A Winter Bride (13 page)

Nell said she didn’t want to be a chambermaid. ‘I’m happy selling pens.’ Taking part in the new venture hadn’t been what she imagined. She’d thought she’d enjoy dropping in at a bar where people knew her name and asked if she’d like her usual. Being one of the Rutherfords would give her automatic admission to the in crowd. Scrubbing out lavatories and making beds had no appeal.

It was her turn for the glare.

‘No, you’re not happy selling pens. You just feel safe doing it. You’ve never tried anything else,’ May told her. ‘There’s no future in it. You’re a Rutherford now. You’re life isn’t about you anymore. It’s about us, all of us. You’ll have to roll up your sleeves and muck in like the rest of us. It’s your duty.’

Alistair put his arm round Nell and said he was sure she’d like to help but they were planning on starting a family.

Nell looked at him in horror.

May gripped Nell’s arm. ‘You’re not …?’

‘No,’ said Nell. ‘I’m not. I don’t want to have a baby yet. I want Alistair and me to spend time together first. Alistair wants to have a baby. He keeps nagging me about it. He said he’d stop, but soon as we got back from the honeymoon, he started again.’

May slapped Alistair’s wrist. ‘You leave Nell alone. She’ll have a baby in her own good time. The notion will grab her soon enough. It grabs most women, after all. It’s a curse.’

Alistair looked sheepish.

May put her arm round Nell. ‘This girl needs time to enjoy being a wife before she becomes a mother. Once you’re a mother, you’re a mother for life. The worrying and the caring goes on and on and on.’ She hugged Nell. ‘You stick to your guns. You have a baby when you want. It’s you has to carry it and you that gives birth. Then it’ll be you doing the midnight feeds and the nappies and dealing with the teething and you taking them to school and you helping with the homework and you sitting up worrying when they’re out late.’

Nell thought that this woman alone could solve the world population problem. She’d certainly put her off motherhood, but she loved May for taking her side in the ongoing baby dispute.

‘Still,’ said May, ‘you can both help with the decorating at the weekends. Do you no harm to get familiar with a brush and a pot of paint.’

Johnny said that it’d be a while before they got to the actual decorating. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking down at his shoes, lifting them from time to time, examining them, worried that the muck on the floor would ruin their shine.

May said, ‘Your Uncle Dave will see to all that. He’s got contacts in the trade.’

Harry’s brother Dave was in property. He owned a huge number of flats across Edinburgh that he rented out. Whenever something in one of his flats needed fixed or replaced, Dave got in touch with one of the many workmen he’d met in pubs on the outskirts of town – plumbers, joiners, roofers, painters and many more who were prepared to work for cash. He had names and phone numbers listed in a small red notebook that he kept in his desk at home.

It was Sunday, a month exactly since May had made her announcement. She’d picked up the keys on Friday. This was her first trip out to view her new property.

‘I’m itching to get started, but I have to wait till your cousin Derek draws up the plans. Then we’ll get going.’ May made her way back to the front door, looked up at the pigeons. ‘The pair of you will have to find a new home. Your days here are numbered.’

Alistair followed, pointing out that Derek had not long passed his final exams. ‘He’s fresh out of university. Don’t you think you need someone with a bit of experience?’

‘This will be his first commission. He’s got to make a go of it. Can’t mess up your first job – your future depends on it. Besides he’s family.’

‘This venture is all about family,’ said Harry.

Nell stopped worrying about the effects of dust and rubble on her beloved Italian shoes as she was hit by a sudden inspiration, ‘Then that’s what you should call this place.’

‘What? Family?’ said May. ‘I don’t think much of that.’

‘No,’ said Nell. ‘You should call it Rutherford’s.’

May swooned. ‘It’s so bleedin’ obvious, I never thought of it. Rutherford’s. That’s perfect. Says it all.’

They trooped back to the parking area outside where May unpacked her picnic basket, pulling out a selection of sandwiches, an almond cake, a bottle of Sauvignon and glasses. They uncorked the bottle (May would never forget something as important as a corkscrew). They shouted their toast. ‘Rutherford’s,’ they cried. The sun shone, birds sang and May looked round at the small company, eyes aglow with joy. ‘Oh, isn’t life fabulous?!’

