The Virgin in the Garden (44 page)

“She won’t be Potter by the time she pays that in,” said Frederica obviously.

“I expect the Bank is used to that,” said Stephanie. Marcus, in flannels and aertex shirt, slid quietly into his chair.

“Where do you think he’s gone?” said Frederica. No one answered. Stephanie pushed away an unchipped egg. Winifred poured tea.

“Do you think he’ll come to any of it?” said Frederica. No one answered that, either.

There was a long silence. Frederica said, “Oh well, if nobody’s got any bright conversation, I think I’ll go and have a nice bath.”

Winifred roused herself.

“Now wait a minute, don’t just dash off, this has to be thought about. It’s
Stephanie’s
bath that counts, we must think about that, and the boiler, and make a careful schedule, time things …”

“Oh, Mummy, don’t be silly, anyone can go whenever they want, we’ve all got nothing to do and there’s huge deserts of time between now and then because you would insist on doing everything yesterday so now we must all sit and bite our nails for an eternity today, just in case the boiler blows, or the bouquets don’t come and we have to cycle to Blesford and back, or …”

“I get no thanks for trying to organise things smoothly,” said Winifred, tight-lipped. “You all seem to suppose arrangements just make themselves.”

“No, no, that’s just what we
don’t
suppose. We are complaining of oppressive fixing of hours of boring waiting …”

“I don’t care when I have my bath,” said Stephanie. Winifred, catching her tone, looked at her anxiously. She made an effort. “That is, I go very pink, bright pink, so I must have my bath in time to fade again before …”

“The blushing bride,” said Frederica.

“Shut
up
,” said Marcus, surprisingly. Everyone turned to stare at him. He got up and went upstairs, into the bathroom.

“Well,” said Frederica, “I shall go after Stephanie, and then I can have a good soak and a good sing and put myself in fettle.”

“No one,” said Winifred, “has time to
soak
, dear.”

This was not true. Frederica was right, there was too much waste time. A florist’s van came with flowers, Mrs Thone telephoned to say the catering was in hand, Bill stayed away, and nothing else happened. The three women trailed round the house in dressing-gowns, making unnecessary cups of Nescafé, glancing casually out of the windows. The house was full of piles of parcels and temporary spaces where a chair, or a clock, had gone to furnish the maisonette. Frederica knew they should all have been laughing or crying together but Winifred and Stephanie were silent and closed and her clumsy jokes seemed like monstrous acts of aggression or vulgarity, so after a time she did indeed close herself in the bathroom, where she sang with gloomy glee “No Coward Soul is Mine”, “Abide With Me”, and Feste’s cold little song from
Twelfth Night
. After Winifred had nervously ejected Frederica, Stephanie took
a brisk bath – she did not want to look at her body – and wandered, pink, damp, slightly curly-haired into her own bedroom, where she sat on the bed and waited until she could decently begin to get dressed – a time which was still some hours away.

The room, always bare, was now denuded. Her books, her mantelpiece things, the stool, the bedside table, had been carried down to Askham Buildings. The wardrobe contained only clothes she had grown out of, worn out or rejected. In a nervous attempt to occupy herself she had stripped the bed and folded the blankets, on which she now sat, quietly, not recognising the place, which she could not leave, because it had already gone away. She envied Frederica, who always wanted something – who had indeed carried off a few of the things that had been left, a tapestry cushion, a hair-pin tray, a print of Botticelli’s Primavera whose blank space on the wall was a paler green than the rest, making it all look dusty. She thought of her childhood, and it was nothing to do with her. She thought of Daniel, and decided not to. She thought of Wordsworth, and felt a momentary relief. Winifred knocked at the door and appeared, wearing, under the dressing-gown, a gleaming new corselet. She was carrying yet another cup of Nescafé.

“Do you feel all right, dear?”

“I’m not ill.”

Winifred looked round the room. “It all looks a bit stripped. I thought we might make a study here, for him. I’m sorry he’s being like this.”

“Not your fault. Not unexpected, really.”

“It’s your day. And he’s trying to spoil it.”

Stephanie saw she was weeping.

“I wanted it to be right, for you, a real family wedding, for you …”

“It will be.”

They looked at each other with mirrored despairing patience. Winifred’s hands were tucked in her dressing-gown cuffs, wrapped round her body, for comfort. Stephanie thought, a woman, a house, “a real family …” Did she want to make a “home” for Daniel? What did she want? Frederica burst in, clothed in the yellow poplin, her hair tied back with a long chocolate ribbon. She said,

“Get a move on. I can see Alexander walking across Far Field looking absolutely all pearly grey, and a top hat, imagine the beauty, and here you all are in your underthings. Things are starting. May I borrow that new lipstick you bought, Steph, that softy one. Mine are all altogether too strong for this buttery colour, you need subtlety, and you wouldn’t want a tarty bridesmaid, would you? You wouldn’t lend me a bit of your greeny eyeshadow too, would you?”

