by Rumer Godden
‘That is an opinion,’ said Peter and Mr Bellamy smiled, but still he said, ‘It’s very difficult to estimate the value of rare books until one has examined them closely. This could only be done at Sotheby’s, for instance, where we have a large bibliographical reference library.’
‘But the Book of Hours. Surely you can tell us what you think?’ said Bella.
‘Is it as good as Mr Alabaster hoped?’
‘At least tell us that.’ The aunts were crowding round him.
‘The Bonnefoy Hours is a manuscript of the finest Parisian workmanship,’ he admitted, ‘and in an excellent state of preservation. The expressions on the faces, in particular, are masterly. Masterly!’ said Mr Bellamy.
‘Then it is rare and valuable?’
‘Decidedly.’
‘How valuable?’
Mr Bellamy plainly preferred not to commit himself – but he doesn’t know the aunts, thought Tracy.
‘Valuable might be anything from a hundred to a thousand pounds,’ complained Bella.
‘If that old Anatomy of Melancholy book sold for a hundred and fifty …’ said a Grace.
‘Mr Prendergast wasn’t sure.’
‘No, but this one ought—’
‘Eliza was offered two hundred pounds all those years ago,’ said the third Grace.
‘Or asked two hundred. We don’t know.’
‘It should get more than that now.’
‘Five hundred perhaps,’ said a Grace, and, ‘Could it fetch five hundred?’ they asked.
‘Yes, could it?’
‘Or even a thousand?’
‘A thousand for a book!’ They pressed Mr Bellamy until he was driven to say, ‘It wouldn’t be unreasonable to put a reserve on it.’
‘Of what?’ asked the aunts.
‘Of a thousand pounds?’ said one boldly.
‘Perhaps six thousand,’ said Mr Bellamy.
‘Six thousand!’
Tracy had put herself next to Dick – she found this silent and sometimes unexpected uncle soothing – and now he said softly and privately to her, ‘They usually estimate a reserve at about two thirds of the price they expect to get.’
Six thousand pounds, two thirds! thought Tracy. She was suddenly giddy. ‘But that’s – that’s nine thousand,’ she whispered to Dick, who nodded. Nine thousand! She had to put her hands on his arm to steady herself. Nine thousand pounds! Why that would be enough … and once again she felt as if she had a bell of excitement and joy swinging in her.
‘The market has never been as high’ – Mr Bellamy was trying to be truthful and at the same time extricate himself – ‘and rare books are getting rarer, but naturally copies of the same book vary greatly in value. So much depends on condition, “points”, as one calls them, binding, provenance, and so on.’ Then he seemed to give up and turned to Walter. ‘You have other books, you know, perhaps even more interesting. There is the Cessolis.’
‘That’s the one on chess,’ said Bella.
‘Can a book on chess be worth much?’
‘It was translated and printed by Caxton,’ said Mr Bellamy dryly.
Tracy felt giddier still. Even more rare than nine thousand pounds; and there are the Spenser and Chaucer too and at least a hundred other books. Oh, if I could talk to Peter, thought Tracy. She longed to talk it over with him, to try and estimate – though of course we don’t really know yet, not until they get to London, she thought. They may not be worth all this. Mr Bellamy might be mistaken – yet, as she thought that, he leaned across the office table and picked up a small thin calf-bound book. ‘Now if you want a real sensation …’ and he showed it to them.
‘Ralph Roister Doister,’ read Bella. Their faces were blank; the sensation had not reached them.
‘The earliest English comedy attributed to Nicholas Udall,’ said Mr Bellamy, ‘about 1566.’
‘And is that very valuable?’
‘Only one copy, one copy, is known and that’s in the library at Eton College – and it lacks the title page. This has the title page,’ said Mr Bellamy.
‘You mean that ordinary-looking little book is worth more than the beauty of the Book of Hours?’ said Dick.
‘It is far more rare,’ said Mr Bellamy, and for once there was silence, complete silence, among the aunts.
