The summer term began. With a small band of amethysts and pearls round her finger, Virginia’s status was heightened in the eyes of her pupils. They had never been more obedient, willing, friendly. Every Monday the painting composition turned into The Wedding Day – pink-faced brides awash with white poster paint dresses, doll-like bridesmaids carrying bunches of flowers tall as themselves, red-trousered grooms waving stunted arms and splitting their faces with grins.
At break times the children whispered in corners, pooled their money, added and re-added, planning The Present. Nature lessons turned into questions on the facts of human life, a subject which seemed to stimulate them far more than the ways of the amoeba.
‘Miss Fly, how soon will you be getting a baby after you come out of the church?’
‘Will you like sleeping in the same bed as your husband even when he’s very new?’
‘Will you think of us sometimes even when he’s kissing you?’
Virginia answered their questions as well as she could. Flattered by their interest, she had never regarded them with more affection. The image of them, heads bent low over books, sun shining on bare arms, stamped itself on her mind. She would miss them. She would miss, too, the classroom: its familiar chipped paint, dented linoleum floor, the wall of paintings, the shelf of rough clay models, the chorus of squeaking chairs, the wild flowers and specimen leaves and the dreadful poster of Stone Age Man in England, presented by one of the school governors. This room had been her refuge for nine years, the place she had felt most safe, most in command. To leave it for ever would be a wrench, chilly, difficult.
Virginia and the professor, in these last few weeks before marriage, settled down to some sort of a routine. On Tuesday evenings Virginia would go to London to see him. Usually they would go to a concert or a theatre, have dinner, and Virginia would catch the last train home. On Saturday afternoons the professor would come to Acacia Avenue, spend the night, and return home on Sunday after tea. On such occasions Mrs Fly allowed them little time alone together, such was her enthusiasm to hear exhaustive details about their future. The professor found her tiresome almost beyond endurance, but for Virginia’s sake remained infinitely polite and courteous, thus locking himself more firmly in her claustrophobic affection.
When they had time, they made plans. One afternoon, when Mrs Fly was out on one of her little errands, the professor let himself into Virginia’s bedroom. She was on her knees, turning out cupboards. The professor lowered himself on to the candlewick bedspread. Virginia, glancing at him, was aware of the difference between him and the man she had always imagined would storm her window and possess her. With an effort, she cast such stupid thoughts aside, and turned to a pile of concert programmes.
‘Ah! You have kept all those.’ The discovery of her hoard seemed significant to the professor.
‘Yes. I throw practically nothing away.’ She remembered Charlie’s letters and photograph flaring in the boiler.
‘It must be an omen. They must have meant something to you.’ It was difficult to tell if the professor was teasing.
‘They reminded me of all the things we’ve been to hear.’
‘Together.’
‘Together,’ Virginia agreed. He was so easy to please, the professor, sometimes.
‘Come here a moment.’ Virginia went towards him on her knees. He put his arm on her shoulder. ‘I think we should buy ourselves a cottage in the Welsh mountains for weekends and holidays and our old age. Would you like that?’
Virginia’s spirits rose. She hugged the professor’s knee. ‘Please let’s do that.’ Water from their own well, perhaps. Thick, thick walls and real fires. Those views. Snowed up Christmas. Books, walks, sun, music, peace. Pictures again, pleasing pictures.
‘Very well, we will set about it. On our honeymoon we will drive around looking till we find something.’ The professor, rewarded by her reaction, was finding it hard to control his voice.
‘That would be really lovely. I shall look forward to that.’ Virginia’s eyes came near to shining. The professor kneaded one of her ears and felt the blush rising on her cheek.
‘You look quite happy. Are you happy?’
‘Of course.’
‘You don’t want to change your mind?’
‘Sometimes you are quite absurd, Professor.’
‘Oh, Virginia Fly.’ He felt old man’s tears pricking at his eyes. They sat in silence for a while.
Then Mrs Fly returned and began calling them. Determined to keep their new plan from her, lest it should be in some way undermined by her inevitable doubts, they went down to join her for tea.
But later that week, alone in the staff-room during a free period before lunch, Virginia abandoned correcting English essays and wrote her first letter to the professor. She wrote fast and easily, her hand firm, pinpricks of sweat on her nose.
