The Wedding Group (18 page)

‘No, thank you,’ he said sternly, as the spoon went into the dish for his helping.

Cressy bent her head over the plate and, with closed eyes, breathed in the spicy smell. Sniffing and nibbling, sniffing and nibbling, David said to himself over and over again, to while away the time until they had finished. Until he could get down, he thought; for the two women ate calmly, ignoring him, as if he were a child who had made a fuss.

He put his napkin on the table, and turned slightly to look out of the window.

‘Have some cheese afterwards,’ Midge suggested. ‘Afterwards’ obviously meant ‘when
we
have finished our delicious pudding’.

He had, of course, confided in Nell about the cravings, and how they were getting on his nerves, and she had said that there could not be any physical reason for them, as far as she were able to see; unless a sharpening of the senses, which could hardly account for the tinned grapefruit. ‘But why ask me?’ she in her turn had asked. ‘I’m just an old maid.’

‘A very wise old maid,’ David had said. He had meant to imply that her wisdom lay in being unmarried, but she had narrowed her eyes, and muttered the words after him. ‘“A very wise old maid”, is it? I think, my boy, that you can do your morose drinking with someone else from now on.’

So he was out with everyone, for the first time in his life.

He stirred; he sighed;
they
had a second helping.

‘Sorry if we’re keeping you,’ Midge said sarcastically, in a tone she had not used since Archie went, and David could not remember ever having heard.

Pet, unlike her cousin, was too proud to allow herself cravings. For they would only have drawn attention to her plight. Now her days seemed dull and never-ending. Listlessly, she sat for Harry, or, rather, stood for him. As far as he was concerned, her plight had come at the right time. Before her pregnancy showed, he had painted her as the Virgin Mary entering the house of Zacharias. She stood in the doorway, wearing a homespun skirt and a fairisle sweater, her hair falling to her shoulders. Her head was haloed. These days, she was posing for the other half of the picture – the pregnant Elizabeth, just risen from a chair in greeting, one hand on the table, the other on her belly, some knitting fallen from her lap to the floor.

Pet and Cressy stood before the unfinished painting in the studio. Harry had gone to London to give a lecture, and they were safe and alone in there, alone for the first time since Cressy had left Quayne.

‘That was Gabriel’s busy time,’ Cressy remarked, looking up at the picture.

Everything in the living-room of Zacharias’s house was slanting and broken up – a mad aspidistra, refracted light streaming over Mary from the open door, a crooked window covered with lace curtains, bric-à-brac everywhere, an old woman’s room.

‘It always takes me such ages to sort out what everything is,’ Cressy complained. ‘I can’t see the point in his making it so difficult. And he does it more and more.’

‘Don’t you want something to get your teeth into?’ Pet asked, and Cressy turned to look at her in surprise at the mocking tone
of her voice. ‘All of the arts are the same, and he is a
prose
painter,’ Pet went on languidly, as one who quotes a boring but well-learned lesson. ‘The worst thing a prose
writer
can do is to lapse into poetry, and when he does, if he has any nous, he fractures it, makes something more exciting of it. Trips one’s attention.’

They both knew that their grandfather knew all about writing, as well as painting; but Cressy said, ‘I can’t see the sense in fracturing an aspidistra. It doesn’t make it at all exciting to me. And why are you clutching your stomach like that, and with such a look of horror on your face?’

‘It is a look of ecstasy, my dear. The child has just quickened in her womb.’

‘In, I remember, the sixth month – and not a minute too soon, I should think.’

‘Well, she was an old woman. Perhaps that makes a difference. I don’t know.’

‘At least he’s made sure of a family likeness.’

Pet began to laugh, for the first time since her plight began, and Cressy turned to her with a pleased look. The cousins had come together, as in the picture.

Mo, from a window, watched the cousins crossing the courtyard. She decided that, together, they looked absurd, both with their rounded stomachs going before; but, alone, they would not have done. She had a curious sensation, watching them, of recoil, of separation, an intense loneliness, fringed with envy. It had always been, with the three of them, that one was a little left out: usually, it had been Cressy, from her recalcitrance; and now it was she, from her virginity.