Mr Bellamy left, shaking hands at the front door; he had decided to go straight up to London from Canverisk in the morning and had consented to take the books. ‘I should like them out of the house,’ said Walter. ‘Your mother, of course, had not insured them.’ Mr Bellamy had rung up Sotheby’s and had the books insured, ‘And what a figure,’ said Bella. And he and Mr Alabaster had packed them in two leather suitcases brought down by Tom and Peter from the attics.
As the sound of the taxi grew faint up the lane the family wandered back into the drawing room. ‘It’s too late to change for dinner,’ said a Grace.
‘But still time for a drink,’ said Harry and Peter went to fetch glasses from the pantry.
Mrs Quin’s sherry had been left in the sideboard undisturbed. ‘South African,’ Dick had said briefly, and had gone into Canverisk to buy some Tio Pepe; he had brought gin and whisky down with him. ‘Walter hates my guts,’ he had told his Grace, ‘but he will drink my gin.’
‘I could use a gin,’ said Bella now. They were all a little irritable and on edge and, as they waited for Peter, Bella began on Tracy again. ‘And when will this famous housekeeping begin? We all have to make plans, you know.’
‘Bella shouldn’t keep on pressing,’ said Tom to Dick, who was setting out the bottles.
‘She could save her breath,’ said Dick.
‘Yes, that young man’s a lone wolf,’ said Tom, ‘if ever I saw one, and Tracy was brought up in America; shy, good manners and all that, but independent. They won’t let Bella or any of us arrange their lives, but listen.’
Before Tracy had had a chance to answer, the others had ‘clocked in’ as Dick said, and, ‘I must say that child is patient,’ he said.
‘We ought to know where we are,’ a Grace was saying. ‘We must plan …’
‘But won’t we have to wait for probate?’
‘I imagine not. The terms of the will—’
‘Yes. Don’t wills have to be proved?’
‘They don’t even listen to their own answers,’ murmured Dick.
‘We came for a night,’ complained a Grace. ‘We have been here five days!’
‘And I ought to have been in town long ago.’
‘We were supposed to be leaving for Italy.’
‘Walter had started apple-picking, Beauty of Bath and Irish Peach. We must go back.’
‘But we can’t all go now, there is Tracy.’
‘She could be married from our house.’
‘But her mother …’
‘Barbara will come over, of course.’
‘Tracy had a cable today.’
‘A quiet wedding …’
‘Quiet! There are about a thousand St Omers.’
‘Then in London perhaps …’
‘That’s such an expense for us all.’
‘I suppose they should wait three months, after Mother …’
‘It would be nice at Christmas … velvet … the bridesmaids could have little muffs.’
‘Do you remember Amanda’s wedding? Ivory wild silk …’
‘Absolutely simple …’
‘Tracy could come home with me.’
‘Surely she will need to go back to Rome and collect her things.’
‘Or are they in America?’
‘She would be wise to get her trousseau in America. They have such pretty things. Their underclothes …’
‘You can get to New York and back now, for about two hundred pounds.’
‘My dear Harry. Money doesn’t matter to Tracy now!’
‘I don’t know what Barbara will want to do about linen, but I have a little woman …’
‘My dear girl, brides don’t have house linen nowad
ays.’
‘Surely it should be announced in the Times and the Telegraph.’
‘Oh no! They will be flooded with advertisements. I can’t tell you what it was like with Amanda. All those leaflets and photographers.’
‘The telephone rang incessantly.’
‘There isn’t a telephone here,’ said Tracy who had been waiting for a pause, ‘and we have announced it.’
‘You have!’
‘Already!’
‘Yes. Mr Prendergast thought we sh-should, as we plan to marry s—’
‘You mean be married soon?’
‘Yes. In f-fact—’ but a Grace wailed, ‘Soon! Then we shall all have to come back when we have just gone.’
‘We can’t go on and on upsetting everything.’
‘First Mother, now …’
‘… take leave again so soon …’
‘Change all our plans again …’
‘I don’t think so, Bella.’ Peter had come in with a salver of glasses. ‘Bella and all of you. You needn’t change anything; that is if you plan to stay here tonight as I think you must now. We shan’t detain you,’ said Peter. He put the salver on the table. ‘I got a special licence in Exeter yesterday. That was my business there,’ he said to Bella. ‘Tracy has had a cable from her mother and we should like to ask you all to our wedding tomorrow.’
