“Oh, that’s all right,” said Lucy wearily, wondering how TOLL knew it was them.
But that, of course, was what the exchange always said. And there had been no people. The flat was empty. She had been the only listener. His proofs were finished and he must have gone out.
She returned to her room, sick and cold with unreasonable disappointment, for which she scolded herself. There was now less than a day to get through before she would be with him for ever. There were only fourteen hours. At this time tomorrow they would be in bed, in a strange room that they had never seen before.
Her thoughts swerved and galloped away, as though they had come to the edge of a precipice. She had no misgivings, but she did not want to imagine all that beforehand, apprehending that something vital and fresh might be lost if she did. She could picture more distant scenes in her life with Patrick, but the weeks immediately in front of her were lost in a golden mist into which, even in thought, she would plunge tomorrow for the first time.
She turned from it to survey the past, and to remember that first meeting at the cocktail party when she had been introduced to Patrick and he had flashed a conquering smile at her, and how, then, the smile had vanished, had been replaced by a glance of astonished enquiry, of delight, as if to say: Is it you? At last, after all these years, is it really you? She had been so much afraid that he looked like that at everybody. But they had not been able to part, and had dined together in a smelly little inn, and walked afterwards for hours among canals and gas-works in a part of the town which she had never explored, until he helped her to climb over the garden wall into College. She had been afraid when they met by appointment next day. She had never dared to believe that it meant anything until he suddenly asked her to marry him. She had loved him from the first meeting, long before she knew that inner history, his disgust, his self-contempt, his degrading infatuation for Jane Lucas, his half-hearted schemes for escape, for another life. She did not love him because she knew all this: she knew all this because she loved him.
Before getting into bed she pulled from under her pillow a small rag doll, dressed like a Highlander and called McNab, which had shared her bed since she was four years old. For a long time she had believed that McNab could think and feel, and some suggestion of sentience had clung to him when she had discarded her other dolls. His button eyes stared at her reproachfully and she had not the heart to thrust him away. Even after that fancy expired she felt a sort of disloyalty to the past in disowning him: he had shared the whole of her remembered childhood, and until that was forgotten she was linked to him.
Very little of that childhood was dead to Lucy. She had enjoyed it so much and so many of her earliest pleasures still had power to enchant her. She could remember lying, as a very little girl, in long waving grass, looking up at the clouds in the sky, hearing a bumble-bee close to her ear, and lapped in a vast contentment. She still knew that satisfaction when she lay in summer grass and watched the clouds. The flap of her bare feet on hot sand as she ran down to bathe, the dancing tingle, the shrill treble clatter of the waves, were as exhilarating now as they had been ten years ago. A robin whistling in the bloomy autumn dusk could always fill her with delicious melancholy, wood smoke always stirred some undefinable memory, and the view from the top of any hill was a miracle. Her heart still shivered with excitement at the soft rustle of a curtain rising on a stage.
She was the same person that she had been when she found McNab in her Christmas stocking. She had learnt much; her pleasures had expanded, but her enjoyment was of the same intense quality. Experience had merely opened new worlds for her and taught her how to use her natural capacity for joy.
McNab therefore had remained under her pillow and accompanied her to Oxford, though she had concealed him from Melissa. But from Patrick he could not be concealed, and he must be left behind, for nobody takes a rag doll on their honeymoon. Some portion of the past must now be relinquished. She decided to put him into an ottoman which was full of various oddments, still unpacked but selected for preservation. If ever she and Patrick became famous botanists, McNab might become a relic and find immortality in a museum among other historic dolls. He should have a label:
McNAB. RAG DOLL circa 1930.
Formerly the property of DAME LUCY REILLY, O.B.E.
Tossing him into the ottoman and slamming the lid, she climbed into bed. If she could not sleep, she could at least relax and think of agreeable things. The present was too exciting. She went a long way back and thought of summer days on the Cherwell, the green shadows, the buttercup fields and the splash of a punt-pole. But an unpleasant rhythm disturbed the memory. It had been tugging at her ever since she came upstairs, though she would not listen. Now it forced itself upon her.
