Frederick and Ottilie sat side by side on a bench at the Tarn, as they so often did when they wished to escape from The Grampians and have a little time to themselves.
‘All this bread really can’t be good for them,’ said Frederick. ‘It’s not as if ducks feed on bread in the wild. Shouldn’t we bring seeds or something?’
‘Haven’t you heard of evolution? These are ducks that have evolved over the centuries to live on the Tarn and eat a dreadful diet. They’re called Duckus Elthamiensis Breadophagus.’
‘Sounds plausible. What are we going to do about the wedding?’
‘Oh gosh, I don’t know. I mean, the last one, when Sophie and Rosie had a double wedding, it was such a wonderful affair. Daniel was still in the RAF, and his whole squadron came and stunted for us, and it was a beautiful day, and my father was perfectly well, and my mother wasn’t nearly as mad. And of course my father paid for it all.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying we should do something that’s altogether different. I mean, poor Mother is off the rails, and Daddy can hardly breathe, and it’s bound to rain, isn’t it? And Daniel and Rosie don’t get on any more, so it would be difficult for them, and Sophie and Fairhead will be thinking back on it and being sad that they can’t have the children they’d hoped for. So we’ve got to do something different. But terribly romantic.’
‘We could do an Oriental.’
‘An Oriental?’
‘Yes. I’ll send in my brothers to kidnap you, and a few days later I’ll send the bride price to your father. It’s a wonderfully efficient system, and it would save your father from having to give you a dowry.’
‘He wouldn’t anyway. And you’ve only got one brother, and he’s in Burma. What about coming in the middle of the night with a ladder?’
‘I don’t have a car at present, and I don’t think I’d get a ladder onto the train.’
‘You could borrow our AC Six. Or get a hansom.’
‘How does one get a ladder into a hansom?’
‘You strap it to the roof, silly. Actually I think we might have a ladder in the storeroom under the conservatory. Where Wragge sleeps in the wheelbarrow.’
‘And what about the honeymoon? Where shall we go? Normandy?’
‘I want to go to Scotland. I am Scottish after all, but I might just as well be English. I haven’t got one trace of a burr, and I hardly know the place. I have nostalgie de la patrie.’
‘Inverness is lovely. And what about St Andrews? It’s got a road on the waterfront and two streets, and you can walk down one of them in the rain, and then back up the other in the rain, and then down the other in the rain, and then you can sit in the rain and watch the sea, or go and laugh at the golfers on the Old Course, playing in a gale.’
‘I’d love that. I’ve never been to St Andrews. We could dine on porridge and kippers, and tatties and haggis and neeps, and cock-a-leekie soup.’
‘It’s quite hard to catch a haggis. Are you sure they’re in season?’
Frederick threw the last morsel of bread to the ducks, crumpled the brown paper bag in his hand, and put it in his pocket.
‘If we’re going to honeymoon in Scotland, what about doing the most romantic thing of all?’
‘The most romantic of all? Do tell.’
There was something out of kilter about The Grampians in the days thereafter, but no one could quite put their finger on it, until one morning Rosie said, ‘Ottilie, what’s happened to Frederick? He hasn’t been here for days. You haven’t fallen out, have you?’
‘Haven’t you noticed that I’ve been weeping buckets?’
‘You seem positively blissful and serene.’
‘Isn’t one always, when one’s beloved disappears?’
‘Oh, Ottilie, I know you’re up to something.’
‘Moi? Little me? Have I ever looked more innocent?’
‘You certainly have. You’ve put on a very obnoxious air of smug self-satisfaction.’
‘Smugness is always self-satisfied. It’s part of the definition.’
‘Clever clogs. You’re just trying to avoid the question.’
‘All will be revealed,’ said Ottilie. ‘Just for now, I am being mysterious.’
Three weeks elapsed, and then Ottilie disappeared overnight. Cookie, who was always up first, found that the ladder from Wragge’s storeroom under the conservatory was leaning against the morning-room windowsill, and the sash was wide open.
There was a note from Ottilie on the dining-room table that said:
Darlings,
Don’t worry about me at all. I have eloped with Frederick and will return in a fortnight, a respectable married woman, having honeymooned in Caledonia.
Sorry about the ladder. It just seemed so awfully banal to leave by the front door. You wouldn’t believe what fun this all is.
I am so excited!
My bestest love to you all, the soon-to-be Ottilie Ribaud
When, a fortnight later, she and Frederick did finally reappear, glowing with happiness, none of the family had the heart to remonstrate, despite their confused outrage in the interim.
‘Did Prince Albert come?’ Mrs McCosh wanted to know.
‘No, Mother. We were married by a blacksmith. Over an anvil.’
‘A blacksmith! An anvil!’
‘Yes, Mother. It was rather moving, in its way.’
‘Is it really a proper marriage?’ asked Rosie.
‘It’s perfectly legal,’ said Frederick. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it. I even stayed up there for three weeks to fulfil the residency requirement.’
‘So that’s where you were.’
Rosie was dissatisfied. As far as she was concerned, a marriage that was not a religious ceremony in a proper church was not a marriage at all. ‘I thought that all this Gretna Green stuff was just for romantic novellas,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that it really goes on.’
‘Well, it is in romantic novellas,’ said Ottilie. ‘That’s how everyone knows about it, isn’t it? Anyway, our blacksmith was very charming, and he had the most enormous muscles in his arms, and he was just as good as a vicar, and the anvil was beautifully clean and polished up, and really not too dented. It was rather huge, too, but not as big as an altar.’
That evening Mr McCosh took Frederick aside and said, ‘It was very good of you to spare me all that expense, my boy, but I would have been perfectly happy to give you a proper wedding. I feel as confident in you and Ottilie as I did in Sophie and Fairhead. Very confident indeed.’
‘It wasn’t done to save money, sir,’ said Frederick. ‘It was to give Ottilie as much fun as possible. And, besides, all my family are in India and Burma. The groom’s side of the church would have been almost empty.’
‘If you keep that up,’ said Mr McCosh, ‘you’ll have a good marriage. Life is short, eh? Just as well to remember that, and, as you say, have as much fun as possible. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. It’s a pity you don’t play golf. Couples who play golf together stay together, in my experience, unless she’s much better than he is. I can give you plenty of tips, if you’d like to learn.’
That evening Fairhead and Sophie came from Blackheath in her noisy little car to congratulate the couple and stay for the night. At supper, Mrs McCosh said, ‘I am just terribly sorry, Ottilie, that I did not have the opportunity to talk to you about the nature and duties of marriage. I did so with Sophie and Rosie, and I trust it has stood them in good stead.’
‘Fabulously good stead,’ said Sophie mischievously, ‘the steadiness has been invaluable. And consternate not, Mother, I passed on your sagacious counsel to her myself.’
‘It was priceless,’ said Ottilie, and she and Sophie began to giggle, whereupon Rosie cast them a disapproving look.
‘I am so glad to hear it. And what did you do in St Andrews?’ asked Mrs McCosh.
Sophie and Ottilie caught each other’s eye again, and the latter spluttered and nearly choked on her soup. When she had recovered, she said, ‘We walked up and down in the rain, Mother. And we went and laughed at the golfers trying to play in the gales. It was bliss.’