‘In St Probus, very quietly owing to a recent bereavement …’
‘Quietly!’ said Peter and groaned again.
‘But in a way it was quiet,’ said Tracy and that was true: antagonism, rivalry, even criticism had stopped, ‘melted away at the word “wedding”. I shouldn’t have believed it,’ said Peter.
‘Tomorrow!’ There had been consternation, ‘but not at the fact of the wedding,’ said Peter in astonishment. ‘Suddenly that was accepted.’
‘Well, it had gone beyond argument,’ said Mr Prendergast. No, it was consternation over one question and one question only: ‘What will Tracy wear?’
‘A frock,’ Tracy had said.
‘A cotton frock. But you can’t.’
‘Or the suit I came in, or jeans.’
‘Jeans!’
‘It’s all I have. I have a lovely shantung suit in Rome.’
‘A shantung suit! Don’t you want a proper wedding? I thought every girl—’
‘I can’t have one,’ said Tracy reasonably. ‘There isn’t time. It’s to be at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. There are no wedding dresses in St Probus.’
‘But there are,’ said Cecily, ‘in the chest.’
‘The chest? With the baby clothes?’
‘Yes. I put moth balls in this very year. The veils are there too and some beautiful lace.’
‘The Limerick! Grandmother’s family veil!’
‘Of course!’
‘The one we all wore.’
‘I can’t be married in just a veil,’ said Tracy.
‘And the dresses are too old.’
‘But are they?’ asked a Grace. ‘They may be so old that they have come round again,’ and the aunts took Tracy upstairs to open the chest in the Porch Room. The baby clothes have been put away since the youngest Grace wore them. The long robes and nightgowns are unhealthy, Bella says when her children are born, and the other girls follow her. ‘No baby wears flannel petticoats now, or cambric vests,’ but they use the christening robes. There are two: one made by Adza in lawn with a tucked front and lace ruffles; the other, handed down from Lady Patrick’s mother, is entirely of Irish lace. ‘Gran said I wore that and it’s an heirloom,’ said Tracy reverently. Under them, wrapped in blue paper, were the dresses.
‘Mother would never let us dress up in these,’ said Bella, ‘not even for the Christmas charades.’
Lady Patrick, of course, has no wedding dress; she is married just as she is in her street dress when she walks out of her father’s town house after breakfast, taking her maid as witness, and meets Jared at the small Catholic church on the corner; but Damaris’s, sent back with all her possessions by Mr King Lee, is in the chest, all its richness still fresh. ‘I had forgotten it was so lovely,’ breathed a Grace. ‘Feel the satin. It would be exquisite with the Limerick veil.’
‘But I couldn’t wear it in a little country church in the morning,’ protested Tracy, ‘and it’s far too big for me, and Damaris died.’
‘Perhaps it would be unlucky.’
‘Whose was this?’
Bella had taken out a dress of limp lawn, full-skirted and tucked, tight-sleeved and lined with white silk. It had cuffs and a narrow collar frilled with lace. ‘Whose was this?’
‘It must have been … Great-grandmother’s?’
‘Adza’s?’ Tracy was startled. ‘Could it have lasted all that time?’ but her aunts were in full cry, as Peter would have said.
‘Would it look queer?’
‘It’s too simple to be queer.’
‘It would get up beautifully.’
‘We could take it up to Minna. You know how clever she is.’
‘Try it on, Tracy.’
Adza is plumper than Tracy but, ‘We could take it in here,’ said Bella, ‘and here.’
‘With darts,’ said a Grace.
‘It wouldn’t matter if the yoke were full.’
‘The hem is ripped here.’
‘That’s nothing – a stitch.’
‘It looks really rather charming.’
‘With a simple veil, not the lace.’
‘I know. The confirmation veil. Thank goodness we refused to wear the thick ones they had at school.’
‘Like mosquito netting, I remember …’
‘This is as fine as tulle.’
‘What about shoes?’
