Just Friends (42 page)

“Mm.” Jack was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was here on false pretenses and didn’t deserve Guy’s confidence.

“Unfortunately, things
have
been taken away. It’s a terrible thing for a girl to lose her mother. One tries to compensate but . . .” Guy jabbed at the ground with his stick. “I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for marrying Annabelle. She doesn’t seem to understand that Annabelle isn’t a substitute for her—nor could Freya ever be a substitute for Annabelle.” He looked up at Jack. “I sometimes think that’s why she hasn’t settled into a relationship of her own.”

Jack avoided his glance. He wasn’t playing this game. “I guess she hasn’t found the right man.” He shrugged carelessly.

“Very probably. It would take someone of special qualities to make Freya happy. Shall we walk down?”

Jack stomped after him, feeling disconcerted and irritable. Freya wasn’t his concern. She didn’t want to be his concern. They weren’t really a couple, so it was irrelevant whether he possessed “special qualities” or not. He glowered at Guy’s boots, trying not to think of all the ways in which he had abused this man’s hospitality. He should never have allowed Freya to tempt him into coming here.

“I’m very pleased Freya brought you over,” said Guy, turning to him with a friendly smile. “We don’t often get to meet her men friends. She likes to keep her life compartmentalized. Still, I expect you know that all too well, since you’re living together.”

What?
Jack’s head snapped up. He tripped over a tussock of grass and nearly fell.

“She was telling me about it this morning.”

This morning?

“She said you didn’t bore her. I must say I was impressed.”

“But—”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not for me to approve or disapprove. In fact, I’m glad she has someone to care for her.”

“Yes . . .” Jack pictured her face when he’d shouted at her last night.

“Someone to stop her doing silly things.”

“Right . . .” Like going on dates with Professor Parkenrider and that little squirt Brett. Like losing hundreds of dollars at poker and shortening people’s trousers.

“She reminds me of those cats who climb out on a limb and can’t get back. You see, I’m not there to rescue her.” Guy’s face was so sad and tender that Jack was moved. To distract himself he pointed at a small enclosure to the side of the chapel and asked, “What’s that?”

“Come along and I’ll show you.”

They passed through a rusty gate and entered an area of rough grass and weeds studded with gravestones. Some were of normal size, lying flush with the ground, but most were upright and unusually small, barely a foot high.

“Are those—children’s?” Jack was shocked. He’d no idea that infant mortality had been as severe as this.

Guy chuckled. “Pets,” he said. “Pets and servants—probably in that order.”

Jack’s head swam as he bent down to peer at the worn lettering. Xeno the tortoise. Echo the parrot. “Mabel Cruttwell 1820–1910, nanny to the Ashleigh Family: In grateful memory of ninety years of faithful service.” Harold the cat. Swithun the butler. An entire row was devoted to dogs: Arthur, Guinevere, Gawain, Lancelot, Morgana, Kay, Merlin, Galahad, Iseult.

“We thought we’d carry on the Ashleigh tradition with this fellow.” Guy waved his stick at Bedivere, who galloped over and cocked his leg on poor Sir Kay. Jack slumped down onto one of the headstones, feeling suddenly light-headed. And something funny had happened to his arm. He’d been aware of a prickle of pain as he’d pushed some weeds away from one of the graves; now he noticed with alarm that a cluster of bumps had formed on his skin. He hoped this wasn’t an English version of poison ivy.

“Don’t worry, it’s only a stinging nettle.” Guy showed him a patch of dark green plants with hairy leaves. “The trick is not to brush past them. If you grasp the leaf firmly”—he demonstrated with forefinger and thumb—“it doesn’t hurt at all. Rather like some women.” He grinned.

“Thanks,” Jack said dryly, rubbing his arm. He pictured Freya alone at the wedding, chin in the air, eyes watchful, alert to any slight.
Oh, Freya . . .
She was so stubborn, so mistrustful. How could she have thought he was “pretending” last night?

“I’d better get a move on,” said Guy. “Annabelle will be flapping. It’s a man’s job to stay out of the way until the last moment, then lend a calming presence, wouldn’t you agree?”

