A Petrol Scented Spring (12 page)

He loves me.

All day every day. They jaw about nothing else. Lilies or roses; white satin or silk; Highland or morning dress; the nineteen-fourteen Heidsieck versus the nineteen-fifteen; partridge or ptarmigan; oysters or lobster; until Hilda is ready to scream
who cares?

‘It's the most important day of your sister's life, so try not to spoil it, Hilly, will you?'

Dodo came south in late September. A brisk peck on the eyebrow from her beloved at the railway station? Or did he shake her hand? Two and a half months is no time at all to arrange a society wedding, m'dear. The guest list stands at three hundred and fifty, and rising. The extended Atkins and Richmond clans, all the debs Dodo came out with, and their families, and the matrons from Mama's season (but not the spinsters: too depressing), and Pa's business chums, and Gordon's Cambridge pals who are home on leave, and the
people
we know
in Devon, and anyone the Doc cares to invite, of course. Some third parties (Hilda, for one) might find all this expense rather bad taste in the middle of a war. Which just goes to show how wrong a girl can be: holding a really splendid wedding is the
least
we can do to lift everyone's spirits at this dreadful time. And it's hardly your sister's fault that she has fallen in love when the Kaiser's being so beastly. After which the conversation reverts to corsages, cake recipes, court trains, and trinkets for the bridesmaids.

Still, they're back in London until the New Year.

Uncle George will do the honours in Saint Cuthbert's, a cod-Medieval cod-cathedral with compound pillars and cherubs and stations of the cross and every shade of veined marble, and the most hideous artsy-craftsy copper lectern, and a clock on the wall just like a railway station! It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone (except Hilda) that all this Anglo-Catholic, smells-and-bells palaver might not be to the taste of a Kirk-christened farmer's son.

The bridegroom arrives with Aunt Nellie a week before the wedding and is given a scratcher in Earls Court Square, while Dodo is stowed round the corner at Mrs Curtice's private hotel (because heaven forfend they should spend a night under the same roof before being chained in matrimony). The Doc happens to be bunked across the hall from Hilda, so of course she's going to make the effort of getting to know her future brother-in-law.

He pretends not to hear at first, but she knows he can't be kipping, he's only just turned in. She taps again, soft but persistent, ready to continue for as long as it takes. The door opens a crack. You should see his eyes pop at her nightie, though only a couple of buttons are undone. He's quite the buck in his shirtsleeves. There's some tedious argy-bargy about the lateness of the hour and won't-it-wait-till-morning, but in the end: open sesame.

She stalks the room, peering out of the window to see what sort of view he has, fingering his hairbrushes (wood, not silver-backed), unscrewing and sniffing his bottle of bay rum, opening his top drawer and finding – crikey! – the most enormous sporran she has ever seen. It weighs an absolute ton when she puts it on over her nightie. Though she can see he's not happy, he raises no objection, the spoilsport. She says they should get better acquainted. There's been no time today, and it'll be twice as frantic tomorrow. He must be simply done in, poor him, padding the hoof round London from Earls Court to Kensington to Regent Street and back. She has noticed no one asks
his
opinion about the arrangements. The guests getting blotto on all that pricey fizz, and him a bun-strangler. He smiles to himself in a way Hilda finds most discourteous. As if he knows her game, when she doesn't have a game, or rather, she has several, and she hasn't yet decided which to play. There's the game where he thinks she's trying to seduce him, and she tells him he couldn't be more wrong. And the game where he admits to the collywobbles – or even to second thoughts – and she tells Dodo. And a similar game where she doesn't tell because they become fast friends, and Dodo never guesses that Hilda's is the invisible steadying hand on her marriage. And the game where he tries to kiss her and she shoves him away and remains coldly aloof ever after, and Dodo never knows why.