‘Perhaps she will die,’ Cressy said – meaning Leofric’s wife – as they walked down the hill, Pet chumming her on her way a little.

‘I don’t care if she dies or not. I never wish to see him again.’

‘I can’t think how it ever happened in that case.’

‘And no more can I,’ Pet said, like an angry child. ‘You know what it’s like here,’ she went on, as if she were at last going to try to explain. ‘Prison can’t be much worse, can it? I can imagine prisoners doing strange things, just to pass the time, even. We used to go for walks. Surely everyone knew that? He talked to me as if I were a person – a grown-up person, too. He asked me questions about myself.’

‘I bet he did.’

‘We all like that, I suppose. He always called me Petronella, and even that made me feel different. “Your names are three sweet symphonies,” he said. You know –
The Blessed Damozel
.’

‘Oh, her!’

‘He’s written that in his book.’

‘How
can
he go on writing about us after this has happened? What a cheek!’

‘You’re so lucky,’ Pet said. ‘Though once I thought that you were mad.’

Cressy guessed that she was in danger of being smug about her love for David. In Pet’s company, she scarcely allowed herself to think of it – of her miraculous escape, her wonderful new life. She tried to keep her thoughts on her cousin. ‘How often did it happen – you and Leofric?’ she inquired.

‘Only once, thank you very much.’

‘I should have thought it hardly possible.’

Pet said nothing, knowing so well that it was.

‘Poor Pet.’

‘Oh, don’t say “poor Pet” again. Everyone has said it over and over. I’d rather they were angry. Who wants to be pathetic?’

Cressy, in her absent-minded way, had been thinking, ‘Such a predicament, for such a little sex’ – not really of the predicament itself; but she could not say so.

They stopped near the top of the hill to look at the building site – one or two houses with walls quite high already.

‘Aren’t they awful,’ Pet said dutifully.

‘Don’t be brain-washed. I think they might look very nice. And perhaps some nice people will come to live in them. It might be the beginning of something different for you.’

‘Not for me,’ Pet said bitterly. Suddenly, she put her cold hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh, what shall I do? What
shall
I do?’

She shall share
my
happiness, Cressy determined. There is so much of it. I must find a way of letting it spill over.

Pet had recovered. ‘I don’t think I’ll come any farther,’ she said. ‘I get so puffed climbing hills.’ Before she turned away, she glanced again at the building. ‘I still think they’re ghastly,’ she said.

I can’t think why birds don’t get duodenal ulcers,’ Midge said to Mrs Brindle. She was standing at one of the drawing-room windows, watching them, her birds, swooping into and away from the ham-bone on the lawn. ‘It’s terrible the way they have to eat their food, so full of anxiety all the time.’

‘Perhaps they do get them, ulcers,’ Mrs Brindle said, flicking her duster along bookshelves. ‘We’re hardly to know.’

The ham-bone was left over from David’s and Cressy’s stay. Mrs Brindle thought she could have made a little pie with the meat left on it, but it was already out on the lawn before she arrived.

‘There are some kidneys in the fridge if you’d like to take them home,’ Midge said, as if she had read her thoughts. ‘I meant them for breakfast yesterday, but they only wanted bacon and sausages.’

During the long visit, she had over-catered, and wildly so towards the end. The previous day Cressy had gone back to the cottage laden. She had, also, Midge was pleased to think, gone home reluctantly.

Midge had spent the day with her, getting everything ready
for David’s return in the evening. His contentment there had to be assured.

‘You must stay and have some supper with us,’ Cressy had said. ‘I insist on it. We shall never manage to finish up this meat on our own. And that great wedge of Brie will run out of its sides before we can eat it all.’

But despite all they had done, David had not seemed to marvel at the results when he came back. And Midge had returned home depressed, to lie in bed and go through a conversation she had overheard a night or two before, across the landing, from their bedroom, David’s voice distinct with exasperation. ‘Let’s face the fact,’ he had said. ‘We’ll never make anything of it.’

