The Unknown Bridesmaid (2 page)

Julia had flowers in her hair, which pleased her enormously, cornflowers and daisies, cunningly wreathed together and attached to a velvet band. They made up for the dress being off-white and quite plain. And she had a posy, too, tied with blue ribbon. ‘You’re as pretty as a picture,’ Iris said. It was Iris who was the picture. Even Julia’s mother was silenced by the vision of Iris in her bridal gown. The dress was simple, nothing meringue-like or frothy, cut on the bias, the satin draping perfectly round Iris’s slender figure. ‘How do I look?’ Iris asked. ‘Lovely,’ was the chorus, and again, ‘Lovely,
lovely
.’ Then Maureen began to cry, and barely stopped for the rest of the day. Tears of happiness, tears of joy, or so she said, but even Julia could tell these were tears of loss and pain. They were ‘so close’, this mother and daughter, or so Julia heard guests constantly saying to each other throughout the wedding reception. Never been such a close mother and daughter. They were more like sisters, someone said, which Julia thought perfectly ridiculous. Did that person have eyes? Could she not see what Maureen looked like, what Iris looked like? Sisters?

Honor had required extra care after her difficult birth. That, of course, might explain a lot (the difficult birth). And the fact that Honor was a girl and not a boy. It had emerged early on that Honor ‘should have been’ a son, not a daughter. Julia hadn’t asked why Mrs Brooks had wanted a son, why she cared about the sex of her first baby. It was not, after all, relevant. Mrs Brooks herself, it had also emerged, was one of three sisters, the middle one, also ‘meant’ to be a boy. ‘I
was never forgiven,’ she had told Julia dramatically. Julia had smiled politely, and skilfully steered her back along the path she wanted her to go along. So, she had said, tell me about Honor as a baby. This was also a tale of woe. Honor was difficult, didn’t feed properly, cried most of the time, took ages to regain her birth weight, couldn’t hold her head up until she was three months old, maybe more, and really Honor’s development had gone on like that, difficult, right from the start.

Julia asked, at one point, who Honor showed affection to.

‘Affection?’ Mrs Brooks echoed, as though affection were a disease.

‘Does she have a pet, perhaps?’ Julia pressed. ‘Or a soft toy she cuddles?’

‘She’s been given plenty of soft toys,’ Mrs Brooks said, sounding angry, ‘she hasn’t been deprived of soft toys, I can tell you that. She’s had teddy bears and every stuffed animal you can name, a whole zoo of them.’

Julia nodded, and politely asked again if Honor had shown affection for any of them and was there a particular toy she took to bed?

‘She’s ten,’ her mother said, ‘she’s too old to take toys to bed, for goodness sake.’

Julia nodded again, and made a note. ‘What about relatives?’ she suggested. ‘Her aunts? Your sisters or cousins? Does she have cousins she’s fond of?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Brooks.

‘No to aunts, or No to cousins, or both?’ Julia said. ‘No to both,’ she said, and did not elaborate.

Considering how defensive she always was, Julia was surprised no justification for this lack of contact followed. The subject was considered closed, but Julia wouldn’t agree to this. ‘Friends?’ she queried. ‘Is Honor fond of any school friend, or has she been until recently?’

‘She’s never been keen on friends,’ Mrs Brooks said, but
this time sounding almost apologetic and not aggressive. ‘I’ve tried,’ she went on, ‘I’ve invited children in her class to come and play after school, though Honor didn’t want me to, but it wasn’t a success.’

‘How many times did you try?’ Julia asked, injecting as much sympathy as possible into the question.

‘Once,’ she said, ‘then I took the hint. What was the point if Honor wasn’t interested? It just made me look silly when
I
had to play with the other child.’

‘What did you play?’ Julia asked quickly.

‘What?’ Mrs Brooks was annoyed again.

‘What did you play with the other child?’

‘Heavens, you expect me to remember that?’

‘Why?’ said Julia gently. ‘Was it a long time ago, this one play date?’

There was a distinct pause, a real hesitation. Something was being weighed up, but Julia didn’t know what. It was time, perhaps, to ask this woman more about herself. She liked talking about herself. Julia had already heard how she had had the most unfortunate of upbringings, which involved a great deal of detail, in the telling, about her parents’ divorce and how this had affected her. But time was short. She couldn’t let Mrs Brooks get going on her own troubles.