Brrr, Brrr … Brrr, Brrr … Brrr, Brrr….
By no effort could she escape from that dual pulse. The forlorn, unanswered summons rang on and on, through her thoughts, through her drowsing, through her dreams.
5
MELISSA had wrought well. Mr. Rawlings told his women next morning that she was a thoroughly nice, unspoilt girl. His wife knew better than to disagree, but a faint murmur of protest was wrung from Joan.
“Affected?” cried Mr. Rawlings. “Nonsense! She’s perfectly simple and natural.”
“I thought she was frightfully affected last night,” persisted Joan.
“I’m not aware that your opinion was asked. You might do worse than take a lesson from her. She’s so interested in anything one tells her.”
“Depends on if you’re a man or a woman,” asserted Mrs. Rawlings, rallying in defence of her young. “She’d listen to anything in trousers.”
This did Melissa no great disservice. He smirked and told Joan that a girl who listens intelligently is always attractive, before he went off to find Melissa and tell her about his golf handicap.
His women adjourned to Joan’s room where the sight of the bridesmaid’s dress, laid out on the bed, did nothing to sweeten their tempers. It was primrose-coloured and chosen to suit Melissa. They had protested, but Lucy had been adamant, assuring her mother that no colour really suited Joan and that the shell-pink, for which Mrs. Rawlings clamoured, would have been worse.
“I’ll never wear it again, never!” mourned Joan. “A hideous rag I wouldn’t be seen dead in. Honestly, Mummy, don’t you think Melissa is sickeningly affected?”
“There’s no other word for her,” agreed Mrs. Rawlings. “You can see where Lucy’s picked up all those airs and graces. I always said those posh friends would do her no good.”
“When they came floating out to tea yesterday I nearly laughed. I nearly burst out laughing.”
“I always have said, and I always will say, that Lucy needs her bottom smacking. She’s so dreadfully conceited. Of course, she’s been spoilt. Nothing’s ever been good enough for her. Such nonsense, sending her to this college, when she could have got a job and been off her mother’s hands years ago. And now …”
Mrs. Rawlings was obliged to pause, for Lucy’s marriage was hardly a retributive climax.
“Now,” she said darkly, “it remains to be seen. Have you sewed in dress preservers?”
“No.”
“Well, you ought to do. You know how you perspire.”
“I don’t care. I’ll never wear it again. I’ve said.”
“When your father knows what it cost, you’ll get nothing more out of him for a month of Sundays. Sit down and sew them in now, do! There won’t be time after lunch.”
“I wish it was all over. I feel frightfully nervous. I don’t know from Adam what I’m supposed to do.”
“You do what the high and mighty Melissa does, and for goodness’ sake hold yourself up. She’s taking Lucy’s flowers, though you’re the one that ought to, being a relative. She won’t be nervous. I asked her if she’d ever been a bridesmaid before and she said she’d lost count how often!”
“Three times a bridesmaid never a bride,” quoted Joan in brighter tones.
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Melissa had spoken no more than the truth. She had been walking up aisles behind brides all her life, ever since the age of three, when she had pinched a little train-bearer in front of her. She knew all the ropes. She had already tried her yellow shoes in order to be sure that they were comfortable. She had practised a new way of rolling up her little hat. When she tripped into Lucy’s room she looked so cool and composed that the atmospheric storm raging there abated a trifle.
Lucy’s head and her veil seemed to have sworn an eternal feud. Repeated attempts to unite them had reduced her to frenzy.
“Look at me,” she cried, “look at me! Nearly two o’clock and a head like a hearth-brush! Why, Melissa! How lovely you look! I’m glad we settled on yellow.”
“It is a success,” agreed Mrs. Carmichael, who was also as near frenzy as her immense self-control would permit. “And your hair is so nice. I do like it like that.”
“But your hat!” returned the courteous Melissa. “I love the way it frames your face.”
Mrs. Carmichael flushed with pleasure. Nobody had taken any notice of her hat, though the time which she had spent in choosing it had been as hard to spare as the money.
