by Amy Myers
Laurence entered his cool church, which smelt of the fragrance of flowers and the wisdom of ages. Ostensibly he had come to check his cope and white stole were lying ready for him, and that all was ready for the Celebration. He knew it would be. Bertram had proved a most efficient sacristan, except for the day after his birthday. Teetotal the rest of the year, he claimed the Lord owed him the privilege of a bottle of port wine on the day of his birth. Unfortunately this year his birthday had fallen on a Saturday, but the churchwarden took over his Sunday duties, without a word being spoken.
Laurence tried to analyse the root of his worry. Marriage was a celebration he’d carried out countless times. He’d married the children of couples he’d married as a young man himself, he’d baptised their children, and now he was to marry his own firstborn. Soon the other five would follow. Four, he automatically corrected himself. He sometimes saw Millicent as a living entity in the family, a presence that would not fade. She would have been nearly twenty-four now, possibly even married. They might even have been grandparents. Impossible to think of his firefly bewitching Elizabeth as a grandmother. With Isabel married, they might not have to wait long now.
But that brought him back to the heart of his concern. He had doubts about the wisdom of Isabel’s marriage, but all his talking to her had shaken her resolve not a whit. She was twenty-five and what if her motives were more selfish than desirable? Had marriage not always been a matter of position and property, an economic arrangement? He and Elizabeth had married for love but who was to say which marriages were happiest? Isabel would make a splendid hostess, and mother – here, Laurence’s imagination broke down. He could not see Isabel as a mother, but it was fashionable for the wealthy to leave the task of rearing their children to others and England produced worthy sons none the worse for it. Just because his own views were different, he could not condemn others. All the same, his prayers to God were more personal than usual.
At twelve-fifteen the bellringers arrived, collected their beers, ready waiting thanks to Bertram, and, as their boots clumped up the wooden stairs to the bell chamber, he reflected that they were as much a part of it all as he and Elizabeth, for marriage was a social event as well as a religious one. He remembered this afternoon he must persuade Robert not to travel to the Continent in such troubled times, and that inevitably meant discussion with Swinford-Browne, who would be as concerned as a father as he was. Relations between them were strained, to put it mildly. Without proof he could not accuse Swinford-Browne outright of involvement in Tilly’s re-arrest. He had, however, made his suspicions plain to the man – who had piously denied any knowledge of the matter. Now they must meet as parents with a common anxiety. He put it out of his head again; the coming service would affect the rest of the young couple’s lives, the loss of a holiday in France would not.
‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,’ carolled Elizabeth, leading the way with the dress; Caroline was half crouched at her side holding the skirt and train gently over her arms, managing the odd kick on the ‘boom’ when she could.
Isabel sat in splendour at her dressing table, her fair tresses looped stylishly à la Vallière, after Elizabeth’s ministrations; there had been no need of a transformation after all, thanks to her mother’s careful brushing and judicial use of pins. Like a high priestess, Isabel slowly raised her arms towards her wedding dress.
‘Isabel,’ Elizabeth jerked the dress away as she drew closer and observed the shocking truth, ‘have you been enamelling?’
‘Only a little lip rouge, Mother, and a little on the cheeks,’ Isabel declared, studiedly off-handedly.
‘You look like a painted doll.’
‘This is my wedding day, Mother.’
‘All the more reason for you to look as God intended, my child.’
Caroline decided to intervene, seeing deadlock fast approaching. ‘I should take it off the cheeks anyway, Isabel. It doesn’t suit you, but the lips look rather nice.’
She earned a glare from her mother. ‘It will mark the gown.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ Isabel scrubbed at her cheeks with the nearest handkerchief – a carefully laundered one from Grannie Overton’s linen reserve with embroidered roses and violets.
‘One two three go.’ Caroline shouted as the gown floated down over Isabel’s head and shoulders, settling, then falling over her hips. Caroline was despatched to the rear to do up the army of tiny covered buttons; Elizabeth tweaked in front. The Overton pearls were duly placed round her neck, gloves were donned, train and veil arranged and at last Elizabeth pronounced herself satisfied. She pulled the cloth off Caroline’s mirror, carried in specially for the occasion. ‘There!’
