by Martin Boyd
She was determined to hold to her decision, but because of the danger of the habit of her life weakening her intention, she suggested to Wolfie that he should go and stay with Daisy for a while, as she and Josie were entirely occupied with preparations for the wedding, clothes, invitations and other details, which were of no interest to him.
In spite of this she found it more difficult to arrange meetings with Russell than before the engagement. If she went into Melbourne it was usually to go shopping with Josie, and if she went alone she attracted more attention as the mother of the girl who was to marry Captain Wyckham. People whom she only slightly knew, or who had let their acquaintance fade out when they found that she was not likely to be socially useful, now, as before Elsie’s party, crossed the street to speak to her. Diana always responded to signs of friendship, but she felt the advances of these people to be more insolent than their former coldness, and they gave her a contempt for the society she was soon to leave, so that if it were not for Josie she would hardly have taken the trouble to conceal her meetings with Russell.
In those days it was impossible to go into Melbourne without meeting half a dozen or more people whom she knew, and it appeared quite natural that, when she was with Josie, they should run into Russell and have tea together. She wanted Josie to strengthen the liking she showed for him on the evening when they had dined at the French restaurant. One day she said to her:
“I think of coming to England soon after you’re married. Would you like that?”
“Oh Mummy, that would be lovely!” exclaimed Josie, delighted.
“Do you think John would mind? I don’t want him to think that he’s to be saddled with his mother-in-law. I wouldn’t stay with you.”
“He’d love it. He admires you tremendously. He often says so. Would Daddy come too?”
“No. He wouldn’t be able to leave the Conservatorium for so long. Daisy would look after him.”
When Diana next saw John she told him of her intention, and he said with apparently genuine pleasure: “That will be splendid. You must stay at Wootton Speke. You’ll like my father.”
Although Wolfie was staying with Daisy and Bill Byngham at Frankston, it was not far away, and he sometimes looked in at Brighton to fetch a piece of music, or another pipe. He arrived one day at tea-time and as Josie was out, Diana took the opportunity of telling him that she was definitely going to Europe.
“Am I not to come?” asked Wolfie, looking offended but not seriously hurt.
“You can’t leave the Conservatorium for so long,” said Diana. “Daisy and Bill can come here to look after you.”
“It is strange that my wife leaves me,” said Wolfie. He made no further protest. After the bleak atmosphere of his home in recent weeks he was thoroughly enjoying the rollicking family affection in Daisy’s house. The prospect of continuing this, with grandchildren clinging to his knee, continuous talk about art and music, students sleeping in all the spare beds and on the drawing-room sofa, wine and beer at any hour of the day or night, and no one to question his assignations, appeared more agreeable than trailing round Europe in Diana’s exclusive and disapproving company. Also he was lazy, and his old ambition to gain a European reputation had died. He was rather frightened of the idea.
When she had told Wolfie, Diana booked her passage on a ship sailing on the eighth of August. John and Josie would have sailed a fortnight, and Russell a week earlier, the latter to await her and join the ship in Perth. A few days after this she met John, who told her, as if it were very good news:
“Miss Rockingham’s going home by the same ship as you. She was very pleased when I told her that you would be on board.”
Diana tried to show equal pleasure, and to conceal the dismay she felt. She rang up Russell in the evening and told him.
He sounded even more disturbed than herself, and suggested that they should postpone their departure for another week.
“I’ve told everyone I’m going on the eighth,” said Diana. “I can’t give any reason for changing.”
They did not like to discuss it on the telephone, and they met next day in the Gallery to do so.
“Another thing,” said Diana, “is that Miss Rockingham, who has been charming to Josie, and very friendly whenever I have met her, will think it extraordinarily rude if I change my ship for no apparent reason, as soon as I hear that she’s going on it.”
Russell admitted this, and suggested that Diana should also disembark at Perth and then they could sail together a week later. Or she could go to Colombo, pretending she had always wanted to see it, and wait there.
“But I hate those hot Asiatic places,” said Diana. “I couldn’t pretend with conviction. We can’t really go dodging about the Indian Ocean like that.”
They laughed a little at their predicament.
“I suppose I shall just have to appear surprised to find you on the ship,” said Russell. “But people know we know each other—especially Miss Rockingham. She lunched with us.”
“I wonder how well they know.”
“It will make the voyage a bit difficult,” said Russell thoughtfully.
A few days later, when she met him again, he was even more grave, and talked mostly about the effect of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. This had shocked people in Melbourne but they regarded it as the sort of thing to be expected in the Balkans, and did not imagine that it could possibly affect their own lives, any more than Diana would have thought that the dismissal of a lift-boy in a block of Collins Street flats could decide her own future. Russell, probably more European-minded than anyone she knew, was anxious about its repercussions.
“But surely there couldn’t be a European war nowadays?” she said, and added: “John is in the army.”
“It couldn’t last a month,” said Russell. “It would be over before he got there.”
“How would it affect us? One can’t help thinking of that.”
“I don’t see that it need affect us. The war wouldn’t be in England. We might get mixed up in a naval battle on the way.”
