The Glass Castle

by Violet Winspear

  ‘The fine feathers of a bride always do the trick,’ said Lilian’s friend. ‘Apart from which that material is something special, and that jewelled crucifix must have cost the earth. You certainly lost no time, Heron, when Edwin Trequair came to our neck of the sea. And we all thought you were set on a career in London.’

  ‘Most girls are,’ said Miss Spendlove, ‘until they meet Mr. Right and a career seems all wrong. What can a career really offer, and I speak from experience! Even the satisfactions of a job well done can’t compensate for having someone who cares about you, night and morning. I smile when I hear all this talk about liberation from men and the ties of marriage. It’s women who created marriage in the first place; it’s men who would really like to be free, and these silly female liberators are falling right into the trap of loneliness, if they did but know it. Men have their animal instincts and always will have them, and it’s natural for them to want to roam about and select a bit of fun, but no real woman wants that kind of system to become the general way of life. There’s often nothing sadder than a woman with no warm shoulder to lean on when the winter comes, for no time is all summertime—’

  ‘Really!’ The other woman fussed with her hair. ‘Believe me, I’m not saying anything against Heron for marrying Edwin Trequair. We all know he has pots of money and a pedigree, so I say good luck to her. Lilian tells me there isn’t a single member of his family on the guest list. Are they all demised, Heron, or is he the proverbial black wolf?’

  ‘Edwin has no family,’ Heron said, and some imp of wickedness made her add: ‘But I do know that he’s descended from the Pendragons on his mother’s side. The Pendragons, as you know, were the lineal rulers of Cornwall and Celtic kings in their own right.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ Avid eyes stared at Heron through the mirror. ‘I must say he has something very haughty about him—do tell me how he got the scar. We’re all dying to know!’

  ‘Oh, that was at his university in Heidelberg,’ Heron said airily. ‘As you know, the students there are fond of duelling and they will fight with their foils unbuttoned—it’s actually against the law for them to carry on the duelling tradition, but you know what high-strung young men are like, especially the scions of powerful families. Edwin is now the last of his line, and as the ancestral home down in Cornwall has finally crumbled away, he took it into his head to buy the Glass Castle and start a new dynasty.’

  ‘How fearfully fascinating!’ Lilian’s friend was all agog, and Heron relished the moment when she would buttonhole Edwin and ask him about his student days at Heidelberg; she was sure that with his quick wits he would not be lost for a suitable answer. She smiled to herself and when she turned from the mirror she caught Miss Spendlove giving her an old-fashioned look. Her smile deepened, for she knew the little dressmaker wasn’t fooled by her outrageous fabrication.

  ‘The dress is exactly as I wished it to be,’ she said warmly. ‘I am so grateful to you.’

  ‘I’m gratified that you do your dear mother such credit, Heron. And now I think it’s time for us to go downstairs. The bouquets will have arrived, and the cars will be on their way for the family and the bridesmaids. You aren’t nervous, my dear?’

  Heron stood very still a moment and tested the strength of her nerves. There were still tiny flutters in the region of her stomach, and her knees were a little shaky, but apart from that she was almost calm. She only hoped that it wasn’t the calm that forewarned a storm.

  ‘Let’s say I’m resolved,’ she said, and this time a nerve quivered in her lip when she smiled. ‘Edwin isn’t the sort of man I’d dare to leave standing at the altar.’

  ‘As if you’d want to!’ Laughter trilled from Lilian’s friend, who had now arrayed herself in a large pink hat. ‘I wish my Dixie would find someone like him, but she will go in for these arty types with more hair than anything else. I keep telling her that a girl can’t live on hair and air, but she asserts that you don’t have to, with a social security office around every corner. Oh well, if she wants to marry for love and live on charity, then so be it. It’s her life.’

  ‘And this is mine,’ thought Heron, as she made her way down the staircase of Memory, all the years of childhood left behind, and the memories of this house when it had been her home. In a few hours she would walk in through the door of the Glass Castle and that would become her home.