“Isn’t it lovely?” said Lucy, looking rather ashamed of herself. “But this incarnadined veil, Melissa! I’ve pinned it on, and pinned it on, and pulled it off, and pulled it off!”
“It looks as if you had. Sit down! No … don’t crush your dress all under you. That’s better. Now put a towel over your shoulders … oh thank you, Mrs. Carmichael….”
Melissa set to work on Lucy’s roughened hair with a comb, and brought her curls to order.
“It’s not my hair,” wailed Lucy. “It’s getting the veil to sit straight. I’m paid out for saying I wouldn’t have a wreath. I thought a sort of vague cloud round my head would look nice, and it went perfectly well when I practised it…. Do hurry up! It’s getting late and Patrick says if I keep him waiting he won’t marry me. He says he’ll give me ten minutes, and then walk out. Skewer it down with hairpins at the top first. Oh! There’s Uncle Bob shouting! The cars must be there. Oh, do hurry!”
“It’s finished. It’s done. Look at yourself.”
Lucy turned to the glass and saw the misty cloud, just as she had wanted it to be. She shook her head to see if the pins were firm.
“You angel! You genius!”
A peremptory bellow was heard below:
“Joan! May! Gwennie! Miss Hallam!”
In renewed panic Lucy thrust them from the room, imploring them to be off, since she could not set out for the church until ten minutes after they did.
“And if Patrick tries to walk out before I get there, sit on his head. Oh, Mother, what is it?”
“I was just looking to be sure I have my latch-key.”
“You won’t need a latch-key. Patrick and I will get back first. The head waiter will open the door and after that it will stay open. Do go! Tell Uncle Bob I’ll come down in seven minutes. Seven!”
She drove them downstairs. There was a little commotion as they went out with Mrs. Rawlings, Joan and Stephen. Car doors were slammed in the road. A silence fell upon Hill View, in which Mr. Rawlings could be heard clearing his throat impatiently, in the hall.
Lucy put her watch on the dressing-table and sat down to wait for seven minutes. She spent the first three of them in remorse for having been so sharp with her mother. There would be no opportunity now to apologise. They might not be alone together again for weeks.
She snatched up a pencil and pad and scribbled hastily:
My dearest, darling Mother, I love you more than tongue can tell. You know that, don’t you? Every year I live I come to understand more what you’ve done for me. You are the best mother anybody ever had. God bless you. LUCY.
This note she took into her mother’s room and put it on the pillow, just under the counterpane. Tonight, hours after she had gone, it would be found, when Mrs. Carmichael went to bed.
A particularly loud harrrrmph! in the hall reminded her of her Uncle Bob and the seven minutes. She rushed back to her room for her bouquet, gathered up her skirts, and rustled downstairs.
Mr. Rawlings had never been fond of Lucy, but he was touched by her appearance as she came down to him. He was a sentimental man — her bridal white, with its poignant associations, transformed his tiresome niece. She was a virgin, tender, young and lovely, by whom he must now act a father’s part. He handed her and her flowers into the waiting car with affectionate care, and when he had taken his place beside her he patted her hand.
“I wish,” he said huskily, “that your father could have been sitting here now, Lucy. I wish he could have seen you.”
Lucy smiled at him abstractedly and asked what time it was.
“Ample time,” he assured her. “We shall be there at two thirty-five precisely. Five minutes late is correct.”
Lucy smiled again and looked at the familiar houses slipping past. A couple of turns brought them to the road where the church was. Cars were parked along the kerb. Here was the awning and the red carpet and the crowd on either side of it. Everything flowed on. The car stopped, and Uncle Bob was out, and she was out, and a camera clicked. She was rustling up the red carpet to the porch where open doors gave a glimpse of yellow dresses, and white-clad choristers, and her mother’s worried face peeping over somebody’s shoulder. The easy flow of events jerked to a standstill, for this was wrong. It was quite wrong that her mother should be hovering about in the porch. She should be in the front pew. How stupid! And how badly Melissa was made up! Surely she had not looked like this at the house — the rouge standing out on ashy cheeks and startled eyes staring under the little hat? Melissa’s eyes! So horrified…. And Mother clutching at Uncle Bob. Something was wrong.
