For Love Alone (6 page)

The tables were set, the crowd was thirsty, the air was red and dust flew up. The important persons stood about exchanging well-worn confidences and courtesies and a new embarrassment set in for the hundred mixed relations. Aunt Bea kept running about keeping up the good-will, while Malfi's parents were continually shaking hands, kissing and greeting people. But the strangers brought together by Aunt Bea broke apart again at once, rendered indifferent by the heat of the extraordinary day which had now reached its maximum and was, as the men kept saying, one hundred and twelve, right outside now, the mercury frying. At first they created a little turbulency and gaiety by saying: “Have the bride and groom arrived yet?” “Were you at the church?” Many of the guests had not been invited to the church for the queer reason that Malfi, a party-giver and the showpiece of the family, wanted a very quiet ceremony. Presently these questions failed too, especially when it became certain that the newly married pair had already arrived but were staying in a small room, because Malfi was tired.

Sylvia Hawkins, a dark cousin of twenty-eight, came bursting in with the news, creating a small unrest for a while by saying that Malfi was crying and her husband comforting her; and Aunt Bea
rushed about at once saying the poor child was over-wrought, over-excited, the happiest day of a girl's life often brought tears, even though they might be deep-down tears of joy, but happy is the bride the sun shines on, and it certainly was bursting a blood-vessel to blaze on Malfi, the sun never shone so yet on any Hawkins bride, and then a good-natured joke to cover the awkwardness: “How do you like that—a June bride in February? But if all brides were to get married only one month in the year, such procrastination might cause certain things to happen, for time, time waits for no man and sometimes the Little Stranger comes out of the nowhere into the here rather sooner than he is expected.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Anne, Aunt Bea's daughter, blushing to the roots of her hair.

“Don't blush, my cherub,” said Aunt Bea, “though a day like today no one knows whether it's blush or sunburn, but whatever anyone may say, I don't think it's out of place at a wedding to talk of babies. Babies do come, you know, and from weddings, and under some circumstances”, and here she giggled reminiscently, and lowered her voice, “you might almost say it is the baby who is being married.”

“Mother!” cried Anne, mortified.

“Fear not, my little darling,” said Aunt Bea, ashamed, but only of having hurt her child's feelings. “Mother will shut up. I open my mouth and put my foot in it.”

“Don't be a fool, Bea,” said Aunt Esmay fatly. “My! my dress is sticking to me, they'll think I came in a bathing suit if this goes on much longer. We do need an electric fan. Wouldn't you think they'd have one? At the whist drive on Saturday they had one over each table.”

“A ninon bathing suit is just right for today,” said Bea, giggling, “or Eve's bathing suit.”

“I'm just waiting to rip these rags off my back and step into a cold bath,” said Maggie.

“Look at me in my old serge suit,” said Bea, with a poor smile. “Well, all I had, don't think I wouldn't prefer ninon.”

“Ninon over none-on,” said Aunt Esmay, laughing at the old joke as if she had just made it up.

“Ninon over none-on,” said Aunt Bea disconsolately. But she brightened at once. “Never say die, for my own precious cherub's wedding I'll wear purple and fine linen if I have to scrub floors for a six-month before. Anne will have whatever she wants, ivory satin, watered silk, Chantilly lace and of course, the family diamonds.” Aunt Bea lifted one foot and wrenched at her shoe with a grimace. “These were a bargain at Joe Gardiner's, but you know I am so ashamed to keep the poor young man showing me samples that I just take anything. They seemed to fit in the shop, such a bargain, I couldn't resist it, twelve-and-six, bronze kid, but now they fit me all over nowhere.”

They could not fill in the time. The tables waited, the musicians waited, the Don Marches had done shaking hands and the reception was beginning to fall flat; for it was queer and depressing that Malfi had not yet come in but was sitting, nerve-shaken, prostrated by the heat, in a cloakroom at the end of the corridor.

