Octavia

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Only if my John isn’t getting upset,’ Dora said. ‘I can’t have him getting upset.’

  ‘He’s bearing up extremely well,’ Emmeline told her. ‘He’s got his brother with him. And Johnnie don’t forget.’

  ‘And what about my Arthur?’ Edith wanted to know.

  He was actually so nervous he was standing at the altar rail biting his nails, but Emmeline wasn’t going to tell her daughter that. ‘He’s bearing up well too.’

  Dora deferred to her uncle, patient in the shadows of the car. ‘What do you think, Uncle J-J?’

  ‘Another five minutes,’ J-J suggested, smoothing his white moustache. ‘He’s come a long way to be at your wedding. We could spare him another five minutes.’

  The brides exchanged glances. ‘Five minutes then,’ Dora said, ‘but no more. We can’t drive round the block forever, Ma. Even for you.’

  ‘You are the dearest girls,’ Emmeline said and she stood back so that the car could be driven away, her green shoes scuffing up a flutter of used confetti. ‘It’s too bad,’ she said to Octavia who had walked across to stand beside her, elegant in blue and grey. ‘All that fuss to get everything organised so that he’d be here in plenty of time. I thought we were doing really well. I mean six days’ leeway should have been plenty. And now this. Everybody driven up to the last minute and the girls waiting and everything at sixes and sevens. That ship’s got a lot to answer for, wretched thing.’

  ‘We shall laugh about it afterwards,’ Octavia tried to comfort.

  ‘I’m not laughing now,’ Emmeline told her grimly. ‘If it weren’t for upsetting the girls I could sit right down and cry. Oh, what does that fool think he’s doing?’ A black taxi was trying to turn in at the exit, right in the path of the bridal car. ‘If he doesn’t watch out there’ll be an accident. That’s all we need.’

  Both cars screeched to a halt, sparks and gravel spinning from their wheels. The brides peered from the window again, the bridesmaids were all eyes – and a stocky looking man in a crumpled fawn suit and the most peculiar hat came tumbling out of the taxi, clutching a battered carpet-bag.

  ‘Oh!’ Emmeline cried. ‘It’s him! He’s here! Algy! My darling boy!’ And she ran towards him arms outstretched.

  There was a confusion of moving bodies and squealing voices. The darling boy was swept into her embrace, carpet bag and all, and hugged so tightly that his hat fell off his head and his brown face was flushed with pleasure; the bridesmaids left the church steps and rushed along the drive for a better view; the brides scrambled out of their car, and stood in the midst of the melee, their veils lifting behind them like twin sails, while their mother and their uncle danced round one another like excited children. And a strange man in an expensive grey suit got out of the taxi and stooped at the driver’s window to pay the fare.

  Octavia had stood back to allow her cousin the first greeting, so she was the only one looking at the other passenger. There was something familiar about those long legs, the cut of that grey suit, the way he was bending towards the window. Something she’d seen before, something that was making her heart jump.

  ‘Oh, my good God!’ Emmeline cried. ‘It’s Tommy Meriton! Tommy, my dear man, how lovely to see you.’ And she swept upon him and kissed him soundly while her brother explained that they’d met on the ship and wasn’t that a bit of luck and it was all right to bring him along, wasn’t it?

  ‘I’d never have got here without him.’

  ‘Of course,’ Emmeline said, taking them both by the arm and steering them towards the church. ‘Of course. The more the merrier. Now come along do, the pair of you. My poor brides have been waiting for ages, I’ll have you know, you bad boy, Algy. Oh, it is good to see you.’

  It was left to Octavia to restore order, to ensure that the luggage was put out of the way in the porch, that the brides were ready and the bridesmaids were calm and standing in line, so she had no time to greet her unexpected guest, much though she would have liked to. He and the belated voyager were dragged off into the church while she was busy and installed in the front pew, to the great interest of the congregation and the considerable relief of the vicar, who’d been standing by the altar rail wearing his patient expression for so long it felt stuck to his face. By the time she finally slipped into the church herself, she only had a second to ease into the nearest pew before the organist was playing the wedding march and J-J was proceeding down the aisle with a bride on each arm.