My Dearest Dear Professor – Please think of the other morning when you asked me to marry you as a dream which didn’t really happen. Because I can’t ever marry you. Your affection swayed me when I was low: I am fond of you and I enjoy being with you and you seemed – forgive my cruelty here – to be something I could clutch to. I said yes hardly knowing what I was doing. It was wrong of me, unforgivable of me, and I ask you if you can forgive me. But I cannot marry you because you see I don’t love you in the way that I should love someone with whom I’m going to spend the rest of my life. You don’t fill me with a terrible passion that is impossible to live without. I don’t feel sick and dizzy in your presence. I don’t miss you enough when you’re not there. I don’t feel you are my whole life. You don’t shake my foundations. I have a million doubts. There, clumsy as ever, I am. Hurting, surely, but only in order to make you believe that I’m serious, to make you believe it will be a disaster for both of us if we go through with it.
I am sorry. Yours, Virginia Fly.
With a calm determination she sealed the envelope, addressed it, stamped it. She would walk to the village now and post it, to make sure it arrived in the morning. But on her way down the passage the bell rang. She was on lunch duty. There was no time. She put her letter in the bag.
At lunch she was aware of feeling sick. The noise of clattering plates and a couple of hundred high voices jarred on her ears with a freshness which reminded her of the first time she had dined in this echoing hall nine years ago. The lump of semolina with its eye of strawberry jam blurred before her eyes.
‘Miss Fly, are you all right?’ Damn the child.
‘Fine, thank you.’ Send the letter, and there would be years and years more semolina, wouldn’t there?
As soon as grace was over, she slipped round to the dustbins at the back door, tore the letter into innumerable small pieces, and threw it away.
For Mrs Thompson, Virginia’s engagement was the culmination of the happiest spring she could remember since Bill died. As other people fester on regret at some past action in their lives, Mrs Thompson daily thrived on self-congratulation: writing to Virginia Fly had been the most rewarding gesture she had made in years. True, it hadn’t turned out quite as she had expected: it was Mrs Fly who had become her great friend rather than Virginia. But that was only to be expected, due to the generation gap. Still, she was very fond of Virginia: she was such a nice, quiet, sensible girl, with something of a humorous eye. The kind of daughter she would have liked to have had herself. The kind of girl you could understand – not like most of the younger generation to-day, with their scruffy clothes and funny moods. The kind of girl who needed a bit of protection and advice as to the ways of this wicked world – Mrs Thompson could help her there, and would see to it as far as she could that Virginia came to no harm. It was a pity that the Ulick Brand plan hadn’t worked out: he had seemed such a nice, well-off young man. Mrs Thompson would have liked to have taken credit for the match. Still, the professor was probably altogether more suitable. Older men were steadier. More trustworthy. Less energy to go gallivanting about. In all, a better bet. Besides, as Mrs Thompson joked to Virginia with amazing regularity, she quite fancied the professor herself. That lovely thick grey hair and those sensitive hands (she always noticed hands). You could tell he was a wonderful pianist.
If anything, Virginia’s engagement brought Mrs Thompson and Mrs Fly even closer together. There was so much to discuss, so much about which to give their invaluable advice. They found in each other a reflection of their own enthusiasm: they found the warmth of agreement and the pleasure of mutual, rosy tinted reminiscence. Indulging in these things meant the necessity of being together a great deal: Mrs Thompson came down to Acacia Avenue most weekends now, often staying on for Monday night and only, with reluctance, dragging herself back to London on Tuesday to keep her date with Mrs Baxter. Mrs Fly would have been delighted for her to stay the whole week.
In fact, at this happy time, Mrs Thompson had only one real problem: Mrs Baxter.
Mrs Baxter was jealous. Bright green, and it showed. Mrs Thompson, for her part, had done her best. No matter how great the wrench of leaving Acacia Avenue, she had always turned up on their regular Tuesday night. What’s more, she had kept nothing from Mrs Baxter. She’d told her everything: she even persuaded Mrs Fly to send her an invitation to the wedding. Mrs Baxter took this in quite the wrong way.
‘Huh! Expect me to go troll-olling along to the wedding of some fancy people I don’t even know, do you? You can keep your charity to yourself.’
It was no good explaining. Mrs Baxter didn’t want any explanations. She also didn’t ever want to hear another word about the Flys, and made this clear to Mrs Thompson in no uncertain terms.
Mrs Thompson, as she later told Mrs Fly – who was very sympathetic about the whole situation – was very hurt. But, for old time’s sake, she resolved to curb her tongue. For several weeks, as the result of a superhuman effort, she managed not to mention any one of them.
