Carol took down his hand and looked at Monica with a look that she could not help thinking he himself felt to be a peculiarly piercing one.
“Is that the truth?”
“Of course it is.”
He threw himself back again in his arm-chair and said abruptly:
“I believe you. I didn’t know before—but I do believe you now.”
“I should hope you do. Will you tell me what’s the matter, please?”
Monica’s new-born self-assurance had unconsciously communicated itself to her voice and manner. For the first time she was speaking to Carol without regard for his susceptibilities, or his supposed reaction to her words.
“What do you imagine is the matter?” Carol enquired bitterly. “You’ve let me down utterly, Monica—you’ve failed me—and I trusted you.”
She felt dizzy with surprise and perplexity.
“How? How have I failed you?”
“Monica! Don’t pretend. How can we go on being friends, as we have been, once you’re married? You know perfectly well it will be out of the question. It wouldn’t be fair on Pelham to begin with, and I don’t suppose he’d even allow it. Naturally.”
“But, Carol—of course we can still be friends. I don’t see why it need make any difference.”
Monica spoke without conviction, partly because she did not really believe what she was saying, and partly because she was still utterly undecided as to whether Carol did, or did not, mean that he had wanted to marry her himself.
Carol was very quick to see, and take, the advantage that her uncertainty gave him.
“You’re not being honest with me. You know perfectly well that on the day you promised to marry another man you were virtually giving me up.”
“But I——” Monica hesitated, helpless.
“You can’t possibly deny it,” Carol asserted. “And I think that you do, at least, owe me absolute sincerity, Monica. That’s why your letter hurt me so frightfully. You wrote, didn’t you, pretending to think that I shouldn’t mind, that I could let you go quite easily and happily. Yet you must have known that it wasn’t so.”
“Honestly, Carol, I——”
“My dear, I know exactly what you’re going to say. I know just how you’ve reasoned it out, in your own thoughts, persuading yourself that it would be all right, and that we could go on as before. You may be able to deceive yourself, Monica, but it’s impossible for you to deceive me. That’s a thing that nobody has ever succeeded in doing.”
Monica stared at him, utterly impotent in the face of his astonishing belief in himself and his own words.
“I’m pretty certain,” Carol went on, “that I understand you a great deal better than you understand yourself. I can see, for instance, how this has happened. We hadn’t seen each other for some weeks, and you’re the sort of person—and I’m not saying this at all unkindly—with whom it’s rather, Out of sight out of mind. Your friendship for me probably weakened, simply because I wasn’t there, beside you.”
“You’ve no right to——”
“Yes, I have. I’ve every right. We’ve been friends all this time, I’ve given you more of my confidence than I ever have to any other woman, and I’ve helped you to the very best of my ability. I’m not going to pretend to you that I don’t know I’ve done something for you, in the past two years. I’ve given you the very best I had to give, Monica, and you’re flinging it all back in my face.”
His voice broke.
“But Carol,” said Monica desperately, “you don’t mean that—you weren’t ever—you wouldn’t ever have fallen in love with me yourself, would you?”
She felt that she was expressing herself crudely, and even grossly, and gave the words a downward inflection that made them sound like an assertion, rather than a question.
He turned and looked at her quickly, and Monica realized that for a moment she had disconcerted him. He had not yet acquired an attitude of mind with which to meet her suggestion.
He spoke only after an uncomfortable moment’s pause.
“It’s perfectly impossible, my dear, to say what might or might not have happened. You must know that, as well as I do. There’s only one woman in the world that I love, or ever shall love. I’ve always told you so. Other people may change; I never shall. I’m like that. But what you’re doing is hurting me abominably. You’re not only taking yourself away from me, you’re taking away my faith in women. Monica, ask yourself honestly if you think you have any right to do that.”
Monica understood that Carol was willing to relinquish neither his original claim to a grande passion for Viola Lester, nor his newly evolved grievance against herself. With an ingenuity that only a flawless degree of self-deception could have achieved, he had contrived to reconcile two aspects of himself that must, under less skilful handling, have appeared as mutually destructive one of the other.
It would be not only useless, but also very nearly impossible, to try and make him face reality.
Monica stood up.
“I’m very, very sorry,” she said, with finality.
Carol stood up too, and he had, under the stress of his self-induced emotion, turned white.
“You understand that it’s good-bye, Monica?”
“If you feel that it must be. I don’t. And perhaps some day——”
“If I go now, you won’t see me again.”
Monica hesitated for a moment, and then held out her hand to him.
“Very well,” said Carol hoarsely.
