The Unknown Bridesmaid Read online

  ‘Hera,’ Julia repeated, clearing her throat, ‘I suppose everyone asks you about your name, how you came to be called Hera?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hera, ‘they do.’

  No explanation. If the child didn’t want to give one, Julia wasn’t going to press her.

  ‘You’ve got three brothers, Hera, is that correct?’

  Hera nodded. Then she pointed at the file on Julia’s desk. ‘It will all be in there,’ she said. Her tone was not aggressive or rude, just weary.

  ‘Well,’ Julia said, ‘I like to check everything myself. Mistakes can happen, as you know.’

  Hera frowned and said, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She imitated Julia’s stressing of ‘as you know’ at the end. ‘What am I supposed to know about mistakes?

  Julia didn’t pause. ‘That you know what it’s like to make them,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t make a mistake,’ Hera said, emphasising ‘mistake’. ‘I meant it. I meant to do it. I’ve never pretended it was a mistake. It was my mother who said it was even though I told her it wasn’t. It’s stupid.’

  ‘What’s stupid?’ Julia asked quickly. ‘Your mother insisting that what you did was a mistake, or her failure to believe you meant it?’

  ‘Both,’ said Hera.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, each studying the other. Hera didn’t blink. Julia did, several times, which Hera seemed to notice and be pleased by. It was lucky, Julia thought, that they were not engaged in an arm-locking exercise or at this point Hera would have won, my arm would be flat on the table, powerless.

  ‘You hurt your brother,’ Julia said, in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘quite considerably, as it turned out.’

  Hera smiled.

  ‘You find that amusing?’ Julia asked, keeping any disapproval out of her voice, trying merely to state it as a fact.

  ‘No,’ Hera said.

  ‘Then why did you smile?’

  ‘At you,’ Hera said, ‘you think you’re so clever.’

  Now there was a change in attitude. This was deliberate insolence, much easier to respond to.

  ‘You hurt your brother,’ Julia repeated, ‘you broke his wrist.’

  ‘He broke his own wrist,’ Hera said. ‘I pushed him to the ground, and he put his arm out and his wrist broke.’

  Julia paused. ‘He didn’t choose to fall,’ she said, ‘you pushed him, so you caused the fall that broke his wrist.’

  ‘But all I did was push him,’ Hera said.

  ‘Hard,’ Julia said, ‘very hard, and you’re much bigger than him. You pushed with both hands. You pushed so hard he crashed into a chair.’

  Hera nodded. ‘I did,’ she said, ‘and I meant it. But I didn’t break his wrist.’

  Time for a pause. Julia got up and went to her desk and made a business of consulting the file there, though she perfectly remembered its contents.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ Hera said, and she too stood up. ‘Can I go? I mean, I’m going.’

  ‘Fine,’ Julia said, ‘so long as you realise the consequences.’

  She was relieved to see that Hera suddenly looked uncertain.

  ‘What consequences?’ she asked. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  Such apparent confidence in a young girl, a mere child, but Julia suspected it was not confidence.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not. Sit down again, Hera.’ And she sat down again herself. ‘Right,’ Julia said, ‘let’s be clear about a few things. This wasn’t a squabble between you and your brother. It was part of repeated acts of violence towards him and your other brothers, so something has to be done about your behaviour before you injure someone seriously. You can’t go around thumping other children the way you have been doing. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’ve been referred to me. Understand?’

  This came out rather more sternly than Julia had intended, but it seemed to have some effect. Hera sat down and folded her arms in what Julia deduced was a defensive gesture. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she also detected a faint watering of Hera’s prominent eyes. No tears came, but Hera held her head up and stared at the ceiling for a while before looking at Julia.

  ‘Your mother—’ Julia began, but Hera interrupted her.

  ‘My mum has nothing to do with it,’ she said.

  ‘I was going to say,’ Julia continued, ‘that your mother seems very troubled by what happened, very unhappy about it.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ Hera said, ‘it’s how she is.’

