by Maggie Ford
He bent his head over the blank page and began to write.
Tony drove steadily along the winding Berkshire roads and Geraldine’s eyes were everywhere, never having seen so much countryside in all her life. She remembered little of that trip to Loughton given by the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, being only six years old, except for the clopping hooves of the horses pulling the brake and feeling scared of a sensation of being closed in – probably the trees.
Now she was travelling through changing vistas of countryside in her own car, or at least Tony’s car – the same thing really, they being married next Saturday, just six days away.
He was taking her to meet his parents, a bit late in the day but better late than never. It was one of the few things that had made her angry with him, his refusal, or so it appeared, to introduce her to them. Now at long last she would see what they were like. She had begun to wonder about them, making a joke of it.
‘Your dad hasn’t got horns, has he? Or your mother got two noses?’
He hadn’t smiled and she really had wondered for a second or two whether she’d put her foot in it, that there really was something wrong with one or both of them that he’d not told her about.
He’d shaken his head sombrely. ‘They might as well have. If you can call one being full of himself and the other practically licking his boots and thinking the sun shines out of his backside an affliction, yes, they’d be more palatable with horns or two heads.’ She hadn’t asked him again.
That was all in the past now. She would get to know these people and once she got over these attacks of nerves she’d had all the way down here, life with Tony would be a path of dreams.
She wondered what sort of house they had. He’d said moderately big.
‘Not one of your country mansions, but I suppose it’s quite a tidy size. It was fine when we were all there together as little kids – myself, my brother and my sister. Us boys of course were sent away to school, Fenella was tutored at home. But now just the parents rattle around inside it. The place was made for large private soirées I guess, but they seldom do things like that.’
He had gone on about his family: Fenella married, his brother killed in the war, only him left and then not having been there for years; about the fun they’d had as little children before social etiquette caused them to be sent their separate ways. ‘People where you live never send their children away,’ was meant to explain things but would have put her back up had his chatter not served to dispel some of Geraldine’s nervousness.
She’d never known him to be so talkative but put it down to nerves as well. After all, he was introducing his future wife to his parents – not easy at the best of times but having left it this late, and she a girl from a different background to his, she had to admit, he was bound to be on edge. Setting out he had been quiet enough, relaxed, just the odd comment. It had been she who’d done all the talking, mostly on the wedding next Saturday. But as the miles went by, his tension had shown itself and it had been she who fell silent while he chatted on.
She could tell they were getting nearer to their destination without his having to say so, as he grew quiet, his tenseness beginning to transmit itself to her. To dispel it, she took some deep breaths and told herself she was as good as they but that they had money and her people didn’t; that they had to sit on a toilet and do their business same as her; that wind did make its presence known from time to time from either end as with everyone from the King and Queen down.
It was coming up to three o’clock. ‘Almost there,’ Tony said as the open countryside gave way to a sizeable village that he said was where his parents lived.
It felt to Geraldine as though they had been travelling all day, through small towns, isolated hamlets, dozens of tiny villages, stopping once at a country pub for a sandwich and a beer and to gratefully pop to its spider-web-infested toilet that straddled a gurgling stream visible through the bottom of the loo itself. Having started out at ten, even though they’d been doing a cracking thirty miles an hour most of the time, at times even reaching nearly forty whenever the twisting country lanes decided to straighten out, she was stiff, ready to stretch her limbs. Would they, she wondered, be invited to stay the night? They couldn’t possibly make the journey back in one day. Perhaps Tony would suggest they stay at that village inn they were passing. Visions of him booking one room for them both brought a surge of excitement to her loins but she said nothing.
‘This is it,’ he said abruptly, swinging the car left to come to a stop before a pair of wrought-iron gates. She couldn’t see any house for trees but it was one of several residences they’d glimpsed in passing, each apparently different to the next, all set well back from the road and hidden from view by shrubs and trees and all well separated by extensive gardens, every entrance guarded by wide, impressive gates, some open but most of them closed.
These gates too were shut, although Tony said he had written to say he’d be arriving about now. A brass plaque on one of the granite posts with the inscription Rosebrier House was the only welcome there seemed to be. Thankfully they weren’t locked and Tony needed only to leap out of the car and push their iron latch down for them to swing open with ease, a gardener pausing to watch as he slipped back into his seat to give her a smile and squeeze her hand reassuringly before he drove on through, deliberately ignoring the fact that he had left them open as though to establish that this was his home even if he’d hardly ever lived in it. Geraldine even glimpsed a stubborn set to his expression as they motored slowly up a gravel drive that widened to an oval area at the main entrance of the house.
Though in good repair, the house was old, maybe around a hundred years, perhaps older – she was no judge of buildings but she could imagine this drive once full of carriages, the gentry assisted down by footmen and conducted into the house, itself bright with candlelight blazing from every one of the tall windows as the guests were welcomed in by host and hostess.
Today there was no welcome. Even the sky had clouded over. There might have been some staff, it being a sizeable place, but other than the solitary gardener there was no one about. Tony had to leave the car to ring the front doorbell before the door was opened by a young girl.
