The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

  48. Marriage of True Minds

  “The wedding has taken place at St. Something-or-other’s, Knights-bridge, London,” thought Morcar, mentally composing the notice in the Annotsfield Recorder while waiting for the arrival of the bride: “Of Major David Brigg Oldroyd, D.S.O., and Miss Jennifer Mary Harington, only daughter of Sir Edward Mayell Wyndham and Lady Harington, of 3, Notens Square, London. The bridegroom, who is the only son of the late Colonel Francis Oldroyd, D.S.O., and Mrs. Oldroyd, has had a distinguished career in the Army. They won’t be able to say what he’s done in the Army,” mused Morcar, “for none of us are allowed to know. He wears a maroon beret so presumably he’s Airborne. It’s my belief he parachutes into France, or Greece, or Jugo-slavia, or Norway or some of those places, to help the Resistance Movements, but of course he won’t say a word about it. Colonel Oldroyd was formerly a textile manufacturer in the Ire Valley, and in peacetime Major Oldroyd was connected with Old Mill in that district. The best man was Pilot Officer G. B. Mellor, the bridegroom’s cousin. The service, fully choral, was conducted by— a couple of bishops, they look like to me,” thought Morcar, craning his neck to see the clergy as they came out of the vestry: “But of course I’m not up in these things. However many choir boys are there? I wonder how much Harington has to pay them per head? Ah, here comes Jenny. The bride, who was given away by her father— Harington looks in a vile temper; he grows smaller and more vituperative every time I see him—the bride wore a dress of ivory satin, originally worn by her great-grandmother on her bridal day. Dearest Jenny,” thought Morcar fondly: “How nobly beautiful you look! A wedding is a sacred thing to you. Her full court train was carried by two little friends of the bride. Her veil of Brussels lace was lent by the bridegroom’s stepmother. She carried a bouquet of white roses, the white rose being the emblem of Yorkshire, the bridegroom’s native county. The single bridesmaid was Miss Frances Oldroyd, stepsister of the bridegroom, who wore a picture gown of dove grey, with a diamanté headdress, and carried a posy of white gardenias.”

  Morcar had heard all these details discussed very fully on the previous evening and in Christina’s recent letters, so that the wedding group held no surprises for him. What he was unprepared for was the effect of the ceremony on himself. It was so long since he had seen David for more than passing glimpses that the young man had become an idea to him rather than a person. But now he found the person much finer than his imaginings. David had been a graceful, handsome, lively lad; he was still handsome, and all his movements had the ease of well-co-ordinated muscles, but he was now a man—a man who had had to take decisions involving life and death and accepted the responsibility without shrinking. He had broadened and toughened; his complexion had bronzed and his forehead was not now unlined; when he laughed at a joke his eyes lit up with the merry look Morcar knew of old, but in repose his face was rather stern. The first impression the onlooker received of him was that of a striking and daring personality with an iron will, pursuing without reservation and in spite of every difficulty an ideal end; it was only in intimacy that the charm of the old David—the friendly gaiety, the happy sparkle, the loving goodwill—warmed the air. Morcar viewed him now with a respectful admiration which strengthened his former affection for the boy. As David and Jenny stood at the altar together and spoke the old vows which pledged their faith through all the chances and changes of life—David in a strong ringing tone and Jenny on a note quieter but no less warm and firm—Morcar felt a deep emotion. This is what life ought to be, he thought, as David put the ring on Jenny’s finger; those two are good as sunshine and true as steel; their love is enduring and noble. His own petty preoccupations seemed to fall away from him, and the true significance of human life, all its tragic grandeur, its high romance, its aspirations so eagerly pursued amid such sordid and petty conditions, its amazing endurance, its sweetness and its pathos, seemed to open out before him. The more venerable of the two clergy was now approaching the climax of the service.

  “Forasmuch as David Brigg and Jennifer Mary have consented together in holy wedlock,” he intoned, “and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other …”

  Morcar forced himself to think of his own wedding, to think of it with forgiveness and understanding and acceptance. Yes, and with repentance too, thought Morcar suddenly; for to be stupid, to be unperceptive, to be ignorant of one’s capacities and aims and nature, to take the line of least resistance—these were also crimes.

