The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘Yes, but I’m not anyone else, am I!’ She’d lobbed it back, twice as loud. ‘That’s why you married me, remember? That’s what you said: I was different,’ the word spoken with contempt. His word, chosen especially for her, and there she was, ridiculing it.

  This I desperately didn’t want to hear. This was between the two of them in a way that wasn’t true of decisions as to where to spend Lady Day or even where to set up home, which were, fundamentally, mere practicalities. This went to the very heart of the pair of them: it was about what had made them the couple that they were, or had been. It was about what had drawn them to each other and sealed them together. Katherine was different and he loved her for it; that had been the deal, was the implication. But he’d reneged on it, was her accusation.

  ‘Can you remember that, Edward?’ She gave a hoot of humourless laughter, scorning the boy he’d been. ‘But then you got me home and decided better of it.’

  ‘Stop this,’ he said. ‘Will you just stop it.’

  And I recalled, suddenly, dizzyingly, how different Katherine had indeed been in the beginning, that light in her eyes and the lightness in her step, and there on the stairs I felt for all of us. Why hadn’t she gone back, when Edward returned from France, to how she’d once been? Why hadn’t that happened?

  ‘If it’s “anyone else” that you want, you should’ve married my sister.’

  ‘Katherine, listen. Listen—’ He might’ve grabbed her wrist, her forearm, he might’ve been tussling with her. ‘Please just listen to me.’

  She was trying to make a break for it, and sweat bloomed on me. Run, I told myself, Just do it, make a dash for it.

  ‘You are a wonderful wife.’ But he sounded exhausted, going through the motions. ‘You’re all a husband could wish for, and I’m very sorry if somehow I give you the impression that I feel otherwise, but all I am asking is that you do something, occasionally, for the good of this family.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ she was outraged, ‘how much I put into this family. You’re off, swanning around, but I’m stuck here with your bloody mother!’

  That was unfair; my mother would have been upset to hear it. Yes, she was irritating, but she was good with Katherine’s babies. And was Katherine going to say something about me, as well? Your bloody sister, Jane; your bloody useless stupid lump of a sister. I began sidling down the stairs. Run, just run.

  Edward sighed emphatically. ‘You get on well enough with my father, though, don’t you?’

  There was a pause, then, ‘Oh, Edward, will you stop it.’

  ‘No, you stop it.’ Pathetic, childlike, in sheer frustration.

  ‘I have!’ Katherine screamed, suddenly, at him. ‘I have. Don’t you understand that? Can’t you understand it? I have. We have. We did stop.’

  If I didn’t quite know what it was that she’d just said, nor did I stop to wonder. I didn’t have time because the row was over and she was going to come charging through that door. I had less than a heartbeat left in which to disappear, that was all I could think. And there was only silence, the terrible silence of that room, in which to do it. I could have slipped down in all the tumult but – stupid, stupid – I’d left it too late. Nevertheless, I had to do it and panic took me down: a slew of panicky, fluttery paces, my breathing as loud, to me, as my footfalls.

  At the bottom of their stairs, I drew back into the adjacent stairwell – my own – as Katherine thumped down and then across the oriel, towards Hall. Then came the crash of the Hall door.

  My legs were shaking and my chest hurt; I dropped to sit on a step and heard Edward. He was slower, in no rush to go anywhere. I listened for him to cross the oriel, then heard nothing more: he’d slipped into the parlour, I presumed, probably on his way through into chapel.

  I emerged to discover that I’d misjudged; he hadn’t left the oriel, but was sitting on the window seat. We were facing each other, and my breath reversed, bounding back into my chest but I could hardly step back into the stairwell; I was going to have to brazen it out and walk past him. He’d know I’d have heard the shouting: even if I’d been up in my room rather than on the staircase, I’d have heard the shouting, if not the exact words, then the commotion. At least he wasn’t looking at me, at least there was that; his head was bowed. Careful to walk casually, I was in fact with each and every step anticipating his glance, rehearsing in my mind the rueful smile that I’d give before looking rapidly away again. But he didn’t look up. He knew I was there but he didn’t look up at me, didn’t acknowledge me, and in turn I obliged him by keeping my eyes averted. And, actually, I’d already seen more than enough. I’d seen my brother bereft of hope, which was something I’d never seen nor even imagined possible.

