The Wedding Group (8 page)

David and his friend Jack Ballard, the photographer, had had their success with the series on living painters, and now were sent off to explore the literary shrines of England – a rather duller assignment, they considered.

Midge was at this time living in the future, as she lived most of her life, and the present, with David away, went very slowly for her. He came home only at week-ends, and the days between formed a pattern of slowly rising spirits from the despair of Monday onwards.

David and Jack Ballard went motoring up and down England in search of the scenes of its past glories – to Rye, to Dorchester, to Haworth and Chawton. August was out, and leaves beginning to fall. There was now a more interesting light for photography. A fine blue mist hung over Haworth, and Rye was bathed in gentle sunlight.

Midge tried to pass the time. There was no cooking to do, no meals to plan. She lunched on bread and cheese and gin-and-French, and supped off shop cakes and sherry. She cut off the dead roses, and hoped for a last crop later on, she made new curtains for David’s bedroom, and went to London
several times about her winter clothes. It was all work for the future.

The evenings were terrible to her, for it grew dark earlier each day. She paced the sitting-room, found that she talked to herself, switched all the upstairs lights on at dusk, in readiness for going to bed, and all night long imagined burglars breaking in. David, enjoying himself, sent postcards. She wished that there were a literary shrine near by, but there was only the village lady-novelist, and she was of no account.

Mrs Brindle alone brightened Midge’s days. They worked together, for company, turning out rooms, and talking about Quayne. Midge had an almost childish interest in the long serial story Mrs Brindle so willingly unfolded. She even called at the antique shop, on the pretext of a hunt for opaque glass. She introduced herself to Cressy, had a chat with Toby and Alexia, lingered, admired the Wedgwood wedding group, and left empty-handed.

She often saw Harry Bretton about the village, in his long smock and the chef’s cotton over-trousers he always wore. His carved shepherd’s-crook had been brought by a disciple from Delphi, and from the same place he had a shepherd’s hooded cloak for winter. It was snug, but smelly, and people coming up in the train with him from London would sometimes move from his compartment into another at the first opportunity – especially in wet weather. Midge saw him one morning, as she came out of the Walnut Tree café. It was soon after her meeting with Cressy. She knew who he was, but she and her box of cakes meant nothing to him.

‘I’m leaving Quayne. I came to say good-bye,’ Cressy told her grandfather.

He had been warned by Rose, and was ready for this interview, and Cressy did not take him by surprise, as she had hoped.
Apart from the thought of the outside world and its comments, he was greatly relieved. The girl spread confusion, like a poltergeist.

‘It will always be waiting for you, when you want to come back – if the outside world, as I believe you call it, doesn’t come up to expectations – which it may not,’ he added gently, sorrowfully.

He was in his workshop. On an easel was a half-done painting of ‘The Marriage at Cana’.

He had been sitting humbly before it, perched on a stool, looking at it through narrowed eyes, when Cressy entered. She, standing beside him, looked at it with wide-opened eyes, and thought that Christ had a distinct look of Harry about Him. She also thought that the bride and bridegroom, in stylised modern dress, resembled the figures in the Wedgwood wedding group in the antique shop – the one which both Nell and Midge had admired so much, and which she herself thought crude and pawky, like some fair-stall ornament.

‘Well, you won’t be very far from home,’ Harry said, still deliberately staring at his painting, and speaking as if he had more important matters on his mind. ‘And’ – he turned then, and smiled – ‘it will save your poor little legs all that going up and down the hill. I know how you young people like to save your legs.’

He was in an exceptionally good mood, because the next day he was off on one of his walking-tours in the New Forest with Leofric Welland, his most willing listener. Fifteen or twenty miles a day, he thought complacently. At my age.

‘God will be with you, little Cressida,’ he said, dismissing her. He stood up, put his hands on her shoulders and his beard against her forehead. ‘You won’t make your mother and father unhappier, I hope, by not coming to see them very often.’