Jack didn’t answer. He sat on top of Nanny Cruttwell, watching a distant car winding its way up the drive. There would be plenty of cars dropping people off and going away again. It shouldn’t be hard to get a ride to the station.

“Well, I’ll see you up at the house. Come along, Bedivere. By the way,” Guy thwacked a bramble into submission. “I don’t wish to be personal, but I do happen to know an excellent cure for a hangover.”

CHAPTER 29

The chapel was filling up. Above the dogged drone of the organ came the rustling, flapping, chattering, cawing sounds of gathering guests: stately great-aunts adorned with brooches big as sheriff’s badges; jolly uncles buttoned tight into the waistcoats of svelter days; hair-tossing young women in skimpy dresses and off-the-shoulder pashminas; guileless-looking toddlers warming up their vocal cords. Jamie was on duty at the door, dashing in striped trousers and black tailcoat, handing out service sheets. At the front of the chapel Reverend Thwacker, an elderly rubicund gnome swamped by his surplice, pottered about the altar ensuring that all was in order, and beamed nearsightedly at the congregation. Roland and Sponge huddled close on wooden Sunday school chairs, observing his every move as if he were the Grand Inquisitor laying out instruments of torture. Roughly every thirty seconds, Sponge’s hand crept to his waistcoat pocket, checking that the ring was still there.

Freya looked at her watch: three minutes to go. In her heart, she had not seriously believed that Jack would stand her up. But he had. Here she was, sitting in the front pew with a ringside view of the event she had dreaded for months. On her right sat Annabelle, a vision in peach silk; on her left, an empty expanse of woodwormy elm planking proclaimed her solitary status and isolated her from a clique of Tash’s Huffington relations, all strangers. Her father was outside, preoccupied with Tash. Apart from Vicky’s family and a few old friends of her father’s, she knew nobody. At her back, she felt the pinpricks of curious eyes.
“Who is that woman in the extraordinary hat?” “That’s the stepsister. All alone, poor thing.”

Freya flared her nostrils and stared straight ahead, as if facing a firing squad. “Land of ho-ope and glory . . .” How depressing this all was: the smell of damp plaster and mildewed hymnals, the chill stealing up her legs from the stone floor, the sheaves of garish gladioli flanking the altar, the artless designs of lambs and crosses and beaming suns hand-stitched onto hassock-covers by the good women of the parish. The organist was now playing a tune she vaguely remembered from a television advertisement for the Renault Revenge. She bent her head to the service sheet. “Jerusalem” was not an obvious choice for a wedding hymn, but at least everyone knew the tune. Hardly anyone in England attended church for religious purposes anymore. Weddings, funerals, christenings, Christmas: these were the occasions that, like dinner-gongs, summoned guests into the house of God for a spot of spiritual sustenance. It was best not to be too inventive with the menu.

His suit still hung in the closet; his shaving kit and toothbrush were in the bathroom: she had checked. But Jack himself had disappeared. Where was he? What if he had gone for good? She clamped her jaw tight. No matter what had or hadn’t happened last night, it was plain selfish of him to sulk when she needed his support.

The organ music broke off. A roar of chatter rose briefly to fill the void, then hushed to an expectant whisper. Roland stood up, his features rigid with bravery. Sponge put his hand once more to his pocket. Reverend Thwacker took his place at the head of the aisle, glasses flashing fiercely in a stray sunbeam. Annabelle slipped a hankie out of her sleeve, preparing for a gush of maternal joy. The organ gave an asthmatic wheeze, gearing itself up for the entrance march. Freya turned her head and caught a distant glimpse of Tash, deceptively virginal in off-the-shoulder ivory, adjusting her floral headdress with the help of Polly (or possibly Lulu). She became vaguely aware of a commotion nearer to hand—the shuffle of people rising to their feet, a murmured tut-tutting, a voice saying “Excuse me, ma’am . . . Thank you, sir.” She whirled around to look. It was Jack.

