The Wedding Party (3 page)

‘Oh! nonsense. You know I wouldn't dream of it. Here the thing stands. I never use it.'

‘Well, it's very sweet of you. But just a peppercorn.'

‘Oh! very well, then. Just a peppercorn.'

Mrs Arbuthnot smiled even more expansively and a moment later Miss Kingsford broke in on the intimacy of the conversation by saying:

‘I'm sure you two have business to talk over. Do you mind if I walk as far as the stream?'

‘Oh! won't you come over to the house for a cup of tea? Do. It's only two minutes—'

‘Well, thank you, but I should really like to get back. I've got one or two bits of shopping to do before they close.'

Miss Kingsford walked away to the stream. She stood on the bank and stared at it bleakly. It really wasn't, she thought, much of a stream and suddenly she knew she hated the caravan. Twenty yards away a solitary moorhen, disturbed, suddenly plopped sharply into the water and a moment later the sound was echoed and expanded by a long and gracious peal of Mrs Arbuthnot's laughter. When it finally died she even heard Mr Willoughby laughing too.

Under the impulse of these sounds she walked away up the stream. She walked for two hundred yards or so, until a fence prevented her walking any further. Then, for quite
how long she didn't quite know, she leaned on the fence and stared into the stream, once or twice hearing, even at that distance, fresh peals of Mrs Arbuthnot's laughter.

When she finally walked back to the caravan Mr Willoughby advanced to meet her and said:

‘Ah! there you are. We'd almost begun to think we'd lost you.'

‘Oh! don't worry. I'm not easily lost.'

With gracious ease Mrs Arbuthnot shook hands and said good-bye. She was sorry Miss Kingsford wouldn't stay for tea. She hoped she would come again some other time. In farewell to Mr Willoughby she offered both cheeks and Mr Willoughby kissed them politely.

‘Well, we'll be in touch—'

In the car, after an awkward silence of some ten minutes or so, Miss Kingsford said:

‘Well, are you going to take it?'

‘Yes. I think so. It's what I've been looking for. I'm sorry you didn't like it.'

‘Oh! it's nothing to do with me.'

Another long awkward silence followed and they were almost within sight of the coast again before Mr Willoughby said:

‘Of course I shall entirely repaint the thing. And it needs a new cooker. And Mrs Arbuthnot's promised to make some fresh curtains. She's such a friendly person.'

Too friendly, Miss Kingsford wanted to say, but offered nothing but bleak silence in answer.

‘You'd never think she suffered the most ghastly tragedy
a few months back. Her father and husband were driving down late one night from town. The car hit a tree—'

‘Oh! I see.'

‘She simply refuses to let it get her down. She's always the same. So buoyant and gay. It's quite inspiring.'

‘Yes,' Miss Kingsford said. ‘I suppose she'll make a good neighbour.'

A week later Mr Willoughby left the guest-house. Miss Kingsford, determined not to say good-bye, stayed in her room all day, keeping herself, after her habit, very much to herself. But when darkness fell she put on her fur coat and walked along the cliff-top, with the dog for company.

Half way along the cliff-top she unleashed the poodle and let him run. At the place where he had once raced over the cliff and she had feared Mr Willoughby might kill himself she halted and stood looking down. A cold wind was blowing and she could hear breakers beating on the shore. Then she thought she heard the dog whine in the darkness and presently it seemed as if the separate sounds of wind and dog and breakers were woven into one long continuous sound. And after a time she knew there was no mistaking that sound.

It was the sound of winter.

Mike Hillyard stood on the terrace of the hotel leaning on a long stone balustrade under which big beds of scarlet salvia were fiery in the thunder gloom of late afternoon, idly watching the lake and the mountains beyond.

A mountain shaped exactly like a sugar cone rose from straight across the water, wreathed at the very top with a grey halo of cloud. From the foot of it, every minute or so, storm signals darted out like orange soundless fireworks. The gloom was almost purple, the lake water momentarily iridescent where low light from breaking cloud struck it. Far off, a solitary slip of sunlight caught a single low alpine meadow and turned it into a flag of such luminous emerald brilliance that it too might have been some sort of signal to the opposite shore. Behind the hotel the tempestuous rain of early afternoon had turned a mountain stream into a ferocious white-green torrent that he could hear crashing down its many waterfall steps like a continuous echo of the earlier thunder.

