“By gum, this is the life,” bawled Freddy over his shoulder.
Soaring like a seagull on airwaves of terror. Below us, the waves seethed against the jagged rocks. Think happy thoughts, Ellie! Do not focus on that Mr. Woolpack who had driven over the cliff edge one foggy night last spring. What would it take, a pebble in the wrong place at the wrong time, to send us in Mr. Woolpack’s flight path? I fear I almost gouged out Freddy’s appendix. Life was rather meaningful to me right now.
Through the wrought-iron gateway of Merlin’s Court we blasted. The motorbike hit a blemish on the surface of the drive, leapt two feet in the air, and flew like Mary Poppins onto the narrow moat bridge and under the portcullis.
“Aint much, but it’s home, right, El? The place has class-ivy-encrusted walls, turrets and battlements galore, whence the lovelorn can hurl themselves, and never forget the gargoyle doorbell. All mod cons, really! Except a comfy dungeon or two.”
“No house has everything,” I said stiffly. Ours was but a small-scale, nineteenth-century repro of a castle, but the dearth of dungeons with manacled skeletons crumbling to dust was rather a sore point with me.
“Ellie”-Freddy lurched to a stop-“how about spotting me a few quid so I can take Jill out tonight for a bang-up tofu dinner?”
“What’s a few?” I was struggling to flounce out my dress.
“A hundred?”
“Freddy.” Taking his arm, I moved us to the door. “Why don’t you get a job? A proper job instead of pinging a triangle in that dismal band.”
“Work?” He looked aghast. “The way I see it, cousin, if you have to be paid to do something, can’t be much fun, can it?”
“Wrong. Some people love their jobs. I do, and Ben can’t wait to begin another cookery book and open his restaurant in the village.”
Freddy reached for the doorknob. “My heart bleeds! Inventing new ways to fry bacon. My! My! I’ll wager that when Ben opens that restaurant, he won’t lift his pinky to crack an egg. Eh, but it makes a chap glad to be born shiftless. About that two hundred nicker, Ellie?”
“After the wedding cake, I’ll look and see what I’ve got stashed under the mattress.”
Simultaneously, Freddy released the brass knob and I grasped it; the iron-studded door flung inward, almost sending me sprawling.
After these many months in residence, I still experienced a sense of embrace on entering Merlin’s Court. “Thank you, Benefactress Ellie,” the house would whisper, “for everything-these gorgeous Turkish carpets on the flagstone hall floor, the peacock and rose elegance of the drawing room, the Indian Tree china in the blackened oak dresser in the dining room. And, especially, thank you for loving me as passionately as Abigail Grantham once did.” But on this most venerable day, I didn’t get that sort of greeting.
A complete stranger stood beyond the threshold-a stocky man with a sallow-skinned pug face and an oversized mop of glossy black curls. He held a half-filled wineglass and his expression was one of extreme disappointment, like someone expecting the postman and finding a policeman on the step instead. The man started to close the door with his foot as Freddy and I stepped inside.
He tapped the wineglass to his forehead in a mea culpa of embarrassment. Wine slopped out. “A thousand pardons. For the minute I didn’t recognise you, Mrs. Haskell.”
Oh well, when a man used the two most beautiful words in the English language, I had to smile at him. “It’s the veil,” I said. “We brides all look alike.”
The man with the black curls and eyes like ripe olives was graciously stepping aside, but as the door opened wide, my smile shrank; I found myself looking into a madhouse. Could this bellowing uproar be a cheering for my belated arrival? Afraid not. There was no escaping the raw truth. The mob milling in and out of doorways, crowding the stairs, jostling the two suits of armour, was, in the main, drunk.
6
… Hyacinth’s earrings swayed so fast back and forth, I feared they would nick her throat. “I must say, Ellie, had I been you, I would have grabbed the nearest broom and swept the lot of them into the garden and turned on the gardening hose. But where was Bentley?”
“He arrived at that very moment. He had thumbed a ride from Rowland, who had come driving up with Miss Thorn, the organist.”
“Pray tell me that Bentley swept you into his arms and carried you over the threshold.” Primrose sighed ecstatically. “I cannot think of anything more splendid.”
“It was, considering that one year earlier a crane could not have lifted me…”
How could Dorcas and Jonas have let things get out of hand like this? The mayhem intensified as I gazed around from the blissful haven of my husband’s arms. A blue-haired woman, sporting more chins than I had owned in my heyday, went squealing past us up the stairs, the skirt of her paisley silk dress clutched in both hands.
“I’m coming to get you, my sugar plum!” A paunchy gentleman transporting two champagne glasses broke through the crowd in hot and heavy pursuit of the Paisley Lady, who was now peeping coyly through the bannisters; he collided heavily with Ben.
“Beg pardon, children!” A glass of champagne was thrust at me. The gentleman proceeded to elbow his way onward and upward. He didn’t get very far. Freddy reeled out a hand and hooked a finger under his collar.
“Daddy, don’t be a tart,” he drawled, “you’re not cute with your brain sloshing around inside your skull.”
“Unfilial brat!” Uncle Maurice held the wounded expression for a full second, and then made a dive for the stairs.
“The man needs to have his mouth and his fly sewn up.” Whereupon, Freddy tipped my tiara over one eye, knocked his elbows sideways to clear a path, and went off to find Jill.
Ben having, I believe, enjoyed this vignette as much as I, now whispered, “Ellie, may I put you down?”
It seemed we said a kind of good-bye as he set me gently on my feet. My eyes clung to his, unwilling to disconnect, until I realised he was looking not at me, but at Miss Thorn. Had she been any other woman, I might have experienced a pang of jealousy. Instead, I fondled my wedding ring. Did this woman never tire of being always the organist, never the bride? Or was she resigned to her fate? She towered over Rowland, who was six feet; she made Ben look short. Many women turned height into an asset: Miss Thorn had succumbed to it. She wore horn-rimmed glasses, and her dreary brown coat drooped to her ankles. I was an ardent convert to thin, but Miss Thorn had carried a good thing too far. She caved in where she should have caved out. Her complexion was poor, her shoulders hunched, and her hair was lank and mouse-coloured, parted in the middle and clamped back from her forehead with two slides. Tucked into each of those slides was an artificial daisy. She collided with Ben and me and tipped her steamed-up spectacles down her nose to see who we were.
“Oh, do please excuse me. I kept seeing a lot of white, Mrs. Haskell, and thought you were a wall. I’m so glad of the opportunity to say how honoured I am at being included in these nuptial celebrations.” Here she did a little dip at the knees, something between a curtsy and a nervous tic. Ben and I hastened to assure her of our pleasure that she could come.
She tittered. “As a rule, I am not much of a social butterfly-I stay busy with my music, my tatting, and adding to my collection of antique telephone directories. But I was very ready to be persuaded when the vicar insisted I would be welcomed today.”
There came a lull in the general hubbub, broken by a meowing from the staircase. I looked up, expecting to see Tobias, but it was the Paisley Lady. Skirts clutched in her hands, she came frisking down the stairs with Uncle Maurice close on her heels.
A voice to my right chirped, “I never saw anything like it! Have to be his decadent London friends.”