A Family Affair (10 page)

The wedding took place three weeks later, and Jenny was a bridesmaid as she had wanted to be. She wore a dress of stiff organdie with three rows of frills around the hemline that Carrie had made for her, sitting up late at night over her Singer sewing machine, and a matching coronet of pink silky stuff in her hair instead of the usual ribbon bow, and a pair of silver sandals. She stood behind Heather in the Catholic church, feeling immensely proud in spite of the fact that Heather was wearing a frock with a loose-fitting coat over instead of the ivory dress Jenny had always imagined she would wear and holding Heather's trailing bouquet of roses, stephanotis and maidenhair fern while she and Steven made their vows.

Outside the church the whole family posed for photographs. The menfolk were in their Sunday suits with white carnations in the buttonholes – Jenny thought how handsome David looked and was proud all over again that he was her brother. Glad looked more suitably dressed for a funeral than a wedding in her black silk coat, black button shoes and stockings and her best black straw hat trimmed with a big rosette of silk flowers, but in order to enter into the spirit of an occasion of celebration she had a corsage of pink carnations pinned to her shoulder. Carrie, too, wore a corsage, and a costume in what she called Marina blue – after the Duchess of Kent, she explained to anyone who asked. Though she was tightly corseted, the skirt pulled a little across her stomach and she thought ruefully that for all that she never seemed to stop running about she had still managed to put on weight since she last wore it.

No-one looking at her would have guessed she was anything but delighted that her elder daughter had become Steven's wife and, indeed, she had mellowed towards the idea in the three weeks since Heather's shock announcement. She still wished Steven wasn't foreign, she still wished Heather had gone to the altar under different circumstances, but at least she was safely married now, she would have no more worries on that score. Steven hadn't left her in the lurch as some might do, he had stood by her and although there might be a certain amount of counting of months when the baby was born it would soon be forgotten – a nine days'wonder. She wouldn't have to endure the shame of this grandchild being born out of wedlock. Now all she had to do was make sure Jenny didn't get herself into trouble and she could hold her head up high and know the respectability that was so important to her had been preserved. And it would be a long time yet, hopefully, before she had to start worrying about that. Jenny was young for her age and as yet, thank goodness, had not shown the slightest interest in boys.

Carrie stole a proud sideways glance at her, at her round smiling face and plump body encased in pink organdie. Could she detect the first hint of development beneath the tightly fitting bodice? She rather thought she could. But Jenny didn't look like Heather in any respect, except for her eyes, and Carrie was glad. She couldn't have gone through all that again, the boys standing in line, the fearful realisation of the temptations she would face, the constant watchfulness combined ultimately with the knowledge that in the last resort she couldn't be there all the time, couldn't know what her children were up to every minute of the day. And Jenny wasn't like Heather in her ways, either. She had none of Heather's wilfulness. She was a good girl. Carrie only hoped she would stay that way.

When the photographs had been taken it was into the church hall for the reception – a glass of sherry, a sit-down meal of ham salad followed by trifle and the two-tier cake, topped by a miniature bride and groom, which had been baked by the Co-op. Afterwards there were the speeches and the usual jokes about the stork, which made Heather blush and caused Carrie's mouth to set in a tight line for a few moments – the first and only time during the whole day.

Heather and Steven were going to Paignton for a week's honeymoon – since Heather intended to travel in the same outfit she had been married in there was no need to go home and change and the family showered them in confetti as they waved them off in Steven's car with tin cans tied to the rear bumper.

Carrie had ordered a taxi to take them home afterwards, dropping Glad and Walt off on the way, though David was going on for a drink at the Working Men's Club with his friends. When she had packed Jenny off to bed – not easy, since although Jenny was tired, she was also overexcited and reluctant to take off her bridesmaid's dress – she went to the sideboard and got out the quarter-bottle of brandy she always kept there for medicinal purposes.

‘I don't know about you, Joe, but I could do with a drink!'

‘That would be very nice, m'dear.'

His preferred tipple was whisky – ‘a nice drop of Teachers' – but brandy was better than nothing, even if it did recall childhood days of bilious attacks when his mother had poured him a little to settle his stomach.