  There was a moment of great pain and stillness as the realisation of his own share in his disasters pierced his heart.

  Then he heard the words: “I pronounce that they be man and wife together.” The organ pealed, the choir broke into a hymn about perfect love, the congregation stirred and smiled cheerfully. The ceremony was over; David with his wife on his arm followed the clergy into the vestry, and Morcar sat down and folded his arms and shrank into himself while the guests discussed Jenny’s dress.

  A young fellow in R.A.F. uniform hurried out of the vestry and came towards him. As he approached Morcar saw that it was G. B. Mellor, looking well and spruce in his airforce blue.

  “Mr. Morcar,” whispered GB, bending over the pew end with his usual air of reasonable persuasion, his brown eyes very sparkling and expressive: “They’re expecting you in the vestry. David wants you to sign the register as a witness. So does Jenny. They’re expecting you—they’ll be disappointed if you don’t come. Lady Harington sent me for you particularly. You’ll come now?”

  “Oh, very well,” growled Morcar. He felt soothed and flattered, rose and followed P.O. Mellor with alacrity. It was pleasant to be in the vestry with all his friends; pleasant to kiss Jenny, whose beautiful face, though rather paler than usual, was radiant with joy; pleasant to shake David’s strong warm hand and meet his friendly glance; pleasant to tell the pretty Fan she looked like a fashion plate and to admire Christina, who as usual to Morcar looked the loveliest, the brightest, the best of them all. The wedding march pealed out cheerfully and the procession arranged itself in couples; David and Jenny, GB and Fan, Harington looking crosser than ever with the weeping Mrs. Oldroyd hanging on him. Suddenly it struck Morcar that he, of course, was standing in the place of David’s father: he offered his escort to Christina, who accepted it, laying her gloved fingers very delicately on his arm. The verger threw the vestry door wide and they marched out and down the aisle. Morcar held his head well up and smiled rather more than usual to cover his intense pain and embarrassment. To walk thus, at a wedding, with Christina still another man’s wife, was almost more than he could bear. “This is the second wedding I’ve attended in my life,” he thought. “Well, they say third time does it. The third one shall be mine and my love’s.”

  The reception at Claridges at first went very well. Christina was always a most accomplished hostess, and today her beautiful desire to make others happy achieved full consummation. Her step was light, her smile gay, her lovely eyes sparkling, in her joy for Jenny, as she moved from guest to guest.

  The young men gathered round David.

  “How many times have you jumped, old man?”

  “Seven.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, here and there, you know.”

  “Have you met any Norwegians?”

  “I’ve met representatives of all our Allies at one time or another.”

  “Have you met any Russians?”

  “One or two. They’re very nice personally, but can’t talk about anything but the horrors of the war.”

  “Natural, after all.”

  “Oh yes, entirely natural. They’ll pour out a whole glass of vodka and drink it off in one gulp, as a toast to Stalin. Drinking’s an international language,” said David, laughing. “I can follow them fully, there.”

  “David, it’s time for the wedding cake,” said Christina, flying by. “Will you go up to the table, dear? Have you a sword or something to cut it with? Where is Jenny?�
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  “I don’t know,” said David, looking about. “I haven’t seen her lately.”

  Amid jokes from his friends about letting his wife run away from him, David, laughing and retorting, moved towards the buffet table where the wedding cake stood in state. Morcar followed. He was interested in this cake, for it was a present from his mother. Mrs. Morcar was fond of David and devoted to Heather (which oddly enough had increased her fondness for the dog’s owner, thought her son with a smile) and by infinite contriving of “points” and conserving of rations, especially fats and sugar, had at last amassed sufficient materials from which to make a sizeable wedding cake of good quality. The cake, in three tiers, with a thin coating of sugar, had been baked and decorated by an Annotsfield confectioner, Morcar with infinite precaution had conveyed it to London, and here it was, the cynosure of all the eyes of a very fashionable party. Their exclamations had already been such as to delight Mrs. Morcar’s heart, for no minute passed without someone declaring that it could not be edible but was an excellent fake, and hearing with amused admiration the family’s assurances that all three tiers were completely real, nothing ersatz about them. A hubbub now arose in the neighbourhood of the cake, Harington’s voice could be heard in a peevish drawl, and Fan and several other young people began to move rapidly through the crowd in different directions, calling out for Jenny. Morcar who was taller than many of the guests craned his neck and stood on his toes and caught sight of her; she was standing in an alcove, her fine head bent beneath its crown of lace and flowers, listening with grave attention to GB, who was talking to her very earnestly—no doubt the young idiot was describing his ideas of the future world socialist state, thought Morcar with impatience. He pushed through the crowd in Jenny’s direction, and reached her at the same moment as her father.