  ‘What, troubled, unhappy?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, but it’s what you meant, I think. Your mother cried when she found your brother on the floor, screaming, and you standing over him. She says she cried when she took him to A & E and was told his wrist was broken and would need to be set in plaster. A lot of crying. Were you upset to see your mother crying?’

  ‘It was stupid,’ Hera said.

  Hera’s mother had cried in front of Julia. Copiously. Hera, she said, was beyond control. Her rages were frightening and unpredictable. Everyone was frightened of her, even the brother who was a year older (but half a head smaller). Once, Hera had almost strangled this brother. She said she had only been experimenting, to see how easy it would be should she wish to strangle someone. The marks were on his neck for weeks. There was never an apology afterwards. Hera’s mother wept as she described her daughter’s callous behaviour, saying she had no idea what gave rise to it, why Hera was like this. They were a happy family; there had been no disasters to explain why Hera was as she was, no divorce or death, nothing. She repeated that they were a happy family. Except for Hera.

  Julia and her mother stayed at Aunt Maureen’s for a week. They had never stayed so long before, except for when Reginald was killed, even though they had often been invited to, because the sisters invariably fell out within twenty-four hours and Julia’s mother would announce an abrupt departure back to Penrith. But not this time. Maureen was happy, Iris was happy, and Uncle Tom was happy (not that his happiness had ever had any bearing on anything). The baby was the centre of everyone’s attention, his every cry or whimper responded to. Julia’s mother was good with him. She walked about the house carrying him and crooning to him in a manner which puzzled Julia. She had never seen her mother so gentle and loving, her usually cross expression quite gone, with only the hard mark between her eyes, the vertical slash on her forehead, to show how ferocious her frown had been for too many years. Julia couldn’t understand it.

  She couldn’t understand the attraction of little Reggie either, and had become tired of pretending she was thrilled to be allowed, occasionally, to hold him. She preferred it when the baby was in his pram, which was an old-fashioned one, a Silver Cross pram with big wheels and a big hood and a rain cover which stretched tightly across it. The placing of the precious baby in this vehicle was a solemn ceremony involving a great deal of adjusting of the interior mattress and covers. Maureen put a pillow there, but Iris took it out, saying pillows were dangerous for small babies. Her mother and Julia’s mother raised their eyebrows at each other but neither dared to challenge Iris. On their last day, Julia and her mother were allowed to take little Reggie for a short walk while Iris had a dental appointment and Maureen was getting her hair done. It was clear to Julia that this was an honour, and that her mother appreciated that it was.

  They set off slowly, Julia opening the gate so that the Silver Cross pram could glide through without marking its shiny navy-blue sides. The navy blue seemed a contradiction to Julia: if this was a silver cross pram, why was it navy blue? Where was the silver? She brought this up with Iris, and was laughed at and told she took things too literally. Once through the gate, her mother turned the pram round and they headed to the park, Julia also holding on to the handle. Two lots of hands gripping the thick handle. Her mother wouldn’t let Julia push it on her own until two kerbs had been negotiated and the park entered. Then, on the flat path leading to the duck pond, Julia was giv
en permission to push the pram on her own. It was easy. It hardly took any strength to make the pram move. Julia pushed harder and for a second, only a second, took her hands off the handle to see if the pram would continue to move on its own. Her mother was shocked, and immediately slapped her own hands back on the handle. ‘Never,’ she said, ‘never take your hands off the handle. Anything could happen. Really, Julia, you are the limit, the idea!’

  Julia wasn’t given the chance again to push the pram on her own so she gave up and put her hands in her pockets instead. When they got to the duck pond, her mother put the brake on the pram wheels and she and Julia sat on a bench, with the pram’s hood up to shield the baby from the sun. They had no bread, so couldn’t feed the ducks, which might have relieved the boredom for Julia. Sitting on the bench, swinging her legs, Julia narrowed her eyes and looked at the pram and thought of releasing the brake and giving it a push to see how far it could travel by itself along the cement path. Quite a long way, she reckoned, because there was a slight slope downwards and the pram would gather speed.

