Two Penn'orth of Sky (3 page)

She and Peter were seated side by side at the top table, flanked by their parents. On a small separate table stood the wedding cake, a masterpiece of the confectioner’s art, all glistening white icing, the purity of it enhanced rather than broken by the miniature bride and groom on the top tier, standing in a bed of sugar flowers. When the meal was over, she and Peter would cut that cake, and after it was eaten and the tables cleared away, the musical trio her mother had engaged would appear and the dancing would begin.

Not that we’ll see much of the dancing, because our train leaves from Lime Street Station at three o’clock, Emmy reminded herself. Most brides aren’t lucky enough to have a proper honeymoon and just go away for a night somewhere local, but we’re off to Llandudno, to stay in a real hotel for a whole week! And then we’ll come back to the beautiful house in Lancaster Avenue. She could see it clearly in her head: the tree-lined avenue, the neat little garden, bright with flowers, the gleaming windows and cheery red brick façade, the four well-whited steps leading up to the green-painted front door. Oh, I’m such a lucky girl! Mam said this was the start of a new life and I mean to make it the sort of life I’ve always dreamed of.

Emmy had looked forward to dancing with Peter, knowing how the skirt of her dress would sway like the bell of a great flower, but the musicians had barely begun to tune their instruments before she had to run up to her room to change for her train journey. Susie, who seemed to be getting on extremely well with one of Peter’s fellow officers, offered to accompany her, but Beryl stepped forward, telling Susie that, in the bride’s absence, her attendant should start the dancing. ‘I’ll see to Emmy, same as she saw to me when I were a bride,’ she said firmly. Then she turned to her friend. ‘It’s a shame you can’t wear the dress for a while longer, queen, because I’ve never seen anything lovelier. But there you are, you’re having a honeymoon which is more’n most do. Where’s you off to now? I forget the name of the resort.’

Emmy, entering her bedroom, shook her head chidingly at her friend. ‘Peter said we weren’t to tell anyone where we were going or they would be
certain to play tricks on us,’ she reminded her friend. ‘But I’ll send you a postcard, Bee, honest to God I will.’

Beryl laughed and began to remove Emmy’s headdress and veil, draping the veil over a coat hanger and placing it carefully in the wardrobe. Then she undid the dozens of tiny buttons which fastened the bride’s dress from the nape of her neck to her hips, and began easing it off. Emmy stepped out of the froth of lace and silk and began to put on the pale blue muslin dress, the long, white, elbow-length gloves, and the smart little shoes in blue kid, which she had bought from Blackler’s only a week before. Then she sat down and began to unpin her hair, brush it out and coil it into a big, soft chignon at the base of her neck. Beryl tutted disapprovingly and took over, smoothing the hair back from her friend’s face until not a strand was loose, and then settling the gold straw hat with its wreath of blue cornflowers on Emmy’s head. ‘I’m going to miss you like anything, queen,’ she said heavily. ‘D’you realise, we’ve never been apart since you could toddle? And now you’re going away and leaving me, Wally and Charlie and—well, you’re leaving us behind,’ she finished, rather awkwardly.

Absorbed as she was at this moment by her own affairs, Emmy still heard the hesitation in Beryl’s voice. She had been examining her reflection critically in the small mirror, but now she swung round to face her friend. ‘Oh, Beryl, you’re expecting another baby!’ she said, and, realising that it had sounded like an accusation, hastily added: ‘Isn’t that just wonderful? I’m so happy for you, queen. Can I be godmother?’

She was watching Beryl’s face as she spoke and
saw the anxious, defensive look melt into a beam of pure pleasure. ‘Oh, Em, I’m so glad you’re pleased. The baby’s due in a couple of months which is another reason why I wouldn’t be your matron-of-honour. Folk think it’s just fat, but it’s really the baby. My mam were quite cross; said there were enough of us in the house already and she could do without a second bawling brat. But our Charlie’s nearly two, and we thought it were time he had a little brother or sister. As for being a godmother, who else would I choose?’

‘Well? I know you’re all packed, but are you ready, dear? The car to take you to the station arrived a few minutes ago and you don’t want to miss that train!’ It was Mrs Dickens, very flushed in the face, with her elegant hat tipped rather further forward than it should have been and a sausage roll in one hand. Emmy leaned down and kissed her cheek. ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she said, a trifle breathlessly. ‘Oh, Mam, now that the time has come to leave I feel sad and . . . well, lonely, in a way. I wish you were coming to Llandudno with us.’

