Chapter Eighteen

 

At the first of December, snow didn't come to dust our Christmas greenery, except for the kind which comes in a can, which Pete's wife was using to dress the garland of holly adorning the front entrance of the Fisherman's Rest. I walked past, my thermos of coffee cradled between two hands with fingerless gloves — a nod to the slight chill in the air today, putting some briskness in my pace.

Dancing and dresses were on my horizon today, two weeks after the W.I. disaster — not for the annual charity fundraiser, however, but an event a little further from home. Kitty and I had scored a job as substitute catering supervisors for a friend of ours, who happened to be assigned to the university's Christmas ball. Dwight was grateful for a break during the busy season, with his wife expecting their second child; I was glad for the only feasible opportunity I had to be a fly on the wall for Paula's debut at a university event.

The entry bell for Save the Date jingled. "I found a sober-enough skirt and blouse to pass as a uniform," said Kitty, entering with a garment bag slung over her shoulder. "Reckon the waistcoats he loaned us will probably be a bit knackered, but I have a sewing kit and some extra buttons."

"Don't forget the ties," I said. "Dwight said even he wears one, just so no one mistakes him for one of the guests at a party."

"They're fair ugly, so I reckon that's true also," said Kitty, pulling a couple of clip-on ties from her pocket and laying them on the counter. "Did you ring the staff list?"

"This morning. Everyone knows the time and the two senior employees on the crew will be helping us unload the food." I hung Kitty's bag with my own outfit, a near-matching black skirt and white blouse with tights and slip-on shoes.

The phone rang and I picked it up. "Save the Date, this is Julianne speaking," I said. "Your appointment time confirmed? One moment, let me look in our diary ... our assistant has been out this week, she's probably the one you spoke with before ...."

Paula had this week off, in order to finish research on part of her paper, since term holiday was approaching. Not having seen her for the past five days, I began to worry that maybe she had had second thoughts during the long interval at university.

Wanting to go and actually going were two different things. So what if she had a tailored dress and people in her corner, encouraging her? She was a little shy at heart, and the boy she had secretly fancied for years had pretended to make up for it by asking her to this dance. That might be enough to make me give up on the notion of going before the day of the big event.

"Have you heard from Paula?" Kitty read my mind, apparently, as she unzipped her jacket.

"No. I sent a message, but there was no answer." I closed our diary and tucked it under the desk again. "I know she's probably busy studying, or whatever she's doing for her degree."

"Reckon she's rethinking things?" Kitty tucked both hands in her back pockets, gazing at the wall of success behind me, with the photos of various happy events in our past. "The bit about the boy you mentioned, that'll be the hardest part for her. Nobody wants to show up and see an ex-crush hanging about, ready to make sly fun of the fact they're alone."

"Because he won't be, I know," I said. It wasn't the fact he hadn't asked Paula that convinced me Tristan was going to be there with a beautiful girl who wasn't a bookworm. He was the sort of boy who always had his eye on someone — he was good-looking enough that plenty of girls would overlook his smugness and feel flattered. I'd been similarly stupid in my early twenties, as I could now painfully recall.

Kitty didn't say anything to this, but I knew she agreed. She could sympathize — she'd been entangled with one of those selfish types during her walk on the wild side. She'd been the castout in local society in her youth, too, as the girl treated with contempt and suspicion by her more popular peers. In some ways, she understood what it was like to be Paula better than I did.

"Did you ring the bakery about the engagement cake?" Kitty asked.

"I tried a couple of our favorites, but they're booked up due to the Christmas season," I said. "I think I might can call in a favor, though, at one of the posh places. I'm thinking of using the 'I owe you' we generated with the extra orders for the Arnold-Thompson wedding."

She nodded. "Whatever it takes, I guess. Morgan probably wants to see public reaction to the winner's cake before the wedding makes the magazine cover. She's not the type who wants to risk a debut that disappoints."

"I sense that vibe from her, too," I said, sardonically. "She doesn't have to worry. I'll find a baker and the cake will be perfect by the time it's on the banquet table."

We had already seen the menu for the engagement party, and arranged for flowers to decorate the tables. With it being held at Bon Cuisine, there was less for us to do than usual, except for overseeing all the details from the outside world, like the cake and the decor. Mark had chosen a friend of his to be the caterer for the evening, so we helped coordinate the details, but not the food.

It was a relief to have a lighter load, but the remaining details were still galling for me after the disaster with Morgan. Jillian hadn't been rehired, despite Mark's evident disagreement with his fiancee's decision. She was still seeking new employment, according to the last message I received from her, which made me feel even worse.