  It was not likely that Sir Edward Mayell Wyndham Harington would find Pilot Officer G. B. Mellor a very congenial guest, reflected Morcar quickly, and he saw at once that Harington was furious at finding Mellor thus in private talk with his daughter. Besides, poor fellow, thought Morcar sardonically, Harington didn’t want Jenny to marry at all; he only yielded because in England in 1943 it simply wasn’t possible to refuse one’s daughter to an officer in an airborne division—a man with a D.S.O. too. The prevailing mental climate made such a refusal impossible. “I don’t suppose he’s pleased about the cake, either,” thought Morcar with relish. It was clear that, whatever the cause, Harington was very angry; his pale eyes gleamed, his full mouth was pinched into a vicious line.

  “What are you about, Jenny?” he cried in a loud angry drawl. “Why are you neglecting your guests? Where are your manners? Is this a sample of your behaviour as a married woman? This is hardly the mode of life in which you have been brought up!”

  His tone was so loud and his voice naturally so resonant that his rebuke was audible for quite.a distance; some of the guests made discreet grimaces at each other and Christina, who came up just then, look daunted.

  “Sorry, Sir Edward. My fault,” said GB in his pleasant reasonable tones with a smile.

  Harington disregarded him. “Come along, Jenny,” he said urgently, seizing his daughter by the elbow. “Come quickly. Don’t keep your guests waiting any longer.”

  “Yes, Father,” said Jenny calmly. She gave her father a steady look and withdrew her arm from his grasp, then moved with her usual dignity towards the buffet.

  A number of guests at once closed round Christina, laughing and chattering to enable her to recover from her embarrassment.

  An hour or so later, when David and Jenny had left for an unannounced destination on their honeymoon and the crowd of guests were thinning out, Morcar thought he perceived on Fan Oldroyd’s part a determination to leave with him. Her mother naturally wished her daughter to return with her to the hotel where she was staying, but Fan was full of excuses about the need for her to go back and finish some work at the Ministry which enjoyed her services, before joining Mrs. Oldroyd. Seeing that Fan’s services were not on a very high level, Morcar doubted the necessity, but he thought she perhaps had some communication to make to him from or about David, so he aided her contrivance, and promised privately to wait for her at the hotel entrance. Fan vanished and reappeared in her ordinary clothes, and they drove off in a taxi together. Fan chattered lightly and quickly about the wedding—the beauty of Jenny’s frock, the luscious taste of the cake, David’s secrecy about his duties; Lady Harington always looks so lovely, Sir Edward is such a sourpuss, I think G. B. Mellor a prize bore; a pity Edwin couldn’t be at the wedding—he’s in the Mediterranean.

  “Come now, Fan,” interrupted Morcar impatiently: “If you’ve something to say to me, say it.”

  “Very well,” said Fan: “Only don’t be cross or I shall be nervous.”

  “You nervous?” queried Morcar, sceptical.

  “Yes. How,” said Fan, obviously about to take the plunge: “How would you like me for a daughter-in-law, Uncle Harry?”

  “Not at all,” said Morcar crossly, vexed by this trifling.

  “You are cruel!” exclaimed Fan.

  Morcar glanced at her in astonishment. A feeling he had never heard before from her shook her voice, a dark colour roughened her smooth delicate cheek.

  “Nay, Fan,” he said: “Surely you’re not in earnest?”

  Fan nodded, her rosebud mouth quivering.