“What?” boomed Uncle Bob. “Not here?”
“Lucy darling … there’s a little delay…. Patrick isn’t here yet.”
Her mother was saying this. Melissa had come up and taken her arm.
“Stephen has just run round to the White Hart.”
“Never heard such a thing in my life! Inexcusable!”
“Has anybody gone for him? Has anybody gone for him?”
This was from Aunt May, who came darting down the aisle and pushed Joan’s hat straight.
“Shouldn’t have let her come. Shouldn’t have let her arrive till he was here. Why didn’t you …”
“Stephen’s gone.”
“Never heard of such a thing. Keeping Lucy waiting….”
Lucy interrupted them all in a loud voice which startled them, so that they turned and stared at her.
“No, that’s all right. He never knows what the time is.”
“And how long have we got to stand here?” asked Uncle Bob indignantly.
“I shan’t stand. I shall sit.”
She rustled into the last pew and beckoned Melissa to come and sit with her. Mrs. Carmichael joined them, biting her lip, but Joan and Mrs. Rawlings remained, popeyed and whispering, by the font. The church was full of whispering and rustling and people turning to stare. Canon Ryder, who had been waiting at the chancel steps, now came down towards them, and Mr. Rawlings hastened to meet him amid a covey of choirboys who, in a panic, had decided to get into the chancel. He turned and waved them away, exclaiming indignantly:
“Go back, you boys! Stay where you are! Go back, I say!”
Lucy giggled, though she was furious with Patrick. When she had forgiven him, when he had apologised properly, she would describe this scene to him and he would laugh. But it was too bad of him.
Running feet were heard outside. Stephen appeared, crimson and breathless.
“He’s not at the White Hart. He’s never been there. They never arrived there at all.”
The church became several degrees colder.
“Must have been held up on the road.”
“Their lunch was ordered for one o’clock.”
“They’d have telephoned …”
Among all the
voices there was one saying it now:
“An accident …”
“A motor accident …”
“They were coming in Reilly’s car …”
“… Serious … or they’d have telephoned …”
The church pillars wavered and swung like curtains in an icy fog.
“Lucy! Put your head between your knees! Melissa! Press her head down between her knees.”
Relentless hands pressed Lucy’s veiled head between her knees and held it there much longer than was necessary. A fainting bride, she thought, should be allowed to sink backwards gracefully; she should not be treated like a sick school-child. But at last the pressure slackened and she sat up. A babel of voices asked if she was all right and a man’s hand appeared over her shoulder with a glass of water.
“I’m quite all right,” she stated. “What had I better do?”
Nobody seemed to know. Mr. Rawlings was talking about the police and the A.A. and telephones and enquiries concerning accidents on the Kingston By-Pass. All sorts of people were making suggestions. The whole congregation were now pushing up to the west end of the church.
Melissa’s cool voice cut through the clamour.
“I think,” she said, “that we should take Lucy home.”
Several voices disagreed. Mrs. Rawlings pointed out that Patrick might still arrive at any moment. Surely it would be better to wait a little longer. An old lady called Miss Betteridge, a patient of Mrs. Carmichael’s, was telling everybody that Patrick had probably gone to the wrong church. There were three churches in Gorling. He might be waiting at any of them. Canon Ryder was looking at his watch, and reminding them that there could be no wedding after three o’clock.
Lucy came out of her pew, pushed through the gaping choirboys, ran out of the church and down the red carpet, and jumped into the car before anybody could stop her. She wanted to get home before they told her that Patrick was dead. One part of her knew it already and had nearly fainted, but the whole of her mind had not yet caught up with the idea.
The party in the church had been so much taken aback by her sudden exit that nobody followed her. She sat alone in the car while the crowd, which had never seen a wedding like this before, surged up against the windows. Cameras clicked and flashed. Miss Betteridge came bustling out of the church and thrust her head into the car.
Lucy Carmichael Page 4
