Forty-five Minutes Before I Do
Audrey hurried along the corridor to the morning room, avoiding eye contact with everyone she passed. She found Granny Parker sitting in a wing-backed chair, reading a different Jilly Cooper novel from the one she’d been reading last night. She looked slightly like a Bond villain plotting some dastardly plan for world domination.
‘Ah, Audrey,’ she said.
‘I must be quick, Granny, it’s not long until the service. Is everything okay?’
Granny Parker shut her book. ‘I didn’t get to talk to you last night, after that debacle at dinner. I wanted a word before the wedding.’ She patted her book in her lap. ‘You’ll be the first in six generations of Mrs Parkers who hasn’t been a Yorkshire lass, you know.’
Audrey nodded, humouring her. ‘Well, it’s good to shake up the bloodlines now and again, isn’t it?’
‘Parkers are as Yorkshire as tea and cake, as Yorkshire as the Dales.’
‘Are you saying you disapprove of me because I’m too southern?’ Audrey asked, in a friendly tone. She was used to Granny Parker’s eccentricities.
‘I don’t disapprove, I just see what I see.’ Granny Parker paused, drumming her fingers against the spine of her book. Audrey watched the woman’s face, the crease lines around the edges of her lips like a well-played concertina. Her face looked as though every emotion had lived there at some stage or another, but beneath the wrinkled folds of skin, the older woman’s eyes were sharp and clear. ‘Omens are the universe’s way of telling us something isn’t right.’
Audrey blanched at this. She could see Granny Parker truly believed what she was saying.
‘Well, I don’t agree,’ she said tightly. ‘People see what they want to see.’
Granny Parker reached out a hand and squeezed Audrey’s arm. ‘I’ve got a sense for these things, I always have done, I feel it in my knuckles.’ She tutted. ‘Your soul’s too heavy for one so young. You’re carrying something around with you, and you need to put it down. Don’t bring it into your life with Josh, it wouldn’t be fair.’ She paused and let out a slow sigh. ‘But I suppose we are where we are. I make my peace with it today, for Josh’s sake.’ She pulled out a small blue purse and handed it to Audrey. ‘I wanted to give you this before the service. Something borrowed, something blue, something Yorkshire, through and through.’
The woman looked so sincere as she handed her the purse, Audrey tried to swallow the previous insult about her having a heavy soul.
‘What is this?’
‘Soil, from the farm I grew up on.’ She peered at Audrey, her eyes now soft and kind. ‘Every Parker woman had a piece of Yorkshire in her, and so I’m giving you a piece of it for you and yours. Even though Josh has turned into a right prissy southerner.’
Audrey smiled at this. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do you think he’ll ever get back to farming? You could leave London, the two of you. He used to love helping with the cows when he was younger. I don’t like to see him getting soft behind a desk.’
‘He’s not soft, Granny. He goes to the gym, he plants trees most weekends – it’s physically demanding, trust me.’
‘Ah, he’s soft. My husband could pick up a cow, he could.’
Audrey smiled. ‘Well, there’s not much demand for cow lifting in London.’
‘I also wanted to give you this,’ said Granny Parker, taking a well-thumbed copy of Riders by Jilly Cooper from her bag and handing it to Audrey. ‘Three things you need in a marriage – trust, humour, and a little bedroom inspiration from Jilly Cooper.’
‘Thank you,’ said Audrey, wishing the planet had chosen this moment to spontaneously combust and erase this conversation from the solar system. ‘I’d better go. I’ll try and work on lightening my soul.’ She squeezed Granny Parker’s hand as she stood up. ‘Can I ask, what was it about Grandpa Joe that made you know you wanted to marry him?’
Granny Parker looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘It was the way he looked after his animals. He had such care for every one. I remember he had this heifer recovering from a twisted stomach, and he slept two nights in the barn with her, talking to her, rubbing her belly. He cancelled tea with me to sit with her. That’s when I knew he was the one.’ Audrey smiled at this. ‘You follow your gut when it comes to love, or the cow’s gut, in my case.’ Granny Parker gave her a serious, searching look, but then returned to the book she was reading.
‘Thank you. I’ll see you in the church then.’
‘I hope so, Audrey, I hope so.’ Then she gave a little cough, which sounded to Audrey like her cue to leave.