  The bridesmaids clustered to admire her dress and her bouquet of virgin-white lilies, and then the cars arrived and as if in a dream Heron found herself in a Silver Shadow Rolls beside her uncle, and it was sweeping soundlessly along the coast road towards Geesewell. The day had now grown brilliant with sunshine, a real June day, making the sea sparkle, and adding a joyous note to the bells when the car turned into the driveway of the Abbey and Heron saw onlookers clustered along the path, their bright, inquisitive eyes peering in to get a glimpse of her bridal finery.

  Uncle Saul squeezed her hand in the lace mitten. ‘You look a treat, my lass, and you’re doing yourself a bit of real good by marrying Edwin.’

  ‘Why, because of his money?’ She spoke with a little note of bitterness in her voice.

  ‘Not entirely, lass.’ Her uncle leaned forward and looked into her eyes. ‘It’s no use for any woman to marry where there’s no real backbone, and Trequair has plenty of that. It’s funny, really, but he reminds me of my Commanding Officer when we were in retreat at Dunkirk. Our company would have perished to the last man if it hadn’t been for him. Not a man of us ever thought he had an ounce of feeling in him, that he was all soldier, with iron poured into his veins instead of food. But with hell on his tongue and flame in his eye he got most of his boys to the boats, and then he keeled over right in front of the last of us, just as we were about to scramble aboard an old fishing tub. There’d been a bullet in him for an hour or more, and suddenly it felled him and he died there in the muddy, bloody water. Died without a whimper, a moment after he’d been yelling at the lads to get the hell out of there and what did it matter if that last boat looked as if it’d sink in the Channel. “You can all swim home from there, you ruddy pups,” he said!’

  Uncle Saul gripped Heron’s fingers and there was a hint of tears in his eyes. ‘Not for loving very easily, but not for forgetting, either.’

  And on that nostalgic note Heron entered the church on the arm of her uncle and the sound of the bells and the birds were muffled by the organ music. Shafts of jewel-coloured light poured from the lyre windows, and there at the altar stood the tall figure of Edwin, and she thought how straight was his back in the fine grey suiting, how implacable was the set of his head, and how black was his hair. Beside him stood his best man, a stocky yachtsman with whom he had struck up a friendship since coming to live at Jocelyn’s Beach. The day after tomorrow they would set sail in Rip Lawson’s yacht for the south coast of France where they were to spend their honeymoon at Cap Deville, where Edwin had rented a small villa, or domaine as it was called in that region of France, where the flowers grew so abundantly that perfume factories had been set up at Grasse, to provide essences for the salons de beaute in Paris.

  The wedding music seemed to grow louder, filling the church with the awesome notes of the Wedding March ... which to Heron had become a march of doom to the side of Edwin Trequair, who like the soldier in Uncle Saul’s story seemed to have iron in his spine. Would he never unbend to look at her, in these last few moments of her freedom? No! He gazed straight ahead of him at the altar, where the candles burned, and where the priest stood waiting in his snowy cassock, prayer-book in hand, eyes gravely watchful as the bride came to the side of her bridegroom.

  She seemed to shimmer in her silvery-white brocade, a tracery of flowers patterned her veil, and now she held only her own white prayer-book, for the lilies had been handed to Sybil. And it was then that Edwin slowly turned his head and allowed himself his first glimpse of her, and in those final moments before she became his wife she wondered at his curious self-control, and she wondered how she stood
here so calmly when she clamoured to rush away, flying in terror down the aisle to the door the ushers had now closed.

  All through the ceremony she felt as cold as a leaf in the rain, and she knew how icy cold her hand must have felt to Edwin when he took the golden ring from the prayer-book and placed it on the third finger of her left hand. ‘With this ring I thee wed. With my body I thee worship.’

  It was over and they were kneeling in prayer before the altar. It was accomplished, here in the Cloister of Ste. Marie. In the vestry, at the signing of the register, Heron swayed as if she might faint, and suddenly an arm gripped her about the waist ... an arm that in the grey suiting felt as strong and hard as an iron bar.