Maybe I could help her find another job, as the least I could do for getting her fired inadvertently. I would look through my list of professional friends this weekend and make some calls, because one of them surely needed an excellent young baker. Maybe Morgan's black mark against her in the restaurant world would be erased by a recommendation from me, among the people I knew better from long association.

Another problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I had a bad feeling it was my lot to circulate a tray of punch cups or cheese and crackers in a crowd of total strangers. No familiar face suddenly appearing, with a smile that proved she was having a wonderful time outside the world of facts and figures.

I had time to go back to the cottage before we were due at the university's temporary dance hall, after picking Lottie up from Gemma's mom. I made a quick dinner of spaghetti with frozen meatballs for my hungry crew who returned home around the same hour — Sylvia with a stack of homemade Christmas cards she and a friend had been making for class, Heath with a turtle shell he had dug out of a friend's garden, and Joel with an assignment to read Shakespeare's The Tempest for which he looked extremely unhappy.

"Think of Shakespeare like a metaphor for physics," I suggested. "The storms of life are actually storms in the atmosphere."

"It's boring," he said, not buying this idea. "It's just people standing around, talking. Some of them are weird."

"Well, Shakespeare isn't for everyone, but it's required that you know it to get through life," I joked. "Most people actually like it, if they give it a chance." From Joel's expression, I could see he didn't intend to be one of them.

"Can I have some chocolate biscuits?" Heath wolfed down his portion before I even coaxed Lottie to eat a few bites of her beef and peas.

"That's up to your dad, not me," I said. "He's on pudding duty tonight."

Matt entered, hanging up his jacket on the kitchen hook, then brushing some leaf debris from his hair. He noted dinner in progress and the uniform underneath my apron, remembering that I had somewhere to be tonight. He leaned to kiss my lips after I closed the fridge, and its door was no longer between us. "Off soon?" he asked, with a little disappointment.

"As soon as this lot eats and washes up," I said, giving a pointed look to the kids at the table. "I'll probably be late."

He kissed my forehead. "Call me when you're leaving to come home," he said. "I'll be awake."

"Don't sit up for me, you need your sleep," I said, giving his chest a light push with my hand. "Go wash up. I'll make a plate for you." After a day spent with mulch and compost piles, Matt's clothes and hands were in need of cleaning.

Kitty picked me up at the front gate, and we set off to meet Dwight's van, which we needed to load with the trays of food already prepared at his kitchen. I loaded the 'refill' items, prepared and stored in plastic containers, which consisted of finger foods for restocking the serving trays when they began to be depleted by hungry partiers.

"Is that everything?" One of Dwight's staff was checking the master list as I emerged from the caterer's kitchen one last time with a punch bowl.

"That's it," I said, locking the door. "Kitty, you have the boxes of punch cups loaded already?"

"They're in the back," she answered. "We'd better go. We only have an hour to set things up before the dance begins."

I hurried to stow the punch bowl's box in our back seat, then hopped into the passenger one. Kitty shifted into gear and we pulled into the lane behind the catering van, driving on to the university.

The temporary dance hall was in the university's debate hall — all the chairs were removed, along with the speaker's podium, replaced by a band. The long tables for the food were located on the opposite side of the room from the double doors of entry, where we carried through our trays of food, punch bowl, cups, and the large vat of punch for pouring into the crystal bowls.

I hoped I was still as good at this as I was in my college years, otherwise the university's floor was going to be a sea of raspberry bubbles in no time.

The room was decorated for the event — champagne-gold streamers, a gold mirrored ball, and lots of frosted garlands with glittering gold Christmas balls attached were hung like swags around the perimeter. Two frosted Christmas trees stood in opposite corners from each other, decorated in gold ornaments and gold-colored silk poinsettias. Someone was testing the lights as we carried in the last of the food, putting them on a 'dimmer and shimmer' setting, in Kitty's words. It made the gold streamers of tinsel and baubles hanging above shimmer like metallic confetti raining down.

We peeled open the trays as we laid out the stuffed mushrooms and miniature sandwiches rolled in thin flatbreads, similar to a kind Michael made with shaved meat and piccalilli at a recent luncheon. I arranged some parsley decoratively around the rows of finger foods, as a couple of servers put on their aprons.

We made small talk with Dwight's crew as we worked and waited — I didn't know most of them very well, but I recognized a few who had signed on to cater for us at some events, including one who worked with Michael from time to time. By seven forty-five, the band was warming up, and the early arrivals were coming in, looking like hesitant mice afraid a cat was in the next corner.

