Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

28. Before

Before

The society wedding everyone has been discussing for months takes place on Bobby’s third birthday. While I am planning a small picnic beneath the oak tree for our family, an army of vans are unloading their contents at Meadowlands.

There is a running commentary on the decadence unfolding, a narrative that is mostly bitter since none of the villagers have been invited. How wasteful and extravagant are the hothouse flowers—rare blue orchids, first reported by the cleaning lady, and denigrated at length in the village shop. Twenty-four cases of champagne unloaded by the gardener, something French-sounding, he’d said, he couldn’t remember what. The marquees—not one, but two—positioned so they have a perfect view of the lake, easily seen from the road. These tents are quite something, I am told. Even Helen, who knows better than most how painful the subject matter, how thin the ice upon which we skate, cannot resist elaborating.

“They’ve covered them with strings of colored lights. Stunning—like something out of Arabian Nights ,” she says.

My heart does beat a little faster then.

Some of the villagers are employed in the run-up to the wedding—extra cleaners, gardeners, laundry maids—and now there is a deluge of detail. Three hundred guests invited, Hollywood stars rubbing shoulders with English aristocracy, novelists, musicians, and politicians. There is rumor of Elizabeth Taylor and Alec Guinness, Doris Lessing, the Duchess of Argyll. Tessa Wolfe must be in her element. A wedding dress designed by Norman Hartnell, pictures taken by society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. A swing band flying in from the States. A chef from Paris. The wedding of the year—it said so in Tatler .

Bobby wakes early on his birthday: It is half-light when I hear his bare feet running along the floorboards and his small, soft body squeezes in between us.

“I’m three,” he announces, and I know Frank is thinking the same thing as me when he replies, “Three whole years of you? Wow.”

“And there was a storm that day,” Bobby says, his prompt for Frank to tell the story of his birth.

He settles his head on his father’s chest and Frank curls an arm around him.

“We don’t get many storms in the summer but when we do they tend to be big. And this one was colossal. Trees came down, phone lines were cut, people lost electricity. Your mum was all on her own. And the baby was coming—”

Bobby’s favorite part is when his uncle Jimmy arrives home in his school uniform and saves the day. Jimmy is Bobby’s hero. He believes Jimmy saved his life. And maybe he did.

As it’s his birthday, Bobby is allowed to go milking with the men. He’s too small to be much more than a hindrance but they always wait patiently while he tries and fails to do what they do. Milking takes a good while longer when Bobby is involved.

I listen to Frank helping Bobby dress in his room, sudden riotous laughter when he puts both feet through one leg hole of his underpants, the discussion about his navy overalls, which Helen made for him—an exact copy of the ones David, Frank, and Jimmy wear.

“Not a baby anymore,” Bobby says.

“Clearly,” says Frank. “Better start pulling your weight.”

They clatter down the stairs and across the yard and I listen to their fading chatter, luxuriating in both my aloneness and the fact they are mine.

We will be celebrating Bobby’s birthday later today, after the second milking. My parents and sister are coming, David, Jimmy, Frank, me, and the birthday boy. No one else. I thought about asking Helen, who has a son almost exactly the same age, but the truth is, I have insulated myself within these thick walls of family and it is all I need. Bobby seems content enough surrounded by grandparents and an aunt and uncle who adore him. Why change it?

When Bobby gets back, we spend the rest of the morning preparing a feast. The Wolfes’ guests may be dining on oysters and lobster tails, but we have jam tarts and honey-roasted sausages and a pineapple hedgehog with quills of cheddar. When we’ve finished icing the cake, Bobby’s cheeks and nose are smeared in chocolate and I take a picture of him, grinning at me, wild on sugar and excitement as we count down to the main event.

