The White Marriage

  Also by the Author

  CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS

  LUCINDA

  CORONET AMONG THE GRASS

  THE BUSINESS

  IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW

  STARDUST

  NANNY

  CHANGE OF HEART

  GRAND AFFAIR

  LOVE SONG

  THE KISSING GARDEN

  THE BLUE NOTE

  SUMMERTIME

  DISTANT MUSIC

  THE MAGIC HOUR

  FRIDAY'S GIRL

  OUT OF THE BLUE

  IN DISTANT FIELDS

  THE WHITE MARRIAGE

  GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART

  THE ENCHANTED

  THE LAND OF SUMMER

  THE DAISY CLUB

  The Belgravia series

  BELGRAVIA

  COUNTRY LIFE

  AT HOME

  BY INVITATION

  The Nightingale series

  TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE

  THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS

  The Debutantes series

  DEBUTANTES

  THE SEASON

  The Eden series

  DAUGHTERS OF EDEN

  THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS

  The Bexham trilogy

  THE CHESTNUT TREE

  THE WIND OFF THE SEA

  THE MOON AT MIDNIGHT

  Novels with Terence Brady

  VICTORIA

  VICTORIA AND COMPANY

  ROSE'S STORY

  YES HONESTLY

  Television Drama Series with Terence Brady

  TAKE THREE GIRLS

  UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

  THOMAS AND SARAH

  NANNY

  FOREVER GREEN

  Television Comedy Series with Terence Brady

  NO HONESTLY

  YES HONESTLY

  PIG IN THE MIDDLE

  OH MADELINE! (USA)

  FATHER MATTHEW'S DAUGHTER

  Television Plays with Terence Brady

  MAKING THE PLAY

  SUCH A SMALL WORLD

  ONE OF THE FAMILY

  Films with Terence Brady

  LOVE WITH A PERFECT STRANGER

  MAGIC MOMENT

  Stage Plays with Terence Brady

  I WISH I WISH

  THE SHELL SEEKERS

  (adaptation from the novel by Rosamunde Pilcher)

  BELOW STAIRS

  For more information on Charlotte Bingham and her books,

  see her website at www.charlottebingham.com

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Copyright

  The White Marriage

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409057543

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  a division of The Random House Group Ltd

  www.booksattransworld.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2007 by Bantam Press

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Charlotte Bingham 2007

  Charlotte Bingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9780593055953

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  THIS NOVEL IS SET IN ENGLAND

  AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

  I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we lov’d?

  John Donne

  THE WHITE MARRIAGE

  Charlotte Bingham

  Prologue

  There was a time, believe it or not, when it was perfectly possible to know very little about the birds and the bees, unless, or until, it was necessary. There was a time when Christmas meant a tangerine, some nuts and a second-hand book; when to own a whole length of tinsel was almost unimaginable; when to pin together a paper bell to hang from a light fitting was exciting; and to see a man carving a turkey was to be filled with an inestimable feeling of good fortune.

  It was at about this time that Sunny finally finished growing up in Sussex. Her parents, Mr and Mrs John Chantry, lived in a thatched cottage overlooking the green in the ancient village of Rushington. Not many people had motor cars in those days, in fact hardly anyone had a motor car, and if they did it was more or less guaranteed to be on blocks in the garage waiting until such a time when petrol rationing was over, or the owner could afford to buy some new tyres, or someone could be found to come out and get it started.

  Sometimes Sunny would go into her parents’ garage, with its upper storey that housed what always seemed like acres of home-grown apples and onions, and stare at her father’s Vauxhall 12. It was covered with a large tarpaulin tightly pulled together. It might have been a sad sight to someone else, but to Sunny that strangely shaped fawn object was full of promise. She knew that one day soon that tarpaulin would be coming off, and the bricks upon which the axles were resting would be removed, and they would all push the pre-war motor car outside into the sunshine. She would help her mother wash and polish it, and her father would dart about from one side of the car to the other pointing out bits that they had missed, as he always did when they were helping him.

  Sunny was less like her school friends than she would have liked. She had no pony of her own, nor did her father do ‘something in the city’. Her father worked for a company that helped restore old buildings, which was why, because of the post-war building restrictions, he was not at all rich, which was also why her mother had a service altering and refashioning ball gowns and cocktail frocks, because dress materials too were rationed, and a bolt of cloth found in the attic was treasure trove, and if there was just a hint of a party coming up, clothing coupons were saved for months and months beforehand.

  So you see, it was very different from now, and yet – and yet to Sunny, little though there was, and little that she perhaps had, it seemed almost too much. She was that happy.

