The One..Perhaps by Lucy Deedes
There were no flies on my mother when it came to marrying off her daughters; Mrs Bennet could have taken her correspondence course. There were three of us girls and since Victoria and I were now married with children, there was only Rose to plot for.
Rose announced she had another friend coming down for the weekend and our mother sprang into action, antennae on full alert for social transgressions, character faults and doubtful shoes.
Charlie arrived – clean-shaven, blue linen shirt, good shoes – and Rose took him upstairs to show him his bedroom. This was along the passageway, down a few steps and round a corner from Rose’s own room. The rest of our welcoming committee left in the hall exchanged glances and smiles and withdrew to the kitchen.
‘He’s not wearing his dog collar!’ said my mother.
This was a very unjust docking of points.
‘Ma, that’s his uniform and he’s not at work now.’
I scooped up Nancy and we negotiated her legs and her plump little body into the high chair. She opened her mouth like a baby bird and I spooned in some vegetable gloop.
Rose and Charlie came downstairs bearing bottles of champagne and a tall bottle filled with something green.
‘Charlie ’s brought champagne AND olive oil from his father’s farm in Sicily,’ Rose said. “Just look how healthy. Let’s open a bottle.’
She started unwrapping gold foil but Charlie took the bottle from her and placidly untwisted the wire. I saw our mother, washing lettuce at the sink, pause while the Sicily angle filtered in. He opened the bottle with no fuss, filled glasses and took one over to her.
‘What are we having?’ Rose said.
‘Fish pie, oh and darling, would you mash the potatoes and maybe make a cheese sauce while I do the bone hunt?’ She was proud of her fish pies and relentless about removing every particle of bone and skin.
‘If someone found a bone in my fish pie, I’d have to kill myself.’
Nancy continued to eat placidly, but her eyes followed Charlie round the room and when he clinked glasses with Rose (cue a slight stiffening from Ma) she roared with laughter as if he’d performed a clever trick, sending a fine mist of vegetables across the floor.
‘Nappy alert,’ I said. ‘Much as I’d love to make a sauce…’
Ma put on her glasses and sat down in front of the fish and Rose drained the potatoes and set to with the masher.
‘Charlie will do it, won’t you darling? Flour and nutmeg up there, milk and cheese in the fridge, cheese grater on the draining board,’ she waved a hand at him.
‘I’ll take Nancy up, if you like,’ Charlie said to me. He held out his arms and I handed her over. Nancy favoured him with a coquettish look. “I’m quite good with babies…all those christenings.’ He carried her away down the hall and we looked at each other.
‘Bingo,’ said Ma.
From Simon: This is a nice little scene of family interaction. The early reference to ‘Mrs Bennett’ is useful shorthand, telling us we’re in the Pride and Prejudice world of match-making and marrying off daughters. The simple story is animated by very exact detail and use of language. There is a whole history of prejudice in the mother’s disapproval of ‘doubtful shoes.’ It reminded me of an elderly woman I once heard saying, ‘The son-in-law was always a dubious factor.’ I like the way in this narrative, the mother’s system of values is spelled out in the phrase ‘docking of points’. And ‘the bone hunt’ is exactly the kind of expression which develops in a family’s private slang. It is also telling that Charlie seems quite relaxed under what he knows to be intense scrutiny. We get this from the fact that he opens the champagne ‘placidly’. And he is clearly familiar with the rules of the game he’s playing. Rose offers him as a potato-masher, but he knows there are more brownie points to be gained from changing the baby’s nappy. He’s a shrewd operator and I’m sure he’ll be very happy with Rose. I’m not sure, though, that I envy him his prospective mother-in-law.