It wasn’t the wedding Mattie had dreamed of when Megan was a teenager: a long white dress and veil, a church packed with well-wishers and rose petals drifting down as the cameras clicked.
‘What did you wear on your wedding day?’ Megan asked her mother.
‘It was thirty years ago, you know! A pale-pink linen two-piece, and artificial rosebuds in my hair.… You could wear something more striking, with your black hair. How about sunshine yellow? I wore a yellow dress once,’ she reminisced.
‘I remember you telling me, it was when you had your portrait painted, wasn’t it? I’m thinking of buying a full-skirted frock, with petticoats, nipped in at the waist and the new mid-calf length, I think, with flat ballet pumps to match … don’t look so amazed! I like the idea of decorating my hair instead of a veil!’
‘You’d want yellow rosebuds if you follow my suggestion, not pink, like me. Is Gracie to be a flower-girl?’
‘We’re going to ask her. Did you have attendants?’
‘I did. They wore pretty cream frocks. My friend Christabel’s mother, Dolly, made them. I hope you’ll look Christabel up! Her husband is my cousin Walter, and her daughter is Dolly, after her mother.’
‘All these people you want us to meet! We’ll do our best. But, naturally, Aunt Evie is top of the list!’
It was a civil ceremony, but old friends, including Megan’s school pal, Kay, came along, as well as a couple of nurses she had known from working at the hospital, and some of the Bigelow’s staff. Others, like Sybil and Lloyd, too far away to attend, sent warm wishes and gifts. There were gifts too from Anna at Red River, the family in England and Grace and Mungo.
Grace wrote: ‘May you find happiness a second time, like me with dear Mungo.’
Mattie was sure she would when Megan walked into the registry office on her father’s arm. She looked so beautiful, Mattie caught her breath. A beam of sunlight through a window glinted on Gracie’s new glasses, the blue frames complementing her taffeta dress. She was slowly blossoming, her grandmother thought happily.
Young Gracie was swept along by all the excitement, but the magnitude of what was about to happen, the parting from her beloved Mommy Mattie and Grandad Griff, moving to a strange country, suddenly overtook her later, when Mattie discovered her, crying her eyes out in her room, after they realized she’d crept away from the family party back at the house.
‘Come here,’ Mattie held out her arms to comfort her.
‘Oh, Mommy, I don’t want to leave you!’
‘You like Max, don’t you? You must call Megan Mom, now. She loves you so much and it’ll be fun, you know, having a young mother who can do with you all the things I can’t, because I get wheezy, and have to rest up at times….’
‘But she told me she loved my dad, and would have married him.’
‘That’s true, and she’ll never forget him, I know that, but – she has someone else she cares for now, who cares for her, and for you. Max is a good man and you’re both lucky to have him. We’ll write to each other, eh? You’ll meet all my lovely family in England, and tell me how they are, won’t you? I know you’ll miss us, just as Grandad and I have missed the folk back home all these years, too.’
Mattie gently removed Gracie’s glasses, lifted the hem of her skirt and, after huffing on them, polished the lenses on her new silk underslip. Gracie’s big dark eyes blinked at her grandmother, but she managed a little smile.
Mattie said briskly: ‘Now, wipe your eyes, and come and see Grandad and me dance to the old gramophone – that’s if we can clear a space in the middle of the company! We’ll be good for a laugh, even if we’ve forgotten the steps!’
Griff whispered in Mattie’s ear as they whirled around in their version of the quickstep, ‘You look really nice today, Mattie – still got your trim waist, so I can get my arms round you!’ He demonstrated.
‘I thought of wearing pink again, but I didn’t want to clash with the bride. So ivory seemed a good compromise. It’s heartening to see all the bright new fashions in the shops again, though it made it hard to choose. I’m glad you got a new suit.’
‘Had to,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘You’re such a good cook, Mattie, my waistline isn’t what it was!’
Gracie was staying with her grandparents for two more days: Megan and Max had booked in at a hotel and from tomorrow would be making last-minute preparations for the flight.
By 10 p.m. the party was over. Gracie was insisting she wasn’t tired, which her yawning belied. Mattie and Griff were ready to put their feet up too, to unwind before going to bed.
‘It was a lovely day – thank you for all you did to make it possible,’ Megan said, hugging them in turn.
Mattie straightened the lopsided band of rosebuds on her daughter’s head. ‘Now I won’t have to worry about you any more – Max can look after you!’
‘You can count on it,’ he said sheepishly.
When they had gone Gracie was determined not to cry, because she guessed Mommy Mattie and Grandad Griff needed her to be cheerful. They must make the most of this time together, as Grandad quietly said.