Her mother gave her arm a consoling pat and Beryl uttered a crow of delight. ‘Llandudno! Me and Wally will gerron a train an’ come and visit you. We’ll bring a heap o’ rice an’ chuck it all over you so’s everyone’ll know you’re newly-weds. Oh, an’ we’ll tie tin cans to your wedding car . . . I guess Wally’s doin’ that this minute, come to think of it.’

Emmy clapped her hands to her hot cheeks. ‘Oh, don’t let on I’ve given the game away,’ she said imploringly. ‘I never meant to say a word, honest to God I didn’t.’

Beryl laughed and gave her a squeeze. ‘Don’t you fret yourself, chuck,’ she said kindly. ‘Off with you
now; it may be tradition to keep the bridegroom waiting, but trains stick to their timetable, no matter what.’ She picked up Emmy’s suitcase as she spoke and the three of them headed down the stairs.

‘Be good, an’ if you can’t be good, be careful,’ Beryl shrieked after them, as the hired car drew away from the kerb, the tins clattering behind it.

‘An’ may all your troubles be little ones,’ someone else bawled. ‘Oh, don’t I wish I were you, Peter Wesley, you lucky sod.’

Emmy laughed but Peter looked a trifle tightlipped, though he had begun to relax once more by the time the car drew up outside Lime Street Station. He hurried Emmy on to the concourse, scarcely giving her time to glance around, for they only had five minutes to catch their train. But something made Emmy look to her left. There was Johnny, leaning against a sooty brick wall, smiling at her, as a group of other young men, all in uniform, rushed forward and began to pelt them with more rice.

‘What a send-off,’ Peter gasped, as the two of them sank on to the plush seats of a first-class carriage. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in trying to get rid of this rice before the train leaves the station, because—’

Even as he spoke, he was proved right. A long arm reached through the half-open window, opening it fully, and then handful upon handful of rice showered into the carriage. Emmy thought, apprehensively, that the young officers were going to get inside as well, for one of them, red-faced and obviously the worse for drink, kept shouting that he had not yet kissed the bride and what was a wedding if one did not kiss the bride at least once on her wedding day. But whilst he was still fumbling with the handle,
the train began to move and his friends dragged him away. Peter went across and pulled the strap which closed the window, then turned back to Emmy, smiling ruefully. ‘I might have guessed they’d follow us to the station,’ he said. ‘But now we can settle ourselves down for a bit of peace and quiet before we reach our destination. Would you like to take off your coat and hat? Only it’s quite warm in here.’

Obeying, Emmy removed the garments and placed them carefully on the string rack overhead. They had the carriage to themselves – it was not a corridor train – so she settled back in one corner and put her feet up, smiling with as much gaiety as she could muster at her new husband. But in the back of her mind there was a little niggle of discontent. Johnny had come to the station but he had neither thrown rice nor taken any part in the boisterous horseplay of the young officers. Emmy thought that he might have at least pretended to be cheerful, have accepted that she was happily marrying someone else, for she was sure his disappointment and misery must have been as obvious to everyone else as they were to her. But I won’t feel guilty, she told herself defiantly, turning her head to look out of the window at the June countryside flashing past. I know Johnny believed I’d marry him, one day, but I never actually said I would and anyhow, what I felt for Johnny was more like sisterly love. The way I feel about Peter is the real thing, so it would be nice if Johnny could accept defeat graciously, instead of trying to make me feel guilty.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Peter’s voice held just a hint of impatience. Clearly, he had noticed her silence and did not think it appropriate.

Emmy wrenched her mind away from Johnny and
smiled, brilliantly, at Peter. ‘I was wishing we’d been able to have just one dance,’ she said wistfully, though untruthfully. ‘It was a shame we had to leave before the musicians had even struck up.’

Peter leaned across and kissed her lightly, but lingeringly. ‘Never mind, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘I promise you we’ll have years and years ahead of us and we’ll dance through all of them.’

‘Isn’t she just the most beautiful thing?’ Peter Wesley bent over the cot and gazed, lovingly, at its tiny occupant.

