The Quality Street Wedding

by Penny Thorpe

  ‘No, I said it to Sergeant Metcalf, and now—’

  Kathleen shook her head. ‘Doesn’t count.’

  Mrs Calder huffed in irritation. ‘I’m quite sure it does count. Now, if you don’t mind, Kathleen—’

  Mr Calder interrupted eagerly, ‘Hang about, have you got a clever way out, our Kathleen?’ Mr Calder knew that each of his children had their own peculiar talents and he was not averse to making the most of them.

  ‘It only counts if she gives evidence in court and she can avoid that one of two ways: she can either run away to Timbuktu so’s they can’t find her to tell her to say all she knows in the magistrates’ court – or she can marry Peter.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Mrs Calder was ready to hear a solution to their problems which chimed in with her own dearest wish. ‘How would a wedding help keep Peter out of trouble?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t because he’d be married to our Reenie and that would be trouble for life, but it would mean they couldn’t ask Reenie to repeat all she said in court and then they’ve got no evidence he’s done owt wrong. If Reenie’s the only evidence they’ve got and she gets married to our Peter, then it’s all square.’

  Mr Calder nodded in enthusiasm as he began to catch on to Kathleen’s idea. ‘A wife cannot be compelled to give evidence against her husband – oldest trick in the book.’

  Reenie blanched. ‘Are you certain of this? Would marrying Peter really save him from being arrested?’

  Kathleen shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t give him immunity from all crimes for life – for instance, if he steals a policeman’s helmet in a year’s time they’ll still pinch him for it, but in this instance it’s your best solution. Under English law a wife cannot be made to give evidence against her husband and they can only prosecute Peter if they get you to give evidence in court before you’ve married him. If you marry him before he gets put up in court then they’ll have to drop the case.’

  Mrs Calder managed to look pained, hopeful, and dispirited all at the same time; the weight of worry a mother carried was as constant as it was complex. ‘But there’d be no time. Weddings don’t happen as fast as that – you need four weeks at least to have the banns read and if they’re going to have Peter up at the magistrates’ court it will be a day or two at the most.’

  ‘You want a special licence.’ Kathleen heaped a good dollop of steaming mashed potato onto her plate nonchalantly. ‘That girl who’s been banging on about getting married in the sweetshop said she’s getting one.’

  ‘But that’s just because she’s getting married some place irregular,’ Mr Calder said.

  ‘You can have a special licence for either; sometimes it’s for people getting married in a hurry, sometimes it’s for people getting married on the quiet, and sometimes it’s for people getting married in a chapel, not a church. I read up on it when that Dunkley lass started throwing her weight around about my shop. I didn’t fancy letting her have her own way without a fight.’

  ‘Yes, but she can have a special licence because she’s a vicar’s daughter and she’s got fancy connections; it would be different for our Reenie, surely?’ Mrs Calder felt a clawing terror at the thought of hastening her own child’s journey into adult life, despite simultaneously wanting her to have the security of a marriage to a nice lad like Peter.

  ‘You had us all christened at Stump Cross, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course I did.’

  ‘Then that’s all you need. Reenie needs to see the vicar, then go and see the bishop, then fill out a form. It’s two forms if Peter wasn’t christened.’

  Kathleen shovelled a forkful of chicken-and-ham pie into her mouth happily as the rest of her family sat staring in silent shock; could it be that the very decision Reenie had been struggling to make was now the solution to all her problems? Or was it merely the beginning of more? There was so much to think about and so little time to do it with care.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Ruffian was restless. His mistress had left him that morning in his stable at the factory with a little hot mash and a pat of reassurance. After that Reenie had gone down to the parish church on a borrowed bicycle in the pale dawn light. The parish church was no place for a horse not known for his continence and although Reenie was sorry not to have had his warmth on her journey and his moral support on her big day, she knew leaving him in the safety of the stables was for the best.

