The Land of Summer

by Charlotte Bingham

  In the drawing room an open bottle of champagne on ice awaited them. Julius poured himself a glass, having dismissed not only his best man but also for some reason the attendant Wilkinson with a vague wave of one hand, and held the bottle up significantly in Emmaline’s direction to see if she might like a glass as well.

  ‘Thank you, Julius,’ Emmaline replied, dismally surveying the large empty room. She had nursed a secret hope that, even though the church ceremony had been attended by so few, her new husband might have arranged a surprise reception back at Park House to celebrate their union.

  ‘So,’ Julius said, as was his wont, having handed his new wife her drink.

  ‘So?’ Emmaline wondered. ‘So this is all we must expect by way of a celebration, is it, Julius?’

  ‘This is your home, Emma.’ Julius stared back at her with what seemed to be genuine bewilderment. ‘This is where we are to live, together. Did you expect more?’

  ‘I am very much afraid I did expect more, Mr Aubrey,’ Emmaline responded as calmly as she could. ‘This is all there is? For our wedding celebration?’ She looked round the drawing room empty of anyone but themselves.

  ‘So it would seem, Emma, but you must be happy now that you are married, surely? Are you not happy?’ Julius replied, as if still puzzling out a riddle. ‘You are married. You were able to purchase your wedding dress. What else should there be?’

  ‘What else should there be? A reception, at the very least. Something, Julius, more than just a handful of people in a church. Are you not even going to kiss the bride?’ She looked challengingly at him, but did not move any closer.

  ‘Very well, Emma, yes, of course I will kiss the bride.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her briefly on the lips, but before Emmaline could respond he quickly turned away.

  ‘May we not embrace a little longer?’ she asked him in a low voice.

  ‘Most certainly not. It would not do at all. One of the servants might come in, and it would be a very bad example. Your good health.’ He raised his glass and emptied it quickly, before moving back towards the champagne in its wine cooler.

  ‘Julius?’

  Surprised by the tone of her voice, Julius turned.

  ‘Oh, Julius!’ Emmaline threw aside the small bridal bouquet she was holding and hurried over to the French doors so that Julius could not see her expression.

  ‘Not there, Emma, if you don’t mind,’ she heard him complain from behind her. ‘Not on that chair. If there is any water in those flowers—’

  ‘Oh, Julius,’ Emmaline sighed hopelessly.

  ‘If there is the slightest bit of water it will mark the silk.’

  ‘Julius.’ Emmaline turned back to him as he crouched over his precious chair to check for any possible damage. ‘Julius – are we not even going to go away somewhere?’

  Julius stood back up to look at her, clutching the bridal flowers and looking more than faintly absurd.

  ‘Go away somewhere?’ he echoed. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t believe you can be so ignorant of wedding arrangements,’ Emmaline said. ‘I just do not believe any of this, I really do not.’

  ‘And I fail to understand your distress,’ Julius replied, belatedly pouring himself a second glass of champagne. ‘If your desire was to go away somewhere, Mrs Aubrey—’

  ‘I see,’ Emmaline interrupted. ‘It’s to be Mrs Aubrey now, is it?’

  ‘That is what you have become, is it not?’

  ‘That does not mean you have to call me by that name, Julius. Unless you deliberately wish to be hurtful?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ Julius looked genuinely appalled. ‘I would not hurt you for the world, but I am not versed in these matters. If you wished to go away you should really have mentioned it before, and then I could have arranged something to your liking.’

  ‘And what chance did I have? Every time I wished to discuss the arrangements for our marriage, you found an excuse to leave the room.’

  ‘I am a very busy man, Mrs Aubrey. There is much to which I have to attend at my works, the company is in need of fresh direction—’

  ‘Stop it, Julius. I mean it. Please stop it.’

  ‘Stop what, please?’

  ‘Please stop calling me Mrs Aubrey. I am your wife now. And my name is Emmaline, or Emma, as you seem to prefer it.’