But the strain told upon her and, some Tuesday nights, when she and Mrs Baxter parted, she found herself in tears of frustration. It would have been so nice to ask Mrs Baxter’s opinion about her new wedding hat, her dress, the colour of her bag and shoes … Friends, she reflected, sometimes asked too much of you. Still, she shouldn’t complain. At least she had friends. For the first time for years she thanked God for her blessings, and when she rose from her knees she gave a little skip of pleasure. The day after to-morrow was Friday again, and meant another Surrey weekend.
One night, about six weeks before the end of term, Virginia had a dream about her black-moustached seducer. She woke trembling, sweating, weak and cold. Having thought he had left her for ever, his return terrified her. She lay writhing in the damp twisted sheets, watching the full moon cut into diamonds by the panes of her lattice window. She thought of the touch of the man’s hand on her body, soothing her neck, cupping each breast in turn, and she stifled a scream in the pillow. Some time later, finally exhausted by frustrated desire, she succumbed to common sense, a defence she had always instilled into herself so hard throughout her life that it escaped her only momentarily in moments of crisis.
She got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and lit the bedside lamp. She would write, finally, to the professor. Marriage, without the kind of passion she had just experienced, was not possible. There was no further choice. She would begin to wait once more. After all, she was used to waiting.
Dear Professor, My Dear Professor, she wrote in the red marking pen that happened to be beside her bed, I am dreadfully sorry but we cannot cannot cannot go through with it. It would not be fair to either of us, especially to you. With all my heart I want to love you totally, but I can’t. I want us to be delirious and wild and passionate – but we aren’t like that, are we? We are marvellous friends and I know people tell you friendship is the best basis for marriage, but I do believe you must start with something else as well or even the friendship won’t survive. It’s a little different for you. You had, a long time ago, a perfect kind of love. You have had time to recover a bit, and I will be something different – secure and nice and friendly for your old age. But you see I never had that first bit. I have tried to love people, but it has always been fantasy, never the real thing. And I believe that must come to everyone at least once in a lifetime, even if one has to wait till one is fifty. Therefore I am afraid. What happens if I marry you, feeling like I do, settle for our compromise, and in years to come I fall in love with someone? Oh God, dear professor, that would be dreadful. Neither of us could ever want that to happen. Here, trembling and feeling very cold again, she got up to shut the window. The sky was filling with summer dawn, veins of mercury in the clouds, the ugly lawn silvered with dew, the birds already alert and full of song.
‘Virginia Fly, you’re a fool,’ she said out loud.
So please forgive me if I go from your life, which would be better than the possibility of destroying it. I can’t tell you all this because I am a moral coward. I wish I could have written it better. With love and affection, Virginia Fly.
After that, Virginia slept till the sun was high and it was breakfast time.
Getting dressed, the perfection of the morning made itself felt even in her unimaginative room, and brightened the dull Surrey view outside. She couldn’t help thinking of Wales: there, such a morning wouldn’t be wasted. She would collect a warm egg for the professor’s breakfast while he stoked up the fire, and then sit in the mountain sun all day with books she’d never had time to read.
Once more, Virginia found herself going down to the boiler. The shreds of her second letter to the professor, which she hadn’t bothered to re-read, were devoured in a moment. The despair of the night was past. This morning she was all common sense.
The Wedding Day was the bright light on Mrs Fly’s horizon. She found the joy of anticipation almost unbearable, and certainly something she couldn’t keep to herself. Every morning Mr Fly and Virginia were subjected to new thoughts on the matter.
‘Oh Ginny, before I forget to tell you – I was awake most of the night thinking about it, I can’t think why it didn’t come to us before – I’ve had a brainwave.’ Mr Fly, controlling a sigh, picked up his paper. Mrs Fly tapped at her egg with a minuscule silver spoon. ‘Ted, I think you should listen to this. I think you should take an interest. It’s not every day your daughter gets married.’ Mr Fly continued to read his paper.
‘I am listening,’ he said.
‘I shall want your advice to prove it.’ His wife took her first tiny sip of yolk. ‘Well, it’s this. Bridesmaids. On the subject of bridesmaids. Had you thought about them, Ginny?’
‘Only that I wouldn’t have any.’
‘In the normal way I would agree with you, not having any young relations. But how about my brainwave? I thought: why not have all the girls in your class? There are twelve of them, aren’t there? Imagine, they’d make quite a little train.’
