Something Blue Page 11

  Photographs?

  ‘And the close-ups of the happy couple, too – though I do think somebody should have had a word with Cameron about his choice of waistcoat. There was a splendid group taken by the fountain …’

  Declan closed his eyes. He hardly ever did weddings, it was just too painful, but now and again he’d take a booking if he really needed the money. He’d been offered this one over a lunchtime drink by a journalist at the Gazette whose girlfriend was a friend of the bride.

  ‘Of course, this wedding will be a much grander affair than poor Dolly’s.’

  At first Declan had turned it down flat, but the very next day his van had hit a fucking great pothole when he’d swerved to avoid a rabbit in the lane on his way back from a dawn foray into the mountains. There’d been a hell of a crash, and for a while he’d just sat there gripping the steering wheel, sweating and shaking as the memories engulfed him.

  ‘There’ll be two hundred and fifty at the reception …’

  After a while he’d wiped his face on his coat sleeve and driven on, but the engine was making a hell of a racket and he knew he’d done some serious damage. Next morning he’d driven very slowly to a garage on the main road a few miles from the cottage, where he’d learnt that the roll bar was badly bent and it would cost a couple of hundred euros to fix it.

  ‘… and six page boys in shades of purple and lavender. I always say there’s nothing like …’

  The mechanic had grinned and kicked the side of the van when he’d finally crawled out from underneath the chassis. If he was Declan he’d jack this heap of junk in, so he would. Would he not be better off with something that would pull a few girls, now?

  ‘… mauve satin knickerbockers …’

  Declan stiffened, and thrust a clenched fist deep in his jacket pocket. He’d bought the van the week before he met Maura, and they’d gone everywhere in it together; shopping, picnics, holidays. Jesus, they’d toured Connemara in it on their honeymoon. Sometimes, he thought he could still smell the faintest hint of her perfume when he was driving. In fact, he always thought if it had been the van he’d been driving that day …

  Brusquely he’d told the bloke to just get it fixed, and strode away. He was almost home when he realised he didn’t have a spare couple of hundred euros. He was on the phone to his journalist mate and getting a phone number for the bride’s parents the minute he got inside the cottage.

  ‘… to match the bridesmaids’ sashes …’

  The wedding really hadn’t been that bad. He had blocked out all feeling and concentrated on doing the job. The sky had been heavily overcast, and he’d had his work cut out sorting the lighting and finding the best shooting angles. But the young couple had been great, and if it hadn’t been for the nature of the occasion he would have accepted the drinks that friendly guests kept pressing on him and joined in the spirit of things instead of remaining silent and aloof as he went about his work.

  ‘… and the bridegroom is something very important in the City. Now, September the twenty-fifth is the date I’ve chosen. Do tell me you’ll be free then, Mr O’Halloran!’

  He was about to refuse when he thought of the negatives of the sheep’s eye hanging in the darkroom. He was already pretty sure they were good; but he knew too that the pin-sharp definition essential in such detailed work – in essence a series of exquisitely abstract miniatures – would have been even crisper if he’d been using one of the ruthlessly effective but prohibitively expensive new Hasselblads.

  ‘Mr O’Halloran?’

  If McGinty wanted him to work that day, he’d plead an important prior engagement. He never had anything but work to do on a Saturday. McGinty couldn’t exactly complain – it would be the first time he would have been unavailable in all his years at the paper. ‘Yes. Yes, I’ll be free then, Mrs …?’

  He winced, and held the receiver away from his ear as she squealed with girlish delight.

  ‘With family groups posed along lines similarly formal lines. And, of course, several portraits of myself?‘

  Declan located the matches at last among the jumble of lens caps and marker pens in his pocket.

  ‘… thigh-length lime-green brocade, though I haven’t finally decided on my jewellery yet …’

  He laid the receiver down on the table and felt his way across the room in the darkness towards the round table where the oil lamp stood. Lifting off the glass bowl of the oil lamp – it was engraved with lilies, their once golden outlines now stained and tarnished with age and neglect. – he lit a match and touched it to the wick. The flame flared a brief, startling blue for a moment, then settled to a steady yellow glow. He replaced the bowl, found a discarded bill and a stub of pencil amid the detritus of newspapers and dirty dishes and returned to the phone. Shrill squawks were still issuing from the receiver as he picked it up.