  ‘Very well, Emma,’ Julius nodded. ‘But, to return to our subject, as for this business of going away – by that am I to take it you wish for a … a honeymoon?’

  The way he pronounced the word honeymoon and the expression on his face suggested to Emmaline that Julius found something appalling either about the word or perhaps even in the notion. She thought carefully before continuing, finally concluding that perhaps Julius was nothing more than shy, possibly even shyer than she was herself, and that all his odd behaviour, such as his disappearances, the verbal dismissals, his calling her formal names and his constant state of apparent bewilderment, could be put down to diffidence. Having decided that such a thing was entirely possible, Emmaline determined to try quite a different approach.

  ‘It’s all right, Julius,’ she said with a smile, even though she did not feel in the least like smiling. ‘I think – I think this reaction of mine is possibly due to nerves. After all, it isn’t every day a young woman gets married – and the last thing, the very last thing, I would want is to upset you on this matter, which after all is your wedding as well as mine. I was just being thoughtless. Selfish, in fact, so please forgive me.’

  Julius frowned again, giving Emmaline a fleeting impression that she might have been speaking to him in a foreign language, and nodded.

  ‘I was going to say that if you wanted—’ he began, but Emmaline stopped him, managing to get closer to him now and looking up at him.

  ‘It really doesn’t matter, Julius,’ she said quietly. ‘I am perfectly content. Really I am. And you are right – it isn’t the ceremony that matters, it is what happens between us now, in our lives, in the rest of our lives. That is what Mr Welton was saying in his address.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Julius agreed, unable to look her in the eyes. ‘I just wish he wasn’t quite so prolix.’

  ‘Prolix?’

  ‘Long-winded.’ Julius quickly moved away from Emmaline and poured himself more champagne. Once more he held up the bottle in offer to Emmaline but this time she shook her head, putting her hand over her glass. She could already feel the wine going to her head and the last thing she wished for now was to get intoxicated. ‘So,’ Julius said once more, after sipping his drink. ‘Time for lunch, I would say.’

  ‘I would prefer it if I could change before we sat down to lunch, Julius.’

  ‘Yes.’ Julius stared past her, frowning as he gave the matter his consideration. ‘The trouble is I doubt if Cook will have taken that into account, Emmaline. This is the way it is with servants, do you see? One always has to take them into consideration. You see? Even as we speak,’ he held out a hand in illustration, ‘there is the gong.’

  So it was that on her wedding day Emmaline sat down to lunch with just Julius for company, both of them in their bridal attire; had there been others present it would not have seemed the slightest bit unusual, but since they were entirely alone except for their servants Emmaline felt as though she were playing a part in some drama which she had just finished rehearsing, and was now taking refreshment in full costume.

  Glancing down the table at her new husband as he ate and drank she could sense that he too felt discomforted, and at a loss as to what to say. To break the silence Emmaline was just about to ask what they should do that afternoon when she realised it might sound a little forward, although she was not quite sure why. Certainly she felt embarrassed for her near lack of tact, sensing that whatever was to happen next had to be instigated by the man to whom she had just been joined in holy matrimony, the tall, handsome, elegant gentleman sitting opposite her.

  What happened next was that Emmaline left Julius at the dining
table to enjoy a glass of port and a smoke, and when she came back downstairs he was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Mr Aubrey has taken himself off for a constitutional, madam,’ Wilkinson informed her when she enquired as to her husband’s whereabouts. ‘Will there be anything else now?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emmaline replied, feeling herself colour. ‘Please send Agnes to me. I wish to change my clothes.’

  It was far too early to dress for dinner so Agnes put out an afternoon dress, and they both began to reset her hair, Emmaline instructing Agnes as they went along.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying, madam,’ Agnes said as she carefully began to brush out her mistress’s long tresses, ‘we all thought you looked absolutely beautiful in your wedding gown. I never seen no one look so lovely.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you have, Agnes,’ Emmaline said, smiling at the serious-faced young girl in her looking glass. ‘The dress was certainly pretty.’

