A Thousand Candles

by Joyce Dingwell

  ‘Yes ... but why?’

  ‘I could give the usual reason, I suppose,’ he said offhandedly. ‘Love, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t ... I don’t —’

  ‘No.’ He came in before she could finish it. ‘We don’t, do we?’ He looked at her so long she had to turn her glance away.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ he confirmed at last. ‘But I’ve heard, and I’ve read, of other reasons, and they’ve worked out in the end.’

  ‘Worked out?’ she said dully, for it was dull, she thought.

  ‘One of my reasons is the scrubber,’ Crag offered. ‘In fact he’s the only reason apart from—’ He stopped abruptly. After a pause he went on, ‘He can’t be pushed around, Pippa, and you know it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know it,’ she said bitterly, ‘but what can I do? We have to get out. Rena has practically said so. What can I do, Crag?’

  ‘I told you,’ was his reply.

  ‘But I ... but you...’

  ‘You said that before and I agreed with you that we don’t. But what I offer still makes sense, girl, in fact it’s the only thing that does make sense. For all of us.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘Davy, who would break his heart if you took him away, and you know it.’

  ‘Yes’ ... a little angrily ... ‘I know it. You should never have let the association between you build up to this.’

  ‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘it has. Then me, Pippa, I want the boy. I want him very much.’

  ‘That instant family?’

  ‘Yes ... yet just for Davy himself as well. I love the little scrubber. Finally, you.’

  ‘Yes. Where do I come in, why is it the only thing for me?’

  ‘Because what makes Davy happy must make you contented, because you’re dedicated to Davy, because Davy—’

  ‘But what about me?’ She was surprised at the sudden note in her voice. She was surprised at what she had said.

  He had leaned nearer to her, and instinctively she drew back.

  ‘Well, what about you, Pippa?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I ... I...’

  Yes, girl?’

  ‘I ... You’re right, of course. It’s only Davy who matters.’ She spoke calmly, and it was difficult with such a sudden fast beating heart. ‘But, Crag,’ she added, ‘does it have to be—marriage?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well, I could go as your housekeeper,’ she suggested.

  ‘Not up there. It’s a funny thing, Pippa’ ... he was attending his pipe now ... ‘it’s a primitive corner all right, but not in that. Also, the way I feel about the scrubber, it just wouldn’t work. No, girl, that boy has to belong.’

  ‘But you’d be saddling yourself, can’t you see that?’

  ‘I reckon if a horse is saddled the right way he’s just as happy and a deal more secure than running free. I’ve actually seen it, Pippa, I’ve seen it up there.’

  ‘Up there,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I can’t believe it’s formal as you say, I can’t believe I could not go merely as your housekeeper.’

  ‘I have one already and she’s not leaving,’ he replied calmly. ‘Besides that, there’s the trip up. You see we’d be going overland. Camping out.’

  ‘Camping out? But Davy—’

  ‘Would thrive on it. I’m sure of that. I know he would benefit from those outback nights.’

  ‘It still doesn’t comprise a real reason for you to—to saddle yourself,’ she said.

  ‘One tent,’ he answered levelly, ‘you, the scrubber and me. It’s a long way up, and you don’t clutter yourself with gear.’

  She had reddened, but she still held out.

  ‘You would be cluttering yourself, Crag, can’t you see that?—a sick boy, his sister.’

  ‘My son,’ he corrected soberly, ‘my wife.’

  ‘Oh, Crag, stop it! I—I can’t be your wife.’

  ‘If you’re meaning what I think you’re meaning I’ll take you on those conditions as well,’ he said quietly.

  She flushed even more vividly, understanding him, then shook her head.

  ‘I’m not a child,’ she said gravely. ‘I realize that complying to a certain state means more than living as—well, as I lived before.’

  ‘I just told you if you want to make conditions, I’ll accept you on them.’

  ‘And keep to the conditions after the acceptance?’

  He did not answer for a long moment, then he said, ‘I don’t know, Pippa. I feel like saying “Until you say”, but—’ He made a gesture with his big shoulders.