  ‘… elbow-length gloves. Suede, I think, if I can find a tangerine bright enough. Hello …?’ Her tone sharpened; the cut-glass vowels flattened slightly, allowing a Northern Irish accent to slip through momentarily. ‘Mr O’Halloran?’

  He repressed a grin. ‘Hello, Mrs –? I’m sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t catch your –’

  ‘O’Shaughnessy. But do call me Tina.’ The sharpness was coated with honey once more. ‘Now. The wedding is at two thirty at St Aloysius, an absolutely charming little church in the countryside near Fergustown, followed by the reception at the Grand Hotel. I expect you’ve read about it in the nationals. It was featured very prominently on Holiday! on TV recently. It’s frightfully old, and the chef trained in Paris at the George Cinq, so he’s obviously the absolute top of his tree. As I said to poor Dolly, where else could one possibly have one’s reception?’

  Declan scribbled down the information. He spent the next few minutes thinking about the various papers he was planning to experiment with when he printed the sheep’s eye miniatures while she told him a lot more about the wonders of the cuisine at the Grand Hotel.

  ‘And I’m planning to ask chef to devise a special dessert just for me. I mean for Lucy and dear Sam.’ She sighed. ‘Well, I’d love to go on chatting to you, Mr O’Halloran, but if you could see the list I have in front of me! I’m about to ring the florist to tell her all about a delightful new rose I saw on Gardening Gems last night – it would be perfect for the buttonholes.’

  Declan blinked. ‘But won’t the shop be closed at this time of night?’

  ‘Well, naturally. But fortunately I’ve just found her home number in the directory. I’ll be in touch again shortly, Mr O’Halloran, to discuss things in more detail – and let me just say I look forward to the superb record I just know you’re going to make of what’s going to be a simply wonderful, wonderful day.’

  As Declan headed for the kitchen to put the kettle on, desperate for coffee, tea, cocoa – Jesus, anything – he glanced out of the window. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear now, a gentle ultramarine shading to a deep purple over the distant mountains.

  Purple.

  Page boys.

  Satin knickerbockers.

  Holy Mother of God. Despite himself, he grinned. His attention was soon diverted by a new patch of fungus pushing through the crack in the plastered wall, and he moved away from the window without noticing that the moon had unfettered herself from the dark embrace of the apple tree and was sailing once more free and clear across the unclouded sky.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Anna set her glass of wine down carefully on the coffee table, kicked off her sandals, chucked her bag on the sofa and threw herself down after it with a sigh of relief. Ten past six. Great, she had nearly an hour before Jack arrived; time to put her feet up for five minutes before she made herself presentable and got supper started. She closed her eyes and rested her aching head against a cushion. Just for a moment she allowed herself to imagine how delightful it would to arrive home just once and find Jack there before her, newly showered and freshly shaved, smelling deliciously of some exotic aftershave. She’d never liked t
o tell him but she actually couldn’t stand whatever it was he wore. She bet sodding Ruth bought him a bloody great keg of it every Christmas and forced him to use it …

  Anyway, he’d be standing in the kitchen with a welcoming smile, and delicious smells would be wafting from the oven behind him. He’d have made some sort of chicken dish, maybe baked tandoori-style in one of those Indian clay whatsits. With all the trimmings, of course, and there’d be some chilled beers to go with it … Yes, and pigs might fly. She couldn’t recall Jack as much as making a piece of toast for her, now she came to think of it.

  This wouldn’t do – what on earth was the matter with her? She took a sip of wine, drew her feet up and massaged her left heel where the strap of her sandal had been rubbing all day. Anyone would have thought she wasn’t desperate to see him. And she was, she really, really was – it was an age since last Thursday. It was just that today had been a bugger of a day, worse even than Mondays usually were. Both Trish and Susie had called in sick first thing, ostensibly with flu but in fact because they were behind with their graphics coursework. She’d overheard them discussing it on Saturday – they only had one day left to complete a 3D scale model of the Pompidou Centre which they were supposed to have spent the last three months toiling over, but hadn’t even yet begun.

