Strangers in a Garden Read online

  And the next exciting event on my calendar, Laura thought, as she went upstairs, is the arrival of my future mother-in-law. Adrian was to meet her at the airport on April 1. Mrs Fry had taken a flat equidistant to Livingstone Hall and Central station. The purpose of her state visit, Laura gathered, was to supervise her son’s preparations for his exams, and to take the train into Edinburgh to shop at Jenners, the exclusive department store. The reason Laura was obliged to glean all this information was that Adrian had been instructed that he could go out with his friends on Friday nights, but otherwise there were to be no distractions from his revision.

  ‘Honestly!’ Laura exploded to the others on the steps. They were now joined quite regularly by Cressida walking La-la. ‘I only used to see him – you know, properly – on Saturday nights. She’s vetoed that and I can’t go round and see him Sundays because he has to have tea with her.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Fiona said, ‘if she’s footing the bill for his education, he’s just got to play ball.’

  ‘But she’ll want to see you,’ Cressida said. ‘Look you over.’

  Cressida was right. The summons came. She was to accompany Adrian to Sunday tea, chez Madame Fry.

  Preparations for the big event were intense. It had been decided, by the Steps Committee, that a demure shirt-dress would be suitable Sunday afternoon attire for Laura.

  Since Elspeth wore one every day to the office, Laura approached her to see where she’d bought them and Elspeth said immediately, ‘Oh, borrow one of mine. Please. I’ve got five.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Laura moaned to the girls, ‘look at the colour. Tobacco brown. I look dull in brown.’

  ‘No,’Lola said, ‘you’ll look sober. Respectable. You can hardly turn up for Sunday tea with your future mother-in-law flaunting around in a scarlet dress.’

  ‘Be interesting,’ Cressida said, ‘seeing how Adrian is with his mother. It’s a fact, isn’t it, that the way a man treats his mother is the way, eventually, he’s going to treat his wife.’

  It was agreed that Laura should carry leather gloves which, on arrival, she would place on the hall table.

  ‘If there is one,’ smiled Marje.

  Cressida insisted on giving Laura a leather handbag. ‘I never use it, Laura. I’d like you to have it.’

  On the appointed day, they hurried upstairs after Sunday lunch (boiled ham and white sauce which Laura was too strung-up to eat) to watch while Dinkie had another stab at a chignon. Laura’s nails had received two coats of clear varnish that morning while Marje took her room-mate’s laundry downstairs to do in the scullery.

  Adrian arrived at a quarter to four in a newly washed and polished car. ‘You look very nice,’ he said, as Laura fiddled with her gloves.

  When they arrived at the apartment, Mrs Fry was in the hall, on the phone. She waved at them to go in. Adrian made tea. Laura buttered scones. It was soothing doing something domestic with him, on such a nerve-wracking occasion.

  After twenty minutes, Mrs Fry appeared in the sitting room. She was a big-boned woman with hockey teacher short hair and very good legs. When she shook hands, Laura felt the woman was going to throw her over her shoulder.

  Mrs Fry sat down and began talking. She told them how tedious it was having to sort out the problems of the younger Army wives. She talked about places Laura had never been to and people Laura had never met.

  Her flight over had been tedious and it was too bad that Imperial Airways was now renamed BOAC, where was the sense in that? Stuart, they were informed, was making good progress in the Navy, had just been promoted but of course his father was disappointed his elder son hadn’t followed him into the Army, into the Regiment. She approved of Livingstone Hall, but her introduction to Logan had been, well, strange.

  ‘He had a sign on his desk. It said, SKI-ING UPHILL? WATCH ME! How ridiculous, surely everyone knows it’s not possible to ski uphill.’

  Throughout this monologue Adrian looked by turns tolerantly amused, and then like someone counting the flowers on the curtains. Laura realised his mind was elsewhere. She was simply astounded by his mother. Such behaviour was not what she was used to. All right, her mother could be infuriatingly vague and her father had tended towards pomposity, but a guest in their home was always made to feel welcome.

  After an hour and a half of being talked at, though totally ignored, Laura was regarding Mrs Fry with thinly disguised venom.

  Get this. I am going to marry your younger son. I shall be the mother of his children. And I shall do everything in my power to keep everyone well away from you.

