The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  My father still had hold of Katherine’s arm, foreshortening her lunge at Edward.

  ‘You are sick!’ she yelled at her husband.

  ‘I am?’ It had broken the spell for him; he could no longer resist responding to her, and was almost gleeful, ‘I am?’

  Mum turned to Elizabeth and me, and said, calmly, ‘Girls—’ Go.

  ‘No.’ Edward was just as resolute. ‘They need to hear this. This is family—’

  ‘No one needs to hear this. Girls . . .’ And she gestured towards the door.

  But when I attempted to move, I couldn’t; my legs turned heavy, refused me. And Elizabeth actually sat back, arms folded, unbudgeable.

  My father had recovered himself sufficiently to try again. ‘Edward—’

  ‘But. . .’ Edward was thus goaded into continuing. ‘Ned, I’m afraid, is by the by, because—’

  Katherine spun around and spoke to us all. ‘Don’t listen to him.’

  She was still frantic, but something of Edward’s brisk, undemonstrative tone had come into her own; she’d decided to play him at his own game. For me to oblige her, though, to refuse to listen to Edward, was impossible. What he’d said couldn’t be ignored: why would he have made such a dreadful accusation? I’d never imagined that my brother could be vindictive, but was that what I was witnessing?

  Then he asked her, ‘You’d really have gone on with this lie?’ And suddenly all the antagonism was gone; it was a genuine question, anguished. ‘You’d have kept this up? All our lives?’ His eyes searched hers. ‘You’d have done that to this family?’ Sheer disbelief, and real sadness. Whatever it was that he was claiming of Katherine, I saw, he did truly believe it; he hadn’t made that accusation for effect. He believed it, but, of course, he’d got the wrong idea somewhere along the line. How, though? Edward never got wrong ideas. He certainly never got wrong ideas and then voiced them so horrendously publicly.

  We were all listening for Katherine’s answer, all we Seymours, spellbound. She said, evenly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ but it struck me as unconvincing; she was having to make an effort to hold steady. I wanted to believe her, but couldn’t, quite: I could see she was testing him, testing the water. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment and I had the sense that he was giving her the chance to admit to something. She didn’t take him up on it, instead repeating, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He looked to the rest of us with a regretful sigh and I realised he was going to tell us, and I both very much wanted to know and very much didn’t. Edward appeared resigned to us having to know and to his having to be the one to tell us.

  He said, ‘Katherine had a love affair’ – derisive – ‘while I was in France, of which, I’m sorry to say, Johnny is the result.’

  Well, I knew instantly that he was wrong, and the relief was wonderful. There’d been no love affair, I knew, while he was away: I remembered only too well that awful time. How could I forget? I could swear there’d been no love affair. Katherine had pined hard for him and it was me more than anyone who’d had to weather it, slap bang up against her foul moods. She’d been no woman in love back then, I was certain of it, and this notion of Edward’s would have been laughable if it hadn’t just caused such an altercation. Katherine, too: she closed her eyes and exhaled, her own sense of relief obvious. And my parents: shaking their heads, knowing that there’d somehow been a huge misunderstanding. For just a moment longer, we still had hope.

  Katherine said, ‘That is absurd, Edward.’

  But that was when he came up with what he had on her: ‘“It did stop.”’ He was quoting, and I recognised the words. ‘“We did stop.” Your words, Katherine,’ he reminded her, triumphantly, ‘your exact words.’

  I remembered them being said, but hadn’t understood their relevance at the time and still didn’t. As for Katherine, her eyes widened at their impact; she was surprised. An incisor crept briefly onto her lower lip. ‘That had nothing to do with Johnny.’

  What didn’t?

  She’d said it softly, trying to make it for Edward alone. ‘And it was over before—’

  What was?

  My mother turned abruptly towards Elizabeth and me; she got that far but then words failed her.

  ‘But not long enough before.’ Edward’s mouth was a line and he stared his wife down.

  She more than matched him, though, stepping up to him, gaining ground on him, her own eyes narrowed. ‘And for you even to think it.’ The words reeked of disgust.

  I couldn’t make sense of any of it; my heart was hammering.