He tells her he's glad not to be running the show. And your kin, she says: how do they feel about bending the knee at a nuptial mass? Two of his brothers are fighting in Turkey. The rest of the family is needed on the farm, and the school can't spare his teacher-cousin Jeannie for the three days she would have to be away from Glasgow, so his only guests will be a couple of retired schoolma'ams, a poobah from the prisons hierarchy and one Professor Browning, at whose name he seems to think Hilda should bow down in awe.
Four guests
. Hilda surprises herself by taking the hump. What on earth will people think? Does Mama know? She must have had an absolute fit. And now the penny drops: he's a Russian vine, a fast climber, and he doesn't want the peasants dragging at his roots. Won't his chums in Perth hold it against Dodo – he does
have
chums, doesn't he? How's he going to keep her entertained in that dead-and-alive hole? She can't spend every afternoon with Aunt Nellie. He's going to have to get himself promoted toot sweet, engineer a move to fashionable Edinburgh. She closes in, walking her fingers up his shirt front: Dodo may worship the ground he treads on at the minute, but bored wives have a habit of looking elsewhere for amusement. Or won't he mind that, if he's going into the thing quite heart-whole?

He turns away from her and opens the door. Very rudely. But she smiles and wishes him a gracious goodnight.

 

Hilda has never known Dodo so dizzily distrait, but even the bride-to-be notices that relations between her fiancé and her sister have cooled. And they were pretty tepid to begin with. The next afternoon, between ordering the hothouse roses and rehearsing the page, she draws Hilda aside. ‘You haven't been telling tales, have you?' What tales, Hilda would like to know? ‘It's not funny, Hilly.' Ah, but it is. So funny that Hilda wouldn't dream of spoiling the jest too early. Not that she has positively decided to tell him, but she may allow herself some delphic hinting when Dodo is around.

The day dawns, shiversome but bright. The groom, Uncle George, Aunt Nellie, Pa and Hilda have brekkers in the little morning room on the ground floor, so the servants can rig up the wedding feast. Everything else has been done. It feels positively skivey, sitting here with no tasks to discuss. Mama has disappeared to Mrs Curtice's to steady Dodo's nerves. Hilda has been warned to steer clear. ‘Keeping a lookout for Gordon' is the preferred euphemism. The Engineers have given him a five-day pass. The Doc takes another slice of toast. Aunt Nellie passes the marmalade. No one can think of anything to say. ‘The lull before the storm,' Uncle George intones, which only makes the silence more deadly. The doorbell rings. A maid patters down the hall.

‘I
say, is this the wedding party?'

‘Is that Argemone?' Aunt Nellie asks, while Hilda shrieks ‘
Billy!'
And after that she has the most whizzing time. Billy takes her up to dress in her moss-green velvet, and tells her about the Front, and the wounded Tommies always ready with a quip, and the awkward Frenchies, and the Fritz who was so bamboozled by the shelling he didn't know he'd walked into the enemy's camp, and how the Major was going to shoot him as a spy until Billy talked some sense into him. Hilda is laughing so much she doesn't hear Aunt Nellie tapping at the door, so Pa marches upstairs to bellow that if they hang about for one more minute they're going to be late.

When they take their pew, Billy whispers ‘Splendiferous, eh?' and Hilda can only agree. The resiny scent from the evergreen branches framing the door, the pillars wound with holly and ivy, the rood screen crowned with pine cone and mistletoe and hellebore, the guests glowing in shades of amethyst, sapphire, emerald, ruby. A murmur ripples through the nave and every head turns to the back of the church. The bride drifts down the aisle in her white Guinevere dress, a winter sacrifice. The Doc's eyes shine like a child's on Christmas Eve. He's quite the mythic hero, with that dagger down his sock and his barbarian's exposed knees. Uncle George seems nervous before the titled congregation, but rises to the occasion like the old limelight-hogger he is, and the choir sing the
Exultate Deo
like angels, and when the groom places his ring on the bride's white hand, even Hilda's sharp eyes blur with a tear.

