Caddy ever after, p.10
Caddy Ever After, page 10
At this point a distraction was caused by Kai taking off his shoe and passing it to his neighbour to smell.
So Miss Farley gave up on Kiran and me, but she didn’t forget entirely. At the end of the lesson she gave me a new blank worksheet to fill in over the weekend by myself. She said, ‘I appreciate you will be occupied tomorrow, Rose, but I don’t suppose you will have anything better to do on Sunday.’
How right she was.
Caddy’s Wedding
When I arrived home from school that Friday afternoon, Daddy was there.
I was very surprised. I said, ‘What are you here for?’
And he said, ‘For goodness’ sake, Rose! Who else did you think was going to give Caddy away?’
‘Oh, I hate that expression!’ said Mummy. ‘It is just as if Caddy was being got rid of Free To A Good Home like we used to have to do with her guinea pigs when we ran out of cages. Hello, Rose darling, I am just rushing out to buy a hat – would you come with me? What’s the matter, Bill?’
Daddy was staring at her with his mouth hanging open. He said, ‘Are you telling me, Eve, that you haven’t got a hat?’
‘Of course I’m not,’ said Mummy meekly. ‘I know I have my woollies and my big blue painty one, but I thought for tomorrow something new would be nice and the market won’t be packing up for another hour. Please come, Rosy Pose, because you have Style.’
Daddy took a big deep breath and let it out very slowly.
‘Let’s rush, Rose,’ said Mummy.
So we did.
The hat stall was nearly packed up when we got there and the people running it seemed rather grumpy. They told us that it had been a bad day for hats. ‘Too breezy,’ said the Hat Man, ‘not like proper June and an icy cold wind straight from the melting polar ice cap. Global warming. Might as well call it a day.’
But when the Hat Man and the Hat Man’s wife understood that Mummy wanted a new hat for her daughter’s wedding in the morning, they changed completely. They unpacked their whole van and a mirror and flask of tea and some ginger nuts, and it turned into a sort of visit.
‘It’ll be your turn before you know where you are, my fine lady,’ said the Hat Man’s wife to me. ‘Got your eye on anyone yet?’
I said I had got my eye on two or three – but not to marry, to go off with when I wanted someone to go off with.
‘What a cracking idea,’ said the Hat Man, and Mummy and the Hat Man’s wife agreed.
Then Mummy found a hat that smelled wonderful, just like dry grass, and looked like it was beautifully woven out of hay, and started crying.
‘This is the hat I shall have to watch poor little Caddy get married in,’ she cried. ‘Rose, have you got a tissue, darling? Where did I put my purse down?’
The Hat Man and his wife were very kind. They took the £3.49 label off the hat and put it in a pink-and-white striped carrier bag and said it was free. And they hugged Mummy and said to come and let them know how it went, and they had thought of going in for kids themselves at one time but settled for King Charles spaniels in the end and on the whole they were glad.
So that was Mummy’s hat.
When we got home, Daddy was pacing up and down the pavement in front of the house saying, ‘What else has not been done?’
Sarah’s mother was with him, trying to calm him down, and saying, ‘Everything is going to be perfect!’
And Mummy went snuffle snuffle snuffle, and got out her pink-and-white bag, and Sarah’s mother said it was a dream of a hat. Superb.
‘Mine is simply over the top,’ she said, sniffing Mummy’s in an admiring kind of way. ‘But when will I get the chance again? Sarah will never take anyone seriously enough to marry them. In fact, she never takes anything seriously! Look at that rabbit! I ask you! When Caddy will be on her way to China in two days’ time. I must dash!’
And she did, while Daddy was still asking, ‘What rabbit? What rabbit?’
Poor Daddy. But it would have been useless trying to explain about the rabbit, so we just said, ‘Oh never mind,’ which made him mad.
That night was chaos in our house.
