Her escape, her journey across the continent, had pulled Mabel from a precipice and led her to forgiveness and the remembrance of a purer love. Now, with Howard standing next to her—still next to her after twenty-five years—Mabel felt a surge of happiness flow through her veins. She might never again go away on her own, but she would, she thought, take her husband with her.
“Shall we?” she said, offering Howard her arm.
Conversation hummed over the garden; over women in diaphanous pale gowns with diamond-crusted headbands and plumes; over men in starched wing collars and white bow ties, and those in uniform, their medals glinting in the early evening sun.
Older guests, those military men with stiff legs and walking sticks, red faced and bleary-eyed, and those ladies paying homage to more sedate bygone days, kept to the gritted terrace and allowed the young to spill out onto the lawn. Holding glasses of champagne, they tried to recall who was who: “Isn’t that one of the Forbes girls?” When they had last seen each other: “It was at the Knights’ victory party, I tell you.” Caught up on who had died: “Last winter. And quite sudden, I believe.” And from time to time they fell into silence as they stared out at those with unlined faces and unbent spines, standing in huddles about the lawn; filled with nostalgia, remembering a time when they too had cut a dash.
When the gong sounded, the young men and women waited as the older ones slowly made their way along the red carpet, laid out across the striped lawn and leading into the tent, where the noise, now contained by canvas, was suddenly louder; and where the older men, holding a hand to their ears, shouted, “What’s that you say?” There, the men waited for the ladies to be seated, and the ladies waited for Mabel, and everyone smiled and nodded at one another with nervous goodwill.
The large red flower was easy enough to see. Daisy had followed its path as it wobbled through the tent and then came to a stop at Iris’s table. The dark suit, directly in Daisy’s line of vision, had its back to her and was facing Iris, who looked quite devastating in a Chanel gown of cream chiffon stripes. She had been to Marcel and had had her bobbed hair dyed jet black, straightened with irons and a heavy fringe cut, so that it hung down like curtains about her face, large green eyes and red-painted lips—which she now puckered to blow a kiss back at Daisy. Then Valentine, seated next to Iris, said something to her and pulled her attention away.
All of them—Daisy and her family—were scattered about, so that almost each table had a Forbes family member seated at it. Only Mabel and Howard sat together—and side by side, Daisy noticed. And now she could see Reg and Margot: Reg leaning in toward Margot, one arm draped over the back of her chair, the other extended, gesticulating, making some point or other. Ben, she saw, had been placed some distance away from the family, toward the back of the tent and on a table with older people and a few uniformed men. Lily and Miles were seated right in the middle of the marquee—under the chandelier. And she could hear Dosia somewhere in the distance, and arguing already: “Fair pay . . . fair pay! It has to be about fair pay.”
Daisy smiled back at Aurelia, sitting opposite her, between two of Howard’s friends. She had been standing with Aurelia outside on the lawn when Stephen appeared with his parents and the flowery Tabitha on his arm. She had introduced Aurelia to Mr. and Mrs. Jessop and to Stephen, and then stumbled: “And this is Stephen’s . . . friend, Tabitha.”
With that big red flower on the top of her head and her matching red dress, Tabitha Farley reminded Stephen of one of his father’s prize begonias. Though to be fair, there were a few women in similar hats, including his mother and Auntie Nellie. They looked as though they were going to church, or to a wedding, Stephen thought, not that he knew anything much about women’s fashions or what was right to wear to this sort of function. And there were certainly a variety of outfits, and all ages, and a surprising number of men in uniform. It was easy for him: He had only the one suit.
He scanned the tent once more. He could see his mother and father and Auntie Nellie at a table with the Singhs and some other neighbors, and Mrs. Forbes’s mother; Nancy and Mr. Blundell down toward the back with Howard’s cousins and some people he didn’t recognize; Benedict Gifford . . . surrounded by silver heads and uniforms; and the major and Mrs. Vincent, deep in conversation. But where was she? Where was Daisy?
He felt a hand on his thigh and turned. Tabitha smiled and winked at him.