  When, at last, they were back in the car, Laura said, ‘I don’t think your mother liked me.’

  ‘Oh, she’s always like that. It’s why Stuart cleared off to the Navy, to get away from her. Anyway, we’ve got something to look forward to, soon as the exams are over. The May Ball. I’ve told Ma I’m going and that I’m taking you.’

  But who else, Laura wondered, would Adrian have thought of taking?

  No-one from McAllister’s publicity department was invited to Shona’s wedding. They read about it the following week in the Glasgow Herald.

  ‘McAllister – Hamilton Nuptuals.’

  ‘What’s she got on?’ Jimmy demanded. ‘Looks like net curtains.’

  ‘It’s called a veil,’ Elspeth said. ‘Can you spell veil?’

  ‘And him.’ Jimmy jabbed at the photograph. ‘He looks years older than her. Looks like some old fatty jewboy.’

  ‘It says he’s a distinguished architect,’ Laura said. ‘And he’s been commissioned to do a statue for Liverpool Airport.’

  ‘The Beatles!’ shouted Jimmy. ‘He should do one of the Beatles.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Elspeth said.

  Jimmy mimicked, ‘Don’t be thilly. Those new teeth of yours don’t fit, Elspeth.’

  Elspeth said coldly, ‘Mr Throap wants to thee you. Come along.’

  Laura turned to Dougal. ‘False teeth? Elspeth? But she can’t be more than twenty-three.’

  Dougal lit his tenth Woodbine of the morning and choked his high-tar cough. ‘Oh, that’s real Glasgow. Bad teeth.’

  Bad diet, Laura estimated. Little fruit, no greens, masses of sugary, starchy stuff –

  Jimmy was back. He loitered by Laura’s desk. ‘So, Shona Mercy’s not coming back?’

  ‘No. Hamish knows someone with a yacht. They’re cruising on the Med.’

  ‘So, um, will you be moving to her desk?’

  Laura had already considered this. Shona’s desk was bigger, and had the phone. But Laura had no-one to ring during the day and there was the added disadvantage that she’d be nearer Dougal with his constant moany muttering, ‘I cannae cope.’

  She shook her head at Jimmy who immediately slung himself into Shona’s chair and smirked, ‘I’m the new copywriter. Sproat’s just told me. Got a pound raise.’

  ‘You!’ Laura was outraged. ‘You can’t type.’

  ‘Day release course. Start Monday. Won’t take me long.’

  ‘You can’t write. You can barely speak.’

  ‘Write? What you do is nae writin’.

  Laura glared at him. She’d been quietly proud of her last effort, lyrically capturing the rapture of the May bride.

  She burst out, ‘And you smell!’

  ‘Och aye. I thought you could give me some of that aftershave you flog.’

  Dougal turned round and said dourly, ‘I think you’ll find, Jimmy, you’re supposed to wash first.’

  The May Ball. No one else from Arundell House was going, but they could talk of nothing else. Even Miss May was involved, whispering to Laura on the landing, ‘You’ll be out till the early hours, Miss James, with your young man. I’ll leave some sandwiches for you in the Butler’s Pantry.’

  When Adrian arrived to collect her, there was practically a collective swoon as the girls admired his dinner suit, the black bow tie expertly in place. Fiona was the only one with a camera. It was expensive, and looked complicated, but F
iona said casually she needed it for her job so her, er, boss had bought it.

  Laura and Adrian posed at the bottom of the Arundell House staircase. Adrian had asked her to wear her white dress. She’d accessorised it with Cressida’s long, satin gloves and dancing shoes in silver, called slingbacks. They were new in the shops and had cost 49s 11d.

  The university May Ball was not, in fact, one enormous event but a series of moveable feasts in the larger halls of residence. Adrian and Laura kicked off at St. Anne’s, where the band was fantastic, then looked in at some of the others, where everyone seemed to know Adrian and Laura knew no-one but it didn’t matter, because Adrian looked after her, introduced her, kept his arm protectively round her.

  They ended up, way after midnight, at Livingstone Hall where Adrian had established that the maids would be laying out a good supper. Supper too, turned to be a movable feast because Livingstone House proved so popular there weren’t enough tables, causing a throng of revellers to take their plates to the games room, the hall, or in Adrian’s case, to the top of the stairs.