Mr Fly spluttered, trying to suppress a laugh.
‘Do be serious, Ted,’ snapped his wife. ‘You don’t seem to be taking this wedding at all seriously. Now listen to this. I’ve got it all worked out. Twelve little bridesmaids, most of them quite pretty as far as I can remember from Speech Day. Wouldn’t they look a sight? In lime, I thought. Lime would be lovely in July. And it’s not a normal bridesmaid colour, is it? Lime Kate Greenaway dresses with little posies of stephanotis and gardenias, and bonnets on their heads trimmed with the same flowers. What do you think?’
There was a long pause. Then:
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Mr Fly, getting up. ‘I thought ordering the champagne was to be my only responsibility.’ He went to the door. This irritated his wife.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Work.’
‘But you haven’t finished your toast.’
‘I know.’
‘But you usually do.’
‘This morning, I don’t want to.’ For the first time that she could recall in forty years her husband slammed the door. She gave a small shudder.
‘Oh dear, I don’t know what’s the matter with him.’
‘You can’t expect him to be interested in dress-making details,’ said Virginia. ‘Besides, the wedding has been the sole topic of conversation for six weeks now. Couldn’t we talk about something to interest Father, for once? No wonder he’s resentful.’
Mrs Fly sniffed.
‘I can see whose side you’re on,’ she said. Deflated, she scooped up the small threads of egg yolk which, in spite of all her careful management, had dribbled down the side of the shell. ‘Well, what do you think about my idea?’
‘No,’ said Virginia, firmly. ‘Absolutely no. I’m sorry, but I hate lime and twelve schoolchildren bridesmaids would be totally absurd.’
Rarely did Virginia speak so sharply to her mother. Mrs Fly’s eyes brimmed with tears.
‘I don’t think you can realise, Ginny,’ she said, her voice a-quiver, ‘exactly what a wedding means to the bride’s mother.’
‘Probably not,’ said Virginia, still hard. ‘And I don’t think you realise that the trappings are not the important part. If the professor and I had our way, we’d be married in a Northern registry office with no one, no relations there.’ Mrs Fly stood up quickly, grasping the edges of the table cloth with her shaky hands.
‘You can’t mean what you’re saying, child,’ she shouted. ‘After all these years of saying your prayers and you don’t want to be married before God? You can’t mean it –’
‘I do,’ Virginia shouted back, sickened by her mother’s tears. ‘You’d better go and tell Mrs Thompson, and see what she has to say about it.’
Virginia left the room, slamming the door like her father. She always reacted badly to scenes. Her hands were shaking by now, and she was sweating under the arms. At this moment, she realised, she and her mother had never been farther apart.
Not far along the road she was stopped by her father in his mini shooting brake.
‘Ginny? I’ll give you a lift.’
‘Father! What are you doing here?’
‘Just driving around, you know. Filling in time. I made myself a trifle early.’ He winked. When she was in the car he said: ‘I’m sorry I went off like that. I just thought if I heard another word about bridesmaids’ dresses … Your mother’s a little overwrought. I don’t blame her, of course.’ He smiled. ‘Do you happen to know if Mrs Thompson is coming down again this weekend?’
‘I believe she is.’ Virginia watched her father’s face. A muscle clenched in his neck. He spoke tightly.
‘I have a feeling, once you’ve gone, Ginny, she’ll be down most weekends. Still, that man near Hastings, you know, the one I got the lawn mower from, he’s become quite a friend of mine. He’s asked me over any time. Said I could go any time I liked, and he’ll take me gliding. I quite fancy a bit of floating about the skies. Maybe I’ll go over there on Saturday.’ This was the first time he had mentioned either his new friendship or his new hobby.
‘That will be nice,’ said Virginia, pleased: and then suddenly, all in a rush, ‘and you will come to us any time you like won’t you? To London or Wales? Any time Mrs Thompson overdoes it?’ Mr Fly laughed.
‘I wouldn’t want to inflict myself upon you, Ginny.’
‘You’d never be doing that.’
‘Well, I dare say, average traffic, I could make it up to you in no time at all.’
He left her near the school. Driving off, sitting very upright, hands clasped on the wheel cautiously as a learner, he decided not to take the risk of waving. Virginia watched till his carefully polished car was out of sight. She wondered about his old age.
