Chapter 19
URSULA WAS OLDER THAN LYDIA HAD BEEN expecting.
Older than Lydia herself, closer to forty if not already there, with lovely dark-fringed grey eyes, a pale freckled complexion and a pointed chin that gave her an elfin look.
Her frame was small, her wedding outfit a pretty rose-pink dress and strappy matching shoes.
Her curly hair, brown and shiny, had been gathered loosely into a cream satin ribbon, some wisps escaping to trail around her face.
Her smile, like her mother’s, was tentative.
‘Thank you so much for accommodating us,’ she said. ‘We really appreciate it.’
Mother and daughter had arrived in Tessa’s little red Mini, just the two of them.
It had been Lydia’s suggestion for them to freshen up at Chance House before the church ceremony, after Tessa had told her that she and Ursula planned to spend the night before the wedding in a hotel in the town.
My husband will meet us at the church, she’d said – and it was this knowledge that had prompted Lydia’s invitation.
As long as it was just bride and mother, she was happy to have them.
She wondered how Ursula’s father had taken the news that his wife had organised a wedding without consulting him – Lydia assumed he hadn’t been informed of her decision to write the letter that had led to this arrangement – but of course it wasn’t a question she could ask.
She was dreading her encounter with him, although she knew that some people could put on a show for outsiders.
He might be all charm today. He might rise to the occasion.
Tessa wore a powder blue dress that fell to her knees, and what looked like the same navy jacket and pearls she’d had on to meet Lydia.
She was not at ease: it was evident in the set of her mouth, the crease between her eyes, her quick, nervous movements.
Lydia found herself feeling anger towards a man she had yet to meet.
However pleasant he might be later, it was clear that he was robbing them of the joy they should both be feeling today.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a little salad to keep you going until the meal.’
‘You’re too good,’ Tessa told her.
In the apartment, prompted by her mother, Ursula called up a photo on her phone of the groom, and Lydia regarded the handsome features, the wide generous mouth and dark, dark eyes, the tight-curled hair sprinkled with just a little grey.
‘Where did he stay last night?’
‘With my brother Stephen. His parents stayed there too. They’re all travelling together.’
And her father, presumably, would be travelling alone.
‘Can I ask when your baby is due?’ Ursula enquired timidly. ‘September, second half.’
‘Best of luck.’
No mention of the tragedy. Maybe Tessa had said nothing to her. Lydia still wore her wedding ring, so Ursula might assume there was a husband at work somewhere.
‘I’d love to have a baby,’ she said then, a light flush entering her cheeks. ‘Paul has a grown-up daughter but she’s studying medicine in Canada and couldn’t be here with exams coming up. We’re going to travel there in the autumn, and I’ll meet her then.’
Despite her initial shyness, Lydia began to sense an innate hopefulness, an air of fresh innocence about Ursula that belied her age. Might this have been what had attracted Paul, widowed like Lydia and possibly looking for someone to bring new optimism and sparkle into his life?
But there was spirit in Ursula too. There was courage in going against her father’s wishes, rejecting the big wedding he’d planned for her. Beneath that quiet exterior, she wasn’t prepared for him to push her about.
What she had been prepared for was to wait for the right man to come along.
Although she was older, she hadn’t settled for someone to have babies with.
Maybe her parents’ marriage had taught her the wisdom of holding out for someone who would truly make her happy.
On her phone screen Lydia had seen in Paul’s face the open look of a good man, and the affection in Ursula’s voice when she spoke of him was lovely to hear.
‘Come with me,’ she said to them after they’d eaten. ‘I’d like you to see the garden.’ The day was dry, and there was time, and she enjoyed showing it off to anyone new.
‘Beautiful,’ Tessa said, as Lydia walked them around. ‘Are you the gardener?’
‘I’m the assistant gardener – I just follow orders. He’s a local man: he created it from scratch.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Sorry,’ Ursula put in, ‘but I have to run in to the loo – I think it’s a combination of tea and wedding nerves.’ Lydia directed her to the apartment’s bathroom and she disappeared. The other two continued their stroll towards the sea.
Tessa was charmed by the little beach. ‘I used to love to swim, years ago, before I got married. There was a pier near the house where everyone swam – we even went out on Christmas Day.’ The words were full of wistfulness. ‘If I lived here I’d definitely take it up again.’
