The White Marriage Read online

  Sunny nodded silently into the telephone, finally managing to say, ‘I would love to.’

  ‘Come about one o’clock and, if it is fine, we will sit in the garden and enjoy a light luncheon under the trees on the lawn, eh?’

  ‘I would love to,’ Sunny managed again.

  ‘Good. I will look forward to it,’ Leandra finished, but before she could say any more the telephone had clicked the other end. She stared at it. The Little Puppy was unhappy. Was that good or bad? It was something that she would decide tomorrow.

  The following day, lunch being over, and Sunny having started to look more like her name and less like a wet week, she finally came round to the subject that was most troubling her.

  ‘I think I may have done something to upset Gray.’

  Leandra put her head on one side. ‘Oh, no, my dear, surely not?’ she asked in a tender voice.

  ‘Yes, I think so. You see, he hasn’t telephoned since – well, for quite a few days, and I don’t want to telephone him. It seems so … so presumptuous, and anyway, my mother has always said you must never telephone a man, that it gives them the wrong ideas.’

  Leandra suppressed a smile. It was too sweet and silly of the Little Puppy to think that it was possible to give someone to whom you were engaged the ‘wrong ideas’. Still, let her think away, it could do no harm.

  ‘I know Gray has been very busy – very, very busy – with business affairs to do with the family estate.’

  Sunny nodded, trying to understand how busy a family estate might be, so enthralling obviously that it stopped someone telephoning you.

  ‘I thought it must be something like that. Of course, that must be the reason. Just so long as I have not upset him. You see I am so much younger than he, I felt I must be rather dull, and then the arrangement between us is – is so fluid, as it were, that I wondered if he would rather let the matter drop now? And I wouldn’t blame him, I wouldn’t really, because after all, quite a few people might not want to marry someone who felt sorry for them, and that kind of thing. I mean, since he is not quite what he would wish, he might not want to go on being with someone who knows this, and that would be quite understandable. Besides which, my mother and father are still very against everything, and he might feel that too, mightn’t he?’

  Leandra put a cool hand on Sunny’s arm. ‘Why don’t I, in a very roundabout and discreet way, find out from him? If there is anything to find out, which I am sure there is not.’

  ‘Could you? Would you? I mean poor Mr— I mean poor Gray, he might want to drop the whole idea, as I have just said. He might be having second thoughts, particularly since he is older. He might not want to enter into an arrangement with someone who could not keep up with him in conversations, and is really ignorant compared to him. It’s not that I feel any different, because of course I want to do the right thing by him, but at the same time I look up to him so much I would not want to drag him down, if you see what I mean?’

  As Sunny finally finished, her expression being one of such unvarnished idealism, even Leandra felt a small dart of guilt, but more than that, she sensed that Sunny rather than Gray might be having second thoughts, which would not do at all. She wanted to keep the Little Puppy on her leash, to keep her idealistic, grateful, but above all determined to go against her parents’ wishes.

  ‘My dear, I will do everything I can to help you in this matter. Now I must go back to organising this wretched ball in aid of war orphans which I have let myself in for, and you, in your turn, must go home and stop worrying. Above all, remember that the golden rule in life is to follow your heart, and let no one and nothing dissuade you from that.’

  Sunny leaned forward impulsively and kissed Leandra on the cheek, something that she had never done before. Leandra coloured slightly, not quite knowing how to take it.

  ‘My dear—’

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much for everything, Mrs Fortescue, really. You are so kind. I’ve never known anyone so kind, really I haven’t. I have learned so much from you today, and in a way I knew I would.’

  She fled back to the house, where Rule called her a taxi. After a hot and crowded train journey, she arrived back at Pear Tree Cottage to find her mother waiting for her with a tired expression.