  Anna was secretly sympathetic to their plight, and accepted their excuses graciously. She felt a lot less understanding when the impatient lunchtime queue reached almost as far as the entrance, and there was nobody to keep the coffee machines going or make extra baguettes. She and Roxy had been recovering with a cup of tea and the remains of the cauliflower and walnut quiche when the first of the two school parties Alastair had forgotten to inform her were coming arrived. They made a beeline straight for the coffee bar like junkies drawn to an opium den and immediately complained about the shortage of orange juice and brownies. She’d managed to quell the incipient riot by whipping up a triple batch of chocolate shortbread, but by the time she’d finished she was exhausted and still had the teatime rush to come.

  Ten minutes before closing time she’d been putting the batter she’d made for tomorrow’s drop scones in the fridge when she became aware of a steady dripping coming from the freezer, which had become a near-solid block of ice. Since Anna never used frozen products in any of the dishes this wasn’t a problem, but she knew she was in for trouble if she ignored the warning signs, which meant, sod it, that she’d have to switch the entire fridge off on Saturday when she shut up shop and spend Sunday – Sunday, for God’s sake! – at work, defrosting and cleaning.

  To top it all, Alastair had waylaid her as she was leaving and, far from apologising for forgetting to tell her about the school parties, had pressingly reprised his regular Monday request that she sherioushly conshider opening on Sundays. Forbearing to take Roxy’s whispered advice to tell him to stuff his bleeding request where the sun don’t shine, she’d promised to think about it and stalked off, trying not to limp on account of her painful heel.

  She’d felt too exhausted even to contemplate walking home. While she was standing at the bus stop, a rack of magazines on a nearby newsstand caught her eye. Maybe she’d splash out on the current edition of Hello! She deserved it after the day she’d had. No bus was in sight. Hurrying over, she was about to hand over the money to the dour old man in charge when she spotted a glossy magazine on the end of the row. On the cover was a girl she had to assume to be a bride, since the magazine bore the title in giant embossed gold letters. Without this clue, one might have been forgiven for assuming the creature to be a homeless drug addict, since she was stick thin, nearly bald and wearing glistening black lipstick which rendered her pallid skin even paler. The wedding gown seemed to consist of a couple of paper tissues held together by safety pins. Anna grinned, imagining Tina’s reaction should Lucy discover a rebellious streak and hold out for what the caption proclaimed to be ‘The Now Look!’ Below the caption was a list of articles - all surprisingly traditional, considering the cover. She was smirking at ‘Make-up Magic for your Special Day’, and ‘Twenty Top Tips for Honeymoon Happiness’ when her smile faded. At the bottom of the list, in slightly smaller type beside the bride’s bright green Doc Martens, it read ‘So You’re the Mother of the Groom’. Anna’s jaw dropped.

  She was about to be the Mother of a Groom!

  They were talking about her!

  She shivered, and pulled her denim jacket tightly round her. It wasn’t fair. She just wasn’t ready for this. ‘Mother’ was fine. But ‘Mother of the Groom’? It had a hideously formal sound, a smell of violets and dusty lace hung about it. Quite possibly more than a whiff of incontinence pads too.

  She was about to turn away when the model on the cover caught her eye again. Wait a minute – maybe things weren’t as bad as she thought. Maybe people still stuck to the same old-fashioned titles where weddings were concerned – Lucy was having a matron of honour, for God’s sake – but that didn’t mean they were still expected to fulfill old-fashioned stereotypes. Look at the ‘bride’ on the cover – hell, she was so ‘Now!’ she was practically ‘Tomorrow!’ Alastair would probably ‘fanshy her somefing crool’. She’d buy it and pick up a few tips on the latest trends. Maybe there’d be something delightfully Biba-esque recommended for M’s of the G … As she dug into her bag to find her purse her bus heaved into view. The queue for it was now depressingly long.

  She had to stand nearly all the way home, hemmed in by a press of shoppers and their outsize bags. She had just managed to extract her copy of Bride from her bag and was about to open it when she caught sight of a pair of rheumy eyes boring into her from behind a pair of rakishly diamantéed spectacles. Dear God, it was the old crone she’d tried to hurry the day she bought her scarlet underwear – worse, she was determinedly elbowing her way towards her.

  Mercifully, the bus was spluttering to a halt. Muttering apologies, Anna pushed her way to the exit and jumped off, not looking back as she crossed the road and hurried along the Steine and up the hill. She didn’t stop until she’d closed the front door behind her.

