This Cold Country (14 page)

“An altogether nicer type of girl—where do you find them?”

To Daisy's horror, the man was now standing beside their table, looking—as were, she felt, most of the other diners—at Daisy, and speaking to Patrick. Daisy, helpless and now scarlet, looked at Patrick; she would have been on firmer ground had she not so obviously been talking about the incident just before the man she was describing paused at their table.

Patrick looked over his shoulder at the new arrival; Daisy noticed, with respect and relief, that he was holding up rather better than she was. But, before he could speak, the officer continued. “Mind if I join you? There should be some wine left—” And, drawing a chair one-handed from a neighboring unoccupied table, he sat down, rather heavily, with them.

Even as completely out of her depth as Daisy now was, she noticed with amusement the flicker of desperation on the face of the headwaiter, now moving toward them, and his qualified relief as Patrick smiled.

“I should have known,” he said. “Daisy, this is Major Sir Ambrose Sweeney, M.C., my neighbor in Ireland and a desperate character. Ambrose, this is my fiancée, Daisy Creed.”

Ambrose Sweeney, without taking his eyes off Daisy, gestured with one outstretched arm, and a waiter brought the unfinished bottle of wine from the other table. Daisy assumed the service at the Ritz, already excellent, would now become nervously instantaneous.

“Fiancée?” he said. “My congratulations. Has she met your family yet?”

“Ambrose! You don't feel you've caused enough trouble tonight?”

“You're right,” Ambrose said, and turned to Daisy. “They're perfectly all right once they get to know you. In the meantime, push a chest of drawers across the door each night when you go to bed.”

Daisy laughed and relaxed. Ambrose had not been the maker, although he might have—probably had—been the cause, of the scene, and his presence at the table made her own evening easier. It dispelled or at least postponed the, however exciting, however eagerly awaited, awkward moment when she and Patrick had to acknowledge the reason they were in London. That they had traveled here to anticipate their honeymoon. Although Daisy had become aware of Ambrose Sweeney's existence not more than five minutes before, she was pretty sure he understood what was going on; that he was at least as aware of their silent drama as he was of the more visible one in which he had just taken part.

“Daisy's a Land Girl in Wales—on my cousin Rosemary's farm.”

Ambrose looked at her with interest.

“George ever get any joy with those grouse he tried to introduce on his moor?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Daisy said. It was the first she had heard of grouse at Aberneth Farm.

“Didn't think so. Told him it wouldn't work. Grouse won't breed if they're nervous.” He paused for a moment thoughtfully. “Unlike humans.” Another pause. “Whole family pretty highly strung,” he said, his gesture indicating the table where he had dined with his erstwhile companion. “Mother was a Chatfield—you know what that means—this unfortunate girl is the daughter of the old boy who put most of his money into Russian bonds in 1915. Enough to make anyone touchy.”

“Touchy?” Daisy asked, both amused and hoping for further comment on the scene they had just witnessed.

“You can see she's overbred—beautiful and hysterical—like an Afghan hound.”

Patrick and Ambrose exchanged banter, the subject of their conversation moving back and forth between regimental matters, friends in common, horses, and sport. The men spoke lightly and, it seemed, freely of their military duties, but it was in a uniformly self-deprecatory manner; had a German spy been concealed beneath their table, he would have come away with nothing to interest him—unless, of course, he cared about the population of foxes in Tipperary and West Waterford.

Although Daisy contributed little to the conversation, she was not excluded. Both
of
the men addressed an occasional observation in her direction and from time to time would appeal to her with a rhetorical question.

Eventually, Ambrose straightened his back, glanced at his watch, and remarked, “Evening's still young, might as well drop in at the old Kit Kat. Don't suppose—no, of course not.” And he was gone.

“The old Kit Kat?” Daisy asked.

“Generic term for any club he might drop into after dinner. Covers most of Soho
and
the Guards Club.”

Patrick called for the bill. He paid it in a less casual manner than Ambrose had his. Daisy, watching him, was sure the tip was neither too little nor too much; she was also sure that the Ritz was not where he usually ate his dinner in London, and it was not a place they would frequent after they were married.