  But after all that, it was the happiest wedding and everything else went off without a hitch. John managed to make his responses without a single stutter and was given a loving pinch by way of praise for his prowess, and Arthur kissed his bride with such happy ardour that it brought tears to the eyes of nearly every woman in the congregation. And then they were out in the sunshine and the bright air was full of tumbling confetti and Octavia found herself standing side by side with Tommy Meriton and turned towards him wondering what she could say. He’d changed, there was no doubt about that. His lovely fair hair had dulled to brown and was cut severely short and he wasn’t as slim as he’d been when they parted, but he was still Tommy, his dark eyes exactly the same, his smile unchanged.

  ‘Hello, Tikki-Tavy,’ he said. ‘Surprised?’

  The nickname made her heart lurch. ‘Very,’ she said. And was on the point of adding that he was the last person she’d expected to see – but checked herself in time. He might not take her candour quite so easily after all these years and she didn’t want to upset him. I’m growing cautious in my old age, she thought.

  ‘Couldn’t let him struggle here by himself,’ he said, as if he felt he ought to explain. ‘I don’t think he knew where he was when we docked.’

  ‘He knows where he is now,’ Octavia laughed. He was standing with his arm round Emmeline’s ample waist, beaming at the brides.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Thank you for looking after him,’ Octavia said. ‘It was very good of you.’

  He gave her a self-deprecating grin. ‘Least I could do.’

  ‘I hope we haven’t made you too late getting home.’

  This time his grin was mischievous. ‘I phoned Elizabeth from the quayside,’ he said. ‘She knows I’m going to be late. Don’t worry. She’s used to it. If I travel by sea I rarely dock on time.’

  The photographer was calling to them to stand in line for the family portrait. ‘If you would be so kind, ladies and gentlemen!’

  ‘Still, I suppose I’d better be getting back now,’ Tommy said. ‘Mustn’t hold up proceedings.’

  Octavia didn’t want him to go. Not so soon. There wasn’t any need to rush away, was there? ‘You’re not holding up proceedings,’ she told him. ‘The very idea! Come and have your picture taken. That ship was so late a few more minutes won’t make any difference, will they?’

  ‘It’s a family portrait,’ he protested. ‘You heard what the man said.’

  She took his arm and led him towards the group gathering on the steps. ‘If you’re not family,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who is.’

  So he had his photograph taken, standing between Tavy and Em, and afterwards, at J-J’s insistence, he was persuaded to join the reception with the rest of the wedding party, where an extra place was set for him at the end of the long wedding table, next to Octavia.

  ‘This is like old times,’ he said as he took his seat.

  She was so happy to be sitting beside him she was grinning like an idiot. She had to remind herself that she must make an effort to be sensible. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him.

  He smiled at her for a long time, remembering. ‘I could eat a horse,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think horse is on the menu,’ she said, remembering too.

  ‘Which you know because you’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘Oh Tavy, you haven’t changed a bit!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ she told him, laughing. ‘You’d be surprised how much I’ve changed.’

  ‘Not in essentials,’ he said
. ‘Oh, I know you’re a power to be reckoned with – publicly, I mean – I’ve been following your career – but underneath you haven’t changed at all.’

  ‘Well, I won’t argue with you,’ she said.

  He laughed at her. ‘If you don’t, it’ll be the first time ever.’

  Algy was leaning across the table towards them, breaking into their tête-à-tête. ‘Top hole wedding, Tavy,’ he beamed. ‘Bonza food, bonza wine – and Em says there’s dancing afterwards. You’ve done us proud. Aren’t you glad you came back with me, Tommy?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tommy said. ‘I think you could say that.’ And he smiled at Octavia, his face shifting into the familiar happy contours she remembered so well. ‘Bags I the first waltz,’ he said.

  Oh yes, she thought, dear Tommy. You can have every waltz there is.