Chapter Thirteen

The Famous
One-Legged Kiss

By late spring, work on the hotel was underway. The rubble was cleared, the walls plastered, the roof retiled and the pigeons sent on their way. May visited every day. Scarlet-lipped and eyes thick with blue shadow, she tripped through the building on six-inch stilettos, hugging her fur coat round her. She beamed at the workmen, telling them to carry on and keep up the good work. She fussed over details, itched to get busy choosing wallpapers, curtains, carpets, ‘and taps,’ she said. ‘Good taps are a sign of a classy hotel. Mine will be gold-plated.’ Always she looked round and sighed. ‘This is going to be lovely.’

Every Friday at four o’clock, Harry stopped by the worksite and pulled a pile of cheap brown envelopes from his briefcase. He paid his tradesmen in cash. He’d tap the side of his nose. ‘Good money for good work and the taxman doesn’t know a thing. Let’s keep him out of it.’

Thursday nights were as they’d always been. The family had their meetings. Alistair went to eat and discuss business with his parents. Nell wasn’t invited. It was so much part of her life with Alistair, she didn’t think about it. Besides, he’d told her it was boring. ‘Just business, business, business and a lot of bickering.’

‘But the food will be good,’ said Nell, because the food wasn’t so good where she went on Thursdays: home to eat with her mother and father. Thursday nights were egg and chips nights. In fact, Nell didn’t really mind. She was beginning to find comfort in the familiar.

She’d go directly from work. The food was always ready and put in front of her as soon as she’d taken off her coat. Every week Nell’s mother would glance at her stomach to see if it was swelling, then the glance would move up to Nell’s face. Their eyes would meet. Nancy would raise her eyebrows, silently asking if a grandchild was on the way. Nell would sigh and shake her head and say, ‘Not yet. Give me a couple of years.’

She and her mother and father would sit at the fold-down Formica-topped table politely passing round the tomato ketchup and sliced and buttered bread. The teapot in its green cosy sat centre stage, and, now that Nell was married, living away from home, and was, therefore, a visitor, they drank from the good china. The place still smelled of cooking fat with an undertow of bleach. These days, Nell found it rather calming.

The conversation was mundane – the weather, Nell’s day at the pen shop, Nancy’s day at the cake shop and things Nell’s father had seen from his vantage point on the sofa. Today it had been a dog peeing on the front gate and Mrs Livingston next door buying fish from the van that came round every Thursday morning. Not a lot, but he made it sound interesting.

Afterwards, her father would go back to his sofa to watch television while Nell and Nancy washed up. As they did, they’d talk womanly talk. Nell noticed that now she was a married woman, her mother spoke of married things. For Nancy this meant instructing her daughter in the importance of cleaning. ‘A day set aside for every chore. Monday for washing, Tuesday ironing, Wednesday the bedrooms, change sheets and …’

Nell lost interest. She’d heard all this many times, and always found it boring. She wondered if there had ever been passion in this immaculate house. Had her mother and father rushed home every evening after a day delivering coal and serving in the cake shop to hold one another, to kiss deeply and swear eternal love? Had they made it a mission to make love in every room in the house as she and Alistair had? Had they shared baths, bickering about who would sit at the tap end? Did they have a song that was
their
song? Had her mother ever stripped off in the kitchen when a sexy tune had come on the radio, abandoning the lamb chops under the grill as she wriggled and pranced and peeled off her clothes? Nell had done this last week. The chops burned. Watching her mother vigorously wipe plates and set them on the draining board for Nell to dry, jaw clenched, determined not to let a scraping of egg yolk escape the fevered scouring of her dish cloth, Nell decided no, Nancy had done none of these things. The way she bustled and wielded the bleach, she certainly didn’t look like she’d ever done any of these things.

Nell slowly, slowly dried a teaspoon and gazed out into the garden. Late spring, and light was fading. Tulips were in flower. Not in clumps, but in splendid regimental order, shoulder to shoulder, braving the breeze. Nell stopped drying the spoon. She looked out the window in amazement. The garden was small. She hadn’t noticed that before. In fact, for years she’d thought it huge. Well, she thought, it
was
huge when I was three.

She looked round the room. It was small. When did this happen? Had it shrunk, or had it always been this size? And her mother suddenly was so much smaller than Nell thought. She had to stretch on tiptoe to reach the back of the draining board. Had she always done that? Nell gazed into the distance, wondering at this new revelation.