“I’m prepared to risk that,” said Diana. “Our affairs would become very unimportant.”
The wedding was now only a fortnight ahead, and Diana was taken up with arrangements and could think of little else. The presents began to arrive. Although from the same people, they were far more expensive than those sent to Daisy, again on the principle “to him that hath”. They had to be opened and a list made for Josie to write letters of thanks, and then re-packed and sent to Elsie’s house where they were to be on view, guarded by plain clothes detectives in the billiard room. Arrangements had to be made to ship them to England after that. She had not only to arrange Josie’s trousseau but to design the bridesmaids’ dresses and to think about her own.
There were two rolls left of those beautiful stuffs which her mother had left her, one of blue silk, and one almost flame colour though soft in tone. She knew that she looked her best in red, that she could “carry it off”, but she thought it would be too striking to wear at a wedding, especially her daughter’s. Yet it was not only this consideration which made her choose the blue. She could not be certain that there would not be other acquaintances besides Miss Rockingham on the ship, when Russell joined her at Fremantle, people who knew her better, and that in far less than a year she might be the subject of scandal. Then, as was their habit, the scandalmongers would give a retrospective resumé of her character, and say: “What decent woman would wear red at her daughter’s wedding?” All through the preparations, and at the wedding itself, she had this feeling that she was under the threat of hostile criticism.
Harry arrived from Queensland a week before the wedding day, and increased this feeling. He exuded disapproval. Diana had scraped some more butter from her bread to send him to the most expensive, and presumably the best “public school” in the state, from which he returned with reverence for the rich grandsons of Scottish crofters who were his schoolfellows, and contempt for his family and thei
r characteristics, their lively wit, their spontaneous affections, their creative ability and above all for their indifference to public opinion when their sense of justice was affronted. When his schooling was finished he went off as a jackeroo on the sheep station of one of his school friends, obviously to escape from humiliating associations with his relatives. Diana was distressed at his attitude, and disgusted to have paid so much to turn her son from a real into a synthetic gentleman. He now talked about “good form” and called Wolfie “sir” though every intonation and gesture he used to his father was one of contempt.
She had hoped that a year on the station would have made him more sensible, but it had only made him a little coarser in appearance and defiantly “Australian”. He saw, perhaps truly, that his relatives were simply the survivors of the early administrators of the colony, with the self-sufficiency they had inherited from those people, still half-English in their attitude and entirely so in their values, and that they had no future in the country. It may be of interest to note here that the 1914 war finished them. They no longer survived as a group of any importance, or at any rate of social importance, as their qualities could not survive amongst people whose only respect was for money. It was odd that Harry combined his talk of “good form” and his “sirs” with this attitude, but like most young people, he was slightly muddled. He was rather like a man who buys highly varnished imitation Georgian furniture, but thinks the genuine antique too shabby. So he was angry at Josie’s marrying an Englishman, especially one with aristocratic associations, as he thought that it would perpetuate the malaise of his family. If, on the other hand, the daughter of one of his squatter friends had bought such a husband, as Clara Bumpus had done, he would not have objected, as that would have shown the power of their money, which he revered.
Wolfie came back from Frankston on the same day that Harry arrived. He was bursting with happy paternal affection and was about to embrace his son, but Harry shook hands and said offhandedly: “Hullo, sir.” Wolfie looked very hurt and Diana was angry. A day or two later, when Harry again, beneath the formality of his address, showed his contempt for his father, she turned on him saying: “The slightest of Wolfie’s preludes is of more value to the human race than anything you are likely to produce in the whole of your boorish life.”
This sort of thing increased her feeling of being in a false position, of being in a way, treacherous. She hotly defended Wolfie when she was planning to leave him for another man, but she could not bear Harry’s attitude. He must have inherited his pomposity from some ancestor of Wolfie’s. On Wolfie it was an amusing gossamer film of manner which fell off at the slightest provocation. In Harry it appeared to be solid throughout.
Another incident, if it could be called that, which puzzled her, happened one afternoon when she went to tea with Maysie. Miss Bath was there and apparently found great difficulty in answering when Diana spoke to her. She seemed so offended that Diana thought that by some oversight she could not have been invited to the wedding, and when she got home she looked up the list, but found the tick against Miss Bath’s name which showed that she had accepted.
At a brief meeting with Russell in the tea-room where they had gone on that first day, she said: “I am longing for it all to be over and to get away. I want things simplified.”
She tried to escape her divided feelings by concentrating on the arrangements for the wedding, to make them as perfect as possible though this again was partly as a compensation to herself. Her own mother had been so bitterly disappointed at her marriage to Wolfie, that she had left all the arrangements to Cousin Sarah, her Calvinistc housekeeper, who had taken a sadistic delight in making them as drab as possible. She had made up for this by later generosities, trips to Europe and presents of good jewellery, and by leaving her more than her sisters, but Diana had never forgotten the humiliation of her wedding day. Through Josie she would wipe it out. All the same she could not rid herself of the feeling that the wedding was some kind of test which she herself had to pass through.