  ‘What “love affair"?’ Elizabeth piped up, sceptical. ‘What “love affair"?’

  My sister-in-law and brother looked at her as if they’d both forgotten she was there. Moments ago, Edward had made something of addressing her but now all he could manage for her was a mere, ‘It doesn’t matter what love affair,’ before turning back to his wife and appealing to her as if the rest of us weren’t there and agog. ‘You know, you know that Johnny—’

  ‘Oh, but I think it does matter.’ Elizabeth was cheerfully incredulous.

  And all strength to her, I felt: for once, I was impressed by my sister, even awed by her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Edward seethed, pointedly refusing to look at her. ‘It’s over, I’m satisfied of that, and – I can tell you – it’d benefit no one here to have the subject aired. What matters is the practical problem that we’re left with, which is that Johnny isn’t my son.’

  But that was ridiculous, and my father put his head in his hands, my mother put a hand on his arm. So obviously baffled, they simply didn’t know where to start.

  But Katherine did. ‘What?’ She rained scorn on him, ’so, for two years he is your son, he can be your son, there’s no problem with that darling little boy being your son, and then all of a sudden he can’t be?’

  She threw up her hands, despairing of him.

  ‘But I didn’t know, then, did I?’ This near-howl of frustration from Edward brought the other two dogs to their feet, so that all of them were a-skitter. ‘I didn’t know! All this time,’ he marvelled, ‘all this time, I’ve been thinking, “How come?” How come Johnny arrives at the end of August and he’s such a big, healthy baby? How can that happen? It’s a kind of miracle, isn’t it?’ And he widened his eyes, to parody his naivety. ‘Oh, weren’t we lucky! Weren’t we blessed! Because there really could be no other explanation, could there?’

  He was shouting: Edward, whom I’d never known to raise his voice, and my own blood clamoured inside my head. ‘Because what other explanation could there be? Perhaps I was stupid but, you know, Katherine, it never once occurred to me that I couldn’t leave you alone for a couple of months with my own father.’

  Her intake of breath was sharp enough to hurt her.

  Our father? For a moment, I was even more lost.

  But my father wasn’t: ‘Edward!’

  Nor my mother: ‘Edward!’

  ‘Papa?’ Elizabeth sang it out: it was madder than she’d hoped, and she gave it less than no credence.

  And somewhere in all that, and to my horror, I got it.

  Katherine recovered herself to roar, ‘How dare you make such a vile insinuation! Your father behaved impeccably and honourably and for you to think otherwise—’

  ‘My father,’ Edward was yelling back at her, but jabbing an accusatory finger in his father’s direction, ‘had an affair with my wife! Just how is that “honourable"?’

  I wasn’t sure I was still properly alive, breathing, on my cushion, in the parlour. Was this actually happening? Was it possible for such a thing as Edward had said to be said and for us all to hear it and the following moment to come rolling along as normal, as if nothing much had occurred? Well, if time itself hadn’t stopped, my mother had, her hands to her face and her eyes fixed wide on Edward.

  My father was within a whirl of distressed dogs, reaching for them to calm them, but he spoke up to
put Edward right: ‘Edward, this is absolutely—’

  ‘Stop saying “affair",’ Katherine cut across, furiously contemptuous. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Son—’

  Edward turned his back on our father, reserving his ire for Katherine. ‘Oh, sorry, what was it like? I’m afraid I’m not up on the finer distinctions.’

  This was about the poems, surely, I realised; incredible though it was, this had to be about the poems. But how could it be about the poems? Poems! What on earth was the matter with Edward? I stood up, if spectacularly shakily. It was me who’d told him about the poems: in that sense, this, whatever it was, was my doing, so somehow I had to try to undo it. They were just poems: I’d even seen them.

  Edward was busy warning his mother against his wife. ‘Here it comes: the denial. More lies.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m not denying it,’ Katherine countered, hotly.

  That, he hadn’t expected. Nor, of course, had any of us. I stopped, only half-standing. My mother’s hands moved to her mouth.

  My father was at the door, ushering the dogs into the oriel. ‘Katherine—’ He sounded exasperated.

