The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  I said, ‘They never came before, did they Reggie? And they’ll probably never come again. It’s a fluke.’

  But Reggie was still honeymooning with my relations and good manners ruled everything he did, even in his dealings with preposterous old ladies. He would never come right out and say what he thought. Over the years I have never been persuaded that the American way isn’t healthier.

  ‘Well,’ he said, taking each of them by the hand, ‘we must make sure you’re not disappointed. We must make sure you have a good vantage point. I’ll have a word with Bagehot.’

  One of the many Bagehots was a lord lieutenant. The kind of person who could make the difference between glimpsing the top of a passing coronet and getting a front row seat.

  I tackled Reggie later.

  I said, ‘Couldn’t you have backed me up, just a little? All they ever want to do is triumph over me.’

  ‘Old sausage!’ he said. ‘Don’t allow silly things to bother you. They both seem perfectly agreeable to me.’

  Ma spent the next week displaying her encyclopedic knowledge of the King and Queen, and quizzing anyone foolish enough to loiter in the Morning Rum.

  ‘Full names,’ she’d warble, longing for you to admit you’d forgotten them again.

  ‘Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes!’

  This was the greatest feat of memory ever achieved by my mother.

  ‘First betrothed to Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, who sadly died …’

  ‘From sleeping between damp sheets,’ interrupted Aunt Fish, who only remembered causes of death and who had herself developed a chesty sniffle.

  ‘Married George Frederick Ernest Albert …’

  On and on Ma went, sorting through a selection of photographs she had brought with her.

  ‘Her Majesty will be interested to see her new American relations,’ she said, basking under Reggie’s protection, daring me to contradict her, or pick her up and shake her and say, ‘You’re not going to get within a hundred yards of the Queen, you deluded, annoying old woman’, which I longed to do.

  Murray was no help to me, inventing urgent duties in the garden whenever the photographs were brought out.

  ‘Time to lift a few carrots, Em,’ he’d say, and off they’d run. Emerald and Sapphire each had been given a patch of garden. Like me, Sapphire found Nature worked too slowly and whimsically for her taste, so she soon abandoned hers, but Emerald took it over, allowing her own chaotic plot to spread, flowers and vegetables jumbled together.

  Sapphire was more interested in Ma’s collection of photographs.

  ‘Do you have one of Gilbert?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’ Ma said. ‘Certainly not. I hope you are practicing your curtsies, Sapphire. I hope you and Emerald are remembering to bandage your ears.’

  The King and Queen were marking their twenty-fifth anniversary, not by taking a bronzing vacation at Cap Ferrat, which they must certainly have earned, but by visiting as many English towns as possible. That Meltun Merbrey was one of the chosen said much, I suppose, about the ones that had failed the selection process.

  A light rain fell all night, petering out at breakfast but never quite going away. At eleven o’clock Reggie and I set off by motorcycle and sidecar. Bobbity followed with the others packed into the shooting brake. A large tent had been erected and filled with long tables for the service of a Jubilee tea. A second tent was being laid with assorted rugs and a small number of chairs. That was where I found Angelica.

  ‘Just been organizing a potty,’ she said. ‘In case HM needs a tinkle. And when your mater arrives and your aunt, one of Bagehot’s people will want to talk to them. They have to know when to curtsy and so forth.’

  Strings had been pulled by a Bagehot in high places. Ma and Aunt Fish had been wheedled onto a receiving line.

  I emerged from the tent to see them trudging toward me across the field. Murray was holding Ma’s mink out of the mud, Emerald and Sapphire were doing the same for Aunt Fish, and they cut such figures, from their borrowed rubber boots to their Tiffany tiaras, that several small children began running toward them, cheering and waving Union flags, in the mistaken belief that they Were Somebody.

  Ma swept past me. I believe it was the happiest moment of her life, bar one. And that was the moment when Their Majesties paused in front of her as they moved along the line.

  ‘I always recall what our dear cousin the Queen said … ,’ became Ma’s trump card, to be played in any conversational lull. And although Reggie told me it was unlikely Her Majesty had asked anything more than whether she had traveled far to be there, according to Ma they had enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion and parted on the most cordial terms.