Moments later they were on Piccadilly and, shortly thereafter, in a taxi on their way back to the hotel. There Patrick had taken a bath, embraced Daisy, and instead of making love to her had taken her to the air-raid shelter where she was now falling asleep.

D
ESPITE VALERIE'S HEAVY-HANDED
innuendo, there was no connection between Daisy's decision not to wear white for her wedding and the weekend she had spent with Patrick in London. She had returned to Aberneth Farm—thanks to the air raid, Patrick's early morning chivalry, and both their exhausted states—as she had left it, a virgin. She was, she thought, glad this was the case but didn't have the heart to tell Valerie.

Daisy had refused her mother's offer of her own wedding dress, suitably altered by her grandmother, and had spent the greater part of her saved wages on a pale lilac dress and a small, subdued pink hat. Both could and would be worn later.

After the weekend in London, Daisy and Patrick had returned to their wartime duties. Daisy to the late-summer, hot, hard, but not unpleasant routine of Aberneth Farm; Patrick to the training course near London. The next time they would see each other would be the evening before the wedding.

Daisy wondered if every bride felt at least a little ashamed of her family. Her parents' shortcomings could, at a pinch, be dismissed as eccentricity, that useful catchall excuse allowed to anyone whose family originated as minor landed gentry or better. Joan, whose stock was identical, could not be so easily explained; from the moment she had enlisted she had assumed the vocabularly of a dock worker. Barring criminal activity or relentless promiscuity—and Daisy wasn't completely sure the latter was not included in Joan's self-cast role—she could not have found a more efficient way of revenging herself for the real or imaginary defects of her upbringing. Joan's coarseness and Valerie's refinement were equally embarrassing. Valerie: another reason for Daisy's heart to sink. Daisy wanted and needed Rosemary at her wedding and it would have been both unkind and awkward to exclude Valerie, who, as stage manager of the London weekend, had now in her mind expanded her role and felt responsible for the match. Valerie's overwhelming advantage was that she was not a blood relation and Daisy had no reason to feel responsible for her. Though, of course, she did.

None of which should have been insurmountable—Patrick already knew what he was getting into—had it not been for his choice of best man.

“What a good idea, darling. I was worried that none of your family would be there,” Daisy had said, her heart sinking.

Patrick's parents were dead and none of his surviving family were coming to the wedding; Daisy wasn't sure why not and wasn't able to frame the words to ask. When her parents had asked vague, not very pressing questions, Daisy had cited distance, short notice, and anything else that came to mind. Privately she suspected lack of interest, both on Patrick's part and that of his brother and sister. So when Patrick suggested James should be his best man, Daisy simulated enthusiasm.

The conversation had taken place on the telephone; the telephone call a rarity, their slightly awkward letters a more usual form of communication. Daisy thought Patrick had already asked James and that he was not so much seeking acquiescence as employing a polite form of telling her.

She sought out Rosemary. She had not, since James was Rosemary's cousin, told her of James's attempt to seduce her at Bannock. That memory no longer made her ashamed; but since she knew he was not well disposed toward her, this occasion would present an opportunity for him to sneer at her family and to revenge himself on her.

Rosemary, for the first time, disappointed Daisy. She had always seemed the personification of tact and common sense; now she seemed not to notice that Daisy was awkward, embarrassed, and inarticulate. She seemed unable to infer the problem from the words that Daisy did and did not mumble. The unsatisfactory conversation ended with the understanding that Daisy, like most young brides, was nervous about her wedding and that Rosemary would be helpful in any way she could. Daisy retired to her bedroom to consider what had and what had not taken place.

