Chapter 13
Cora phoned Gwyn to invite them to supper on a Tuesday evening when the house was still spotless from Elisavet’s endeavours.
‘The three of us?’ Gwyn asked.
‘No, I thought – just you and Lottie, this time.’
Silence. Then: ‘Ah.’
Cora wondered about the way he said ‘Ah,’ whether it was with disappointment or understanding. ‘The thing is, Gwyn—’ she began.
‘I know,’ he interrupted her. ‘Fiona is picky about her food.’
‘Well, yes, she is, a bit.’ It was true, she was.
Fiona had developed a habit of sniffing her food before eating it and then making all sorts of faces once she’d put it in her mouth.
She had become proud of being fussy, but Cora felt it reflected badly on the rest of them for enjoying the food Fiona had decided wasn’t up to scratch.
She wondered if this fussiness had rubbed off on Gwyn and decided to be specific.
‘I’ll make pasta with a tomato-based sauce, Parmesan cheese and bread rolls. ’
‘Delightful!’ he said. ‘See you Tuesday.’
‘Can’t go wrong with that menu,’ she said aloud. Fruit salad to follow. And then she’d broach the subject of Fiona’s visit. It was always easier to digest difficult news on a full stomach, she’d found.
She gathered up the birthday cards from the windowsill and put them in a drawer.
She wasn’t sure what the supper would achieve, except that it was easier to get these things out in the open, talk about them, hopefully put things right.
Her loyalty and her love were always first and foremost with her son and granddaughter, but the more she thought about it, the more she could see it from Fiona’s point of view.
Gwyn had loved Regina and you couldn’t divorce the dead.
Mind you, that whole business of Fiona telling her she was getting on in years had tarnished her sympathy for her somewhat. Getting on in years? We’re all getting on in years at exactly the same rate, she thought. Should have said so at the time.
The previous year Fiona had been happily talking about the wedding; she’d been checking out venues and considering colour schemes with swatches of fabric.
Cora was enjoying it. Everyone loves a wedding!
But then she’d looked at Gwyn, sitting on the sofa saying nothing, just listening to his fiancée with a helpless expression, as if he was being carried away from shore by a rogue wave to a distant horizon.
‘Should I buy a hat?’ Cora had asked brightly.
‘Not yet,’ he’d replied, equally brightly.
Oh, Gwyn bach.
Personally, she’d never thought that long engagements were a good idea. She felt that marriage vows should be promised in the first crazy flush of love, before practicalities came into the picture; before a couple started weighing up the cost of a wedding versus a deposit on a house, for instance.
So she’d kept quiet, being diplomatic.
That might have been a mistake. She had discovered over the years that we set a lot of store by what people think, even if it was something they just said off the cuff.
What was just her opinion might have sounded to Gwyn like an instruction to marry Fiona.
If she’d said something, they might have been married by now and Lottie would have given up trying to come between them, if that’s what she was doing.
Dew, listen to me, power mad, she thought, believing I’ve got more influence than I actually have.
It was a trait she saw clearly in others, like Megan’s father, Idwal, thinking he was responsible for Cardiff being bombed because he insulted Lord Haw-Haw in a pub, but normally she was able to ignore in herself.
Gwyn and Lottie came on the dot of six thirty on Tuesday, all smiles and as happy to be there as she was to see them.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said, draining the pasta.
‘Something smells good,’ Gwyn said.
‘It’s only pasta, it is,’ she said, taking off her apron.
When Cora invited people to come for food, she didn’t like to keep them waiting.
She handed the wine bottle and corkscrew to Gwyn to open, no good reason for that, she was perfectly capable of opening her own wine bottles but in her opinion you could take independence too far sometimes.
‘Sit wherever you like. I’ve got a sauce ladle here somewhere,’ she said, looking in the cutlery drawer. ‘Here you are! Dig in!’
She joined them at the table where they looked expectantly from one to the other.
Gwyn was wearing a blue floral shirt, very jazzy, and Lottie was wearing torn jeans and two black ribbed vests, one on top of the other. Her hair was in a high ponytail and she looked very young without make-up.
Cora wished she had invited them because she enjoyed their company, and not because she had a mediation to perform.
However, she never wanted them to feel obliged to come as a duty, and so she was sparing with her invitations.
She thought again of Fiona saying she was ‘getting on’. The cheek of her.
‘What are you thinking?’ Lottie asked her, one inherited eyebrow quizzically raised, transferring her fork to her right hand in the American style.
‘Me?’ For a moment, Cora hesitated and then she put her cutlery down. Get it out of the way, she thought. ‘Tell you the truth it’s Fiona, it is. She came to see me.’
‘Did she? Why? What for?’ Lottie asked warily.
‘She said that in her opinion, your house isn’t big enough for the three of you.
That was the gist of it, anyway. Getting it off her chest, like.
’ She glanced at Gwyn. She’d always found it difficult to know what he was thinking, and now, to her relief, his grey eyes as he looked back at her were calm and untroubled. ‘I know you love her, son.’
