“I mustn’t hug you,” she said to herself, again and again, but she always did, and each time he died in her arms. And there was Daddy behind him, looking prouder and prouder, and she wanted to hug him too so that he would never smile at her again.
Once, when she thought she was awake, Mandy was there too. She was holding out a white fluffy thing, as if to put it over her face as she slept.
“What’s that?” asked Matilda, drowsily.
Amanda and Philip froze. They exchanged guilty glances.
“She’s awake!” said Philip, panic-stricken.
“It’s a pillow,” replied Amanda calmly. “We thought you might be more comfortable with a pillow.”
“No thank you,” smiled Matilda, thinking that maybe Mandy wasn’t so nasty after all. She drifted off to sleep again, back to her recurring hugging nightmare.
It was only the following morning that she remembered this “pillow” dream. Nanny had taught her to interpret her dreams, but she could make head nor tail of this one, no matter how hard she tried. Philip had been in it, though, looking very handsome, and she hadn’t been squeezing him to death. Maybe it was like one of those funny dreams Vincent used to get in his teens.
#
She awoke to find that Mandy had left Philip’s house already. It gave her confidence that her scary love-rival had gone, and she told Philip how she wanted to spend the day. It seemed to catch him off-guard, as he turned pale and sat down quickly on the sofa.
“You want to do what?”
“I’d like to meet your Mummy and Daddy.”
“Why?”
“We’re getting married. Nanny said Outsiders always meet each other’s parents before they get married. It’s a tradition. I want to do things properly.”
Philip went whiter still, and started blowing into a paper bag, which seemed to her to be a very curious thing to do. Another Outsider custom, perhaps? A thought struck her; a terrible, terrible thought. What if he was having second thoughts about their wedding?
“We are getting married, aren’t we, Philip? Please don’t send me back to Daddy!”
“No, no,” he broke off from the bag. “You’re definitely not going back to Daddy, whatever happens.”
Matilda gave him a huge girlish grin. She went to give him a huge girlish hug too, but much to his relief seemed to think better of it, patting his head instead, though even that hurt a bit.
“I mustn’t hug you,” she explained sadly. “I really mustn’t hug you.”
He shrugged. She was pleased to see that he seemed to have taken this news quite well. He was her brave little soldier.
“Can I call them Mummy and Daddy yet, or should I wait until after the wedding?”
The paper-bag came out again, and he spent a few minutes furiously inflating and deflating it before he was able to reply.
“Maybe not just yet, Matilda. Let’s take it one step at a time.”
Her face fell, but she nodded in understanding. She had hoped to call them Mummy and Daddy straightaway. But at least he had not ruled it out altogether, the wedding was obviously still on, and she could work on him. She assumed that Philip’s father would be scary and might beat her, but if his Mummy was nice then they could tell each other stories and drink from saucepans and do other things that Outsiders liked to do with their children’s wives. As long as she had Philip, what did it really matter anyway?
“Okay,” she beamed, having cheered herself up already. “I can wait until we’re married. What’s a week or two anyway? Now come on, Slow-Coach. Let’s go and see them now.”
She galloped round him in excited circles. Philip trudged unhappily to the front door. He slid on his coat. He looked so miserable. Matilda wanted him to be happy, but she couldn’t risk hugging him.
“Is you Daddy very scary?” she asked, sensing how reluctant he was to take him there. It was endearing in a way. Maybe he just wanted to protect her from harm. But she felt sure that his Daddy wouldn’t be as big as hers, so he needn’t worry quite so much.
“No,” Philip replied. “But “Mummy” sure as Hell is!”
“Don’t be silly,” she chided him. “Mummies aren’t scary!”
He shrugged, and walked out the house, leaving her to follow along behind him. She stepped out the front door, paused for a moment, and went back inside. She grabbed the paper-bag from the coffee-table where he had left it. Her intuition told that one of them might need it again before the day was out.
#
Philip took a deep breath, and knocked purposefully on the door.
He had positioned Matilda behind an immaculately trimmed privet hedge in his parent’s front garden. Best to give them a little notice before springing her on them. Two or three years notice might have been better, but it didn’t seem likely that she’d agree to wait that long.
The door opened. Fuck: it was Mother! Father would’ve been the easier option.
“Philip! It’s Tuesday! You know I’ve got Bridge Club at eleven, and Pamela does so hate tardiness. You’ve got 20 minutes. And take your shoes off before you come in, there’s a good boy.”
Without awaiting a reply, she disappeared back indoors.
He hesitated. He couldn’t just stroll in after her with a trolless in tow. Some sort of explanation would be required first. Quite a lot of explanation, in fact.