Speech Day was on the last day of term. The professor, having been invited by the headmistress herself, agreed to come, after much persuasion. He made an effort for the occasion: pressed suit, clean shirt, and new tie. Remarkably distinguished, he looked, Virginia thought with pride.
As was the case of all members of staff who left after years of hard and devoted service, effulgent tributes were paid to Virginia. She sat, disbelieving, as words of praise were sent forth in short, trembling speeches by girls with sweating hands. The headmistress wished her well in her marriage and hoped she would come back and visit the school often. A girl from her own class, curtsying, suddenly nervous, presented her with a huge bunch of yellow roses. Finally, the whole school gave three cheers for Miss Fly. Down below, in the hall, the professor laughed and clapped in the front row, proud of her. She muttered thanks, and smiled till her face ached. ‘I’m overwhelmed, what can I say?’ It was all insanity.
A violent chord on the piano lopped off the emotion of the moment. The whole school stood, paused, then crashed into ‘Jerusalem’. Then they marched out, familiar thud of feet, last time in the familiar hall, all those beautiful straight backs, on the platform Miss Graham’s petticoat showing as usual …
‘It’s a wonder you’re not bloody crying at it all,’ whispered Mr Bluett, making her smile a proper smile at last.
Later, she took the professor to her classroom. There he was a triumph. He met every pupil, shook each one by the hand, examined and commented on twenty-four paintings of his own wedding. The children presented him and Virginia with their present, wrapped in paper painted by themselves. A carriage clock, long saved for. The professor’s delight enchanted them: they crowded round him, touching him, calling for his attention, getting to know as quickly as they could the man who was taking their teacher away.
All the farewells over, the professor picked up Virginia’s small case. In it she had put the things that had accumulated in her desk over the years. She unpinned and packed the wedding paintings; she took the clay ashtrays, pressed butterflies and flowers that her pupils, on various private occasions, had given her during the term. Finally, she rubbed out the end of term notices from the blackboard, and they left the empty classroom.
‘I feel a bastard taking you away from them,’ said the professor. Virginia laughed. Now it was over, now they were out of the gates, she felt better.
‘You were marvellous with them,’ she said. ‘You didn’t let me down.’
‘You wait, my love, you wait,’ he joked. ‘My God, marriage is a state of perpetual crisis, didn’t you know that? Sometimes one is not always strong enough to deal with it in the best way.’ He saw a look of fear flinch in Virginia’s eyes. ‘No – for heaven’s sake. I was exaggerating. With you, it will all be calm and peaceful. At least, mostly. Won’t it?’
‘I hope so.’ said Virginia.
Before the train left, in the carriage, the professor told her he loved her considerably more this afternoon, if that was possible. Other people’s appreciation of her had added to his own. He was impatient for the week they had left to go by.
‘I want you, my love,’ he said, ‘profoundly.’
Nevertheless, when his train had gone, Virginia went to the station waiting-room and began him one more letter.
Oh my dear love – we can’t, we can’t, we can’t. I don’t believe we should …
But she knew that there was no point in going on, that she would never send it.
Instead of taking the bus, she walked home. On the way she planned her escape: London to-night by train. The Golden Arrow to Paris – her passport was in order. Then, the first train south. On to Italy, Greece, Turkey. She had saved enough money. She would send postcards to say no one was to worry. The professor would forget her. In a year, she might return. Find a new life. If she had the courage to carry out this decision, she might be rewarded.
At home she found her mother, still in her Speech Day hat, in the kitchen making curry.
‘I’m doing your father’s favourite,’ she explained, in a more subdued tone than she had used for several weeks. ‘Poor Ted. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been quite down, not at all himself lately. When they gave you those flowers and cheered you like that he became quite tearful. I’ve never seen him like that before. So I thought he’d like a curry again. I haven’t had much time lately, have I? – Here, would you peel me a few apples?’
Virginia went obediently to the sink. She wondered at what point during the evening she could escape to get her things together, and how she would word the letter that explained her departure.
The day of the wedding was, as Mr Fly pointed out, a very average day for mid-July. The sky was a taut blue, and a few spongy white clouds, hesitant to cross the sun’s face and cast shadows on the proceedings, hovered above the line of trees. The air smelt of flowers – not from the flower beds, which were nothing but thin lines of crumbled grey earth this year, due to Mr Fly’s numerous weekend visits to the new friend in Hastings, but from the pedestal vases feathered with great blooms that stood snootily in the marquee. This contraption had been put up some nights before. Virginia resented its presence. It meant that from her bedroom she could no longer see the garden. The tent’s canvas spine and sloping sides blotted out the familiar view. And in the last few days she had felt a desperate need for familiarity.
