‘Well, don’t you miss it?’ she said plaintively, in their snatched meetings over early supper or breakfast, and he said he did, of course, but he had grown accustomed to such deprivation in the long years on his own.
They had decided she would continue working until she was pregnant and when the first baby was unarguably on its way, they would look for a little house with a garden just slightly further out of central London, in Ealing perhaps, or Highgate, neither frighteningly expensive. He was so easy about the wedding; she would have expected him to be awkward, questioning all sorts of aspects, but he simply agreed to everything. Guest lists, venue, food, champagne, even what he was to wear. The thought occasionally rose unbidden to him of what on earth Laura would have made of it, but he banished it. She would either have mocked him or despised him, probably both. She was in another country now, remembered with great love, but he had left her there, safe, together with Hope.
Alice’s parents had slightly mixed feelings about Tom as a husband for their beloved only daughter. They thought he was charming, and might well have considerable prospects, but these were of a rather vague variety. They did concede that being the wife of an MP could be very prestigious, but he wasn’t one yet and might never be. Anyway, he wouldn’t be a Conservative MP but a socialist one.
They were a little nervous about Tom’s family, and their attendance at the wedding; how would they fit in with their own friends? They were probably unsophisticated. It was very fortunate, they agreed, that neither of Tom’s brothers was to be his best man, but like Alice they were finding the absence of any other suggestion increasingly irritating. Finally Mrs Miller decided she could hardly leave meeting the Knelston clan until the wedding day and suggested that as many of them as were able, but certainly Tom’s mother, should come for the day one Sunday. She wasn’t quite sure how they would all get there, and was slightly surprised to discover that all the families, and even the unmarried daughter, had cars, and that Arthur, Tom’s next brother down, was rather well off, being a successful builder. He would bring Mrs Knelston and two or three other cars would come too.
Alice was delighted with this plan; she had still not met Tom’s mother. Now, suddenly, she would meet the lot of them, and had already decided she would like them very much.
Finally, one evening in bed, she discovered the reason for Tom’s reluctance; his mother, who was only in her mid-fifties, was what he described as ‘confused’. Dementia from an early age ran through the female line of the family and poor Mary had fallen victim to it.
‘I just can’t think why you didn’t tell me,’ she said crossly. ‘What did you think I might do? Forbid her to come to the wedding, refuse to have anything to do with her?’
Tom, looking at once wretched and embarrassed, said he supposed he’d thought she might find the whole thing hard to cope with.
‘Do you really think so little of me?’ said Alice. ‘I’m very sad for you all, of course, but that’s about it.’
‘I’m sorry. Yes, it was wrong of me. But she certainly won’t be able to come to the wedding, Alice. It would be impossible. She’s quite likely to rush up to the altar and kiss me when we’re taking our vows.’
‘It seems such a shame,’ said Alice. ‘Surely one of your sisters could take care of her, take her out if she thought she was about to do something – odd.’
‘It all happens rather suddenly,’ said Tom. ‘Hard to predict. And once she’s on her way, there’s no stopping her. I don’t want you worried about her in the middle of your wedding.’
‘Our wedding,’ said Alice briskly.
‘Sorry. Our wedding. But it’s – well, it is your big day, isn’t it? That’s all I mean.’
‘I would hope it was yours too,’ said Alice. Then, ‘Look,’ she said into the silence. ‘Bring her, Tom, please. To the reception at least. And I still think if one of your sisters sat at the very back with her . . .’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘Not in the church. But yes, the reception.’
‘Good. I’d better give my mother due warning though.’
‘Oh, Alice . . .’ He leaned across the bed, reached for her hand and kissed it. ‘In case you don’t know, I do love you.’
‘Just as well,’ she said, ‘since there’s only about six weeks to go for you to change your mind.’
She left him feeling happier, but in the taxi started worrying whether he would have kept such a thing from Laura. She felt quite sure he would not.
‘Damn you,’ she said aloud, to the brave tragic ghost who seemed destined to be her life’s companion. And then again, ‘DAMN YOU.’
Jillie’s wedding was not to be in June; nor in July. Ned said he wanted them to enjoy their engagement. It was such a happy time, there was so much to do, a house to find – the cottage was far too small for two of them – his private practice was growing, and absorbing more and more of his time, and besides a big wedding, such as Jillie would surely want, was a large enterprise, and required a great deal of organisation.
Jillie, who would have married him in a registry office, with witnesses pulled off the street, the sooner to become Mrs Welles, agreed to all this with a dutiful cheerfulness. He was right; the cottage was tiny and her parents did want a big wedding, and he was terribly busy with his work.
‘But I just think,’ she said to Alice one night, managing to interrupt the urgent flurry of consideration over whether the bridesmaids should have white ribbons or blue on their pale lemon taffeta dresses, ‘I just think if he really loved me as much as he says he would at least have some kind of notional date in mind. I mean, don’t you think it’s a little bit odd?’
‘I – suppose so,’ said Alice, torn between total agreement with this and not wishing to upset Jillie further. ‘But you mustn’t forget he’s quite a bit older than you and he’s got a very complicated life to sort out –’
‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s the same age as Tom and Tom’s been married before.’
‘He has indeed,’ said Alice with a sigh. Jillie ignored it. ‘Then there’s the – the sex thing. I just don’t understand it.’
‘Still nothing?’
‘Nothing. Sometimes I feel like a sort of – sort of much-loved sister.’