  But when the meal and speeches were done and the two wedding cakes had been cut to crumbs with a great deal of giggling and the band had struck up for the first dance of the afternoon, he was dragged off by Algy ‘to meet the families and do the honours, men of the family and all that sort of thing.’ And as Algy was cheerfully sozzled by then and not in a mood to take a refusal, he shrugged his elegant shoulders and did as he was told, grimacing at Octavia as he left her. There was nothing for it but to join her cousin in one of the rather uncomfortable chairs at the edge of the dance floor and watch as the two bridal pairs took to the floor to lead the dance. It was better that way. She couldn’t really expect him to dance with her. It wouldn’t have been proper.

  ‘I do so hope they’ll be happy,’ Emmeline said, smiling at Dora as she and John drifted past, cradled in each other’s arms. ‘It’s the one thing I’ve always wanted, for them to be happy. I made such a bad mistake marrying Ernest.’

  Octavia didn’t contradict her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I remember how he treated your boys, slapping their legs and calling them milksops. Poor little things. It was brutal.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about him, that was the trouble,’ Emmeline confided. ‘I thought it was enough for him to be a good provider, a man with a good job. You’re so silly when you’re young. But I paid for it. I knew it was a mistake right from the wedding night. Too late then, of course. Once you’ve made your decision you have to go through with it, don’t you? But it was a mistake and if I had my life to live again I’d do things very differently. Oh, I do so hope it will be better for my darlings.’

  ‘It will be,’ Octavia told her. ‘Look at them. They’re blissfully happy. Both of them.’

  ‘Do you have regrets?’ Emmeline asked. ‘About Tommy, I mean.’

  The question caught Octavia off guard but she answered it sensibly. ‘No,’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t. Regrets are a waste of time. I’ve got too much to do to sit around feeling sorry for myself.’ But then she noticed that Emmeline’s face was falling and realised that her words had been too brusque and could have been taken as a criticism, so she rushed to explain. ‘If I’d married him, Em, I couldn’t have run my school and think what a waste that would have been. No, I made my decision and I stuck by it and I don’t regret it. I’ve been royally rewarded.’

  Algy was pushing his way back to them through the dancers. Thanks to the wine and his exertions and the heat of the room, his face was an even darker brown than it had been when he arrived. But, as both women noticed, even though he was tiddly, he looked fit and stocky and full of himself, and he hadn’t coughed once since he arrived. ‘Come on, sis,’ he said to Emmeline. ‘Time you were dancing.’

  ‘I can’t dance,’ Emmeline protested. ‘I’m too fat.’

  ‘Rot!’ her brother said. ‘You’re not fat. A bit on the stout side maybe but you should see some of the women in Australia.’

  ‘No, honestly Algy,’ Emmeline said, tempted but dithering. ‘I can’t. Really. I haven’t danced for years. I’m too old. I’ve probably forgotten how. Anyway I can’t leave Tavy on her own. That wouldn’t be kind.’

  ‘Tavy’s dancing with me,’ Tommy said, from behind them. ‘She promised. Didn’t you, Tavy?’ He held out his hand to her and, when she took it, guided her to her feet.

  And then they were on the dance floor and waltzing together, as easily as if they’d never been parted and had danced with one another every day of their lives. It was extraordinary, exhilarating, dizzying. To be held so close with his hand warm in the small of her back guiding her, breathing in the lovely clean smell of his skin, smiling into his eyes. I’m dreaming, she thought. This can’t really be happening. And she struggled to find something acceptable to say, something to steer the conversation away from the disconcerting strength of her feelings.

  ‘What were you doing in Australia?’ she asked. That was safe enough.

  ‘Nothing at all, old thing, because I wasn’t there.’

  ‘I thought you and Algy met on the ship.’

  ‘So we did. I joined it at Alexandria,’ he explained. ‘I’ve been in the Middle East.’

  That was better. Now she could take an intelligent interest. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Being diplomatic.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘A Jewish homeland.’

  ‘Ah!’ There’d been talk of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine ever since 1920, when the British had been given the mandate there, but nothing had ever come of it. ‘Is it likely, do you think?’

  ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘It’s uphill work to get the Palestinians to even consider it. But likely or not we have to keep trying. There are bad times coming.’