“Nineteen minutes!” he heard her call out from the living room. “And counting!”
He rang the doorbell again, even though the door was open. Father appeared this time. Short, placid, horn-rimmed glasses and a Marks & Spencers’ cardigan. Safe as houses.
“Hello, Philip. Nice to see you. Come in, why don’t you? Take your shoes off first, you know what she’ll say otherwise.”
“Father, wait.”
Father stopped, and waited as instructed. What could be so urgent as to keep Mother waiting?
“I’ve brought someone round with me.”
“Amanda? Oh good, Mother will be pleased. They’re like too peas in a pod, those two. Apart from the swearing. Amanda, I mean. Not your mother.”
“Eighteen minutes,” called Mother impatiently from inside.
“No, not Amanda. Someone else. She’s-”
“Gorgeous?” chuckled Father. “All your girlfriends are. Especially that Spanish girl a couple of years back. She had a lovely pair of - ”
“No, not gorgeous.”
“-Eyes. She’s what then? Funny?”
“Not in the conventional sense.”
“Good personality?” ventured Father, running out of ideas as to what particular qualities one of Philip’s girlfriends might have, which he would feel comfortable discussing with his son.
“No,” Philip shook his head emphatically. “Not in the least.”
“She’s what, then?”
“She’s behind that bush.”
“Hedge, Philip. It’s a hedge. Mother won’t let me have anything to do with bushes. What’s she doing over there? Is she shy, or does she just like gardening?”
Father toddled across the garden in his carpet slippers, determined to re-assure this shrinking violet that he did not bite (though Mother might if she forgot to take her stilettos off before she entered the house). Philip scurried anxiously behind him, wanting to prepare him for the worst, but completely at a loss as to where to start.
“Seventeen minutes,” bellowed Mother from inside. “And counting!”
“Father, Father, there’s something I need to tell you first.”
“Yes?”
“You know you asked if she was gorgeous.”
“I thought that was a given, with you,” Father nodded.
They stopped on the lawn, a few yards away from the hedge. As Father turned towards him, Philip saw Matilda poke her head up above the hedge. Her big old face protruded periscope like above the top-most branches, turning from side to side as she looked back and forth between Father and the open front door. She wore a delighted smile, like a child surveying the presents Santa had left on Christmas morning. It was only a matter of time before she did something stupid and embarrassing. He had to act fast.
He pulled Father close, so they could speak in confidence.
“She’s pig-ugly,” he declared.
“Oh come now, Philip. That’s not a very charitable way to describe your new girlfriend.”
Philip looked back towards Matilda. She was still peering meerkat-like over the hedge. Her slightly crazed eyes were now focused firmly on the front door. For a second, he felt a flush of guilt, as if he had betrayed her by discussing her in such harsh terms. She had saved his life, after all. But then he tensed. All was not well. She was going to do something unpredictable. The fan was on, and the shit was ready for action.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Philip, keeping Father’s back to her. “She’s my fiancée.”
It was then that Matilda ploughed her way through the hedge, pushing her way through the tangled branches as if they were candy-floss strands, and made a break for the front door.
“Mummy!” she cried. “We’re going to be so happy together!”
Philip charged after her, determined to bring her down. She had too much of a head-start though. He made a despairing attempt at a rugby tackle, but all he got for his trouble was an accidental kick to the cheek-bone and a mouth full of immaculately-mown lawn.
She disappeared indoors, still calling out “Mummy!” as she went.
“She may be pig-ugly,” declared Father, “but the girl’s got guts.”
“Guts?” asked Philip, as he picked himself up and tried unsuccessfully to brush the grass-stains off his jeans. “How do you make that out?”
“She’s going to walk mud all over your mother’s new cream carpet.”
#
Philip followed her inside with a heavy heart, with Father chuckling along behind him.
As he was removing his shoes, he heard a Mother-sized scream from the living room, followed by the now familiar sound of breaking china.
“Get out!” screamed Mother. “I’ll have the Police on you!”
They entered the living room. Mother was standing precariously on the coffee-table, with an armful of cups and saucers. One by one, she sent them flying at Matilda, as hard and as fast as she could. Her aim was admirable; she had picked up a few tips from the fielders at the local cricket club after all those years of making cucumber sandwiches for their tea. They bounced off Matilda’s head, like machine-gun bullets off a brick-wall, fracturing as they struck her skull and shattering as they ricocheted into walls, ceilings and the 42 inch plasma TV that Curry’s had installed in October.
Matilda looked distraught.
“Help!” wailed Mother, as she saw her would-be rescuers enter the room. “Rape! Murder!”