‘I think,’ said Julia, ‘I need to talk to Honor’s teacher.’

The wedding was on a Monday, which scandalised Julia’s mother. ‘A Monday!’ she kept exclaiming, as though this day of the week had some in-built taint attached to it. But Monday it had to be, for reasons Julia never understood except that they were to do with the bridegroom’s next tour of duty with his regiment and his father arriving back only on the Sunday night – it was all complicated. However, a Monday it was, a wet Monday. More horror from Julia’s mother when the
curtains were opened that morning and the weather revealed. Julia herself felt miserable just looking out on the lashing rain and wild wind stripping the trees of leaves. In her mind, the very word ‘wedding’ was equated somehow with sunshine and blue skies. How could there be a wedding in this storm?

Iris, though, just laughed. The rain and wind did not dismay her at all. ‘Rain on your wedding day means good luck,’ she said firmly. Julia’s mother asked where she’d got that bit of wisdom from, but Iris laughed some more and didn’t reply. ‘You
are
an old misery, Auntie,’ she said mockingly. Julia held her breath. It was true. Her mother was an old misery, but only Iris dared to say so. The peculiar thing was that instead of being insulted, or reacting with anger, Julia’s mother merely nodded her head and tightened her lips. Anyway, the rain didn’t last and the wind died down long before the time of the wedding. By 2 p.m. the sun was beginning to struggle through the clouds and though there were puddles all along the path to the church they looked pretty, like little lakes, glinting in the suddenly sharp light.

Julia skirted these puddles carefully, not wanting to damage her beautiful white satin shoes. She progressed on tiptoe, holding up the skirt of her dress, and arrived at the church door triumphant. The other two bridesmaids, the bridegroom’s sisters Sylvie and Pat, were not so careful. They were much older than Julia and their dresses (she noticed at once, and with envy) were more elaborate, full-skirted and frilly on top, whereas Julia’s dress was plain and simple, not a frill or flounce to it. But the sisters were nice girls who made a fuss of Julia. She must walk in front of them, they insisted, and right behind the bride. ‘You look so sweet,’ they said, and Julia blushed and smiled. Her mother was nowhere near. She was already sitting in her place. I am so sweet, Julia repeated to herself in her head, so sweet, so sweet. She stood with the other bridesmaids waiting for Iris to arrive and felt
happy and light-hearted. Then the car with Iris and her father arrived and there was such excitement in the air, such a lot of bustle, with ushers darting forward to open doors, and the music beginning, and at that moment Julia heard a whisper and felt something slipped into the hand not holding her posy. ‘Give it to Iris,’ the whisper said, ‘it’s a secret, afterwards.’

There was a pocket in her dress, in a side seam. ‘I’ve made you a pocket,’ Mrs Batey had said, ‘to keep a hanky in case you need it.’ And a handkerchief was indeed safely tucked away there, an embroidered handkerchief her mother had given her at Christmas, embroidered with her name in purple silk thread. Julia looked quickly at what was in her hand – a small, square box wrapped in tissue paper, tied with a ribbon – and slipped it into her pocket. Her heart raced a little fast. The whisper had been Reginald’s, the bridegroom’s. She’d only met him once, the day before, and had been intimidated by him. He was tall and strong-looking and he’d been wearing dark clothes and looked, to Julia, sinister. She didn’t say a word to him, and all he said to her was hello. But now he was in his soldier’s uniform. Julia could see him, standing waiting in front of the altar as Iris slowly advanced on her father’s arm. He didn’t smile. He held himself rigidly, at attention it seemed, and Julia shivered a little at the sight of him, though she didn’t know why.

Julia didn’t tell her mother about Reginald’s whisper, or about the little box he’d given her. He’d said it was a secret, and her understanding of ‘secret’ was that she must keep it to herself. But she would have liked to consult her mother about exactly what ‘afterwards’ meant. After the wedding was over? After the wedding breakfast? After Reginald had gone off with his regiment? She worried about when to give the box to Iris. There was no chance in the church afterwards. Too many people, all thronging round the bride, and then bride and bridegroom were whisked off in a car to the church
hall. There, Julia was seated next to her mother at the top table, with Iris four places to her left, in the centre. There were speeches, and applause, and a lot of laughter, though Julia failed to understand why people were laughing, especially at the best man’s speech. ‘Rude, no need for it,’ her mother muttered.