  ‘I would have said they’re here already, given how much unemployment there is.’

  ‘It’s worse in Germany and that’s going to be the powder keg this time round.’

  His sombre tone alarmed her. ‘You’re not talking about another war, surely to goodness.’

  He reversed neatly and changed the subject. ‘Your Dora looks well,’ he said. ‘Love suits her.’

  She’d have liked to have heard more about what was happening in Germany but the subject was rather too obviously closed so she agreed that both her nieces were blooming and danced on, surrendering herself to the double delights of the waltz and his proximity.

  The afternoon passed in a drowse of rich food, unaccustomed wine and unexpected pleasure. It was quite a shock to Octavia when the bandleader announced the last waltz and she saw Emmeline signalling to her daughters that it was time to change their clothes. So soon? she thought. Surely not. And then she felt guilty because she’d danced the afternoon away and neglected her guests.

  ‘I must circulate,’ she said to Tommy as they walked from the floor. ‘I’ve hardly said a word to the other parents since they arrived.’

  They were remarkably forbearing. ‘You were enjoying yourself,’ Mrs Erskine said when Octavia apologised for her neglect. ‘And why not? That’s what weddings are for. Is that your husband you were dancing with? If you don’t mind me asking. He did introduce himself but we’ve forgotten what name he gave. Haven’t we, Jim?’

  Octavia explained that, no, he wasn’t her husband. ‘Just an old friend of the family. I haven’t seen him for years. We had a lot of catching up to do.’

  ‘He looks like a nice man.’

  ‘Yes,’ Octavia said. ‘He is.’ And now I must say goodbye to him and we probably won’t meet again. But there was no time for regrets for when she’d done the rounds and talked to all the people she’d been neglecting, the brides reappeared in their going-away suits and everybody rushed outside to wave them off to Wimbledon Station – travelling in two separate cars and blowing kisses to their guests until they were out of sight – to catch trains to wherever they were going for their honeymoons.

  And then it really was all over bar the leave-taking.

  Tommy was almost the last to say goodbye. ‘It’s been so good to see you again,’ she said to him and, although she spoke lightly and properly as befitted a hostess, she meant what she said.

  ‘We will meet again soon,’ he promised.
‘I have to go to Berlin in a day or two but I will telephone you when I get back.’ And he took her hand and kissed it in the old, hearttugging way.

  And that was that. The wedding was over, the dancing done, he was walking away and she had to return to the light of common day.

  ‘Time we were all getting home,’ J-J said to Emmeline and Algy. ‘It’s been an eventful day.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Algy agreed. ‘It’s been a real bonza.’

  ‘Oh, Algy,’ Emmeline said, taking his arm. ‘You sound so Australian.’

  ‘I am Australian.’ Algy laughed. ‘I’m your long-lost brother from down under.’ And that gave him a fit of the giggles. He laughed all the way back to the house and was still laughing when Emmeline led him upstairs to show him the room where he would be staying for his three month sabbatical.

  He said it was a bonza place and didn’t mind in the least that it had been the room of his two nieces. ‘Makes a nice change from the bush. I can tell you.’

  ‘You don’t live in the bush, do you?’ Emmeline asked.

  He laughed at that. ‘Don’t I just! I haven’t slept with lace curtains at the windows for more years than I can think about.’

  ‘Come out into the garden and tell us all about it,’ Octavia said. ‘It’s a gorgeous evening. Much too nice to waste indoors. We’ll sit by the fish pond. It’s pretty down there.’

  So they sat by the fish pond in their wicker chairs and listened to him as the goldfish circled lazily beside them and a blackbird sang in the may tree at the end of the garden and the evening sky soothed towards dusk. It was a fascinating story, for he seemed to have travelled all over southern Australia and tried all manner of jobs before he settled on sheep farming.

  ‘Best thing I ever did,’ he told them. ‘Out in the fresh air all day. Sleeping under the stars. You never saw such stars as there are in Oz. So bright you wouldn’t believe. Champion shearer I am. Known for it.’