“There’s all sorts on that playing field,” she said as he came to meet her. “It’s awful, with kiddies about.”
“Hello, Margaret,” he said, forcing her to look at him and grimace.
“Have you been to school with our Sally?”
He nodded. Peggy was very short and determined, clutching a fur-trimmed coat about her. She spoke vehemently, rapidly, yet rarely looked at the person she was speaking to, as if the distraction would crack her determination. She amused him.
“What are you doing playing on the swings?” She almost followed this up with, ‘like a big soft bairn’, but Samantha had warned her about that.
“Just…” Mark’s smile flickered; he patted his breast pocket, which crackled with Tony’s letter. “Just waiting to go into town. Shopping, you know, see Sam.”
“She won’t want disturbing at work.”
“I often pop in. She likes it.”
“I used to work in a shop. I hated people popping in. It puts you off your stroke.”
“She’s got a very professional manner.”
“Yes.” She eyed him, thinking, could plastic surgery do anything? Most likely he’d come out worse than ever. She said, “I wanted to check with you again—well, with Sam really, but you’ll do—about the dinner party.”
Mark nodded and pretended to look blank. The prospect of this do amused him more than Peggy did herself.
“Is everything still on for that?” she asked.
“As far as I know,” he said.
She wished he had more about him. Even with a face like the London A to Z he could look pretty vacant. “And Sam’s quite happy to…?”
“She’s coming round to the idea, slow but sure.”
Peggy looked up at him. He was surprised. Uncertainty played about her eyes, tugging the little puckers of fat. “I want this to happen properly, Mark. I want us all to have a nice time. Now I know dinner parties aren’t what the likes of you and I are used to, or Sam for that matter, professional manner or no, but it’s the way Iris likes to have things done. And she wants so much to be liked by you and Sam. She’s trying hard.”
“Sam’ll cook something nice. You’ll see. It’ll be all right.”
“I’d do it myself, invite the two of you to mine, but Sam wouldn’t come back to the house…”
“I know. It’s all right at ours. Neutral ground.”
“It’s hard for Iris too, you know.”
He smiled, thinking the conversation had come to a natural end, and watched his mother-in-law gather herself back up into some semblance of rigour, shrugging her old-fashioned coat stiffly into place. She dabbed the corner of her eyes with one crooked knuckle, overdoing it, he thought.
“Your bus is here.”
Feeling dismissed, he shot off across the grass towards the white minibus purring at the kerb. Peggy watched; he was bright blue against the dull green, vital with a kind of skinhead sexiness. She shuddered.
THE TOWN’S FAIRY LIGHTS WERE MEAGRE THIS YEAR, SLUNG OVER THE main street and precincts with torpid abandon. The bulbs crackled in tinsel wreaths as the rain came down. The biggest shops had the better displays clustered about themselves, first hands in the tin of Quality Street.
Mark got off at his usual stop in the very centre of town, where the tarmac was sizzling with wet bus tyres and nearby, a student pavement artist threw down his pastels in disgust. On the pavement outside Marks and Spencers his Hellas and the Nymphs had turned into a lurid green paste.
Mark went straight to the new arcade. Here everything was lavish, smelling faintly of floor polish and Poison. Mirrors came at every angle, throwing images of unhappily dressed prospective customers back at themselves, and of the gleaming, bullet-shaped elevators that shot up and down between levels of the arcade.
He was reassured by his own constantly monitored presence. He looked like someone drawn in blue biro. A scrawl, he thought, and went for a coffee in the ladieswear department of a store overlooking the main street. You couldn’t smoke there, and the frocks pressed in and peered over the tables in pristine, season-coloured ranks.
For her wedding, Samantha had worn an immense white dress and veil, tugging it brutally through the narrow hallway of the registry office. Peggy had knelt on the welcome mat to pick sycamore leaves out of the train. Mark held the door and Sam’s prim bouquet. She let him keep it. “It suits your makeup,” she said and smiled.
His eyes rested on the tiny pulse working away at her throat. The sight of that and the softness of the light, filtered through the doors’ cracked stained glass, eased his aching eyes a little. He bent to kiss her throat in that spot, and from behind them rose Peggy’s voice, warning that they were blocking the way and that there was bound to be another lot in soon.
During the service (“Looks like Gran’s old front room,” Sam muttered to her mam, who shuddered) the woman who married them took an obvious dislike to them and kicked up a stink about them having only one witness. “You need two,” she said.
“Mam’s got eyes in her arse,” Sam said. “She counts as two.”
The registrar simmered. “Could you ask someone to come in from the waiting room, please?”
Peggy, realising the gravity, picked up her handbag to go.
Mark said, “Couldn’t I be the bridesmaid as well?” He proffered his bouquet limply. Samantha giggled and bit his shoulder.
“I don’t think you’re treating this quite seriously enough, Mr Kelly—”
Sam broke in. “Ignore him. He’s just a camp bugger.”
“You bitch,” he muttered, teeth clenched. “Can we just carry on through the service till we hit the bit that needs witnessing?”
The registrar groaned. “Really, they need to see it all. It’s a ceremony.”
“Mam’ll be back in a minute,” Sam urged. “She’s persuasive.”
The registrar continued. “And do you, Mark…”
“Look who I found across the road!” Peggy cried, pulling another figure in a smart suit and hat into the room. The newcomer’s orchid, Sam thought, was a spiteful green. “Iris was just across the road! What a coincidence! What