‘White sandals, or we could borrow in the village.’
‘For her head there’s the circle of pearls.’
‘Or flowers.’
‘Real flowers!’
‘That would be pretty, to match her bouquet.’
‘Thank goodness we live in a flower-growing place.’
‘Would Sir Gervase’s arums be over?’
‘Arums? For a headdress?’
‘Goose, I meant for the bouquet.’
‘What about Major Bruce? He might have violets. They would suit this.’
‘If he has any of his double white ones …’
Tracy was twisted and turned and, while her aunts chattered and Bella pinned in the darts and Cecily stitched at the hem, she stood, not in a dream – the reverse, thought Tracy – in a new reality in which she herself seemed to grow indistinct, lose my edges, thought Tracy – to dwindle, or was it to grow? and merge with all the young girls who had stood here in their wedding dresses, their hearts beating faster because of tomorrow, the tomorrow for each one of us, thought Tracy.
The largest wedding is Groundsel and Minna’s, at which Minna rends Groundsel by crying throughout.
She cries, but she keeps her word. ‘Will ’ee marry me, Minna?’
‘Ach yes!’ She says that in the happiness of that day of the first snow, but two days later the snow is gone.
The thaw is sudden and complete; no trace of snow is left. The sun shines and soon even the slush is dried.
Minna does not see Groundsel in the morning; altogether there is no colour in the day; the sun goes in; the wind comes over the field rough and warm from the Atlantic; it roars in the lane, but the wood, when she wanders to it, in the afternoon, is still and dank, smelling of earth and wet holly. There is no Groundsel to meet her there either; he has had to take over the stable work because the groom has gone with the children to the Meet.
Cook has told Minna to bring in some mint on her way back through the kitchen garden. ‘If there’s any escaped the frost,’ says Cook and, in the patch of mint, Minna finds a purple head of stock where the snow had been. ‘Fonny!’ says Minna. The little frostbitten flower seems to stab her. She walks slowly back to the house, her apron blowing against her legs. Instead of mint she has picked the bitter purple flowers.
After tea Groundsel comes to the kitchen to fetch kettles of hot water to make the ponies’ mash. Minna will not look at him, she goes on with the washing up, but she has given her promise.
‘I love ’ee Minna. Do ’ee love me?’
‘I love. Ach, yes! I love,’ and a tear slips down her cheek into the washing-up bowl.
Their wedding in 1913 is the largest because the whole village comes to it. The quietest is Ripsie’s about which no one hears until it is all over. Damaris’s is the most expensive, the youngest Grace has the prettiest, but one seems to merge into another until they are all the same: I, thought Tracy, and these aunts humming round me, and Gran and before Gran, right back to Adza; I and them all.
‘It is Papa’s place, my dear.’
‘A considerable difference in the death duties.’
‘I wanted to see the boys so badly that I had to come.’
‘Would you do what you said, guide me and turn me loose with books?’
‘Ach, yes. Ach, yes! I love.’
‘I shall never go into that bedroom again.’
‘Christen her in the font?’
Adza often unwraps the white lawn dress and looks at it, ‘though I don’t know why I keep it,’ she says. Mary, that eldest of the Brood who marries the young doctor, has her own ideas about a wedding dress; white lawn is not grand enough for Damaris; every year makes it increasingly clear that Eliza will never marry, and Anne … Adza’s soft plump face grows almost hard when she thinks about Anne. ‘She was such a gentle biddable little girl and to think,’ says Adza, ‘we need never have given the Dinner Party.’ It has capital letters forever in all their minds.
After Damaris’s wedding, while she and Mr King Lee are still on their way to New York, Harry St Omer sends Anne some flowers; then at Christmas a box of chocolates; and in February comes the valentine. ‘He does it to dozens of girls,’ says Anne, but, ‘My dear,’ says Eustace to Adza, ‘I think we should give a little dinner and ask the St Omers.’
In February the St Omers are safely in London and Adza does not pay much heed, but that year they come down to Tremellen early for the whole summer and Eustace says it again.
‘But we have dinner in the middle of the day,’ says Adza trying to escape.