‘No,’ she promised.

So much drama, and the arguments with her mother, and her father’s silence, had left her very tired. She felt that her head was full of tears, but for once they did not fall.

Harry sat down on the stool again and tried to turn his thoughts to a study of his day’s work. Without their looking at one another again, the farewell-scene was over.

A little later that day, Joe went down the hill with Cressy, carrying her suit-case. They talked brightly, but with almost numbed lips.

It’s such a little way away, he kept reminding himself, shifting the case from one sore hand to the other. But it wasn’t where she was going; it was the reason for it, that haunted him. Other daughters of her age went off – to their flats in London, even to foreign places, but did not leave such bitter wreckage behind them. And Rose on her own he had to return to.

Thinking of this, he said, ‘We’ll leave your case at the shop, and then why not us have a little drink together at the Horseshoes? I don’t believe I’ve ever taken you out on your own in all my life.’

‘Oh, I should love it,’ she said, and her lips became less numb, stretched by her smile. ‘I shan’t know what to ask for. Can I have wine, like the Monsignors?’

‘No, I’m afraid wine’s out at the Horseshoes.’ He smiled, too. ‘It’s a very modest establishment.’

‘Sherry, then?’

‘Sherry,’ he agreed.

With his free hand he raked through his pockets. From long experience he could tell copper from silver by touch.

They walked on down the hill quite jauntily, thinking of the future and its possibilities.

In asking for an attic, Mrs Brindle had known what she was about. The lay-out of the rooms above the shop was perfectly
clear in her mind, from her having worked there for a previous owner.

And she had said it would be heaven, and it was.

‘I shall be so happy here,’ Cressy said, dumping her suitcase down, and rubbing her hands on her skirt.

Alexia looked at her in astonishment. The room, to her, seemed hardly fit for human habitation. They had never redecorated it, and the uneven walls were papered with a powdery, faded pattern of roses. It smelt fusty, and its one window looked on to a blank wall of the Three Horseshoes.

To Cressy, it seemed beautiful, as the place where her new life would begin. On the little bare landing at the top of her own flight of stairs was a gas-ring and a wooden shelf, a saucepan, a kettle, and a plate or two: for one of the conditions of her being there was that she should not encroach upon the Moorheads’ evenings. They liked to be alone together, cooking their supper, listening to music and, later, going over the accounts or the catalogues of auction sales.

‘I’ll leave you to settle in,’ Alexia said, having explained about the gas-ring and the electric-fire and apologised for drawers sticking and floorboards creaking.

‘And this first evening, if you want to borrow some eggs…’

‘It’s very kind of you, but I bought a tin of beans. As a matter of fact, I’ll unpack later. My father came down with me, and he’s waiting next door at the Three Horseshoes.’

‘You should have brought him in,’ Alexia said vaguely, thinking that the girl was starting off well by not having done so.

‘He never goes in anywhere, except the pub,’ Cressy said, following her down the stairs. ‘I suppose he’s rather retiring.’

That suited Alexia.

From below came the sound of a Dave Brubeck record, and a smell of olive-oil being heated, then, above the music, there
was suddenly a great spluttering as something was slipped into the pan at the right moment. Toby was cooking the supper.

‘You’ve got your back-door key?’ Alexia asked. ‘We have to be very careful about locking-up here, as you can imagine.’ She opened the door of the sitting-room office and watched Cressy going out into the cobbled yard at the back of the shop, where they kept pieces of statuary and urns and wrought-iron garden furniture.

Although she was sorry for the girl, she wondered if she was going to be a nuisance. She had had a happy girlhood herself and, spurred on by Mrs Brindle, had over-imagined the miseries of Cressy’s. All the same, what she and Toby wanted and hoped for was to live their lives together, and in peace.

