The Hanging in the Hotel (37 page)

Carole thought of her handsome civil service pension and her carefully squirrelled savings. ‘I’d be very happy to help out if—’

‘Not necessary, Mother. Honestly. We don’t have a problem with it. A lot of our contemporaries pay for their own weddings. It’s different if you marry straight out of
university, when you have no money at all . . .’

‘Not to mention a huge student loan these days,’ Gaby added.

‘Right. In those circumstances you expect the parents to stump up, but Gaby and I are . . . well, both healthily established in our careers, so it makes sense for us to foot the
bills.’

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s fine,’ said Carole, again with more conviction than she felt.

‘And,’ her son continued, ‘on the “he who pays the piper” principle, that will also mean we can conduct the wedding in exactly the way we think fit.’

He pronounced this with an almost wolfish satisfaction, which again set alarm bells ringing for Carole. Surely they weren’t going to go for some ‘alternative’ style of wedding?
Not exchanges of vows they had written specially for the occasion, or readings from
The Road Less Travelled
or
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
, or crowning each other with garlands
of wild flowers? None of that sounded terribly likely from the Stephen she knew, but Carole was coming to realize increasingly how little of her son she did know.

‘And what,’ she asked tentatively, ‘do you “think fit”?’

‘Oh, nothing outrageous,’ he replied, to her considerable relief. ‘Traditional, white church job, that’s what we’re after.’ Seeing his fiancée’s
wry grimace, he went on. ‘No, Gaby, if we’re going to do it, we’ll do it properly. A big number. Invite everyone we know.’

The girl looked almost pleadingly at Carole. ‘A large part of me would just like to dash off to a registry office and get the deed done on the quiet.’

‘No way. It’s not as if we’re ashamed of each other.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then let’s let everyone know about it. I think the most important bit of the wedding service is that “before this congregation” bit – though no doubt they’ve
screwed that up too in the Modern English version of the service.’

Carole wasn’t enough of an expert on the liturgy to pass comment. Gaby still looked dubious. Though she worked in the flamboyant world of a theatrical agency, there was a reclusive quality
about the girl, an unwillingness to be put into any kind of limelight. And that tendency seemed to strengthen as the reality of the wedding approached. She jutted out her lower lip. ‘I
don’t know. I think the playwright Ian Hay probably got it right when he described marriage as “a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention”.’

Stephen chuckled. ‘It’ll be all right, love. I want to show you off. I want everyone to know that I’m marrying the most wonderful woman in the world.’

Carole lowered her eyes in embarrassment. This seemed a rather effusive statement from a member of the Seddon family. The thought seemed to cause further disquiet to Gaby too.

But it enabled Stephen to move on to what was clearly another bone of contention for the engaged couple. ‘Which is why, Gaby, I think we really have got to put the announcement in the
paper.’

‘I honestly don’t think that’s necessary, Steve.’ Carole had never heard her son called ‘Steve’ by anyone but Gaby; even his school friends had stuck to the
rather sedate ‘Stephen’.

‘We’ve told all our friends,’ Gaby went on. ‘Everyone who needs to know already knows.’

‘But somehow the engagement doesn’t really seem proper unless there’s been an announcement in
The Times
and the
Telegraph
.’

Carole sympathized completely with her son’s response. There was a right way of doing these things. ‘I agree. Really, Gaby, you’ll be amazed by the reaction you get to an
official engagement announcement. People you knew as a child, school friends, people you’ve completely forgotten about – they’ll all write and congratulate you.’

Gaby grimaced without enthusiasm. ‘I’m not sure that I want that. People coming out of the woodwork . . .’ The idea troubled her for a moment, then she moved on in a lighter
vein. ‘Anyway, from what friends of mine have told me, newspaper announcements also mean your parents get inundated with flyers from wedding caterers, wedding video companies, wedding
insurance brokers . . . I can do without all that.’

‘I still think we should do it,’ said Stephen, with a dogged truculence that Carole remembered well from his childhood.

‘All right, we’ll talk about it again. Not now.’

Gaby spoke with a surprising firmness, which had the instant effect of making Stephen change the subject.

‘Incidentally, Mother, have you talked to Dad?’

After another little internal wince, Carole replied, ‘Well, I spoke to him soon after you announced your engagement.’

‘But not since then?’

‘No.’

‘You said you were going to.’