With knit brows and compressed lips he gazed at her, and then, unexpectedly, kissed her forehead, with a long, solemn kiss.
“Good-bye, Monica. God bless you.”
She made no answer, and, with squared shoulders, Carol Anderson marched out of the room, without looking back. Monica felt sure that he was making exactly the exit that he visualized himself as making.
She did not feel convinced that his farewell was destined to be a final one, and in effect she received three letters from him, in quick succession, within the week. All were long, involved, reproachful, and conceived in a spirit of ardent self-pity.
In the midst of her new preoccupations and interests there was but little time to write replies. Monica sent one answer, that she herself felt to be a cursory and uninspired production, and then wrote no more. She forgot Carol so readily and so completely, that it did not even occur to her as strange that she should have done so.
Nothing, now, was of the least importance excepting her wedding preparations, and the long-desired and despaired-of honour that was now hers.
Her mother’s happiness was almost as great as Monica’s, and far more freely expressed.
“It’s everything that I could have wished,” she declared to all her oldest friends and numerous relations. “We’ve known Herbert for years, and dear Vernon used to like him, and say how sound he was in all his views. I’ve no doubts whatever about his making Monica happy, and of course it’s too delightful that she’ll be living in London, so that I shan’t feel I’ve lost her in the least.”
“Very unselfish of you, Imogen,” observed old cousin Blanche. “I’m afraid you’ll be lonely, all the same, when she’s gone, even if it’s only into the next street.”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Ingram radiantly. “It’s the fate of a mother, isn’t it? I always knew I couldn’t hope to keep Monica always with me, though she’s been a very devoted, unselfish child. I daresay you’ve guessed that there have been one or two little episodes, before this happened—but she wouldn’t hear of leaving me. And, of course, one felt that none of them were quite the real thing, so far as she herself was concerned. This, I’m thankful to say, is very different.”
The days rushed by, filled with appointments, letters, presents, preparations.
“I hope you’re not wearing yourself out,” said Mr. Pelham solicitously, two days, before the wedding.
Monica laughed and shook her head.
“You certainly look remarkably well.”
A house had been found in Beaufort Gardens, and was to be painted and decorated whilst the bridal couple were spending their honeymoon in Italy. Monica and Mr. Pelham, tacitly and without discussion, had agreed that Beaufort Gardens was quite near enough to Eaton Square.
They looked forward to furnishing their house and installing themselves in it on their return.
“Why, we shall be quite an old married couple by that time,” Mr. Pelham playfully observed.
Monica found it difficult to believe.
One night she dreamed that it had all been a mistake about her marriage, and that she was not engaged at all. She woke, sweating and sobbing, to an intense wave of relief as her fingers sought and found the big half-hoop of diamonds on her left hand.
It was on the following night, the one before her weddingday, that her mother came softly into her room, after Monica had already been in bed for nearly an hour.
Monica, who had not been to sleep, sat up.
“Lie down again, darling. I didn’t want to disturb you—we want you to look your best to-morrow, and you must get plenty of sleep to-night.”
As she spoke, Mrs. Ingram took her accustomed seat on the side of the bed.
“My pet, I can scarcely believe it’s your wedding-day to-morrow. It seems only the other day that you were a little thing in the nursery, peeping at me through the bars of your cot when I came upstairs to see you before going out to a dinner-party.”
“I can remember a lovely pink evening dress you used to wear, with puffed sleeves,” said Monica smiling.
She found it easier to speak of her baby days to her mother than of the later years.
“If only dear father could have known about this—it would have made him so happy!” mourned Mrs. Ingram.
“I wish he had,” said Monica, with the pang that would always come at the recollection of her father’s unspoken disappointment and mortification that his daughter had not been sought in marriage.
“But after all, he did know Herbert, and liked him very much.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ingram quickly. “I always think it’s such a good sign when a man is popular with other men. You see, they can judge of one another so much better than we can.”
“I suppose they can.”
“I feel that Herbert is so absolutely reliable.”
“Yes,” Monica agreed, “that’s one of the things one likes so much about him.”
“You needn’t be nervous, with a man of his kind—and one whom you’ve known so long. Though I must say, I rather like a bride to look nervous. Your dress is perfect, Monica.”
“I can’t believe,” said Monica, “that it’s really there, hanging up in the wardrobe—my wedding-dress.”
Her mother pressed her hand.
“I hope the little bridesmaids will behave nicely, and manage your train properly.”