  ‘The college has telephoned, Sunny, yet again—’

  ‘I know, I know, Ma.’ Sunny stopped suddenly and, facing her mother in the small dark hall, she heard herself saying, ‘I have to tell you I am going to take Mrs Fortescue’s advice and follow my heart, and – and so – I thought about it so much on the train, and I know I can’t go back to college. That’s it, I’m not going back to college any more, Ma. I hate it. It is a complete waste of time doing something I hate, and a waste of your precious money, besides bringing me down.’ Leandra Fortescue’s kindness to her had given Sunny sudden courage. ‘I am going to do something else with my life. I don’t know what, but something – something that maybe I can be proud of – sewing, perhaps? Like you.’

  ‘You’re not talented enough to sew, Sunny. You’ve never paid enough attention to sewing to be good at it.’

  Sunny nodded in agreement, unsurprised by her mother’s reaction. It was true. But she must think of something, anything, rather than go back to that wretched college. She had thought about her life all the way back from Maydown, in the taxi, and in the train, and the conclusion that she had come to was that it was because she was doing something so dull that Gray was not telephoning her. She had nothing new to tell him. It must be that. It could be nothing else. She was dull and boring, and talking to her on the telephone had proved only too dull and boring; and even if that was not the reason, it was nevertheless a fact. No, she had made up her mind. She was never going back to Princess Secretarial College, and no one could make her.

  ‘So what are you going to do, Sunny?’ her father asked her in a bored voice the following weekend.

  Sunny knew that her mother must have talked everything over with her father, and the fact that nothing had been said meant that they were still hoping that she would come to her senses, whatever that meant.

  ‘I am going to London, and I am going to model clothes.’

  ‘Going to be a mannequin?’

  His voice told Sunny that in her father’s eye that was tantamount to being a tart.

  ‘Yes, Pa, I am going to be a mannequin.’

  ‘Is there someone who might want you?’ John turned briefly at the door, his eyes on Sunny, his mind already on starting up the Vauxhall and going for a spin, because somehow driving about took his mind off everything better than staying around the house.

  ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact Arietta has a lady who she thinks would like me to model clothes for her. She does the same sort of work as Ma, except on a bigger scale. Arietta thinks that because I am quite tall I might get some work with her.’

  ‘Arietta does, does she?’ John shook his head. ‘Well, let’s hope Arietta is not stringing you along, Sunny, because I’m not prepared to keep you twiddling your thumbs in London, really I’m not, and the sooner you understand that the better.’

  It was a hot summer evening and London had a quiet, almost empty feeling to it, as Arietta, her first hard-working week at Beetle’s Bookshop at a close, made her way back to her new one-bedroomed flat in the downtown house with the black-painted front door.

  In Rushington she knew that the flowers in the cottage gardens would be swaying in a slight breeze, but in the row of terraced houses to which she was making her way, the geraniums in the window boxes would be under-watered and unmoving, their leaves yellowing a little, their flowers drying. In Rushington husbands and fathers, boyfriends and sons would be making their way steadily towards the pub, and what they would consider to be well-earned gins and tonics, whereas along the King’s Road, respectably dressed men were walking slowly back to bus stops, or catching taxis to some other part of town where they would change into evening dress before ‘going on’.

  ‘This is London’s bohemia, m
y dear,’ Mr Beauchamp had explained earlier in the week as they walked down the King’s Road. ‘Here the painters and the writers, the artists and the poets all go to their locals and talk a lot of claptrap. Happily they only come out at night, since they are all late risers, and by that time the rest of us have vamoosed back to our cosy gardens, or taken off to the West End to see our proper friends, for if there is anything more boring than hearing one artist arguing with another about something that neither can prove, I do not know it.’

  ‘What about writers?’

  ‘Oh, writers are so conceited they don’t acknowledge anyone else even exists!’

  From these brief observations Arietta had assumed that Randy Beauchamp had little or no time for the artistic community who frequented his bookshop.

  ‘Don’t you like the people whose books you sell?’ she had ventured at lunch-time that day, when Randy had opted to put ‘CLOSED FOR LUNCH’ on the door and retired to the backroom for Arietta’s sandwiches.

