No More Meadows (24 page)

‘It does matter. Tell me.' But when she began to tell him about Jerry he did not really want to hear. He dismissed it as: ‘Romantic sentiment. You were just a kid. Don't try and make me jealous of a dead man.'

‘I'm not. You asked me.' Christine stood up. Her tears for Jerry were finished long ago. This was no time to have them brought out again from the grave where they were buried with
him. She took a deep breath and turned round, making herself smile.

‘Well, anyway,' she said, ‘what about that girl you nearly married, who Edna said was a tramp? You've never told me about her.'

‘I'd have gotten round to it,' he said. He told her about the girl to whom he had once been engaged. He told her at some length, although she did not want to hear. It was long dead and buried, and it did not sound as if it had ever amounted to very much, but he took it seriously. Apparently he could have a romance in his past. Christine could not.

She grew tired of hearing about the girl, whose improbable name had been Amarella. She came back to the bed and took Vinson's tight-skinned face in her hands and kissed him. ‘Never mind about Umbrella,' she said lightly. ‘I don't expect you to have reached the age of thirty-eight without being in love with other women besides me. You can tell me about the others another time.'

‘Make a nice topic for evenings at home,' he said, looking up brightly, and they both laughed, and kissed again and liked each other. When he left her she went to bed and slept untroubled by the misgivings that are supposed to assail every girl on her last night alone as a single woman.

She did not see Vinson the next morning. She wanted to see him, but he was very strict about the bridegroom not seeing the bride before the wedding.

‘No one will know,' Christine had said. ‘You could just come along to the hotel and say hullo.'

‘It wouldn't be right. I'll see you at the church, darling.'

On the morning of her wedding Christine wanted Aunt Josephine very badly. How Aunt Jo would have enjoyed bringing her a special breakfast in bed, passing a warm iron once more over the little veil of her hat, helping her to dress, dashing at her with a needle and cotton for last-minute adjustments.

The chambermaid was in and out of the room, because she was old and forgotten and a bride excited her, and Edna came in to help Christine to dress, but it was not the same. At this
last moment of leaving her old life she wanted someone from the old life to cling to.

Edna was very kind. She was wearing a brown printed silk dress which matched her complexion, and her face looked more creased than ever. It was one of those faces which take a long time to recover from sleep. She helped Christine to pack, she fluffed out her hair at the back under the little white hat, and said that her blue-and-white dress was just darling.

Christine had learned from Vinson not to say: ‘Oh, it's nothing much', but: ‘Thank you. I'm glad you like it.' She still felt conceited saying it, however.

Vinson had sent her gardenias to wear and a posy of gardenias to carry. She pinned on the flowers and held the posy in front of her, and stood in front of the long mirror behind the cupboard door and thought: A bride. Well, I suppose I look it.

All her life, ever since she was old enough to read fairy tales, she had imagined herself as a bride and dreamed the dream of being dressed up and acting the part of the central figure on the greatest day of her life. Now that the day was here at last the reality was not as real to her as the dream had been. She was too nervous to take in everything that was going on. After the short ceremony, when Vinson kissed her on the church steps for the photographers, she found that she had hardly noticed what had happened in the flower-filled room of the rectory. She would like to have it all over again so that she could pay proper attention to the responses she made, and to the injunctions the bald, spectacled priest laid on them. She could not remember what he had said. All she remembered was Vinson's cool hand holding her hot one, and being suddenly afire with shame when she thought he was going to stumble over a response.

They posed for a group photograph, with Milt wearing his huge buttonhole and sweating at the forehead and Edna in a surrealistic hat, and Art Lee, the best man, with a crew cut, a rigid stance, and hands clenched by the trouser seams.

Christine smiled for the photographers and hoped that Vinson was smiling. She hardly dared to look at him now that he was her husband. He had suddenly become someone else. He had taken over the place of her own independent self on whom

she had always had to rely. The Catholic Church had made him a part of herself, and she was as shy of looking at him as one is of seeing oneself in the mirror when one is not quite sure how a new dress will look.