I expected if Paula was coming, this would be her moment. Arriving to find a quiet chair near the back, to be a wallflower watching everybody else dance, drink punch, and chatter away in lively little pockets of conversation. But the few who came early were strangers, a couple of boys making awkward conversation near the punch table, and a girl who was sitting on one of the chairs, reading the screen of her phone.

More people trickled in as the clock ticked five past eight. The room was beginning to fill up, but I didn't recognize anybody thus far. At ten past, the event's M.C. took the stage, one of the university's dons.

"Good evening everyone, and welcome to the annual Christmas Ball." To a round of polite applause, he continued. "We wish you all a wonderful time, and best of British on your exams, which will be coming shortly." He chuckled, with lukewarm laughter from the room in general as a response. "To ensure you have a good time we have catered food, decorations provided by our committee, and of course, our wonderful band for the evening, the Moonglow. Please give them a welcoming round of applause."

Everyone clapped, then the band began playing their first song of the evening. Russell, who was Dwight's main employee, lifted the first tray, and looked to us for the signal. Kitty was ladling punch cups, so I took on the first duty of sending out our circulating wait staff.

Feeling as if I had been sucked back in time to my own college dances, I leaned against the wall behind the buffet, watching the room. Memories of good times, bad ones, and evenings both boring and memorable were prompted — I could have taken a walk down memory lane if it wasn't for the distraction of looking for Paula in nearly every new arrival. I knew I should give up soon, because she wasn't the type who typically made a late entrance — that meant facing crowds, including all the peers who were so indifferent to her, and actually making a path through them.

Kitty poked me in the arm. "He's here," she said. Tristan, I realized a second later, and peered through the crowd in the semi darkness for the boy I had seen at choir practice.

He had arrived alone, although in the typical pack of friends I would expect him to be with, all boys who looked like the same type. Already, I could see them joking with each other, as they scanned the crowd of girls in formal dresses who were clustered near the catering station.

Was he looking for Paula? I felt a little hope — and a little apprehension — when I thought of this. But it didn't take me long to see that I shouldn't worry on that score. Tristan had spotted a girl in a black and pink cocktail dress, who looked exactly the same type as the girl he had been flirting with at choir practice. She was glamorous, thin, with a slight pout on her lips as she listened to her friend talk.

Even though he didn't have a girl with him, I had a feeling that he wouldn't come to a dance like this without a partner in mind already. As he squeezed his way towards the glam girl, I knew that he'd made his choice. In a way, I was glad Paula wasn't here to watch.

Kitty could sense my disappointment. I could see the look of sympathy on her face. I shrugged. "You were right," I said.

"I didn't want to be," she said. "I thought maybe he'd turn out to be better than a prat, somehow."

"Then you did better than me, because I was pretending," I said. "I knew ... he wasn't the kind of guy who would do the right thing."

She shrugged. "At least we tried," she said.

"You did the biggest part," I said to her. "You had Birdie design that beautiful dress. I could never have found something that beautiful for her on my own."

"Like I said, Birdie owed me a favor," said Kitty. "You were the one who paid for it. The one who thought of it, too."

I nodded. "Lately, though, you've been the better of the two of us," I said to her. "That makes me realize that you always are the better of the two of us. Probably I'd have to shutter the business if you ever left, because I couldn't do it without you."

A sarcastic laugh from Kitty. "Yeah, right," she said. "You used to be my boss, remember? It's not like I was a genius out there making it happen for myself."

"I'm being serious," I said. "I forget to thank you for being you."

Kitty glanced at me. Her gaze softened. "It goes two ways, I figure," she answered.

My turn to laugh, but like hers, it was a short one. It was next to impossible to get Kitty to admit how good she was at anything — like getting a politician to admit they changed their opinion.

I studied the floor as I reflected on whether I should tell Paula about this at any point, or let her go on thinking he might have come to this dance hoping to see her, disappointed she didn't show. Sometimes harmless thoughts of fantasy are better than the disillusioning truths that don't do us any real good. But Paula was smarter than that, and deserved better than some pretense. If I was lucky, she wouldn't ask about the dance at all.

We watched the couples dance, in between refreshing the punch and unwrapping new trays from the coolers. I helped one of our servers clean up a mess involving a couple of spilled cups, then washed up before returning to see if the tables needed anything else, tidying the parsley around the cheese and crackers to look more attractive again.

As I turned back to the main room, I spotted someone just entering. The lights were still dim, but I recognized the dress immediately, with the embroidered bodice's beadwork, the sweetheart neckline and satin skirts with tulle beneath them, giving them a gentle flare. All in creamy pale satin that was almost a pink-tinted champagne shade, under a silver lace overlay which matched the beadwork on the dress's upper half.

