The White Marriage Read online

  ‘It’s all just spectaculation at the moment, Ron,’ his missus had warned him. ‘And nothing more than that, but it’s fishy, I have to say. That’s what this is, fishy. First he brings this young girl back here, and then we see her leaving the place as soon as she can, shooting off heaven only knows where, and perhaps heaven is the only body who does know where, think of that.’

  Certainly Gray had no idea where Sunny might have gone, and since it was Leandra who had found Sunny in the first place, he had no desire to tell her that he had lost the poor child, yet again.

  For some reason he found himself sinking down into the chair his father had vacated. The cushion was flattened, as flattened as his feelings. He felt overwhelmed with despair, and with good reason. He was in love with Sunny, of that one thing he was quite certain, but now Dilke was dead there was no reason not to marry Leandra.

  He remained seated in the chair, facing his inability to be anything except lightweight. It was no comfort, but it was probably the same with all the war generation, those of them that had managed, like him, somehow or other to survive. And then they had come home, realised they were alive, but not that something inside them was dead, and promptly confused the act of making love with real love. In his case he had happily given in to a situation that was both passionately pleasing and deliciously luxurious, that of being the lover of a rich and beautiful woman, without realising all along that he was merely hiding from the past, trying to put all the death and the killing, all the bloodshed behind him.

  Too late he was realising what a sham it all was. You couldn’t spend all your life crouching in an emotional bunker; you had to go over the top. He would have to go ahead and tell the truth, as he had begun to do earlier. He would tell Sunny the unlovely truth, and if she still wanted to marry him, well and good. But where was the elusive Sunny Chantry this time?

  Sunny let herself quietly into the cottage. She could hear her mother’s sewing machine going, and her father’s wireless in the sitting room. She stood for a moment breathing in the familiar atmosphere once again. She was home, and what was more and what was better, she felt she was home.

  ‘Sunny? Is that you?’ her mother called.

  ‘Yes, Ma.’

  ‘Oh, good. Put the kettle on lovey, would you? I would love a cup of tea, and I am sure you would.’

  Sunny went into the kitchen, and did as asked. She and her mother had often enjoyed a cup of tea after dinner. It was one of their little rituals, tea and biscuits at about nine o’clock at night. The train journey had been long and tiring, requiring a change, and a great many drunken soldiers in third class making insinuating remarks, but somehow she hadn’t minded. She had felt in some odd way that she deserved it. She had made such a complete mess of things. Gray, Hart, everything so muddled, and no one knowing what she felt about them, least of all Sunny herself.

  ‘I’m glad you could get home before the last train,’ her mother said, smiling up at her as Sunny put down the tray with the cups of tea and the biscuits, as if nothing had happened, as if Sunny had not been away at all. ‘I always think,’ Mary continued, ‘that the last train is the bottom, and one nearly always falls asleep and misses one’s stop at that time of night.’

  They neither of them attempted to kiss each other, because really, there was no need. They both knew that Sunny had run home, and that to become too emotional or too demanding at that point would be upsetting to both of them.

  ‘How’s the sewing?’

  ‘Better than I thought, really. Better than I was at shorthand and typing, at any rate, which isn’t saying much.’

  ‘Well, that is good, then. I thought you might take to it one day, just didn’t know which day.’

  Mary took off her glasses and sat back, sipping her tea and nibbling elegantly at her biscuit, holding a small, flowered tea plate underneath it as she did.

  ‘I heard from Arietta the other day. She’s really enjoying helping in Beetle’s Bookshop, isn’t she?’

  Sunny nodded.

  Yes, Arietta was enjoying Beetle’s Bookshop. She thought longingly of Ari and her seeming ability to handle everything – the bookshop, Sam, Mr Beauchamp. So unlike Sunny who, it seemed, could not handle anything.

  ‘Why don’t you hop up to bed, pet? You must be dog tired after your journey. I’ve put a hottie in between the sheets. And don’t bother poking your nose round the sitting-room door. Pa is caught up in a concert on the wireless, and you know what he’s like, goes into a trance, music on the knee, completely immersed, wouldn’t register it was you if you dropped a bomb behind his chair.’