But, everywhere, it had almost disappeared. The sense of the strangeness of the house increased from day to day, culminating in the morning of the wedding. The dining-room, at breakfast, was darkened by the marquee. Most of the furniture had been moved out of the sitting-room. The hall and kitchen smelt of cheese fingers. Mrs Fly wore an apron, slippers, and no stockings while she busied about giving orders to Mrs Thompson. Men in white coats came in and out carrying trays of petits fours. Mr Fly wandered up and down the side of the marquee, testing the guy ropes with both hands. He expressed a sudden and unusual concern about the strips of gritty earth that he called his flower beds: hoped too many people wouldn’t stand upon them. Mrs Fly’s hopes were that Caroline would manage to come, for Virginia’s sake, and the caterers had spelt the professor’s name correctly on the cake. Virginia, unable to think of anything useful to do, counted the bridge rolls smeared with mashed sardine.
Mid-morning, she found a small, fat, bald-headed man looking bewildered in the hall. He introduced himself: Inigo Schrub, best man. Of course. Virginia remembered him from their brief meeting at the professor’s lecture. He had studied music with Hans in Vienna. Now, he was first violin in a Midland orchestra. He smiled, his eyes magnifying uncannily behind his thick glasses.
‘I wondered – I don’t really know my duties – but would it be in order to take the bride for a drink?’
Virginia accepted gratefully. Anything to get out of the house.
They walked a quarter of a mile to the nearest pub. Inigo seemed slightly out of breath: walking and talking at the same time was not easy for him.
‘Hans, my old friend, is a lucky man indeed,’ he gasped. ‘He deserves so delicious a woman. He deserves after all these years an admirable wife.’
‘Then he shouldn’t be marrying me,’ Virginia heard herself saying. ‘I’m not at all the right person for him. I’ll be a dreadful wife. I’m too – set in my ways. I can’t explain. I just know we’re making a mistake.’ For a fleeting moment she had a feeling this stranger would understand, even rescue her. ‘Can’t you tell him, even now? You’re his best friend. It’s not too late. We could put it off. We shouldn’t go through with it. Really.’
‘My dear girl, pre-wedding nerves. I know just how you feel.’ He patted her arm, a million miles away. ‘What you need is a drink. It’s always the bride who suffers before the wedding. Here, what shall I get you?’
As she didn’t answer, he bought her brandy and they sat at a tin table under a small awning advertising beer.
‘There, now, you look very pale. You shouldn’t have worked yourself up into such a state.’ A friendly, caricature grandfather, he was. ‘Hans wouldn’t make a decision about marriage unless he knew what he was doing.’
‘He knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t know what I’m doing, that’s the point,’ Virginia’s voice was very high.
‘My dear Virginia, you are very young.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Compared with Hans.’
‘Oh, compared with Hans, I suppose. But what has that to do with anything?’ She sighed, suddenly very weary. Inigo, completely at loss how to help her, drummed his knuckles on the tin table top.
‘It will work out all right, you’ll see. It’s the shock of the plunge, I expect, after waiting some years of your life. You know how reality is. It always shatters illusion in the most cruel way. In a most devastatingly cruel way.’ He shook his large round head from side to side. Balls of sweat ran from his temples to his puffed out cheeks. ‘But that is what we’re here for. That is our function – to live with the reality and bury the dreams, no matter how long we’ve lived with them … There, I’m preaching. I apologise.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Virginia, shyly, ashamed. ‘I’m being very hysterical. Put it down to nerves, as you said. Nonetheless,’ she added, then paused for a moment. ‘Nonetheless, I’m convinced I’m doing the wrong thing.’
‘My dear girl, no more of this talk.’ Inigo sounded almost impatient, then noticed her eyes. ‘Why are you appealing to me? How can I help you? The marriage is in two hours. You must think of my friend Hans. Don’t you think that to let him down now would be a grave injustice?’
Virginia raised her head and smiled at him, self-mockingly.
‘Hans, luckily, is not very concerned with my past. I don’t think he knows or cares that I have never loved anyone. He doesn’t know that I was raped by an American penfriend, for example, or went to bed with a man I had great stupid hopes for, only to be turned out by his wife.’
