The White Marriage Read online

  ‘Well, you would have thought wrong, Mr Wyndham. The truth is that you have come here to be impertinent. You have come here prepared to criticise – and showing concern for Sunny in the way you have is quite definitely silent criticism, whatever you might think. And frankly, I have had enough of you. I didn’t like you at first, and I don’t like you now. Coming in here, with your swanky ways, parking your Bentley outside – making use of our telephone – and then having the gall to confide in me your fears for our daughter whom you have, God help her, persuaded to become engaged to you. Frankly, Mr Wyndham, whatever the outcome of your association – and I very much hope for your sake that it is only an association, that Sunny has nothing more to do with you, for her sake – if Sunny does fall into bad ways when she is in London, that is her business and not yours.’

  Gray frowned. He did not like being told off, but he liked John Chantry’s last words even less.

  ‘You say “if Sunny does fall into bad ways”.’

  ‘That is exactly what I said,’ John agreed, holding open the sitting-room door for Gray to walk through. ‘Because Sunny left for London yesterday, Mr Wyndham.’

  Gray stopped. ‘She left yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wyndham, yesterday. She packed up her suitcase, and we gave her fifty pounds, which is a small inheritance left to her by a godmother. We wished her good luck and Godspeed, and now, we understand, she is in our great capital city, and having a rare old time of it, I am sure. I only hope that you never find her, and she never finds you.’

  Gray walked out into the sunshine, feeling and looking dazed. He had never dreamed that someone like John Chantry would or could be rude to him, but also he had never thought that Sunny would leave Rushington. He had always thought of Sunny as being the kind of small-town, or in her case, small-village, girl that stayed at home in the acknowledged manner, putting together a trousseau and embroidering her initials into hand towels until she married. But no, Sunny had gone. She had packed her bag, taken fifty pounds and gone, but – and this boded ill for Leandra’s plan – she had not told either Leandra or Gray what she was going to do. She had, as it were, cut them out of her will.

  Once outside he turned to say something to John Chantry, but he had closed the door. In the circumstances it was surprising that he had not slammed the front door behind Gray, but he hadn’t; he had closed it, formally and obviously, as far as he was concerned, for ever.

  Gray walked down the garden path feeling bewildered. Where was Sunny, and what was she doing? Why had the Little Puppy been let off her lead? The kennel door sprung behind his and Leandra’s back? He had a feeling that Leandra would somehow blame him, that he would be considered to have put a foot wrong. He resolved not to say anything to Leandra until such time that he could find Sunny.

  Inside the Chantrys’ cottage Mary was kissing John.

  ‘Well done, John, well done. You saw him off, all right.’

  John sighed. ‘Let’s hope that he never finds poor Sunny until such time that she finds someone else.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Mary agreed.

  It had been Mary’s idea to let Sunny go to London after all. She had suddenly realised that if Sunny went to London, saw different people, had more excitement than she could possibly ever find in Rushington, she might forget the dreadful Wyndham man, and John, bless his heart, had seen the light and gone along with it. Now they only had to cross their fingers and hope for the best.

  Chapter Eight

  When Sunny stepped off the train at Victoria Station, she had been fully aware that the gentlemen commuters, who climbed out of their first-class carriage after her, were following her with slow tread and appreciative eyes towards the ticket barrier. In truth, since she had become nominally engaged to Gray and had grown so much in confidence, it seemed that she exuded something that she had not had before, and it was something she was really rather coming to take for granted. It was inevitable. She might have no engagement ring, she might have the profound disapproval of her parents, but she had still acquired the overt confidence of an engaged girl.

  The truth was that she thought about Gray almost every hour of her day, trying to imagine what he might be doing, and not really succeeding, because when someone is so much older, and you are barely eighteen, the truth is you can’t quite understand what their day might embrace, once the coffee and toast stage is over. Just a small part of her hoped that perhaps, as he went about his day, he might occasionally be thinking of her, but that is as far as it went. She knew that she had won his father’s heart, and while she could not really understand why his father had told her to run from Gray, she could appreciate that her performance, which she recognised was what it had really been, had won Mr Wyndham Senior over to his son’s cause, and that once married to her, they would be rich beyond anyone’s dreams.