  Anna sighed. A perfect end to a perfect day. Except it wasn’t the end of the day – Jack was coming, and the best was ahead. She smiled, and took a sip of wine. She didn’t really mind cooking; she’d just had a lousy day, that was all. She’d have a quick glance at Bride while she finished her drink, then make a start. Taking the magazine from her bag, she began to leaf through it. The first thing that struck her was the hedonism of the advertisements: staggeringly beautiful girls wearing wedding dresses so fragile, so exquisite, it was impossible to imagine them being worn outside the photographer’s studio, let alone surviving the ceremony (potential hazard: tiny bridesmaids stepping on train), the reception (potential hazard: new husband’s ex-girlfriend accidentally spilling large glass of red wine down front), or quickie with new husband in hotel broom cupboard before changing to leave for honeymoon (potential hazards: too numerous not here to mention). Then there were the veils, delicate wisps of gossamer, pearl studded, flower embroidered, and one with pale pink sequins tossed seemingly at random over the transparent gauze, and so beautiful it brought tears to Anna’s eyes.

  She turned the page to an article on bridal tiaras and gazed at them for a while, trying to decide which one she’d have if her fairy godmother absolutely forced her to choose, finally settling on a diadem with diamonds in the shape of wild roses mounted on gold and set in silver. Hold on a minute, though – apparently the flowers were set en tremblant, and would be animated by the slightest movement of the head. What would happen if she nodded too vigorously when the registrar asked if she ‘took this man’? Or laughed too hard at some risqué joke in the best man’s speech? Actually, she was pretty sold on the pierced gold tiara with brilliant-cut diamonds in the form of twining lilies to which clung moonstone drops, now she came to think about it …

  This was ridiculous – she didn’t have time for such fantasies. She’d just take a quick peek at the gear for mothers-of-the-groom,
then she’d get on. Taking a fortifying sip of wine, she leafed past the magic make-up tips and honeymoon-happiness advice, and almost choked on her wine. Instead of the trendy, slightly kooky look she’d been hoping for, she was faced by two sombre-looking matrons. One was draped in mushroom calf-length pleats topped by a jacket with outsize lapels, and seemed to be wearing a matching standard lampshade on her head. The second had calf-length pleats in navy, topped by a jacket that featured a collar that was presumably meant to convey an insouciant nautical air but looked worryingly like a bib that had been attached by a social-services carer to catch embarrassing geriatric dribbles. Her hat was a navy and white sailor-type cap tilted at what was no doubt intended to be a jaunty angle but merely looked as if it had slipped from the wearer’s tremulous grasp when she put it on. Both women carried immaculate white gloves and little clutch bags in – predictably – mushroom and navy.

  Why was the cover so way-out if the contents were so bloody conservative? Come to think of it, the brides’ dresses, lovely as they were, were as traditional as confetti and choir boys, not a paper handkerchief or safety pin in sight. None of the articles sounded exactly ground-breaking – unless ‘magic make-up tips’ gave hints on how to achieve the Goth Look on your special day, and ‘honeymoon happiness’ gave tips on making love in a diving suit while swinging from the hotel chandelier. She checked. They didn’t. She flipped back to the cover again. And noticed for the first time the caption below the bride’s other Doc Martened foot: ‘Winner of Last Month’s Fashion Students’ Competition’. She thought of Susie and Trish’s sometimes alarming outfits. That explained it, then.

  With a sigh, she drank the rest of her wine and, like someone probing an aching tooth with her tongue just to make sure it really was agony, examined the mothers-of-the-groom outfits again. They still looked just as unappetising; her grandmother wouldn’t be seen dead in these clothes. If she was alive, that is. Anna was about to chuck the magazine in the wastepaper basket when she noticed the article at the bottom of the page. ‘Make Him Proud to Introduce His Mother’. She didn’t need to read rubbish like that. Though what was that bit about a total skincare programme? She had to admit, her beauty regime really was pretty slapdash … She read on. Oh dear, it was true, her nails were hideously neglected, and she was going to have to shake hands with all Lucy’s relatives … The ‘before’ and ‘after’ the ‘Special Low-Fat Diet’ photos certainly did make you think. She took another look at the models sporting the M-of-the-G fashions. They were slim, with glowing skin and immaculate hair. She had to admit they seemed pretty damn soignée, even if they were looking daggers at each other. You could bet your life Sam would be proud of them …