  It promised to be an unseasonably hot day and a thick mist was rolling off the river and up through the valley. It was dark in the stable and Ruffian, like a dog careful of his master, was fretting to see the face he knew best. The stable door was closed and latched, but – as was Ruffian’s habit when he chose to roam – he nudged it on the other side and it swung open, the screws in the hinges sliding out of their crumbling sockets in the sandstone doorframe, the stable door itself pivoting with a creak on the long-suffering latch as it did every time Ruffian left his stable on his own. And as it rattled open it revealed a now dangerously thick fog; Ruffian was not deterred by it.

  Horses often know their way home, but this horse always knew his way to his mistress. Ruffian kicked a hoof, pulled back his head, and yanked his makeshift bridle free of the bonds which had held it to the post just inside the door. He turned right at the entrance to the stable yard, and made his way ploddingly through the unseasonable darkness.

  Reenie and her mother had made the nerve-racking visit to the bishop’s office and obtained the necessary licences to allow Reenie and Peter to be married – with her parents’ permission – in the parish church at Stump Cross. There had been a rush the day before to find a curate who could perform the ceremony in the empty church in the middle of the week, and then efforts to move Peter all over town so that he wouldn’t be found at his boarding house. Peter must have sent a telegram to his parents to tell them that he was being married at short notice because a parcel arrived from them by special delivery addressed to Reenie.

  ‘It’s very beautiful.’ Reenie did not sound convincing as she laid out the expensive satin dress with matching fur cape which had arrived wrapped in tissue paper inside a gilt-edged box.

  ‘Oh, aren’t they kind,’ Mrs Calder said, her voice strained.

  Kathleen was the only Calder who was ready to speak her mind that day. ‘It’s all right, but you’ll not get any more use out of it after this, and as there’s to be no one much at the wedding and no photographer, you might as well wear your overalls as something fancy.’

  ‘Kathleen!’ Mrs Calder did not want to admit the truth of this. ‘A wedding doesn’t need a lot of people to make it special and this will still be a very special day.’

  It would have been clear to any passersby who saw Ruffian plodding up the Bailey Hall Road toward the parish church that he was a horse on a mission; however, the cloak of fog which concealed him prevented any passerby from noticing him; stopping him; rescuing him from the danger of the road he trod without lamps or human guidance.

  An omnibus, its lamps lit and its conductor blowing a whistle to alert passing traffic to its passage, clattered past Ruffian so closely that the McVitie’s advertising boards on its side scratched along Ruffian’s flank. Ruffian plodded on. This was his town and he would find his mistress.

  ‘I’ll have to leave Ruffian behind, won’t I?’ Reenie had accepted that there would be a lot of changes to her life when she was married; she’d be forced to leave her beloved job at the factory, to leave her family, to leave her friends – it would all be worth it to save Peter from prison, she told herself. But leaving her oldest friend, leaving faithful Ruffian, that would be the hardest of all. They had seen one another through thick and thin and Reenie was only too aware that time was not on their side; Ruffian was a very old horse and these were his last days. By marrying Peter and going away with him to an army barracks, she was consenting to miss Ruffian’s final days. It was likely that their last goodbye would be sooner rather than later.

  ‘You’ll be able to come back and s
ee him; he’ll always be here,’ her father had said, knowing only too well that Reenie’s visits would be few and far between as an army wife. ‘Why don’t you take him down to the factory and give him one last day at the stables? He likes it there, it’ll be a treat for him on your wedding day.’

  Reenie liked the thought that if her old friend Ruffian couldn’t be at the ceremony he could at least be nearby. It would be a solace on a day that she was more anxious about than she could tell anyone.