  Chapter One

  It was a miracle that Mary Chantry had never choked on a pin. It was one of the many things about her mother that Sunny found fascinating, bec
ause not only would Mary inevitably be found at most times of the day with a couple of pins in her mouth, but she was quite able to carry on a conversation with the pins still in residence as she busied herself with some alteration.

  ‘Gracious, a motor car has just come to a stop outside the cottage, Sunny.’ As usual Mary was speaking through several large dressmakers’ pins, but nodding towards the window. ‘I think you had better see if the driver needs help.’

  Sunny, sporting a stunning pre-war bias-cut satin ball gown, which her mother had been busy pinning on her, stepped down from the dining table where she had been standing in for the owner of the gown, and stared out of the latticed window at the motor car.

  ‘It’s not a motor car, Ma, it’s a Bentley.’

  No one in Rushington owned a Bentley. Sunny pulled on the latch of the thick, black, iron-studded oak front door, only to find herself confronted not with a chauffeur, as she had half expected, but a tall, expensively dressed gentleman wearing a stylish belted pale wool cashmere coat into the pockets of which had been driven two brown leather driving gloves.

  He stared at her before removing his hat in greeting.

  ‘Good morning. My name is Gray Wyndham, and I am so sorry to trouble you.’ He smiled, exposing an almost shocking set of princely white teeth, which set off his light tan, his thick dark hair, and the beautiful light blue of his shirt and tie. ‘It is really rather a bore, I dare say, but my motor car has broken down, and right in front of your cottage. I expect it must be bothering you, blocking the view and so on?’

  ‘Good morning,’ Sunny replied. ‘And really, I do not mind at all if you bother us, or block the view. As a matter of fact I know Pa will be only too delighted if you will stay bothering us and blocking the view, because he so loves motor cars, and if he comes home and finds that he has missed seeing such a splendid one as yours, he will probably kick the cat.’

  ‘Does he kick cats often?’ the stranger asked, looking startled.

  ‘No, no, it’s just something he always says, you know? Besides, we don’t even have a cat, although I would like a cat. But we don’t even have a dog yet, although I would like a dog too. But if we get a dog, he has to come first, Pa says, and the cat second. But all that is in the future, as it must be until the building restrictions are lifted, Pa says. Because we have so few pennies.’

  Despite feeling frustrated that his car had broken down on the way to a Friday-to-Monday with Dilke and Leandra Fortescue at Maydown Manor, Gray Wyndham started to look amused, as why wouldn’t he? This was honesty indeed.

  ‘So your father says a good deal, does he?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he is a chatterbox. I get it from him, Pa says. Ma is not a chatterbox.’ She leaned forward, lowering her voice as she did so. ‘Too busy dressmaking, too many pins in her mouth, I say.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I am Sunny Chantry.’

  ‘How do you do, Sunny Chantry?’ As she stared at him staring at her, the stranger added, ‘As I say – my name is Gray Wyndham.’

  ‘How do you do, Gray Wyndham?’

  Sunny frowned. It was a strange name, but she had to admit it did have a ring to it.

  ‘Such a nuisance when a new motor car gives out on you.’

  ‘Yes, what rotten luck, but do come in. We have a telephone, so as it happens you have actually broken down in front of just the right cottage. You can telephone to Mr Arkwright of Arkwright’s Garage. He dearly loves a breakdown, but when he sees it is a Bentley, he will love it even more. In fact you will make his day, if not his week.’

  Sunny indicated for Gray to step into the hall, after which she pointed at a telephone on the hall table. It was polished, it was dusted, and it stood on a mat.

  ‘There’s the telephone,’ she told him, indicating it with just a hint of pride in her voice, because it was one of only half a dozen in the village. ‘Shall I dial the number for you, since your hands are a bit grubby?’

  ‘I should like that very much,’ Gray admitted, and he stood by patiently as Sunny looked under A in her mother’s thin, dark blue leather-covered telephone book.

  ‘Ah, there we are. I always think it’s Rushington two four oh, but it’s Rushington two four two.’ She dialled the number, and as she did so Gray noticed that she had long fingers, and no nail polish.

  ‘Mr Arkwright?’ A far away ‘Yes?’ was bellowed down from Rushington two four two over whatever was happening so noisily in Arkwright’s Garage. ‘This is Miss Chantry.’ Sunny raised her voice and spoke slower. ‘A gentleman by the name of Mr Wyndham has broken down outside our cottage – at least he hasn’t broken down, his car has. It is a Bentley, Mr Arkwright.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Are you there, Mr Arkwright?’

  ‘A Bentley you say, Miss Chantry? Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Arkwright, I am very sure. It’s right outside our door even now.’

  ‘Well, I never. A Bentley. Stay you there, Miss Chantry, don’t move, and I will be out to you all in a jiffy.’