  Sunny nodded, and putting down her teacup, she silently made her way up to bed as Mary, sighing inwardly, but only too relieved that she had come home safely, started to turn the handle of her sewing machine. She had no idea what the outcome of Sunny’s dreadful muddle would be, but she had every idea that a good night’s sleep would certainly not do it, or her, any harm.

  Upstairs, Sunny stared around her room before slipping between the covers, grateful, despite its being summer, for the comforting presence of Fido, her old dog hot-water bottle. She lay with her bedside light on for a few minutes, feeling herself to be a small girl again, staring at the moths busying themselves around her lamp, remembering how she had loved to hear her parents with their friends in the garden of a summer night, the low murmur of their voices, their laughter, drifting up to her as comforting as summer rain against the window-panes, as she, in turn, drifted off to sleep.

  She switched off her light, the moths fell silent, perhaps, like her, dazed by their recent experiences. Sunny pulled at the curtain, staring up at the moon. An owl hooted, a tree moved in the slight breeze, rustling its leaves as if to remind her that it was alive and awake, and that being so, she could go to sleep.

  Randy Beauchamp was feeling in what he always, to himself at any rate, called his ‘pasha mood’. In this mood he always felt that he would not be surprised to find, if he turned to see himself in a mirror, that he was wearing a fez and brandishing a rather elegant fly swat.

  He had been following the little drama of ‘darlingest’ and Arietta’s friend Sunny quite closely, and with some interest. For the most part – aside from letting the little lying deceivers put their love letters in Beetle’s books – he never interfered with his customers’ love lives, any more than he interfered with their ghastly taste in bad literature, but in this case, he had a feeling that now that it was clear that Dilke Fortescue had met a sticky end, he would have to do as instinct told him he must, and step in and inform his old friend Gray Wyndham that enough was enough.

  As he had understood it from the happily indiscreet Sam, Miss Chantry, the beautiful friend of Arietta, had agreed to marry Gray on the understanding that he could not be a man. Could not be a man his foot – Gray, of all people! So that was a most unhappy start to a young life, because either the poor girl would marry him, thinking she could remain as chaste as a nun, and then get a dreadful fright, or she would marry him, and have to live out his lie, which was also not at all right.

  Randy picked up the telephone.

  ‘Gray?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your bookseller.’

  ‘Randy. How are you?’

  ‘Very perturbed, if you want to know. Would you care to come round and pay my bill?’

  There was a small pause.

  ‘But of course, Randy, whatever you say. Is it very outstanding?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I find it to be extraordinarily so, Gray. Deplorably and inexcusably outstanding, if you really want to know.’

  Gray and Randy had known each other, if not for ever, certainly from long ago. Randy had never yet asked him to pay his bill. It was a first, and that being so, Gray knew that Randy’s demand to see him would have to be about something quite other than the bill.

  Gray arrived at Beetle’s Bookshop looking exactly as he always seemed to look since he got back from the war: polished, not a hair out of place, impeccably dresse
d, but today, for some reason, supremely uneasy.

  ‘My dear friend, my dear bookseller in whom I trust utterly, what is it that I have done, or not done?’ He paused as Randy surveyed him over the top of his glasses. ‘I knew from your tone on the telephone – oh dear, that rhymes in such a hideous way – but at any rate I knew that you had something which you wished to discuss, which has absolutely nothing to do with the money I owe you – money I have to tell you that nevertheless I will pay over to you.’

  He reached into the inner pocket of his overcoat and, Randy having presented him with a bill, he opened his immaculate leather wallet and paid out two beautifully new, clean five-pound notes.

  ‘There we are, Randy, and if there is any change I beg you to put it towards your favourite charity.’

  ‘My favourite charity is me, Gray.’

  ‘Well then, if that is what you want, so be it…’

  They hardly smiled because they both knew they were treading conversational water until such a moment arrived that Randy confessed why it was that he had wanted to see Gray so urgently.

  ‘Why don’t we go into the back room?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Randy. Ever since public school those sorts of invitations always fill me with dread. Whatever you have to say to me, over and above the hideous amounts of money I have owed you for far too long, should be said here.’