The wedding was at All Saints’, East St Kilda, which was not as smart as St John’s, Toorak, but it was the church where all the family had been married since the early days. The day turned out to be fine, full of the winter sunlight of Walter Wither’s picture, but shining on a slightly different scene. In the morning Diana had to take Josie and her luggage to the Radcliffe’s where she was to dress. Then she had to return to Brighton for a picnic lunch with Wolfie and Harry, dress herself, and supervise Wolfie’s adornment in a new morning coat and white spats. He was more anxious about his appearance than the bride, and required nearly as much attention.
Harry had no morning clothes and he wore his best navy-blue suit, which was a year old, and too tight for him, as his muscles had developed on the sheep station. Diana had wanted him to have a morning coat made quickly in time for the wedding, but he had refused saying: “I’m not going to pretend to be an Englishman.”
When they came out into the sunlight he looked at Diana and said: “You’re too dolled up, Mum.”
Diana had a black velvet toque, into which she had pinned with a diamond brooch, a tuft of blue feathers that matched her dress. She had long white kid gloves and she wore her pearls, and pearl and diamond earrings, but she did not think that she was over-dressed. When she was dressed for a party she always looked a little dramatic. She could not help it, and in fact she enjoyed it. It emphasized her natural distinction. When she had taken no trouble with her clothes, she attracted no attention, except from a connoisseur like Russell. Harry would not have objected to her appearance if she had looked like a rich Toorak lady, but she was not fat enough, and they did not have her kind of face. But she had a moment’s qualm. Would they say afterwards that she had been showily dressed at her daughter’s wedding?
Harry sat opposite her in the car, the contrast between his slightly gingery hair and his blue suit making him look like a Presbyterian empire builder on Sunday morning. Wolfie said: “Do I look nice?” When Diana, to make up for Harry’s surly manner, told him with warmth that he looked very nice, he said: “I am the King of England,” and he raised his top hat and bowed to the empty streets. Then she was annoyed that Harry had again forced her into this defensive attitude towards Wolfie, and when he showed so obviously that he did not find his father amusing, she said sharply:
“The wide open spaces seem to have made you exceedingly stuffy, Harry.”
When they arrived at the Radcliffes’, Jack Radcliffe said: “By Jove, Diana, you’ll steal Josie’s thunder,” and she felt cheerful and confident again. She went up with a sudden access of happy excitement to see Josie, and to do the final arrangement of her dress, her wreath and the old lace veil which Lady Wendale had lent her.
At last she set out for the church with Harry and the Radcliffes, leaving with their butler the responsibility of sending Wolfie off with Josie at exactly twenty past two.
When she arrived at the church she went with Harry up to the front pew on the left. Daisy and Jimmy Byngham were already there, Jimmy looking arrogant and slightly mad. She had given Daisy a cheque to buy a new dress, but they had spent it on a week’s holiday in Sydney, and Daisy, who had something of her own flair for clothes, had reconditioned a dress she had given her last year. Fortunately, though they looked odd, they had an air which prevented them from being entirely discreditable. If they had been in rags they would still have seated themselves in the most prominent position. Diana wondered if she and Wolfie had been quite as troublesome when they were young. But Harry’s surliness, and Daisy’s absolute selfishness in spending the cheque in that way, made her feel that it would not cause her such a great pang to leave them.
The test which she thought the wedding would be for her, was to behave towards these people, even to her closest relatives, with adequate and controlled friendliness, but with no open affection which she felt would make her vulnerable to their censure when she had left them. Combined with the need for this effort was the anxiety that ever
ything should go perfectly.
The Governor-General, Lady Eileen, the Wendales, Lord Francis Blake and Miss Rockingham came and sat across the aisle. The State Governor and his suite followed and sat in the pew behind them. If the whole Royal family had been coming, Diana thought ironically, Daisy still would have spent her cheque on a trip to Sydney.
John, in dark green uniform, with Freddie in scarlet, came in from the vestry and stood at the right of the aisle. Diana, remembering what he had told her about Josie and the pot of daphne, with that instinct she had for making a simple decoration an allusion to something else, had pots of this plant, now in its waxy bloom, put at the chancel steps. He caught their scent and looked down. When he saw what it came from, he turned and gave Diana a quick shy smile of gratitude.
A few moments later Josie arrived at the west door, and came slowly up the aisle on Wolfie’s arm, followed by six bridesmaids in peach-coloured dresses, carrying posies of coppery roses. Suddenly all Diana’s intentions for herself and her demeanour were swamped in a wave of maternal pride and love. Josie had arrived safely, and her anxiety about the success of any arrangement which depended even in a partial degree on Wolfie, evaporated. She did not realize that this love which she sent like a blessing towards Josie, included Wolfie in the orbit of its kindness. When he had given his daughter away, obeying careful preliminary instructions, without which he might have followed her to the altar, he joined Diana in her pew. He had the blissful expression of a good boy, and continuing in this role he took up a prayer book, with some difficulty found the marriage service, and held the open book towards her, so that they might follow it together.
