‘Duncan, come over here.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Duncan.

She had switched off her phone. It hadn’t meant
anything.

She trusted him.

At the exhibition, Eve darted between rooms that had been mocked up to show domestic interiors through the ages. ‘Look at this, Jas.’ She pointed to a fireplace surrounded by seventeenth-century Delph tiles. ‘Exquisite.’ She turned and gestured to a pair of elaborately carved
chairs. ‘Wouldn’t give those house room … but I
love
that material.’

It was hideous and Jasmine’s feet were hurting. Never wear high-heeled boots to exhibitions. But it was hard not to be affected by the charm of the museum – normally she didn’t much care for them. She preferred to think about the future. Here, though, the layout was simple and straightforward, and so was the exhibition. ‘“The home,” she read out from the pamphlet, ‘“has been a central preoccupation through the ages.”’

‘Do you remember the houses you made … out of boxes and crates. How we banned Maudie from coming in?’

‘Of course.’ Eve had been obsessed with houses and dens, tracing windows, doors and chimneys with black marker pen on cardboard boxes.

‘The Palace Box, with the drawbridge.’

‘Oh, the Palace Box.’ Jasmine linked her arm through her sister’s. The houses had been ramshackle indeed. Sometimes she wrote in emphatic capitals, ‘Eve’s House’ above the doors – which ranged from tiny portals to serious entrances. Older and more competent, she honed her building skills, hacking away at the boxes with scissors (carefully blunted by Lara) to construct doorways and rooms. She devoted hours to painting roofs and doorknobs and – often – a window-box with bright red flowers.

Arm in arm, they progressed from the Jacobeans to the Georgians.

A blue and white pot of hyacinths had been set on a walnut table that formed part of the Georgian
mise en scène
.
Blunt green spikes nosed through the bulb fibre and the outlines of the flower bells could be seen unfurling inside their green cradle. The notes supplied by the museum pasted on the wall above them read: ‘An increasingly popular plant in the eighteenth century, hyacinths were probably brought to England in the 1560s and, like the tulip, their bulbs commanded considerable prices. A contemporary herbalist wrote: “The Perfumers use is very much, but it is no use in Physick. It often raises the Vapours in Women.”’

I bet it did, Jasmine thought, and moved away. She had never lost her dislike of the hyacinth and its heavy, cloying scent.

Fixed to the wall were the curator’s notes: ‘During this period, the family still tended to be larger than those of today. As with earlier periods, anyone who lived under a family’s roof thought of themselves as part of the household. If well to do, a “family” might include stepchildren, orphans, spinsters and widows as well as servants …’

‘Over here, Jas,’ said Eve, and beckoned. She was standing by a walnut-cased clock, dated 1783, into whose handsome Roman face was incorporated a date dial. ‘There’s one just like it at Andrew’s parents’. One day, Andrew will inherit it. It has to be treated with extreme care.’

‘Lovely.’

Shockingly, Eve seemed to crumple. ‘What have I got myself into, Jas?’

‘Wedding nerves?’

‘Yes and no.’

Jasmine looked into her sister’s troubled face and tried to work out what was going on. ‘This isn’t about the stupid tiff over the wedding date, is it?’

Eve gripped Jasmine’s hand painfully hard. ‘No. No.’

‘Is it Andrew’s parents?’

Eve shrugged. ‘God,
no
.’ She managed a funny little smile. ‘I hate ’em, though.’

‘Andrew, then? You need more time? You haven’t known him that long.’

‘A year. People have got married after twenty-four hours and made it work. Anyway, he’s the one.’

She knew she should say,
If you have a moment’s hesitation, call it off.
Instead she offered, ‘Nerves and doubts are part of the package.’ Pause. ‘I imagine.’

Why wasn’t she being straight with her sister? Was it because, in watching Eve get married, she would be indulging in vicarious and deeply unhealthy shtick? Or, even more labyrinthine, that deep down she did not want Eve to get married because it would point up Duncan’s lack of desire to marry her? So she couldn’t advise her sister to call it off because it would be for the wrong reasons?

This was exhausting.

‘It’s going to be such a change,’ said Eve. ‘I can’t imagine it.’

‘But you are sure about Andrew?’

‘Yes … yes.’

‘That’s the main thing.’

Eve rattled on, ‘Perhaps we should ditch the big wedding and have a small one in the summer. Then it would
be over.’ She bit her lip. ‘September’s that much longer to wait.’

Jasmine tried to shape the words
Don’t marry unless you’re sure
.

‘Jas, you’re the only one I can trust.’

Finally Jasmine’s tongue obeyed her. ‘You don’t have to get married, Evie. Call it off.’

Jealousy was the fingernail screeching down the blackboard.

The sisters exchanged one of their honest, plumbing-to-the-depths looks. ‘Not getting any younger, Jas.’ Eve did not have to elaborate further.

Eve’s ‘Not getting any younger’ also meant that Jasmine was nearly thirty. Fact: incontrovertible, unavoidable.

‘You can’t marry him for that reason. Anyway, it doesn’t matter these days, Evie. Nobody gets married till they’re forty.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

Think slowing biological clock, the ineluctable drying up of tender young tissue, inner decay.

Eve added, ‘I told you, Andrew’s the one. Really, truly.’ Her voice rang with feeling.

‘Even so, Evie, don’t do anything that’s not right.’

‘What would you do, Jas?’

