Innocence Lost
Page 21
Chapter 18
NELLIE’S FATHER was a celebrant for the Church and Nellie knew the right components of a wedding ceremony. She went into an organising frenzy. She poked Loesie into moving the sloop into a part of the river where weeping willows trailed their branches in the water.
“We’ll make a nice feast out of the nicest food we have,” Nellie said. Never mind that Roald would have to cook it, while she insisted on turning a farm dress into a simple wedding dress with the aid of a sheet. Nellie might be clumsy, easily flustered and impractical, but her strength was that she knew about clothes and protocol and she loved that kind of thing.
She made a table on the deck from a crate covered with a horse blanket. She went on shore to cut sprays of wild parsley flowers which she fashioned into bouquets. She set out cups and candles on the table. It was all so surreal, and it was hard to comprehend that not far away an entire town had been destroyed and its inhabitants killed or driven away.
Johanna spent most of the day sitting on top of the hold covers watching Nellie, who was in her element and seemed to have found a shred of happiness to lift her from her misery.