  Ruffian had narrowly avoided three potentially fatal road accidents since he had slipped his bonds in the old stables and trudged out in search of Reenie and it could only be a matter of time before a lone horse – invisible in the fog – met with tragedy. Ruffian was plodding doggedly in the direction of the busy junction at the bottom of Horton Hill. This was the junction which met the metropolis of train tracks, the junction which teetered over the brink of a precipice of the canal basin, the junction where Bess had nearly lost her life in the car accident which had destroyed their beloved factory. This was the worst place in Halifax for a lone horse in these conditions. Motor cars with headlamps straining to break through the fog hammered on their horns to alert other road users to their presence as they sped dangerously round corners while horses pulling wagons whinnied and shied at the noise and had to be restrained by their masters who walked beside them, cursing whatever duty required them to make their journey that day, and a chaos of pedestrians wriggled up and down the pavements, arms out in front of them, feeling for obstacles and men.

  In the midst of all this stood Ruffian who had reached the edge of the junction and whose only way forward led beyond it. Braving the noise and confusion which younger horses refused to be led through, he lifted his ancient hoof and then stopped dead. Something was holding the ugly old nag where he stood and his ears pricked up. If Reenie had been there she’d have recognised that look in his eye and she’d have known that he wouldn’t be able to resist it. Somewhere, the slightest of breezes was carrying twin temptations to Ruffian: the aroma of apples and sweet, sweet hay.

  Ruffian turned back the way he had come and plodded south; he could smell the gifts his mistress usually brought him and he would follow their scent to her.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  ‘You are doing this because you love me, aren’t you, Reenie?’ Peter had become increasingly worried about his intended, and as they snatched a moment alone together, out of earshot of her parents, Peter took the opportunity to see how the land lay. ‘Because I know you and you don’t seem happy. I don’t want us to be married if it will make you unhappy. I only want—’

  ‘It’s not you making me unhappy; I promise!’ Reenie couldn’t tell him her real fears. She wasn’t marrying him because she was in love with him, she was marrying him because she loved him enough not to want him to go to prison. The guilt of what she’d done weighed on her; she had told the police sergeant that he’d helped his cousins go to fight in the civil war in Spain and if it weren’t for her he’d be free. This was her doing and only she could remedy it. There were worse reasons to marry and she told herself that if she was miserable then she deserved it. There was no one to blame but herself. ‘I’m just sad it’s all such a hurry. And we’ll have to leave the factory and our friends. That’s all.’

  ‘You know I only want you to be happy, Reenie, don’t you?’ And Peter meant it, because he loved her.

  ‘I know. And I promise I’ll be happy when I know that you’re safe.’

  Ruffian had crushed several flowerbeds on his journey out of the town, but nuisance though he was, he was less of a nuisance than he would have been on the public highway. Ruffian had trudged through the garden of the lady mayoress (where he had drunk the contents of her birdbath); churned up the gravel drive of a prosperous carpet manufacturer (where he had knocked over a half dozen milk bottles and a pat of butter which waited on the step); and crushed a Wendy house belonging to some children who were mercifully absent. Ruffian’s luck was wearing thin and, after escaping the dangers of the town, he now came up against the worse danger of the country: a shotgun. Ruffian was not easy to see in the fog, but his destruction of the gardens could be heard and ill-tempered Squire Curran had convinced himself that he was being besieged by poachers, burglars, or worse. Old man Curran had seized his shotgun and run onto the terrace which looked out over the garden where Ruffian now walked in innocence.

  The fog had cleared a little and, as Ruffian trudged toward the scent of apples, he began to emerge in Squire Curran’s field of vision. ‘Marjorie!’ Curran shouted through the open French windows behind him. ‘Turn those lights off! I want to see the blighters! I want to see the whites of their eyes!’

  Old Squire Curran raised his shotgun to his shoulder and squinted down the sight at the horse which he was convinced was an advance guard of vagabonds coming to turn his orderly home into a circus of sin. His finger slid over the steel trigger of his favourite Purdey game gun and he paused a moment to wait for the horse to come just a little closer. That pause proved to be fatal for the squirrel who was scurrying through the budding oak behind the horse. At the moment of Squire Curran’s pause, three things happened: a breath of wind brought a fresh blanket of fog between Ruffian and his would-be assassin; a fresh waft of apples drew Ruffian quite suddenly in a different and unexpected direction; and Mrs Marjorie Curran took her irascible husband to task and threatened to confiscate the decanter again if he didn’t give her that gun and stop interrupting the broadcast of the Ovaltineys on the wireless. His shot had missed the old horse the first time, but Ruffian panicked and Squire Curran ignored his wife and did not go into the house.