I recognized her face, the eyes highlighted with the eye shadow we had bought at the salon, a tiny bit of lipstick shaping the mouth, and the mass of chestnut hair pulled back in a French twist. It was like watching Audrey Hepburn walk into the ball in My Fair Lady, seeing Paula transformed like this.

A few students had noticed her, with the same shock I had. Paula walked in, not shrinking from the stares, some of which were evident. She kept her chin up, and a tiny smile on her lips, even though I could tell she was nervous.

"Look at her," said Kitty. It wasn't a suggestion, but a statement. It said it all about Paula coming in the way she had, and I felt my heart swell a little bit with pride. She actually made it.

She said hello to a couple of classmates, one of whom was complimenting her dress. A little of Paula's familiar blush flashed, and she nodded before answering.

As I helped one of the servers with the new tray of apricot biscuits, I noticed the girls in Tristan's circle were watching Paula, and making comments. Tristan turned his head in response to something they said, then spotted her in the crowd. I could see the shock in his face as he recognized her.

One of his friends said something and nudged him, but he didn't laugh. The shock had taken off the cocky veneer he usually wore, unable to prop itself back in place in time for the response. That almost made me glad.

I watched Paula make small talk with some people, and gaze around herself, at the room's glittering decorations, and the fake snow the projector was casting over the band as it played. She paused near one of the tables for a cup of punch, and spotted me across the way as I exchanged trays with Russell. I had time to wave, and see the eager smile on her face before the crowd closed again.

My heart lifted, watching her have a nice time. I caught glimpses of her circulating and saying hello to some university acquaintances, in between the time I spent unwrapping the next tray of petit fours with Christmas roses and the university logo piped atop them, and arranging them on a circulating tray for one of the waiters.

"Here comes trouble," breathed Kitty. She was beside me, as she unwrapped the mini eclairs. I looked away from our work, and saw that Tristan had left his friends and was moving in Paula's direction.

My heart was in my throat when she turned away from the professor who had just greeted her, and saw him close by. For a moment, I saw the emotion flash in her eyes, and thought a tiny bit of the blush was coming back to her cheeks — not the rosy powder we had bought at the salon, but the genuine kind.

I didn't want my heart to sink, but it was beginning to slip downwards. I didn't want Paula to fall into the trap of those handsome eyes, or that smile that knew just how to manipulate. Not because she looked so different that he could probably pretend she was a different person altogether.

I inched closer, nudging my way through the crowd's fringes on the pretext of swapping trays with one of the other servers. I knew I shouldn't — as if I could do anything if Paula found herself flirting with him ten minutes from now, like he'd never insulted her in the past.

"Hey," he said to her. I thought her blush deepened.

"Hi," she said. Her hands were in a tight clasp in front of her.

"I didn't think you'd be here tonight. You never come to uni parties or dances," he said.

"I thought I'd like a change," she said. "It's nice. It's really pretty here tonight." She looked around again.

"Yeah, they did a good job," he said. "Um ... you look nice. Really."

"Thanks." This time, the blush flowered, dying away quickly. "You, too." She smiled at him.

I could see by his stare, from the angle I was at with Angela the server, that he didn't know what to make of all this. He was looking at Paula in a way that made me think he was sorry he hadn't asked her to the dance for real, instead of playing it as a joke.

"Do you want to dance?" he asked. "I'm free." He gazed at her, expectantly, after he said this. Confident of a 'yes', like always, I thought. I didn't blame him, because I had seen the look in her eyes, too.

Paula hesitated. She looked at him again, and I could see the struggle in her physically, just beneath the surface. She looked down.

"Thanks, but ... I think I'll sit this one out," she said. "Maybe your friend would like to dance instead." She looked across the way at the girl in pink and black, who was quite clearly scowling as she watched Tristan's back, with him in conversation with another.

He turned around, glanced at the girl from earlier, then back at Paula, doing a poor job of covering his guilt momentarily. Paula took this opportunity to smile. She turned and made her way in the opposite direction, leaving him speechless in that spot.

Yes. I closed my eyes, feeling my heart leap back into place. A surge of victory inside, for Paula walking away from the only really terrible choice she'd ever made, to like someone who wasn't worth her time. She looked like a confident young woman, her chin still level as she approached the fringes of the dance floor, watching everyone else take their turn. But not with disappointment that she wasn't dancing among them with Tristan.

As Tristan slunk off to his original object for this evening, I found Kitty's glance across the way. She merely lifted one eyebrow, which conveyed her feelings perfectly.

Someone else was going to ask Paula to dance before tonight was over, because I had a feeling this evening was hers, even if no one else present knew it.