The Wedding Party Page 2

  Did he? Well, it wasn’t exactly that. He was rather puzzled about something, that was all. There was something different about her this morning, he thought, and he couldn’t for the life of him think what it was.

  ‘Me?’ She felt her pulse quicken perceptibly. She looked him directly in the eyes. ‘About me?’

  ‘Yes, it’s something – I don’t know – Oh! yes, of course. How stupid of me. Of course – you haven’t got your dog.’

  A dark irritation ran quickly through her, quickening her pulse still further.

  ‘Oh! don’t talk about him.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  He had, she said, been very, very naughty again. Most tiresome. Really he’d never been quite the same since that business the other morning. He’d been so disobedient. And clumsy. She’d had to leave him at home. It was really too much.

  ‘How old is he? Perhaps he’s getting old.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that.’

  Mr Willoughby sat very thoughtful again and then said at last:

  ‘I’ve got an idea he really enjoyed that little episode.’

  ‘Oh! you do? Then all I can say is he didn’t deserve to.’

  ‘He really laughed at me down there on the cliff.’

  ‘Yes? Well, all I can say is I wasn’t amused.’

  Suddenly she felt that there was not only a coldness in the air but a certain chill between herself and Mr Willoughby.

  ‘Oh! let’s talk about something else. He really vexes me. Have you decided what you’re going to do?’

  Well, he had, sort of. Well, half and half. Yesterday he’d been to see a caravan. It belonged to an old friend of his. She didn’t use it any longer. It was standing in an apple orchard. He could practically have it for free.

  ‘And where is this?’

  ‘Over in Sussex. It’s really rather a lovely spot. Secluded but not actually isolated. Some rather nice woods. And there’s a stream. I could very likely do some fishing.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you find it rather lonely? I mean, with winter—’

  ‘Probably. But then that wouldn’t be any change.’

  The words penetrated her deeply. She was now at a loss for anything to say and drank at her sherry sharply.

  ‘Anyway I haven’t absolutely made up my mind. I’m going over to have another look this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh! yes.’

  Looking at her glass and seeing it almost empty he begged to be allowed to buy her another sherry. She quickly said no, she didn’t think she would and then as abruptly changed her mind. He went over to the bar to give the order and came back rather nervously with another sherry and another glass of beer. A dribble of sherry spilled over the lip of the glass and ran on to the table as he set it down.

  ‘Oh! I’m terribly sorry – I’ve spilt some.’

  ‘Oh! don’t worry. The glass was very full.’

  ‘Clumsy of me all the same.’

  He took a neatly folded handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up the few drops of sherry and then folded it just as neatly and put it back again. This meticulous little gesture affected her sharply, but still not as much as the words he uttered next.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to run over with me? It’s rather a pretty drive—’

  ‘It’s awfully kind of you.’ Miss Kingsford felt warmly, uneasily thrilled. ‘Do you really—’

  ‘You have your rest and I’ll be ready about three. Is that all right? It really isn’t all that far and there’s plenty of daylight still.’

  After lunch she lay on the bed, eyes closed but sleepless. A recurrent vision of Mr Willoughby utterly alone in a caravan in an isolated, leafless orchard haunted her. It was wintertime; she saw snow on the ground and on the black apple branches. Once or twice the dog, toffee-less, still in disgrace, stirred in its basket and once she said:

  ‘Don’t fuss. We’re not listening. Like it or not that’s where you’re going to stay.’

  The drive into the country was, as Mr Willoughby said, very pretty. Whole woods of hornbeam were already turning a tender yellow. Fat port-wine berries hung heavily from all the hawthorns. Apples glowed from orchards like rosy-orange lanterns and a few late cream feathers of meadowsweet still flowered about the hedgerows.

  ‘Rather nice country don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. But I still prefer ours, back in Kent.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, I always feel it’s somehow sort of smug over here.’

  Mr Willoughby drove the car at last into a valley of gentle slopes broken by strips of oak and hazel woodland and at the farthest end of it by an apple orchard of four or five acres still bright with unpicked fruit. A few sheep were grazing under the apple-trees. Mr Willoughby parked the car in a gateway and said:

  ‘Well, here we are. Come over and see what you think of it.’