  That too she couldn’t imagine. Nevertheless she had been determined to arrive in London in style, hence the reason she had purchased a first-class ticket. The sum of fifty pounds, which her parents had passed on to her, seemed to provide wealth enough for anyone, and style.

  Her parents’ sudden acceptance of her leaving college had been surprising, but the haste with which they set about finding her a place in Arietta’s lodgings, and the alacrity with which her mother packed her up, had been almost upsetting. On top of the speed of their dismissal of her, there had been the dinner they gave her at the George. Her parents never ate out, yet on Sunny’s last evening in Rushington they had taken her to the George, and toasted her departure as if she was about to emigrate to America, which was perhaps how they thought of her leaving for London.

  Certainly the whole dinner had had an air of finality about it. Her mother looking at her in a way that said ‘Goodbye, darling’ in every glance, and her father looking at her in a way that said ‘Good luck, Sunny, and I hope you won’t need it’.

  There had been glasses raised in muted toasts – ‘Here’s to a happy outcome’ – and murmured appreciation over the roast chicken, the strawberries and meringues – ‘Do so love Eton mess; takes one back to before the war’, and so on.

  All very nice, yet all the time Sunny had had the feeling that her departure for London was freeing her parents in some way, that while not wanting to see the back of her, they were certainly not feeling upset. Indeed, the following morning they drove her to the station in the Vauxhall in such fine form, laughing and talking to each other in the front of the car, Sunny like a small reluctant child in the back, that they could have been at the start of a holiday, not seeing off their only child. Certainly they seemed more than happy to watch her buy a first-class ticket, and then disappear into the early light of a Sussex morning without so much as a backward glance.

  ‘Much the best for you to go and take your chance in London,’ her mother had murmured, as she sewed and ironed, washed and starched Sunny’s clothes; and she had said it so many times that Sunny had found it difficult not to scream.

  Now she stood in a queue waiting for a taxi, her suitcase by her side, her straw hat on the back of her head, short white gloves remaining miraculously unmarked after the train journey, hoping against hope that she would be able to find her way to the bookshop where Arietta worked. To someone who had hardly even been on a train, London seemed to be a maze, not a city, and she a figure lost within it, longing for a piece of string that she could follow and so find her way out of it.

  ‘Beetle’s Bookshop, off the King’s Road.’

  ‘Beetle’s Bookshop? No idea. Any other address, miss?’

  Sunny shook her head. ‘No, all I know is that it’s just off the King’s Road.’

  ‘There are quite a few places off of the King’s Road, dear. Got to give me a bit more than that I am afraid, miss.’

  Sunny felt in her handbag, and instead of the bookshop gave the address of the lodgings, which her mother had scribbled into the back of her diary.

  ‘Oh, I know that street all right. Hop in.’

  The taxi driver deposited her
suitcase on the pavement outside the tall, four-floored house, and drove off at what seemed to Sunny to be unseemly haste. She stared up at the house, and then down again at the address in her diary. It was the right place, but how to get in? The arrangement had been for Arietta to meet her at the bookshop, and take her round to the house. Arietta had the key to the front door. Sunny had no key. She walked towards the basement steps, hoping to be able to hide her suitcase behind the dustbins, but the gate to the area was firmly padlocked, and there was no sign of life behind the curtained window. She stared at her suitcase realising that with it in tow it was impossible to wander about trying to find the bookshop. Suddenly even the sight of her mother’s writing in the back of her diary brought a feeling of homesickness that threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to go home to Rushington, but knew that to do so meant that she would be seen to be cowardly; and worse than that, to her mother and father, her swift return would be about as welcome as a tax bill.