Then there was the photograph, a time of maximum confusion, with the photographer making a great fuss about who was to stand where. Julia was first of all told to sit at Iris’s feet but then told to stand next to one of the other bridesmaids, so that she was at the end of the row. This didn’t suit the photographer either. He said the ‘composition’ was wrong, and the ‘proportions’. Once more, Julia was put in front of the bridal couple but this time slightly in the centre, with the other two bridesmaids flanking the bride and bridegroom. Other group photographs were taken, with more and more people in them, and in the final one Julia was squeezed right at the end, almost out of the picture. She was tired by then and found it hard to smile, as instructed, or even to say ‘cheese’.

Later, at school, she boasted about being a bridesmaid, describing her dress in a way that was not exactly a lie but was rather imaginative.

‘Honor doesn’t participate,’ the teacher told Julia, ‘not in any way. She doesn’t volunteer any opinions. If I ask her some direct question, she just shrugs. She can’t be coaxed into expressing herself.’

It was a fee-paying school, the children wearing a neat uniform: blue-and-white-checked shirts, plain dark blue skirts or trousers, and a blue blazer with a white dove crest on the pocket. The school had been founded in the late sixties when a dove was the symbol of peaceful protest against the Vietnam
War. Parents liked the idea of this, and they liked the uniform. Mrs Brooks said Honor couldn’t have been at a nicer school, what with the uniform and the small classes and the strict discipline. The fees were high, but she believed anything worth having comes at a price. It was obvious. You get what you pay for. But Honor had not made the best of the opportunities being at such a model school gave her. She hadn’t liked school from day one and had made a fuss about going every single morning from then on. What was there not to like? her mother had asked, of course she had, but Honor gave no reason, just repeated, so annoyingly, that she hated school and did not want to go. Told that the law said she had to, she said she hated the law too. Which, said Mrs Brooks, was such a stupid thing to say, so childish. ‘But she is a child,’ Julia had said pointedly.

There was something about the tidy, quiet school which Julia found a little disturbing. She’d once been a teacher herself, and no school she’d ever taught in had been as unnaturally quiet as this one. The school building was an Edwardian double-fronted house, set in its own grounds. These grounds were not extensive, consisting as they did of a lawn either side of the driveway and a larger lawn at the back with some climbing apparatus at the end of it. There were no playing fields or anything like that, but then the children were aged five to eleven and not in need of football and rugby pitches and the like. There was a school bus, painted in the blue and white school colours, which took the children to the park and to a swimming pool in a local leisure centre. Their every need, the prospectus claimed, was catered for. But entering the school, Julia was struck by how the building appeared to dominate the children. The rooms were quite dark, and high-ceilinged, and though the furniture was modern and brightly coloured it was dwarfed by the space it occupied. The corridors, and the staircase, had lots of the children’s artwork pinned on the walls but, again, the dark oak of the banisters,
and the dark brown of the carpet on the broad stairs, seemed to fight, and win, a battle with the colourful paintings. The children looked out of place, especially the younger ones.

Honor’s teacher was called Miss Cass. Julia was introduced to her by the headmaster, a Dr Richards (she assumed he was a doctor of philosophy, but in that she was wrong). ‘This is Miss Cass,’ he said. No Christian name was given, and Julia didn’t ask for one, though she gave her own. Dr Richards said he would leave them to ‘chat’ about Honor Brooks, but he reminded Julia that Miss Cass only had fifteen minutes to spare. Julia said she was grateful to be spared them. They were left together, Julia and Miss Cass, in a small room next to the headmaster’s study (he’d referred to it as a study, not an office). There were two leather armchairs facing each other with a coffee table between them, upon which rested a copy of the school prospectus. Miss Cass hadn’t yet sat down nor had she invited Julia to do so. Thinking that to stand for the allotted fifteen minutes was absurd, Julia took the lead, though she felt she shouldn’t have. ‘Shall we make ourselves comfortable?’ she said, smiling, and promptly sat down herself. Miss Cass hesitated, and then perched on the very edge of the seat of the other armchair.

Julia explained who she was and why she had come to ask Miss Cass about Honor, and then Miss Cass told her about Honor never responding to anything at all in class. Julia worded her response, to what Miss Cass said, carefully. ‘So you think Honor is shy?’ she said.