  The trailer caravan, a green, light two-berth affair rather shabby and flaky, like the little guest-house, from wind and weather, stood in the farthest corner of the orchard, away from the road. When Mr Willoughby unlocked the door it instantly struck Miss Kingsford as being very poky. You couldn’t swing a cat. There was a queer, musty, churchy smell in the air. It was sort of dead, she thought.

  ‘I think it’s quite homely in its way, don’t you?’ Mr Willoughby said. ‘And you can just see the stream.’

  Without answering Miss Kingsford peered about at bunks, cupboards, crockery, saucepans and a small shelf of books and then through the windows with their faded puce curtains at the stream flowing past, twenty yards away, between banks of alder trees.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Willoughby said. ‘What’s your impression?’

  ‘Oh! I couldn’t live here.’ The tone of Miss Kingsford’s voice was peremptory, almost irate. ‘This would give me the willies.’

  In his gentle fashion Mr Willoughby surprised her by saying that he wasn’t, in fact, asking her to live there. He was the one who might be going to live there.

  ‘I know, but you did ask my opinion.’

  ‘Well, you’re entitled to that, of course.’

  ‘I thought you said it wasn’t isolated.’

  ‘I don’t think it is. There’s a pub and a post office and two shops a hundred yards down the road. I hardly call that isolated.’

  ‘But in winter? What are you going to do in winter?’

  He had not time to answer this before, from outside the caravan, a woman’s voice suddenly called with pleasant breeziness:

  ‘Ah! there you are, Charles. I thought I recognised the car.’

  Miss Kingsford felt herself stiffen. She turned to see, standing just outside the doorway, a rather plump, fresh complexioned woman of fifty or so, her face well made-up, her brown hair without a trace of grey. A pair of drop pearl ear-rings gave her a certain gracious touch of distinction. She was clearly the sort of person who smiled almost perpetually and her silk green and purple dress was cut rather low.

  ‘Oh! Charles, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had someone with you. But how nice to see you again so soon.’

  With his customary politeness Mr Willoughby stepped outside the caravan and greeted her with a light kiss on both cheeks. This was clearly what she expected and Miss Kingsford held herself coldly, silently aloof.

  ‘Miss Kingsford, may I introduce Mrs Arbuthnot? An old friend of mine.’

  Miss Kingsford, he explained, was staying at the guest-house. Mrs Arbuthnot came forward and shook hands with Miss Kingsford. Her hand was warm. Her face flowered with an unbroken, expansive smile.

  ‘Charles, do forgive me for intruding like this. I’d really no idea you’d brought someone with you.’

  ‘Oh! please don’t mind me,’ Miss Kingsford said.

  ‘I was going to drop you a line,’ Mr Willoughby said, ‘and then I thought I’d like to run over once more before I finally made up my mind.’

  ‘And have you made up your mind?’

  ‘Well, there would have to be one condition.’

 
; ‘Oh! really, what?’

  ‘I should have to insist on paying some sort of rent.’

  ‘Oh! nonsense. You know I wouldn’t dream of it. Here the thing stands. I never use it.’

  ‘Well, it’s very sweet of you. But just a peppercorn.’

  ‘Oh! very well, then. Just a peppercorn.’

  Mrs Arbuthnot smiled even more expansively and a moment later Miss Kingsford broke in on the intimacy of the conversation by saying:

  ‘I’m sure you two have business to talk over. Do you mind if I walk as far as the stream?’

  ‘Oh! won’t you come over to the house for a cup of tea? Do. It’s only two minutes—’

  ‘Well, thank you, but I should really like to get back. I’ve got one or two bits of shopping to do before they close.’

  Miss Kingsford walked away to the stream. She stood on the bank and stared at it bleakly. It really wasn’t, she thought, much of a stream and suddenly she knew she hated the caravan. Twenty yards away a solitary moorhen, disturbed, suddenly plopped sharply into the water and a moment later the sound was echoed and expanded by a long and gracious peal of Mrs Arbuthnot’s laughter. When it finally died she even heard Mr Willoughby laughing too.