  Laura, delayed because her stocking suspender had snapped, came up behind him. He was sitting next to a girl Laura had never seen before. They were eating steak and kidney pudding. Laura was never to forget that smell.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Adrian was confiding, in the way you do when pissed, ‘the isolation of being with someone who’s, well, terrific, but who you don’t want because you want someone else. But you don’t know if the someone else wants you.’

  ‘Why don’t you just ask her?’ said the girl.

  ‘Because I’m afraid of the answer.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Laura pushed past. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked up at Adrian. ‘I’m going home. Don’t bother to come with me.’

  Seething, she collected her fur wrap (borrowed from Cressida) and stormed out. Behind her, she heard a clatter of plates and Adrian tearing after her. It was a chill night, but Laura was hot with fury.

  As he caught up with her, she rounded on him. ‘You’ve been lying to me. All this time, you’ve been lying.’

  She was walking so fast, even Adrian had difficulty keeping up with her. ‘Look, Laura. I met her after I met you. She was working in Glasgow. We – we got friendly.’

  That explained his sketchy letters. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Patricia.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Look. You didn’t let me know you were coming. It was a fait accompli. Arundell House, fixed. Your job, fixed. Expectations of me. Everything. I wasn’t going to tell her about you, but she found out. I think from Sven. So she went home to her parents, in Edinburgh.’

  ‘And why didn’t you just tell me I was barking up the wrong tree? Got it all wrong.’

  ‘Your propaganda was so good. You look fantastic. Frankly, she’s not all that pretty – red sort of hair, and freckles – but she is, you know, very nice.’

  ‘And proud. And hurt.’ I know the feeling, Laura thought. She bashed on, ‘So you’ve been seeing her?’

  ‘Well I wasn’t, but she rang me up to wish me happy birthday.’

  ‘When? When do you see her?’

  Adrian sounded utterly miserable. ‘Wednesdays. I used to drive over on Wednesdays. She works at Jenners. The glove department. It’s her half day.’

  Oh really? How very, very interesting.

  Point one, why wasn’t Adrian at his tutorial on a Wednesday?

  Two. Petrol. It was an hour’s drive to Edinburgh. He had never, ever taken her out midweek.

  Three. Jenners. Adrian had reported that Mrs Fry had, in barely six weeks, spent an eyewatering £750 in Jenners. £750! Laura didn’t earn that in a year. And had Adrian introduced his mother to Patricia? Was that the reason that Mrs Fry had regarded her, Laura, like the scabby pair of shoes left over at the end of a jumble sale?

  As they turned into Arundell Terrace, Laura said, ‘What are you going to do, Adrian?’

  He gave a long, shuddering sigh. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  Laura knew. As they approached Arundell House she took her keys from her bag. When they reached the steps, she got her arm right back and hit him viciously across the face. He fell backwards down the steps.

  She left him there, and went inside.

  Chapter Six

  ‘I saw your boyfriend this morning.’ Triumphantly, Fiona siezed the jug and poured the last of the gravy over her Yorkshire pudding.

  ‘If you mean Adrian, he is no longer my boyfriend,’ Laura said coldly.

  The others exchanged glances. They knew, of course. Try keeping anything quiet at Arundell House. And they had heard her sobbing, all day Saturday.

  ‘Well that explains it,’ Fiona rattled on. ‘He was in Kelvingrove Gardens. He was holding hands with Patricia Souter.’

  She pronounced it, correctly, to rhyme with hooter. In a childish way, this did a little to cheer Laura up.

  ‘How do you know her, Fiona?’

  ‘We were at school together. In Edinburgh.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  Fiona gave it some thought. ‘Not academic. But very good at golf.’ She stood up. ‘Well, it’s hail and farewell, girls. I’m leaving this afternoon. I’ve been chucked out. I was twenty five yesterday and you can’t stay at Arundell after twenty five.’

  There was a guilty silence. No one had realised it was Fiona’s birthday.

  They didn’t need to ask where Fiona was going, but Lol couldn’t resist, ‘Getting your own flat at last?’

  ‘No. My boss is putting me up.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Don’t worry about Patricia. She’s not half as pretty as you. Adrian will come back, I’m sure.’

