Philippa Carr - [Daughters of England ]

by Gossamer Cord

  “For ever,” echoed Dorabella, gazing rapturously at her diamond ring.

  A few days later we left Cornwall.

  It had been decided, after a good deal of discussion, that the marriage should take place at Christmas.

  The First Wife

  WE RETURNED TO WEEKS of feverish preparations. My mother had a few qualms of uneasiness. She thought it was too soon and they should have waited a little longer.

  “Why?” demanded Dorabella. “Why should we wait? What’s the point? And being so far apart it isn’t easy to see each other.”

  My mother said: “The spring would have been a good time. Or, say, May…or June…”

  “Why? Why?” demanded Dorabella.

  My mother looked at her and smiled. “Well, as you both seem so sure…”

  “Of course we are sure.”

  My mother left it at that, but when we were alone she talked to me, as she often did. She had always discussed a problem with me rather than with Dorabella.

  She began: “I wish they had agreed to wait awhile.”

  “Dorabella never wants to wait for anything.”

  “I know. She is so impulsive. She doesn’t always see things clearly, she doesn’t look at all the possibilities.”

  “But you liked the family in Cornwall. You got on very well with Matilda Lewyth.”

  “Yes. And, of course, she is in charge. I can’t see any conflict between her and Dorabella over that.”

  “Dorabella certainly wouldn’t want to take on the management of the household.”

  “No, indeed not. But…”

  “They were charming to us,” I went on. “And they seemed to like Dorabella. There was no objection, as there sometimes is in such cases.”

  “I don’t know. It is just that it all seems too quick. I should have liked a little time to get…to get to know more…”

  “Well, we were there for a week. It wasn’t exactly a conventional household. But perhaps most households are not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, on the surface they seem conventional sometimes and then you discover all sorts of things are going on under the veneer, if you know what I mean. There is the housekeeper who isn’t really a housekeeper; there’s her son who runs the place; and there is Dermot who doesn’t seem to take much interest in it. And the father just sits there. He reminds me of a puppet master holding the strings.”

  “Did he really seem like that to you?”

  “It was just a thought that occurred to me. And then there was the feud.”

  My mother laughed. “It was amusing that you met one of the enemy. I wonder what they thought of that? They didn’t give much sign…”

  “No. That’s what I mean. I had a feeling that something was going on underneath.”

  “That’s your imagination.”

  “Well, there is something about that part of the world. Superstitions and such like. All those things you mustn’t do, like meeting parsons on the way to the boats, and dropping gloves which have to be picked up by someone else.”

  “Your stranger turned out to be a blessing. If you ask me, it’s time they dropped their silly old quarrels about something which happened a hundred years ago. And Dorabella is going into all that. I wonder how she will fit in?”

  “Well, she is in love with Dermot.”

  My mother nodded, but she was frowning.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “She always falls on her feet.”

  “She’s going to miss you.”

  “And I her.”

  “That’s the disadvantage of being twins. That closeness is wonderful at times, and then comes the inevitable separation.”

  “But she is not going to the other end of the world,” I cried. “And I shall go and stay there and she will come here often, I am sure.”

  “I suppose Dermot will be able to.”

  “Of course. He’s got Gordon Lewyth to look after the estate.”

  She frowned again. I was surprised, for I had thought she had been pleased by what she found in Cornwall; but, like myself, she had a faint stirring of disquiet that all might not be as it seemed.

  Christmas was close—a very special Christmas, dominated by the wedding which was to take place. The church had been beautifully decorated; Dermot was to arrive a few days before, and there would be rehearsals in the church. I was to be the Maid of Honor, and Uncle Charles’s small daughter was a bridesmaid, his little boy a page—our brother being too old for the role and overcome with horror at the thought of it.

  Dorabella’s dress was hanging up in the wardrobe; she looked at it a hundred times a day and wondered whether it was too long, too short, and whether the skirt needed an extra flounce of lace. There was another question: Should she wear the wreath of orange blossom round her head? My mother was anxious that she should because she had worn it at her wedding.

  “Is it a little old-fashioned?” Dorabella asked again and again.

  “What if it is?” I asked. “What does it matter?”

  “What does it matter! This is my wedding!”

  “It looks beautiful and Mummy wants you to. It will bring back memories of her wedding.”

  “But this is my wedding.”

  “Nobody is going to forget that. You wouldn’t let them.”

  “You’ll have to wear that orange blossom at your wedding.”

  “Mine? If there ever is one.”

  “Of course there’ll be one. Once I’m out of the way, you’ll have a chance.”

  We laughed together and I was reminded of how lonely I was going to be without her.

  Dermot arrived at the beginning of the week. He was exuberant and Dorabella was wildly happy at the sight of him.

  My mother and I watched his arrival from one of the windows. We looked down on him and Dorabella clinging together.

  We smiled at each other.

  “It will be all right,” said my mother. “He’s a good boy.”