  The next time they went to see little Reggie he was eight weeks old. He could smile, what everyone said was a real smile and not just wind. Again, Julia was allowed to hold him, under heavy supervision, though she hadn’t asked to. She found his face ugly, but of course didn’t say so. The tiny bit of hair he’d had had gone and his baldness showed lumps, bulges, all over his head. His eyes hadn’t grown any bigger and were now almost lost in rolls of fat. Julia was glad to have him taken from her unwilling arms, and placed in the Silver Cross pram.

  There was another outing, to the park, to the duck pond and back. This was as boring an outing as ever, but at least Julia was allowed, once she and her mother were in the park, to push the pram on her own. Her mother of course walked beside her, repeating ‘Slowly, slowly, Julia’, but only Julia’s hands were on the handle. It did make her feel quite important to be in charge of the Silver Cross pram and its precious cargo. Again, she had this urge to push the pram away from her to see how far it would go. It gave her an excited feeling in her stomach which was not altogether pleasant. Any moment she felt she might give in to the urge, and she would do it so suddenly, and with such strength, that her mother wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  ‘You did that very nicely, Julia,’ her mother said, when the walk was over and they were turning into Maureen’s drive. It was so rarely that her mother praised her in any way, for anything at all, that Julia blushed with pleasure. Her mother told Maureen and Iris that Julia had pushed the pram beautifully in the park, though Maureen did slightly spoil the compliment by remarking that it was an easy pram to push, the Rolls-Royce of prams, not like modern-day prams with wheels so small they took a lot of turning. But still. As a reward, Julia was invited to help bathe little Reggie that evening. In the bathroom there was a stand with a plastic bath held within it. Iris ran the water until she announced it was at the correct temperature and then she used a jug to half fill the plastic baby bath. Julia sat with a white towel spread across her knees, as instructed, and watched Iris undress the baby. She was quite shocked at what she saw. Her eyes were riveted on little Reggie’s genitals as she tried to make sense of them. Never, in any book with pictures of babies in it, had she seen a naked baby, and never in real life had she seen a boy unclothed. Suddenly, little Reggie became a fascinating object and she watched with a new interest as he was carefully lowered into the bath, with Iris’s arm still round him. He yelped at first, but then as his adoring mother gently splashed the warm water over him he seemed to become calm and enjoy the sensation. When Iris had finished, she put the baby onto the waiting towel and Julia wrapped it round him and patted him dry, as directed by Iris. She didn’t pat his genitals, but concentrated on his feet. Then Iris took him and put a nappy on him and a vest, and a blue Babygro. All babies were dressed in Babygros now. Neither Iris’s mother nor Julia’s mother approved of them, partly because each of them had made nightgowns for the baby, but Iris thought they were brilliant.

  Julia and her mother stayed the night. It was on the next day, in the afternoon, that little Reggie was put to sleep in the Silver Cross pram which was placed in the garden, at the front, under a pear tree. It was a hot, sunny day but there was plenty of shade under the tree. Julia was told to check that little Reggie was asleep and then come in for tea, leaving the front door open so that any cries could be heard. She stood dutifully beside the pram. ‘You can rock the pram very, very gently,’ Iris said, ‘just enough to send him to sleep.’ She watched as Julia very, very gently touched the big, broad handle of the pram. The pram hardly moved at all. ‘Good,’ said Iris, ‘you’ve got the idea.’ She peered into the dark cavern of the hood of the pram. ‘Good,’ she said again, ‘he’s asleep. You don’t need to rock him now, Julia. Just play in the garden and listen out for him.’

