Katherine and James’s wedding day dawned bright and fair; at that point, the good weather had held for so long that everyone seemed to expect it to be fine. Anne had arranged for the wedding breakfast to take place outside, with tables and chairs set up under awnings. Jack had outdone himself with the garden; the once-empty flower beds were now bursting with blooms, and the warm air was fragrant with the scent of roses and dianthus, honeysuckle and wisteria.
That morning, after getting dressed herself, Eleanor went to help with Katherine’s preparations. As bridesmaid she wore a drop-waist gown of pale-pink silk with white lace underneath; it was quite the nicest thing she’d ever worn, besides the dress to the opera. Katherine’s gown was even lovelier, with a high collar of white lace – they’d found it in London, after all, made by Belgian refugees during the war – and lace on the cuffs and cinched-in waist as well.
As Eleanor came into Katherine’s bedroom, full of high spirits, she saw her sister’s face was pale with strain.
“Oh, do cheer up,” she cried. “You’re so pale you’ll look like a ghost in the photographs.” Their father had, in a moment of largesse, hired a professional photographer to take pictures of all the wedding party.
“I feel like a ghost,” Katherine told her. She pressed her hands to her pale cheeks. “I feel as if I’m disappearing.”
“Well, I assure you you’re not. All you need is a bit of colour.” Adopting the kind of briskness Katherine usually had, Eleanor pinched her sister’s cheeks. “It’s a shame Mother won’t let you wear a bit of rouge.”
“Don’t be coarse,” Katherine said automatically, and then a tear slipped down her cheek. Eleanor drew back.
“Oh, Katherine,” she said, and patted her sister’s shoulder. It was a testament to Katherine’s mood that she suffered that small show of affection. “Surely it’s not as bad as all that,” she protested gently. “He’s marrying you, after all.”
Katherine wiped the tear away with trembling fingers. “Yes,” she said, and took a deep breath. “There is that.”
“Don’t you think, in time, you may be happy?”
“I hope so. I pray so.” Katherine took a deep breath. “That’s what Mrs Freybourn keeps telling me. ‘Just give it time, Katherine dear. He’ll come round. The war was hard on him, on everyone.’” She shook her head and pressed her fingers to her eyes to prevent any more wayward tears from escaping. “Is time all one needs, do you think, Eleanor? It feels lazy to me, to just wait, but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Have you tried speaking with him?” Eleanor asked cautiously. “I mean properly. Telling him…”
“Telling him what? I don’t know what to say. He does all the right things. He’s the perfect gentleman, respectful and solicitous and so bloody cold.” She dropped her hands from her face and turned to look out the window. “I shall freeze to death,” she said, her voice distant and lifeless. “Slowly.”
“Please don’t say that.” It sounded awful to Eleanor, and yet she remembered those first few months after Walter had died, how everyone had been frozen in separate worlds of grief. She felt as if she had finally begun to break free. Jack – dear, wonderful Jack – had helped her by letting her cry, and giving her the garden. But who had helped Katherine, or James for that matter?
“I shan’t say it again,” Katherine told her as she turned back to face Eleanor, her expression resolute now. “I shan’t say any of this again. When the vows are spoken, the thing is done. There’s no point…” She trailed off, biting her lips.
“You don’t have to marry him,” Eleanor burst out. “If you don’t think he’ll make you happy—”
“Oh, Eleanor, are you still such a child?” Katherine sighed wearily and reached for her locket, which she fastened around her neck, the gold heart nestling in the hollow of her throat. Eleanor still hadn’t told her father she’d given hers away. “Of course I have to marry him. If I cried off on my wedding day I’d be completely ruined. No one would have me, ever, with such scandal attached to me.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to be alone than with someone and unhappy?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine answered with bleak honesty. “The trouble is, I’ve known happiness with James, before the war. It’s the most treacherous, tempting thing. I knew it, ever so briefly, and I long for it again. Sometimes I can almost convince myself I’ll find it with him now, or at least soon.”
“Then speak to him—”
“It’s not that simple!” Katherine’s voice rose and she closed her eyes briefly, drew in a steadying breath. “If a single conversation could cure what ails us,” she asked, “don’t you think we would have had it already?”
