by Susan Lewis
As she stormed off Dee remained where she was, looking as helpless and troubled as she felt. Time wasn’t doing much to heal her niece’s grief, and now that her father had married again, Dee couldn’t help fearing for how much worse Rosalind’s despair might become.
Upstairs in her bedroom Rosalind opened her mobile phone, and after one or two false starts she managed to compose a message to her father saying, ‘If you want to tell her I won’t do anything stupid, you can, because I won’t – at least not today.’
In the end she forced herself to erase the last four words out of concern for him, and after pressing send, she turned her face into the pillows. Scrunching them as tightly as she could, she willed her mother with every fibre of her being to reach out to her in some way, because she couldn’t take any more of this emptiness, or silence, or terrible, frightening loneliness that was all her life was now, and had been ever since Catrina had gone.
Lisa was on the phone to David when Amy came back with four glasses of champagne on a tray. Taking one, Lisa sipped it gratefully as she listened to David saying, ‘I’m truly sorry it happened. If I’d had any idea she was going to do something like that …’
‘Darling, it’s not your fault,’ she interrupted softly. ‘Just as long as she’s all right.’
‘Dee’s there and Jerry’s on his way back. I know she’s sorry, even though she can’t bring herself to say so. Has Amy arrived with the champagne yet?’
‘Just. Thanks, I really needed it.’
‘I thought you might. So, do you feel OK to continue? If you want to delay or …’
‘I’m fine as long as you are.’
There was a tremor in his voice as he said, ‘Then let’s try to put the past few minutes out of our minds and concentrate on what today is all about.’
Taking another restorative sip, she wanted to say it would be hard to stop thinking about Rosalind, but that wasn’t going to help either of them.
‘Shall I tell everyone we’re ready?’ he asked.
As her insides flipped with nerves she turned to the mirror and wondered again why she felt so anxious, when they were already married. Then, allowing herself to see how lovely she looked, she said, ‘Yes. Why don’t you do that?’
After ringing off she took one more sip of her drink, then looking at the others she whispered, ‘OK, girls, first positions.’
A few minutes later, as the laughter and clinking of glasses dissolved into a murmur and the jazz band rested on their instruments ready for their next cue, Roxy came out of the sitting room carrying her small spray of white sweet peas inside a floating cloud of verdant fern. Quietly descending four of the wide stone steps leading down to the courtyard, she took her position.
Standing at the centre of the gazebo with Lawrence and the rosy-cheeked celebrant whose name had escaped him again, David was smiling past the terrible tension inside him. He was thinking of Rosalind, and Catrina, and wondering how he had come to be here, and whether he could get through the next hours without shaming himself, and Lisa. He’d been awake most of the night trying to memorise the poems they’d combined to celebrate their vows, but if he was asked to repeat any one of them at this moment he knew he would be unable to.
He felt Heather – Heather, that was the celebrant’s name, and relief poured over him – he felt her hand on his arm, and as he glanced at her she nodded for him to look up at the house.
Lisa was standing at the top of the steps, and in her ivory silk taffeta dress with its softly sculpted bodice that accentuated her waist and breasts and clung like a caress to her body to fan out in a mermaid tail from mid-thigh, she was a vision that was so captivatingly romantic she almost seemed ethereal. And as a murmur of approval spread through their guests, he knew he’d never felt more anxious or elated in his life.
Seconds of stillness passed, with the sound of trickling water carrying over the garden along with the exquisite scent wafting from Lisa’s trailing bouquet of lilies of the valley. Then, emerging from the silence with all the beauty and grace of a swallow taking flight, Sheelagh’s haunting voice began to fill the summer air.
Morning has broken, like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them, springing fresh from the Lord.
Remembering the song from their early days, David felt a lump forming in his throat. Knowing it was one of his favourites, and presenting it to him this way, was a gift more precious than he could have imagined and way beyond anything he deserved. He should let her go now. He couldn’t tie her to him like this when the fears were haunting him again and in truth had never really gone away. He wasn’t the man he used to be, he was a fraud, a coward who should have backed away yesterday, or long before, but instead he’d kept clinging to the vain hope and delusion he’d spun for himself out of the half-truths he’d given the doctor.
As Baz’s hypnotic tenor took the second verse and Lisa started forward, David was aware of everyone rising to their feet.
Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.
It was as though the alchemy of the words, the arrival of the bride, and the whole poignancy of their lives were bringing them together in a way nothing else could. He watched her descending slowly, radiant and happy, and knew he could never do anything to spoil this day for her.
As Roxy reached the gazebo she smiled at him and moved discreetly aside. Then, as both singers and the band joined to escort Lisa for the final few steps, it was as though everything and everybody were blending into one, and the effect was so rousing that Lawrence’s were perhaps the only dry eyes in the garden.
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day.
Lisa was gazing into David’s eyes as he reached for her hand, and in that moment she could only feel thankful that Rosalind hadn’t come, because now they could speak the entirety of the vows they’d created without having to spare her feelings.