The reproach in Stephen’s voice put Carole instantly on the defensive. ‘Yes, but I didn’t say when.’

‘No, but you must.’

‘I will.’

‘It’s very important that you and Dad are relaxed with each other at the wedding.’

‘I can assure you,’ said Carole with some asperity, ‘that your father and I will be as relaxed as it is possible for us to be. But neither of us is about to pretend that the
divorce didn’t happen.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just thinking, the more contact you’ve had before the event, the easier it will be for you.’

‘That, Stephen, is a matter of opinion.’

‘But you will try.’

‘Of course I’ll try!’ Carole was surprised at how close she had been to putting a ‘bloody’ in her reply.

‘I spoke to him a couple of days ago, and said that you’d be ringing him soon.’

‘And I’m sure I will. But I’ll do it without prompting from you, Stephen.’

‘OK, fine.’

The spectre of David loomed closer in Carole’s consciousness, and it was a troubling presence. There was a lot about the whole wedding business that troubled her. Not that her son was
marrying Gaby Martin – that seemed a piece of unqualified good news – but the attendant details that this basic fact gave rise to. A reconciliation – at whatever level –
with David was the most worrying of these. And now it had been joined by the fact that the wedding was to take place on Carole’s home patch. She knew she should be pleased and flattered by
the news, but all it had done was to raise her anxiety. In spite of her mental strictures about Gaby’s mother’s response to the idea of organizing a wedding, Carole didn’t want to
find herself forced into too much responsibility for the event.

As these two worries jostled for prominence, a third, which had been lurking in Carole’s unconscious, rose to join them – the prospect of meeting Gaby’s parents. Carole had the
social skills of any middle-aged woman who’d been brought up in the right middle-class way, so she was not going to disgrace herself, but the mere thought of the encounter disturbed her. It
was fear of the unknown. These two people were about to become inextricably involved with her, and that knowledge brought to Carole Seddon the familiar terror of losing control of her carefully
circumscribed existence. In her Fethering retirement she had simplified everything – she had her comfortable Home Office pension, High Tor all paid for, her Labrador Gulliver to prevent her
from looking like a lonely single woman. She resented anything that threatened to recomplicate her life.

As if reading her thoughts, Gaby said, ‘And we really must fix a date for you to meet up with my mum and dad.’

‘Yes,’ Carole agreed, envying the ease of that ‘mum’. Without total honesty, she went on, ‘I’m really looking forward to that.’

‘I’ll ring them this evening and try to sort something out. Are weekends best for you, or would a weekday be as good?’

‘It doesn’t make a lot of difference,’ replied Carole, suddenly overwhelmed by the bleakness of her social calendar.

‘I’ll get back to you when I’ve talked to them.’

‘Fine.’ Everything seemed to be ‘fine’ that lunch-time, Carole thought wryly. At least, everyone kept saying everything was fine.

‘We’re going to have to move soon,’ Stephen announced, looking at his watch. ‘Want to look at some churches.’

‘I thought you’d decided that you were going to get married in Fethering.’

‘
Near
Fethering. If there’s a prettier church in one of the other local villages, then we’ll go for that. Since Gaby isn’t a resident . . .’

‘And since neither of us has a shred of religion,’ his fiancée contributed, anticipating his thought.

‘. . . we may as well make our choice on purely aesthetic grounds.’

Gaby’s face took on an expression of mock-guilt. ‘And the only person who’ll be offended by that will be my grandmother. Still carrying a very large candle for the Catholic
Church, I’m afraid,
Grand’mère
. Still, she lives in France, and I think she’ll be too frail to make it to the wedding – so, as Steve says, we’ll just go
for the prettiest church we can find.’

‘Yes, well, fine.’ Though Carole had no more religious feeling than they did, she had found her son’s words a little offensive. Without buying into the belief side of the
church, she felt there were still certain social niceties that should be respected.

She reached for her handbag. ‘I’ll settle up.’

‘I’ll get it, Mother.’

‘No, my treat. My patch. My idea to meet here.’

‘I won’t hear of it.’

And he wouldn’t. Before Carole had time for further remonstration, Stephen was up at the bar, wallet at the ready.

Gaby eased her body against the hard back of the settle in their alcove, wincing as she did so.

‘You all right?’

‘Getting a bit of pain from my back.’

‘Have you had it looked at?’

‘No, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. Just tension.’