  Under the impulse of these sounds she walked away up the stream. She walked for two hundred yards or so, until a fence prevented her walking any further. Then, for quite how long she didn’t quite know, she leaned on the fence and stared into the stream, once or twice hearing, even at that distance, fresh peals of Mrs Arbuthnot’s laughter.

  When she finally walked back to the caravan Mr Willoughby advanced to meet her and said:

  ‘Ah! there you are. We’d almost begun to think we’d lost you.’

  ‘Oh! don’t worry. I’m not easily lost.’

  With gracious ease Mrs Arbuthnot shook hands and said good-bye. She was sorry Miss Kingsford wouldn’t stay for tea. She hoped she would come again some other time. In farewell to Mr Willoughby she offered both cheeks and Mr Willoughby kissed them politely.

  ‘Well, we’ll be in touch—’

  In the car, after an awkward silence of some ten minutes or so, Miss Kingsford said:

  ‘Well, are you going to take it?’

  ‘Yes. I think so. It’s what I’ve been looking for. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh! it’s nothing to do with me.’

  Another long awkward silence followed and they were almost within sight of the coast again before Mr Willoughby said:

  ‘Of course I shall entirely repaint the thing. And it needs a new cooker. And Mrs Arbuthnot’s promised to make some fresh curtains. She’s such a friendly person.’

  Too friendly, Miss Kingsford wanted to say, but offered nothing but bleak silence in answer.

  ‘You’d never think she suffered the most ghastly tragedy a few months back. Her father and husband were driving down late one night from town. The car hit a tree—’

  ‘Oh! I see.’

  ‘She simply refuses to let it get her down. She’s always the same. So buoyant and gay. It’s quite inspiring.’

  ‘Yes,’ Miss Kingsford said. ‘I suppose she’ll make a good neighbour.’

  A week later Mr Willoughby left the guest-house. Miss Kingsford, determined not to say good-bye, stayed in her room all day, keeping herself, after her habit, very much to herself. But when darkness fell she put on her fur coat and walked along the cliff-top, with the dog for company.

  Half way along the cliff-top she unleashed the poodle and let him run. At the place where he had once raced over the cliff and she had feared Mr Willoughby might kill himself she halted and stood looking down. A cold wind was blowing and she could hear breakers beating on the shore. Then she thought she heard the dog whine in the darkness and presently it seemed as if the separate sounds of wind and dog and breakers were woven into one long continuous sound. And after a time she knew there was no mistaking that sound.

  It was the sound of winter.

  The Wedding Party

  Mike Hillyard stood on the terrace of the hotel leaning on a long stone balustrade under which big beds of scarlet salvia were fiery in the thunder gloom of late afternoon, idly watching the lake and the mountains beyond.

  A mountain shaped exactly like a sugar cone rose from straight across the water, wreathed at the very top with a grey halo of cloud. From the foot of it, every minute or so, storm signals darted out like orange soundless fireworks. The gloom was almost purple, the lake water momentarily iridescent where low light from breaking cloud struck it. Far off, a solitary slip of sunlight caught a single low alpine meadow and turned it into a flag of such luminous emerald brilliance that it too might have been some sort of signal to the opposite shore. Behind the hotel the tempestuous rain of early afternoon had turned a mountain stream into a ferocious white-green torrent that he could hear crashing down its many waterfall steps like a continuous echo of the earlier thunder.

  Suddenly, from behind a high perpendicular crag of rock, a steamer slid into sight, a gigantic snow-white swan dressed with many-coloured bunting. As it came nearer he could just hear from it, above the noise of the waterfall, the sound of someone playing a guitar and then of people singing.

  Even more suddenly the steamer performed a strange miracle. It laid on the water a vast clutch of eggs, a hundred or more in pink and blue and green and scarlet and mauve. As they floated and bobbed and spread in its wake a boat propelled by two boys in blue swimming trunks darted out from the shore, followed by another and another until there were half a dozen of them, chasing joyfully the stream of retreating balloons.

