Walking with Ghosts

said. ‘A thin band. Geordie said all his friends will think he’s a cheapskate. He’s gone to buy a suit with Sam. Wants something with wide lapels and a metallic fleck in it. I told him if he finds anything like that I won’t marry him. But you know what he’s like, he’ll spend a teenage fortune. By the time the wedding’s over we’ll be broke.’
    Marie sipped her coffee. ‘What about the dress? What kind of thing are we looking for?’
    ‘If there was time I’d have had it made. The idea I’ve got in my head is something in silk, dark blue, not too dark, full skirt, gathered at the waist. I saw one once, ages ago, in French Connection, I think. And I called in there on the way here, but they haven’t got anything like it.’
    ‘Sounds easy enough,’ said Marie, ironically. ‘How far are you willing to compromise?’
    ‘We’ve got about three hours. If I haven’t found anything by then I’ll call the wedding off.’
    ‘What happens in three hours?’
    ‘I meet my mother. She arrived last night. She thinks Geordie’s the pits. She thought he was scum before she set eyes on him, and as far as she’s concerned he’s already lived up to her expectations.’ Her lips quivered and a tear darted down her cheek, but she brushed it aside.
    Marie reached out and covered her hand. ‘Oh, Jesus, Janet. That’s not fair.’
    ‘She doesn’t give him a chance. For hours before she arrived he was cleaning the house. He bought flowers to put in her room, made the bed up himself. I told him not to bother, that she was an ungrateful woman, and that she didn’t really like anybody in the world. But he wouldn’t listen. “This is gonna be my mother-in-law you’re talking about,” he said. “And I don’t wanna get off on the wrong foot with her.” He probably expected somebody like Celia, you know, someone who was interested in people. Or at least somebody who was interested in something outside of herself. But my mother’s never been like that. She’s interested in herself and her own thoughts, and she doesn’t have many thoughts. Not nice ones anyway. Basically she thinks everyone in the world is out to screw her, and she sets out to immobilize them before they can get near her.
    ‘Geordie went out an hour before she arrived and bought magazines at Smiths, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair. He went to Fenwick’s and got a new eiderdown for her bed because he thought the old one looked as though it had been washed. White, with little yellow flowers on. And he bought a picture, reproduction of some Matisse flowers, and hung it on the wall. We met her at the station, and when I introduced them she wouldn’t even shake hands with him. She wanted to rest, so I showed her the room, and five minutes later she was back downstairs with the magazines and the flowers, saying she didn’t read magazines, and flowers gave her a wheezy chest.
    ‘That was just the beginning. When we were eating last night Geordie tried again, thinking he’d just got off to a bad start. He turned up at the table with a collar and tie, and he’d been polishing his shoes for, well, must’ve been more than an hour. They were shining like they had batteries inside. My mother just pushed the food around on her plate. Geordie asked her what it was like back home, if she’d had a good trip on the train, what she thought about the royal family, if she’d read any good books lately. I could see he’d really thought about it. He’d lined up a whole gamut of topics to try out on her. If one of them didn’t work, he’d have another one ready to tempt her with. But she wasn’t having any of it. Whatever he said she’d grunt and look at her plate or out the window.
    ‘Finally she said, “The only thing I’m interested in is Janet’s welfare, and as she’s already pregnant before she’s even married, I can’t see very much future for her, can you? In my experience the kind of man who gets a girl pregnant before the marriage is not the kind of man who is going to be able to provide for a family, and will most likely desert the ship as soon as something goes wrong.”
    ‘ “I wouldn’t do that,” Geordie said. “Janet’s the most important person in the world. I’d never desert her, no matter what happened. And the baby’s gonna be a blessing. It’s gonna have everything in the world.”
    ‘Mother turned on him. “And how’re you going to provide for them? That’s what I’d like to know. You don’t have a proper