Chapter Thirty
‘You’re not going to be able to manage me.’ Gareth’s fingers moved restlessly over the spokes of the wheelchair.
Diane didn’t pause in her task of transferring things from her usual old handbag into a small black one, new, that she’d bought to go with her dress. ‘I can get you into the car — you’re mobile enough on your crutches in short bursts. Melvyn and Ivan will help at the church.’
‘I feel funny about Melvyn and Ivan being at Valerie’s funeral. They’ve hardly met her but it hasn’t seemed to occur to them not to go.’ His brows were hard over his eyes.
Diane found her keys. ‘She’s the half-sister of their half-brother. They have a pronounced idea of family.’
‘Did you get directions?’
‘Yes.’ Her stark black dress showed not a flash of white or even a gold-coloured button. She glanced in the mirror. It was amazing how well black suited her and her pale hair. She hadn’t bought anything of such quality since before she met Gareth and was entranced by the way the fabric hung and moved.
He was watching. ‘So where’s that dress from, then?’
She looked up. ‘I bought it at cost from Unity’s because I’ve had no time to make anything suitable.’
‘You seem thick as thieves with this Unity. I heard you, on the phone, turning away work from Trish Warboys.’
She looked down into her bag. It had a bright paisley lining but she was sure nobody would mind that, or notice. ‘I’ve too much to do for Unity’s and she wants more for next season. It’s more remunerative than doing occasional commissions for Trish Warboys. Good job I’ve moved into the bigger workroom. I’m working flat out, even with Bryony helping.’ She didn’t tell him that she’d successfully negotiated working capital both via a deposit from Unity and a small bank loan. Let him wonder.
‘It’s a regular little rag factory in there.’
She didn’t answer. It was one of her new strategies. Whenever Gareth sneered, she fell silent.
‘I don’t want to be late,’ he snapped.
‘We won’t be.’ She looked again in the mirror and brushed the shoulders of the dress.
‘Where’s Bryony?’
‘In the bathroom.’
‘Again?’
‘She’s pregnant and she’s nervous because she’s never been to a funeral before. She’ll be OK.’ She reached for her jacket.
He looked around the modest, old-fashioned kitchen. ‘I’m thirsty. Any chance of a cold drink before we go?’
‘Yes, you get it. Up on your feet little and often, that’s what they said, wasn’t it? You can shout if you get stuck.’ She left the room and went upstairs. At the moment, he was easy enough to avoid. During the day, he had the choice of the sitting room or the kitchen, to avoid the undignified palaver of scooting upstairs on his behind. Good job they had a downstairs loo.
He hobbled around, his progress slow on crutches because of his wrist.
By the time she had to help him into the car, he’d taken refuge in grumpiness. He wasn’t taking well the cool way that Diane was ignoring his wishes and also his temper. Her absence from the marital bed. The segregation of their finances.
She was a remote Diane.
She smiled to herself as he glowered out of the car window at a field of stubble. No way could he look after himself as yet, so having support at home had been fundamental to his discharge from hospital. But if he’d thought that Diane not leaving him when his secrets popped out like naughty children meant they’d return to their old relationship, then he couldn’t have been more wrong. With cool courtesy Diane helped him wash and dress; she also prepared his meals and did his laundry.
But she didn’t discuss her movements nor seek his opinions. She offered him no company other than at meal times and her conversation consisted of finances, hospital appointments and the information that she had booked a local gardener to transform their garden into an easy-care oasis.
Even Bryony, silent in the back seat, wasn’t demonstrating her love in the unconditional, effusive way that she used to.
For Gareth, his life had changed when his father found him. And now, if it was changing again . . . well, that was unfortunate. Diane could no longer live her life to suit him, she reminded herself, picking up speed on the straight lane.
But then he disarmed her by muttering, ‘It’s unfair that somebody who loved life so much shouldn’t have it.’ And she realised that his surliness wasn’t necessarily about her. He was missing Valerie, who’d represented fun in his life in the last two years. No more helicopter jaunts. No more sitting in her large, beautifully equipped kitchen and listening to her describing the childhood he never had. Discovering how comfortable wealth made things.
‘I know you miss her,’ she said, gently. And how much did he miss Stella? Not as much, she was sure, as she missed James.
* * *
As St. Agnes-in-the-Field Church was only around the corner from Valerie’s house there was no motor cortège to join. Diane took Gareth directly to the pointy Norman greyness of St. Agnes’s and Ivan and Melvyn were waiting to lift his wheelchair from the boot, steadying it on the lane’s bumpy surface while Gareth hauled himself across from the car.
The hearse carried Valerie’s oak casket from her home with the family walking behind.
James. Harold. Natalia. Alice. Tamzin.
In the pause while the casket slid smoothly from the hearse and on to a gurney, Diane wheeled Gareth to join the family group.
‘Dad.’ Gareth put his hand out to his father. Harold was pale and his nose looked larger and more heavily veined than ever.
‘Gareth,’ said Harold, hoarsely. ‘At least you’re still here—’ His lips set tightly. Tamzin, a liquorice stick in a straight black dress, took her grandfather’s hand. Diane pushed Gareth slowly, behind the casket, up the sloping path to the dim interior of the small village church. But she watched James, in front, James who set his shoulders and looked only straight ahead.
Gareth let Melvyn hoist him onto his crutches to shuffle between the scarred old pews, flinching each time he put weight on his leg. Diane left him and Bryony in the family pew and she melted back into the body of the church to stand with Melvyn and Ivan.
She wanted to put space between herself and James. If she could have avoided the funeral she would have. It felt wrong for her to be there.
The church was cold and smelled of hymn books. She watched Gareth casting his eye over the simple village church, without stained glass, silver ornaments or gilded crosses and only worn old flagstones to floor the nave and the aisles. Then frown at James, as if wondering why the funeral hadn’t been held somewhere grand.
But there was a nice enough choir and a breathy organ and the red-faced vicar, raising his voice to the rafters, managed to avoid giving that speech about the deceased having merely stepped into the next room, which, far from comforting the loved ones, usually left them enraged.
And one of Valerie’s friends read a eulogy about keeping Valerie alive in their minds — especially whenever they heard a sports car gunning past.
Gareth listened, motionless. Harold’s complexion was so grey that he could have been carved from the same stone as the church. James stood between his softly weeping daughters, holding their hands.