Stephanie mutely indicated her chest of drawers and watched Frederica
briskly apply her pristine wedding makeup to her own face. She was ashamed of the feeling that the things were hers, should have been used by her; like a small child on its birthday, not a grown woman, she told herself, watching Frederica spit expertly on her mascara and twist her mascara brush on the sandy lashes. The green eyeshadow looked rather nice on Frederica.

“There – all done in a jiffy. Now I can let Alexander in whilst you beautify yourself. Mummy’s been pressing your folds out. I’ll go and get The Dress, shall I?”

“I suppose so.”

Frederica gave her a long, greedy, proprietary look and flared out again, rustling net petticoats and crisp cotton skirt. After a moment, she came back with the white, sagging plastic bag containing the dress and hung it in the door.

“If you need a tirewoman, shout. He’s coming up the garden path, I’ll open the door, I hope he doesn’t think this yellow is juvenile …”

Left alone, she moved the naked bulb of her bedside lamp nearer to her mirror – the shade had also been taken down to Askham Buildings. In the theatrical glare this produced she made up her own face, rapidly, minimally, stepped out of her dressing-gown, stared at her naked breasts for a cool angry moment, and began on a whirlwind hooking and zipping. She brushed too fiercely at her hair, so that protesting damp bits of it whipped into unintentional tight spirals, and then, as ruthlessly as she could, she poked and pinned and squashed the little white wired cap and the clouds of tulle onto her head. It was all a nonsense. One, two, she tapped her heels into white kid slippers and stalked out, skirts rustling, onto the landing. In the hall Frederica was making little rushes in search of a lost glove and Winifred, military in glossy navy blue, was struggling with a pleated linen hem. A car-driver stood by the door. Stephanie stood on the stairs.

“Oh, you’re there. Oh, good. You look lovely. Alexander’s in the sitting room with the flowers. If he – if your father – comes back – tell him – oh, I don’t know – tell him – but don’t on any account wait, whatever you do. Don’t wait. Is my back hair all right? Do I look silly?”

“Lovely, you look.”

“Not that it matters, anyway. Perhaps it will be just as well if he
doesn’t
put in an appearance. My dear – I will see you in the church.”

“I hope so,” said Stephanie, still on the stairs. Frederica spun past, gesturing with a handful of cornflowers and white rosebuds.

“I tell you one thing, Alexander’s
much
the most handsome …”

“I feel a fool,” said Stephanie.

“You will,” said Frederica, in a thoughtlessly soothing voice, and
rushed out to her carriage. Stiffly, Stephanie went into the sitting room.

Alexander rose most gracefully, smoke-grey, pearl-grey, oyster-grey, from the sofa, gave her a half-bow and said, “Ah, let me look at you, let me see.” She stood stony in the doorway. He gestured with a hand. “Please, walk towards me. I am so honoured to have been asked. Could you put your head up a little. Take longer steps. Forgive me. That’s lovely.”

Flustered, she nearly tripped over the trailing flex of the iron. She caught up a pointed trail of veiling, bent awkwardly down, rustling and white, to disconnect the plug.

“Let me,” said Alexander.

“Fires can start that way.”

“We have avoided a fire.” He put the iron onto the bookshelf. He put the ironing board behind the sofa. The room was a graceless chaos: Frederica’s discarded dressing-gown on the carpet, dirty coffee cups on mantelpiece and table, trails of packing shavings. In the middle of this, Alexander took her hands.

“Lovely dress.”

“I feel silly.”

“Why?” He was excited: he felt a pronounced distaste for the domestic mess. He would never have advocated the wearing of bright red jackets and white tight trousers on the buttocks: but a woman in a white veil, a long, wide skirt and a sash caught his attention in a way a woman in an apron – off-stage – never would. He repeated, “Why? Use your sense of occasion. Step out.” He studied her with a practised eye. Some of the seams were puckered: a hook and eye at the waist were sewn askew: her rigorous dressing had depressed the waistline of the dress below the line of the sash; there was something wrong with her head. He gripped her hands, briefly, and said,

“If I may – I could just fix your sash. Give the veiling a tweak? May I?”

She nodded, speechless.