  Play. Julia pondered this instruction. What did it mean, ‘play’? With what? With whom? There wasn’t a ball or a skipping rope in sight. There wasn’t a swing in this garden either. She wandered round the lawn, stopping at the sundial and trying to work out the time, but couldn’t. There was a small pond in one corner, containing a few water lilies. She could, she supposed, throw stones into the pond. Half-heartedly, she picked up a few stones from the path and threw them one by one into the pond, moving further away each time, to make aiming at the water lilies more difficult. Then she heard little Reggie cry. It wasn’t a proper cry, more a whimper, but she went back to the pram and rocked it. The whimpering stopped, but she went on rocking the pram, doing it harder. How much rocking would it take to overturn the pram? It was just a passing thought that went through her head. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the pram tilting. But it never would. It would need a really, really strong push to upend it, much stronger than any she could give.

  Often, she saw pictures like that in her mind. Things happening, quite bad things. They were more often bad things than good things. She never told anyone this, though she would like to have known if everyone had such thoughts.

  Half an hour had gone by. Julia didn’t need to consult her wristwatch. There was a large wall clock high up in front of her. Its presence always irritated her but getting it removed seemed a job nobody would take on. ‘It’s always been there,’ other people said, seeming surprised that Julia took exception to it.

  ‘Hera,’ Julia said, ‘how would you describe a happy family? What would you say it would consist of?’

  But Hera was a clever girl and she wasn’t falling for this. ‘Happy?’ she queried. ‘Depends what you mean by happy.’

  ‘What do you mean by it?’ Julia parried.

  ‘I don’t,’ Hera said.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘I don’t talk about happy families. You did. So you should know what you mean.’ She smiled, pleased with herself.

  Julia nodded. ‘A happy family, to me,’ she said slowly, ‘can be of any size. It doesn’t matter how many, or how few, members it has. It doesn’t even matter how these people, adults and children, are related to each other, once they’ve grouped together into a family. But once they have, their happiness depends on how they treat each other. Just one member disregarding the feelings of another can wreck the family – if the rest of the family let it, of course.’

  Hera yawned ostentatiously.

  ‘I might be boring you, Hera,’ Julia said, ‘but I haven’t finished yet. I think you don’t want your particular family to be happy. Everyone else who belongs to it wants it to be happy, but you don’t.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Hera said, but flatly, without passion.

  ‘You’re very fond of that word,’ Julia said. ‘Is everyone except you “stupid”?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But what you’re saying about me is stupid. Why would I want to wreck my family? It’s stupid.’

  ‘What do you want to do, then,’ said Julia, ‘behaving as you have been behaving?’

  ‘I can’t help how I behave,’ Hera said.

  ‘Oh, but yo
u can,’ Julia said, ‘saying that is stupid.’

  This could go on forever or at least for the rest of the remaining twenty minutes.

  ‘Have you ever been hit, Hera?’ Julia asked. ‘Slapped? Smacked? Pushed around?’

  Hera shrugged.

  ‘What does that shrug mean?’ Julia asked. ‘Yes? No? You can’t remember?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Hera said.

  ‘Suppose what?’

  ‘Well, I expect I was smacked when I was little, how should I know?’

  ‘Your mother says you never were.’

  Hera made a noise of derision, a little ‘huh’ that sounded contemptuous.

  ‘So I shouldn’t believe her?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Believe what you like,’ Hera said, ‘it makes no difference to me.’

  ‘Well,’ Julia said, ‘it makes a great deal of difference to me. If I believe your mother, and I see no reason not to, you as a young child were never treated as you treat your younger brothers.’

  ‘Rick is older,’ Hera said, smiling triumphantly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia, ‘but you’ve hit your younger brothers too, haven’t you? But not hard enough for them to break a limb and for you to get found out. That’s what you’ve depended on, isn’t it? Not being found out. Making your brothers so afraid of you that they have never said anything. Has that given you pleasure?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Hera said, angry now.

  Julia let a pause of a full five minutes fill the room with silence. Hera didn’t like silence. It agitated her. She developed all kinds of strategies to combat it, tapping her fingers on the side of her chair, kicking her foot against the cupboard next to her. Julia let this happen, not once telling the girl to stop it. Eventually, it did stop. Hera folded her arms.