Lydia wondered why she’d stopped. She was only an hour away from the sea – surely not too far, even once or twice a week.
‘I told you Ursula’s father is difficult,’ Tessa said then.
‘You did.’
‘From early on in the marriage, he was hard to live with. When the children moved out I started to look after babies while their mothers were working. It was something I could do, something I loved to do, and it gave me a bit of pocket money, but he hated the idea that people thought he couldn’t support us, so for peace I gave it up after a couple of years. ’
She sighed. ‘He’s an angry man, so easy to make him cross – and now that Ursula is doing her own thing with this wedding, he’s become impossible.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Was he going to walk his daughter up the aisle today? Surely he couldn’t refuse, even if she’d gone against him, even if neither of them really wanted it to happen. ‘What does Paul think about it all?’
Tessa’s mouth twisted. ‘Well, he’s not happy, of course. He came to Ireland for Ursula, and for me, but I’m guessing he’d much rather have stayed in Dubai and got married there instead. They both would.’
‘Could you have gone there?’
‘I could, but my husband wouldn’t – he hates flying – and it wouldn’t have been worth it to go without him. I’d never have heard the end of it.’
‘Can I ask if they’ve met, Paul and your husband?’
She nodded. ‘Ursula brought him here after they got engaged, but it didn’t go well.
He resents the fact that Paul’s an educated man with a profession – my husband’s a farmer, and makes a good living from it, but he got it into his head that Paul was all high and mighty, and looking down on him, which wasn’t true at all.
It didn’t make for a pleasant atmosphere. ’
The man sounded thoroughly obnoxious. Why on earth did Tessa stay with him, especially now that their children were grown and gone?
‘I know I should leave him,’ Tessa said, no doubt guessing Lydia’s thoughts. ‘Ursula and Stephen both want me to – but I’m not sure I have the courage. I don’t know if I could start again, at my stage in life. And,’ bleakly, ‘I did love him once.’
She turned back towards the house. ‘Ursula will be wondering what’s keeping us,’ she said.
She pulled a tissue from her jacket as they walked up, and dabbed her eyes.
‘Look at me,’ she said, giving a tearful laugh.
‘I’m dreading this. I just wish it was over.
’ She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I mustn’t let her see how nervous I am.
You’ve been so very kind, Lydia. Thank you. ’
‘I wish I could do more.’
Not long after they’d left for the church Cathy appeared, and Lydia helped to set her up in the dining room.
By four o’clock, an hour after the ceremony had been due to start, the wedding party hadn’t arrived.
They would be posing for photographs, chatting with Father Phil, taking their time, with a cold buffet requested from Cathy – but when there was still no sign of them by half past four, Lydia began to wonder.
She opened the main door just in time to see a beribboned car turning in from the lane, followed by two more. She arranged a smile on her face, bracing herself for her encounter with the father of the bride – but he wasn’t there.
‘He didn’t come!’ Ursula exclaimed, getting out of the wedding car.
‘My father, he didn’t show up!’ Elation and relief in her voice, transformed from the subdued bride-to-be.
‘Lydia,’ she went on brightly, ‘I’d like you to meet Paul, my new husband.
’ Smiling widely at the word. Yes, Lydia recalled the delightful novelty of having a husband.
Paul was big and affable, wearing an immaculately tailored navy suit and what looked like a permanent beam. Happier too, doubtless, at the non-appearance of his father-in-law.
‘Delighted to meet you, generous lady,’ he boomed, clasping Lydia’s hand before sweeping an arm to indicate the house. ‘Such a beautiful home indeed!’
His parents, climbing from another car, offered her quieter but equally glad greetings, the mother stooped and solid in yellow, the father portly, and in a navy suit like his son.
‘Our first time in Ireland,’ they told her.
‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’ Never having met Ursula’s father, possibly unaware of the facts, what did they make of his absence from the wedding?
It didn’t seem to bother them particularly, so maybe after all they’d been forewarned.
He’d stayed away out of pettiness. That was clear. His childish protest at his wishes being ignored, on a day that belonged to the bride and groom. He’d thought nothing of sabotaging the ceremony, or trying to.