‘I’d like Patsy to meet your Cousin Rose,’ Artemis had replied. ‘And Tutti. I want him to see Strand House before it’s too late.’
Nothing had changed at Strand House. As the taxi pulled up the drive, the four of them could see Cousin Rose stooped over the flower bed by the front door, with the gum-booted and bowler-hatted Tutti behind her, shading her under his large black umbrella.
‘Will you just look who it is, Tutti!’ Cousin Rose exclaimed as Ellie and Artemis, Hugo and Patsy climbed out of the cab. ‘Will you just look who it is now!’
‘Sure don’t I know well enough?’ Tutti replied, looking heavenwards. ‘For haven’t you been telling me all day?’
Ellie kissed her relative fondly, and Cousin Rose, seizing her by both arms, kissed her twice in return and even more fondly. Artemis was also seized, before she could introduce Patsy, and hugged until the breath was all but squeezed out of her.
‘We’ve no need for introductions, child!’ Cousin Rose admonished. ‘Sure Patsy and I are blood!’ Patsy too was seized and hugged, and then held at arm’s length, before being seized and hugged again. ‘Will you look at him, Tutti?’ Cousin Rose sighed. ‘Will you just look? Isn’t he a ringer for that lovely man in the fillums?’
‘He is not,’ Tutti replied. ‘You must be thinking of somebody different altogether.’
‘Who?’ Cousin Rose challenged. ‘I’d just love to hear.’
‘Wouldn’t you just?’ said Tutti. ‘Maybe next time we go to the fillums you’ll take your spectacles.’
Finally it was Hugo’s turn, and then with one hand in his and the other in Patsy’s, Cousin Rose led them up the steps. ‘Will you help with the bags, Tutti!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Instead of standing there like an orange!’
‘I will not!’ Tutti called in return. ‘That’s the jarvey’s vocation! Isn’t that right, my man?’ he asked the cabman.
‘It is not,’ the driver replied. ‘Now will you help take these in, my man?’
The little church in which they were to be married stood in a field full of grazing sheep, on a hill overlooking the bay. It was hard to know if there were more flowers packed in it or people, Ellie thought, as she looked at the sea of shining faces, and the innumerable jugs of flowers picked by Cousin Rose and Tutti from the garden. The heavy smell of roses filled the air, accompanied by the drone of fat bees who had found their way in through the open door and were lazily gorging themselves on the still succulent flowers.
There were people outside the church as well, well wishers and sightseers, come to see the English Lady marry the Yank, and when Tutti finally drew Cousin Rose’s big Humber up at the foot of the hill, a cheer went up from the crowds as Artemis stepped out into the sunshine.
‘They’ll not have seen anyone prettier,’ Tutti said, holding the car door open. ‘And I’ve a mind to say that they’re not the only ones.’
In the unavoidable absence of her father and Diana, Tutti had been nominated unanimously to give the bride away, and for once he showed no signs of objecting. Now he offered Artemis his arm, once she had reached into the car for her stick, and steadied herself.
‘The white flag is up, your ladyship,’ Tutti said, as Artemis adjusted her veil. ‘And they’re off.’
Patsy stared as hard as he could at the altar, not daring to look round. Behind him he heard a cheer outside the church, then a slight gasp from the people behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ellie, who was half turned to look down the aisle. The organist began to play and still Patsy dared not look. He hadn’t been allowed sight or sound of Artemis since tea time the day before, and it seemed like a lifetime.
Hugo, his best man, took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Bon voyage, pal,’ he whispered in his best American. ‘Happy days.’
Now Artemis was by his side and still Patsy didn’t look. He thought if he turned now and saw his bride, his heart was so full of love it would burst. So he waited until the priest took a step towards them before he looked at Artemis.