That evening seemed one of the worst of all to Midge. She could not nudge away thoughts of the future – those thoughts that so often spoiled the present. She wondered about old age, when her life might be like this all the time, with no hope, as now, of David’s returning – his last postcard was from the Crabbe country – either tomorrow, the next day, or any other day.

The silence frightened her. This evening, nothing moved, except for an occasional leaf floating down through the heavy air. The garden, with its mauve and yellow autumn flowers, was perfectly still, growing dark.

She had been working there until dusk and, as she came across the lawn to go indoors, the windows faced her, black and blind.

The house, a Georgian cottage, had been added to, years ago, by Archie. He had built on the big room, and other rooms above it, in white clapboard, with a slate roof. It had been skilfully done: it was a success, and she loved it. Only herself in it alone dismayed her. She remembered the house when it had
been quite full, and noisy and untidy. She was remembering it now, going towards it. At this hour, she would have been bringing in off the lawn all the things the boys would have left there at their bedtime – rugs and cushions, cricket-bats and dirty beakers. Then, when she had gathered everything up and dumped it in the hall, she would cook some scratch meal for Archie, feeling tired and irritated, but surely happier than now, and certainly not frightened.

Inside, she washed her hands, still thinking of the old days, looking at her set face in the glass above the basin. She locked the door, switched on a great many lights, poured out a drink. Then she went back to make sure that she had locked the door, began her usual pacing about, and kept glancing at the clock.

If David married, she would have to leave it all – sell up and perhaps go to live in a flat in London, for company and protection. And then what would she do all day? And where could all her lovely things go in a flat – the old furniture and the modern pictures – the pleasing blend of Archie’s family things and what she herself had collected?

Or she could stay on here and take in a paying-guest, whose purpose would be to lessen her sense of isolation. She had thought it out so many times – one solution after another; but none was a true solution. ‘I don’t
want
a lodger,’ she murmured aloud. Her heart added, I simply want David here – David and his friends, all the young people. But the young people seemed to be ageing faster than herself. The present could not last for ever.

The telephone ringing so unexpectedly in the quiet house startled her. She almost ran into the hall to answer it, then, finding that it was a wrong number, she came back slowly. She took up her glass and sipped, her heart still beating fast, and her mouth drooping as if she might cry. Cruel, she thought. How awfully cruel. But cruel of whom she did not know.

That had certainly made the silence worse – the silence when she stopped going about the room, clicking her heels on the parquet floor. She could bear it no longer, she thought, and decided to drive somewhere, anywhere, simply not to be here. It was so far off bedtime, and going to bed, in any case, she dreaded.

She unlocked the garage, backed down the drive and went out into the dark lane. There were no lights, no houses, until she reached the village – only her headlights combing through the trunks of trees on either side.

The last bus stood empty by the Green, brightly lit, reflected in the pond. She drove slowly. Even the sight of that had lifted her spirits. In the cottages were other lights – sometimes only the blue-white illumination of a television screen in a room whose curtains were undrawn. Against golden blinds were silhouettes – of a shrouded birdcage, or a geranium in a pot. A faint glimmer shone through the antique shop from the room behind. The Three Horseshoes was the most lit up of all – the sign flood-lighted, and brightness streaming through the chintzy windows. She drew up the car and went in, feeling a little apprehensive and self-conscious, for she had never been there without David.

The bar was not very crowded. It had a murmurous glumness about it, in spite of the barmaid – whom Midge had never seen before – dazzling in a lurex-woven dress. The landlord introduced her to Midge as Gloria.

‘Oh, I know your son,’ she said. ‘There’s quite a likeness. I expect you’re often told that.’

In fact, Midge was not told it nearly often enough, but always warmed up when she was.

Gloria brought a look of London to the bar, and old Mr Pitcher glared crossly at her. When she bent down to reach for a light ale from the bottom shelf, she showed a sun-burned
cleavage. Her hair, of a uniformly butter-colour, was built up high with a false piece of nylon. Midge was ‘dear’ to her from the outset.