“What do you think ails you? Ails him?” Eleanor asked. “He’s not… shell-shocked, is he?” She’d read about the unfortunate soldiers who suffered from neurasthenia; she knew there were asylums to help the worst cases, but also that their condition was looked down on by some who condemned them as cowards. Most men simply struggled on, trying to appear normal. But James did not exhibit the usual symptoms: the “thousand-yard stare” of dazed vacancy, the lolling tongue, or the jerky movements that had been dubbed “the hysterical gait”.
“No,” Katherine said after a moment. “I don’t think it’s that, thank heaven.” She hesitated and then said, “It’s almost as if something happened to him. I don’t just mean the war or a battle or just the awfulness of life in the trenches. Something in particular.”
“You mean because of how he was this summer? With Walter.”
Katherine nodded. “I get the sense that he’s hiding something, something he’s ashamed of, almost. But perhaps I am merely being fanciful. It doesn’t matter, in the end. He won’t talk to me of it.”
“Perhaps in time…”
“Ah, yes. Time.” Katherine’s mouth twisted. “That great healer.” She turned to look out the window again; the sun was shining, gilding the garden in light. Eleanor could see Jack moving around, setting up chairs and tables. He was dressed in his best suit, his usually untidy hair smoothed back with pomade, and she wondered what he would think of her in her bridesmaid’s dress, with a new hat besides. In the two weeks since he’d brought her into the house with her cut foot, he’d hardly spoken to her except about garden matters, and then only when she’d insisted, when she’d come out to find him and ask him about this seed or that plant, all of it no more than a pretext to talk to him again.
But he wouldn’t talk, not properly, and Eleanor told herself she didn’t mind because she just knew the thrilling truth: Jack cared for her. He had to; in that moment in the garden she’d almost thought he’d been going to kiss her.
“But if you do love him,” Eleanor persisted, needing to say it, to believe it, “it will turn out all right in the end.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I know what love is. Is it just that fluttering feeling you get in your stomach, when you see someone?” Eleanor blushed and thought of Jack. “Or is it something rather more?” Katherine reached out and braced one hand against the windowsill, almost as if she needed help to stay standing. “If I truly love James,” she continued slowly, “then I’ll stand by him in this – whatever this is. Whatever he’s suffering. And however cold he seems.”
“And it will get better,” Eleanor said bracingly. “It has to.”
“Have the last four years taught you nothing?” Katherine asked with a hollow laugh. “There’s no ‘has to’ any more, Eleanor. There’s no guarantee of a happy ending for anyone, ever.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Eleanor begged. “Not on your wedding day, Katherine. This is a beginning, not an end. You love James, and he loves you, even if he doesn’t always show it.”
Katherine smiled and touched her cheek. “You’re such an innocent,” she said, and somehow it didn’t sound like a compliment to Eleanor. “Four years of war, your brother dead, and you’ve seen those poor blinded soldiers. You’ve seen Billy Sutherland selling bootlaces on the street, and yet you still cling to your silly, foolish hope.”
“Is hope foolish?” Eleanor replied with as much dignity as she could muster. “I don’t think so.”
“Then perhaps I’ll take a page from your copybook,” Katherine said wearily. “And be as foolish as you are.”
An hour later she was married, the air inside the dark, vaulted church cold despite the warmth of the day outside. The vows were spoken, Katherine’s voice ringing clear while James’s tone was both flat and firm. Everyone emerged from the church into the courtyard, the ancient stones warm beneath their feet as they blinked in the bright sunlight.
Eleanor pressed one hand to her head; the cold of the church and the sudden sunshine had conspired to give her a headache.
“Are you all right, Miss Eleanor?” Jack asked, suddenly coming to stand next to her.
Eleanor gave him a distracted smile. “Yes, just a headache. And the scent of all the lovely flowers is giving me a tickle in my throat. They are as fragrant as you promised, Jack. I’ll be fine.” She gazed at Katherine and James, walking arm in arm towards the vicarage; they both looked stiff, like puppets or performers in a play. “Do you think they’ll be happy?” she asked quietly.
Jack shifted where he stood. “It’s not my place to say,” he answered.