Geraldine watched him speak to her. The girl retreated, returning with a tall, thin, shapeless woman who leaned forward to kiss his cheek rather reluctantly. This had to be his mother, in her early fifties maybe but well preserved as to make her own mum in her early forties seem positively worn out. And why not? Mum had lived her life washing, cleaning, feeding a family in London’s East End. This woman had done nothing all her life.
Geraldine felt her lip curl at the thought of the gulf that lay between her life and the one Tony’s mother had led. She sat firmly in her seat in the car and waited. She wasn’t going to let a woman like that put her down.
At a word from Tony, his mother looked beyond him to where she still sat in the car. She murmured something to Tony who left her to come and help Geraldine out. He smiled, asked if she was okay, took her arm and led her up the three wide steps to the porch and main door from where his mother hadn’t moved an inch except to now extend her hand to be taken. Geraldine could hardly call it shaken because the very second she dutifully touched it, it was withdrawn. But the smile on that fine-boned face bore a trace of tension, uncertainty. Was Tony’s mother, so self-controlled, just as uncomfortable in meeting her as she was in meeting Tony’s mother?
‘How do you do?’ The ritual nicety was hardly audible, the voice low, the question indifferent.
‘Very well, thank you,’ answered Geraldine, realising that she should have merely echoed the salutation, but too late.
There came a polite inclination of that handsome head and, protocol observed, Mrs Hanford stepped away to allow her son to conduct his fiancée inside while the young maid closed the door on the outside world, effectively creating a sensation in Geraldine of being trapped, like a rat in a box, as she and Tony were divested of their coats and hat
s.
But this place was hardly a box. The trapped sensation fading as instantly as it had come, Geraldine gazed around the great hall with its central staircase leading up to a balcony on which she could see a row of doors, Mrs Hanford now leading the way to one side, the maid skipping ahead to open the door to which she was making.
A brief nod of the head on its elegantly long neck sent the girl away and Geraldine, with her hand still tightly clutched in Tony’s, followed the woman into a huge, well-furnished room, a drawing room or reception room, she wasn’t sure, her eyes now on a tall, somewhat thickset man with a balding head and grey moustache.
Mrs Hanford, still on her mettle, went over to him, obliging her son and his fiancée to follow, and standing to one side of him, lifted an elegant hand.
‘This is the young lady whom Anthony intends to marry, Miss …?’ The introduction paused at a question appeared to her to be deliberately couched to make her feel ill at ease.
‘Glover, er, Geraldine,’ she prompted, instantly annoyed at herself. She’d intended to greet these people with easy dignity, her tone direct and composed. Instead her voice came out small as if swamped by all this show of wealth, which she supposed it was.
‘Miss Geraldine Glover,’ repeated Tony’s mother. ‘Miss Glover, this is my husband.’
He nodded his acknowledgement of her and Geraldine nodded back, now gaining control over her actions. She was damned if she would speak if he hadn’t the decency to address her.
She was asked how her journey was.
The conversation was polite, hardly that, she not knowing what to say, loath to speak of her background, theirs stilted, confined mostly to enquiries: how long had she known Anthony before they decided to get engaged? Emphasis lay on the word decided; she readily replied that it had been about a year and in saying so detected not so much a look as a feeling that she’d apparently jumped in pretty quick. How long had they been planning the wedding? Mrs Hanford’s eyes roamed towards her victim’s midriff, immediately making Geraldine seethe that the woman dared to imagine that this wedding had been designed in a frantic hurry to save a girl’s name. Was her father footing the bill for this wedding? And even as Geraldine lied with a curt nod, she knew that her inquisitor was calculating that the father of a girl from her background certainly wouldn’t be able to afford much. And so it went on, over tea and little afternoon sandwiches and cakes brought in by the young maid.
‘Who are you having as your groomsman?’ his mother asked Tony, who grinned easily, almost rudely. ‘None of my cousins, if that’s what you’re hinting, Mother.’
‘I hardly thought you would after the way you have behaved towards us, Anthony, cutting yourself off from us in the way you did.’
‘Tomfoolery!’ his father broke in. ‘All that education and you go and play the tomfool being a shopkeeper!’
‘I wanted to enjoy my hobby, see if I could make it pay its way.’
‘Hobby! Playing about with bits of coloured glass, like some child. You never have grown up, Anthony.’
‘I grew up quick enough in France, Father.’ Tony’s voice had adopted an edge, but his father didn’t appear to notice.
‘France apart, it seems it didn’t teach you anything.’
‘It taught me more than I ever wish to remember.’
‘Still tomfoolery – a fine profession laid before you for the taking and you turned your nose up at it. I’ve no understanding of you, throwing away a fine future after all the money we spent on your upbringing, your education. I wonder why I haven’t washed my hands of you long ago. If it were not for you wanting to get married … If your brother was alive, he would have—’
‘He isn’t alive, Father. He’s lying somewhere in some Ypres field and may not even be all in one piece.’
‘Stop it, this minute, sir, I will not have you discussing your brother in this manner. We’ve had enough sorrow. This is about you.’
‘Please, both of you!’ his mother was holding out her hands, and in that instance Geraldine saw a submissive wife in place of the haughty matriarch she’d first met.