  She didn’t acknowledge him. ‘Why would I deny it?’ she asked Edward, defiant. ‘Yes, he wrote me some poems.’

  Poems, yes – you tell him – and my panic subsided just a little, so that I began to sit back down.

  ‘I don’t lie.’ She began to circle him, as if inspecting him. ‘I’m not the one around here who lies. My feelings for your father were genuine, Edward, and I won’t deny them, I’m not ashamed of them. But that’s not something you can understand, is it? Genuine feelings.’

  Now what was she saying? I had a horrible suspicion that, stuck halfway between sitting and standing, I was making a sound, a kind of keening, but couldn’t quite hear over the thumping of my heart. What I did know, for certain, was that Katherine had to stop speaking. She’d said enough.

  Not in her opinion, though, she hadn’t. ‘You think love’s something to be ashamed of? Oh, but yes, you do think that, don’t you. But,’ her face veering to his, ‘nothing happened.’

  I’d heard that from her before – in the kitchen courtyard, just a few nights before – but only now did it dawn on me what she meant. For you even to think such a thing, yet there we all were, poor us, thinking it, because she was insisting that we think it. I sat down. My father’s opening of the door for the dogs was doing nothing to alleviate the unbearable heat of the room, and vomit reared to scorch the back of my throat.

  Haughtily, Katherine refuted the accusation with her insistence, ‘I am your wife, Edward.’ Then, ‘Why don’t you ask your father? Ask him if anything actually happened,’ and she gestured across the parlour at our father, which meant that she did, at last, look at him, but there was nothing in the look, it was neutral, practical, devoid of anything unsaid.

  My father didn’t return the look, instead addressing Edward, ‘You have this wrong, Edward, completely wrong,’ but in that same instant it occurred to Katherine that this wouldn’t suffice, because her father-in-law was hardly a disinterested party.

  She’d need someone else to back her up, and that was how she came to nominate me: ‘Ask her.’

  Me?

  ‘She’ll tell you.’

  Edward frowned. This was mere diversion, as far as he was concerned, but my mother slid her stunned stare to me and Elizabeth sat forward, fascinated. And Katherine: her coppery eyes were wide and clear in mine, as if to hold me to something. ‘She’ll tell you.’ It was Edward to whom she spoke but me to whom she looked, unwavering, hopeful.

  Closing the door to return to us, my father began again, ‘Nothing of the kind,’ but faltered at the silence around which the rest of us were stuck: me on one side and everyone else on the other. I was going to have to bridge that silence, even if I wouldn’t be telling them anyone anything they didn’t already know.

  I said, ‘Nothing happened,’ although in barely more than a whisper because I hated to be saying it at all: it simply didn’t need saying, it was absurd to be saying it; it was no more than a prompt to Edward.

  ‘Edward,’ – please, stop this – ‘nothing happened.’ There I was, imploring him, my brother of whom I didn’t recall ever before having asked anything.

  ‘And she’d know,’ Katherine insisted of me, shrill, self-righteous. I wished she’d shut up, because everyone knew. No one, not even inexplicably aggrieved Edward, would actually think that my father . . .

  ‘Oh?’ Edward took a step towards me, suddenly interested, as if sensing sport, ‘You’d know, would you?’

  No actual question nor proper challenge, but a mere mock-humouring to belittle me in front of the others. I knew very well not to rise to it, not to take it personally: it was his wife with whom he had this argument and I just happened to be caught, momentarily, in the middle, yet again.

  ‘You,’ – pitifully dull Jane – ‘you’d know what Katherine, here, was up to, would you?’

  I couldn’t look at those fierce dark eyes.

  My father insisted, ‘This is offensive, Edward,’ taking him by the shoulder only to be vigorously shaken off. Edward was busy relishing that in all this mess and muddle, here was something on which everyone could agree: that it was presumptuous of me – me, of all of them – to think I could know anything of how exactly Katherine had conducted herself during that time. Suddenly, as he saw it, there was a good chance he wasn’t alone in looking to have been made a fool of.

  Still unable to raise my eyes to his, I appealed, ‘Edward . . .’

  My father told him, ‘Think of your mother.’

