Fred ran his hand over the back of his head. ‘Well, Alice, I mean – it’s – uh – pretty hard to miss.’
‘What is?’
‘The – Oh, forget it.’ He leaned forward. ‘You really think you might not have?’
She felt anguished, already regretting that this would be the last thing he remembered of her. ‘I don’t think so … Oh, Lord, you think I’m ridiculous, don’t you? I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You must think –’
Fred stood up from the table abruptly. ‘No – no, Alice. This is great news!’
She stared at him. ‘What?’
‘This is wonderful!’ He grabbed her hand, began to waltz her around the room.
‘Fred? What? What are you doing?’
‘Get your coat. We’re going to the library.’
Five minutes later they were in the little cabin, two oil lamps burning as Fred scanned the shelves. He quickly found what he was looking for and asked her to hold the lamp while he flicked through the heavy leather-bound book. ‘See?’ he said, jabbing at the page. ‘If you haven’t consummated your marriage, then you’re not married in the eyes of God.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you can have the marriage annulled. And marry who the hell you like. And there’s nothing Van Cleve can do about it.’
She stared at the book, read the words that his finger underlined. She looked up at him, disbelieving. ‘Really? It doesn’t count?’
‘Yes! Hang on – we’ll find another of those legal books, and double-check. That’ll show you. Look! Look, here it is. You’re free to stay, Alice! See? You don’t have to go anywhere! Look! Oh, that poor damn fool Bennett – I could kiss him.’
Alice put down the book and looked at him steadily. ‘I’d rather you kissed me.’
And so he did.
Forty minutes later they lay on the floor of the library on Fred’s jacket, both of them breathing hard and a little in shock at what had just transpired. He turned to her, his eyes searching her face, then took her hand and raised it to his lips.
‘Fred?’
‘Sweetheart?’
Alice smiled, the slowest, sweetest smile, and when she spoke it was as if her voice dripped honey and was shot through with happiness. ‘I have definitely never done that.’
28
From the body of the loved one’s simple, sweetly coloured flesh, which our animal instincts urge us to desire, there springs not only the wonder of a new bodily life, but also the enlargement of the horizon of human sympathy, and the glow of spiritual understanding which one could never have attained alone.
Dr Marie Stopes, Married Love
Sven and Margery were married in late October, on a clear, crisp day where the mists had lifted from the hollers by dawn and the birds sang loudly about the importance of a blue sky and squabbled noisily on branches. Margery had told him she would agree under sufferance because she didn’t want Sophia yammering on at her till the end of time, and only if they told nobody and Sven ‘didn’t make a thing of it’.
Sven, who was agreeable in almost all things where Margery was concerned, greeted this invitation with a hard no. ‘If we marry, we do it in public, with the town, our child and all our friends in attendance,’ he said, his arms folded. ‘That’s what I want. Or we don’t marry at all.’
And so they were wed in the small Episcopalian church up at Salt Lick, whose minister was a little less picky than some about children born out of wedlock, and in attendance were all the librarians, Mr and Mrs Brady, Fred and a fair number of the families they had brought books to. Afterwards they held a reception at Fred’s house, and Mrs Brady presented the couple with a wedding quilt that her quilting circle had embroidered, and a smaller one for Virginia’s cot to match it, and Margery, despite looking somewhat awkward in her oyster-coloured dress (borrowed from Alice, the seams let out by Sophia), wore an expression of embarrassed pride and managed not to change back into her breeches until the following day, even though it clearly pained her. They ate food brought by neighbours (Margery hadn’t intended so many people to come, and had been a little taken aback by the endless stream of guests), someone started up a hog roast outside and Sven wore a look of intense happiness, showing off Virginia to everyone, and there was fiddling and some fine dancing. At six, just as dusk was falling, it was Alice who left the wedding party and finally located the bride sitting alone on the library steps, gazing up at the darkening mountain.
‘Are you all right?’ Alice said, sitting down beside her.
Margery didn’t turn her head. She stared up at the tips of the trees, sniffed loudly, then let her gaze slide sideways towards Alice. ‘Feels kind of weird to be this happy,’ she said, and it was the most unsettled Alice had ever seen her.
Alice considered this, then nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. And she gave her friend a nudge. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
Two months later, after the Gustavssons had acquired a dog (a wall-eyed runt of a puppy, unwanted, some way from the quality hound Sven had suggested – he was, of course, crazy about it), Margery went back to work at the library. Virginia was minded four days a week by Verna McCullough, along with her own baby, a rather frail, freckled child by the name of Peter. Sven and Fred, aided by Jim Horner and a couple of the others, raised a small cabin a short walk from Margery’s, with two separate rooms, a chimney and a working WC outside, and the McCullough sisters moved into it willingly. They returned to their old home only to bring back a jute bag of clothing, two pans and the mean dog. ‘The rest of it stunk of our daddy,’ Verna said, and never spoke of it again.
Verna had begun to make the walk down into town once a week, mostly just to buy provisions with her wages, but also to have a look around, and people generally tipped their hat or left her alone, and her presence swiftly became unremarkable. Neeta, her sister, was still not much inclined to leave the house, but they both doted on the babies and seemed to enjoy a little socializing, and over time passers-by (who were not many in number) would remark that the dilapidated cabin up on Arnott’s Ridge had began to collapse, roof shingles first, then the chimney, and then, as the high wind caught the loose weatherboarding, the house itself, broken window by broken window, until it was half reclaimed by nature, shoots and brambles clawing it back to the earth, as they had so nearly done with its owner.
Frederick Guisler and Alice were married a month after Margery and Sven, and if anybody noticed how much time they seemed to spend alone in Fred’s house before they were legally tied, nobody seemed much inclined to comment on it. Alice’s first marriage had been annulled quietly, and with little fuss, once Fred had explained the bones of it to Mr Van Cleve who, for once, did not seem to feel the need to shout, but engaged a lawyer who was able to facilitate such things swiftly and with, perhaps, a little greasing of the wheels to ensure confidentiality. The prospect of his son’s name being associated publicly with the word annulment seemed to stay his habitual temper, and after that meeting he barely mentioned the library publicly again.
Under the agreement they let Bennett marry again first. The librarians felt they owed the younger Van Cleve for the help he had given them, and Izzy even attended the day with her parents and said it was lovely, all things considered, and that Peggy made a beautiful and very contented bride.
Alice barely noticed. She was so ridiculously happy that most days she didn’t know how to contain it. Every morning before dawn she would unwrap her long limbs reluctantly from those of her husband, drink the coffee he insisted on making for her, then walk down to open the library and get the stove going, ready for the others to arrive. Despite the cold and the brutal hour, she was almost always to be found smiling. If Peggy Van Cleve’s friends chose to remark that Alice Guisler had let herself go something awful since she’d started up at that library, what with her un-set hair and her mannish outfits (and to think her so refined and well dressed when she came, and all!), then Fred couldn’t have noticed less. He was married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and every night after they had each finished work, and put away the dishes side by side, he made sure to pay homage. In the still air of Split Creek it was not unusual for those who were walking past in the darkness to shake an amused head at the breathless and joyous sounds emanating from the house behind the library. In Baileyville, in winter, there was not much to do after the sun went down, after all.