  ‘Very well, dear boy. Why not therefore sit down?’

  ‘Oh, no, Randy, thank you. And there is too much of the sadistic headmaster in that phrase too. No, let’s battle it out here in full view and hearing of the gasping millions, don’t you think?’

  Since it was early in the shop’s day, Randy agreed.

  ‘You know that I know what it is that has been going on.’

  Gray frowned. ‘I dare say you do,’ he agreed eventually.

  ‘So why I sent for you was because I wanted you to understand that I am not for this situation continuing. I think I can say with some truth that I am tolerant and sophisticated, but I always draw the line at the innocent being led to the slaughter – or in this case, the altar rail, Gray.’

  ‘Might we perhaps be treading where angels wouldn’t dare, Randy?’ The look in Gray’s eyes had changed from amusement to warning.

  ‘Oh, possibly,’ Randy agreed cheerfully. ‘Quite possibly. But the truth is that I will none the less continue. I think you will understand what I mean when I say that Miss Chantry is an innocent little thing, and that no one, but no one, should crush the innocent.’

  ‘Nor shall anyone, Randy.’

  ‘That’s all that I wanted to know. You see, I saw that Leandra Fortescue’s poor husband had been killed – driving his motor car too fast I’ll be bound, I thought. And then next I thought, this is going to make a difference to certain people’s lives, and I am quite sure it will.’

  ‘Yes, Dilke has been killed. It is really quite sad.’

  ‘Yes, it is, most particularly for Leandra, who I am sure was really rather fond of him, in her way.’

  ‘Yes, she was fond of him in many ways.’

  ‘What is going to happen, Gray?’ Randy insisted.

  Gray looked at his old friend of many years, and noted that the older man was looking, and doubtless feeling, at his most pasha-like, and he was right.

  Randy wanted Gray to know, and in no uncertain terms, that he was going to be stern, that he was not on Gray’s side, that Miss Chantry was not to be used as a pawn in his doubtless elaborate love life. Randy knew that Gray was playing both ends against the middle, and that would never do.

  ‘What is going to happen indeed?’ Gray murmured after a short pause, and the normally urbane expression on his face changed. ‘I imagine that there will be a funeral, and then perhaps a wedding. That is what usually happens in these cases when someone dies and someone else is left.’

  ‘It will be a white wedding, I hope, Gray?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Or will it be a white marriage?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘The innocent must not get caught in the crossfire. Over my beautifully opulent body does that happen,’ Randy warned, his expression at its most stern.

  ‘No, of course not. Nor must the guilty go unpunished.’

  ‘Well, as long as you know it, Gray.’

  Gray turned away. He knew it, all right, he just wondered whether Leandra also knew it. He turned back again.

  ‘It may interest you to know that the innocent one has slipped through the net yet again. She must have been born under the sign of Pisces. There is no other explanation possible for her ability to disappear at a moment’s notice, hiding beneath some water lily, no doubt.’

  ‘Humph,’ Randy muttered. ‘Well, I am a Cancerian, and my pinch can make the bravest squeal.’

  Gray left the shop, the bell tinkled behind him, and it began to rain. Randy stared out at the rain. Any minute now little Arietta would be back from her inevitable visit to the post office. He knew that she was as worried about her friend Sunny Chantry as he was. She had, apparently, left the house the previous evening, and had not been seen since.

  ‘Phew!’ Arietta shook herself, and folded the umbrella she had been carrying. ‘Why is it that shops always seem further away when it’s raining?’

  ‘Why is it that it always rains when one has to go to a shop?’ Randy smiled, and beckoned to Arietta. ‘Come, let us take coffee together.’

  Arietta followed him into the back room, and they began to make coffee and find biscuits in that comfortable way that people can who know exactly how to move about a small space without treading on each other’s toes.

  ‘You just missed seeing Miss Chantry’s fiancé.’

  Arietta put down her coffee cup. ‘That stinker!’

  ‘You know that, do you?’