“You look so lovely.” His hands were busy round her waist, pulling, pleating, tucking. “Have you any of those tiny gold pins? There’s a stitch here.” She shifted brusquely, with the immediately suppressed impatience of those who are required to keep still and be touched by helpers. The hands stopped for a moment, hard, on her waist. She began to inhabit the dress. She lifted her shoulders. “Little gold pins,” said Alexander’s beautiful voice, amused, deprecating, insistent.

“Oh, little gold pins. By my bedroom mirror. I’ll go.”

“No, no, keep still, I’ll go.”

She stood like a white pillar, hearing him, Alexander, prowling in her
bare box of a room, swinging downstairs. He took her in his hands again, turning, bending, delicately inserting a pin here, tugging a fold there. He retied the sash, running his hands down her ribs, one over her buttocks, suggesting, somehow, the stance that would hang the dress. He turned her to face him. Abstractedly, he pulled at her collar, peering into the chaste V neck. He put a hand under her chin, turned up her face.

“Have we time? I could do something with that hairline. Your pretty little cap is all asymmetrical. Stephanie, you are deliberately torturing yourself with those ferocious grips and pins. You are a beautiful girl, all soft curves and rounded lines. You can’t
drag
your hairline, love, it won’t do. May I?”

“Do I have any choice?”

“You know I know better.”

“I know you know better.”

He had the pins out in a few seconds, produced a shining new comb from a breast-pocket, soothed, curved, resited the little cap, pinned it down. One or two sore and burning places she had made on her own scalp glowed and vanished. She breathed deeply. He stepped back to look at her, stepped close again and studied her face. She wondered if he was going to offer to apply fresh make-up, too, but he simply nodded appreciatively, touched her cheek with a gentle finger, tucked a curl behind her ear.

“I am enjoying this,” said Alexander. “I am so glad to have been invited. I shall get your flowers.”

He strode away and returned with the wired cascade of white and gold, roses and stephanotis, freesias and orange blossom, the heads bitten in their metal stems, the surface dense, crisp, scented.

“I shan’t know how to hold it.”

“I shall show you.”

He handed the thing to her. She held it awkwardly, protruding, dangling, heavy.

“No, you must clasp it –
not
down there – at waist level, and tuck your elbows in. Above your sash.”

It looked so light and airy, and was so rigidly wired.

“Like a chastity belt,” she said vaguely.

“The way you were holding it, it would have been easier to give it a grosser name,” said Alexander, and they both laughed. “Now, you mustn’t stand, frozen, you must step out lightly. Take long strides, from the hip,
move
that skirt. Try it.”

She stepped out. His hands, his eyes, defined her body. She was briefly pleased with it. The doorbell rang. The driver of the car had returned from the church for this last cargo. Together they went out
into the little hall. Cream paint, flowered walls, telephone table, coat hooks, hardboard bannister case. She remembered the sites of unbuilt homes, marked out with corner bricks, strips of wood, concrete. A house takes up so little earth — a few of these floating white strides and you had covered it, end to end. A child playing out of doors could skip a minute and move over living room and kitchen, step quickly beyond the equivalent of the inhabited space. In some way this perception was linked with the disturbing idea of Alexander, in her stripped bedroom, rifling her dressing table for little gold pins, where she had so often daydreamed him into a finished box of a home, curtained and carpeted against the night and cold. It was all struts, and padding and muffling, a house. She tightened a little white-gloved hand on Alexander’s arm. He bent and kissed her mouth, and then lifted the veiling and covered her face with it. Neatly, pacing together, they went down the garden-path and into the ribboned car.

The next stage was briefly endless. They sat silently in the car and small knots of people stared, even waved, from street-corners, as to a princess passing. She picked her white way across uneven churchyard stones, Alexander’s hand under an elbow. In the porch a man with a camera crouched and grinned, gestured and begged her to smile and smile again. Muffled in white, she turned her head this way and that. A black verger beckoned her into the dark, and there was Frederica, yellow and peering, with glittering eyes. Between porch and church was a black velvet curtain, up against which the verger led her, so that she stared into it whilst Frederica and Alexander twitched at the veiling and shook out the flow of skirts. The verger said that when the organ sounded he would whip back the curtain and give a vicious shove to that sticky door. She should mind that old step down, a bride had measured her length only the other week and been spliced with smashed glasses and a beautiful black eye. Frederica curvetted like a restrained procession of one. Alexander arranged her arm over his: there was a wheezing and winding of bellows and then suddenly music. The verger pulled the curtain, Alexander negotiated the step, Frederica paced after. The Vicar, in rehearsal, had urged her to give Daniel a big smile. He loomed under the bright brass lectern eagle. She met his eye, briefly, vaguely. He had his concentrated frown.