Monica had decided to have child-attendants. Almost all her contemporaries were married, and she did not want grown-up bridesmaids who would yet be several years younger than she was herself. It had all been understood between herself and her mother without any need for words. Two little Ingram cousins had been invited to officiate, and their father was to give Monica away.
Mrs. Ingram began to enumerate various small aspects of the great event—Monica’s new jewel-case, that had been promised from the shop for that afternoon and hadn’t yet arrived—the bunches of roses for the bridesmaids—her own toilette of silver-grey and lavender—and the arrangements made for the breakfast after the ceremony.
Although she had been living in the atmosphere of exactly such preparations for days past, Monica listened with a sense of incredulous astonishment that they should concern herself. It still seemed absolutely impossible that the miracle should have happened.
“I’m glad poor Fricky and Cecily are coming down for your wedding,” pursued Mrs. Ingram, in a tone of indulgent superiority.
“I hope it won’t upset Cecily.”
“Well, darling, she had her chance, and didn’t know how to make the most of it. I’m sorry for poor Theodora, I must say. Neither of them will ever marry now, of course.”
“I wish they could. I’d like them to be happy.” Monica, now, could afford to be generous.
“In a country where there aren’t enough men to go round girls have got to take trouble if they want lives of their own,” observed Mrs. Ingram simply. “Frederica and Cecily never took the least trouble to attract men, even when they were quite young—and look at the result! I’m sorry for their poor mother.”
“She hasn’t really been very nice to them, ever.”
Since her engagement, Monica had found herself licensed to criticize her seniors in a hitherto unprecedented manner.
“No, I don’t think she has,” Mrs. Ingram admitted. “But after all, one must remember that it’s a bitter disappointment for a woman to have two daughters, and no son at all.”
There was a silence. Monica wondered whether her mother’s thoughts had taken the same direction as had her own.
Mrs. Ingram stooped and kissed her.
“Good-night, my darling. God bless you. I mustn’t keep you awake any longer.”
Monica was touched at her mother’s self-restraint in not having said a word about her own loneliness when her daughter should be gone.
She put her arms round her neck, as she had not done since childhood.
“You won’t miss me too much, will you? I shall be quite close by, you know, and it’ll be such fun showing you the house and everything. You won’t feel too lonely?”
“No, no. I shall be all right. Nothing in the world could make me happier than to see you safely married to a good man—and a gentleman—someone we’ve known almost all our lives, like Herbert.”
They kissed, stirred by unusual emotions.
Suddenly Monica felt her mother’s hot tears on her face.
“Darling,” whispered Mrs. Ingram brokenly, “it isn’t what we once dreamed of for you—it isn’t as if——But oh, Monica, say you’ll be happy. I couldn’t, couldn’t have borne to see you an old maid.”
Monica could not answer.
She pressed her mother more closely in her arms.
At last she said, in a stifled murmur:
“It’s all right, mother—really. I’m very happy.”
It was true.
Monica was happier than she had ever thought to be, since the far-off days of her unshattered, youthful confidence.
For the first time since her foolish love-affair with Christopher Lane, Monica had regained her self-respect.
It was Monica’s wedding-day.
She was moving slowly up the aisle, veiled and robed in white, to the pealing of the organ, just as she had so often, waking and sleeping, dreamed of doing.
The tightly-frock-coated form of her bridegroom stood at the chancel rails, a white flower correctly decorating his button-hole, his hand nervously smoothing the thin, dark strands that lay sparsely across the crown of his head.
Monica did not really see him.
She did not see her mother in the front bench, already sobbing in a quiet ecstasy, nor cousin Blanche craning anxiously forward under her huge flowered hat.
She did not see Frederica and Cecily Marlowe, the resemblance between them now strangely accentuated until each looked merely the pale shadow of a pale shadow.
She did not see Carol Anderson, who stood with folded arms and compressed lips, gazing at her with a fixed look of mingled reproach and fortitude.
Monica saw nothing. She was conscious of nothing, save that the moment towards which the whole of life had been tending had come at last.
As she knelt at the chancel steps, her heart was filled with a prayer of ardent and humble thanksgiving.
She was to have a life of her own, after all.
A home, a husband, a recogni
zed position as a married woman—an occupation. At last, she would have justified her existence.
Up to the very last moment she had been afraid, and had known that her mother was afraid, lest something should happen to prevent her marriage.
Nothing had happened: she was safe for ever.
There was no further need to be afraid, or ashamed, or anxious, any more.
She prayed that she might be a good wife to Herbert, and that if ever they had a child it might be a son.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Penelope Fitzgerald 1988
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