Then the newlyweds are out on the pavement, being pelted with white rose petals as they climb into the car, where they're strangely silent but grinning like Cheshires. The guests toddle back to Earls Court Square for speeches and toasts and a spread that would feed five thousand. The next hour or two are lost on Hilda, she and Billy are in a world of their own, until Mama brings Grandmother Kate across and she has to submit to being quizzed about her beaux, with Billy raising a knowing eyebrow, so it's all she can do not to burst out laughing. And then –
gawd blimey, Billy
– the Doc crosses the room to shake her hand and call her sister, and it would be too rude not to introduce Argemone ffarington Bellairs, though it's obvious he disapproves. You can practically hear him thinking ‘invert'. Billy's rather tickled, and drops her voice another octave as she clasps his hand and tells him he's a lucky chap, Do's a delightful gel, known her for years. So he's a doctor, is he? She has the very greatest respect for the members of his profession she has met at the Front: so tireless and resourceful and, well,
courageous
. The Doc half-suspects he's being ragged, but can't quite believe Billy would do it at his wedding. Then Grandmother Kate comes to the rescue, asking him to chum her back to her chair. And they all – well, all except the Doc – drink a lot of 'poo, and say
how
d'ye do
to everyone they haven't seen since the last wedding, and at least ten people tell Hilda
you'll be next
, and Billy cocks her wicked eyebrow as Hilda replies that she might yet surprise them, and suddenly they're on their feet because the happy couple are about to depart for the hotel where Dodo will finally, irreversibly, become Mrs Hugh Ferguson Watson.

I thought about Hugh every minute of the ten weeks we were apart before our wedding. How handsome he was, how decisive, how brusquely masculine sometimes. I liked to see him angry, knowing his fierceness turned mild with me. When Mama told him I'd been ill, and he took my pulse, I felt the desire he fought down. Banking the fire till we were wed only made it more exciting. I liked to tease him, biting my lip when I looked at him, breathing in his ear when he stooped to kiss my cheek. Thinking my shameless thoughts, waiting for him to read my mind. When his eyes burned at me from across the room it was all I could do not to groan. I wanted to offer myself like a goblet, or a banquet, have him taste all my flavours. As I longed to taste his. I couldn't understand all those Shakespearean lovers lamenting the torments, when love was all pleasure and enchantment. The songs he played, the letters he wrote, the smell of the rain that day we walked up Kinnoull hill, the rabbits we surprised, the sunset flashing gold off the monastery weathervane, the bats flickering over the river at dusk . . .

When the day comes, I think I will die from happiness. Mama forces me to swallow my porridge, unless I want to spend the first hour of married life dizzy with champagne and the next four being sick in the lavatory. She dismisses the girl and dresses me herself, as she used to when I was a baby. No one fit to hire as a nursery maid in that godforsaken country. Besides, she wanted me to know I had a living, breathing mother. Unlike her own bleak start. We're both close to tears when Mrs Curtice knocks to tell us the car is waiting. ‘There now,' Mama says, giving my veil a final tweak and moving away from the long glass. I hardly know myself.
Every bride is beautiful
, Hilda will say to me after the ceremony,
so where do all the
ugly old wives come from?

I know from all the hours of planning that the church is dark with evergreen and glittering with candle flame, but I see nothing and no one but Hugh, standing at the altar. The most beautiful man in London. Out-dazzling Uncle George in his gold-embroidered cope. When he turns and looks at me with his blazing eyes, my heart bursts in my chest.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it
.

Twelve months ago I was an old maid with fifty empty years to fill. I would develop a passion for gardening or appliqué work or visiting neolithic sites. Everyone would say how marvellous I was. Today I too can pity old maids, and compliment them on their pointless hobbies. I am married to Hugh. He is here at my side, his hand's pressure on my waist, his lips soft on my ear as he murmurs
How long before we can leave?
‘Not yet,' I smile, nestling my head into his shoulder. There are the speeches to be got through, and the toast to our life together, at which he tilts my chin and kisses me on the lips. When the hubbub resumes I send him across to Hilda, she has been monopolising Bill Bellairs for long enough. She and Hugh are brother and sister now, and must make their peace before they can progress to the sort of spiky badinage Hilda inflicts on everyone she loves. The next time I look he's in earnest conversation with Grandmother Kate, which is good of him, because she's eighty and half-deaf these days. And then he's gone. Five, ten, fifteen minutes later he is still not back. Gordon finds him on the pavement, in the dark, and I don't know what is said but my brother's face is flushed when he returns. He shakes his head. I can't go out there, everyone would look, so I beckon to Bill and, a few minutes later, she re-enters the party with a man who wears my husband's clothes but is otherwise quite unrecognisable. When I lean into him, his chest feels like stone.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Can you not guess?'

‘No.'

‘Have a wee think about it.'