Caddy’s wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses filled the whole of upstairs. Daddy’s clothes for the weekend filled the living room. At any point in time someone was always crying or feeling ill, except Indigo. Indigo was the only calm person in the house. He calmly told Daddy that he wouldn’t be seen dead in a suit, displayed the clothes he intended to wear in the morning (jeans and a black T-shirt and a very nice jacket from Oxfam), and then went out. He was going to see his friend David the drummer who, Indigo said, could be absolutely relied on not to talk about weddings, or pandas, or the inoculations you need to go to China, or in fact anything except drums.
Nobody took much notice of me, but I didn’t mind. There was plenty of food in the fridge so I made myself a ham and baked bean sandwich and escaped upstairs. As I went I heard Caddy wail, ‘I can’t believe this wedding is going to happen in the morning.’
I thought of the state of our house that night, and Mummy’s tears at the hat stall, and Kiran’s stories of wedding disasters. And I thought of how Caddy had loved Michael so much that she had never put him in her address book because she knew she would never forget him, and I couldn’t believe this wedding was going to happen in the morning either.
And I was glad.
So.
Skip the night, when nobody slept.
Skip the morning when two hairdressers moved into the house and started acting like they owned our heads and we were just allowed to live underneath them, as long as we kept our hands down and didn’t touch once.
Skip the rabbit, a last-minute wedding present from Sarah to Caddy, which she delivered in a silver box with air holes.
The rabbit had black eye-patches and Sarah had made it a little black jacket and black trousers (which it bit off in seconds).
‘It is a practice panda,’ said Sarah. ‘I thought you could practise creeping up on it and taking photos. I’m awfully sorry, Eve, I didn’t have time to house-train it. What’ll you call it, Caddy?’
‘Alex,’ I suggested. ‘It looks a lot like him.’
‘Rose!’ snapped everyone.
‘I can’t possibly call him that,’ said Caddy very nicely (but insanely). ‘I have always thought Alex looks ninety-nine per cent Greek god but (face it, darlings) Rose is right. The rest is rabbit, and that’s probably why animals love him and let him take their photographs. Pandas, pandas, pandas – I must keep concentrating on the pandas! It is such a good thing Oscar got you and Rose lost on that horrible moor, Saffy, otherwise I might never have met Alex and I’d have missed the pandas.’
‘You wouldn’t have met him anyway,’ said Sarah, ‘if Indigo hadn’t done that disco to impress me (I was frightfully impressed, Indy) and got Saffron and Oscar together! Pity it didn’t last a bit longer, Saff.’
‘We are giving each other space,’ said Saffron.
‘You’re so right!’ said Caddy. ‘No, you’re not! Pandas, pandas, pandas! Aren’t my shoes perfect!’
‘Yes,’ said everyone. ‘They are absolutely gorgeous, Caddy.’
Skip the ride to St Matthew’s in the carriage, which was brilliant and over much too soon.
Skip the crowd at the church gates, waiting to see what we looked like. Kiran was one of the crowd. She pushed forward to grab me and say, ‘Has anything gone wrong yet?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘It will!’ said Kiran cheerfully. ‘You wait and see!’
Skip me holding Caddy’s train, and Sarah walking all the way up the aisle between Saffy and Indigo, and the lovely way everyone clapped when she made it.
Skip Alex smirking at my trainers (which were white and matched my dress perfectly and even Sarah’s mother had liked).
Skip ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, Caddy’s favourite hymn, and a lot of talk by the umpire, I mean vicar, telling us who was here (Caddy and Alex) and why they were here (to get married) and why we were here (to watch) and what marriage was for (babies, he said – wrong, should have been pandas).
All this went on for ages.
I looked around. I was beginning to get very worried. This was not like any of the weddings Kiran had described. Nobody had fainted, or run in shouting from the street. Nothing had fallen from the roof. It was all very calm and flower-scented and organized. There was a tremendous feeling of special clothes, and high windows, and stone and oldness. A lot of people smiled at me looking over my shoulder at them, but Daddy (who had Mummy in a very firm grip) mouthed: ‘Turn round!’
I was the only one up there with Caddy and Alex. Saffy and Indigo had taken Sarah across to the pews at the front so she could sit down.