In the moist heat which intoxicated them, and the expectancy, the groups flowed together again, friends together, and the boys and the girls in different circles began to murmur jokes. From each joke flew off a flock of relieved laughs. Their bodies relaxed wantonly, they shook their hips and pressed their shoulders together unconsciously. The gaiety started up again. They stood with their backs to the tables, trying to forget the claret cup, the home-made lemonade, the champagne, only turning back from time to time to see that they were not left out, that no one had sat down. The men, ashamed of their dirty turn of mind, looked around self-consciously and tried to keep their talk decent, and a silence fell on any unseemly guffaw; but the irritated lasciviousness of the girls, on whom the heat and the thought of the wedding-night worked as an aphrodisiac, their impatience, curiosity, and discontent, threw them into a fever. It was perhaps Aunt Bea who set the off, running round to each group with a busy gossip's smile and naïve lecherous interest in the wedding only half-accomplished. She kept saying: “The new wife, the wife
in name only,” and “A married woman
de jure
but not
de facto
”; and made remarks about the weather, “I hope it will get cooler for the poor things, imagine sleeping together for the first time in such weather.” She pushed these remarks farther than was her custom for the pleasure of hearing her nieces “go off into a roar”.

Teresa and some young cousin, awkward, flushed and astonished, stood on the outside of a group of four girl cousins listening to Madeline, the prettiest of them all, a golden-brown ringleted girl with blue eyes. She kept doing a dance-step, wriggling her hips, foxtrotting in and out of the group and singing quatrains, or reciting limericks and cracking jokes at which the girls cried: “Oh, that's too raw,” or “How absolutely killing!” or “You're vile,” or “Where on earth do you get these things?” They stood listening, unable to believe what they heard, with red cheeks, baited but ashamed. Madeline sang:
“In the park, after dark, without pants in the park after dark”,
her curls flopping, her face jovial. Aunt Bea had thrust her brown head in amongst them, its skinny stalk growing among all the satiny, round stalks, her young eyes gleaming. When the two sisters heard the conclusion of this song, Kitty turned her hot brown eyes quickly to Teresa and at this Teresa tried to walk off unobserved. Kitty followed. No one but Bea saw them go. A shriek of laughter burst from the group but was quickly hushed. Aunt Bea came after them at once.

“What is it, girls? Are you having a good time? You mustn't mind what Mad says, she means no harm, it's all innocent fun to her, there isn't a lovelier, purer girl than Mad. I know you two are two little prudes but there's a charm in a little fun. Of course, I think Mad oversteps the fine line between broad humour and the coarse, sometimes, but she's so wholesome. But you can't have too many prunes and prisms at a wedding, for, after all, what is a wedding about”—said Aunt Bea, excitedly, going far beyond what she would have said to the two little prudes at any other time. Bored with them she looked around, said: “I do think Malfi ought to make a little effort and not make her guests wait, I'm dying of thirst and that lovely
claret cup, I'm so greedy for it—that's a lovely turtle neck, dear! Just a sec”, and off she ran. The lonely girls passed by another group where a smart-looking girl of about seventeen was leaning forward, stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth, while a fat brunette declared: “Oh, it was awful but we simply shrieked and I never dared tell mother”, and farther on they dropped anchor by some older people who were talking about the wedding presents. “A cheque for fifty pounds from the bride's parents.” Here they listened eagerly, the shame dropping from their shoulders and their eyes getting tense; for they had given two presents, Kitty a handsome tray cloth from her own hope chest and Teresa an electric iron. These were Bedloes however; instinctively they closed rank to shut out the Hawkinses, and Teresa heard the words “another electric iron” from some of their own people, right at hand. The girls moved forward. Tina Hawkins was there, the girl who had just got engaged, thick-browed, jolly Tina, sullen no more but convulsed with laughter as in the old days, Tina with her guttural voice and beside her fat Aunt Esmay holding forth.

“Three electric irons and believe it or not, a pair of chamber-pots.”

“Oh, it's impossible.”

“Call me a liar? I swear, I saw them.”

“But did they put them with the—with the—oh—other wedding presents?”

“Under the table,” said Tina solemnly, “of course.”

“Oh, I can't believe it.”

“Why not?” said Aunt Esmay. “You need them even after you get married. You don't stop wee-weeing.”

The girls shrieked.

A cloud of obscure references hung over the girls. Tina said:

“The girls and Madeline dared me to give po's to Trix when Vic married; I said I would and she made me go buy them. I thought I would die when the man came up to me, a nice young man with hair plastered down. But I up and said: Two po's.' He turned red as a beetroot and then he laughed and Mad, the dusty bow-wow, said: ‘My sister wants them for a wedding.'”