Bill is back beside Hilda, the two of them laughing. What a tremendous jest. I ask Hugh for a private word in the next room. He snorts. I'm ready to weep, to fall on my knees and plead for his forgiveness, but how can I in front of three hundred and fifty guests? He says the time for explaining was before we were married, and how can I deny it, but the truth is I'm still
intacta
: I thought he'd never find out. The last hour of the wedding celebration is as miserable as the previous three have been joyous, but I have to pretend I've never been happier, smiling and raising my glass when I would like to smash it on the table and drag the jagged edge across my wrists. If that's what it would take to make him pity me. When at last we're alone in the privacy of the car, after the throwing of the bouquet and our grim-faced dash through the smiling guests, I blurt out:

‘It was just girlish curiosity. I'm not like Bill Bellairs.'

For one terrible moment he looks bewildered. And then everything becomes so much worse.

 

What Mama reads in my tear-bloated face when I burst into her room next morning is the shocked discovery of human biology. She assures me it gets better. Perhaps she should have warned me, but she didn't want to put me off. It might all have gone swimmingly. I am twenty-six years old. I have known the ins and outs of sex for so long I have forgotten who told me. It takes a while to convince her that her fears are groundless. That their very groundlessness is what is amiss. She laughs in relief: many men suffer first-night nerves. It's understandable, even honourable, a good omen for our future happiness. I look into her generous, loving face and understand that, among the many transformations of the past twenty-four hours, I have moved beyond reach of maternal comfort.

 

The plan is to honeymoon in London, showing him the Tower and the ingenious bridge next door; St Paul's and Wren's smaller, prettier churches; all the famous squares. A couple of landmarks a day, a concert and a Barrie play, and many private evenings back at the hotel. We stick to the sightseeing. Out on the busy streets, our civility seems appropriate. Surrounded by strangers, we are even affable. It is those long hours cooped up in a room together that expose the essential coldness of our marriage.

But he will not speak of his feelings. Not a word. And so I keep smiling, keep touching him and watching his face freeze, telling myself it will pass, it's as my mother said, he has lived a celibate life for so long, he respects me too much, I just have to wait until he gets used to me. Until he can accept that a single sapphic indiscretion does not mean he has married a tart.

 

The Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly: these famous streets. He says he can think of a dozen thoroughfares in Edinburgh and Glasgow their equal in grandeur, but secretly he is thrilled. Like stepping into the pages of a book. Everything more vivid: sounds, sights, smells, the rich women's clothes, the brown leaves big as dinner plates shed by the plane trees. He searches the faces walking towards him, as if the thing he has longed for is about to happen. Now. Or
now
. A tall woman with luminous skin, a mass of dark hair, those succulent lips. Their eyes will lock. And then she will notice the woman at his side.

 

Every night he retires to the daybed in our dressing room. Every morning I try to greet him with a kiss. The way he looks at me will never leave me. The bitterness in his silence. What's the matter with me, do I want to force him to the needless cruelty of spelling it out? He will honour his obligations, support me, live under the same roof, but we will never share a bed. Why can I not accept it? Why must I smile at him like this, and stand so close, and touch his clothes? If it is not stupidity – and I am not a stupid lassie – then it is stubbornness, wilful misunderstanding. I have tricked him into marriage – what else? I have only myself to blame, but still he might find it in himself to pity me, if only I would submit.

On the third morning I take him into the fenced gardens across the street, slipping my arm through his. No one else in sight. He is trapped by our seclusion, and his simultaneous awareness of being overlooked by at least a hundred windows. I pass some innocuous remark about the day – cold, leafless, with that ceaseless train and traffic noise he hears even in his sleep – then, after a few seconds punctuated by the clip of my heels on the path, I say his name. Sensing his impulse to draw away, my arm tightens on his. I want to know if there's anything I can do to make amends. I realise the triviality of my fault is not the point. I hid it from him, and I am so, so sorry. I know I must work to regain his trust. I understand that he feels estranged from me. I respect his refusal to make light of what has happened. However painful this is to me, I see it as an investment in our marriage. And a lesson. I will never lie to him again, even by omission. We will emerge from our present difficulties with a strengthened affection and, on that day, we will know the happiness my foolishness presently denies us. A wave of heat comes off him. He wrenches out of my grasp. In a trembling voice, I ask where he is going? Back to Scotland, he says. The honeymoon is over.