I felt very alone, and I was starting to be frightened. Also I was beginning to think that Kiran was wrong when she said the umpire would get to the anyone-got-any-problems bit, and that would be when everything would happen. Perhaps there would not be an anyone-got-any-problems bit at all. Perhaps the law saying there must be had changed since Kiran last went to a wedding. Perhaps they stopped it, because it caused so much trouble.
I seemed to have been standing there for ages, and I thought that Caddy must be just about married, and that nobody was going to do anything to help me.
And then it came.
The vicar, the umpire, said, ‘I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry, to declare it now.’
THAT WAS IT, AT LAST!
I grabbed Caddy’s train, in case she was going to want to get away quickly, and I spun round.
Now things were happening. People were shuffling and murmuring. Daddy took a step towards us and then changed his mind and went back. I stared at the audience, who looked very uncomfortable, and I prayed for a rescue and in my mind I shouted, ‘Come on! Somebody! Somebody speak!’
Somebody did speak. The sound seemed to come from very high up above my head.
‘Please!’ they begged, ‘Please! Before it is too late!’
And it was me.
‘Rose!’ gasped Caddy. ‘Rosy Pose?’
‘I promised Michael—’ I began, but I did not get time to finish because Daddy grabbed me. He grabbed me and he stuffed me under his arm and he ran with me all the way down the aisle and through the wooded arches and past the font and out to the porch and he let me go on to the grass in the graveyard and dropped down beside me and the next thing I knew was Kiran bending over me and Miss Farley racing through the graves looking absolutely terrible and roaring, ‘It is all my fault!’
Maths Worksheet
On Sunday it was quite important for me to get my maths worksheet done. I couldn’t do it on Saturday because I was rather busy in the morning, and most of the afternoon and evening I was at Kiran’s house.
It was a very hard worksheet. I had to concentrate. I concentrated on it for most of Sunday, in my bedroom with my door shut so that nobody would distract me. I wanted it to be perfect, and in the end it was.
Or as perfect as I could get it, anyway.
I used an italic nib to write the answers, which made them look very nice, and the pie diagram was beautiful. I shaded in each slice like the petals of a flower. Around the edge of the sheet I drew a border of hexagons in a honeycomb pattern. I put a few bees among the hexagons – not very many, just a few for anyone to find and look at who likes bees.
I think Miss Farley likes bees. Whenever one gets stuck in the classroom she lets it out very carefully.
I hoped Miss Farley would be very pleased with my maths worksheet. I hoped it might put her into a good mood.
Miss Farley hadn’t been in a good mood the last time I saw her. This was my fault. I had an idea that I thought might be a good idea, but in real life it wasn’t. In real life it was (as Kiran explained) insane. I should not have tried to push Miss Farley into the church to marry Alex instead of Caddy. Poor Miss Farley. She was not dressed in the right clothes to get married, and none of her friends were there (except Kiran and me), and she was very out of breath because suddenly on that Saturday morning she had had a very strong feeling that something frightful would happen at Caddy’s wedding. She had run all the way across the market place to try and prevent it because it is impossible trying to park near St Matthew’s on a Saturday.
Anyway, Miss Farley did not want to marry Alex. It was a completely bad idea and it made her very angry and I wish I hadn’t thought of it. I just could not bear the thought of the whole wedding being wasted.
Daddy says nothing was wasted.
Daddy can be very awful, but he can be very nice too. The first thing he said after he dumped me in the churchyard was, ‘Did I hurt you, Rose?’
I was sort of gasping and crying and I couldn’t speak, but I shook my head.
‘I think I’ve ricked my back,’ said Daddy, getting up very stiffly. ‘But thank heaven nobody has followed us. I’ve got to go back, Rose, and hold it together. I hope to goodness they carried on . . .’
And then we both looked towards the dark doorway of the porch that led into the church. As we looked, Alex and Caddy and the umpire appeared.
From the church itself came a great whispering hum. It was as if the stone of the walls was murmuring. The murmur grew louder and louder. It was the sound of the people inside wondering what would happen next.