  ‘One loves one’s writers, my dear, of course one does, one really loves them, of course,’ Randy had answered beaming. ‘But one doesn’t really want to get involved with them. It has to be a doctor-and-patient relationship. The bookseller as doctor can be a most helpful and creative figure in a writer’s life, guiding him towards healthy sales and away from self-indulgent literary habits. I tell my customers just what I think they will enjoy and what they will hate – I have to, even if it should get back to the author. It is my bounden duty. You will learn the same after a while. You must get to know your customers, keep their shelves stocked, and shoot from the hip when an author has gone off. It is just how it is.’

  Probably because it was the end of the first week, and she had been paid three pounds – which seemed like unimaginable wealth – Arietta thought about all this as she walked along the King’s Road, savouring the summer air, the people, the sounds of taxis stopping and starting, until she finally approached Randy’s lodging house.

  As Randy had predicted, and because it was a hot summer evening, the basement windows of the lodging house were open, and the sound of a lively jazz trio was floating up to the street.

  Arietta looked into the open window in the basement below. Underneath an overbright light made of cheap plastic could be seen a closely grouped trio of piano, bass and drums.

  Arietta stood by the iron railings that enclosed the basement area, staring down at the scene below. Since the window was open, and the curtains were not drawn, it occurred to her that this entertainment must be in the public domain.

  As she watched the musicians she started to tap her foot, while noting that the contents of the room were all too reminiscent of a café rather than a sitting room. Everywhere were positioned wine bottles with candle grease collected thickly around their tops, from which old, bent, used candles peered as if, old and bent and used as they were, they were still intent on climbing out of their surroundings towards the central light fixture. Unframed posters decorated the walls, some of them advertising plays, some concerts, and others such things as seaside towns on the South Coast.

  One, advertising ‘A Day by the Sea’, seemed to be something the occupants found amusing because they had cut out black-and-white photographs of themselves, or perhaps their friends, so that the advertisements now contained their cheerfully grinning faces, smiling incongruously above the bodies of quite alien people holding buckets and spades.

  ‘Good set, fellas.’

  The drummer stood up and hit his high-hat in a dramatically final manner, making a sudden lone sound, while the pianist looked round.

  ‘Phillip—’

  ‘Yes?’

  The bespectacled face stared at the speaker, and even to Arietta the lack of expression on his face seemed to bode ill.

  ‘Could we ask if we could have a little less of the Art Tatum and more Teddy Wilson, if you don’t mind, Maestro?’

  The pianist pushed his glasses up his nose and stared haughtily past the speaker. He said nothing for a minute, his expression grim.

  Ah, ah, trouble ahead, I think, time to move on.

  Arietta had hardly finished her thought and let herself into the house, when the door from the basement opened, and the drummer appeared at the top of the short flight of stairs, the expression on his face one of determined fury.

  He stopped as he saw Arietta about to climb the first flight of stairs from the hall to her own flat.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, as if he suspected her of being a burglar.

  Arietta met his eye for a second before answering, ‘Arietta Staunton. I am the new lodger on the first floor.’

  ‘Well, you’ll do.’ He beckoned to her to follow him downstairs. ‘Come on, you can be the judge.’ He turned back. ‘You’re not tone deaf, are you?’

  ‘I don’t think so—’

  ‘Good. Then you can come and adjudicate the row that is about to erupt below our feet.’ He pulled at Arietta’s arm, but she resisted his urging.

  ‘Just a second, I have to go upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do.’

  ‘Not before you have settled the row.’

  ‘I don’t settle rows, and anyway, I have to brush my hair.’

  Sam Finnegan stared at Arietta’s hair.

  ‘Your hair is perfectly all right,’ he announced.

  ‘I don’t like it like this in the evening.’

  The expression on her face must have been so stubborn that he seemed inclined to relent.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Go and do your hair, or whatever you have to do, and then come straight down. I’m Sam Finnegan, by the way.’

