“He is not of the best society,” David said. “You do not move in the same circles; you must be mistaken.”
“I might open my eyes if you introduced us,” she said, butting her head against his shoulder. “Then again, I may never open them again, and become a permanent addition to this bedroom. You won’t need me for the wedding breakfast; I’ll send a traitorous serving girl in a thick white veil, just like the true bride did in the fairy story, and you can marry her.”
David shook his head lightly, so as not to disturb the team of blacksmiths at work therein. “That wouldn’t work. I should know you.”
“Ah,” Alison said, “you would not know if I sent her with my mother’s gold ring, my father’s chain, and my own nut-brown hair, and her face covered besides.”
“There’s a horse in that one, I think,” David said.
“Falada. He’s dead; he’s no good to you.”
“A dead horse is extremely useful to a bridegroom who knows what he’s about,” he chided. “Aren’t you supposed to be an educated woman?”
“No. Purely decorative. I read a story once; it was terrible and my head ached for days. It’s still aching now, and if you try to make me remember another detail, I shall lose all my beauty, and you’ll have no one to marry you tomorrow but a grim and loathly lady, who keeps house with termites and rat poison.”
“The horse—” David said, or tried to.
“Falada. It’s ‘The Goose Girl’ story you’re thinking of; that’s the only version of the false bride tale that’s got a horse in it, and the horse is named Falada.”
“Falada, then. Stop interrupting,” he said, in a tone that suggested he knew she would not. “He was a gift from your mother, and no disguise can fool him, not even after the traitorous serving girl steals your clothes and your name and passes herself off as the true bride while you are reduced to tending a flock of sheep—”
“Geese.”
“Geese, then, and when the serving girl passes under the church gate, he’ll—”
“Why would a dead horse be waiting for a bridal party at the church gate?”
“A kind slaughterer nailed his head to the top of the arch. Because,” he said before she could speak again, “because the true bride begged him to, and he could not refuse her request. And when the serving girl passes under the church gate, Falada would call out, ‘Alas, if your poor mother only knew, her loving heart would break in two,’ and that’s how I’d know. Bridegrooms always know their true brides, through the strategic use of horse heads and love tokens.”
Alison shook her head. “You wouldn’t know if I sent her,” she said. “You wouldn’t know if the horse went to the tannery instead of the church gate, and lost his tongue altogether.”
David turned his head and looked at her then. “I suppose I wouldn’t,” he said. Her dark hair was fanned out over her pillow, snapping with gold in the morning light, and she smiled up at him.
“Maybe you’re not the bridegroom at all,” she said in a singsong little voice. “Maybe you’re the goose boy, chasing his hat—Blow, wind, blow, take Conrad’s hat and make him chase it, until I have braided my hair, and tied it up again. A goose boy, tumbling after nothing, while I tie up my hair.”
“Alison,” he said.
“Maybe you’re the horse’s head, nailed over the gate, telling everyone who passes below you how much their mothers’ hearts are breaking. Nailed, and dead, and staring.” Her voice rose in a steady drone, monotonous and tuneful and lovely. “Oh, Falada, Falada, thou art dead! All the joy in life has fled! Falada, Falada—”
He was dimly aware, when he came back to himself, that the voice repeating her name was his, and that Alison was trying to wrench her arms back from him. He dropped his hands to his sides, and they broke apart.
“If you’ve left a mark,” Alison said lightly, studying her wrists as she turned her hands over, “that would be extremely tiresome. You know I’m not wearing gloves with my suit tomorrow.” Alison was enormously proud of her hands. So, for that matter, was David. She had a habit of looking pityingly at the ring he had bought her with such indulgence that it never failed to make David want to snatch it off her fingers and make her beg for it back.
“I’ll buy you gloves this afternoon,” he said.
“I don’t want to wear gloves,” she said. “Gloves look priggish on a bride.” Then: “It would be easier if you were able to refrain from grabbing me, darling. Cheaper than buying me a pair of gloves every time you do.”
“I don’t intend to make it a habit,” David said stupidly. “Only—that wasn’t like you, just then. I didn’t like it.”
“I’m sorry for frightening you, David,” she recited, and her voice suggested more than a little of the schoolroom. She grabbed both of his wrists in a light echo of where his hands had been on her and twisted them gently. “Today I will clean my plate, and say, ‘How do you do’ when your mother greets me instead of spitting and baring my teeth, and protect you from officious bridesmaids”—she was laughing now, a real laugh, and David could not help but grin back at her—“and go to bed at a reasonable hour, and tomorrow morning I will marry you, and never give you cause to be frightened or make you feel you must threaten to buy me gloves ever again, I do solemnly swear.”
She kissed him on both temples, her lips blessedly cool. “And I’ll bring you aspirin for your hangover, and be a sober, faithful helpmeet for your new fine and noble life.” Then she kicked her feet free of the blankets, dropped her legs over the side of the bed, and got up. He could hear her singing from the next room as she dressed her hair.
“It was intill a pleasant time,
Upon a summer’s day,
The noble Earl of Mar’s daughter
Went forth to sport and play.
As thus she did amuse herself,
Below a green oak tree,
There she espied a sprightly dove,
Set on a tower so hie.