  FORTY

  Murray and Angelica were married in the Bagehots’ own chapel, at Wrotherby, pronounced Robey. I had taken apart an ancient Bagehot wedding gown of ivory Brussels lace and reassembled it in a line more flattering and au courant, and the large shield-shaped arrangement of crimson carnations and maidenhair fern helped complete the slenderizing illusion. Emerald assisted with six yards of veil, beaming proudly at anyone who’s eye she could catch, and Sapphire, coaxed into her bridesmaid’s dress with the promise of being taken to Leicester, Leicestershire, to see a moving picture show, slumped alongside her wearing a scowl.

  It was a day of mixed fortunes.

  The evening before Murray had been in a very good humor, allowing Reggie to get him tight on gin and even presenting me with a wedding haiku.

  RELATIVE

  If my wife’s sister is

  Your husband’s brother’s wife am

  I one step removed?

  At breakfast a congratulatory wire arrived from Judah, and another from Yetta Landau and Oscar.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘You’re not disinherited.’ But he didn’t seem to take much pleasure in the news.

  I said, ‘Are you nervous?’

  ‘Somewhat,’ he admitted.

  Reggie took him off to help him tie his necktie, and I went in search of Bullyboy Beluga, to dress him in his Hermès collar. He hardly greeted me. He lay on the floor of the Boot Rum looking up at me dully, and when I began to undo his everyday collar he turned, rather slowly, and bit me on the hand. Bobbity came and examined him, while the girl wrapped my thumb in a clean pudding cloth.

  ‘He seems out of sorts, poor old chap,’ she said. ‘I’ll bundle him up. Put him in the motor. We can get Phillips to take a look at him on our way to Wrotherby.’

  Phillips was our veterinarian.

  But Bullyboy Beluga wouldn’t be bundled. He resisted, demonstrating a defiance animals usually didn’t risk with Bobbity, and put an end to all talk of being driven anywhere or being ministered to by biting her on the ankle.

  She ushered me outside. ‘Leave him to consider the error of his ways,’ she said.

  Another clean pudding cloth was sent for.

  I had created a very special origination for Bobbity to wear to the marrying: a calf-length dress in the darkest blue wool, worn with a Scotch plaid gilet and a matching glengarry. Bobbity was very fond of Scotch plaid and even fonder of darkest blue in spite of the unforgiving way it showed up dog hair.

  For Murray, and for Reggie who was to be his groom’s man, I had made amusing suit vests in figured silk, and I would have done the same for Neville, but he had recently taken up knitted vests and I suppose didn’t wish to be seen as a man who was too susceptible to fashion.

  The day had dawned bright and sunny. I had gambled on being able to wear silk day pajamas without having to ruin the effect with waterproofs. Hot pink has always been my color, and my matching pixie cap was undoubtedly the wittiest hat at the whole affair. Even the way I had hung my bandaged hand in a silk sling drew admiring remarks.

  ‘How inventive you are,’ people said.

  ‘We always gave her every encouragement,’ Ma told them. ‘It was obvious from the start that Poppy had her Grandma Plotz’s way with fabrics.’

  It was the firs
t I knew of it.

  Aunt Fish was most impressed by the Bagehots having their very own church.

  ‘What a pity you don’t run to one at Kneilthorpe,’ she said.

  I said, ‘We don’t need one. We don’t go in for that kind of thing.’

  ‘Besides,’ Ma said, ‘Reggie could certainly have one if he chose to, Zillah. There are any number of rooms he might use. And you know, Judah has given such quantities of money to the temple, to all intents and purposes we must practically own that.’

  Murray made his wedding vows in a rather small voice, encouraged by Angelica’s loving smiles, and then we all processed to a wedding breakfast of Meltun Merbrey pie and sherry wine served in the library.