  ‘Why did you make the offer in the first place?’ she demanded.

  ‘Because, dammit, I want to marry you,’ he came back, ‘because I want to have the scrubber with me, because that housekeeping thing of yours would be no go. Now are you answered?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, you’re not answered, but will you agree?’

  Drearily she said, ‘What else is there? What else?’

  ‘Does that mean yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then say it, girl!’

  ‘I just said it.’

  ‘Say it with something in it,’ he demanded.

  She thought of Davy and what this would mean to him. She repeated, ‘Yes.’

  He leaned right forward now and he kissed her lips. She simply stopped there in the caress, and he released her and said, ‘He’s a nice little scrubber, but does he have to stand between?’

  ‘What do you mean, Crag?’

  He gave a dismissive shrug, then told her he would like to get away immediately.

  ‘We can get married tomorrow, Pippa,’ he announced.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ She was taken aback. ‘That soon?’

  ‘It’s got to be soon. I have to get back to Falling Star before it falls down.’

  ‘You could go on and we could come later.’

  ‘I told you I wanted Davy to have this camping experience.’

  ‘Then you and Davy...’

  ‘Us, Pippa. Look, girl, can’t you see what Rena will try next? No’ ... a little sigh ... ‘you don’t see it, do you, you never did. Never mind, it won’t matter once we get away. But we can’t do that until you’re Mrs. Crag, so I’ve told the local minister—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and Davy, too. He’s tickled pink.’

  ‘You told Davy?’ She could hardly believe him. ‘How could you tell him when you didn’t know?’

  ‘I told him,’ he repeated. ‘I reckoned he’d like to be there when it was done. I reckoned you’d want that.’

  ‘I would want that, but—but—tomorrow,’ she said incredulously again.

  ‘Tomorrow, Pippa,’ he nodded.

  A silence descended. It stopped so long that Pippa found herself searching for something to break it.

  She could find nothing ... and into the void came his soft: ‘Want to back out, Pippa?’ then her own: ‘No.’ ‘Right then, we’re being married. In the town at ten in the morning. After that we push off.’

  ‘Rena—’ she began.

  ‘You can tell her if you like, but it might be hard to find her. I saw her leave Uplands just before I came into the planting. She’ll probably be gone for some time, I’d reckon, while she thinks things over.’

  ‘Then I can’t tell her,’ realized Pippa, half relieved, half uncertain.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I—then we just leave?’

  ‘A little matter of a ceremony first,’ he reminded her wryly.

  ‘It’s—unbelievable,’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘For me as well,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Then, Crag, why are you—’

  ‘No, Pippa, not again. Ten tomorrow. And if you’re not—’

  ‘Yes?’

  But he did not tell her. He just touched her shoulder briefly, then turned away. The next moment in the thickness of the trees he was gone.

  Back again at Uplands, Pippa found that what Crag had said was correct. Rena
had left.

  Mrs. Mallory, the housekeeper, and the only resident servant since the rest of the domestic staff came in daily, told Pippa that Miss Rena had come in, walked around restlessly, then, when she had asked her could she get her something, help her in any way, had replied, ‘Yes, Mallie, throw some things in a bag for me, I’m going away for a while to think.’

  Then,’ reported Mrs. Mallory to Pippa, ‘she said an odd thing, she said “I don’t suppose I’ll be thrown out straight off”.’

  Briefly, Pippa enlightened her, after all she had to know some time.

  ‘That explains her paying up the daily girls,’ nodded Mrs. Mallory, ‘telling me to take a break and she’d see me again when she returned.’

  The housekeeper did not look very concerned for herself, and when Pippa timidly asked if leaving Uplands would inconvenience her, she smiled and said, ‘I don’t think it will come to that.’

  ‘But, Mrs. Mallory, the will—’

  ‘Oh, yes, the will. But I’ve known Miss Rena since she was a child.’ A little smile. ‘I’ve also known Mr. Hardy a few years.’

  Pippa searched the housekeeper’s face for a sign of what she was thinking, but Mrs. Mallory was not giving anything away.