They stood by the door of the hotel reception-room and shook hands with some hundred people who all looked the same to Christine. The women looked at her curiously, and the men, who were mostly in naval uniform, clapped Vinson on the upper part of his arm and said something hearty. It was like a wedding in England, except that none of the guests were shy. They all knew what to say to the bride. They said: ‘I'm so happy to meet you', or: ‘I'm certainly glad to know you', as if they meant it.

The Admiral did not say that. Admiral Hamer was a small, pouchy man with a domed bald head and irritable eyes, who spoke only in grunts. Vinson saw him coming three couples away in the receiving line, and became distrait and could not concentrate on the guest he was speaking to. When the Admiral arrived before them grunting, Vinson almost fell over himself with deference. Christine was afraid for a moment that he was going to bow from the waist.

The Admiral appeared to be cross at having been dragged to a wedding on a Saturday morning. He did not look at Christine. His wife did, however. She looked her up and down, her eyes calculating behind her long-toothed social smile. She was a spare, unyielding woman, with a hard black straw hat like a Gilbert and Sullivan sailor, and a complexion that looked as if she had spent more hours on the bridge than the Admiral.

Vinson was delighted that they had come; although for all they contributed to the gaiety of nations, Christine thought they might as well have stayed at home. When she was beginning to enjoy herself, drinking champagne and talking to Vinson's friends, who were all very nice to her and very easy to talk to, Vinson kept telling her to go and talk to the Admiral's wife, who was standing in a corner with an untasted glass of champagne, holding court among a few sycophantic women whose husbands were worried about their promotion.

‘Must I?' Christine said. ‘I don't want to. I shan't know what to say to her.'

‘It doesn't matter. Just be charming. I want her to like you. She can matter a lot to our future, you know.'

‘I didn't know wives ran the Navy. Though I suppose if the Admiral can only grunt, someone has to do the talking.'

Vinson shushed her, and Art Lee, who was standing near, said: ‘Wait till you've been in the Navy a while. You'll see what Vin means.'

‘Cut it out, Art,' Vin said. ‘Look, Christine, you go and ask Mrs Hamer if you can get her another glass of champagne. I want her to enjoy herself.'

‘She hasn't finished the one she's got,' Christine said. ‘I don't think she wants to enjoy herself.'

‘Now, honey,' Vinson moved away, and Art laughed and said: ‘My wife feels just like you do. I can never get her to do the right thing. It's been the ruin of my career. I want you two girls to get to know each other. You'll get on fine. Where is Nancy? I never can find her at parties.'

‘I've been talking to her. She's the one with the black fringe, isn't she? She's sweet.'

‘Fringe? Oh, you mean bangs. Yes, she's swell. The best. They broke the mould after they made her.'

Christine hoped that Vinson would talk about her like that to other people. She liked Art Lee, although he looked odd, with his long, big-jointed bones and his cropped red hair and his knobby face that looked crudely drawn, like a character in a comic strip.

‘You're a nice girl,' Art said. ‘I like you.' America was strange and bewildering, but strangers were always giving you confidence by saying they liked you.

‘I'm glad you married Vin,' Art said.' He's a swell guy. We've been buddies for a long time. He and I were classmates at Annapolis, you know.'

A lot of the officers at the reception had told her that. It seemed to be a passport, like Englishmen being at the same public school together.

After the Admiral and his wife had left, and with them a very senior captain, who was Vinson's divisional chief and caused him some unease, the party began to loosen up a little. The women got together in corners and gossiped, and Vinson and
his friends got together in other corners and laid their arms across each other's shoulders and raised their voices. If it had been a film, Christine thought they would have sung ‘Sweet Adeline'.