‘Worried about the huge step you’re taking in getting married?’

It was an atypically direct question for Carole, but Gaby just laughed it off. ‘No, a client at work’s giving us a hard time. Actor who’s just hit the big time – or may
have hit the big time. He keeps talking about moving on to another agency, and my boss is on my case all the time, trying to make sure I don’t allow that to happen.’ She grinned weakly.
‘Usual stuff.’

Carole wasn’t entirely convinced by the answer. She thought her own diagnosis might be nearer the truth. Suddenly she noticed how pale and stressed Gaby looked, how different from the
vivacious young woman she had first met only a few months previously at the Hopwicke Country House Hotel. Though her body retained its plumpness, Gaby’s face seemed to have thinned. There
were deep hollows under her eyes and the tight blonde curls had lost their lustre.

‘How long has the back been bad?’

Gaby shrugged, a movement which again caused her to wince. ‘Few weeks.’

‘Doesn’t Stephen think you should see someone?’

‘I haven’t told him it’s hurting. I have to be strong for him.’

Carole hardly had time to register the strangeness of this remark before Gaby, almost childlike in her pleading dependency, asked, ‘Why? You don’t know a good back person, do you?
Because we are going to be down here for a few days.’

‘Well . . .’ Carole Seddon couldn’t quite keep the scepticism out of her tone as she replied, ‘I know someone who does some
healing
.’

‘No, she hasn’t called me,’ said Jude.

‘Oh, well, probably the back got better of its own accord. As backs do.’

Jude instantly picked up the implication of the last words – that all back pain was psychosomatic, and didn’t affect people who had a proper control over their emotions. As Carole
had. She smiled. ‘A pain may have its origin in the head, but that doesn’t mean the bit where it manifests itself hurts any the less.’

There was a predictable, ‘Huh.’

‘Don’t worry, Carole. I’m not about to go into a riff on holistic medicine. I’m just saying that the physical and the mental are deeply interconnected.’

Jude’s neighbour sniffed. It still sounded like mumbo-jumbo to her, and she devoutly hoped she would always continue to think of it as mumbo-jumbo. Carole Seddon had been brought up to
consider the physical and the mental as totally separate, and the idea of breaking down the barrier between them she found positively frightening. Unwelcome thoughts and emotions were hard enough
to control as it was, without suddenly changing the traditional rules that kept them in their proper place.

They were sitting in the front room of Jude’s house, Woodside Cottage. The space was cluttered with ‘things’ which their owner had accumulated over many years. Very few of them
had any practical use. There were ornaments, shells, bottles, drapes, chains, bangles, faded photographs in frames. Each ‘thing’ represented a memory for Jude, of a time of her life, of
a friend or a lover. She could have told visitors the history of each, but that was not why she had them on display. They were private aides-memoires, and in fact she was rarely asked about them.
People who came to Woodside Cottage seemed to accept the clutter, as just another manifestation of its owner’s personality. And they were always more interested in telling Jude about their
lives than in asking about hers.

Even Carole had got used to the clutter, and Carole was distrustful of ‘things’ – particularly ‘things’ that brought memories with them. She tried to exclude such
‘things’ completely from High Tor, hoping to keep the lid tightly closed on most of her past life.

The windows of Woodside Cottage were open that morning, and the warm June air presaged another hot summer. An ‘unnaturally’ hot summer, the Fethering locals would say darkly, before
moving on to lugubrious talk of ‘climate change’ and its inevitable corollary of a man-created Armageddon. But that day there was still sufficient movement in the air to set the bamboo
wind chimes tinkling. Not for the first time, Carole wondered why, though she’d have despised the sound anywhere else, she didn’t find the wood-chink noise irritating in Woodside
Cottage.

Jude was one of those people who carried with her a unique personal environment. Outwardly, she was a plump woman in her fifties with blonde hair gathered up into a gravity-defying structure on
top of her head, but an inward serenity set her apart from other women of her age. Though her personal life had not been without its passions and disappointments, she emanated calm to everyone with
whom she came in contact. It was not an effect at which she worked, it was instinctive. When they first met, Carole had felt jealous of this quality in her neighbour, but that jealousy had given
way over time to a wistfulness, a recognition of how different their personalities were. For Carole, all emotional responses were hard work, the road to them fraught with misgivings and potential
disasters. In low moods, she sometimes feared the only spontaneous instinct she had was for prejudice.