  She sank slowly down on to her suitcase. The buckles were most uncomfortable, but had to be borne, because she knew there was only one thing she could do now, and that was to wait for someone or another to turn up and let her into the house.

  In the ordinary way Arietta would have been looking forward to Sunny coming to London; would have resolved to put flowers in the room above her own, which was where Mr Beauchamp had agreed to let Sunny have a room, but she was now feeling really rather different. Her much altered feelings had everything to do with the parcel containing Angus Wilson’s new short-story collection, which she had been given to despatch to a certain Mrs Dilke Fortescue, together with a letter written by a certain Mr Gray Wyndham, the whole having been sent on by Beetle’s Bookshop.

  Arietta knew, indeed she was certain, that she was not by nature a particularly curious person, but when Mr Beauchamp had handed her the single sheet of paper written by Mr Wyndham, within the back pages of the newly published book, she felt a curious sense of obligation to take it out and read it. Indeed, she felt it was almost a religious duty to do so. Sunny was, after all, meant to be engaged to Mr Wyndham, and as such Arietta felt she had a real duty to read what Mr Gray Wyndham had written to this Mrs Fortescue.

  ‘Darlingest’ the letter had begun. Arietta had been unable to believe her eyes. What a thing for an engaged man to put! Darlingest!

  Naturally she had read on, feeling quite faint when she realised that it was Sunny of whom he was writing as ‘the Little Puppy’ and that Pear Tree Cottage was the ‘puppy kennel’. It was hideous beyond anything to think of poor Sunny having made herself ill over this older man while all the time he was deceiving her with another woman, and a married woman at that.

  Happily, once she had absorbed the letter and its contents and replaced it in the back pages of the novel, she was able to find a chair on which to sit to continue wrapping the wretched parcel. And she had sat down on it, after first clearing the overcrowded desk, and she had dutifully addressed the parcel, as also the one to the Duke of Somerton, although His Grace’s missive to his mistress seemed quite mild in contrast to the throbbing intensity of Mr Gray Wyndham’s to Mrs Fortescue.

  My dear, I shall be at White’s from Tuesday through to Thursday. Leave me one of your little missives there, and we can meet for a cinq-à-sept at Park Street. Your own Bear.

  PS. I have a string of something very sweet which will suit a certain long white neck …

  The parcels duly wrapped and sealed, Arietta had made her way to the post office, but although the sun was still shining, and the sky still blue, the King’s Road looked suddenly shabby and second rate, rather, she imagined, like the people whose love letters she was now posting. She walked along, as a child might who has a stick that she is intent on running across the railings she passes, slowly and in a desultory fashion. The deception of the love letters, the furtive nature of the affairs had done more than shock her, it had disillusioned her. She had so hoped that once she came to London she would find that not everyone in the world would be like her mother, that they would be kind and straightforward, that they would care for each other, not want to deceive each other; but now she saw that wherever she went, the world would always be just as her mother had always said it was – full of people not caring how they hurt each other, wanting only to pleasure themselves, no matter at what cost to anyone else.

  She had stood patiently in the queue of shabby people all with parcels they could probably hardly afford to post. While the queue moved up slowly the realisation had come to her, making her once again feel quite faint with the horror of it all. Sunny was coming to London any minute now. What would she say to Sunny? What?

  That evening, after work, Sam and Arietta had retired to the pub. He had immediately noticed that she was not as she had been with him earlier in the day.

  ‘Are you still holding it against me about the Moroccan wine?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I said, you seem to have grown so morose I thought you might well be holding it against me about the Moroccan wine, Miss Staunton.’

  ‘You may call me Arietta, but you may not enquire further about why I am morose,’ Arietta stated flatly and without humour, staring at the other customers without really seeing them.

  ‘So what is it that eats at the heart of Miss Arietta Staunton?’

  ‘Something pretty beastly, I can assure you.’

  Sam pulled a face, and then started to tick off a list on his fingers.

