The White Marriage Read online

  Sunny put down her fruit knife, and carefully wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘Why would he want me to marry him?’ she asked eventually, frowning. ‘We have only met twice.’

  As she tried not to look too astonished at what Mrs Fortescue had just said, Sunny could not help realising that her feelings were, to say the least of it, mixed. On the one hand she believed that stranger things happened to people than someone asking for your hand in marriage after only two meetings – she had, after all, been told of a wartime romance when two people met at one railway station and left the train at the next in order to marry by special licence – on the other hand that had been during the war, and now was now.

  Not that she did not find Mr Wyndham attractive. After dancing with him at the ball, she had even dreamed about him, but the idea of marrying him was vaguely ridiculous, like marrying a film star, or royalty.

  ‘Mr Wyndham was very impressed with you. He feels he could make you happy, but since he is rather older than you, he wanted me to act as his go-between in the old way, which is why I asked you to luncheon today.’

  There was a long silence, during which Sunny tried not to stare at Leandra, and failed. After a few seconds her face mirrored the amazement of her feelings.

  ‘It’s quite old-fashioned to ask someone to ask someone else to lunch to tell them that they want you to marry them, isn’t it?’ Sunny ventured, finally. ‘I mean it is a bit like something in an opera, wouldn’t you say?’

  Leandra raised an eyebrow, considering this. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose it is,’ she agreed finally. ‘Although that is how the royal family go on. I believe they still send an emissary to ask for someone’s hand in marriage.’

  The maid had reappeared with the coffee, which she now, at Leandra’s direction, placed in the drawing room next door, after which they both stood up, and went to sit either side of the chimneypiece.

  ‘It is old-fashioned,’ Leandra went on, once the door had closed behind the maid. ‘But what I should perhaps explain is that Mr Wyndham enjoys what I would call rather unusual circumstances, and it is these that he especially wished me to tell you about. He wants to be honest, but, quite naturally, he does not want to embarrass you.’ Leandra handed Sunny a gold-decorated coffee cup, and offered her some brown coffee sugar. ‘Mr Wyndham had a good war – MC and all that – but it left him … how shall I say?’ She lowered her voice to hardly more than a murmur. ‘It left him unable to be a man – in the proper sense of the word.’

  As she finished speaking and saw the expression on Sunny’s face Leandra could have kicked herself. The poor girl looked more than embarrassed, she looked mortified. But perhaps that was good? Perhaps it meant that she was modest and well brought up?

  In fact Sunny was blushing not because she was either particularly modest or especially well brought up, but because she and Arietta had always remained determinedly vague about the details of how a man was a man, neither of them liking to think that when it came to procreation the human animal was no different from any other.

  ‘You mean Mr Wyndham can’t have children?’ Sunny finally offered, after a determined sip of her coffee, which in the absence of a glass of water did nothing to lessen the colour in her still burning cheeks.

  ‘No, my dear, more than that.’ Leandra lowered her voice still further, so that she was barely audible. ‘He is not able to be a man in any sense of the word, if you understand me.’

  Sunny put down her cup of coffee, and her heart flooded with sympathy for the handsome, debonair man with whom she had enjoyed lunch only a few days before.

  ‘I see,’ she said, despite the fact that she didn’t at all, but she couldn’t think of what else to say. She clung to the idea that she could surely iron out the fine details of the implications much later. ‘In that case, if he is unable to be a man, why would he want to be married to someone, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘You may well ask, Miss Chantry. I suppose in one sense, despite having a very full social life, he feels lonely, and then in another way, as his long-time friend, I know that he has always yearned for a settled relationship with someone whom he could love as a friend, and after your luncheon together he told me that despite the more than ten years’ age gap, he felt that you could well be that person but, quite naturally, he felt shy of discussing the more intimate details of his life with you personally.’

  Sunny stared at Leandra. Now everything really did seem to be happening as in a dream. Perhaps it was a dream, just like the one that she had that had starred Mr Wyndham. Quite soon she was sure she would wake up in her own little bed at the cottage, and the sun would be trying to burst through the old pale blue curtains, and there would be downstairs-sounds coming up from below the window: her father mowing the lawn, her mother’s radio playing Music While You Work. She was silent for a moment, trying to decide how to be, and finally settling, as she nearly always did, for complete honesty.