‘O Coo-my-dove, my love so true,
If you’ll come down to me,
You’ll have a cage of good red gold,
Instead of simple tree:
I’ll put gold hinges round your cage,
And silver roun the walls;
I’ll see you shine as fair a bird
As any of them a’.’
But she had not these words well spoke,
Nor yet these words well said,
’Til Coo-my-dove flew from the tower
And lighted on her head.”
Her head appeared around the doorway. “David,” she said, looking at him intently, “don’t wear your blue suit today. Tess hated you in blue last night. She said you looked like a traffic policeman.”
* * *
By midafternoon, offset with aspirin and a tentative attempt at lunch, David’s hangover had receded into a general, unobtrusive air of listlessness. Even his headache felt dreamy and hardly worth noticing, and he allowed himself to be drawn from the street into the reception hall (which was something less than a hotel and something more than a teahouse) with dazed good grace. Then they sat and waited for Tess.
The kitchen was closed until five, the waitress had said, but she would bring them coffee and sandwiches, if they wanted. “I can’t imagine wanting either,” Alison said, “but you might bring me a champagne cocktail, if you’re willing to part with one, or else nothing.”
David smiled by way of apology. “Two champagne cocktails,” he said, “or else two of nothing.” The waitress nodded and disappeared through the back door, either to find their drinks or because she couldn’t stand the sight of them another minute.
“I just want you to know,” Alison said, “that it doesn’t matter to me, if you like Tess.”
“I do like Tess,” David protested, aware it was impossible to sound sincere while saying so—and rather resenting her for opening a conversation with both a denial and an assertion of fact. He disliked fighting on two fronts. “I should like Tess. I do like Tess. And Tess should like
me. You like me.”
“I don’t think that’s strictly necessary.” Alison had a habit of replying only to a selected portion of David’s conversation, that which she considered worth discussing, and blandly ignoring the rest. It was a terrifically effective strategy; he had never been able to drag her back to a point once she had decided to abandon it.
“Does Tess like me?” David asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alison said. “She hasn’t done anything to suggest she doesn’t, has she?”
“No, not exactly, only—she looks at one as though she disapproves of how one parts one’s hair, or spells one’s name, somehow.”
“There’s only the one way to spell David.”
“All right, but I still got the distinct impression last night that she was disappointed by the sight of me.”
“Perhaps she was,” she said lightly. “I’ll let you know, if she tells me, and do my best to provide further evaluation so you might make improvements.”
“Darling,” he said.
“Darling,” she said, bowing her head.
“What I can’t understand is why you put up with it.”
“I don’t need her to approve of you,” she said. “I approve of you.”
“I don’t mean what she thinks of me, or doesn’t. I mean all of it.”
“Tess has always been singular. She has what she calls her insistments. She drew a single room every year at school but ended up making sure I bunked with her anyhow. It’s better to let her get her own way. She doesn’t require anyone else to do anything about it, so it’s no trouble. I don’t mind it.”
The front door opened halfway, and a man looked in, scanning the room, then just as suddenly withdrew his head and shoulders back into the street.
“That’s another thing,” David said, striking his leg. “These demands, these whims she’s got. You come home from those sudden trips of hers looking half-starved and half-mad, without a word about where you’ve been or how you got there. They’re absurd. I can’t imagine how you’ve put up with it so long, or why.”
“Well, Tess is absurd. Lots of people are absurd. I don’t see why it should bother you. We don’t have to see her often after we’re married, if that’s what worries you.”
“But that you should have to put up with it,” he said. “When I think of all you’ve— Why hasn’t she offered to help, even once?”
“David.” She smiled, but there was a grimace behind it.
“She’s simply rolling in it, and here you’ve been, living in what’s more or less a garret because she thinks it’s funny—”
“—sewing artificial flowers by candlelight, thumbs bleeding, throwing the family Bible and the last of my stockings into the fire to keep from freezing to death—”
“Laugh if you like, but for all that she’s your oldest and dearest friend, she was certainly unconcerned enough about your going to work when she could have easily covered your share of the rent with what she spends on lunch.”
“Oh, lots of girls work in shops. And I don’t live with Tess because she has money. I live with Tess because we both particularly like it—and it hasn’t stopped me from sleeping in your bed when I feel like it. Soon I’ll be living with you, because you and I would both particularly like it, and you can pay as much of the rent as you want. Something in the neighborhood of all of it would satisfy me, I think.” She put her arms around him and tugged him to her, and he let his head drop against her shoulder. “Don’t let’s quarrel over it, darling.”
“Darling,” he said, only a little muffled from speaking directly into her lapel.
“I’ve never wanted money from Tess,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have liked it if she had tried to give me any.” The door opened again, and she braced David back up in his own chair and smoothed her skirt. “That’s her now, and here you are with the guiltiest look on your face; try to be civil and not rummage through Tess’s bank account, and in return I promise not to notice when your father gets drunk tonight and tries to ask me where I was stationed during the war.”
But it was not Tess.