  He won’t, Laura thought, as she waited to cross the Great Western Road that afternoon. He’s flying off to Cyprus tomorrow with his odious mother and he won’t be back until the autumn. He’ll be spending the vac swimming and eating fresh grilled fish beside hillsides scented with thyme. He was looking forward to it. Who wouldn’t?

  The social map was changing. Shona was honeymooning on the Med. Sven was spending the summer in some log cabin on an island off Stockholm. Kel had done his Finals and, after what Adrian described as a riotous leaving bash at the Byres Road pub, he had taken up his job as a junior metallurgist for a Rhodesian mining company.

  In the last conversation she’d had with him, the last time Laura had had tea at Livingstone House, he said, ‘I’ll have to find myself a wife out there. One of the secretaries, or a nurse. Someone local, you know, who knows the ropes.’

  ‘Why do you need to get married?’

  ‘Because single guys get put in a hostel and have to eat at the Mine Club. But if you’re married, you get a house, and bougainvillia, and a banana hedge and lemon trees.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’Laura laughed. ‘Can I come?’

  ‘What are you two whispering about?’ Adrian had brought over a plateful of sausage rolls.

  Later, Laura said pointedly to Adrian, ‘Kel wants to get married.’

  ‘Really?’ Adrian had said. ‘He must be mad.’

  Now, Laura got herself dangerously across the Great Western Road and entered the long drive of the party house.

  ‘You must come round,’ Cressida had insisted, when she heard the news about Adrian. ‘I’ll look after you. I’ll make a nice supper. We can eat in the garden, have some wine.’

  Eating in the garden’s certainly not an option, Laura thought, gazing up at a leaden sky. She was glad she’d put on her jeans.

  Abruptly, one of the upstairs front windows of the party house was thrown open. Cressida, with wild hair and wild eyes was screaming, ‘I won’t stand for it! I won’t. I won’t. I hate this place, I hate everything –‘

  And next, out of the window came hurtling a cold chicken, followed, missile-like, by Scotch eggs, tomatoes, a fruit cake and a cucumber. Finally, a bottle of wine smashed down onto the gravel. Laura turned to go, but then Cressida came running out of the house and jumped into the car, with Lala
. Waiting for Cressida’s usual wave, Laura’s heart suddenly started jumping about.

  Cressida was driving the car straight at her.

  Laura dived sideways. Just in time, as Cressida careered down the drive and roared off down the Great Western Road.

  Tom came rushing up. ‘Christ! Are you all right?’

  Laura sat up. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Your head’s bleeding a bit. Come on, let’s get you fixed up.’

  In the sitting room, he lay Laura on a huge squashy sofa, and fetched a first aid kit, along with two glasses of brandy.

  ‘Cress does this occasionally. Goes bonkers.’

  ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She’ll have gone to Findhorn. She’s convinced this is where she’ll find the real life. It was started by a bloke who got fired from his job because the boss was convinced he was secretly constructing a UFO landing site. He started this community by a rubbish dump in Moray. They grow all their own food but it’s sown or planted, like, according to phases of the moon. And when they harvest say, a radish, forget We Plough the Fields and Scatter – what they do is a lot of chanting.’

  ‘Sounds potty.’

  ‘Cressida is potty.’

  ‘What exactly does she do?’

  ‘Do! Look, she doesn’t have a job, she has enthusiasms. Art history, making candles, weaving, painting murals, making raffia jewellery, papier mâché, last thing, she was hanging out at the theatre dabbling away at costume design.’

  ‘How did you meet her? In LA?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a house, in Mayfair. She was living down the road, in a grotty flat.’

  ‘Just a minute. A grotty flat – in Mayfair?’

  ‘They exist. Cress cottoned on that the Church Commissioners, they own a lot of property, have a duty to house the poor of the parish.’

  ‘But Cressida couldn’t have been poor.’

  Lol had delved into this with Cressida, and established that her father was a movie producer. A mogul, Lol told the girls, impressed because they didn’t have much clue what a mogul was.

  ‘Let’s face it,’Marje said, ‘no one comes along and says, How do you do, I’m a mogul.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Tom was dabbing her forehead with Dettol.