She took me from Jan, yet she led me to her also; a lesser woman would have been embittered by the unwitting cruelty I showed her then, yet when that was over and I needed a crutch to keep moving, there she was propping me up. She didn’t push herself back into my life; indeed she wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t asked her. Yet I hadn’t hesitated. There’s a Paul Simon song, ‘Something so Right’; if I’m ever on Desert Island Discs, or anything like it, I’ll have them play that for Prim.
Right then, looking down at her, I saw the lids of her left eye unstick themselves. ‘S’up?’ she mumbled. ‘Heartburn? Y’ know you shouldn’t eat garlic.’
‘What’s up with you?’ I chuckled. ‘You sounded as if you were giving someone the message there. What did I do?’
‘Not you,’ she said, awake now, and rolling over on to her side. ‘My Mum. I was having a dream about our wedding; I was in this fluffy white dress and she was fussing all over me.’
‘Fluffy white dress? You never told me that.’
‘Of course not. That’s women’s work.’
‘Fine, but you? In a big flouncy dress?’
She smiled. ‘It’s okay, it won’t be a Royal Wedding job. It’ll be tight-fitting and simple, like I usually dress when we go formal. I’m even going to have it re-modelled afterwards so I can wear it again.’
‘Very economical. But what if I hadn’t overheard this dream of yours and I’d turned up in jeans, alongside you in the white dress?’
She snorted. ‘As long as you turn up, I don’t care if you’re in your M and S boxers. But don’t worry about that; Susie’s helping me with the dress, and it’s Mike’s job to make sure that you turn up appropriately clad. The white tux that you wear on the telly sometimes, that’ll be fine.’
‘Sod that. You’re wearing new — I’m wearing new.’
‘That’ll be good news for Slater’s,’ Prim murmured. Then she yawned. ‘But come on. You still haven’t answered my first question. What’s keeping you awake?’
‘My brain.’ I told her. ‘My over-active brain. I’ve been thinking about my Dad’s throwaway line today, and about what Liam said tonight. They’re right, both of them. Just lately, everywhere I’ve gone, mayhem’s dogged my fucking footsteps.
‘Susie comes to see us, and someone cremates her car right on our doorstep. I meet Noosh in Aberdeen and some gangster takes a shot at her. I go down to London with the GWA and two guys turn up looking to break my arms. I take the boys out for the day and someone shoves wee Colin into a bloody great hole.
‘On the basis of all that, my love — and I’m not even going to think of some of the other things that have happened over the last couple of years — am I, or am I not, an unlucky guy to be around?’
Prim laid her left hand flat on my stomach. ‘On the basis of most things that have happened to me since I met you — and I’m not just talking about the silly money that seems to flow in our direction all the time — I’d say you’ve brought me more luck than anyone I’ve ever met.
‘Don’t get paranoid over a couple of silly remarks, Oz, please. Luck had nothing to do with any of those things, anyway, and none of them save one had anything to do with you. Someone — Stephen Donn, from the looks of it — had made a very specific threat to Susie before her car blew up. Noosh What’shername seems to have brought some heavy baggage back from Russia. As for Colin, we had that report of youngsters being seen in the vicinity, and shoving the wee chap into that Dungeon was so reckless and stupid that it only makes sense as a kids’ prank.’
She paused, stifling another yawn. ‘The only thing that concerns you directly, is the London incident. We don’t know for sure who sent those men to do you. Maybe it was Stephen Donn giving you a warning not to get too close, maybe it was your rejected admirer or her husband, maybe it was someone completely different.
‘Whoever was behind it was in deadly earnest. Luck didn’t come into that, either.’
‘That’s a comforting thought.’
‘You haven’t had any trouble since, have you?’
‘Not personally, no.’
‘Right, forget it.’ Her arm slipped round my waist and pulled me gently down until I was lying beside her, my face close to hers on the pillow. ‘Now, since you woke me at this unsocial hour, the least you can do is. .’
Clearly, my luck had taken a turn for the better.
Chapter 32
For all that I indulge in them every now and again, the truth is that I’ve never really understood mother-in-law jokes. The best humour, as I see it, has to be based on reality and the concept of the Wife’s Old Dear as a descendant of the velocirapter runs counter to my experience.
I’ve always found that it’s the daughters who have the really sharp teeth, and the really ripping claws.
Granted, my first experience of the species was somewhat unusual, given that Mary was both my mother-in-law and my stepmother, for in either role she’s as kind and gentle a woman as you’ll meet in a day’s march. Nevertheless, I didn’t anticipate any problems with her successor, whom I’d liked from the day we met.
No, the prospect of going with Elanore Phillips to Gleneagles Hotel to make the wedding arrangements did not, of itself, make me particularly nervous. What did worry me were the strictures laid down by Prim before I set off for Auchterarder. ‘You know what Mum’s like,’ I had been warned. ‘She loves a big production, and she’ll try to push you into it.
‘I want a very informal do. You can sign up for the poshest fork buffet they have and for the top of the range wines, but I do not want a sit-down lunch and formal speeches. Dad will propose a toast to us, we will each of us say a few words in reply, and that’s it. Given our history, I will not put you through the ordeal of making a full-scale speech and having people hanging on your every word looking for possible references to Jan.
‘Nor will I put myself through the ordeal of having to listen to it.’
She paused for breath. ‘But Mum would, you see. You’ve heard her; all she can think of is the fact that when Dawn got married quietly in the States, she was somehow cheated out of something. She doesn’t see anything but that. She’ll use every weapon in her arsenal to try to cajole or bully you into agreeing to a formal job. . but don’t you dare. She isn’t even seeing the guest list: I’m damned if I’ll have her stuffing it with her Old Biddy pals from the church.’
After that, heading up to Perthshire I felt like an ancient Greek warrior, given his shield and told to return bearing it in victory or borne dead upon it in defeat.
She wasn’t wrong either. I had never visited Semple House on my own before — on every occasion I had been there, Prim had too — but when I arrived I was greeted as if I’d ridden up on a donkey along a road strewn with palm-leaves. Remembering how that story carries on, I didn’t feel too comfortable.
I had planned to take Elanore and David to lunch at Gleneagles before she and I met the functions people, but the table was set when I arrived. One of the things I like about Prim’s mum is that there’s no subtlety about her — the tactic was clear: soften up the boy with her awesome kitchen skills, then go for the finisher. She opened her campaign over the soup. ‘Before I forget, Oz,’ she said, gauchely. She reached into a cavernous handbag and produced a white envelope. ‘Give this to Primavera for me, won’t you. It’s a list of my Auchterarder friends whom I’d like you to invite.’
I took it from her without comment, then sneaked a quick glance at David. I was impressed by the depth of his concentration on the Cullen Skink.
The bell for Round Two sounded over the steak and kidney pudding. ‘You know, Oz,’ she began, confiding in me as a member of the family, ‘I love my older daughter dearly, as does David, and as do you, but we all have to admit, don’t we, that she can be very wilful.’ As she spoke, her husband forked up a particularly large morsel of dumpling, cleverly taking himself out of the discussion.
‘She knows her own mind, does Primavera,’ I conceded. I was about to add, ‘And mine too,’ but I stopped myself just in time.