She was dressed in a cream silk dress which had belonged to Ellie’s grandmother and which had been worn by her the day she was married in this very same church. Patsy knew that because Cousin Rose had promised her on the telephone she would fetch it down from the attic where she had it in safe keeping, and have it ready for her when she arrived. But he had no idea of quite how beautiful the old dress was, and how perfectly it would fit Artemis. The sleeves were full and half puffed above the elbows, the crinoline was covered by an overskirt which was caught up at regular intervals by orange blossom, and on her head she wore a simple lace cap from which fell a veil of old lace.
Artemis turned to Patsy and as she did so, through the fine veil he could see her smiling at him, and Patsy had to swallow hard to stop the tears from flooding his eyes.
‘Here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation,’ the priest exhorted, to which the congregation gave a great sigh before being asked for the last time whether or not any of them knew cause or just impediment why the two people before them should not be joined in Holy Matrimony.
‘They do not!’ Tutti pronounced, earning himself a glare from Cousin Rose, while the congregation earned a glare from Tutti.
His final demand being greeted with silence, the priest then proceeded to marry the English Lady to the Yank, bidding them to live together after God’s ordinance, forsaking all others, for better or for worse, to love, and to cherish and to obey, until death parted them. And on the will of those gathered behind them in the church, strangers till that moment, but now part of the large eternal family, and for the love that they felt for each other, Patsy Milligan and Artemis Deverill were wed.
‘Those whom God hath joined together,’ said the priest, ‘let no man put asunder.’
‘Let them not!’ boomed Tutti. ‘Nor no woman either!’
The little organ then piped out the ‘Wedding March’, its bellows barely big enough to sustain each chord, while Patsy and Artemis Milligan turned together and walked down the aisle as man and wife. And as they went, walking out into the sunshine which danced off the sea, the people gathered in the tiny church wished them God speed and good luck as they showered them with petals plucked from the multitude of cut roses.
When the war was over, Hugo recorded the events on the repainted mural in the back hall.
Today, guides make Hugo’s wall-painting the last stop on the tours around Brougham, since it has become one of the major talking points of visits to the stately home. But when Hugo was repainting it, it was much more than that. For the family and residents of Brougham it was a lifeline, a defiant statement that despite everything, they would all survive and endure. Everyone who passed through the portals of Brougham during those critical years and who stayed to make their mark or play their part or had come there just simply to recover, they were all included: Matron, the nursing sisters, the nurses and their patients, Mr Peake and Doctor Leigh, Porter and his staff, Cook, Mrs Byrne, and Jenks, the cats and Boot, Brutus and the foals and their mothers, Jamie as a baby, and Jamie growing as a child, painted from pictures sent from Nanny in America, and Jamie back home, old Nanny and new Nanny, all the people and their children and their animals and pets, all part of a time that is now gone, and yet because of the painting is there for evermore.
THE END
About the Author
Charlotte Bingham comes from a literary family – her father sold a story to H. G. Wells when he was only seventeen – and Charlotte wrote her autobiography, Coronet Among the Weeds, at the age of nineteen. Since then, she has written comedy and drama series, films and plays for both England and America with her husband, the actor and playwright Terence Brady. Her other published novels are the highly acclaimed bestsellers Summertime, The Season, The Blue Note, The love Knot, The Kissing Garden, Love Song, To Hear a Nightingale, The Business, In Sunshine or in Shadow, Stardust, Nanny, Change of Heart, which won the 1994 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, Debutantes, The Nighting
ale Sings, Grand Affair, The Chestnut Tree, The Wind off the Sea and The Moon at Midnight, Daughters of Eden, The House of Flowers, The Magic Hour, Friday's Girl, In Distant Fields and The White Marriage.
Also by Charlotte Bingham:
CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS
LUCINDA
CORONET AMONG THE GRASS
BELGRAVIA
COUNTRY LIFE
AT HOME
TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE
THE BUSINESS
STARDUST
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IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW
A BANTAM BOOK 9780553402964
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781409032557
Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd.
Doubleday edition published 1991
Bantam edition published 1992
Copyright © Charlotte Bingham 1991
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The right of Charlotte Bingham to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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