Inigo Schrub coughed, confused. The copper colour of his face deepened.
‘These are dramatic situations …’ His voice trailed away. Virginia was no longer listening.
‘You wait till you see my wedding dress,’ she was saying. ‘Funny, but even over that I gave in in the end. It was always easier, for peace and quiet, not to resist my mother. Not to argue.
‘My father and I always supported each other,’ she went on, ‘but he had these ridiculously high hopes for me. I never won anything at school, except for art. It would have made him the happiest man in the world if I’d been the sort of girl who won prizes. I let him down over and over again. He was brave about it, but disappointed. So when he suggested I should become a teacher, I agreed. I didn’t want to. I wanted to paint. But my decision pleased him so much, I couldn’t go back on it. He deserved something, didn’t he? It wasn’t such a dreadful sacrifice, after all his support. It was easier.
‘Believe me,’ she added, ‘I must have been an awful child. Goody Goody they called me at school. Goody Ginny Goody. I used to make devilish plans to provoke them into liking me. They all failed .. Perhaps I was shy and awkward, more so than I realised. I know I was plain. Anyhow, I gave up a certain amount of hope.’
‘You could never have been plain,’ interrupted Inigo Schrub. The top of the table was warm under Virginia’s flattened palms. She twitched one of her hands slightly, so that the shaft of sun on her knuckles was forced to slide down the long slopes of her fingers.
‘Instead, I settled for anticipation,’ she went on, ‘Much better. You can thrive, you know, anticipating on small things you’re sure will happen. That’s far less gloomy than hoping for bigger things that may never come about.’ Virginia spoke so softly that Inigo Schrub had to bend his head to hear. She narrowed her eyes. The midday sun was hard.
‘You can watch yourself from a long way off, for many years – maybe all your life,’ she continued. ‘You can see your pathetic gestures, know what you are doing wrong. And yet you’re powerless to change your actions. You may hate yourself for your inability, but still you remain powerless.’
‘You watch yourself become crushed, then,’ observed Inigo. He signalled for more drinks. Virginia’s glass had been empty for some time.
‘Quite,’ she agreed, seeming to realise his presence again, ‘though in my case I fitted in, rather than became crushed. Fitting in is easy, once you have the knack. It becomes the simplest way of life. People like you for it. You’re no trouble. But they don’t love you for it.’
‘Then you will be submerged.’ Inigo Schrub suddenly banged his fist on the table top, making it echo. ‘You have no right to watch yourself drown.’
‘I have little alternative, Mr Schrub. I have no pity for myself, only a certain dread for our future, the professor’s and mine.’
Inigo’s body, almost as wide as the table top, seemed to have sunk down.
‘You will resist, believe me,’ he said. Virginia drank her second brandy with thirst.
‘I doubt my resistance,’ she said.
‘If our whole life were not cast about with such doubts, then certainty itself would be of no value. As it is, believe me, please, you can be certain of Hans’s devotion to you. And don’t deride yourself too far. You have such affection to give …’ He petered out once more, embarrassing himself by his display of conviction. To detract from his confusion, he looked at his watch and suggested they should go. After all, there was no more to say.
On the way back, what with the sun and the brandy, and Inigo’s guttural voice, so similar to the professor’s, and his fat supporting arm, Virginia felt quite strong.
She and Inigo joked about the preposterous events of the afternoon ahead, and even laughed.
After an attempt to eat a small lunch – no one tried very hard – Mr and Mrs Fly, Mrs Thompson (who had installed herself a week before to help) and Virginia went to their separate rooms, watches synchronised.
Virginia sat on her bed wondering what to do first. Under the candlewick bedspread she could feel the squares of folded blankets: her bed as it used to be no longer. It was very hot in the room, in spite of two open windows. Breezeless. Through the canvas of the marquee came the voices of people shouting orders.
Her case was packed, open. Only the things for her face and hair on the dressing-table. The dress – a horrible compromise of a dress – hung outside the cupboard. Virginia had refused the stark white, long satin her mother had longed for. But she had eventually agreed not to wear floppy crêpe of brightly coloured flowers. The compromise was a pink taffeta thing (’salmon’s blush,’ Mrs Thompson called it, meaning it as a compliment) of indeterminate shape. In a hundred years’ time, found in an attic, it would be hard to place the decade it belonged to. Pink satin shoes to match, toes demurely touching under the cupboard. And the hat, shimmering on its stand: a bundle of pink flowers whose petals sprouted forth a paler pink veil. If it hadn’t been so awful, it would have been funny, Virginia thought.