  Then we went down to greet him.

  There was much laughter at dinner that night. Dermot was clearly very happy—and so was Dorabella.

  All would be well.

  The next days sped by. Guests arrived. The house was full and the bustle of preparation at its height. The day after Boxing Day the bridal pair would leave for their honeymoon. Dorabella could talk of little else. They were together most of the time. I went riding with them once or twice, but I felt a little redundant and when I declined to accompany them they made no protest, but if they were relieved they hid the fact carefully.

  On Christmas Eve I happened to go into the kitchen. Mrs. Mills, the cook, was at the table stirring something. She was talking to one of the maids when I came in and I heard her remark:

  “Well, say what you will, I don’t reckon it’s right. They should have made some other arrangement. It never was right and never will be. I mean to say…”

  “What isn’t right, Mrs. Mills?” I asked.

  She looked embarrassed and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Oh, nothing really, Miss Violetta. I’ve had so much work to do these last days that I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels.”

  “Perhaps we could get Amy Terrett in from the village to give you a hand.”

  “Amy Terrett! No thank you. I’d be telling her what to do half the time instead of getting on with it. Quicker to do it myself.”

  “Well, I am sure my mother would be happy to get her if it would help.”

  “Don’t you say nothing of this to her ladyship. I’m not complaining about the work. This is a wedding, and weddings only come now and then, and if I’m not capable of handling them I don’t know who is.”

  “But there is something. You said it wasn’t right.”

  “You was always like that, Miss Violetta, wasn’t you? Right from a baby. Wouldn’t let nothing go. Why this, why that, and on and on till you got an answer. Now, Miss Dorabella, she’s different. Unless it was something about her, of course.”

 
; “Is this something about Dorabella?” I asked.

  “It’s all one of them mountains out of molehills, you might say.” She looked at the kitchen maid and lifted her shoulders.

  “You won’t rest till you get it out of me, will you? All I was saying was that Mr. Dermot Tregarland ought not to be here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s the bridegroom, that’s why.”

  “Well, he has to be here. We can’t have a wedding without him.”

  “That’s true enough. But he should have stayed somewhere else…at a hotel or something.”

  “There’s plenty of room here.”

  “It ain’t right for bride and groom to sleep under the same roof on the day before their wedding. It’s unlucky.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Mills, I never heard such nonsense. He’s been here before and we’ve visited his family. We were all under the same roof then. Nobody thought anything about it.”

  “This is the night before the wedding.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, it’s only yesterday you were a little ’un, Miss Violetta. There you were, sitting at my table and popping raisins in your mouth when you thought I wasn’t looking. And there was Dorabella with you. There’s things you have to learn. I can only tell you it’s unlucky for bride and groom to spend the night before the wedding under the same roof.”

  I laughed. “Well, they’ll be married soon and it won’t matter about their being under the same roof.”

  “I didn’t say it would. I’m only telling you what I’ve always heard. But I wouldn’t like Miss Dorabella to know.”

  “Don’t worry. She wouldn’t care if she did.”

  “That’s a fact. She never saw anything she didn’t want to.”

  There was a glass jar of raisins on the table. I leaned forward, took one, and, smiling at Mrs. Mills, I put it into my mouth.

  “You’re cheeky, you are,” said Mrs. Mills.

  And I went out of the kitchen and remembered later that I had not told her there was an extra person for dinner.

  It was Christmas Eve. The Yule log had been brought in. In the kitchen they were baking mince pies and preparing the mulled wine for the carol singers when, they came. Hampers were being sent to the people in the cottages. Caddington always kept up the traditions and customs of the past.

  My uncle Charles with his family were with us, accompanied by Grandmother Lucie. The house was full.

  Grandmothers Lucie and Belinda were closeted together, talking about old times. Their lives had been very much entwined—often dramatically—and there was a certain relationship between them, rather like that which had existed with my mother and my aunt Annabelinda who had died violently and mysteriously many years before. We did not talk about that. Grandmother Belinda did not like us to, and my mother was always reticent about her, too.

  Christmas was a time for stirring memories, and I suspected that when Lucie and Belinda were together there was a great deal of talk of those early days.

  Edward arrived with Gretchen. They were now engaged to be married.

  I often thought what a significant time that had been in Germany. There would not have been these preparations for this wedding now but for that. Edward and Gretchen? Well, he had met her before, but I could not help feeling that the incidents we had seen in the Böhmerwald had precipitated them into a binding relationship. It had certainly made Edward see that he could not leave her in Germany.

  There was much merriment at the dinner table that night. We pulled crackers and produced our paper hats and read our mottoes while we laughed at the useless little articles we found in them—hearts of mock-gold and silver, keyrings, tin whistles, and so on.

  My father sat at the head of the table. He was very happy. He loved to have the family around him and he, at least, I was sure, had no qualms about the coming marriage, except perhaps to hope that Dermot would become more interested in the estate which would be his…as dedicated as Gordon Lewyth was to ensure its prosperity.