Emmy, propped up by lacy pillows and still pale from her ordeal, smiled mistily across at her husband. It was the end of March; she had experienced nine months of marriage and now she was the mother of the tiny, dark-haired girl who lay in the cradle at the foot of the bed, gazing up at the ceiling with round eyes whose intense blueness was already beginning to turn brown.

‘She’s a good baby, or has been so far, and naturally I think she’s extremely beautiful,’ Emmy murmured. She did not add, as she might have done, that she had been in labour for three days, had had a horrendous time, and had already decided that her first child would be her last. After all, Peter had insisted that she should give birth in one of the most expensive nursing homes in Liverpool. He had showered her with attention, buying the best of everything, and equipping the small bedroom at the house in Lancaster Avenue with all a child could desire. Unfortunately, he had been at sea when the baby had been born, but as soon as SS
Queen of the South
docked he had come hurrying to her side, his arms full of spring flowers, chocolates and a bottle of champagne, which he said she should drink to keep her strength up.

Her mother told her constantly that Peter was the best husband any girl could have and Emmy knew she was right. She lacked for nothing and nor would their child, though it had upset her when, a few days after their return from their honeymoon, he had told her he did not wish her to revisit Nightingale Court. ‘Your mother won’t be there very much longer since she’s moving in with us,’ he had reminded her. ‘And your friends, people like Susie and Beryl, will be welcome here at any time. But I think it best if you keep away from the court, my darling, because some of the people living there are very – very . . .’

‘Common?’ Emmy had suggested, with a rather sharp note in her voice. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say, Peter? Because if so, you might remember that Mam and myself . . .’

But Peter had denied it vehemently, assuring her that he had been going to say ‘strange’, and this, of course, Emmy could not deny. The Telfords, a large and feckless family who had just moved into the court, were already heartily disliked. The children were dirty and rude, and though one occasionally saw a man entering or leaving the house, it seldom seemed to be the same one. Then there were others, all of them pretty strange when you came to think about it: Mrs Evans, who sang, tunelessly, beneath her breath all the time; old Mr Perkins – Beryl’s ancient grandfather – who never left his house; and Miss Cardew, who kept ten scrawny cats, seven budgerigars, and a large, grey parrot whose vocabulary consisted of evil words learned, his owner claimed, from ‘those nasty sailors’.

So instead of being angry with him, Emmy had been forced to admit that he was right, though she had not liked his prohibition. ‘There are strange
people everywhere,’ she had declared. ‘Captain Marriott up the road is pretty strange. He’s got a telescope set up in his front bedroom and watches us all through it. And Mrs Ingham’s maid, Mollie, says he wolf-whistles when she’s hanging out the washing, because she shows a bit of petticoat and rather a lot of leg, reaching up, you know.’

Peter had guffawed but said that this was simply typical of an old sea-dog and not strange at all and Emmy had decided that the argument was not worth pursuing. After all, she had no real desire to revisit the court, and much preferred that her friends should come to Lancaster Avenue, where they would be impressed by the house and would enjoy her generous hospitality, for Peter gave her a great deal of housekeeping money and instructed her to buy nothing but the best and to apply to him at once should she ever find herself short.

‘She’s awake, you know; is it all right if I pick her up? Only I don’t want some nurse rushing in and telling me off,’ Peter said, breaking into Emmy’s reverie. ‘I say, isn’t she tiny?’

Emmy felt affronted. She remembered the struggle of giving birth to a child who had seemed the size of a prize-fighter and shook her head violently. ‘No she is not tiny,’ she said firmly. ‘She weighed over eight pounds when she was born, Peter, and since she guzzles and guzzles every four hours – sometimes more often – I should think she probably weighs a stone by now.’

Peter laughed indulgently and scooped the child’s tiny form up in his arms. ‘I say you’re perfect, little Diana Sophia,’ he said adoringly. ‘Who’s Daddy’s precious girl, then?’

Emmy had been lying back on her pillows,
dreamily contemplating father and child, delighted to realise that Peter was going to be a marvellous father, but at his words she shot upright. ‘Diana Sophia?’ she squeaked. ‘But – but I’ve been calling her Gertrude – Gertie for short – after my mam. I thought you said I could choose any name I liked. You said if it were a boy, it would be different.’

Peter bent and placed the baby in the curve of his wife’s arm. ‘Does she look like a Gertrude?’ he demanded. ‘Or like a Gertie, for that matter? No, no, my love, she’s far too beautiful to be called after anyone other than a goddess.’