  Reenie’s plan to marry Peter to save him from prison could only work if they were married before he was arrested, and that was not by any means a certainty. Unbeknownst to Reenie, as she was standing outside the church, Sergeant Metcalf was getting on his bicycle and going out in search of the young couple. News had reached him of the hastened nuptials and he was determined to reach them before they could sign the register.

  Ruffian was moving a little quicker now; the aroma of apples and hay was stronger, and the angry man with the noisy weapon was still in pursuit, shouting a catalogue of threats through the fog at the scoundrels who he supposed were leading the horse away.

  In Ruffian’s limited experience, Reenie Calder was the source of all the apples in the world and these would surely lead him to her and must be close now. Despite his age, despite the dark, despite the fog, despite the man with the gun and all the odds, Ruffian began to gallop. It was not a steep hill at first, but all the hills in Halifax start like that for a pace or two; Ruffian knew the incline well and would usually pace himself for a heavy climb, but not this time; he left no energy untapped and, hell for leather, he bounded up and away.

  Ruffian might not have known it, but he had almost reached an ancient seat of sanctuary; he was galloping toward the garden of the immense rectory of Stump Cross and, hanging from their solid oak front door, were the apples he sought, part of a magnificent Easter wreath.

  Ruffian arrived at the rectory gate breathing hard, but not spent. He was going to take the apples his mistress had left for him and then he was going to fetch his mistress and take her home. This premature night – as the early morning fog must have seemed to him – was full of dangers and he wanted to know that she was well out of it. He stepped backward a good few paces from the garden wall and then took it at a gallop, jumping in time to clear the garden wall and to land on the rectory lawn. It was not a showjumping manoeuvre he would ever allow his mistress to know that he was still agile enough to perform, but he could not see her which meant that she could not see him. Ruffian trotted quickly to the door of the rectory and seized an apple between his few remaining teeth and tugged. The Easter garland to which it was attached pulled free of the door-knocker and flicked back around Ruffian’s neck like a wreath. Ruffian was left with one loose apple in his mouth and several around his neck for later which suited him well
and he lifted his head to sniff the air for the hay he knew was also there somewhere and then galloped in the direction of the Stump Cross churchyard, leaping over walls and fences as the knowledge that his mistress was waiting spurred him on.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The curate – who had been a little nervous of the unusual licence and the cloak-and-dagger nature of the ceremony – was turning to the page of the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer. His life at the parish was not as exciting as his brother’s missionary life in China and he longed for adventures to write home to his mother about and this was the stuff great epistles were made of. The Calder family had been lucky to get the assistance of this young man because another vicar might have felt irritated at the rushing about, the common licences, and then the chopping and changing of minds; not so the young Reverend Roberts. This whole drama was writing itself in his mind – and although he was itching to get to pen and writing paper, he was also desperate for the scene not to end.

  The churchyard of St Agatha of Stump Cross was not a modest example of its genus. Some churchyards hide themselves away behind dense evergreens; others offer an embarrassment of marble memorials; still others cram crooked headstones into tight chaos with seemingly no room for grass to grow between them.

  St Agatha’s boasted a rolling lawn and a lofty prospect. The rich wool merchant who had sponsored the construction of the neo-gothic monstrosity had wanted to be certain that he would be seen by the good Lord when he went into church and so it was built on a mound, with not a single headstone to block the view from the roadside of the massive front door.

  On this murky and misty morning, one lone beacon stood out on the prow of the churchyard lawn which jutted over the public highway: the life-sized and fully illuminated statue of St Agatha. It was towards this landmark – bright with paraffin storm lanterns – that Ruffian the ugly old nag was cantering, the spring garland swinging loosely from his neck, and – some way off in the distance down the way – an angry squire was in pursuit.