  ‘I feel as if I might not be going to understand you,’ Sunny confided to Leandra. ‘I mean, I feel as if I have wandered into another world, like Alice in Wonderland, a world full of kings and queens and perhaps even a mouse in a teapot.’

  She nodded round the sumptuously furnished room as she finished speaking, and Leandra too nodded.

  ‘That is not surprising, but perhaps if I explain a little more you will understand what is being asked of you. You see, Gray not only felt that you were young enough not to mind his particular situation, but he felt you were also young enough and charming enough to help him regain the affection of his father, who is something of a surly old curmudgeon with little affection for anyone but himself – and I can say that with my hand on my heart, as I have known him since I was quite young.’

  ‘His father? He wants me to be nice to his father?’ Sunny asked, surprised.

  ‘It is necessary to appease his father, who is really rather difficult, and nothing has changed him – not the war, not his son going missing, nothing. He is a sad, bitter old man, who does not show the least affection for Gray, but whom Gray hopes might change towards him if he gets married, if he has a wife, albeit in name only.’

  Leandra stopped, wondering if she had gone too far by calling Jocelyn Wyndham a sad, bitter old man, a description that was actually not hers at all but one that Randy Beauchamp had made to her about Mr Wyndham Senior some months before, when she had been in Randy’s bookshop, choosing Christmas presents.

  ‘Gracious.’ Sunny looked impressed. ‘He sounds a bit like some kind of crusty old earl in a book.’

  ‘I am sure that is a very good comparison,’ Leandra said easily. ‘But now you know the truth of the story, and why Mr Wyndham wants to make a white marriage with you, you will need to go away and think it over, will you not? It is not a step to be undertaken lightly, as you can appreciate, but there will be many gains, of course – not least that you will have a husband who is kind, elegant, handsome and amusing, and that after all, is not nothing.’

  Sunny nodded. ‘Yes, of course, but, as you say, it isn’t something you could just rush into.’

  She turned away and for a second her eyes left Leandra sitting opposite her on her velvet sofa, and wandered to the view outside the window, to the blue sky, to the green of the countryside, and it seemed to her that she was suddenly older, because the truth was that she didn’t like to think of Mr Wyndham as some sort of war victim. He had seemed so handsome and urbane and charming, and very much a man.

  ‘Is something troubling you, Miss Chantry?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sunny admitted. ‘You see, I really liked Mr Wyndham, but now you have said what you have said it seems to me that I am being asked to feel sorry for him, and that really rather changes quite a lot.’

  Leandra stood up and went to sit beside Sunny on the opposite sofa.

  ‘Oh, my dear, dear girl,’ she said, her beautiful Fabergé-blue eyes seeming to spill with sympathy. ‘There is no known reason to feel sorry for Gray Wyndham, really there is not. He is handsome, rich, and live
s his life in a pat of butter.’ As Sunny frowned, not understanding, she went on, by way of explanation. ‘His circumstances do not, believe me, stop him enjoying himself. He is asked everywhere, not just Maydown, but everywhere. So, please believe me, while you are thinking over his offer of marriage, do not trouble to feel sorry for him. Promise me?’

  Sunny nodded. Mrs Fortescue’s words were sincere. Sunny believed her, but even so, that feeling of being let down, of confusing attraction with pity would not go away. Besides, what would she explain to her parents? She was meant to be going to secretarial college, not getting married to some older person who could never be a proper man. She glanced quickly at her tenth birthday present, her wristwatch.

  ‘I must be going,’ she said, realising with a sinking heart that she would have to be very lucky to catch the right train and return home at just the same time as she always did. Not that it mattered really. She had hoped that with the invitation to lunch with the famous Leandra Fortescue would perhaps come a future offer to help her find a post as a social secretary, or working in an auction house, or for an old duke, something like that. She had not expected to have to consider an offer of marriage. It was, of course, quite out of the question. ‘Thank you so much for lunch-eon.’