They laughed heavily. The humour of the afternoon was already well launched and ploughing through a choppy sea.

“Oh, I could have died laughing, I never laughed so much,” said Tina.

“And you gave them to Vic?” one of the girls said, unwilling to give up the story.

Aunt Bea came rushing up.

“I don't want to miss any of the fun, a family wedding doesn't come every day and especially such a grand do as Aunt Eliza gives. Oh, girls, oh, girls, Tina, your sister Madeline, you two girls, you're a menace to society. You ought to be put out. I never heard in my life such an awful,” she lowered her voice, “limerick. I flatter myself I'm open-minded, I relish humour, even broad humour, but there are limits, and Mad with those big innocent baby blue eyes wide open—oh, Mother Ida! But what were you girls giggling about ?”

“Tell us the limerick first.”

“I couldn't bring myself to. Go and ask Mad.”

Instantly, there were some deserters. Aunt Bea, seeing them disband, quickly asked again what they had been laughing at. For the first time Kitty spoke and quite seriously:

“Chamberpots. Some awful presents someone, I mean, Tina, gave Vic.”

“Oh, let me die!” Aunt Bea swung on to Kitty's shoulder. “Never!”

“It's not so funny,” said Aunt Esmay. “I've seen po's given twice. One pair, down at Mr Vetter's wedding, some friends of his in the club gave them to him for a gag, when they gave him the bachelor dinner. This pair had eyes in the bottom.”

Some vile jokes followed, but “Eyes, what eyes?” said one.

“Yes,” said Tina seriously, “they had one pair with eyes painted in when I was down with Mad. They showed them to me. We nearly blew a rib when we saw them.”

They all became serious. “Why eyes?” puzzled Aunt Bea. “A big eye, with lashes, in blue,” Tina explained.

“I've seen them things,” said Esmay, “quite a few times. Maybe it means something. Mr Vetter's friends said it was a masonic symbol.”

The girls came rushing back with the limerick and started whispering it, with side glances at the Andrew Hawkins girls, “Oh, we simply exploded.”

“Now you speak of it,” said Bea thoughtfully, “I heard of it a long time ago. Now what could it mean ?”

“Perhaps it is Egyptian, it is the eye of Ra rising,” burst out Teresa, then blushed. “It might be an old thing.”

“But why would the Egyptians have hieroglyphs on their po's?” asked Aunt Bea.

“To see with at night,” Tina said, and yelled with laughter.

“Venus can see at night without eyes,” said Teresa. At this strange remark, they all looked at her and fell silent; they even looked a little sulky or underhand. Teresa felt herself turn red slowly from soles to hair-roots. Aunt Bea came round to them, all bonhomie. “Teresa, dear, you oughtn't to say things like that, a young girl like you, but of course we know, dear, that is just thoughtlessness. Now, you girls break it up, mingle with the others. What ever will Aunt Eliza think if we stand around in scrums? Now you two girls,” she continued, bustling Teresa and Kitty off, “come and speak to your Aunt Eliza and Uncle Don, I don't believe you've congratulated them yet, and they'll feel deeply hurt if you don't. They're so fond of you, now come along, and you look so pretty, I'm sure Aunt Eliza appreciates it—”

In the natural intermittings of the concupiscent fever which had them all, she needed some arid activity. But they did not reach the circle of froufrou and decency in which the parents of the young couple stood, for the bridesmaid came rippling in, her face bloated with heat and importance, stately, as the groups flowed back before her, and she reached the bride's parents, saying: “She's coming now.”

“She's coming now, the bride's coming now, the happy pair is coming now, here they come!”

The guests crushed together and then like grains through a hopper began to stream and blend their flows, they turned, swarmed and reknotted their groups, pushed back, pressed forward; nearer the door vaguely moved back and those near the table confusedly bent towards it. Someone went to the musicians and the girls pushed forward with avid expressions. Here she was, with her bridegroom, standing a moment at the door, she a little pyramid of satin, with a small oval face, looking at them, as she paused as if they were all strangers, he in a dark suit, the veil over his arm, already disturbed by a husband's worries, looking friendly. She made her way to the table, followed by him, forcing herself to speak amiably and call them all by their names. Andrew Hawkins's girls, who hung back, presently found themselves at the foot of one of the tables, opposite them Aunt Bea.