“Rape seems unlikely,” mused Father. “Now why don’t you come down off the coffee-table, Alice, and stop throwing our best china at our guest? You’ll fracture your hip if you’re not careful.”
“That thing,” spat Mother, “that Bride of Frankenstein, is no guest of mine. I would never invite that monstrous creature into my lovely clean home.”
“That’s rather unfortunate. She’s going to be our daughter-in-law.”
Mother came down from the coffee-table. At speed. Fortunately for both her and her arthritic knees, she fainted straight on to the sofa. Matilda produced his paper bag from up the sleeve of her wedding dress and started waving it towards Mother like a white flag.
“That went better than expected,” Father chuckled. “We’ve even got a few saucers left.”
Mother lay still. Matilda crumpled.
“Mummy!” she screamed. “I’ve killed your Mummy!”
“Oh, she’s not dead,” Father reassured her, as Philip hauled her back up into a sitting position. “She always does this when people forget to take their shoes off. She’s just – pining for the fields!”
“Sorry?” enquired a confused Matilda, who – having been brought up in a house with no electricity and a pathological hatred of all humankind - was not the World’s greatest expert on Monty Python sketches.
Mother groaned as she started to struggle unsteadily back towards consciousness. Father, always the man for a crisis, moved the few remaining saucers out of arms’ reach. He looked around the room. Philip had gone pale, and looked on the verge of fainting himself. Matilda was biting her lip, and trying not to cry. She kept looking at Philip for reassurance, but he was totally oblivious to her. Mother was starting to come to, and it was probably only a matter of time before she was back on the coffee table again. It was just the sort of situation he had been trained for in the Army in the Sixties.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he announced. “Everything will seem much better after a nice cup of Earl Grey. Not sure what I’m going to serve it in though, we seem to have lost all our cups.”
“That’s okay,” Matilda smiled at him, responding to the warmth in his voice. “Philip only lets me drink from saucepans anyway.”
#
They left an hour later. Matilda had spent most of the time in the kitchen with Father, whispering like a Guy Fawkes’ conspirator, much to Mother’s annoyance and Philip’s incomprehension. It’s not like the two of them had anything in common. Philip had to marry an ogre, while Father was married to Mother.
Philip had stayed in the living room with Mother, alternating between reassuring her that he had not lost all his senses, and reviving her with smelling salts every time she heard Matilda’s voice in the kitchen. He also spent quite some time batting back texts to Mandy, explaining why he had not yet “manned up” and thrown that “big-ass moose” out the house. These texts took a while to compose, as he wasn’t entirely sure he knew the answers to these questions himself.
Eventually, he made their excuses and left. Father felt that there was only so much smelling salts that Mother could take before she risked becoming an addict, and it was clear that she was not going to stay conscious as long as Matilda was tramping around on her carpet.
As they walked back home, Philip was conscious of the attention he was getting. It was hardly surprising when he was being shadowed by a giant ogre in a wedding dress. There had been incidents on the way to Mother’s too, but he had been so preoccupied with what to say to his parents that he had blocked the worst of it out. He was now in a very bad mood, and hypersensitive to every look and comment thrown their way. It was bad enough he had to marry her, without becoming a laughing-stock into the bargain.
He skirted the town centre to keep as low as profile as possible, but he still had to weather a number of unfortunate incidents. Several people called out “Freak!”, two started barking, and a group of kids outside Aldi’s started throwing Haribos at her. This was awful for him, truly awful. How could he ever show his face in public again?
It made things even worse when she started crying, as that just drew attention to them, and people would probably think it was his fault that she was upset. To make his position more uncomfortable still, she kept holding her arms out to him for a hug, muttering “I mustn’t squish you” and then putting them back down to her sides again. Seconds later (usually after a random bark from a member of the public) she would repeat the whole process, torn between seeking his comfort and reassurance, and seeking God-knows-what. It looked weird. Up with her arms, down with her arms, up with her arms, down with them again. It was like she was trying to do a Mexican Wave on her own.
“Stop that!” he ordered. “Can’t you see you’re embarrassing me?”
“Hold my hand,” she pleaded, as shaven-headed men on the opposite pavement started howling at her. She was totally missing the point. If he was embarrassed now, how could she possibly not realise that holding her hand would make things infinitesimally worse for him?
“I’m going to walk ahead of you,” he told her. “Just follow me, okay? Don’t speak to me, don’t keep signalling sixes, and under no circumstances whatsoever do you say or do anything which would give anyone the impression that we know each other.”
Matilda nodded sadly, and shuffled a few steps backwards.
“Further,” he commanded, and she took another five or six steps back. As she did so, the man opposite called his friends out the pub, and the whole pack of them started howling away at her like a pack of wolves on speed.