  The reception seemed to go on for hours, while the champagne flowed and white-coated waiters served the guests with caviare, smoked salmon, cold turkey and pheasant from a buffet-table set up in the garden marquee. No expense had been spared; no bride more congratulated than Heron Trequair.

  ‘The name suits you!’ Sybil was delighted by the discovery, a third glass of champagne in her hand and a good-looking usher in tow. ‘The name must always have been waiting to join itself to yours, so it’s fate, my pet!’

  The smile seemed set on Heron’s face like winter frost on a pane of glass. Her grey eyes seemed like translucent stones set in the pallor of a beautiful Greek mask. ‘You should really be called Helen,’ Rip Lawson said to her, having come to her side with a glass sent over by Edwin, who was cornered by some well-dressed ladies, and imprisoned by politeness for the time being, Rip added.

  ‘There’s brandy in the glass, and you’re to drink every drop.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ She sipped some of the cognac and prayed to feel warm again. It was so unnatural to feel so cold when the sun was shining and the roses were blazing crimson and peach.

  ‘Why Helen?’ She hadn’t caught Rip’s meaning.

  ‘Helen of Troy. The face that launched a thousand ships. White silk is always fetching, but, by heaven, you’re a torch lily. Exotic things that grow out East. He must have spotted that straight away.’

  ‘I wish—’ Heron gave a little shiver. ‘I wish everyone wouldn’t assume that he’s bought me, just because I don’t happen to be dowdy.’

  ‘I’m a sailor, Heron, and sentimental. I assume that he loves every red hair of you, and every inch of white skin.’

  ‘That’s only the wrapping.’ She drank a little more of the brandy and felt as if a small flame were running through her body. ‘Is that all men care about?’

  ‘It’s half the battle,’ said Rip honestly. ‘The rest is up to the woman. It’s she who lights the fire and keeps it burning ... or throws cold water on it. As Shakespeare put it: ‘she has power to call the fiercest tyrant from his rage.’

  ‘So I’ve married myself a tyrant?’

  Rip glanced over to where Edwin conversed with some of the guests. ‘There’s temper in his face, and there’s evidence that he’s not been an angel. But if a woman wants an angel who better than Lucifer, prince of them all? Didn’t he know the secrets of heaven before he fell from grace?’

  ‘Sailors are awful blasphemers,’ she said severely.

  ‘We’re puritans as well,’ he rejoined. ‘My yacht’s in harbour half a mile away. Let’s sail off together.’

  ‘You think it’s safe to say that because you think I’m scared of Edwin. Would you take me up the Thames, Rip?’

  He stared at her. ‘You serious?’

  ‘What if I were?’

  ‘Why up the Thames?’

  ‘I have a friend in London. She’d help me to have this marriage annulled—’

  ‘Heron, stop this!’ Rip caught her by the wrist, as if he expected her to run off there and then. ‘You mustn’t say such things at your own wedding. It isn’t right.’

  ‘Now you are being puritan.’

  ‘Yes, and a good thing too!’ With a sudden anxious change of face Rip raised his hand and urgently beckoned to Edwin.

  Heron stood there, so pale and frozen in her white dress that her red hair seemed as if it had drawn all the life tints from her face. She saw Edwin bow to the ladies like a Spanish courtier, and then he was threading his way through the cluster of guests, and as he .came to her, his eyes were fixed upon her, dark sapphires glinting against the brown skin, above the scar that slashed from temple to jaw.

  Heron tautened as a victim might, or a tigress at the approach of the tamer. He had walked with such silence and purpose the night he had followed her to the lake ... they had been strangers then ... they were strangers now ... to be strangers no more when night came to Jocelyn’s Beach.

  ‘Mrs. Trequair is getting restless for your company, Edwin.’ Rip spoke gruffly, and looked into his empty glass. ‘And I’m off for a refill.’