  ‘Yes, your dress was lovely, madam,’ Agnes agreed. ‘But I thought you yourself looked really beautiful. Like something – like something from a fairy story.’

  ‘I think possibly all brides look a little special, Agnes. As I’m sure you will when you get married.’

  ‘Me, madam?’ Agnes stared at her in astonishment. ‘I won’t never get married, madam. Likes of me? I won’t never get married. My mum says I’m as plain as a poker.’

  ‘My mother thinks the same of me, Agnes.’

  ‘Never. She never could have. You, madam?’

  ‘I assure you she does, Agnes. She is forever telling me how plain and how commonplace is my appearance. My sisters are the pretty ones. I have three sisters and they are all considered to be beauties.’

  ‘Perhaps so, madam,’ Agnes muttered. ‘But I still don’t know why anyone thinks that of you. Everyone downstairs, everyone below stairs that is, Dolly and Helen and me, George and Alan – even old Mr Wilkinson – we was all saying how beautiful you are and what a lucky gentleman Mr Aubrey is.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Agnes.’

  ‘We were not being kind, madam, with respect. That’s what us all thought when we first saw you. And again now, when we seen you in your wedding gown.’

  ‘You are flattering me, Agnes,’ Emmaline said, smiling and getting up from her dressing table now that Agnes had finished helping to put up her hair again. ‘But I don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m not flattering you, madam,’ Agnes insisted, now quite readily. ‘We all think so.’

  ‘Then you are all very kind. Thank you.’

  ‘You got a lovely silhouette as well, madam,’ Agnes added. ‘Sure I shouldn’t be saying as much—’

  ‘You can say what you like, Agnes.’ Emmaline laughed. ‘As long as it continues in this vein.’

  ‘Well, so you has, madam,’ Agnes continued, carefully doing up the back of her mistress’s dress. ‘I’d die to have a figure like you – and hair like you – and as for complexion—’

  Instinctively Emmaline raised a hand to her face and stopped smiling, realising that everything her maid had said, the feelings she had attributed to her colleagues, must have been rooted in sympathy for her as a lonely young woman from another country with not even a father to give her away, only her fiancé’s butler, who had slipped back into servant mode as soon as the service was over.

  ‘Thank you, Agnes,’ she said, giving one last longing look to the beautiful cream gown that would doubtless never be worn again. ‘That will be all for now, thank you, Agnes.’

  Agnes hesitated, standing scratching the back of her neck as she stared at Emmaline, worried by her mistress’s sudden change of tone.

  ‘Madam,’ she said anxiously, ‘I haven’t said nothing improper, have I? I mean, what I said—’

  ‘No, Agnes.’ Emmaline smiled at her maid and put a hand on one of hers. ‘You have been very sweet and very kind. I just want a little time to myself now, that is all.’

  ‘I meant what I said, madam.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Agnes. But really, that will be all now.’

  ‘You really looked so beautiful today, madam.’ ‘Thank you, Agnes.’ Emmaline smiled again, but Agnes still showed no sign of leaving. ‘Thank you, Agnes?’ she repeated a little more firmly, and finally with a bob the maid was gone.

  When she had left, Emmaline went and stood in front of her cheval glass, regarding herself. There was no doubt that she did indeed have an exemplary figure, whose natural grace and shape hardly needed corseting, so that she was able to get away with only the lightest of stays and the minimum of tightening, and there was also no doubt that she was well proportioned as far as the length of her limbs and the set of her head went. She had a smooth and creamy complexion, made even more so by the contrast with her lovely dark brown hair and pale green eyes. Yet how could she be beautiful, when she did not think of herself as being even pretty? But now she was married, she must force herself to outgrow her lack of self-confidence. After all, looked at from the outside, Emmaline had to all intents and purposes married well, wedding a rich and successful man with his own business. Julius must be considered by everyone as a man of taste and elegance, although perhaps a little eccentric, and he was certainly very well connected in English society.