  A Bagehot aunt had questioned whether dishes made from pig should be served, in light of there being what she called ‘a Hebrew contingent’, but pie was always served at Bagehot weddings, and funerals, too. No one knew of an alternative, and Murray’s suggestion of shrimp was overruled. Shrimp was only served on buttered toast, before dinner, by people like Flicky Manners, who had houses near the sea and shrimp nets. In the Vale of Belvoir one ate pig.

  I had supervised the baking of the cakes in the kitchens at Kneilthorpe. There were three tiers; one to be taken back to New York, for those who had been kept from the wedding by communists, one to be brushed with brandy, wrapped in muslin and preserved for the christening of Angelica and Murray’s firstborn, and the largest for immediate consumption.

  Observing how the upper tiers were sinking into the lower cake, and anxious to press ahead with the cutting ceremony before any more subsidence occurred, I was hovering by the cake table, gazing out of the long library windows, when I noticed someone approaching the house at as great a speed as a pedal bicycle permitted. It was our outdoors man.

  By the time he had reached the kitchen door and I had been asked for, he was in a state of near collapse, purple faced, chest heaving.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Mrs Reggie,’ he wheezed, ‘on this happy day. But your little dog has passed away and the girl won’t stay in the house till he’s been seen to.’

  My darling Beluga. Just when I had decided to be kinder to him and pay him more attention. If only he could have become ill a day or two later. Murray’s wedding had taken up such a very great deal of my time.

  I said, ‘Had you better bury him then?’

  ‘Yes Mrs,’ he said, ‘I think I’d better. But I thought you’d want to pick out the spot where he’s to lay. Lady Merrick’s very particular where her boys lay.’

  I said, ‘Where do you suggest?’

  The serving classes have to be told everything. This is why they never progress.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. I could find him a nice little corner by the lilac walk. That should dig nice and easy.’

  Murray appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Who’s digging in my lilac walk?’ he said.

  And so it all came out. I would never have bothered him with Beluga’s passing, on his wedding day of all days, but the outdoors man blurted out the whole story, about him howling a little in the Boot Rum and then falling into the sleep from which there’s no waking, and the girl saying he had to be buried, wedding or no wedding, before there was a smell.

  Murray did no more than run out of Bagehots’ kitchen in his figured silk vest, snatch up the bicycle and hurtle away toward Kneilthorpe, leaving me to deal with a stranded outdoors man and a bride who was waiting to cut the cake.

  The English are a very sensible people. They just quietly do whatever has to be done. They never flap. And so it was decided that the cake and the wedding party would transfer to Kneilthorpe. In fact it was decided that to do so would be the greatest fun and should have been thought of in the first place.

  Reggie and I went ahead on the Flying Banana, with the outdoors man in the sidecar, and we didn’t overtake Murray until the beginning of the gravel sweep. He was in a terrible sweat.

  ‘Cavalry’s on the way,’ Reggie shouted to him over the noise of our engine.

  Beluga Bullyboy was wrapped in a feed sack on the cool scullery floor.

  ‘Would you like to see him one last time?’ the outdoors man asked me. On balance I thought not. But when Murray pedaled into the yard, he insisted on paying his respects. I had never realized he was so fond of the old beast.

  By the time Angelica arrived, and the rest of the party, he was down at the lilac walk, stripped to his shirt sleeves, giving unsought assistance at the digging of the grave.

  The cake hadn’t traveled well. The supporting pillars of the second tier had sunk without trace into the body of the principal cake, the cause being too much opening and closing of oven doors by foolish kitchen girls.

  ‘I do hope this isn’t an omen,’ said Aunt Fish.

  I believe my aunt always secretly hoped for the excitement of tragedy.

  More sherry was served, the cake was admired for its moistness, and no one talked about the bridegroom turning grave digger, except to condole with me and observe that twelve was a good age for a bulldog.

  But when the moment came for Murray to drive Angelica away to Lower Bagehot, to the dower house that was to be their new home, he froze.

  ‘Poppy,’ he whispered. ‘Could I have a word?’

  We closeted ourselves in the Morning Rum.

  I said, ‘Are you in a funk, Murray Jacoby?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’d rather stay here.’