If she was marrying Duncan? ‘Evie, you can’t marry Andrew because you’re frightened of not finding someone else.’

‘It’s odd. One day I think being married to Andrew will mean feeling secure. The next day, I feel anything but.’

‘This is ridiculous. Marry him if you want to, but don’t
if you have the least doubt. There are plenty of other options. Plenty of other men. Plenty of other things to do.’
Liar
.

As quickly as it had come, the storm was quelled. ‘Sorry, Jas. Just thinking out loud. I’m fine now.’

Jasmine pointed to the clock. ‘Do you see where the date hand has stopped?’

‘No.’

‘September the fourth.’ She was trying to reassure her sister. ‘September again. The best month.’

‘Jas,’ said Eve. ‘Stop humouring me.’

On the way out through the Victorian section, Jasmine read the curator’s notes. ‘Here the notion of the tight family unit was beginning to make itself obvious. Privacy was at a premium and family loyalty narrowed …’

For dinner that evening, she and Duncan joined up with Eve and Andrew at the Thai Palace. They ordered bamboo fish, paper prawns, grilled duck curry, Phuket satay, and got stuck into the Tiger beer.

Duncan was still a touch off colour from his carousings and was happy to sit back, saying nothing much. He draped an arm around Jasmine’s shoulders, and did his trick of twisting a lock of her hair around his fingers. Andrew told tales from the boardroom, and did a masterly job of explaining the feints and counter-feints from the latest take-over battle.

Andrew had a habit – as did Duncan – of dropping jargon into the conversation. The two men bandied it around with obvious relish.
Big babies
, Jasmine thought,
with a rush of affection, and realized that Andrew’s brand of charm – a lazy amusement with most things – had grown on her. All the same, she couldn’t say that she
knew
him.

There was not trace in Eve of her wobble at the museum. She ate and drank, made a couple of good jokes and, more than once, leaned over to kiss Andrew.

Feng shui
raised its head.

‘It’s used to orient buildings in an auspicious manner to improve life with positive
qi
 …’

As a prime advocate, it was the sort of information Eve had at her fingertips. She was about to continue, but Andrew interjected, ‘Positive
qi
, my arse
.
’ He helped himself to the duck curry. ‘Positive
qi
dictates we can’t have the kitchen in the obvious place.’ One chopstick poised like a sword. ‘The place where it would be most convenient. Otherwise the dark gods might have it in for us.’ He shot a look at his fiancée. ‘Apparently.’

Duncan had been playing Let Me Grope You under the table with Jasmine. She caught his hand, and he squeezed hers to indicate amusement. ‘I take it you can’t negotiate with positive
qi
?’ he said.

Eve said, ‘Anyone would think that Andrew and I had not spent hours talking about this and agreeing on it
.
’

Andrew put down the chopsticks. ‘
You
agreed.’

‘I repeat,’ a little smile played around Eve’s lips, ‘a
joint
decision.’

Duncan’s hand slipped between Jasmine’s thighs. She pulled at his fingers.
Stop it
. ‘Evie showed me the plans. They look good.’

‘Providing we can get past the
feng shui
.’ Andrew cocked an eyebrow at Eve.

Eve said patiently, ‘As I’ve explained to my husband-to-be, it’s a way of looking at life and making it more harmonious.’

‘Not with the kitchen in the wrong place it isn’t.’

‘Andrew,’ said Eve. ‘You agreed.’

At this point, Andrew laughed.

That was all right, then. The atmosphere lightened and Jasmine relaxed. Andrew had been leading them on. He had been teasing.

Eve sent her a look, and she returned it.
Secure?
Once upon a time, they had ruled their secret kingdom – a land of imps, hobgoblins and cardboard houses. It had been theirs, entirely theirs, tightly governed and patrolled. Not even the ghost of their mother had been welcome.

At college she had studied the Romantics – the black-clad, scowling, rackety, super-intense bunch of poets – and their assorted suffering women and children, whose role it was to cook and darn so that Byron, Shelley, Hoffman
et al
were free to be creative.

Such inequalities, Maudie thought, pounding the pavements on the daily jog, her speed intensifying commensurate to the anger she felt on behalf of the downtrodden Romantic women. (Indignation was an excellent spur to fitness.) How pleasing, then, how compensatory for the rotten treatment of their women it was that quite a few of the men had died unhappily. Still – and the irony did not escape her – she approved of their ideas. Those cosseted Romantics believed they could kill off the Age of Reason with its dull, dry beliefs and its ‘rakes, whores, bawdy talk, powder and patches’. In return, they etherealized sex, turned it into an affair of the soul.

Blood thudded in her ears.

Nick had taken her on the bus and up into the woods. There he had spread his coat and laid her down on it. The air on her body had been cool but he had been warm and eager.

‘Etherealized’ sex? Looking back, the thing she had had with Nick had been anything but etherealized. But
at the end of the summer of that first year, she had told him to go. ‘I don’t want to see you any more. Not in that way.’

‘Yes, you do. You know you do.’ He had hunched over. Angry. Frustrated. ‘Why?’

‘Because.’

Truthful answer: she wasn’t sure. She just knew that Nick would get in the way of the other things in her head. Tess said what a brilliant couple they made – so tall and fit.
That
had been part of the trouble. In the end – and she didn’t pretend it showed her in a good light – she couldn’t bear the idea of being shoved into a box.