She was followed about the room by the mad Aunt Felice, whose only peculiarity, apart from wrinkled khaki cotton stockings and one drooping eye, seemed to be that she felt it her duty to try and tell Christine derogatory things about Vinson's mother. As Aunt Felice had the kind of stammer that gets hung up for a word for seconds at a time, her recital was costive. She was constantly interrupted by another guest claiming Christine, but she persevered, following Christine about, gaping for words, and even pursuing her into the ladies' room to finish the story of ‘that Christmas when poor little Vinson was only five'.

Edna had quarrelled with Milt because he had had too much champagne. She rescued Christine from Aunt Felice and told her that it was time for her and Vinson to leave.

‘I thought so,' Christine said, ‘but I can't get Vin to go. He's having such a good time.'

‘Men,' said Edna. ‘They're all the same when they get together. Look at Milt.' There was nothing wrong with Milt, who was sitting quietly on a sofa, but Edna was irritated with him today and he could do nothing right. He had been stupid about parking the car, and she did not like the way he had kissed Christine after the wedding ceremony.

‘You tell Vinson if you don't go soon the hotel will make you pay more. They're waiting to get the room ready for a cocktail party,' Edna said.

Christine went over to Vinson and said: ‘I think we ought to go now, darling.'

‘Sure, honey. I'll be with you in a moment. Jim's just finishing one of his stories.'

‘Well, I'm going to get ready and have my bags brought down. If you don't come soon I'll go without you,' Christine said, and one of Vinson's friends made a joke about her being his commanding officer.

Christine went upstairs, feeling rather out of it. If Vinson were going to turn out to be one of those men who were always
ganging around with the Boys, she might just as well have married an Englishman who always wanted to get into a corner with his friends and talk about golf.

Vinson came into the room while she was powdering her nose. He put his arms round her waist and laid his head against hers, looking at their faces together in the mirror.

‘Have a good time at your wedding?' he asked.

‘It was lovely. I enjoyed it. Did you?'

‘You bet. I'm so glad the Admiral and his wife came. It was just all it needed.'

‘Vin, I don't think Aunt Felice is so mad,' Christine said, changing the subject, because she could not share his enthusiasm for the Hamers. ‘She's just annoying. She kept trying to tell me things about your mother. Did she really turn your father out of the house one Christmas and refuse to even let him come back for his razor?'

‘I don't remember it. Aunt Felice wanted him for herself at one time. That's why she talked that way.'

‘Well, she didn't give any trouble. I think everyone enjoyed themselves, don't you? I like your friends, darling. Was I all right? They were very nice to me.'

‘I thought Art was being a bit too nice to you,' Vinson said, moving away and flicking at the shoulders of his uniform. ‘What were you talking about all that time?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Vin, don't be silly. You can't be jealous of your wife at her own wedding.'

‘This town is full of wolves. You've got to watch out.'

‘Not Art. Darling, he's your friend. You can't talk about him like that. It's ridiculous. I hope you're not going to be jealous of every man I talk to.'

‘I've had too much champagne,' he complained.

‘I know, darling. Come on, let's go down now and get away on our own, and then you'll feel fine.'

It was exciting running out through the hotel with the people in the lounge staring and standing up to see them, and having confetti thrown over them by the wedding guests as they got into their car. They had not driven more than a block away before a tremendous blowing of horns behind them announced that some of Vinson's friends were following them through the
traffic, and when Christine looked out of the back window she saw a shoe bumping along on a string behind the car.

All up Connecticut Avenue they were pursued by the noise and the shoe, and people on the pavements stared and waved, and a traffic policeman grinned and saluted and did not seem to mind the noise.

Christine enjoyed it. ‘I feel like a queen,' she said, taking off her hat and shaking out confetti.

‘It's tough,' said Vinson, ‘but it's just one of those things that happen at weddings. I'll get down a side-street and try and shake them off.'

‘Oh, but I like it.' Christine laughed excitedly. ‘I want everybody to know I'm coming and that I'm Mrs Vinson Gaegler.' It still sounded an odd name to her, but she was getting used to saying it.

When he had left his hooting friends behind he stopped the car and got out to untie the shoe. While she waited Christine heard another weirder noise swelling towards them.