  ‘I would certainly like that break,’ she said. ‘Carter could caretake for a week or so.’ She looked hopefully at Pippa.

  ‘Then why not?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave you, miss.’

  ‘But I will be going myself tomorrow. I’m ... I’m —’ Pippa tried to frame the words: ‘I’m being married.’ They wouldn’t come, though. It all seemed untrue. Surely it was untrue.

  Fortunately Mrs. Mallory did not notice her awkwardness. She said eagerly, ‘It’s my sister, she’s not at all well, and I’d like the opportunity of visiting her.’

  ‘Then do so. Go now,’ Pippa urged warmly.

  ‘It would make a difference if I could get tonight’s train. You see, my sister lives in a small town to which there’s only a night connection. You’d be quite all right, Miss Bromley, Garter would be here. By the way, Miss Rena left a note.’ The woman handed it to Pippa.

  As Mrs. Mallory bustled out to gather her few things together, Pippa opened the envelope. The several lines were written hastily, and backed up the housekeeper’s statement that Rena had left in a hurry.

  ‘Sorry it’s turned out like this, Pippa, but you know the reason. You’re on your own feet now, as I am. Rena.’

  She put the letter back and went in to see if she could assist Mrs. Mallory. ‘Perhaps I could drive you to the station,’ she offered.

  ‘Miss Rena took her car.’

  ‘The other car.’

  ‘Carter had to follow her with it down to Mr. Hardy’s office. I don’t know why.’

  But Pippa knew. And she could see Rena storming out of her own car, throwing down the keys of the car Carter had driven, throwing them at Dom and saying: ‘Here it is. After all, it’s yours.’

  ‘Perhaps I could borrow the car from Mr. Hardy—’ she began.

  ‘He’s gone, too. He went soon after she did. But don’t worry about a car, Miss Bromley, the bus goes into town to catch the train. Are you sure, miss, that you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Quite sure. Carter will be here, remember. Also, I can ring Mr. Crag. He ... we...’

  But Mrs. Mallory was anxious to go, so Pippa did not say it after all. She walked with the housekeeper to the gate and waited with her until the bus came.

  On her way back she detoured around the barns and stables, but Dom was still absent. Carter, whom she met on her way back to the house, said he had left in a hurry ... everyone was in a hurry ... that Mr. Hardy had only paused long enough to tell Carter what to do.

  ‘What if there’s a birth?’ she asked the man.

  ‘He saw to that,’ Carter assured her. ‘No events for a week, miss.’

  ‘I’ll fix tea for us,’ Pippa offered, but Carter said not to bother, he was going to a meeting in the village, and would eat in a friend’s place.

  ‘But don’t be worried, Miss Bromley, I won’t be late.’

  ‘I’m not nervous,’ Pippa assured him, and she went into the house and up to the bare room she had been allotted when she first came here, the room with the window that looked out on the incinerator and mulch heap.

  She could have had any room she liked now, she thought without much interest. She wandered out into the hall, wondering what would become of the house. When the bell suddenly pealed, it startled her, and for a few moments she forgot to answer it, accustomed as she was to the staff attending to that.

  The second peal awakened her, and she ran down the stairs. She wondered if it was Rena back again ... Doctor Burt ... Crag. But the head showing through the glass door was only a little head, and eagerly Pippa opened up and clasped Davy so tight in her arms, he promptly wriggled free.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said.

  He rubbed some of her crushes off, and announced, ‘Crag sent me to sleep here tonight.’ He looked at her anxiously. ‘I have to ask something.’

  ‘Yes, Davy?’

  ‘I have to ask this.’ Davy took an important breath, then said distinctly: ‘Still agreed on it, mate?’

  ‘Crag told you?’

  Yes.’ The anxious look deepening.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Pippa, and at once the little face altered. Never, never had Pippa seen such sunshine in her small brother. She would not have credited he could be so glad. It fairly bubbled out of him, he could not contain himself, and somewhere in her, Pippa, too, knew a song. It’s worth it, she thought, for Davy.

  They had tea together in the kitchen, though very little was eaten. Davy looked about to burst ... and Pippa, though she prepared a dish, only played with the food when it was done.