  As she prepared to take herself back downstairs to the drawing room, to read while she sat and waited dutifully for her new husband’s return, Emmaline determined on keeping calm, on making the most of her position. She was married. Her marriage mattered a great deal more than any wedding reception crammed with cheering guests. She was married.

  She kept repeating the words in her head all the way down the stairs to the drawing room, because it seemed to her that if she didn’t she might start to forget that she was indeed married, and only remember that she had been to church, and then had lunch, which, looked at bleakly, was all it felt as if she had done. Still, as she entered the drawing room and remembered all the fine paintings and the beautiful furniture, it was good to remind herself that she had at least married a man of erudition and learning, a man of education who was consulted by important people who thought a great deal of him. And she was now living in their house, her home, and she had a wedding ring on her finger. And certainly, given all the misgivings about herself with which she had grown up, she had never expected to find herself in such a position. So all she had to do was be patient, as indeed she had been brought up to be. Good things come to those who wait, her governess had always instructed her. Patience is one of the great virtues and must be practised wherever possible. So if she was right in thinking that Julius was just a little introverted, even shy, and perhaps even timid about the union that had just been blessed by the Church, then if ever there was a time to practise the art of patience, this must surely be it?

  With that in mind, and confident that her appearance was everything that it should be on the afternoon of her marriage, Emmaline sat herself down by the fire that Dolly had laid and lit in the drawing room, and it was there that she took tea, alone, while forcing herself to start reading a book about the latest movements in French painting which had been left out on the side table, perhaps for her edification.

  * * *

  Since Julius did not return that afternoon Emmaline sat and read until finally she could read no more, and with time still to kill before she needed to dress for dinner, greatly daring, she sat herself down at Julius’s grand piano and played for the best part of an hour. During that time Dolly came in to see to the fire, and Wilkinson arrived with consummate timing just as Emmaline finished playing a Chopin étude, one of several pieces to which even her father had always considered she did justice.

  Wilkinson waited for her to recover from the emotion she had put into the piece before politely informing her that dinner would be served in one hour. Emmaline repaired upstairs with Agnes to change for dinner.

  When the gong sounded Julius had still not returned.

  ‘Do you not think perhaps we should wait for Mr Aubrey?’ Emmaline, who was beginning to fee
l understandably desperate, enquired when Wilkinson appeared at the drawing-room doors.

  ‘I quite understand, madam,’ Wilkinson replied with great courtesy, ‘but Mr Aubrey’s strict instructions are that all meals are to be served at the given times whatever the circumstances.’

  ‘Even when Mr Aubrey himself is not yet returned?’

  ‘Indeed, madam,’ Wilkinson assured her. ‘Your husband was quite adamant on the matter.’

  And so on her wedding night Emmaline found herself sitting down to dinner alone, a dinner served by Wilkinson and Dolly and supervised by Mrs Graham, who looked in after every course to make sure everything was satisfactory, a five-course dinner which Emmaline felt she could barely even begin to eat, but to which she tried to do full justice, if only to please the servants, who somehow made sure that full and due ceremony was observed, as if there was nothing untoward in the sight of a bride dining alone on her wedding night. Nor was any comment of a forward or untoward nature made; far from it. The faces and manners of the servants were nothing if not caring and concerned.

  Afterwards, Emmaline sat alone by the fire, waiting. She did so in vain, because by the time the clock chimed eleven and the fire had begun to die down there was still no sign of her husband. However, she was determined to play her part in this particular pantomime with as much dignity as her quite obviously dedicated set of servants had demonstrated at dinner time, so she rang for her maid and announced she was retiring for the night.

  She was uncertain at first where she was to sleep, but Agnes was not. Once her mistress was attired for the night, Agnes opened the door from Emmaline’s dressing room to what Emmaline now saw was the main bedroom, Julius’s bedroom. A fire was lit in the grate, there were bowls of sweet-smelling early spring flowers set about the room, and the bedding on the large four-poster bed had been turned back on both sides. Having made sure that her mistress had everything she required, Agnes wished her goodnight and went, leaving Emmaline alone and more than a little fearful in her wedding bed.