“The kitchen is closed until five,” Alison said merrily to the young man who stood in the doorway with a puzzled expression, “but you’re welcome to sit and have a cocktail with us in the meantime. You’re about three hours too early for the rehearsal dinner, and I’ve already got a bridegroom, and our waitress has gotten herself lost and bitten by a snake somewhere in the woods between here and the kitchen, and spilled all the champagne, but don’t let that spoil any of your fun. Are you free tomorrow morning? We could use an usher, or at least someone to sit on the groom’s side.” She turned to David. “Does the clerk’s office have a groom’s side? Never mind, you can have the whole city as the groom’s side. If I’m going to have all the people, the least I can do is let you have a nice big side to be a groom in. I don’t count his parents as people, you see”—that last line was directed to the man at the door, whom David couldn’t fault for falling behind.
The man’s expression grew even more puzzled (which David would not have thought possible only a minute ago), and he stammered out an apology. He had been looking for someone, and must have gotten the address wrong.
“Oh, don’t mind that, I expect you were meant to get lost today. This here is the bridegroom,” she said, gesturing at David. “This morning I frightened him. Tomorrow morning I’m going to marry him. Won’t you have some champagne? Our waitress will be back any minute with three or four bottles of it. She’s a very doughty waitress, and it would take more than a snakebite to delay her.” But the man had been slowly edging out of the doorway during her speech, and by the time she got to the snakebite, he was gone, and they were alone again.
Alison gave a little laugh and pressed a kiss against David’s hairline. He had the curious feeling that if he did not say something soon, he would lose the power of speech entirely.
“She’s watched you,” he said, “struggle like a specimen pinned and mounted to a card, when at any time she could have shaken out her handkerchief and let you have at least the stray coins that tumbled out.” If he could not remove the whine entirely from his tone, he had at least managed to keep his voice steady, for the most part, and considered it a qualified hit.
She kissed him again. “What an ugly way to look at it.”
“Has she even given you a wedding present?”
“You sound,” Alison said, “alarmingly like a person who is asking for money.”
“I don’t mean that you should have asked her for it,” he said. “I only meant that she’s been in a position to do you some good, and I want to know why she hasn’t—and why that doesn’t seem to bother you.”
“But the point is that Tess hasn’t given me money, whether you think she ought to have or not,” she said. “And she isn’t stupid, which means that at some point, she’s noticed that she has money and I haven’t, which means that at some point she’s thought about giving me some, and decided against it. So I could ask her for some, if I felt like embarrassing myself, and she’d arrive at the same decision, and then we’d be no differently situated than we were before, except I’d have been living with a woman I was ashamed to show my face to. My poor, grubby, impoverished face.” And at this she pulled such a long and self-pitying expression that David could not help but smile at her.
“I think,” he said, “if she really cared about you as much as she claims—”
“Perhaps you should go sit under Tess’s window,” she said, “and take your hat with you, and hold it out in front of you, stretched open wide, and carry a sign with the exact amount that you believe I am owed for performing the act of friendship, and see if she is interested in dispensing largesse. Or settling her bill. You started out the day so well too, David. I wonder if your hangover is operating in reverse, and I should put you to bed until you get properly drunk and fit for human society again.”
“Why do I always feel as if I’ve insulted your mother when I try to talk m
oney with you?”
“I’m sure I have no idea. You could always try to stop talking money with me, if you don’t like the effect it produces. Stop pawing at me; you’ll wrinkle my suit.”
David dropped his hands reflexively, but she was smiling again, and he knew that the danger had passed. “And tomorrow you’ll marry me,” he said, not quite believing it still. “Tomorrow you’ll marry me, and then you’ll be married to me, and I’ll take you out of the tower Tess has you locked up in, and it won’t matter if she tries to buy you the moon, because I’ll—”
“Tess would never try to give me the moon,” she said, frowning. “Tess would never give me something I couldn’t use.”
“If you don’t like the ring I bought you,” he said, “I’ll buy you another one. Whatever kind you like. We’ll throw this one away.” There was a very sharp sense of imminence in his chest, somewhere between his lungs and a little lower down. There was no other word for it; something, something was going to happen, or already had.
“I like this ring,” Alison said, and turned her hand to look at it with the same cool, studied air of forgiveness she always did. He would like to strike her, David thought suddenly. He would like to strike her and get up and leave, or fall at her feet and lay his head on her knees and beg until something happened. What that something might be, he could not quite imagine. “But you won’t get any complaints from me if you feel inclined to buy me more jewelry.”
“Darling,” he said, and he kissed her.
* * *
The door did not open again, but Alison had seen something in the window, and snapped her handbag shut as she drew herself up from her chair. “That’s Tess, just outside,” she said, “and you look like you’ve just been having an argument, which is your own fault. I’ll go out and talk to her. You stay here, and see if you can’t convince that ancient mariner of a waitress to come back in and turn the lights on so Tess doesn’t have to sit in the dark.”
He’d kissed her hand then and tried to press it lightly to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, and I do like Tess, and I was a beast to ask about— Anyhow, I know it was never like that, with you, and I’ll do anything you like, as long as you marry me; you can leave me here in the dark with the wind outside and I won’t say a word until you come back, only if you’ll marry me.”
The Merry Spinster Page 10