  They shook hands.

  Leandra walked her to the drawing-room door.

  ‘You will think it over, won’t you? And let me know? There is no hurry, of course there is not; although I do know that Mr Wyndham is anxious to know how you feel. He did so love your company at luncheon, and I know the last thing you will want is to hurt his feelings.’

  Sunny smiled, and the drawing-room door closed behind her, as did the whole idea. Or so she thought.

  Chapter Three

  Arietta stared at Sunny. They were sitting in Mrs Caerphilly’s teashop, a favourite meeting place for both of them. Whenever they felt flush, they could indulge in what Arietta always thought of as a perfect orgy of tea drinking and cake eating, although at that moment she was less interested in cakes (and that took a great deal) than absorbing Sunny’s news.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, this chap, this Mr Wyndham, the one I told you about, he wants to marry me.’

  Arietta pushed her thick brown fringe of hair to the side and continued to stare, this time wordlessly, at her best friend.

  ‘He wants to MARRY you?’ She put down her cake fork. ‘Oh, but that is so lovely! I told you, I told you, he had fallen in love with you.’

  Sunny shook her head.

  ‘No, no, he hasn’t fallen in love with me. He wants to marry me because I am suitable. It’s not love Arietta, it couldn’t be. We have only met three times. No, it’s not love at all.’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  Sunny shook her head yet again.

  ‘No, no, no! No, you see …’ She paused, clearing her throat. ‘Something terrible happened to him in the war, and he can never be a man, but he needs to marry to help his father like him better, and that sort of thing. He is handsome, urbane and asked everywhere, so he doesn’t mind too much about not being a man, but he still needs a wife who won’t mind his terrible problem.’

  Arietta struggled not to look crestfallen. They both knew about dreadful things that had happened during the war; most of all they knew never to talk about them.

  ‘So, so, so.’ Arietta stopped. ‘So, he wants to marry you but he can’t be a husband to you?’ She dropped her voice. ‘You don’t suppose he’s “different”, do you?’

  ‘Oh, no, he’s not different. No, I think it was a war accident, a bomb blowing up near him or something; or perhaps he was tortured? But really what would it matter? I mean, if you agree to marry each other, you don’t always … well you don’t have to be a husband with your wife, I don’t suppose, do you? You can just be good friends, I should have thought, wouldn’t you? Like brother and sister and all that kind of thing.’

  Arietta frowned. She was as vague as Sunny about the exact details, the hard facts surrounding the marital bed, probably because she, like Sunny, was an incurable romantic.

  ‘Yes,’ she finally conceded, ‘I think you could just be really good friends, and perhaps it might even be better because you wouldn’t have to have babies and die in childbirth, and all that sort of thing. My mother’s sister died in childbirth and my mother has never got over it.’

  Arietta had grown up with the endlessly repeated story of her mother’s sister dying while giving birth, in the most agonising way, which meant that, unsurprisingly, Arietta herself had become convinced that marital relations and giving birth were possibly two of the worst things that could happen to anyone.

  ‘So what is going to happen next?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sunny looked away. ‘There’s been the most awful row about everything, you see.’ She nodded at a passing waitress. ‘Some more cakes, please.’

  ‘Certainly, miss.’

  ‘Why has there been an awful row? Surely your parents don’t know about … about …?’

  ‘No, no, they don’t know about that bit, but Ma caught me coming back from lunch – luncheon – with Mrs Fortescue, and she was livid, quite rightly, I dare say, because I deceived her and went against her wishes, and all that.’

  ‘Oh, but she shouldn’t mind, really not. No one notices if you don’t turn up at Princess Secretarial College, really they don’t. Not unless you have been gone about a fortnight, and then not at all during Ascot week.’

  ‘No, but Ma minds terribly if I miss even a day, because of the huge amounts of money they are spending on me being there, which they can’t really afford, and which Pa would prefer to spend on the Vauxhall. At any rate, she met me at the door, and sent me to my room, and then Pa came back and he was furious, and so it went on, and it all ended up with me saying I was going to marry Mr Wyndham no matter what, which I really didn’t mean.’