  She nodded, reddening. ‘The letters in the Angus Wilson …’

  ‘Of course … It seems you are not the only one to have lost your friend Miss Chantry. He too has lost her, he told me. Can’t find her anywhere, which does not bode well for their engagement I should have thought, should you?’

  ‘Really? Well, something good has happened, at any rate, because if he is not a stinker no one is.’

  Randy laughed. ‘You are very stern.’

  ‘Well, you know. I mean to say. Sam thinks he’s a stinker too,’ she added, as if this justified her own hard-held opinion.

  Randy laughed again, but then his expression changed to one of gravity.

  ‘The gentleman in question knows that I will not stand for any nonsense. I have told him so, only minutes ago.’

  Arietta turned and stared at Randy, realising that he meant what he said.

  ‘Have you warned him off, Mr Beauchamp?’

  ‘Yes, in essence. Yes, I have.’

  ‘But supposing your warning doesn’t do any good? Supposing this fiancé-person decides to push ahead with Sunny, what will happen then?’

  ‘Nothing to be done. But I don’t think she will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if she was going to, she would have stayed put, wouldn’t you say? I mean, if your mind was made up, say, to marry my nephew, you wouldn’t disappear, would you?’

  Arietta’s colour deepened. ‘Well, no. No, of course not.’

  ‘No,’ Randy said, his voice nonchalant, his expression determinedly detached. ‘You would stay put. You would make plans together, you would wonder when to tell the rest of the world, but what you wouldn’t do is to run off into the metaphorical jungle and leave everyone to wonder where you were, would you?’

  ‘No, no, absolutely not.’

  ‘My case therefore rests. I do not think now, for one moment, your friend Miss Chantry will be in the mood to take Mr Wyndham up on his offer of marriage. As a matter of fact I think it is the last thing that she will do.’ He fixed Arietta with a look. ‘Now it is your turn to be quizzed, Miss Staunton. When are you going to say yes to marrying my nephew Sam?’

  Arietta opened her mouth a
nd closed it again.

  ‘When he asks me – maybe?’

  ‘That,’ Randy said, after a joyous pause, and with much smiling satisfaction, ‘is without doubt the most thoroughly feminine answer that I have yet come across.’

  He sighed happily. He was more than fond of his nephew. He loved him. He wanted him to be happy. Sam was no plaster saint, but Randy knew now that he had found the girl whom the satin slipper fitted, the girl in a million whom every man in his right senses fell to dreaming of – a nice girl. And Arietta Staunton was just such.

  As Leandra had comfortably predicted to Gray, Rule took the funeral arrangements for poor Dilke out of her hands and into his own, and left her alone to recover her senses.

  Rule was pleased to do so. Not that he had ever wanted Mr Fortescue to pass from this world prematurely, far from it, but now that he had been gathered, amid all the hurry and bustle that always accompanies such occasions, Rule and the rest of the staff could all feel a palpable feeling of relief. Certainly it was felt in the servants’ quarters, because being servants, and therefore what Randy Beauchamp would call ‘stalky’, they had already sensed what they did not actually know, namely that all was not well at Maydown, that a monetary crisis had been brewing, but that now, for reasons they could not actually put their fingers on, the crisis was passing, and things would once more become settled.

  Of course they knew nothing about insurances or wills, or trusts that were only entailed on those who achieved the marital status and so on, but what they did know for certain was that Mr and Mrs Dilke Fortescue’s marriage had been unusual, to say the least, and that Mr Wyndham had not been asked down regularly for weekends with Mrs Fortescue just to play tiddlywinks.

  However, there was one task that Rule could not perform for Leandra, and that was the delicate act of saying goodbye to the man who had picked her up when she was at her most low, when she had still been in mourning for her adored first husband, who had taken the lonely, grieving young girl and given her wealth beyond her dreams, and a position in Society, not to mention his name.

  Leandra went to the church to kneel beside Dilke’s coffin, and as she kneeled she realised that they had, in their way, loved each other. It had not been Dilke’s fault that he was the way he was. That was probably no one’s fault – although, of course, some people might say that it had been his fault that he had not told her until after they had married.