  But no, not now that he had a victory in his sights. ‘You, Jane, yes, you would know, wouldn’t you?’

  Katherine was remonstrating with him, ‘Of course she’d know!’

  But he ignored her to narrow in on me: ‘Because, oh, well, you knew everything that she got up to, didn’t you?’ Meaning that I didn’t. ‘You knew, for instance, all about those “genuine feelings” of hers for our father.’

  And so there I was, exposed as ignorant of something which, by anyone’s standards, was really quite something not to have known. I so badly needed Edward to stop, I wanted so badly to disappear, I was shaking so hard that I feared I was going to fall into pieces, and it was to escape his eyes that I looked to Katherine’s, which I should never have done. Because how extraordinary they were, bright and beautiful and unblinking in mine. Her very breath, too: held there, it pressed hard against my own heart.

  Three years before, when she’d crossed our threshold, I’d been the invisible Seymour, not one of the glorious boys, nor blowsy Elizabeth, nor one of the charming children, but nonetheless those eyes of hers had come for me and swept me up and for a summer we hadn’t looked back. For that summer, we’d spent our days together, stitching and weeding, pastry-making and fruit-picking, and at the end of those days we’d retired to her room to lounge around in the fading light and talk about anything and everything and nothing. And once I’d followed her into the darkness, down to the brook. Once to the deep-shadowed gallery, to dance with her in silence. And in that time she’d spared me nothing: not her dread and loneliness when Edward was away, nor her despair that when he was home he didn’t love her as he should. And yet he had the temerity to stand there and tell me that I hadn’t known her. Well, it was he who didn’t know her, and didn’t love her, and look how it’d ended up. She’d told me that my father was handsome and lovely and that she didn’t want to go to the St Luke’s fair because – the realisation hit me even if, at the time, it’d passed me by – he was staying at home. She’d taken me along on her strolls with my father, sometimes before I could even fetch my boots, and, in front of me, she’d asked him to write poems and then, when he’d done so, she’d shown me them. And when I’d broken the news to her that Edward was due home, she’d sat down next to me and cried. ‘Buried alive’ was what she’d said of how she’d felt when he returned. She’d said those very words to me.


  Sitting there under Edward’s outraged gaze, I was convinced: his wife had hidden nothing from me; I might not always have been sharp enough to see what was there in front of me, but she’d hidden nothing from me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said to Edward, looking him hard in the eye as I said it. ‘Yes, I did know,’ and then, when I didn’t immediately retract or make a move to qualify it and he made a move to laugh it off, I reminded him, ‘I knew about the poems, didn’t I? It was me who told you about the poems.’

  ‘Jane!’ That was my mother, aghast, and I couldn’t look at her.

  ‘But, but, but . . .’ Elizabeth was addressing Edward, but so insistently that we all turned to her and she sat back, pleased. ‘You’d been back nine months, hadn’t you? You came back on St Katherine’s, remember? So what’s the problem? It’s nine months, end of November to end of August.’ End of August, when Johnny had been born. ‘So of course he is yours.’

  In the heat of the moment, I didn’t know at first what she was claiming; I doubt anyone did.

  She was counting on her fingers in demonstration: ‘End of December, January, February . . .’

  I raced ahead and she was right, she was right! Why had none of us thought to question it?

  But Edward had lowered his face into his hands and was rubbing disconsolately at his eyes. Katherine was staring at the floor.

  Even Elizabeth couldn’t fail to detect their awkwardness. ‘What?’ Her smile faded. Why wasn’t this good news? ‘It’s nine months,’ she reasserted: incontestable fact.

  There was a considerable pause, reluctant on the part of Edward and Katherine but puzzled on everyone else’s, before Edward responded.

  ‘Yes, but Katherine and I . . .’ He floundered and almost looked to his wife for help. ‘Katherine and I didn’t . . .’ There was a too-visible swallow, a kind of guttural flinch. ‘Enjoy relations for some time after that.’

  Oh.

  Did we just hear that?

  Katherine moved very slightly towards him and I thought she’d lay a hand on his arm but, instead, she spoke softly to him: ‘You tried, though, you always tried, and what’ll have happened is –’