“It’ll be up to us to start the dancing,” Iris was saying, lighting another cigarette. “And there can’t be any shilly-shallying, not from this table. We need to show them how it’s done . . . You look like a dancer, Tabitha. Am I right?”
“Ooh yes! I love a turn on the floor. Not that there are many dances down here, mind you.” She laughed. “But the ones they have in the Jubilee Hall aren’t that bad, are they, Stephen?”
“Aha! Stephen,” interrupted Iris, leaning forward over the table, “do you know the black bottom? Don’t worry, Valentine and I will show you . . . We’ll show you both how it’s done, and you, too, Hilda. We’ll have everyone doing it before the night is over.”
“I can’t wait,” said Tabitha, squeezing Stephen’s thigh.
It was going to be a long night, Stephen thought, watching Tabitha as she drained another glass of champagne.
After dinner, as pudding bowls were cleared away and bottles of port placed upon each of the tables, the orchestra struck up Irving Berlin’s “Always.” Howard rose to his feet and led Mabel onto the dance floor. A ripple of applause passed through the long marquee. Heads turned. No one else got up to dance, not yet, and all eyes remained fixed on Mr. and Mrs. Forbes as they moved across the candlelit floor in a gentle waltz.
Howard and Mabel Forbes were, to many there, the embodiment of a good marriage, and this night—even this dance—seemed only to confirm that to them. Howard in his tails and white tie, Mabel in her shimmering gown of palest silver: They made a handsome couple, everyone said. When the music ceased there was more applause; Howard bowed and kissed Mabel’s hand. Then the orchestra began again and a beaming Howard beckoned to his guests to join him and Mabel on the dance floor. Iris and Valentine were first up, then the major and Margot, and there were a few unlikely pairings: Aurelia and Mr. Blundell, Dosia and Old Jessop, Nancy and Mr. Brown, and Mrs. Wintrip and Mrs. Jessop. By the end of the second dance, the floor was crowded, and Lily and Miles, too, had joined the swirling throng.
The only Forbes family member not on the dance floor was Daisy, who remained seated at her table surrounded by a few contemporaries of Howard’s, reminiscing about the war, the trenches, lost friends and lost limbs. Ben had quickly found his way over to her and asked her to dance. She declined. The old boys sitting next to her also asked. To each one of them she said, “Thank you, perhaps a little later . . .”
Daisy had no desire to dance with or be anywhere near Ben Gifford, not then or later. And she had been distracted, riveted by the goings-on only a few tables away: watching Tabitha as she tried to drag Stephen to his feet, as he shook his head, as he helped her up when she fell forward onto the table, as she draped her arms around his neck and tried to sit on his lap. Ben had interrupted Daisy’s vigil about then, but minutes later, after declining his invitation to dance, Ben had suddenly appeared in her line of vision—at that table. Daisy saw him exchange a few words with Stephen, saw Tabitha rise unsteadily to her feet. Then Ben led Tabitha off through the scattered chairs and onto the dance floor. Daisy watched the red flower move hither and thither, drifting through the sultry air as though it had a life of its own, appearing and then disappearing back into the crowd. The dark suit remained; the intermittent glow of a cigarette like the beam of a distant lighthouse, guiding her in.
“What sort of music do you like, my dear?” one of the old gents asked.
“Oh, all sorts of things, really . . .”
“And do you dance much up in London?”
“Oh yes, sometimes. But
I’m not terribly good at it . . . not like Iris,” she said, turning her head back to the dance floor.
“Ah yes, she’s quite a goer, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Your mother and father look very happy . . .”
“Don’t they?”
“And what about you? Got yourself a young man yet?” the man asked, moving closer. “Someone in particular?”
Daisy shook her head. “No. No, not yet.”
“Hmm, but plenty willing, I bet. Pretty young thing like you, eh? Shouldn’t be a wallflower, what!”
Eventually, she said, “Do excuse me.”