Isabel surveyed herself, from flowery topknot to the satin shoes peeping out under the detested full skirt. At last she turned round to face them. ‘I look beautiful,’ she told them in awe-struck wonder.
Elizabeth said nothing, but her silence said all. Caroline provided the words: ‘Lovely – have you got the old, new, borrowed and blue?’
‘I’ve put my blue garter on, but –’ Isabel’s face grew round in horror – ‘not the something borrowed.’
‘You’ve Granny Overton’s pearls.’
‘No, they’re going to be mine anyway – I’ll have to borrow the jet buckle after all, Caroline. I’ll pop it in my Dorothy bag.’ She beamed, all resolved to her satisfaction.
Caught out, Caroline could not refuse. I’ll go and fetch it.’
‘And change while you’re there?’ Elizabeth said.
‘Why?’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘Look at yourself.’
Caroline did. She was still wearing her old linen gown. Isabel caught her eye, and burst into laughter. Caroline hugged her. ‘Be happy, Isabel. Be happy.’ She surprised even herself by how much she meant it.
‘Listen,’ Isabel said suddenly. ‘The bells have started.’
The peal rang out over their heads as Caroline, Patricia, Phoebe and Felicia gathered at the door of the church waiting for their sister.
‘We’re her rainbow tea-set,’ as Phoebe put it, looking at their different coloured dresses.
Inside the church the Rector and his wife prayed for their daughter’s happiness. In the Rectory gardens, Jamie Thorn carefully placed the last glass in position, concentrating as hard as he could on this simple task for it saved thinking of other matters. Percy nervously rearranged bottles of champagne in buckets, bowls, and two hipbaths of ice. Rosie rushed around the trestle tables from the village institute checking plates and napkins. This was easy compared with earlier tasks. She’d shelled so many hard-boiled eggs, banging them on the side of a basin, she felt like a young thrush who enjoyed his snail breakfast on the flagstones underneath her window every morning.
The kitchen stood empty, its doors firmly closed against Ahab. The Dibbles and the rest of the staff were in church, seated sedately side by side in a pew at the back, thoughtfully arranged by the Rector, ready to depart to their posts at the close of the service. Their thoughts were divided between the coming wedding and the thousand and one details they might have left undone. Far in front of them, Robert sat awaiting his bride. He at least had no doubt that this was the happiest day of his life. In the pew behind, Edith Swinford-Browne stole furtive glances across to the bride’s side to try to spot the Earl of Buckford and his family, and was disappointed to see no one who could possibly be the dowager. Not all the bride’s family was present. Fortunately there had been no reprieve for that terrible woman, an honourable or not, Miss Matilda Lilley. William had boasted to her that despite the Rector’s earnest representations to his brother to intervene as a member of the House of Lords, nothing, he winked conspiratorially, was to be done. The woman remained in Holloway. Edith hoped this was because of the Earl’s disapproval – surely William would not be so unkind as to block her release. She herself disapproved of suffragettes (she ignored any other possible reason for William’s anger) but there was no doubt they were brave women, and forcible feeding sounded most
upsetting. She cheered up as a gentleman who was undoubtedly the Earl inclined his head politely to her. A stir of restlessness through the church. Not long now. Only Jamie Thorn, his task reluctantly concluded, but who had refused to come to the church, noticed that the overcast sky was worsening.
‘The King of Love my Shepherd is …’ The St Columba tune swelled up to the beams above them. It’s all so unreal, Caroline thought, dazed. In a few minutes I’ll wake up and it will be a normal Sunday. Isabel looks beautiful; sitting on that stool at home she looked like an Arthur Rackham illustration – usually that’s Felicia’s role, but today Isabel did too. It must be marriage, mystery. Shall I look like that? No, don’t think of Reggie. Think of Isabel and Robert. It’s their day.
