“Hi, I’m Sarah’s dad. You must be Marion.” He let the golden-brown fringe fall forwards, and Marion felt the urge to reach out and feel if it really was soft as a silk tassel.
Marion’s dad never wore jeans; he always dressed in a suit even when they went for walks along the promenade. Sarah’s mum and dad seemed so young compared to her own parents. Marion’s father had been fifty-two when she was born and her mother forty-three. They were the same age as most of her schoolmates’ grandparents, and their lives had the sepia tinge of a bygone era when people rode penny-farthings and had kitchen maids.
Marion followed Sarah’s dad into the house, which was remarkable for its lack of antiques, wood-paneling, and curtains with mad swirling patterns. Instead, everything was made from sunlit pine and crayon-box colors. Through the French windows she could see Sarah and her friends standing on the patio. When they saw Marion, they gathered into a group and began to whisper.
Sarah’s mum came from the kitchen, wiping hands as small and soft as baby mice against her pale blue jeans. Sarah’s mum and dad were like a pair of those fashion dolls you saw in toy shops. The ones that stood side by side in cellophane boxes, dressed in matching outfits with plastic leisure accessories like miniature bikes and BBQ kits. “Hi, Marion.” She beamed as if they were old friends. “The girls are out in the garden playing with Robbie. You go and join them while I get lunch ready.”
Marion got a tight cold feeling in her tummy as if she were being sent out to fight in a battle.
“Please don’t make me go,” she wanted to say. “Let me stay inside. We can watch TV, and I can pretend that you are my real mum and dad.”
Sarah’s dad let her out through the French windows, and she found herself standing on some paving stones, all different jagged shapes and sizes that had been cleverly fitted together like a puzzle. Sarah and her friends were taking turns stroking the gray fur of a large cuddly toy. The creature’s nose twitched as if in annoyance at Marion daring to step out onto its fantastical stone garden.
“How does it move? Is it a magic toy?” asked Marion.
“He is a chinchilla called Robbie, and he can move because he’s alive,” said Sarah in a tone that implied only an idiot wouldn’t know that. “Don’t let her touch him,” she ordered the other girls. “She’ll probably do it wrong and squish him to death.”
Lucy Clements, by far the biggest of the girls, readied her walnutty knuckles to punch, then placed herself between the chinchilla and Marion. The others petted Robbie with exaggerated daintiness, sweeping their fingertips downwards and allowing them to alight on his fur for just an instant.
Marion went and stood alone at the far end of the garden. “White trousers twill—brushed cotton red trousers with flower on the pocket—rayon pink skirt—black pants serge—no—canvas—pants—black—no, white pants—toweling—towel—towel,” she said to herself, identifying the fabrics of items on Mrs. Moss’s rotating washing line. She knew how from having spent so much time at Dad’s warehouse looking through sample books.
When Mrs. Moss called them in for lunch, they ate things that Marion had never seen before: peanut butter and a drink called Lilt that had pictures of palm trees on the can and tasted like sugary sunshine. Sarah and her friends began being overly nice to her, but in a pretend way.
“Judy, would you most kindly pass the peanut butter sandwiches to Marion?” said Sarah with a sharp-edged smile stretching her pretty face. “She looks like she is almost dead from hunger.”
“Would you like another Jammie Dodger, Marion? You have only had six or seven already,” asked Lucy. The other girls giggled until a frown from Sarah’s mum shut them up.
After tea, Marion and the other girls went upstairs to play. Sarah declared that they would pretend to be brides by putting a lace curtain over their heads and parading up and down the space between the frilly pink twin beds that served as a church aisle, holding a vase of plastic lilies of the valley borrowed from the downstairs loo.
“Who’s next?” Sarah said, when everyone but Marion had a turn.
“Marion hasn’t had a go,” said Hazel Parkinson, who had so many freckles on her small nose that they melted into one big browny splodge.
“But she can’t be a bride. She isn’t pretty enough. Who would marry that fat potato face?” said Judy Blake. Hearing these words made Marion’s insides burn like the time she ate the bad berries from the garden because they looked like candy.
“No, she must, everyone has to do it,” said Sarah ominously.
Reluctantly, Marion put the curtain over her head and took the flowers that had the harsh, headachy smell of cheap air freshener. As she walked, Sarah began to sing:
Here comes the bride
Forty inches wide
They had to knock the church door down
To get her bum inside.
The mattresses of the twin beds shook as the girls that were sitting on them began to giggle.
? ? ?
WHEN SHE WENT home, she found Mother cleaning the Edwardian silver teapot. Beautifully decorated with exotic animals and birds and standing on four tiger paws, the pot was too valuable to be trusted to the meaty hands of Mrs. Morrison, the housekeeper. Mother listened to Marion’s tale while carefully rubbing a soft gray cloth over the gleaming curve of the handle.
Marion wanted to be told that Sarah and her friends were wrong, that they were just saying these things to hurt her feelings, but instead Mother looked at Marion with an expression of vague disappointment, as if she were something that had lost its shape in the wash.
“It’s not your fault, Marion; you take after your dad’s mother. She was a very plain woman, but she was going to inherit the fabric business. That’s the only reason Grandfather Zetland married her.”
“Maybe I’ll be pretty when I grow up, like the ugly duckling,” Marion said optimistically.
Her mother said nothing but put down the teapot, lit a menthol cigarette, and exhaled. As the realization she might never be loved enveloped Marion with the cloud of bitter smoke, she wrapped her arms around Mother’s angular hips for comfort. Physical affection wasn’t encouraged, however, in the Zetland family, and she soon felt herself peeled off with extreme delicacy.
As Mother returned her attention to the teapot, Marion ran upstairs to her attic bedroom. She arranged all her soft toys in a circle on the floor, then got into the middle and curled up into a ball with her head tucked between her knees. She often did this when she was upset. It made her feel as though the toys were protecting her with their magical power. While she was still curled up with her eyes closed someone came into the room. Marion did not look up, but she knew it must be her older brother, John, because she could smell strawberry shoelaces, and those were his favorite sweets.
“What’s up, Mar?”
“I’m not pretty. I’m never going to get married because I’m far too wide.” The sob that came deep from Marion’s chest sounded like a saw being dragged across wood. “I expect I will die alone.”
She heard John snap a shoelace between his teeth.