  ‘If it’s not the Moroccan wine that’s made you feel down in the mouth, let’s see then …’ He frowned. ‘I know. You’re feeling depressed because Uncle Randy made you go to the post office twice in one afternoon and the queues of people browned you off?’

  ‘No, not that.’ Arietta stopped, and pushed away her glass of tomato juice as if that too was getting on her nerves. ‘Actually it was that, if you really want to know, but not exactly that.’

  There was a small silence, but since he was a musician and quite used to waiting to blow, as the expression went, Sam let the silence rip. He actually didn’t mind this because it gave him a small opportunity to stare at Arietta’s lovely uneven face: her brown eyes with their slight astigmatism, her brown hair that had more than a shot of auburn in its lights, her beautiful complexion and elegant hands and figure. She might not be a beauty, but yet, he determined, she would be a brilliant subject for a painting.

  He had to be honest with himself, he was attracted to her in every way, probably because she was not a beauty, but had an air of detachment, of not really wanting to be in the world, of hoping against hope that any minute now she would find herself elsewhere. It was this more than anything that interested him, that made him want not just to paint her, but to be with her a great deal, although not always in the bookshop.

  ‘It was that, but it wasn’t that? Is it possible to ask for a translation?’

  ‘Yes.’ Arietta frowned. ‘If I tell you a secret you promise—’

  ‘I promise, hand on heart, only to tell one other person.’

  Sam’s expression was serious; even so, Arietta sensed the opposite.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do you not know the simple unavoidable fact, which is when someone is told a secret, they always tell at least one other person. Actually, it is not a fact, it is a rule.’

  ‘Oh.’ Arietta could not help looking impressed. ‘That is honest. So who are you going to tell?’

  Sam thought for a minute.

  ‘I will tell Uncle Randy, because he probably knows already.’

  ‘That is a good idea—’ Arietta stopped. ‘How do you know he knows already?’

  ‘Because if it is something or other to do with the post office, he sent you there, after all. It does not take Sherlock Holmes or Dr Watson to work that one out, does it?’

  ‘You’re quite right. And it is to do with the post office, and also to do with the bookshop, and your uncle does know already, but – but he doesn’t know everything.’

  ‘Don’t tell hi
m that, for goodness’ sake; he is quite sure he does.’

  ‘Well, here’s how it is.’ Arietta took a deep breath and stared ahead of her. ‘Back in Rushington where I come from, there is a girl called Sunny Chantry—’

  ‘Dig the name, kid—’

  ‘Well, I know, not quite fair if she’d turned out to be a lump of lard, but she’s not. She’s very, very pretty and very, very sweet – except when you wake her up in the morning, that is—’

  ‘Shall we get on with the story?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry. Anyway this man, much older than her – he must be about thirty – well, he broke down in his Bentley outside her parents’ cottage and fell in love with her, well, that is, we thought he did. Anyway, there was the most awful shindig, because of his being older and her parents not approving and – and – so on. But at any rate, now they’re engaged, although they have to wait a full year, except – except—’

  Arietta stopped once more.

  ‘Except?’ Sam looked at her. ‘Come on, stop looking tragic, spill the beans.’

  ‘Well, this is where the post office comes in.’

  ‘I thought it might.’

  ‘One of those parcels, one of those books has a love letter from Sunny’s fiancé to someone called “Darlingest”!’ She stopped yet again. ‘It’s too awful, because he’s a war hero, but he can’t be a man.’ Again another pause. ‘But now I come to think of it, that can’t be true, he must be able to be a man in some way or another if, well, if he’s writing to this other person “darlingest” and so on. I mean, he must! Which means he must be deceiving Sunny for some dreadful reason, which we can only guess at, don’t you think?’

  Sam tried to keep a straight face, and failed.

  ‘Arietta Staunton, you are a guinea a minute, do you know that?’

  Arietta threw back her tomato juice and replaced the glass on the table.