There are still a couple of hours before we’ll gather for the picnic. Although I’ve done my best to drown out the noise around Gabriel’s wedding, I know to the last second when it is happening. I see three o’clock arrive on the kitchen clock, think of Gabriel waiting in the village church, his bride about to walk up the aisle with her father. After fifteen minutes, I imagine them exchanging their vows, Gabriel staring into Louisa’s eyes how once he looked into mine. I think about my own wedding in the same church with only our families present, my dress of imitation lace, Frank’s borrowed suit that was a couple of inches too short. I wouldn’t change any of it, I love everything about the new life I have built. But the temptation to look, one final time, rises up in me until I can no longer suppress it.

“Want to go and spy on a wedding in the village, Bobby?”

“Like real spies?”

“Yes. We can hide behind one of the big trees in the graveyard.”

“In fact, I would.”

“In fact” is a big thing for Bobby: It’s a phrase he’s just learned.

It’s only a five-minute walk to the village, ten at Bobby’s pace, but I begin to worry we might have left it too late. And when we get there, I see a line of photographers outside the church, both sides of the road crowded with villagers waiting for a glimpse of the couple, jars of homemade confetti at the ready.

“This is where we need to be proper spies so no one in the village sees us. Think you can do that?”

Bobby puts a finger to his lips, already committing to stealth.

We enter the cemetery from the far side and dart from tree to tree, shielding ourselves behind a tomb while I look for the best vantage spot. When the church bells begin to ring, with an evocative, celebratory peal, I grab Bobby’s hand and sprint for a yew tree wide enough to accommodate us, close enough to see.

“Look,” Bobby hisses, when the bridegroom walks out in a top hat and tails, pausing in the porch, his tiny bride clinging to his arm.

The official photographer rushes forward to take the first shot, dapper in his narrow black suit, white shirt, and black tie. “If you could look into each other’s eyes… oh, that’s it, absolutely spot-on.” His chiseled upper-crust accent floats toward us.

The press photographers form a semicircle around the couple, clicking frantically while Gabriel and Louisa wait and smile, knowing this is part of the game. Their image will be in all the social pages tomorrow.

It is years since I’ve seen Gabriel. He hasn’t changed. Tall and elegant in his fine wedding clothes, a face that will always be more beautiful than handsome. Looking at the two of them, I am filled with a jealousy I have no right to feel.

I watch Bobby watching Gabriel. My son will never know this man, who once meant so much to me. It’s unlikely he will ever see him again. He certainly won’t think of him. Or remember the day we hid behind a tree and played spies. It’s a moment, that’s all, when we are suspended in time.

“What do you think of the bridegroom?” I ask.

“Is he a bit—fancy-pants?” Bobby says, shushing me when I laugh out loud, though his dark eyes flash with humor.

“Fancy-pants” is what Frank calls Bobby when my mother has got him ready for bed: hair parted and slicked by a wet comb, pajamas buttoned to the top and tucked in, a face that gleams.

I watch as Louisa turns her head to say something to Gabriel. See how he leans closer to hear her, how he kisses her cheek.

Louisa’s mother, Moira, who hasn’t aged a day since I last saw her, comes out of the church now, holding the hand of a toddler dressed in head-to-toe white—frilly shirt, knickerbockers, and tights. I’d heard tell of Gabriel and Louisa’s son but it’s mesmerizing seeing him. I watch as Moira lifts the child into Louisa’s arms, as Gabriel stoops to kiss his forehead, as the photographers click away in a frenzy. There’s been no judgment in the reporting of their choice to have a child before they wed. I don’t know why I expected anything different. The rules never did apply to people like Gabriel and Louisa.

Beside me, my little boy begins to wriggle impatiently, bored now. I feel a rush of love for him: I have all I need right here.

I’m glad for them. They are three, we are three. There’s a pleasing symmetry to that. Everything worked out for us both.

“Well, that’s it, then, Bobby,” I say, turning away.

“Yep,” he says, mimicking Frank. “It certainly is.”

He throws his hat up in the air, a flatcap like the ones the men wear, a present from David, and catches it on the first attempt.

I pull him into me. “I know it’s your birthday and the presents are all for you today, but can I say, you’re the best present I’ve ever had.”