  But that might be my imagination again. His daughter was marrying into a family in Cornwall whose position was similar to his own. And I supposed that was something most fathers would want for their daughters. It was really all very satisfactory.

  When we rose from the table the carol singers arrived. I heard them in the courtyard. We all went out to greet them as we had every Christmas I remembered. We sang with them, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” all the carols which we knew so well. The singers came into the hall where Mrs. Mills was waiting with the mince pies and mulled wine.

  “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas…” The words echoed round the hall.

  “Long life and happiness to Miss Dorabella.”

  Dorabella, flushed, excited, beamed on them all. Dermot was beside her and everyone said what a beautiful bride she would make to stand beside such a handsome bridegroom.

  At last the singers had departed and my mother said: “Now it is time for bed, I should say. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  We retired to our rooms. I undressed and got into bed. I felt a certain sadness. This was the end of an era. Tomorrow she would be not so much my twin sister as Dermot’s wife.

  I was not entirely surprised when she came to me. She stood by the bed. In her blue nightdress with dressing gown to match, her hair about her shoulders, she looked very young and in some ways vulnerable.

  “Hello, Vee,” she said.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “It’s cold out here.” She took off her dressing gown and let it fall to the floor, then she leaped in beside me.

  We laughed.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  Her arms were tight about me. “H’m,” she murmured.

  “You don’t sound sure. You’re not going to call the whole thing off, are you?”

  She laughed. “You’re joking!”

  “Nothing would surprise me with you.”

  “No. I’m wildly, ecstatically happy.”

  “Are you?”

  “Well…”

  “A little scared?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “They say marriage is a big undertaking.”

  “Dermot will be all right. I can look after him.”

  “You usually can, as you say, look after people.”

  “As I have looked after you all these years?”

  “Now it is you who are joking. As I remember, I did most of the looking after.”

  “Yes, you have, dear sister. That’s true. And what I want is for you to go on doing it.”

  “What! From miles away?”

  “That’s what I don’t like about this…being miles away. It won’t be the same, will it?”

  “Of course not! Talk sense. How could it be? You won’t be Miss Dorabella Denver any more. You’ll be Mrs. Dermot Tregarland.”

  “I know.”

  “Dorabella? Seriously, you are not having second thoughts, are you? It is rather late.”

  “Oh, no. It’s just that I wish you were coming with me.”

  “What! To Venice? A honeymoon à trois! I wonder what Dermot would think about that?”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant afterwards. I wish you were coming to Cornwall.”

  “I shall come for a visit.”

  “You will, won’t you? Often…”

  “And you will come here.”

  “Yes, there is that. But…I’d like you to be there all the time.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’re a big girl now. You don’t need your alter ego there beside you all the time.”

  “That’s just it. I do. I have been feeling this for some time. We are like one person. When you think of all that time before we were born…when most children are alone…we were there…growing together. We’re part of each other. There is something between us, something other people can’t understand.”

  “I understand perfectly.”

  “Of course you do. You are part of it. You were
always there. Do you remember that frightful Miss Dobbs at school? She was always trying to separate us. ‘You must stand on your own feet, Dorabella.’ Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “I hated her because she wouldn’t let us sit together.”

  “And you could not do your sums.”

  “Which you were clever at, of course.”

  “You would have been all right if you had tried. Miss Dobbs was right. You should have stood on your own feet.”

  “Why should I, when I had yours to stand on? And you know, you liked me to. You were always pleased when I couldn’t do those ghastly old lessons without you. You would click your tongue…just like Miss Dobbs. ‘You are really hopeless, Dorabella.’ I can hear your voice now and see the smile of satisfaction on your face while I copied your sums. You were an old swot. You liked to score over me, you liked it when I couldn’t do without you.”

  We were laughing together. It was true. I had always wanted her to lean on me. She might charm them, but I could win admiration with my superior scholarship. At least I had that!

  Then we began: “Do you remember…?” And we rocked with laughter. There was so much to remember.

  I heard the clock in the tower chime midnight.

  I said: “Listen. This is your wedding day.”

  “Yes,” she said and held me tightly.

  “Fancy you, a married woman!”

  “It will be wonderful, won’t it?” She spoke lightly but I fancied she was asking for reassurance.

  “I know what’s the matter with you,” I said. “It’s something they call prewedding nerves.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “I…I’m not frightened of Dermot. It’s just that it’s the end of the way it used to be…with us.”

  “I shall still be here and you’re not miles away, just in a different part of England. There are trains. I only have to get on one, or you will, and we are together.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself. Vee?”

  She waited for a while and I said: “What?”

  “Promise me this…if I wanted you…suddenly…you’d come. You won’t think that, just because I’m married, there’s any difference between us. You’ll always be with me, won’t you, ‘till death do us part’…?”