Another hotel, Megan thought, but no austerity now that the war was behind them. She mustn’t think of Tommy tonight….
Max slipped into bed beside her, turned off the bedside lamp. ‘Are you wearing my fraternity pin on your pyjama jacket?’ he joked, reaching out an exploring hand. Then he gave a soft exclamation: ‘Oh—’
‘Pyjamas,’ she murmured. ‘They’re in Mom’s rag-bag. I meant to replace ’em with a frilly nightdress, but I forgot. You’ll have to take me as I am.’
‘I don’t mind that at all,’ he said. ‘I’ll follow your example, eh?’
‘Just us again,’ Mattie gripped Griff’s arm as they watched the plane take off.
‘Yes, another turning point,’ he said. ‘I’m happy as long as I’ve got you.’
‘I just wish we were back on the farm; city life is becoming so – busy.’
‘One day, Mattie, when I retire, we’ll go back to the old country, I promise. We’ve had a good life, in Canada and now here, and I don’t regret it, but I know that you—’
‘Still dream of picking watercress with dear Evie,’ she said simply.
Gracie kept her promise and wrote to them regularly.
I like our new apartment – they call it a flat here. We are on the third floor, and go up in an elevator – they call it a lift. (That is much easier to spell.) Max often works late at the hospital, but Mom and me have, guess what, a television set to watch. Mom makes us popcorn and we pretend we are at the movies. The picture is rather small, but we sit close, because the room is not very big. If the picture isn’t right Mom bangs the top of the set, then it gets better. We got the television so we could see the coronation. It went on all day, so we were quite glad when the Queen got crowned. Mom said it was a moment in history.
We are going to Plough Cottage next weekend. Aunty Evie will be there, too. My cousin Robbie who is old to be a cousin, lives there with his family. Mom says we will pick watercress and think of you.
Write soon, I love you, Gracie xx
P.S. At my new school they are impressed I can write and spell so well – they say I am preco – etc. only I can’t spell that! I was going to look it up, but Mom says I am getting out of going to bed.
‘She is precocious,’ Griff said fondly to Mattie. ‘Not our shy Gracie any more, she’s becoming just like her mom and you!’
‘I shall ignore that,’ Mattie said. ‘I’m going to start a new scrapbook: Letters from a granddaughter in England. I might even make a copy of the letters I send to Gracie, because I don’t suppose she’ll keep my replies. I’ll stick in photographs, just as I did with my prairie book.’
‘Good idea,’ he approved. ‘Though she might be embarrassed when she rereads her letters when she’s grown up!’
‘Mommy Mattie was right, Aunty Evie – you and Mom are like two peas in a pod!’ Gracie told her, soon after they arrived at Plough Cottage.
‘My hair wouldn’t be as dark as Megan’s, I’m afraid, if I didn’t give it a helping hand now and then!’ Evie smiled. Like her sister, she’d kept her trim shape.
‘You dye it, you mean? Mommy Mattie had her hair styled, before Mom and Max got married – at Aunty Sybil’s old shop, only it isn’t hers now, ’cos she sold it when they went to live in California.’
‘I don’t suppose Mattie is grey like me, she seems to have kept her hair colour.’
‘She says you’re still her best friend, as well as her sister.’
‘You’ve made my day, Gracie, telling me that.’
‘I’ve heard so much about Plough Cottage,’ Megan said. ‘I think I know every corner of it.’
‘Of course, I haven’t lived here myself since just before the war. Fifteen years – it hardly seems possible to me. Dear Robbie and Vi have kept it all in splendid order – it was never wallpapered in my day, just whitewashed! When I retire, I’ve suggested that we divide the house between us. I’d like to be this side, which was once the pub, where the rooms are kept ready for my visits – we could call it 1 and 2 Plough Cottages maybe – but that’s quite a way in the future!’
‘Mum and Dad will be over this afternoon,’ Vi said, pouring welcome cups of tea.
‘Ronnie is Robbie’s father – and Mattie’s and my elder brother,’ Evie told Gracie.
‘I guess I’ll work out eventually who you all are,’ Gracie said, amid laughter. She added: ‘When can we go and pick watercress? I promised Mommy Mattie I would.’
‘It’s a lovely day – what do you say we all go and pick together?’
‘Whatever’s this?’ Griff asked, when they found a small flat object in Gracie’s next letter.
Mattie knew. ‘She’s pressed a sprig of watercress – just as you do flowers! Careful, it’s very fragile. That’ll certainly go in the scrapbook.’