  7

  Was it, I wondered, about those poems? But why on earth would Edward be bothered by poems? Katherine had said he hadn’t been ‘terribly pleased’ to hear of them, but lately, I knew, neither of them had been terribly pleased with each other in general.

  All that day, I tried to recall exactly what I’d heard: ‘You get on well enough with my father, though, don’t you?’ It had been his response to Katherine’s dismissal of our mother as ‘your bloody mother’, though, which – surely – made it fair enough, because that had been uncalled-for, harsh. Edward probably felt that his wife could do with being a bit more like his mother. Less like his father – following the dogs around the gardens in all weathers, pontificating on poetry – and more like his mother. Katherine was diligent enough at first glance but my brother knew, as did I, that her heart didn’t lie in wifeliness, which was probably worrying him now that he needed to be showing off his wife at court.

  He was elsewhere for the rest of that day, and must have gone to the barber at some point because at supper he was clean-shaven. After supper, he didn’t join us in the parlour but for some reason went to the stables in search, he said, of Mr Wallensis. Katherine had looked tired all day, and had been busy with the boys, but when I offered to go to the chandlery for a couple more candles – I could see my father was having difficulty in reading his paperwork – she rose to accompany me, which set me on my guard. What did she want with me? As soon as we were on the other side of the door, her sigh confirmed it: she had something to say. I felt conspicuous, had to remind myself that she had no idea I’d overheard her and Edward arguing: I knew nothing, I reminded myself.

  ‘I do wish you hadn’t told Edward about those poems,’ she said.

  So did I.

  She didn’t seem to want to apportion blame, though; on the contrary, she’d said it with a faint, forced jauntiness, as if what I’d done couldn’t have been helped.

  Unfortunately, she was wrong about that: I’d said it in unkindness, not that she knew it and I hoped she never would. But I’d had no idea that it would cause such trouble (and why, I wondered, had it?) and I was glad of the opportunity to apologise. ‘I’m really sorry, Katherine.’

  We walked in step through Hall. ‘Oh, well,’ she said with another sigh, but this time taking stock and accepting it, ‘he knows now.’

  He certainly does.

  I did contemplate raising it, asking her why the poems were so contentious between the pair of them, but then we’d turned together into the screens passage and, coming to the door to the kitchen courtyard, she halted so that I had to do the same. Looking me in the eye, she said, ‘I did love him, you know.’ She wanted it said; she needed it understood. ‘I really did love him,’ and there was defiance in the tilt of her chin, in case I tried to take issue with it.

  No chance of that. I nodded, feeling uncomfortable, because it had been a long time since she’d talked to me intimately. That tone of hers came as an echo from a time that had passed and – I realised with a pang – even if I could go back there, I doubted I would.

  She dropped my gaze to look away at nothing, the floor, walls, ceiling. ‘Do,’ she corrected herself, ’do love him; still do. Of course I do. You don’t stop loving someone just because. . .’

 
No, of course not. I folded my arms to hold on to my own warmth; I wanted to be fetching those candles and hurrying back to the parlour. It’d been a long day; it was February, it was Lent, I was exhausted. I didn’t want to be here in this draughty passageway, subjected to this; I wasn’t going to be drawn in. For a time, I’d been ashamed of putting myself so readily at Katherine’s mercy in that first year she’d lived with us, but by then I knew the reason was that I’d been fifteen to her twenty-one, and, realistically, where else than at her mercy could I have been?

  But that time was well and truly gone. I turned to the door and braced myself for the chill. Behind me, she was saying, ‘And he loved me. I do know that.’

  The door opened to owl conversation: a pair side by side somewhere up on the roof, their rusty-hinge screeches solicitously paced.

  ‘But nothing happened.’ She took the door from me to hold it open so that I could have some light from the bracket in the passageway. ‘But, well, you know that.’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, nor was I particularly bothered. The sky was sheathed in stars. Katherine shivered extravagantly.