  He was gone and suddenly bride and groom were alone for the first time that day. ‘You’re looking pale.’ Edwin took hold of her hand and his fingers toyed with the rings that were the golden symbols of his ownership. Heron couldn’t think of this marriage as other than a bargain made between them ... London had palled and she had felt restricted to the typewriter and eternal letters of the law ... to live again at Jocelyn’s Beach had been too strong a bribe for her to resist.

  She flung back her hair and made herself smile gaily. ‘I shall just be glad to get out of all this finery and to be myself again. It’s all been—well, you look a little tense yourself, Edwin. A trifle strung.’

  ‘I’ll confess that getting married is almost as nerve-racking as facing a rogue elephant.’ His lips quirked and he gripped her hand. ‘Let’s go and tell Lillian that we want to cut the cake and be off, away from the madding crowd.’

  The tiered cake was brought forth amid cries of admiration, and the knife case was produced and opened. Heron knew that the knife belonged to Edwin, but she barely caught back a gasp of astonishment when he took it from its satin bed. It was a kris, the ornamental handle studded with gems, and the glistening blade curved slightly so that when it swept through the air it curved itself to the shape of an opponent’s neck.

  ‘I say!’ someone exclaimed. ‘That’s a beauty, but don’t they say that the kris is never taken from a living man?’

  ‘True.’ A slight smile came and went on Edwin’s lips. ‘Before you get the wrong idea, I never took this. It was given to me by an Indonesian prince whom I knew. It has never been used in battle, and that virginal wedding cake will be its first victim.’

  Everyone laughed, and Heron heard a voice murmur that the Indies man was certainly a bit of a character, with a flair for doing the unexpected thing.

  Heron watched the gemmed kris cut into her wedding cake, her hand beneath Edwin’s on the ornamental handle. The pristine icing gave way to reveal the rich depths of the cake, and after the slices had been handed around, and more champagne had been poured for the toasts, Edwin replied to them in his resonant voice with the slight hint of a foreign intonation which made his words take on extra meaning. He said that had Heron and he been a bride and groom out in the East he would have had to abduct her first, this being called bride-capture, and deep in the forest his friends would have made them a bed of flowers and there the marriage would have been declared before the gods, and only later would the actual ceremony have taken place in the temple, one of glittering finery, strange music, roasted pig and fresh pineapple, and dancing until dawn by the flames of great fires.

  ‘However,’ he held Heron to his side, ‘our English wedding has gone without a hitch, and one day, perhaps, we can go and be married again in Eastern style. We thank you all for your good wishes and your handsome gifts, and now I am going to abduct my bride!’ And he swiftly did so, hurrying Heron away from the crowd, towards his car that stood waiting in the drive of Memory. She clutched her brocade skirt and protested that she ought to change her dress.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You shall arrive at your castle just as you are, like a princess snatched from a medieval fairy tale. In you get, my dear. I’m sorry it isn’t
a glass coach drawn by wild swans, and that I’m not a dashing knight in silver armour.’ He smiled a subtle smile right into her eyes and tucked her brocade skirt around her. Then he joined her in the car and as they drove off she was aware of their guests spilling into the driveway and waving them goodbye. Silver-paper horseshoes and pink bells flew through the air and grains of rice spattered the sides of the car.

  ‘Goodbye ... good luck ... have fun!’

  The car sped away from Memory and it really seemed to Heron that she was being abducted ... being earned away by force from all that she was certain of, all that she had known and loved, into a life that would offer strangeness and complication.

  Edwin was different from other men. He had the nerve and the power to be himself; to speak his thoughts and follow his inclinations. He wasn’t bound by convention, and because of this he was unpredictable.

  Heron had to accept him as a husband, but as the turrets of the Glass Castle came into view, she knew how desperately unsure she was of being alone with him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Far below the windows of her bedroom the ocean lay darkly gleaming, and for what seemed an endless time she had stood there gazing down at that dark and silvery freedom of water. Again and again her fingers strayed over the rings on her slender left hand ... rubies to protect the wearer from drowning ... diamonds to express the passion which came too readily to men and blotted out all compassion.