‘It all went off very well, didn't it?' Joe said.

‘Yes. Considering.'

‘She'll be all right with Steven,' Joe said. ‘He's a nice chap. I felt very proud taking her up that aisle today.'

‘I'd rather circumstances had been different.'

Carrie sat down in one of the fireside chairs they'd bought especially for the new house, feeling her skirt strain around her stomach as she did so.

‘She's not the only one by a long chalk,' Joe said philosophically, getting out a packet of Players and lighting one. ‘It's just nice to see her settled.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘You worry too much,' Joe said.

And you don't worry enough, Carrie thought, but did not say. This was the Joe she had married, quiet, easygoing, taking the rough with the smooth stoically, good-naturedly. It occurred to her that in many ways Steven was very like him. Perhaps our Heather hasn't done so bad for herself after all, she thought.

‘Well, if they're as happy as us after twenty-five years, I dare

say they'll be all right,' she said, smiling at him.

‘I hear your Heather
had
to get married,' Joyce Edgell said.

Carrie banged the lid down on to a container of cottage pie and swung round. ‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Come off it, Carrie, you know very well what I mean. She's in the club.' There was a smirk on her face.

‘You don't miss a chance, do you, Joyce?' Carrie said bitterly.

It was true. Ever since the episode when Carrie had blackmailed George Parsons into giving them a house she and Joyce had been at loggerheads and things had been made even worse by Jenny passing The Exam. None of Joyce's brood had made it to the Grammar School, nor were likely to, Carrie thought.

‘At least she didn't get married in white, like some I could name,' Joyce went on. ‘I expect you'd have liked her to, though.'

‘All I want for our Heather is for her to be happy.'

Joyce ignored this. ‘Oh well, she's been lucky so far, from what I hear.'

That did it. Carrie rounded on her furiously.

‘Now look here, Joyce Edgell, just because you behave like an alley cat doesn't mean everybody else does, and certainly not our Heather. So you can just keep your dirty mouth to yourself, or I swear I'll swing for you.'

‘OK, OK, keep your hair on!' Joyce smirked, knowing she'd touched a raw nerve. ‘All I'm saying is …'

‘I know what you're saying. And you can just shut up. Talking about our Heather like that …'

‘Brought you down a peg or two though, didn't it?' Joyce sneered.

It was all Carrie could do not to hit her.

‘I had that Joyce Edgell on at me today about you,' Carrie said to Heather.

Heather and Steven, who were living with Glad and Walt, had walked up to Alder Road as they often did for a cup of Bournvita and a chat. Steven had gone to the outhouse, where Joe was trying to sort out his tools and the garden implements that needed cleaning and oiling for the winter, to lend him a hand and the two women were toasting their knees in front of the open fire.

‘She's heard from somewhere that the wedding was a rush job and she was determined to let me know she knew it.'

‘I hope you told her it was none of her business,' Heather said.

‘I did. In no uncertain terms. But all the same, I wish …' She broke off, looking at Heather's bulge, now fairly obvious under her jumper and skirt.

‘Don't start that again, Mum, please,' Heather begged.

‘No. Well. All I can say is it's a pity it arose at all.' Carrie was aware she was taking her humiliation out on Heather, but she couldn't stop herself. It had been burning away inside her all day like a dose of bad indigestion. ‘It's a pity you never learned self-control. I should have thought after what happened before … well, I should have thought you'd learned your lesson.'

Heather was on her feet, hurt and anger in her heart, tears in her eyes.

‘How could I ever forget? How could I ever forget what you and Dad made me do?'

‘Not your dad. Don't blame him.'

‘No. Not Dad. You. What
you
made me do. Do you think I can forget it for a single day? A single moment? Do you think I'll ever forgive you?'

‘Heather …' Carrie was frightened suddenly, without quite knowing why. Only that she had never seen her daughter quite like this before. Heather was usually merry-hearted, if wilful. A smile to hide the pain, like her father. Now the look in her eyes was close to hatred and it chilled Carrie to the core.

‘Heather …' she said again.