Finally, Stephen saw her. Turned to see her rise from her chair, watched her weave her way through the scattered tables and chairs and leave the tent.
Outside, dusk had descended, stars had begun to emerge. The moon peeped nervously from behind a tall chimney, and along the terrace colored lanterns burned upon tables where people sat smoking in rattan chairs. Waiters and waitresses moved back and forth across the graying carpet from the house to the tent, carrying trays and bottles and glasses, while men stood in huddles, leaning on sticks, murmuring and puffing on cigars.
He found her. Standing in the shadows with her back against the canvas, ethereal in white, barely there. She shook her head and waved him away. When he caught her wrist, a large tear fell onto his hand.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Why are you out here, all alone and sad?”
She shook her head again, didn’t speak. He released her wrist, stood alongside her, his back pressed up against the canvas now too, his eyes searching desperately for the same stars.
The air was warm, scented with rose and lavender and jasmine. The music inside the tent altered tempo. “That’ll be Iris and the black bottom,” he said, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket. “You can tell me, if you want to,” he added. “You know that. You must know that by now.”
“Do you have a handkerchief?” she asked.
He reached to the breast pocket of his jacket and handed one to her. She dabbed her cheeks, then handed it back to him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “And I don’t want to be sad . . . not tonight.”
He lit a cigarette, handed it to her and then lit another.
“But I want to tell you something,” she said, turning to him, leaning her shoulder against the taut canvas, the cigarette in her hand.
He couldn’t bear to look at her right at that moment, couldn’t bear to look back into her tear-filled eyes and not be able to wrap his arms around her and hold her.
“I’ve called off my engagement . . . But that’s not why I’m sad,” she quickly added.
“Your unofficial engagement,” he said, smiling, finally glancing up at her.
“Yes, my unofficial engagement . . . destined never to be official.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “Oh, Stephen, what a fool I’ve been . . . Anyway, it’s over, finished.”
“Am I allowed to ask why?”
She shrugged her shoulders: “I simply came to my senses. Realized, A, I don’t love him, B, I never could . . . and, C . . .”
“C?”
She took a moment. “C . . . I don’t even really like him,” she said, staring back at Stephen, sounding newly dismayed.
Stephen shook his head and then laughed. He stared up at the sky and closed his eyes: Thank you, God.
“God only knows!” Howard bellowed.
The music was far too loud. Mabel grimaced, shook her head. He bent down, held his hand to her ear: “No sign of either of them.”
It was always the same two, Mabel thought, only vaguely irritated: her mother and Daisy. Maybe it was genetic, this penchant for wandering. Howard sat down. He moved his chair nearer to Mabel’s. “I wanted to dance with her,” he mouthed.
“Noonie?”
“No! Daisy.”
Howard and Mabel had danced the first few dances together, then taken turns across the floor with various partners. Mabel glanced back at the dance floor: Iris was leaping all over the place now, wiggling her bottom about in the most unladylike way . . . And there was that girl again, the one with the large flower hanging over her forehead—and not wiggling her bottom but on her bottom. Mabel glanced to Howard, who rolled his eyes and laughed.
“Who is she?” Mabel mouthed.
Howard shook his head: “No idea.”
Mabel watched Gifford pull the poor creature back up and onto her feet. She watched the two exchange a few words and then disappear through an opening at the back of the tent, and she looked to see if Howard had seen, too. He had. She turned her attention back to the dance floor to look for Reggie and Margot . . .
And there they were, trying to keep up with the young: Margot following Iris’s every move and sticking out her bottom; Reg jiggling his limbs like an imbecile. It was most unseemly, and though she knew that he had, she rather wished Howard hadn’t seen, hadn’t seen Reg make an ass of himself in that way, and with Margot.
When the music paused, Howard leaned over to her. “I have something for you . . . something I want to give you, but not here.”
“Oh, but, Howard, I told you . . . no more jewelry, no gifts.”
He smiled, rose to his feet, took her hand and led her out from the marquee.