  “Now, Fan,” said Morcar gravely: “Don’t get silly ideas into your head. Cecil isn’t at all suitable for you to marry.” He was ashamed to say that his own son was not sufficient of a gentleman for her, and paraphrased: “He isn’t the man your father would have wished you to marry.”

  “Poor Daddy! I’m fully aware that Cecil isn’t the kind of man people expect me to marry,” said Fan clearly, her head held high. “But you see, I just fell in love with him. He’s so big—and so simple. He’s perfectly maddening really,” smiled Fan, wriggling her pretty shoulders impatiently.

  “Then you can just fall out of love again,” said Morcar in a hard tone. “I shan’t encourage the match—you wouldn’t make Cecil happy.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. You’re an idle naughty little parasite,” Morcar told her brutally. “You must marry a man who’s not merely rich but also hard and sophisticated, who’d be able to keep you in order.”

  “Idle! I like that! I work eight hours a day! And night duty and weekend duty and firewatching! And why should you be the judge anyway?” panted Fan. “Cecil loves me.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Well, he writes to me.”

  “If you come to that, he writes to me,” said Morcar, thinking of the Service cards in large schoolboyish handwriting which reached him from time to time. “I had a card last week; I reckon he’s landed in Italy.”

  “Exactly! Of course he writes to you!” burst out Fan. “He adores you! Didn’t you know that?”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous!” exclaimed Morcar. He felt harrowed, sickened, disgusted as if by something obscene; sweat broke out on his forehead and he could not meet her eyes.

  “But of course he does. He’s made a romance out of you. He took that course at the Technical because you did, he took to bowling at cricket because you did. You didn’t know that? You see, you don’t understand him in the least. I tell you he loves me. He writes to me.”

  “Did you write to him first, Fan? Now tell the truth,” said Morcar hoarsely.

  “No. To be honest, I meant to, but there wasn’t time. He wrote to me that very night, that very night when we first met, you know. He must have written in the train. I mean to marry Cecil, Uncle Harry, and it’s no use your objecting.”

  “Fan,” said Morcar very earnestly: “Take my advice, I beg of you. Don’t hurry Cecil. Don’t push him into marrying you. I’m divorced from Cecil’s mother, you know, Fan; we never—I—”

  “She pushed you into it?” said Fan pertly.

  “Yes. And I don’t want another tragedy of that kind in the family.”

 
; “You don’t believe me when I say that Cecil loves me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, here’s one of his letters,” cried Fan, diving into her bag and fluttering rapidly through all its numerous and varied contents. She picked out a much-worn airgraph and handed it to Morcar.

  Darling little Fan, he read, I think of you day and night, with your sweet little voice and pretty ways. I wonder if you ever think of me? Morcar snorted. He handed the letter back. “All right,” he said in a tone of disgust. “He loves you. Or thinks he does. I give in.”

  “Darling Uncle Harry!” cried Fan joyously. She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. It occurred to Morcar as he extricated himself from her embrace that Cecil might find marriage with her decidedly agreeable.

  “But what you’ll make of him, I’m sure I don’t know!” he exclaimed in a tone of despair that was not all humorous. “He doesn’t seem to me to have an idea in his head.”

  “He’s very reserved,” Fan defended her choice. “I expect you were very reserved when you were young, Uncle Harry. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that you were very reserved?”

  Morcar uneasily remembered his mother’s remarks on this aspect of his character. But surely he had never been anything like Cecil! His uneasiness probably showed in his face, for Fan remarked comfortably:

  “Cecil is very like you in every way, Uncle Harry.”

  “I hope he’ll have a happier life,” said Morcar gruffly.

  “I’ll try to make him a good wife,” said Fan, at her sweetest.

  “No, you won’t; his slowness will exasperate you,” said Morcar out of a full heart. “And, my God! I’ve only just thought of it: What battles you’ll have with his mother!”

  Fan smiled. “I shall enjoy that,” she said. “I shall never forgive his mother for keeping him away from you.”

  “Fan!” exclaimed Morcar. “If you take that line I shall never forgive you! Listen: If Cecil and his mother and I have had our lives messed up—”