  ‘And I did try, with Edward.’ She turned indignant. ‘I really tried, and there was nothing I wanted more than for us to be happy.’

  Four or five quick steps across the courtyard and I reached the chandlery door, pushed on it, reached inside, felt for a shelf, a box, a handful of candles.

  ‘But he never wanted me.’

  From the corner of my eye, I detected her shrug: He never wanted me, simple as that. And I wondered: could he have loved her yet somehow not wanted her? Because he had loved her, I was sure of it. I didn’t know; I didn’t pretend to know the ways of those who were married.

  And then she said, evenly, as if she herself were in awe of it, ‘When Edward came home from France and I had to walk away from your father and go back to being Edward’s wife, it was like being buried alive.’

  Buried alive? That did pull me up sharp, but when I turned, the light from the doorway behind her made her darker than dark; her face was invisible to me. Walked away from my father, going back to being Edward’s wife: yes, I remembered it, I felt sure I did; I remembered my father ushering Katherine forward, across the outer courtyard, under everyone’s gaze; remembered her touch to Edward’s jacket and his small kiss to her cheek. Katherine sighed. ‘He said to me, “You’re Edward’s wife,"’ an odd little skip in the phrase as if she didn’t quite believe it, as if it were a joke or a curiosity and she needed to hear it, to listen to it, to consider it.

  8

  Edward didn’t come into the parlour that evening, nor, that night, did he go to his room, their room – instead sleeping in the room that was now often solely Antony’s but which had been Edward’s, too, before he’d married. Thomas wasn’t there: knowing Edward was due home, he’d yet again contrived to stay at the Dormers’, this time for several days either side of the Dormers’ forthcoming St Valentine’s celebration. Antony would have been unaware of his surprise roommate because he was asleep. And Edward was gone before first light. That, then, was why he’d been to see Mr Wallensis the previous evening: to arrange an early departure. No one knew where he was headed. ‘Business,’ he’d told Mr Wallensis, ‘four or five days.’ If it had been business, my father would have known, but he, it seemed, was as mystified as the rest of us.

  Something was up – badly up – and the unspoken suspicion in the household was that it was to do with Katherine. No one else had overheard any row, as far as I knew, but everyone was well aware that relations between the pair of them were strained and never more so that in the previous couple of days. She ceded nothing, though, keeping busy around the house, toting her boys on her hips. She said no more to me on the subject of Edward, for which I was grateful. All we could do, any of us, was await Edward’s return and hope that the situation, whatever it was, would blow over.

  Late on the fifth evening, after the children had gone to bed, and Father James too, with a cold, Edward came striding in on us in the parlour with, it seemed, an announcement at the ready. My mother’s breathless exclamation – ‘Edward!’ – was ignored as he positioned himself at the fireplace to command our attention. He looked nervous, though, his Adam’s apple jittery, and at a disadvantage in that he was unshaven and, inevitably, travel-grimy. His nervousness made me nervous; I laid aside my stitching, steadied myself for whatever was coming. His gaze moved around us, his audience, but alighted on no one in particular; he wouldn’t be deflected.

  Composing himself by linking his hands behind his back, he began, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this—’ And evidently he was, because then he faltered, exhaling a pent-up breath which was itself shaky. For all the formality, he was distressed, and my heart contracted to see it of him as much as in anticipation of what we might be about to hear.

  He drew himself up to start again. ‘I’m sorry, but my marriage—’

  He stopped, unable to go on. Whatever he was trying to say, he’d obviously rehearsed it and had taken a run at it, but still couldn’t do it, couldn’t say it. What was he doing, standing there and trying to tell us about his marriage? We all knew the marriage was troubled, but that, surely, was personal, for him and Katherine alone.

  He looked at the floor in utter defeat and uttered, simply, but loudly and clearly, the allegation that would change everything for all of us: ‘Johnny’s not my son.’