Gesturing for everyone to sit, Heather waited for them to settle, and once the rustling had stopped, leaving the simple sounds of birdsong and crickets, she began by saying, ‘Thank you all for coming, and thank you, Lisa and David, for allowing me the honour of blessing your marriage. Lisa and I go back many years, which I hope qualifies me to say that the moment she got in touch to tell me about David, I knew from the very timbre of her voice that she had found her soul-mate at last.’
So she never thought it was Tony? Lisa was thinking.
‘In fact, she had reconnected with him,’ Heather was saying, ‘because as many of you here already know, they first met in this very city as much younger people than they are today.’
After waiting for the wave of amusement to ebb, she continued. ‘It’s because of what went before that I like to think that we are now being shown by this union how those who belong to one another will, if parted, always manage to find each other again. And how true love, no matter how severely tested either by circumstance or time, will never die.’ She paused again, to allow the gentle sincerity of her belief to resonate with them all.
‘Though between them,’ she went on, ‘Lisa and David could have put on a wedding for three or four hundred guests, they have chosen instead to celebrate this special day with you. So I think we can be sure that the very spirit of this occasion is being created by the love you all bear them, and that when combined with the love they have for each other it will carry them into a happy and rewarding future together.’
As David’s hand tightened on hers, Lisa, feeling oddly empty and displaced, returned the pressure.
‘I shall step aside now,’ Heather said, ‘to allow Lisa and David to speak
the words they have in part written themselves, and in part drawn from our most celebrated poets. I think you will all agree when you hear the selection that it is very beautiful and fitting, and I hope Lisa, David, that you feel I’ve served you well with this opening contribution I have chosen from George Eliot.
‘What greater thing is there for two human souls,’ she recited, looking from Lisa to David, ‘than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour. To minister to each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with each other in the silent, unspoken memories.’ She smiled as she finished, and took a step back.
How could she know? Does she know? David was asking himself, his head seeming to spin as he and Lisa turned to one another and gazed into each other’s eyes.
Several seconds ticked by.
‘You first,’ Lisa whispered.
He swallowed drily and took a breath. TS Eliot. He knew the poet, but where were the words?
‘In my beginning,’ she prompted.
‘In my beginning,’ he repeated, ‘is my end, And over the dark water … speak to me with your love.’ He knew he’d missed some, but Lisa was still smiling and holding on to his hands, so could he assume he hadn’t disgraced himself?
‘Yes, yours my love,’ she recited from Edwin Muir, ‘is the right face that I in my mind had waited for this long.’
She paused and he felt a cold sweat trickling down his back.
‘I mourn no more my lonesome years;’ she continued from Elizabeth Akers Allen. ‘This blessed hour atones for all.’
David’s vision was blurred as he tried to absorb her declaration, and then, in an almost blinding moment of clarity, he found himself quoting Christopher Marlowe. ‘Come live with me, and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.’
With the ghost of a smile, she allowed a pause before saying, ‘If ever two were one, then surely we; If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee.’
Making everyone smile, David said, ‘Love me not for comely grace, For my pleasing eye or face, Keep, Lisa, a true woman’s eye, and love me still but know not why; So hast thou the same reason still to dote on me ever.’
Humour was shining in Lisa’s eyes as she glanced at Heather, who nodded for them to continue with the words they’d written themselves.
David’s throat was dry, but he could sense the words coming, ready to be spoken. ‘When my eyes first on you did light, true love in me stirred with glorious might. Though I have loved another and loved her true, always in my heart there was you.’
Gazing into his eyes, Lisa said, ‘I loved you then, I love you now; and all the many years intervened, my journey long and aimless seemed. But now aside my wanderings and wonderings go, for today I come to rest where I have always belonged, with you.’
The next lines were his, but they had flown.
‘On this, our wedding day,’ Lisa said for him, ‘let our loved ones rice and confetti throw. Let fireworks soar, champagne flow and music play; let old friends meet new and family gather round, all to bear witness that I give myself to you …’
He felt the squeeze of her hand, telling him it was for him to speak now. ‘And I to you,’ he heard himself say.
‘And know that our vows will be spoken true,’ Lisa added.
‘David,’ Heather said, stepping forward again, ‘do you, of your own free will and consent, choose Lisa to be your beloved wife, and do you promise to love, honour and cherish her always?’
Looking at Lisa, and almost shaking with relief that the most difficult part was over, David said, ‘I do.’
‘Lisa,’ Heather continued, ‘do you, of your own free will and consent, choose David to be your beloved husband, and do you promise to love, honour and cherish him always?’
Knowing this last would surprise David, a mischievous light leapt into Lisa’s eyes as she quoted from Ulysses, saying, ‘… and then he asked me would I yes … and yes I said, yes I will, yes.’
As a murmur of laughter spread through the guests, David’s eyes showed so much emotion that Lisa’s smile faltered in the force of it.
Heather nodded to Lawrence, who’d barely taken his eyes from her as he waited for his cue with the rings. Stepping forward with the two brushed-platinum bands on a black velvet tray, his fathomless eyes held firm to hers in case there was anything else he needed to do. At a discreet distance, Lucy sat watching, oblivious to her fetching collar of fresh cut flowers.