  ‘Why did you say it, then?’

  Sunny stared past Arietta out into the village street. People were hurrying by, holding precious baskets of shopping, the sun was trying to make a rather late entrance, shining patchily on the old Tudor façades, the red brick Georgian frontage of the White Swan Hotel, the one car parked in the street outside the grocer’s. The whole scene was so dear and familiar that she found herself wishing to heavens that Mr Gray Wyndham and his Bentley had never broken down outside Pear Tree Cottage.

  ‘I suppose … I suppose I said I did mean to marry him because they were in such a fluff about my going to have lunch with Leandra Fortescue when they had told me they didn’t think I should. I suppose I said it because, well, because I was in such a bate about being found out! I just found myself saying that Mr Wyndham was everything I had always wanted! And Ma was furious and rang Mrs Fortescue and told her to tell Mr Wyndham that I would not marry him, because she would not let me, which sounded as if I really wanted to, even though I didn’t really, at least not at that moment. I just said the first thing that came into my head. And Pa is furious and practically ready to call Mr Wyndham outside, or whatever men do when they are frightfully angry. At any rate, he has asked him round to the cottage to sort everything out.’

  ‘What a pickle.’

  ‘A whole jar of pickles, actually, Ari. Because the next thing I knew I was rung by Mrs Fortescue, saying that both she and Mr Wyndham were thrilled that I wanted to marry him, and that I was not to worry about my father being so furious because he would soon come round. So what happened was that Ma’s telephone call to Mrs Fortescue meant that she and Mr Wyndham took what I had said to my parents to be the gospel truth, instead of which I was just being a bit of a Bolshevik, really. At any rate, Pa is blue-steel angry now, and that is not very, well, not very nice actually.’

  Arietta swallowed hard. Sunny’s father, as they both knew, was what was always called in Rushington ‘a darling’ – humorous, and generous to a fault, all things to all men, unless challenged on a point of honour, whereupon he became St George on a charger, his hand on his sword hilt ready
to slay just about anyone, let alone dragons.

  ‘I say, they don’t know your pa, do they, Sunny? I mean, I would hate to be Mr Wyndham if your pa is furious. Talk about entering into the swallowing-hard department. Not funny at all.’

  Arietta took a small chocolate cake from the new plate of cakes that had arrived. It was very small, not very much more than about an inch square. Even so, she took her cake knife and started to cut the tiny offering as if it was a full-size cake, and then taking each little slice she savoured it as if it was her last, which, since the war began and rationing, she always did think it might be going to be.

  ‘Golly, Sunny, I say, if your pa is cross,’ she repeated, her large eyes widening as she stared at Sunny, ‘I should really, really hate to be Mr Wyndham.’

  ‘Me too.’ Sunny tried to look brave. Since the awful row with her parents she had spent the days hiding in her room, so much so that it seemed to her that even the pattern of the wallpaper was now imprinted on her mind, and to such an extent that she could not look at anything, not even Arietta, without seeing its outline reflected over everything. ‘Well, at least Mr Wyndham will probably talk nicely to Pa. He is very charming,’ she finally offered. ‘I mean, I dare say another man, especially an older one, can deal with Pa in that mood.’

  ‘I dare say,’ Arietta agreed, but she did not manage to sound very convinced.

  Instead she took a pink iced cake from the plate and proceeded to cut that one too into tiny little slices. The cake-cutting ritual was a comfort, and it took her mind off the idea of Mr Chantry calling Mr Wyndham outside – although what men did once they were outside she had no more idea than Sunny. She too now stared out of the window. It suddenly seemed that Sunny and she did not know anything very much at all, which was a pity because she had really rather hoped that they did.

  Sunny and Arietta might put John Chantry’s intransigence down to the war, but Mary, his diligent, hard-working wife, knew that it was just a part of his character, as much as his blue eyes and his fair hair. The slightest opposition to his declared will, and his mouth would set so firmly that his lips might have been two parallel lines drawn in concrete.