Of what? Midge wondered fearfully. Of their marriage? Their future? It was difficult to tell for Cressy was weeping softly.

‘I’m
not
angry with you,’ David said. ‘But I
am
very angry with myself. I’ve behaved like a fool, as Nell pointed out.’

‘I’m tired of hearing about Nell,’ Cressy said, with a little gust of anger.

‘O.K. But I’ve come to see that she is right. Whatever you think about her, she has always had plenty of common sense.’

‘But
can
you have a baby in a flat in London?’

‘I have plenty of friends who do.’

‘Well, you know I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with you. Anyone would think it was me who said we had to stay here.’

Perhaps he had corrected her grammar, for she burst out, ‘Oh, I know I’m just an ignorant child. I can’t think why you ever married me. I knew you’d get fed up. It was too good to be true.’

There were vague, soothing noises. ‘It’s because everything here gets on my nerves,’ David said presently. Cressy asked, ‘But what about your mother?’

And then he lowered his voice, remembering, obviously, where he was and who might over-hear him. Midge, straining to hear her fate, heard nothing.

She stood in her room, very still, her hands frozen. Murmuring continued for a time from across the landing, and Cressy seemed to have cheered up; she even laughed, and Midge heard her say, ‘As long as you’ll be better-tempered. I can’t bear it when you’re cross,’ and then, ‘which bed shall I get into, yours or mine?’

Midge very softly closed her bedroom door. She should have given up her own bed, she thought, but she would never have been able to make the suggestion. Usually, when she had taken in their early-morning tea, they had been lying in one of the single beds in the spare room, and she had kept her eyes carefully on the tray, and had been brisk about where to set it down, feeling for some reason embarrassed.

That night of the conversation, she had hardly slept at all. She determined to put all her energies into beautifying the cottage, and so make it dear to both of them. All that day when Cressy moved back, she had worked hard to banish David’s disenchantment; but she guessed that her labours had had very little effect. He was growing more and more like his father, and seemed to come home always nowadays in a state of suppressed irritation.

She knew that so much driving through that hard winter had worn him out; but the summer was coming, and the long, light evenings. She thought hopefully of that, and not beyond. He had had bad weather when he was living with her, but had at least come home to comfort, a good meal, no domestic crises, no responsibilities. He is a bachelor at heart, she told herself angrily. He should have had the sense to remain one.

The threat of their going away was with her all the time now,
and this morning, disconsolately watching the birds, she wondered how she could make herself ready to meet it.

‘There!’ said Mrs Brindle, glancing round the room to see if any speck of dust remained.

Midge turned from the window. Her sudden movement made all the birds on the lawn fly up and away. Indeed, the room looked very beautiful, so burnished and colourful. Mrs Brindle seemed satisfied with it, and left Midge on her own to admire her work.

But Midge was putting the room in the balance. The price of it – of all her lovely things – was her loneliness. That was the threat. It was even more than loneliness, which might be of such a kind that Mrs Brindle’s mornings would become the high spots of the week. It was also her terror at night, and her despair on waking. A long emptiness before her, and all the days the same. And her grandchild snatched away from her – as she had been deprived of the others. Short visits would only bring a stranger. She had looked forward to a day-to-day life with the child.

Some tulip petals – as if having waited for Mrs Brindle to finish her work – slithered softly on to a table. She scooped them up in her hand, dusting away the pollen, thinking that they had lasted the visit out. It seemed hardly worth doing flowers for herself – as it seemed hardly worth dressing in the morning, or wearing make-up; but not doing these things, she told herself sternly, would diminish all she was to pay for so dearly – the order of her surroundings, all she had created since Archie went away. She determined to go out into the garden and pick a great basketful of flowers and sprays of blossom. But, instead, she walked up and down the room with the soft tulip petals in her hand, crushed them till they were pulp, then threw them with disgust upon the fire. Her breathing was wavering, from her great tension. At least I am forewarned, she told
herself, her lips moving, as in the old days when she was alone all day, before the joy of having Cressy in the house.