Music drifted over the garden. A lantern with stained-glass panels flickered on the table where they sat. Noonie had been taking a breath of air when she’d come across them, standing outside the tent. She was looking for a chair, somewhere cool to sit down, she’d said. “Far too warm in there, and so terribly loud.” Stephen had suggested the terrace and had then gone back inside the tent to get the women a glass of champagne. As soon as he’d disappeared, Noonie had turned to Daisy and said, “Is he the one, then? Do you think he’s the one for you?”
“Who—Stephen?”
“Yes. He’s the one you always turn to, isn’t he?”
Daisy laughed. The notion wasn’t so much ridiculous as her grandmother’s suggestion of it, and she was embarrassed, and unsure at first what to say. “Stephen’s like a brother, an older brother, that’s all,” she said.
But Noonie went on—and in something of a rush. “Where love is concerned one must always follow one’s heart, not one’s head. The brain is useful in making certain decisions, but not where love’s concerned. No. It’s not needed for that. And you,” she said, focusing her gaze on Daisy, “are a child with a strong and true heart. You always have been . . . but of course you’re still young and life’s a muddle when you’re young. I remember that . . . and so easy to make mistakes, so easy to not know and walk away . . . thinking it will remain and still be there for you when you unravel the muddle.”
The only muddle to Daisy was what Noonie was speaking about. Then she said: “You see, I was once in love, terribly in love, but I didn’t realize—had nothing to compare it to.”
“Grandpa?”
Noonie shook her head. “No, not him.”
“Who, then?”
“Oh, well, that’s a long story. One best kept for another day. But I can tell you that he was—remains—the love of my life.”
“You’ve never mentioned him—any of this—before.”
Noonie raised a finger to her lips. “I couldn’t—can’t. And it’s a long time ago . . . a lifetime ago. But I still think of him . . . Samuel,” she said, her voice filled with nostalgia and longing. “He married, eventually, and had a family. His daughter wrote to me last year, after he passed away. He had talked to her about me, you see. At the end, he’d talked about me.” She looked at Daisy. “Love never leaves us. It stays right here,” she said, placing a hand to her chest. “And then, one day, the mist rises, everything falls into place, and it’s so easy to see, to understand, and one wishes one could run back through the years, back to that love.”
Stephen reappeared, c
lutching two glasses. He handed one to Noonie, the other to Daisy. Noonie looked up at him, her eyes twinkling. “Have you ever been in love, Stephen?” she asked.
Howard and Mabel stood by the lily pond where the stars glistened on the flat water and two stone lanterns burned.
“As you know, I’ve never been very good at expressing myself, not about emotions, and . . . not when it matters,” Howard said. Then he reached into his inside pocket and handed Mabel a small leather-bound book.
Mabel stared at it for a second or two, then she moved nearer to one of the lanterns. She opened the book, slowly turned a few of its pages, and looked back at her husband. “But it’s filled with your writing . . . you’ve written all of this,” she said, confused.
“Yes, I wrote it while you were gone . . . I wanted to record everything—everything about you, and me and our lives . . . and how I felt, how I feel. I suppose, it was—is—some sort of confessional diatribe, but it was cathartic and helped me a great deal. And I wanted you to know—want you to know that . . .” He faltered. “That I’ve never stopped loving you, and that you are everything—everything to me.”
Mabel wasn’t sure what to say. It was such a strange present, and not at all what she had been expecting.
“So no jewels?”
“No. No jewels.”
“And no speech?”
Howard shook his head. “Just some words from my heart.”
Mabel turned another page. She saw the name—a title at the top of the page—and she smiled. It was the first time she could recall having seen it in Howard’s hand, but she knew now that her time away had allowed her husband not only time to reflect, but also time to grieve. The day after her return home, she had gone to the churchyard to find Theo’s grave blanketed in white blooms, and the air suffused in the same heavenly fragrance as the rose garden.
“He planted all of them himself,” Noonie had told Mabel. “And he went there every single evening to water them . . . Yes, he’s spent quite a lot of time in that churchyard.”
The Snow Globe Page 27
