Vintage by Rosemary Friedman

bread, Viola held the sandwich in two hands.
    ‘So the two of you are to be married. Is that your ring?’
    Clare held out her hand with the ring from Butler’s Wharf: a wide band of gold in the modern idiom, inset with a circlet of rose diamonds, turquoises, and cabochon garnets.
    ‘It’s very handsome. I thought it would be the de Cluzac sapphire…’
    Clare gave her a warning glance, which encompassed Jamie. Viola had never been one for tact.
    ‘Your grandmother was keeping the sapphire for you. How is the old lady? I’ve a soft spot for her. I hope she’s well.’
    Clare looked at her mother’s handsome, unmade-up face – she swore by Nivea cream and used it by the gallon – which a network of fine lines was just beginning to traverse, at her rain-softened, still-dark hair, with the single grey streak which had appeared in her twenties. It flopped unrestrained over the dark brown eyes with their deep lids, which she had herself inherited. She realised that, although it rarely occurred to either of them to pick up the telephone, and that when they did speak they were rarely on the same wavelength, she had missed her mother.
    Viola was one of the very few people, Clare thought, who were – to use the French idiom for which there seemed no satisfactory translation – bien dans sa peau. She said what she meant and meant what she said. She was totally unselfconscious either about her own appearance or the impression she made on others, and followed her own instincts rather than the dictates of society. It was little wonder that she had not lasted long in the Médoc.
    ‘You’re looking well now.’ Viola let go of Clare’s hand. ‘A bit on the pale side but that’s the smog for you. So I’m to have a son-in-law at last. Tell me about yourself Jamie.’
    ‘I love your daughter, Mrs Fitzpatrick.’
    ‘That much is obvious. “Viola” will do. Clare tells me you’re a medical man. You’ll be at home in Ireland. Doctors and poets. You must let me know when’s the wedding.’
    ‘July.’
    ‘That’s the middle of the show-jumping! And where’s it to be held?’
    There was silence as Jamie and Clare looked at each other.
    ‘We’re still arguing about it,’ Clare said.
    ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Jamie – I’ll make a pot of tea, not that poor stuff they have on the other side – Clare always gets her own way. Since she was a child. She makes up her mind and it’s hard to dissuade her. Thereare horses the same. You’ll find common sense will do much, kindness more, and coercion very little.’
    Accustomed to a mug and a tea-bag, Jamie watched fascinated as Viola brought freshly drawn water to a brisk boil before warming the teapot ceremoniously, putting in four teaspoonfuls of Darjeeling leaves, and setting it on the table to brew.
    ‘I can be a bit bloody-minded myself,’ he said.
    ‘Then there’s trouble ahead. I remember once, she must have been about six…’
    ‘Mother!’ Clare said.
    ‘He’ll want to know what kind of woman he’s taking on.’
    ‘He’s not “taking me on”. I’m in charge of my own life.’
    Viola sat down again at the table. She was not to be deterred.
    ‘Her father bought her a three-wheeler. He forbade her anywhere but in the grounds. She’d been gone for two hours before we realised. We thought she was riding round the courtyard. Albert Rochas brought her home on the back of the tractor. She was half-way to Kilmartin to visit her cousins and toppled over into a ditch. Show Jamie your hand, Clare. She bears the mark to this day.’
    Obediently holding out her palm, Clare pointed to the long white line which snaked from the base of the thumb to the wrist bone where the skin had been lacerated by the gravel. It was not by the cicatrice that she remembered the incident however, but by the indelible scar which the aftermath of the accident had left on her mind.
    It had been the first occasion on which her father had raised his hand to her. It was certainly not