It didn't seem possible that Daisy had imbued her employer with a subtlety and delicacy that she did not possess, that she might have misunderstood the level of unspoken complicity between them at certain moments; Rosemary's responsive reaction to the eye met, the unspoken word, the moment's hesitation, belied that. Daisy had to assume Rosemary did not want to concern herself with this problem, or that she was, perhaps, in the other camp if everyone had to ally himself either with the Nugents, who Daisy assumed thought Patrick was making a mistake, or the Creeds, who as usual weren't paying much attention. Or, maybe, Rosemary was taking the view that now Daisy was engaged to be married, and had given notice to her employer, she no longer took responsibility for her, that Daisy should now stand on her own two feet. Daisy was quite prepared to be independent and decisive, starting the moment she was a married woman; it was the interim period that she worried about.

Patrick, Rosemary, and Valerie arrived at the rectory the evening before the wedding. Dinner was exhausting. As on the only other occasion Patrick had eaten a meal with her family, each seemed a parody of his worst self. Daisy was far too nervous to feel hungry, but she noticed that her mother served a meal that was simultaneously burnt and cold; that her grandmother's sighs were louder and longer than usual; Valerie asked one question too many about James, so far unmet by her; and, most horribly, Joan seemed to have assumed the role of best man at a bachelor dinner, allowing no possibility of a double entendre to pass and, although stopping short of an after-dinner speech, managing to tell several coarse jokes that left Mrs. Creed genuinely bewildered and Daisy cringing. Daisy, her stomach constricted with outrage and embarrassment, was at the same time grateful that James would not arrive until the next day, shortly before the wedding. Not that she thought that anybody would be behaving any better; she imagined James, playing Darcy to Patrick's Mr. Bingley, drawing him to one side and whispering that it was still not too late to extricate himself from the clutches of this impossible family.

Daisy awoke, the next morning, to the most beautiful day of the year, cool, dry, and sunny with the warmth of Indian summer and the promise of autumn crispness. And to a feeling she could not immediately have described or defined, a mixture of confidence and determination and an awareness that if she allowed anyone to spoil her wedding day she would have no one to blame but herself. Confrontation, quarrels, and hurt feelings were not the solution; the only way to continue in her happy mood was to rise above the self-centered behavior of her family and Valerie. Or, better still, to isolate herself from it. She stayed in her room, allowing Rosemary to bring her a cup of ersatz coffee and, it having been established that she had first call on the hot water, took a bath and put on the dress she was to be married in.

Rosemary came in with two glasses of champagne.

“What's happening downstairs?” Daisy asked.

“Organized chaos,” Rosemary said. “Lunch and—well, you don't need to think about that—it's your wedding day.”

Daisy put on her hat; Rosemary stood behind her arranging her hair and tugging the shoulder seams of her dress to make it sit properly.

“You look lovely,” said Rosemary, and Daisy, seeing herself in the looking glass, knew that she did.

“Thank you,” she said, resisting the instinctive disclaimer.

They stood there for a moment, each smiling at the other's reflection; Rosemary broke the silence.

“Everything's all right. Your grandmother is putting the finishing touches to your bouquet, your mother is in fact getting food ready for later and it'll be fine, James is chatting with your father, and Joan—”

“James—” Daisy almost yelped. “What's he doing here?”

“He came over to get something Patrick had forgotten—the ring, his trousers—and now he and your father—”

“And Valerie?” Daisy interrupted again.

“She's sitting quietly in her room, reading a magazine and waiting for her nail varnish to dry.”

“Has she—ah—met James yet?”

“Just in passing. I believe your grandmother introduced them.”

Daisy looked at Rosemary in a manner that expressed disbelief or, at least, a need for elucidation.

“Last night, after dinner, for all our sakes, not least Valerie's, I told her that James—appearances to the contrary—was not the answer to a maiden's prayer.”

“You what?”

“She looked as startled as you do now. So I added, meaningfully, that he was ‘not the marrying kind.'”

“Rosemary, you didn't?” Daisy was shocked and amused. And grateful. But mostly shocked.

“It's true,” Rosemary said, laughing. “He's not my idea of the answer to a maiden's prayer and so far as I know he's not looking for a wife until he's finished sowing rather too many wild oats.”

“Rosemary, you're a genius.”

“It's time to go downstairs. Finish your champagne. I told you—everything's going to be all right.”