Haughty still, she saw the cracks appear in that lofty armour as the man turned a face towards his wife, not even needing to speak, and the woman instantly fell silent. She might rule it over others, went the thought through Geraldine’s head, but in her marriage she cowed before this man, this important, learned solicitor of a husband whose intellect she would never aspire to; a woman of gentle upbringing, in her youth not deemed worthy to be taught as boys were taught, confined to learning the social graces designed to make her a good wife of a rich man and an accomplished hostess to his friends and business acquaintances. Geraldine felt almost sorry for her but seconds later she was looking directly at Geraldine almost as though venting her loss of dignity on her.
‘Anthony should have told us much earlier about you. The first we knew of this association was a week after he was engaged. It wasn’t good enough. Would you like a piece more cake with your tea, my dear?’ The unkindly remark was softened by an immediate display of etiquette so that she wasn’t sure if it was unkind or not – an accomplished way of putting her down as she a moment ago had been put down.
Tony must have sensed the small drama being played out by his mother. He came and put a hand on her arm – Geraldine couldn’t imagine him putting an arm about her shoulders as Wally did his mother, Mum giggling and after leaning towards him, straightening to give his cheek a playful slap before telling him not to be so sloppy.
‘I’ve promised an old wartime chum of mine to be my best man,’ Tony said lightly. ‘Better than having four cousins at each other’s throats because I’d chosen one above the others. I thought it best to be neutral.’
No one smiled at his little joke, and after a while Tony’s mother reluctantly asked whether they would be staying for dinner normally served at eight, thus making it late for them getting back to London. If ever there was a broad hint that they wouldn’t be staying the night, this had to be the one, thought Geraldine, glad when Tony said they had plans to eat at The Stag, the village inn they’d passed and that they’d stay there overnight and leave for London in the morning.
This was accepted without protest accept for a compressing of his mother’s already thin lips as she envisaged them booking only one room and cared not to contemplate what that meant. But Geraldine couldn’t have cared less what she thought, only too relieved that they hadn’t been invited to stay. She couldn’t have borne another hour under this roof.
She decided to be blunt as they took their leave of his parents. No point beating about the bush. She hoped never to see these people again.
‘I don’t like your people much,’ she said, and was surprised but happy to hear his reply, ‘Neither do I, much.’
Chapter Ten
When Geraldine finally came downstairs followed by Mavis her chief bridesmaid and Evie her other bridesmaid, it was to a house seething with relatives. At the sight of her, the buzz of voices ceased and instead came gasps of wonder while she, all smiles, gazed down at a sea of upturned faces.
‘You look lovely, dear.’ Dad’s sister Lydia was first to break the spell. Instantly everyone began pushing out of the two downstairs rooms to get into the narrow passageway to see how lovely she looked. It was Mum who had to start ushering the bride back up the stairs.
‘You shouldn’t of come down yet, Gel. And you should of known better, Mave, letting ’er come down. Yer know it’s unlucky for a bride ter be seen before she gets to the church.’
‘That’s the bridegroom, Mum,’ said Mavis. ‘It’s ’im what can’t see her.’
‘Well, it don’t matter, just you three get back up there. We all ’ave ter leave first. Then the bridesmaids, then yer dad’ll escort yer to the bridal car.’
‘Cars!’ Geraldine heard someone say almost scathingly as she turned to retrace her steps. ‘Fancy!’
And another voice in a whisper, but audible to her, ‘Posh, ain’t it?’
And
yet another, obviously not caring who heard: ‘Funny not seein’ a weddin’ breakfast laid out ready ter come back to. Bit silly if you ask me, ’avin’ it in an ’all instead of in yer ’ome. Waste of money if yer ask me.’
Mum, who’d followed her daughters up to her own bedroom where they’d been getting ready as it was the largest, closed the door firmly.
‘Don’t take no notice of them,’ she said. ‘It’s your day, Gel, you do what yer want.’
Now came the anxiety of waiting, with little else to do but prink herself while Mavis fiddled with the veil, making sure that the low circlet of wax orange blossom was sitting correctly just above her eyebrows, that the white satin skirt of her dress was falling properly just above her ankles, the scalloped hem of the tunic part lay just right, low on her hips, and that the V-neck wasn’t revealing too much bosom, though that being as flat as the present fashion dictated would not cause too many problems.
Slowly the hubbub from downstairs died away as one by one the guests left. Mum came up to collect the bridesmaids who left before the bride. Now, with only Geraldine and Dad left to wait for the bridal car, the house had fallen silent.
Never in her whole life had Geraldine known it as quiet as this. At night when the world fell silent, the house never was, Dad snoring audibly through the thin walls, the occasional cough, Evie and Mavis breathing heavily next to her, sighing, stirring, the bed shaking whenever they moved in their sleep, springs faintly creaking, low, muffled tones from Mum and Dad whenever he was obliged to get up to relieve himself, Mum muttering, he replying, his voice deep and resonant. Even when everyone was out, there were always sounds from next door, but not even that today. In the silence she heard her stomach give a tiny gurgle. She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast, but now she felt hungry.
