The wedding was to be in Godfrey’s church, in a fortnight’s time. Here – and this was entirely understandable, for as Godfrey said, it was in order not to harass the girl – there was to be no one invited, except a cousin of Diana’s to give her away.
Very quietly Margaret said: ‘Am I not to come?’
‘He thought she might be more panicky–’
‘No.’
Margaret’s tone was level, unemphatic. ‘I shall come. I can sit at the back of the church.’
She did go. I offered to go with her, but she refused. When she returned – the wedding had been early in the morning, and it was not yet eleven o’clock – her expression would to others have seemed controlled.
‘That’s done,’ she said.
She sat on the sofa, smoking, not looking at me.
‘You know, one always imagines what one’s children’s weddings will be like. Do you do that about Carlo’s?’
‘No, never.’
‘Perhaps it’s a mother’s privilege.’ For an instant, her tone was sharp-edged. Then she went on: ‘I’ve imagined all sorts of weddings for Maurice. I haven’t told you, but I have. So many women would have married him, wouldn’t they? But I never imagined anything like this.’
I asked something pedestrian, but she didn’t hear.
‘He looked very nice. Very handsome. I think he was happy. No, I’m certain he was happy. I used to tell myself, all I wanted was for him to be happy.’
Had she met the girl? Oh yes, Maurice had brought her (Margaret) into the vestry. She and the best man were the witnesses. There had been one other person, a stranger, in the church: not Maurice’s father, who had sent flowers and a cheque.
What was the girl like – the question wanted to come out, but I hesitated. Margaret didn’t need to hear it. She said: ‘She’s almost pretty.’
She added: ‘She wanted to say something to me, but she could hardly get out a word.’
After a moment, still not letting go: ‘I wanted to say something to her, but I wasn’t much better.’
Three weeks later, I was able to see Maurice’s wife for myself. He brought her to tea one afternoon, and trying to settle her down and to smooth away her shyness (and our own), Margaret and I complained heartily of the misty weather, and made a parade of drawing the curtains and shutting the evening out.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Maurice, entirely serene. ‘It’ll be worse where we live, won’t it, darling?’
His wife didn’t reply, but she understood, and gave a dependent, trusting smile. I was thinking, as she sat in the armchair, turning towards him, Margaret’s description wouldn’t have occurred to me. She hadn’t a feature which one noticed much, but she wasn’t, either in the English or the American sense, homely. Often she wore the expression, at the same time puzzled, obstinate, and protesting that one saw in the chronically deaf. How deaf she was, I couldn’t tell. Maurice spoke to her with the words slowed down, deliberately using the muscles of his lips, and she seemed to follow him easily. Sometimes he had to interpret for Margaret or me.
She was wearing a nondescript brown frock. But, as well as her limp catching the eye, so did her figure. Standing still, she looked shapely and trim.
We should have had to quarry for conversation if it hadn’t been for Maurice: but he took charge, like an adoring young husband acting as impresario. Each time he spoke to her, she smiled as though he had once more called her into existence.
Yes, they had a place to live in. They were buying a three-bedroom house in Salford, so that Di’s mother could live with them. I knew about this in principle, for as our wedding present Margaret and I had paid the deposit. Maurice would continue at his job at the mental hospital. Di would earn some money, typing at home.
‘We shall manage, shan’t we?’ he said to her, with his radiant unguarded smile.
‘If we can’t,’ she said, ‘we shall have to draw in our horns.’ When she spoke to him, her tone was transmuted: it became not only confident and trusting, but also matter of fact.
All that we could learn about her, through the deafness (our voices sounded more hectoring as we tried to get through, the questions more inane), was that she was utterly confident with Maurice, and not in the least surprised that he had married her.
I did manage to have one exchange with her, but it couldn’t have been called specially illuminating. I had been casting round, heavy-footed, for gossip about the Manchester district. I happened to mention the United football team. Her eyes suddenly brightened and became sharp, not puzzled: she had heard me, she gave a sky-blue recognising glance. Yes, she liked football. She supported the United. There wasn’t a team like them anywhere. She used to go to their matches – ‘until I met him’. It was the first time she had referred to Maurice without directly speaking to him, and they were both laughing. ‘I’m not much good to you about that, am I?’ said Maurice, who had no more interest in competitive games than in competing at anything himself.
In time, it had seemed a long time, Maurice got up and said: ‘Darling, we shall have to go. Old Godfrey will miss us at the service. You know, there mightn’t be anyone else.’
They had a little church backchat to themselves. I had never been certain whether Maurice was a believer, or just a fellow-traveller. The girl seemed to be devout. Then they got up, and Margaret went towards her and embraced her. Looking at Maurice, she stood uncertain, not knowing which way to go, while I in turn approached and laid my cheek against hers.
When we heard the lift door close, Margaret sat down again and sighed. After a while, she said: ‘Tell me, Lewis’ (actually she used a pet name which meant that she needed me) ‘is that a real marriage?’
‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’
‘No, I want to know what you think?’
‘For what my guess is worth,’ I said, ‘I’d say that it probably was.’
‘It would be a consolation, if I were certain of that.’
As she had told Godfrey, she wanted Maurice to be like everyone else: or as near like as he could come. Perhaps she was thinking, as she did later, about the nature of goodness. He was behaving, as he so often did, in a way which would have been impossible for most of us. If behaviour was the test, then he did good, and most of us didn’t. Margaret and I had often agreed, behaviour was more important than motive. And yet she, as a rule less suspicious than I was, had her moments of suspicion about this son she loved. Was it too easy for him to be good? Was it just an excuse for getting above, or out of, the battle? Did he really feel joyous and whole only with those who were helpless?
She didn’t ask me, because she felt that I was likely to be hard. In fact, I shouldn’t have been. There was something, I should have said, in what she suspected. He might even desire a woman only when she was disabled and had him alone to turn to. That was why, incidentally, I was ready to believe that his was a real marriage. But also, not in terms of desire but of well-being, he might be at his best himself only when he was with the unlucky and the injured. But that was true of everyone who had his kind of goodness. Did that make it less valuable? Maybe yes. It depended whether you were going to give any of us the benefit of the doubt.
Nevertheless, I thought, when I was a young man, if I had met Maurice and my nephew Pat, I should have been hypnotised by Pat’s quick-change performances and attributed to him depths and mysteries which he didn’t in the least possess. Whereas I shouldn’t have been more than mildly interested in Maurice and should have said that you couldn’t behave like that if you were a man.
After having seen more people, nowadays I should be much more sceptical about my ‘explanation’ of either of them: but I shouldn’t be in the least sceptical of one thing, which was which of the two I preferred to have close by. Virtue wore well after all.