  ‘I know.’

  Arietta nodded briefly at him, feeling a little ahead of the game as she did so, but this did not seem to make much impact on her new acquaintance, who didn’t really seem surprised that she should know who he was.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ he said, already moving towards the open basement door. ‘Phillip is driving me nuts, and he just won’t listen. You’ll have to sit in on the next few sets and see if I’m not right. You like jazz, I take it?’

  ‘I love jazz,’ Arietta called back without turning, already mounting the stairs. ‘But I have only two records. Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.’

  ‘Benny Goodman is just the answer I wanted, Arietta Staunton. If you could get through to Phillip that it is more Teddy Wilson and less ruddy Art Tatum that is what is needed, I will fall in love with you for ever. But you know pianists, they will always conduct.’

  But Arietta had closed her flat door by then and didn’t hear his case against pianists. She was too busy tearing off her jacket and skirt, and unpinning her chignon, peeling off her dark stockings, and running towards the bathroom to have a quick dip.

  When she reappeared in the basement, she looked quite different. No longer a replica of poor Mrs Ashcombe, instead she was wearing three-quarter-length matador pants with a bobble fringe, purchased during her lunch-time from a shop down the King’s Road. These, together with a short-sleeved polo neck and hair dressed in a long flowing ponytail instead of a prim bun, gave her a hip bohemian look, more suited to the wrong end of the King’s Road on a Friday night.

  The three young musicians had stopped for drinks and cigarettes, the smoke from which was filling the basement with a pleasant fog. At first they were so busy arguing they did not turn as she reached the last step, so she was able to stand and take in their very different looks. Sam Finnegan was the tallest, dark-shirted with almost matching dark hair. The pianist, on the other hand, was practically a Benny Goodman look-alike, despite his obvious desire to play Art Tatum, his glasses on his nose giving him a lofty air. The bass player, of medium height and also dark-haired, but with intense dark eyes, was the first to spot Arietta, which meant that, having first taken care to wink at her, he turned and nudged Sam.

  Sam turned towards him almost resentfully, until he saw that he was indicating the newly arrived and chan
ged Arietta, at which point he stopped arguing with Phillip and stared.

  ‘Good God, Miss Prism is fled, and we have a Vivien Leigh look-alike in her place!’

  Arietta smiled at the compliment.

  Sam stared at her briefly, and then he turned to Phillip and said, ‘Listen, this cat here is hip, as you can see, so she’s going to be sitting in on the next set, and she can be our judge.’

  Phillip rolled his eyes behind his small wire glasses before leaning towards Arietta.

  ‘He doesn’t usually talk like this. He normally speaks English, really quite well.’ He proffered a hand. ‘Phillip Lane, bachelor of this parish.’

  ‘Arietta Staunton, recently arrived spinster.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Sit down, Miss Staunton, and give us the benefit of your crack,’ the bass player said, stepping quite purposefully between them. ‘I am Hart Dorling, also a bachelor of this parish, but that need not be a permanent state, really it need not.’

  Sam rolled his eyes and, not just sensing competition but seeing it, he led Arietta away from Hart to a chair where he sat her down.

  ‘Have nothing to do with the other two,’ he commanded. ‘They are not to be trusted. I, on the other hand, being the drummer, am a worthy sort that you can trust. The drummer, you see, is always late to the pub, because of packing up his kit, and as a consequence, however attractive, he never gets so much as a look in when the glamour’s in town. So, always trust the drummer, Miss Staunton. Believe me, he will not two-time you.’

  ‘Really? I’ve been told the drummer is always the one the girls flirt with from the floor when they’re dancing with someone else.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Since we never can get out from behind the kit,’ Sam continued, once more seated behind his kit, ‘we never have a hope.’

  Phillip turned from the piano. ‘One, two, one, two, three, four,’ he commanded.

  Sam rolled his eyes at Arietta, and she tried not to laugh as the set began.