Suddenly, from behind a high perpendicular crag of rock, a steamer slid into sight, a gigantic snow-white swan dressed with many-coloured bunting. As it came nearer he could just hear from it, above the noise of the waterfall, the
sound of someone playing a guitar and then of people singing.

Even more suddenly the steamer performed a strange miracle. It laid on the water a vast clutch of eggs, a hundred or more in pink and blue and green and scarlet and mauve. As they floated and bobbed and spread in its wake a boat propelled by two boys in blue swimming trunks darted out from the shore, followed by another and another until there were half a dozen of them, chasing joyfully the stream of retreating balloons.

On the bridge of the steamer the figure of a heavy man in morning dress appeared, a bright red rose in his button-hole, a waving champagne bottle in one hand: a figure gross and gay, shouting stentorian nothings to the shore. Presently it was joined by two others, also bearing bottles, and this tipsy brotherhood of triplets began to sing, in German, some loud bellying song.

Below, on deck, cameras flashed and many people were dancing: the men florid, the women gay and flowery, some wearing fur wraps against the cooling evening air. In the saloon a vast quantity of food was spread out on white-clothed tables jewelled with half-empty glasses, wine bottles and pyramids of pink and yellow roses.

On the bridge a tipsy hand pulled at a cord and for fully half a minute the blast of the steamer's siren completely drowned the chatter of voices, the sound of the guitar, the waterfall and the wild stentorian song.

A moment of two later the steamer bumped against the jetty piles. Two gangways rattled across to the landing
stage. A laughing menagerie of passengers emerged, more cameras flashing, the men like so many penguins, among them all a young bride in a cream lace head-dress, carrying a bouquet of white and yellow roses. She stood there for some moments looking slightly bewildered, even forlorn until at last she was joined by the man of stentorian voice from the bridge, still carrying the champagne bottle in his hand. In the final moment as she took his arm another rasping blast from the steamer's siren split the air, the long repetition of its echoes talking its way across the mountains until finally lost somewhere far away in cloud-hidden snows.

Hillyard suddenly found the frock-coated concierge of the hotel at his side.

‘A gay scene,' Hillyard said.

‘A big, important wedding, sir. The daughter of a big business man. Manufacturer of soap. Did you not see the steamer when it left earlier in the afternoon, sir?'

‘No, I didn't see it. I went for a walk in the woods this afternoon. Where has the steamer been?'

‘Oh! simply for a tour of the lake, sir. For eating and drinking and dancing and making a good time.'

‘And now what happens?'

‘Oh! more eating and drinking and dancing, sir. More good times. More fun. Excuse me now, sir—'

Alone again, Hillyard watched the last of the passengers leave the steamer. As they came ashore he was suddenly struck by the fact that a fair-haired girl in a deep green and purple dress was the only one among them not laughing. She momentarily hesitated half way across the gangway,
looked back, seemed as if she had forgotten something and then suddenly looked up at him and held him for a fraction of a minute in a steady stare.

For a second or two he was half-tempted to smile back at her. But there was no hint of invitation on her face: only the stare that might have been appealing, slightly resentful or merely curious. He couldn't tell at all and a moment later she moved on, crossed the landing stage, all alone, and disappeared.

A white-coated platoon of waiters now began to bear impossible masses of uneaten food from the steamer: vast platters of cold salmon, cold sucking pigs, roast turkeys, fiery lobsters, great boulders of brown-red beef. At one stage some extravagant piece of iced confection conjured into the shape of a much-turreted
Schloss
appeared, all pink and soap-like itself, that took the strength of two waiters to carry away. Lavish baths of fresh strawberries followed, drowned in cream, and finally a great coloured cornucopia of fruit, shaped like a gold canoe, that needed the strength of four men.

