Read Online Dear Doctor Lily by Monica Dickens - Free Book Online

invited?’
    Mrs Legge backed the car without looking to see if the dog or child were behind it, and hauled it round like a battleship.
    â€˜See what I mean,’ she stated triumphantly as she lurched off, scattering stones.
    Ida had turned round to see Sis and the little girl holding hands, with their hair and their long skirts blowing. She fought the stiff window to roll it down far enough to lean out and wave.
    Buddy did not turn up until early the next morning.
    â€˜They screwed up my pass,’ he said. ‘Been driving through the night.’
    As Ida understood it, Watkins base wasn’t all that far away, but he needed a grievance to present to his mother, like a bunch of flowers.
    He looked better in his uniform. He always did, and when he had had a shower and a shave and a stack of Verna’s pancakes, with floods of maple syrup and oily butter that clung round his mouth, he was quite a dashing bridegroom.
    My wedding day. Who would have believed it? Eighty-five per cent of English women get married at least once, but each one is shocked when it happens. The electric heater in the trailer had set fire to itself and burned a hole in the wall that smelled of scorching rubber, so Ida was allowed to get ready in the bath-room,and to have it to herself for one whole half hour. She soaked with a highly scented bath cube given her by Phyllis, who was in a romantic mood, thrilled with herself in a new dress the colour of cough syrup.
    What the hell am I doing? Ida lay in the fragrant scummy water, keeping the back of her hair dry. Do I love him? Lily shouldn’t have talked like that. Secretly, it had shaken Ida a bit. Does he love me? In his way, I suppose. We can make a go of it. Because it was her wedding day and therefore quite unreal, Ida let herself drift away into lying fantasies of low, cushioned rooms and log fires and flaxen-haired children and cow manure.
    When she came out of the bathroom in her white dress and silver shoes, with her new silver eye make-up and pancake foundation over the wretched shadows below them, and the best pink mouth she had ever drawn, glossy as satin, Buddy looked up from the kitchen table and passed the back of his hand over his lips.
    â€˜Not bad,’ he said in a wet throaty voice, which meant emotion with him. ‘Bit like they wear for tennis, but not bad.’ He looked her slowly up and down and up (she had a padded bra). Then he wiped his mouth again and gave a low whistle.
    Mrs Legge had the white hat over a lampshade near the door, so it could not be avoided, but after Buddy had driven off with his friend Malc who was going to stand up for him as his best man, and the rest of them were all ready to leave for the church, Sis hurried in wearing a long Indian kind of dress and gave Ida a big white carnation made of silk that she had bought for her hair.
    Ida was in a spot. Not really. Mrs Legge could stuff herself with the hat. Sis pinned the flower on to one side of her curls. Since Verna Legge was raging, Ida went off to the church in Jeff’s truck.
    After the wedding – my God, I’ve gone and done it! – they had coffee and cakes and beer and sweet wine in the hall at the side of the church. It was nice. There was a doddery old grandmother on a walking frame and a few cousins and local people, and Buddy stayed next to Ida all the time, holding her hand in his hot sticky one, or stroking her arm and telling people, ‘This is my wife.’
    â€˜Never thought they’d get ya, Buddy boy.’ ‘Nor did I. Feels good though.’ ‘Atta boy.’ ‘Sure feels good.’ And other comfortable remarks that made Ida feel glad about the whole thing.
    Henry Legge, in a suit, said to her quite formally that he was proud to welcome her into the family. Mrs Legge did not say a word to anyone the entire time. She sat by the wall with her knees apart, and when Buddy and Ida came to say goodbye to her before they left, she