With Lawrence and his tray now in place, Heather said, ‘Lisa and David, these rings symbolise the love that joins you, spirit to spirit. Just as they have no beginning or end, nor points of weakness, may your union be the same, and may you be blessed with great joy as you journey through life together surrounded by the circle of your love.’ She waited for David to pick up the smaller of the two bands and slide it to the knuckle of Lisa’s third finger.
As he started to speak his voice fell into a void, so Heather helped him recover by whispering the words for him to repeat.
‘I give you this ring,’ he said, looking at Lisa, ‘as a symbol of my love.’
He pushed the ring fully on to her finger, and Lisa said, ‘I receive your love as my greatest treasure.’
After pausing to allow the sense of connection its completion, Lisa took the other ring from Lawrence’s tray, and slipping it on to David’s third finger, she said, ‘David, I give you this ring as a symbol of my love.’
Visibly moved by her use of his name, he paid her the same compliment, saying, ‘Lisa, I receive your love as my greatest treasure.’
Holding out her arms to include the gathering, Heather said, ‘Let us give thanks for this union that is bringing us together in love and joy.’
Speaking almost as one, they said, ‘We give thanks.’
Heather’s eyes moved to the upper terrace, where Baz and Sheelagh were standing, ready to sing, and taking their cue Wills and Theo carried chairs into the gazebo for David and Lisa to sit down to watch the performance.
The Berlin Philharmonic came courtesy of a backing track being played through specially erected speakers. However, the effect of the voices was undiminished, as Baz’s profoundly resonant tenor opened the way into one of Lisa’s favourite operatic duets, O Soave Fanciulla.
The audience were soon spellbound as the drama of the music began to build, filling the garden, the whole valley with the rousing crescendo that, at its peak, reached out to sweep Sheelagh’s voice into its force and to create such a magnificent fusion of sound that the rush of feeling to Lisa’s heart pushed tears to her eyes.
It wasn’t a lengthy piece, but it felt sorely too soon that the music began to fade with the words, ‘Amor! Amor! Amor!’ As it drifted through the air like a magical spell Miles lowered his head, unable to support it any longer. Behind him Hayley was trying to smile through her own tremulous emotion, until Nerine lost a sob in a splutter of embarrassment and Polly joined in at the moment of permissible amusement.
When Lisa and David returned to their feet, still moved by the performance, they stood facing Heather for her closing words.
‘I wish you courage and happiness from this time on,’ Heather said, holding out her hands for theirs. ‘May your love forever nourish you and keep you strong, and may it fulfil you in every way. Please take this, my blessing, on your union. Go in peace. Live in joy, for you are now husband and wife.’ She smiled tenderly, and leaning forward whispered, ‘You may kiss.’
As David turned to her, Lisa looked up at him with wet, troubled eyes. Then his lips came to hers in a gentle but passionate sealing of their connection, and all her misgivings and annoyance that he’d forgotten his lines did nothing more than melt away.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS JUST over a week since David and Lisa had set off on their honeymoon, leaving Amy and Theo to continue entertaining their overseas guests, and Rosalind was doing her best to carry on as though nothing in any way remarkable had happened.
Watching her
moving around in a shell of silence, Jerry could feel the distance growing between them. Since the day of the wedding they’d barely spoken, so he could only guess at how she was feeling about the way he’d come home to give her a piece of his mind for sending such a terrible message to Lisa.
All she’d said when he’d finished was, ‘Why don’t you go back there? Lawrence shouldn’t be left on his own, and I don’t need you here defending her, thank you very much.’
By the time he’d brought Lawrence home it was after midnight and she was in bed. Since she was clearly in no more mood to talk then than she’d been earlier, he’d slipped quietly between the sheets next to her, and turned out the light, thankful that she wasn’t going to quiz him about the day. The fact that he’d struck up a rapport with Lisa’s sister and brother-in-law would quite possibly prove the final straw for their sorry wreck of a marriage, and if that didn’t do it, then the blinding revelation that Polly, one of Lisa’s closest friends, was a second cousin of Olivia’s would undoubtedly blow it away altogether. How had his mistress’s name even come into the conversation, Rosalind would want to know, and if he were to admit that he had mentioned it himself, almost as soon as Polly had told him she’d grown up in Cape Town, that would be proof enough for Rosalind that Olivia was always on his mind.
And she was, more now than ever.
He’d truly believed it would get easier in time; that after eighteen months the longing would have lost its intensity and the wrenching guilt would have faded to nothing more than a vague discomfort in his conscience. He wondered if it was Rosalind’s inability to forgive him that was keeping his feelings for Olivia alive, or was it a weakness in him that couldn’t let go of his marriage, even when there was nothing left to hold on to?
Such difficult thoughts burned like heat on open wounds. Though Rosalind gave him little reason to want to stay, and Olivia, he knew, would welcome him with open arms, to walk away from his marriage would mean walking away from his son, and in spite of how little he seemed to mean to Lawrence, he really didn’t think he could do that. Yet Lawrence would always have David, and perhaps if he, Jerry, was no longer there, Rosalind would have to make more of an effort to get along with Lisa, if only to keep her father in her life.