  Sunny carefully replaced the telephone and stared at it for a few seconds in reverential silence, before turning to Gray and giving a satisfied sigh.

  ‘Mr Arkwright is leaving now; he is coming straight out. He can’t wait.’ She smiled at him. ‘I am not sure if he has even seen the new Bentley yet, except perhaps in pictures, but he is a very good mechanic. He was in the war as a mechanic. He mended motor cars all over Europe. He went right from the toe of Italy up to the French coast, on a motor bike or in an army van, mending cars all the way. He was invaluable to the army, Pa says, because he is so quick. But he will be a few minutes now, I expect. Would you like a cup of chicory coffee, or a cup of tea? Or a sherry perhaps? It is nearly lunch-time, and I know Pa and Ma like a sherry before lunch – sometimes.’

  ‘I would love to wash my hands.’

  Shortly after Gray Wyndham was shown to the downstairs cloakroom, Mary Chantry opened the dining-room door where she had been busying herself with trimming a satin bolero that went with the gown that Sunny had been modelling for her.

  ‘How do you do, how do you do?’ She began removing the customary mouthful of pins and sticking them into the pin cushion on her wrist when Sunny introduced Mr Wyndham. ‘How dreadful for you to break down in such a beautiful motor car. Almost too much to bear, I would say. Take the gentleman into the sitting room, Sunny; don’t leave him standing about in the hall. Oh, and ask him if he would like a sherry, dear. So upsetting, a motor conking out on you.’

  Mary firmly but quietly closed the dining-room door again.

  Sunny pulled up the latch on an old oak door, and Gray followed her into a sitting room that seemed to be filled with flowers, probably because so many of the linen covers on the furniture were floral. Easy chairs round the fireplace gave an air of expected comfort, and there were horse brasses and an old brass warming pan hung about the old oak surround. Further down the parquet-floored room, a baby grand piano stood by the latticed French windows, which themselves opened out on to a garden filled with spring bulbs, which on a May day was really quite a cheering sight.

  Gray walked down the room, looking round appreciatively at the Victorian watercolours on the wall, at the tweed-covered books on shelves either side of the fireplace, at the highly polished fire irons, at the neat pile of kindling, strips of newspaper, and raggedly cut items of wood from every and any source.

  ‘Do you play?’ Gray looked at the piano, lifting the lid momentarily to inspect the immaculately maintained keys, before closing the lid and gazing across at Sunny.

  ‘Oh, yes, I play, but I am no Dame Myra Hess, I do assure you.’

  Sunny raised a glass decanter, and poured Gray sherry into a tall waisted glass. She walked as gracefully as she could back down the length of the small sitting room, suddenly aware that, dressed as she was in an evening gown, she must look more than a trifle strange to Gray.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m dressed like this—’

  ‘I do
assure you, I’m not.’

  Gray looked at her with open appreciation, but Sunny pulled a little face.

  ‘I act as a mannequin for my mother: she remodels old dresses like this for the ladies of the county, for balls and cocktail parties, and such like.’

  Gray stared at the yellow dress, head on one side.

  ‘As a matter of fact I think I can date the one you are wearing – nineteen thirty-three, or ’thirty-four, perhaps.’

  Sunny looked down at the dress.

  ‘It might as well be eighteen thirty-three or ’four, as far as I am concerned.’

  They both laughed lightly.

  ‘You’re not having a sherry?’

  ‘Oh, no, visitors only. F.H.B.’

  ‘F.H.B?’

  ‘Family hold back.’

  Sunny’s perfect pink and white complexion grew rosier. She was not ashamed of her parents’ lack of wealth, but just at that moment she could think of no other way of hinting to this Mr Wyndham person that a schooner of sherry at Pear Tree Cottage was considered something of a luxury. Sherry was only to be offered to visitors, or enjoyed by her parents and their friends on a Sunday after church, but to state this too overtly might be what her mother and father and their friends called infra dig – in other words, laid you open to being sadly embarrassed by your financial straits.

  ‘As an uninvited visitor, I am honoured.’

  Gray smiled and gave a little bow, and as he did so Sunny frowned. Mr Wyndham was a stranger, and yet somehow he seemed almost familiar, as if she had known him in another life.

  ‘Ah, that was the bell. It must be Mr Arkwright.’

  Sunny did not know why but all of a sudden she found she was only too thankful to leave the room and answer the door. As she passed the dining room, her mother popped her head out, several pins once more in her mouth.

  ‘Any more excitements around the place?’ she asked in her usual bright way.

  ‘No, no, I’m afraid not. Everything just as it was a few minutes ago. The handsome stranger is still in the sitting room, Ma, and I did give him a sherry.’