He looked faintly surprised. ‘Well, yes.’
‘And Lottie, she talked about the possibility of you coming to live here. I didn’t know if that was her idea, or yours.’
‘What?’ Lottie’s angry expression said it all. ‘Why would she say that? I’ve got absolutely no intention of coming to live here!’
‘Lottie!’ Gwyn shouted. ‘Don’t be rude!’
‘It’s all right, Gwyn,’ Cora said quickly, her face burning.
Lottie dropped her fork into her pasta bowl.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m furious with her for discussing us behind our backs!
She’s not right for you, Dad, she’s an airhead,’ she said indignantly.
‘I don’t understand why you can’t see it for yourself. It’s not as if she tries to hide it.’
Cora sprinkled too much Parmesan on her pasta in agitation and wondered how on earth it was that Gwyn hadn’t noticed the atmosphere in the house.
It had spread here now, like smoke, the kitchen was heavy with it.
She bitterly regretted getting involved at all.
Fiona should have left her out of it and they should have worked it out between them.
It was underhanded, now she thought about it, because like it or not, it had made her take sides, although she didn’t know whose side she was taking.
Gwyn frowned and stiffened for a moment. He opened his mouth as if to argue and then he shook his head to clear it. ‘Fiona doesn’t mean any harm, it’s just the way she is,’ he said to Lottie. He frowned. ‘I didn’t know you two didn’t get on. Why didn’t you say something?’
Lottie’s eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away roughly with her napkin. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said desperately, and took a deep breath. ‘Ignore me. Like Grandma says, as long as you’re happy.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ Gwyn said. He rubbed his face with his hands and shook his head. ‘I thought you’d like having another woman in the house.’
‘Why?’ Lottie replied bitterly. ‘To replace my mother?’
Gwyn winced. ‘No,’ he said. He added softly as if he’d just realised it, ‘No one could replace her.’
And there it was, out in the open. As soon as he said it and the way he said it, Cora understood the situation clearly for the first time.
She wondered why she hadn’t seen it before.
Much as Cora loved her granddaughter and felt sorry for her son, she suddenly felt even more sorry for Fiona.
Fiona had been bright and carefree when she and Gwyn first met, a lovely girl.
She was a new beginning, a fresh start, but now they had tangled her up in their guilt and loss – yes, she’d done it herself, too – treated her as a poor replacement for Regina.
No wonder she had become so particular about things, and so self-centred.
They hadn’t seen her for the person she was, only for who she was not.
He ought to marry her. She would feel secure if she was his wife, Cora believed that very strongly. Being alone was fine. She wasn’t lonely, she had friends, but nothing could compare to a good marriage in her view.
They carried on eating in silence, silver clattering against china, and then Cora said brightly, ‘Gladdie’s started an art club because she won third prize at the Agricultural Society Art Show.’
To her relief, Gwyn started to laugh. ‘Is that your painting, stuck on the fridge?’
‘Yes.’ Cora sipped her wine and said craftily, ‘What does it look like to you?’
‘Strawberry mousse,’ he said.
‘A nudist beach,’ Lottie suggested.
The three of them stared at it speculatively for a moment.
‘Well, there we are,’ Cora said happily. ‘The joy of abstract is that it’s whatever you see in it.’
Gwyn grinned. ‘Did Gladdie tell you that?’
‘Yes. She’s educating us.’
‘Who else is in the club?’
‘Megan and Elisavet.’
‘Elisavet? How is she doing?’
‘We haven’t got her to smile yet, if that’s what you’re asking.
’ Cora ate her last mouthful of pasta and put her fork down.
‘She’s living in a hostel at the moment.
It’s difficult for her.’ Her face clouded over.
‘Her fiancé has told her it’s over because they’re on different sides of the conflict all of a sudden. ’
‘He’s broken up with her?’ Gwyn looked startled. ‘She said his family weren’t happy but he was supposed to be coming over here to join her. She couldn’t wait to see him again. She misses him.’
‘They’ve split up because of a war?’ Lottie asked with the wholehearted innocence of a girl who had never had to experience one. ‘That’s so random.’
‘Is she still cleaning for you?’ Gwyn asked.
‘Yes.’ Cora looked at him, expecting him to ask her whether Elisavet had supplied her references yet. ‘The art club is for her, really. Gladdie thinks she’s lonely. We’re going to show her around, take her to beauty spots, cheer her up.’
‘Aww, Ma,’ he said, and his eyes were gentle. He scraped back his chair and got up rather abruptly. He rested his hands on Cora’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.
Being loved and understood. The bliss of it soothed her to her soul.
‘It makes no sense! If they love each other, how can they suddenly be enemies?’ Lottie demanded, looking from her father to her grandmother.
‘Good question,’ Cora replied, reaching for the fruit salad, and then she realised Lottie was serious and waiting for an answer. She put the serving spoon down again, and thought about Frank’s notebook. ‘I suppose the question of who the enemy is depends solely on your viewpoint,’ she said.