A knock on the door. Mrs Fly and Mrs Thompson, together. Mrs Thompson seemed to have powdered her face with flour. Blue feathers from her head cascaded down one cheek. Already they were becoming floury. Mrs Fly was a shock of emerald green. Nylon gloves covered her elbows, each one done up with fifty pearl buttons. The wedges of her arms, between the top of her violent gloves and capped sleeves, were rough with nervous goose pimples. Mascara and lipstick, both smudged, blurred her mouth and eyes.
They stood, side by side, in the door.
‘Oh, Ginny. Not ready yet?’ Mrs Fly took a small step forward. ‘Your father’s expecting you down in twenty minutes. Don’t keep him waiting, will you?’ She paused. ‘May I kiss you?’
Virginia stood.
‘If you like,’ she said. Mrs Thompson, too, took her chance to peck at the offered cheek. They both patted her, said stupid things in difficult voices, and left.
Alone again, Virginia sat at her dressing-table and brushed her hair. The curls which had been put in yesterday had fallen out over night, leaving it straggly with ill-formed waves. Her face was chalky white. She burnished it with rouge, and greased her dry lips to make them shine.
Dressed, she looked at herself in the small mirror once more. The pink bodice of her dress shone up into her translucent face. It caused a nasty reflection. The petal hat rested uneasily and uncomfortably on her disappointing hair, and the satin shoes already hurt her feet.
With a calm hand, quite resigned, she pulled the salmon veil down over her face. She thought, suddenly, of Inigo Schrub.
‘Virginia Fly is drowning,’ she said to herself, out loud. She dabbed her wrists with scent, ran both hands very fast along the candlewick bedspread, so that they were left tingling for several moments, and went to the door.
Downstairs, her father, in hired morning suit, paced up and down the cheese-straw smelling hall. At the sight of her on the stairs he smiled. Neither of them spoke.
In the large black hired car, its seats covered in soft material, the air smelt of a previous hirer’s cigar. There was a space of grey seat between them; Mr Fly laid his hand there. Virginia covered it with hers. It felt strangely different – curiously smooth. Looking down, her glance hidden by her veil, Virginia saw her father had shaved his knuckles. Quickly, she withdrew her hand.
They drove to the church with appalling slowness.
‘I’ve been averaging it out, several evenings this week, in the mini, so as I could tell the driver exactly how long …’ Mr Fly began. His voice petered out. He put out a clenched knuckle as if to tap the window that divided them from the driver, but withdrew it.
At the gates of the Victorian church, its red brick a sour colour in the vivid sun, a small crowd craned and murmured. Stepping from the car, Virginia felt very cold. Her father supported her with shaking hand. They took small steps up the bright pathway. Virginia was conscious that her ankle bones clacked together.
They reached the porch of the church, stony cool and dark after the sun. Through the open door, they could see the multi-coloured litter of hats and backs fixed to the pews. Compelled by some strange instinct – a compliment to past closeness, perhaps – a mass of small heads at once strained round to try to see Virginia. All my pupils, she thought. The words went through her head like beads. Then, breaking the spell, she saw her mother raise her arm to point out something to Mrs Thompson. The spine of pearl buttons flashed on her dreadful green glove.
At the altar, stiff waxy flowers were arranged top-heavily on pedestals, their pale petals chequered with garish lights from the stained-glass window. Beside, and almost under one of them, Inigo Schrub, his fat back strained into a small black coat, stood to attention. The professor’s grey head was lowered towards his. He whispered something. But the best man did not respond. On one of his trouser legs his fingers drummed in time to the ponderous Bach.
When the music came to an end, at some sign invisible to Virginia, the congregation rose with a unanimous clatter strangely noisy for people in such light summer things. For one moment they were silent. Virginia’s hand crept to the stomach of her dress. Protected by her bouquet of salmon pink carnations cast in fern, she scratched.
Love Divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of Heav’n, to earth come down…
The hymn had begun. Faces turned. Singing mouths paused, open, as the eyes looked. Virginia felt herself move. Suddenly she was in the aisle, her father beside her. Within a few paces, Mr Fly found himself out of step. Thus, in uneasy tandem, they approached the hideous altar where the professor waited for Virginia to become his wife.