Her mother snatched the tea towel she was using and waved her towards a chair.

‘Give me that. You’ve been wiping that spoon for the last ten minutes. You’ve drifted into a dream. You’re always dreaming. Too much dreaming and not enough doing, that’s you.’

Nell turned arms spread, taking in the kitchen. ‘Has this place got smaller? Have you got smaller?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Nancy said. ‘That’s the silliest thing anyone’s ever said to me. This place is the same size it always was. I’m not getting smaller. It’s you is getting bigger.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Nell.

‘Of course you are.’ Nancy flapped the dishtowel at her. ‘You’ve moved out. You live in that fancy flat; go fancy places with that man of yours. Your world’s expanding. I knew this day would come. When you’d look at me and your dad and notice what we’re really like – plain and ordinary, a bit dull. Well, that’s what happens to you when you’ve been married for years. It’s the routine does it. Anyway, I like being dull. It suits me. I know what’s happening everyday when I get up. No surprises, that’s what I like.’

Nell sat on the top deck of the bus going home. She watched the world slip by, catching fleeting glimpses of passing front rooms. Families watching television, a man polishing his shoes, a woman ironing – these things pleased her. She loved to speculate about other peoples’ lives. Tonight, though, she cursed herself for her stupid remark about her mother getting smaller, and wondered if, now she was married, she was on her way to being plain and ordinary and a bit dull. Certainly Carol was up in arms about how dull her own life had become.

Last week Carol had phoned Nell. ‘I’m lonely.’

It was nine o’clock at night. Nell and Alistair had just taken up their television-watching positions on the sofa. Alistair had been slouched in the corner, Nell lying with her head in his lap. She’d heaved herself to her feet and, complaining bitterly, stumped to the kitchen to pick up the receiver.

‘Why are you lonely? Isn’t Johnny there?’

They always launched straight into conversation. Announcing themselves, saying hello, it’s me, would have taken up precious gossiping time.

‘Yes, he’s here. But he’s sleeping in front of the telly. That’s what he does every night when he’s home. He never talks to me.’

‘He’s tired.’

‘So am I. Really tired. It’s exhausting looking after a little one all day. I look forward to a little adult conversation at night, but all I ever get is him snoring.’

Nell had said nothing. She hadn’t needed to speak; Carol had been working up to a full rant.

‘He comes home, throws down his jacket, eats, then goes off to watch the TV. Hardly says a word. This isn’t right. I’m not putting up with this. He goes off every Friday night, and says it’s his relaxing time. But what about me?’

‘What about you?’

‘I need relaxing time, too. I need a night out. Remember when we used to go to the Locarno? I was happy then. Out on the town. Dancing. Having fun. I was really living then. Now my life is really boring. I’m fed up and I’m eating too many biscuits. Ever since I left school, it was my big ambition to get married. And my mother was forever saying that one day I’d have a husband and children and live in a house of my own. She never mentioned how awful it is – cooking and cleaning and that. I’m bored and I’m lonely and I’m getting fat.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to go out and find some fun for myself before I get any older and fatter.’

Nell had heard Katy start crying in the background.

‘Bugger. Katy’s awake. She’s probably had a bad dream. I’d better go.’

Nell had gone back to her television-watching position with Alistair. ‘It was Carol complaining that she’s bored and she’s getting old and fat.’

Alistair had yawned. ‘Aren’t we all?’

Now the bus trundled into Princes Street. Nell got off; she’d walk the rest of the way home. The city was busy tonight. She made her way through the crowds, stopping now and then to window gaze and people watch. She liked looking at the young men who strutted along the middle of the pavement eyeing passing girls. Thursday night was just for flirting. The drinking and swaggering would come tomorrow after they’d been paid. Nell was good at observing from the sidelines without being noticed. It was a skill she’d learned at the Locarno.

Still she was glad she was no longer part of this parade. Time was, she and Carol would walk, arms linked, secretly watching the boys while pretending to be more interested in the shop windows. They’d nudge one another if they spotted someone they fancied, giggle if he noticed them and winked, whistled or smiled. Back then Carol had been the one who got the admiring glances. She’d been queen of the street game, the one who’d mastered the fine art of noticing she’d been noticed and acting coy. Nell had been the dowdy best friend. She never got the boy.