‘Dearly beloved friends …’
They were, they were. Everyone was here, save Aunt Tilly. Caroline had felt Reggie’s eyes on her as she walked up the aisle behind Isabel. People always cried at weddings; she didn’t want to even though it was all so beautiful and perfect. Tomorrow they would be just Isabel and pleasant dull Robert, today they were symbols of something greater … Robert looked very handsome in his grey morning suit and oyster waistcoat. Not as handsome as Reggie, though. Her thoughts flowed on, until she dragged them back to her father’s voice and the service.
‘… With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee worship …’ Soon it would be her, and Reggie, and at that thought she had to concentrate on Isabel and Robert even harder.
It was all a ritual the service, Communion, even down to the rose petals and rice at the door, and the photographs to be taken at the Rectory. But then life too was a ritual, from which it was sometimes impossible to escape, a friendly prison. Her father’s short nuptial address moved her to tears, which this time she could not hold back; it was simple, the embodiment of the love of a father for his child, the love of a priest for his communicants. It seemed to her it marked something momentous, as though by his words he tolled a bell that spelled a watershed in their lives. Isabel Lilley was no more. Isabel Swinford-Browne had been born. She had moved away from them, just as surely as soon Caroline would be Caroline Hunney.
And she watched the slow stately pageant move on, like the Rectory year itself, until they were back at the Rectory. ‘Hurry,’ someone called, ‘it looks like rain.’
Caroline saw her mother glance up at the sky, and afterwards the image remained in her mind, stamped by random selection on her memory. Then she moved to organize guests for the photograph, or in fact several. Phoebe fidgeted while they were taken, but at last, with the wriggle of a posterior edging out from under the camera cloth, they were released for the banquet. Faces in such large group photographs conveyed little, Caroline often felt. ‘Why not take a photograph just of the hats?’ Caroline whispered to Reggie as she caught up with him. ‘They’re often far more memorable than the faces underneath. Look at Edith’s – it must have danced round the stage with Lily Elsie in The Merry Widow.’
‘Perhaps she wishes she were.’ Reggie snorted so loudly she had to shush him. ‘If it rains, it’ll be like Kew Gardens on her head as the roses grow.’
‘It’s going to rain, you mark my words,’ they overheard Mrs Dibble warning Percy dolefully, as he opened his umpteenth bottle. ‘We’re going to need the plan.’
Surely even Mrs Dibble could not believe the weather would stoop to confer such an indignity as rain today … Caroline giggled.
‘That champagne is making you tipsy already,’ Reggie told her in an unloverlike manner.
Caroline considered this. ‘You may be right. It is, perhaps, stronger than I had thought.’
‘I had to stop Nanny Oates taking a second glass,’ Reggie told her virtuously. ‘She thought it was lemonade with fizz in it. I say, those lobster things look quite decent.’
‘Thank you kindly, sir.’
‘Don’t mention it, my pretty maiden.’ He lowered his voice. ‘This evening then, as soon as they’ve gone?’
Something caught at her, intensified by the switch from banter to love. ‘Yes.’
‘No grey skies for us. The sun will shine all the day long, just you see.’
Margaret Dibble glowed with pride as she watched her mountains of food vanishing, and the threatened rain did not come. She felt Queen of the Rectory, but fast on that thought came that of the accompanying responsibility. Those patties were disappearing all too fast. Were there any more trays left inside? She promptly dispatched Rosie, and watched Miss Isabel flitting around her guests. She always had been a pretty little thing; it was a pleasure to do things for her. Always so appreciative. And now she was married, and into riches. A valiant, handsome young man, too, so polite. Miss Isabel would live happily ever after. She saw Fred ambling around grinning as if nothing had happened at all. She owed that to the Rector again too. She’d heard that after the rough music for Jamie Thorn stopped, the Rector demanded anyone who’d been assaulted by Fred themselves to step forward. He hadn’t been angry, just asked. Puzzled, they’d looked at each other. ‘Your children then,’ the Rector had pressed. ‘Send them to my house tomorrow evening. We must put a stop to this.’ He did, for no one came, so Joe had had to release Fred again, free from official stain as a public nuisance. Margaret vowed she’d make the Rector’s favourite pond pudding as often as he wanted from now on no matter what the season.
