Before I Do(44)

“Let me have this, please. Don’t fight with him, I can’t stand it.”

As she looked over Vivien’s shoulder at the tall, overbearing figure in the garden, she promised herself that for her mother’s sake, she would try.





24


Two Hours Before I Do



“What have you done?” Vivien asked, shaking her head in slow horror as she inspected the back of Audrey’s dress.

“The seam split,” said Clara. “We literally just pulled it over her head incredibly carefully.”

“I wish you’d bought a new dress, darling. This is thirty years old, the thread is probably rotted.”

“I thought you’d want me to wear it,” Audrey said, her voice cracking. “This dress is part of our family history.”

“I never said I wanted you to wear it.” Vivien’s face creased; she looked genuinely confused. “I would have rather you’d gone for a more structured style; you have to be so very thin to pull off this unforgiving material.”

“She is thin,” said Clara fiercely.

“Of course she is, Clara, but not catwalk thin, plus she’s shorter than I am.” Vivien sighed, and Audrey saw Clara purse her lips, as though biting back some further opinion. Audrey was still reeling from the revelation that wearing her mother’s dress meant nothing to Vivien, even though clothes meant everything to her.

One Saturday as a teenager, Vivien had taken Audrey to a vintage store to choose a dress for her sixteenth birthday. They’d spent hours trying things on, speculating on who might have owned these clothes before, making up stories about them. Her mother always spoke so passionately about buying clothes with a history, clothes that had meant something to someone. “You don’t find the dress, the dress finds you,” she’d said. They had ended up buying matching minidresses and wearing them home. It was one of Audrey’s favorite memories, her mother laughing at the looks they got as they strutted down Carnaby Street, arm in arm, like sisters.

“Take it off, and I’ll see what I can do. I brought an emergency needle and thread, but this fabric will need something incredibly delicate. Clara, could you nip down and ask the florist, the caterers, see if anyone has something finer?”

Clara duly disappeared on this errand, and Vivien helped lift the dress off over Audrey’s head. She was left standing in her underpants and bra while her mother inspected the torn seam.

“How long ago was your last fitting, have you put on weight? Most brides get too thin in the weeks before their wedding. With all the stress and last-minute arrangements, they forget to eat.”

“Two weeks ago, and no,” Audrey fumed. “I think it’s just a dodgy seam.” She clenched her jaw, still feeling offended that Vivien seemed so indifferent to her wearing this dress.

“I saw it happen, it was like a horror movie,” Hillary piped up from the bed. Vivien gave a start; clearly, she had not noticed that Hillary was there.

“Why is Hillary here? You can’t have a man watching you get dressed.”

“It’s Hillary, he doesn’t count,” said Audrey.

“I definitely don’t count,” Hillary said. He had the breast pump on his lap and was fiddling with the wires.

“What are you doing with that breast pump?” Vivien asked.

Hillary removed his hands from the machine and grimaced. “I thought it was a travel coffee machine.”

“A travel coffee machine?” said Audrey. “That’s not even a thing.”

“This won’t do.” Vivien clapped her hands at Hillary. “Make yourself useful, please. Half the groomsmen have no idea how to tie a cravat, and guests will start arriving soon. There’s no time for lounging about.”

Hillary reluctantly climbed out of bed. He came to give Audrey a gentle kiss on each cheek, looked her straight in the eye, then, putting a hand on either side of her head, said, “It will be okay. No one’s going to be looking at your ass, and if they do, well—you have a fucking great ass.”

He swung his jacket over his shoulder and waved his hand in the air. Vivien looked back and forth between Audrey and the door.

“I don’t think that is appropriate,” she said once he had gone. “You two have such an unconventional relationship.”

“I don’t think so,” Audrey said. She couldn’t believe her mother, of all people, was commenting on the nature of anyone else’s “unconventionality.”

Vivien went to stand in front of the long mirror and held the dress up in front of her. She let out a sigh.

“I did love this dress. Wedding dresses do suit me, you know.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Audrey said, with a smile, despite herself.

“?‘Oh, in my youth I excited some admiration. But look at me now! Would you think it possible that I was once considered to be attractive?’?” Vivien said, adopting an American accent.

“You know you’re still attractive.”

“That was Blanche DuBois,” Vivien said, still with the accent. “?‘I don’t want realism, I want magic. Yes, yes, magic!’?” She paused. “She was my greatest role, wasn’t she? Everyone said so, that I was born to play her.”

“You’ll have plenty more great roles,” Audrey said, and she watched her mother put on a smile.