  No one breathed; it had no impact for a moment because we were waiting for it to make sense, for him to say something more so that it’d make sense, because as it stood it certainly didn’t. Perhaps he’d spoken in code, I thought wildly. Perhaps what he’d said, the actual words he’d used, had a completely unrelated meaning; he’d said, ‘Johnny’s not my son,’ but to convey something entirely different, which everyone else in the room except me understood.

  But then I got it, or I told myself I did: he was ill. Yes, that must be it: he’d come back home delirious. Because sometimes people said strange things, had strange ideas, when they had a fever, didn’t they? And how on earth was he managing to stand there, my poor sick brother, on his own two feet, in front of that fire? I felt a rush of love or pity, a rush of feeling for him, for probably the last ever time. I wanted to be up there, taking hold of him, helping him, wanted to be doing something, because poor Edward, poor, poor Edward, Edward of all people to be showing himself up in such a manner. If it were anyone else up there in trouble, he’d be the first to their aid.

  And then, thank God, my mother was coming to the rescue. ‘Edward—’ And saying it just right, gently, with that characteristic comforting rustle of her gown as she sat forward. I knew what she was going to say next: You ‘re very tired . . .

  But he didn’t let her, he talked over her. ‘I’ve been to see Katherine’s father—’

  That was where he’d been?

  ‘No.’ And this was Katherine, belatedly, and, actually, I’d forgotten about her. Edward’s claim had been so bizarre as to have no more consequence, to my mind, for her than for any of us.

  But she was putting a stop to it. ‘Stop it.’

  None of my mother’s reticence, and of course not, I told myself, no, of course not, because this was what needed to be done. She was still sitting on her stool, but forward, lurched, close to falling, her lips grey and eyes stark. We’d all turned to her, even the dogs. Whatever was happening, it was happening between Edward and Katherine now, and the rest of us were spectators.

  Edward, though, ignored his wife, even taking strength from his pretence that she wasn’t there, becoming more businesslike, brisk. ‘And he’s unwilling to take her back, so I’ve had to—’

  ‘Edward!’ Katherine sprang up, outraged.

  ‘—make other arrangements.’

  She advanced on him: to do what, I couldn’t imagine, but in any case I tensed hard, my chest tight. My father rose, shadowed by Bear, to intervene, but doing it slowly to play it down, making something of wincing at his stiffness and, in a r
easonable tone, he said, ‘Edward—’

  Edward whirled to him. ‘Don’t you dare say a word.’ Swift, low, vicious, the lapse in composure was quite obscene.

  Beside me, Elizabeth drew her breath through her teeth as if suffering a wounding; as for me, I couldn’t breathe at all.

  My mother was horrified – ‘Edward!’ – all caution gone.

  Katherine demanded of Edward, ‘What are you doing? Have you gone mad?’ and her own breathing was ragged, as if she’d been running.

  Badly shaken, my father had stopped in his tracks, but my mother drew herself up and stepped into the breach, suddenly impressive. ‘Edward,’ she spoke quietly but with considerable resonance, ‘I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you but you do not bring it in front of us like this.’

  My mother was going to save the day: whatever it was that was wrong, I told myself, it was about to be over. My mother could do it. I’d never seen Edward in such a state but she had: she’d seen him when he was a little boy, gripped by unreasonable notions.

  He answered her with a firm, cool, ‘This is family business.’

  ‘No,’ she was just as assertive, ‘it isn’t. This, whatever it is, is for the two of you to—’

  He turned emphatically to address Elizabeth and me, unable to talk to his mother because she refused to hear it, and refusing to speak to his father or to Katherine. It was to Elizabeth and me that he said, ‘Of course, I don’t know about Ned—’

  My father caught Katherine by the wrist, a good catch, lightning quick, almost an act of violence in itself in its speed and surety; he stopped the blow, arrested her hand before it smacked into Edward’s face.

  ‘Jesus,’ Elizabeth was moved to murmur, sounding almost appreciative and, appalling though it was, it had indeed been something to see.

  Katherine raged at him, ‘How can you say such a terrible, terrible thing?’

  Until then, I hadn’t really taken it in, but she was right: what he’d claimed was the very worst accusation he could possibly make, damning both her and the boys, utterly damning them.