‘I'm sorry, Mum, I'm going.' Heather was reaching for her coat, hung over the back of a chair. ‘I don't want to stay here and listen to this.'

‘All right – go!' Carrie snapped, aware even as the words passed her lips that she didn't mean them. But on the defensive she always attacked – within the family, anyway. ‘I just wish you'd realise what we did was for your own good.'

‘I'm sure you thought so,' Heather said. ‘I'm sure you still do. That's what is so terrifying about you, Mum. You think you can do anything –
anything
– and as long as it's for
our good
then it's all right. Only sometimes it isn't. Keeping up appearances is what it's about. And that isn't always the same thing as
our good
whatever you might think.'

Joe and Steven appeared in the doorway.

‘Hey – hey – hey – what's going on here?' Joe asked, mildly concerned.

‘Heather?' Steven said.

‘Come on, Steve, we're going,' Heather said.

She went through into the hall to the front door, deliberately avoiding the kitchen, the heart of the house, her mother's domain.

Jenny was on the stairs. She had been in her room, with the Aladdin oil stove to take the chill off the air, doing her homework, rushing at it in an effort to finish so that she could go down and spend some time with Heather and Steven – whom she already hero-worshipped – when she had heard the raised voices. Heather looked up and saw her, looked away again, opened the front door.

‘Heather!' Jenny called.

But for once Heather ignored her. Not waiting for Steven, not waiting for anything, she went out into the night.

Jenny was not enjoying school. It was just the same as it had been in the Juniors – the lessons were fine – well, most of them – physics and geometry made her mind boggle, but she could cope with everything else, even Latin, which she rather enjoyed. But when it came to her social standing, Jenny still felt like an outsider. On the whole the other pupils in her class seemed quite nice, but they already had their own groups, tight little knots of girls who had been together since infant school, which were self-sufficient and impenetrable – except by outgoing, confident girls like Valerie, who had quickly formed an alliance with a pretty but precocious girl from one of the neighbouring villages who was known, for some unfathomable reason, as ‘Baba'. The boys, of course, might as well have been aliens from another planet. As yet, they were a race apart; they took no notice of the girls and the girls, with the possible exception of Valerie and Baba, took no notice of them.

Just as before, Jenny found herself paired off or left with the other outcasts no-one wanted to be associated with. The trouble was, she didn't want to be associated with them either. At least they weren't stupid, of course, not like poor Tessa Smith. They'd never have passed The Exam if they had been. But in spite of her problems, Jenny still saw herself as vastly superior to the wimpish Diane Witcombe and the gangling Penny Presley with her bandy legs and mouthful of teeth. Yet invariably she found herself forced into their company, left, with them, on the sidelines. Particularly when it came to games.

To Jenny, games and physical education – as PT was now called – were the lesson periods she most dreaded. To begin with, her slowness at changing into aertex shirt and shorts meant she was always the last to leave the cloakroom, scooting hot and breathless after the others as they made their merry way down the road to the playing fields or along the corridor to the gym. And once there the nightmare began in earnest.

Jenny hated the gym, hated having to line up and take her turn at balance hangs and gate vaults on the horizontal bars which descended from the ceiling by means of pulleys, hated rolling about on the mats and struggling to get a foothold to climb the ropes. But all these tortures were as nothing compared to the ultimate torture of the vaulting horses.

Each time Miss Foster, the rosy-cheeked, mannish PE mistress, ordered them to pull out the bucks and horses and beating boards, Jenny's heart sank and she felt sick with dread. She couldn't do it. She simply couldn't do it. She would stand in line, watching the others running purposefully on to the beating board and sailing effortlessly over the horse, and make up her mind that this time she too would clear the horrible obstacle even if it killed her. She would make her run, trembling inside but determined, but the moment her feet hit the beating board her nerve would fail her. She would jump on it too cautiously to gain any momentum and either crash into the vaulting horse or flop like a beached whale, landing ignominiously on top of it. Then she would have to climb down and slink to the back of the queue whilst Valerie or Baba or one of the others sailed over as if they had wings and her face would be scarlet both from the effort and from knowing that she'd made a fool of herself yet again.