  ‘Crag said that.’ Her brother frowned at her plate.

  ‘You’re as bad yourself,’ she smiled.

  ‘But one thing, you’re to go to bed early.’

  ‘Crag said that, too?’

  ‘Yes, Pippa.’

  ‘Well, I will. We both will.’

  They did. Arm in arm they went to Davy’s room, the beautifully appointed room that Rena had had arranged for him.

  Davy went into his little bed, and Pippa lay down on the day bed ... where, to her surprise when she awakened in the morning, she actually went to sleep at once. She had thought she would lie awake, especially when tomorrow...

  But she slept. It was a long restful sleep. She opened her eyes to Davy handing her a not-too-hot cup of tea by its presence of leaves but looking so proud of himself that she drank it and declared it perfect.

  He sat on the day bed beside her.

  ‘Where’s your wedding dress, Pippa?’

  ‘Oh, darling, wedding dresses are for brides, I mean brides who are having big weddings and will be written up in the paper.’

  ‘Then what are you wearing?’

  ‘Oh, my brown, I suppose ... or my grey wool.’

  ‘Oh, Pippa!’

  ‘But, darling ...’

  ‘Brides don’t wear those things, they wear—they wear—’

  ‘Veils. But it’s different, Davy. Can’t you see, darling, that I—’

  ‘I didn’t mean veils ezackly, I—I meant a colour not grey or brown. And I meant flowers, Pippa’ ... eagerly ... ‘flowers to carry. There’s lots of flowers in the garden. I’m sure we could pick them. The gardener told me it was good to pick them sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, yes, we could pick them, but—’

  ‘Then let’s, Pippa.’

  What could she say? What could she say to that little eager face? Thank goodness it was a climate in which seasons made little difference and flowers were always available. Pulling on her dressing-gown, she went out with Davy and gathered enough white marguerites and early violets to form a posy. She tied them with blue ribbon to please the little boy, and after her shower she put on a short blue frock that toned with the violet and white, then tied a blue band round her hair.

&n
bsp; ‘Pippa, you’re a bride!’ Davy beamed.

  ‘You’re a bride.’

  Crag said it when she opened the door at ten minutes to ten at his ring.

  ‘I did it for Davy,’ she said quickly. ‘I did it because—’

  ‘Don’t spoil it,’ he said simply, and came right in. ‘Got a buttonhole for me?’

  She looked at him incredulously, and he nodded.

  ‘The scrubber, too,’ he said.

  There were carnations in the garden, and she plucked two. While she fixed them into buttonhole order, Crag packed their suitcases into the waggon. The waggon was pulling a trailer, she noticed, and the trailer was packed high with camping gear. Already Davy was capering around the gear, but he came running back to be buttonholed.

  ‘It’s all so absurd,’ Pippa began to complain of the carnation in the little boy’s lapel, but she didn’t get it out, for all at once it didn’t seem absurd, it seemed—right. It was Davy’s bliss, she supposed, but it was right.

  She had meant to write a brief note to Rena, telling her what she had done, where she had gone.

  It was only when she was entering the church that she remembered she had not done so. She told herself she must get Crag to drive her back to do it before they left on their—Before they left. Heavens, she had nearly thought honeymoon. She gave a nervous half-laugh.

  Then she stifled the laugh and looked at the minister who had come to meet and to guide them. She heard him say to the three of them, Crag, Davy, herself ... and to a cleaner, a gardener and someone brought in from the street:

  ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join—’

  It was too late to go back. In that moment she realized it. But with the realization came another realization, a realization so big, so bewildering, that for a moment she swayed, and Crag put out a hand to steady her.

  She did not want to go back. She wanted this.

  She heard ‘man and wife’ ... she felt Crag’s lips brushing hers. She felt Davy’s younger lips. She felt the press of the minister’s hand.

  It was not until they were miles from the Southern Highlands that she recalled again the letter she had not written to Rena. She told Crag and he shrugged, ‘Too late now, Mrs. C.’

  Mrs. C. She was Mrs. C.