  On the bridge of the steamer the figure of a heavy man in morning dress appeared, a bright red rose in his button-hole, a waving champagne bottle in one hand: a figure gross and gay, shouting stentorian nothings to the shore. Presently it was joined by two others, also bearing bottles, and this tipsy brotherhood of triplets began to sing, in German, some loud bellying song.

  Below, on deck, cameras flashed and many people were dancing: the men florid, the women gay and flowery, some wearing fur wraps against the cooling evening air. In the saloon a vast quantity of food was spread out on white-clothed tables jewelled with half-empty glasses, wine bottles and pyramids of pink and yellow roses.

  On the bridge a tipsy hand pulled at a cord and for fully half a minute the blast of the steamer’s siren completely drowned the chatter of voices, the sound of the guitar, the waterfall and the wild stentorian song.

  A moment of two later the steamer bumped against the jetty piles. Two gangways rattled across to the landing stage. A laughing menagerie of passengers emerged, more cameras flashing, the men like so many penguins, among them all a young bride in a cream lace head-dress, carrying a bouquet of white and yellow roses. She stood there for some moments looking slightly bewildered, even forlorn until at last she was joined by the man of stentorian voice from the bridge, still carrying the champagne bottle in his hand. In the final moment as she took his arm another rasping blast from the steamer’s siren split the air, the long repetition of its echoes talking its way across the mountains until finally lost somewhere far away in cloud-hidden snows.

  Hillyard suddenly found the frock-coated concierge of the hotel at his side.

  ‘A gay scene,’ Hillyard said.

  ‘A big, important wedding, sir. The daughter of a big business man. Manufacturer of soap. Did you not see the steamer when it left earlier in the afternoon, sir?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see it. I went for a walk in the woods this afternoon. Where has the steamer been?’

  ‘Oh! simply for a tour of the lake, sir. For eating and drinking and dancing and making a good time.’

  ‘And now what happens?’

  ‘Oh! more eating and drinking and dancing, sir. More good times. More fun. Excuse me now, sir—’

  Alone again, Hillyard watched the last of the passengers leave the steamer. As they came ashore he was suddenly struck by the fact that a fair-haired girl in a deep green and purple dress was the only on
e among them not laughing. She momentarily hesitated half way across the gangway, looked back, seemed as if she had forgotten something and then suddenly looked up at him and held him for a fraction of a minute in a steady stare.

  For a second or two he was half-tempted to smile back at her. But there was no hint of invitation on her face: only the stare that might have been appealing, slightly resentful or merely curious. He couldn’t tell at all and a moment later she moved on, crossed the landing stage, all alone, and disappeared.

  A white-coated platoon of waiters now began to bear impossible masses of uneaten food from the steamer: vast platters of cold salmon, cold sucking pigs, roast turkeys, fiery lobsters, great boulders of brown-red beef. At one stage some extravagant piece of iced confection conjured into the shape of a much-turreted Schloss appeared, all pink and soap-like itself, that took the strength of two waiters to carry away. Lavish baths of fresh strawberries followed, drowned in cream, and finally a great coloured cornucopia of fruit, shaped like a gold canoe, that needed the strength of four men.

  As the last of the drifting balloons floated away across the lake like tiny waning moons in the growing gloom of evening, he turned and went into the hotel. It was time for a drink, he thought, and started to make his way to the bar. It was a very nice bar, cool and roomy, with pleasant green tanks of tropical fish set about the walls, and it was his favourite habit to sit there for an hour every evening and drink a glass or two of hock and read or write post-cards.

  Now as he went upstairs to it he was suddenly assailed by the amplified shrieks of a parrot-house. The wedding menagerie had taken over.

  He was first annoyed, then abruptly, hotly angry. He turned with intense impatience and, not looking where he was going, started to go back downstairs. Half way down he managed to avoid a collision with a man escorting a dark-haired girl upstairs and then, a moment later, actually struck with his elbow a second girl coming slowly up behind, half-swivelling her against the wall.

  For the second time the girl in the green and purple dress held him in that half-accusatory, half-appealing stare.

  ‘I am most terribly, terribly sorry,’ he said.