  I said, ‘Then why didn’t you say so? I’m sure Angelica would be just as happy here. It can be arranged after your honeymoon.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I mean. I think Angelica had better go to the new place and I’ll stay here with you.’

  I said, ‘But that won’t do at all. Aren’t you raring to be alone with her? Do you understand what I mean? Married alone.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He looked like a man preparing to walk to the gallows.

  I said, ‘You do know what you have to do?’

  I had in mind to call Reggie in, to give him a short lesson on the birds and the bees, but he insisted that he knew perfectly well what was required of him. It was just that he didn’t feel quite ready.

  ‘Perhaps it’s because I’m upset about Beluga?’ he ventured. But I wasn’t having any of that. No one had asked him to go grave-digging on his wedding day.

  I said, ‘Well, that’s something you’ll have to discuss with your wife. All I can tell you is, you have to drive away with her right now. Everyone is waiting to throw rose petals. Sapphire has tied old boots to your fender. And Angelica is eager for the spooning to commence. I know because she told me so.’

  FORTY-ONE

  No bride was ever more forgiving than Angelica. When my innocent words about honeymooning sent Murray running for a bathroom, where he bolted the door and refused to come out, she held her head high.

  ‘Change of plan,’ she told the waiting guests. ‘Murray’s got a queasy tum, so we probably won’t be making a move today. Probably bunk down here tonight.’

  ‘Poppy!’ Ma hissed. ‘What have you done with him?’

  I might have guessed I would be blamed.

  Bobbity took me to one side. ‘Is he refusing at the first jump?’ she asked.

  I said, ‘Well yes, he is. Isn’t it extraordinary?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Merrick was the same.’

  Angelica was bearing up very well.

  ‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘I’ll start up the motor anyway. It’d be a pity if the old rose petals went to waste. Em and Sapphy can ride with me. We’ll just do a turn.’

  And they did. Petals and rice and bird seed were thrown, and Sapphire and Emerald squealed with delight as Angelica gunned the motor down the drive, for a ceremonial circuit of the house, and a brief detour so the bridal flowers could be left on the fresh earth of Beluga’s grave.

  I asked Bobbity how long it had taken her to coax Sir Neville.

  ‘Not long,’ she said. ‘A
night or two. I just allowed him full rein and eventually he trotted up nicely of his own accord. It’s to do with their school days, you know? Life in the dorm. Even now I’m absolutely not allowed in Merrick’s night table. He only has a biscuit box in there and a torch, but it’s strictly orf limits.’

  But Murray had never known life in the dorm.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bobbity said. ‘Gelica is marvelous with nervy types.’

  But even Angelica’s wealth of patience and kindness wasn’t enough to persuade Murray into the marriage bed. All he would say on the subject was, ‘I’d just rather not at the moment.’

  They gardened together, they dined together and they uncled and aunted together, but there was never the least little bit of spooning.

  Ma remarked, on the eve of her departure for New York, that Murray was almost as considerate a husband as Judah Jacoby himself.

  ‘And Israel,’ said my aunt. ‘Israel rarely troubled me.’

  But word got round, and others were not so forgiving. The girl kept fetching out the wedding cake earmarked for the christening, brushing it with more brandy and sighing theatrically. When Murray happened to cross the stable yard while Bobbity’s hunters were being shoed, the farrier stopped what he was doing and stared at him as though he had two heads. Eventually even Bobbity became impatient.

  ‘I should really hate for this to turn out badly,’ she said. ‘I should hate Gelica to become egg-bound.’

  I said, ‘They do seem pretty happy.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I think Murray should be made aware Edgar Boodle-Neary was always rather keen. If this should continue … If Edgar should decide the plum is still for the picking …’

  Then, one morning early in the spring of 1936, Murray and I found ourselves alone together over our oatmeal.

  ‘I seem to have made a hash of things,’ he said gloomily.

  I said, ‘You do know it can all be undone? There not having been any romping, all you have to do is report back to the priest and it can all be canceled.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All the gifts would have to be returned, of course.’