No one was taking any notice of Fred today; Jamie Thorn was here, too, and no one seemed to care about that either, perhaps because there were a lot of foreigners around. She watched Agnes go over to speak to Jamie, saw her rebuffed. He just walked away from her. Men were like that, Mrs Dibble thought fiercely, disgusted. Like children. As self-centred as her mother’s stale lardy cakes, and today of all days, Miss Isabel’s day.
Isabel floated from one person to another, in a progressional dance of her own, moving back to Robert every so often with a beatific smile. The smile was caused by her overwhelming relief; it had all been so easy. A few words and she was married, across that mighty threshold and safe for ever. She could have wept for happiness, though that would spoil her looks, so she smiled instead.
‘My own Mrs Swinford-Browne,’ Robert observed tenderly, squeezing her waist, and daringly kissing her cheek. ‘This is the first day of our life.’ Isabel was no longer a princess; she was his queen.
‘That housekeeper of yours is better than the quartermaster at OTC camp.’ Daniel grinned, as he led Felicia out of range of the all-seeing eye. Not that she needed much taking. He had tried to stay away from the Rectory, but found he was as drawn to her as flies to a fly-paper and now he was stuck fast. Until Monday at least. Then, just when everyone else was enjoying the bank holiday, he’d be leaving. The crowds would be streaming back across the Channel, while he would be setting off. It wasn’t quite the route he’d intended. It was a nuisance, this European business, but he’d agreed with his father that the sensible thing to do was to take a railway train from Paris to Marseilles and pick up a boat for Greece, rather than to travel slowly overland. It was still a compromise, for his father had wanted him to cancel his plans altogether, but Daniel refused point-blank. His whole life was itching to start, and he was determined not to put it off. What if the Austria-Hungarian Empire had mobilised, what if Russia was growling? In the end they’d let the Austrians and Serbia fight it out. At least it made something more interesting to read in The Times, he told his father nonchalantly. Better than the correspondence on dogs in railway carriages which had preoccupied it in July. He intended to eat, drink and be merry today. Even now he could not take it in that old Isabel was married. He and Reggie had teased her all their lives, and suddenly she had had the last laugh and wed into riches – of a sort. She was easy to tease, for she never laughed at herself, unlike Caroline. Still, he was fond of Isabel and wished her well. She looked a stunner today – and so did Felicia. Careful, Daniel old fellow, he told himself, steady on the champagne or you’ll land up in Ashden Church yourself. Looking at Felicia now, that didn’t seem such a bad idea.
Time for the ices. The quartermaster made her decision. Young Master George would be glad. He always liked his ices. Always a lear in his belly, as her granny would have said, a hole in it. Well, why not? Boys needed feeding up.
Young Master George was congratulating himself that he could hold his drink like a gentleman should, and, after all, that’s what he now was: grown up. He’d given Isabel away (all too willingly, he smirked) successfully; Father had said he was proud of him. His new morning suit made him look like one of the fellows, and he’d been chosen over and above Uncle Charles, Earl of Buckford, to do the honours for Isabel. That had been one in the eye for Grandmother (probably why she hadn’t come), even though Isabel had kicked up a stink when she heard. He didn’t know why: his voice was well and truly broken now so, as far as he was concerned, he was adult and it was all plain sailing to the grave. Even that speculation about girls with the fellows at Skinners could be put to the test now – within the limits of being a gentleman, of course. He appraised the assembled company through his new adult eye. Unfortunately the eye fell on no luscious temptations of the East; all the stunning-looking ladies were too old for him, all those of his own age looked too young and too silly. There was always Eleanor, he thought. She was pretty decent, and she wasn’t that old. Not that he thought of her as a luscious temptation of the East, but he at least could stick dancing with her this evening. He imagined himself placing his white-gloved hands on Eleanor’s back. Good-oh, the ices were coming out.
Mrs Dibble looked at the remaining two raspberry ices, already beginning to melt. She wrestled within herself and won. It was to be a day of reconciliation. ‘Have one of the ices, Harriet,’ she said graciously, pushing it towards her. ‘All turned out well, didn’t it?’