For a moment she couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked wonderful. His suit was perfection. His shirt was crisp. His tie dazzled. His hair gleamed like old gold. Relief pumped through her; her spirits soared.

“What kept you?” she said.

Before he could answer the organ erupted into the triumphant peals of the Entrance of the Queen of Sheba. There was a rumble as everyone stood up and turned to admire the bride. Freya rose, too, shoulder to shoulder with Jack, inhaling his masculine smell of shaving soap and shirt starch. Her eyes slid sideways to search his face. He smiled his easy smile.

“Great hat.”

“A writer, eh?”

Barry Swindon-Smythe, father of the bridegroom, who had been giving Jack a lecture on Britain’s privatized rail system, and his own pivotal role therein, did not seem impressed. He took a swig of champagne. His rapacious eyes darted about the crowded marquee, as if making a cost/value assessment of everyone and everything in it, and flitted back to Jack. “Should I have heard of you? What name do you write under?”

“My own.”

Barry shook his head. “Sorry. No time to read, myself. My wife’s the intellectual in the family. Always got her nose in some wretched book. Matter of fact, she’s reading something now by one of your compatriots. Got one of those funny American names. Clint or Carter or somesuch.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Carson McGuire?”

“That’s the one. Know him, do you?”

“Sure. I had lunch with him just the other day, at my club in New York.” Jack’s conscience gave him a passing nip.

“Marilyn will be impressed. Let me see if I can find her.”

Jack watched him push through the crowd, sleek and self-important in his fat-cat suit, and decided not to wait. He had absolutely no desire to discuss the genius of Carson McGuire. Having decided to honor his promise to Freya, despite the way she had treated him, he intended to enjoy himself. His hangover had miraculously receded. Sunshine, champagne, and a complacent awareness of his own noble behavior had restored his good humor. He escaped from the muggy warmth and candlewax smell of the marquee and strolled out onto the bright lawn, pausing only to allow a pretty waitress to refill his glass.

So this was an English wedding. He must make some notes. The house rose in front of him, its curlicue gables sharply profiled against a serene blue sky. Guests assembled at the entrance archway to run the gauntlet of the reception line in the hall and emerged, a few yards along, from the French windows of the library, where the wedding gifts were on munificent display. There were flowers everywhere, spouting from urns by the front entrance, tumbling from pots placed by the guy ropes of the marquee, colorfully bunched on the damask-covered tables where, it seemed, lunch would shortly be served. Back home, wedding receptions were more like cocktail parties—a sit-down meal was regarded as a barbaric Northern custom; but as he saw platters of salmon being carried to the marquee Jack felt he could be open-minded on this point.

He began to circle the marquee, a pink-and-white striped affair like an outsize jousting pavilion, eavesdropping on conversations and trying to sniff out the social nuances of the gathering. There were Guy’s academic cronies, distinguished by their creased linen jackets, bold ties, and obsolete hairstyles; locals in formal suits green with age or dresses billowing with cabbage-rose prints; the slicker Swindon-Smythe contingent, equipped with chunky gold jewelry and mobile phones; Roland and Tash’s twentysomething friends with cigarettes poised, tongues and shirt-collars already loosening. Everyone seemed in high good humor, talking uninhibitedly at top volume.

“Absolutely riddled with dry rot . . .”

“. . . bonus last year was seven-and-a-half K.”

“St. Ethelburg’s may be the better school academically, but Nigel and I don’t think they give sufficient consideration to the whole person. Orson’s such a sensitive child.”

“Prada, actually.”

“No, no, you haven’t changed
a bit
. It’s simply that people look so different in hats.”

Ah, the hats. Anybody who thought British women reserved should attend a traditional wedding to appreciate the flamboyance that smoldered beneath that dowdy exterior. Straw with ribbons, silk with buckles, gauze with flowers, velvet with feathers; shocking pink, military scarlet, daffodil yellow; hats shaped like bells, like stovepipes, like fountains and toadstools and flying saucers: they bobbed and fluttered above the crowd, exotic as migrating birds blown off course.