As the last of the drifting balloons floated away across the lake like tiny waning moons in the growing gloom of evening, he turned and went into the hotel. It was time for a drink, he thought, and started to make his way to the bar. It was a very nice bar, cool and roomy, with pleasant green tanks of tropical fish set about the walls, and it was his favourite habit to sit there for an hour every evening and drink a glass or two of hock and read or write post-cards.

Now as he went upstairs to it he was suddenly assailed by
the amplified shrieks of a parrot-house. The wedding menagerie had taken over.

He was first annoyed, then abruptly, hotly angry. He turned with intense impatience and, not looking where he was going, started to go back downstairs. Half way down he managed to avoid a collision with a man escorting a dark-haired girl upstairs and then, a moment later, actually struck with his elbow a second girl coming slowly up behind, half-swivelling her against the wall.

For the second time the girl in the green and purple dress held him in that half-accusatory, half-appealing stare.

‘I am most terribly, terribly sorry,' he said.

‘It is quite all right.'

‘It was very clumsy of me. I do apologise. I wasn't looking where I was going.'

‘There is no need. I wasn't looking where I was going either.'

He stood awkward and embarrassed. He hoped she would smile but she gave, for the second time, no hint of a smile.

‘Please,' he said and suddenly stood aside to let her pass. ‘I'm sorry. You want to get to your party.'

This time she did smile, but with the merest twist of her lips.

‘Why should you think I want to get to the party?'

‘I simply – don't you?'

‘No.'

‘Not really? After someone has taken so much trouble?'

‘Oh! yes, someone has taken a great deal of trouble.'

All this time he had been struck by the excellence of her English and now said:

‘Your English is exceptionally good. Have you been to England?'

‘No.'

‘You have hardly any accent at all.'

‘My education was a very expensive one.'

He stood aside to let another couple pass upstairs. The man gave a short formal bow but the girl in the green and purple dress made no movement in answer.

At this moment he had half a mind to beg her to excuse him and take his leave, but she said:

‘And where were you going in such a great hurry?'

He explained about the bar. ‘And then the menagerie—' The word slipped out before he could stop it.

‘The what? Oh! yes the menagerie. The wild animals. That's good.'

Now she lifted her head slightly, in an attitude of listening, the twist of her lips very slightly cynical, and it might have been that she was listening to the sound of the menagerie for the first time. Then she said:

‘If it was a drink you wanted the
Stube
behind the hotel is nice. It's very quiet there.'

‘I know. I go there sometimes for a change. They have a very good Niersteiner there.'

‘Ah! you like Niersteiner?' She smiled again, but pleasantly now. ‘I like Niersteiner too.'

A few minutes later they were sitting on the bare, simple wooden settles of the
Stube
.

‘And who is being married today?'

At first she didn't answer. For fully half a minute she sat staring into her glass. The wine, frosty, pale green, had arrived in big deep glasses, almost goblets, and she might have been staring into the depths of a well. At last she said:

‘My sister. The youngest one. Trüdi.'

He was about to ask the troublesome question as to why she didn't want to go to the party when he suddenly remembered that sometimes girls, driven by resentment, jealousy, or mere pique, act in the strangest fashion on their sisters' wedding days. It might even have been, he thought, that she was wearing the dark green dress out of sheer obstinacy or perhaps the desire for a little limelight too.

Instead of speaking he sipped at his wine and looked at her, first at her bare arms, then at her face. Her skin was shining, golden and incredibly smooth. The arms were quite hairless. Her very light yellow hair was very smooth too and she wore it piled up, the effect being to make her seem taller than she really was. Her eyes were an extraordinarily pale transparent blue and reminded him very much of a big-belled campanula he had seen growing high up between the lake and the snows.

Suddenly she said, rather absently:

‘What is that sound I can hear all the time?'

‘Oh! that? The waterfalls. There are nine or ten of them.'

‘Oh! yes, of course. I remember now.'

‘Do you know the valley up there? I walk up there every day. It's a favourite walk of mine. For a time it's all crash and bang and excitement with the water rushing down and
then gradually it's wonderfully quiet. Absolutely still. Nothing but trees and masses of meadow flowers and crowds of butterflies.'