Mummy’s face popped up between Alex and Caddy, and then I saw Indigo, and Alex’s best man, who was someone I did not know. Alex and the umpire and the best man were talking very fiercely and making quick flat gestures in the air with their hands, like boys in the playground when they are busy fixing a deal. Caddy was nodding; she seemed to be on the side of the umpire and the best man, who were not on Alex’s side. Mummy was sniffing her hat.
I saw all this in a second.
The moment all those people appeared, Daddy became heroic. He brushed the grass off his jacket and straightened his shoulders. ‘Look after Rose!’ he said to Kiran and Miss Farley, and he began to limp towards the church. By the time he got there he had even managed to smile, and he held his arms wide as if he was embracing a huge, special, perfect joke. Then he kissed Mummy and put one arm round Alex and the other around Caddy, and said in his most everything-is-absolutely-wonderful voice, ‘Now let’s get these two people married!’
‘Rose, I think it’s going to be all right,’ whispered Kiran. ‘They’re going back in!’
And it was then that I had my good idea, and I jumped up and grabbed Miss Farley and tried to push her after them into the church, but luckily Kiran is stronger than me. Kiran got a good grip on a gravestone with one hand and my flame-coloured sash with the other, and she hung on, hissing, ‘Rose, you have gone mad! Rose, you are in shock! Rose, let go of Miss Farley!’ And so Miss Farley was able to break free and escape among the tombs. Then Kiran hauled me back to the crowd at the gate, and she said, ‘I think we should go back to my house.’
So we did.
There are no words to say how unreal it felt, walking through the Saturday market in my bridesmaid’s dress and trainers to Kiran’s house. I remember saying to Kiran, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’
‘No,’ said Kiran. ‘You shouldn’t.’
Kiran’s house was full of people talking: her mother and her big brother and her aunt and her grandmother and other people who might have been relations or neighbours, I did not know which. They were all talking. It was amazing. Words surged from every room. They lapped against the walls and furniture. They splashed and showered around us when we opened the door.
Then they saw us and they stopped.
‘This is Rose. Don’t fuss her!’ commanded Kiran, and she steered me up to her room, pushed me in, and asked, ‘Rose?’
‘Yes?’
‘What did you actually do?’
It was nice at Kiran’s house. They fed me pizza and they lent me clothes and they rang my home and left a message on the answerphone to say where I was, and they told me dozens of stories, and when it was night they put a blow-up bed for me in Kiran’s room and I fell asleep at once. I was very tired.
And in the morning Kiran’s father drove me home.
The only person home was Daddy. He still had his ricked back. He walked very stiffly out to Kiran’s father and they shook hands through the car window.
‘Daughters,’ said Kiran’s father, raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ said Daddy, shaking his head.
‘Ah!’ said Kiran’s father, as if he understood everything, and then he drove away.
So there I was, standing in the street with my bridesmaid’s dress in a carrier bag.
‘Had any breakfast?’ asked Daddy.
‘Yes thank you,’ I said. ‘And now I had better get on with my maths worksheet.’
Hot Gossip
(Part 2)
On Monday morning when I gave Miss Farley my maths worksheet, she laughed until she choked and had to sit down. And then she wiped her eyes and drank the water Kiran brought her and said, ‘Right, and now it is time for a little Hot Gossip. Hands down everyone except Rose.’
So I had to tell everyone the amazing true story of Caddy’s wedding and I began with Kiran’s wedding stories.
‘Skip all that,’ interrupted Miss Farley. ‘We all know Kiran.’
So I went on to Mummy’s hat and Sarah’s rabbit.
‘We haven’t got all day,’ said Miss Farley. ‘Skip the hat and the rabbit.’
She made me skip the carriage ride too, and she would not let me tell the very naughty thing Saffron and Sarah did when they came out of church.
‘Cut to the kill,’ said Miss Farley. ‘You interrupted the proceedings at a critical moment and . . . ?’
‘Daddy threw me out and ricked his back,’ I said.
‘But meanwhile . . . ?’