“Oh, Jack.” She turned to him, all the words and thoughts she’d piled up in her head over the last few weeks spilling out in frustration. “No one is here but me,” she said, for the others had gone ahead. “And I know you better than that, surely? Can’t you speak honestly with me?”
He gazed at her for a moment, and she saw a struggle in his eyes. She caught her breath and held it, waiting for his answer.
“I suppose they could be happy, if they work hard at it,” he finally said. “It’s not an easy thing to find these days, happiness.”
He sounded so weary that she frowned, catching his sleeve. “But you’re happy, aren’t you? Here, with…” She stopped, swallowed. “Here, I mean.”
He gazed down at her hand, her white glove seeming almost silvery against his brown suit jacket. “I’m thankful to be alive,” he said quietly, “even if I don’t deserve to be.”
Her fingers clenched on his sleeve. “Why wouldn’t you deserve to be?”
He hesitated, and Eleanor had the sense that he’d said more than he might have wished. Carefully, gently, he pulled his arm away from her hand. “It just makes you wonder sometimes. How the bloke next to you can be blown to pieces in an instant and you’re still whole and well, though you’re no better or cleverer than that poor sod was.” He blinked as if coming to, and turned to her. “Begging your pardon, Miss. I shouldn’t have said such things to you.”
“I’m glad you told me,” she said and dared to lay her hand on his arm once more. “I want to know such things. I’ve always wanted to know, because the not knowing was so terrible. I look back and I wish I could have talked more to Walter about how he felt. What he endured.” She blinked rapidly as words thickened in her throat. “Do you know, the last time he came home, I made a fuss about how boring he was being? Because he wasn’t as jolly as he usually was. It…annoyed me, which seems so petty and childish now, especially since…” She thought of James, and whatever he was hiding, and shook her head. “I was such a child, then. I’m ashamed of myself now.”
For one brief moment Jack covered her hand on his arm with his own. “We were all children once, Miss,” he said quietly. “The war has made men and women of us, for better or worse.” He nodded towards the vicarage, where guests were milling around the garden, a small sea of bright hats and parasols mixed with the dark coats and toppers of the men. “We should go,” he said. “They’ll all be waiting.”
The sun shone down on the wedding party as they made their way to the garden; Jack disappeared as Eleanor approached the gate, heading around the back, and she found herself near James, and moved forward to congratulate him.
“Welcome to the family, James,” she said, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. His skin was cold under her lips and when she eased back she was startled to see what looked almost like anguish in his pale-blue eyes.
Before Eleanor could even fathom it his expression became quickly veiled and his lips curved in what she supposed was a smile. “And I shall be honoured to call you sister.”
It was a lovely sentiment and the right thing to say, but his voice had been toneless. Eleanor studied him for a moment, wondering just what thoughts and feelings hid behind that carefully bland expression. What hurts and scars.
“James—” she began, impulsively, and Katherine, who had been standing near him, turned suddenly and laid a hand upon his arm.
“We should go and sit down,” she said, her tone light and yet also implacable. “Father wants to start the toasts.”
James nodded tersely and they moved off. Eleanor didn’t know what she had been about to say to him just then, but Katherine had obviously not wanted her to say it.
Andrew called for everyone’s attention, and as all the guests turned to him, their coupes of champagne held aloft, he toasted Katherine. Eleanor barely heard the words; she was watching James, noticing the lines of tension that bracketed his mouth, how the expression in his eyes was veiled. Then she heard people saying “Hear, hear” and realized her father’s toast had ended, and James stood up.
Eleanor held her breath as she watched him, saw the faint smile on his face even as his expression remained distant. She glanced at Katherine, who was smiling, but even from several feet away Eleanor could see how tightly her sister clutched her coupe of champagne.
She only half listened as James stiffly thanked his in-laws for their generosity; her gaze had wandered to Jack, who was standing in the shadows by the walled garden, out of the way of the guests. He was there simply to shift tables and make sure nothing went amiss, but she was still glad to see him. Watching him from afar, she could dwell for a moment on his features, note the contained way he held himself, see his mouth twist downwards in sorrowful sympathy as he listened to James.
How could one man go through the war, Eleanor wondered, and come out as stiff and remote as James, and another man, like Jack, seem so unscathed? Yet perhaps Jack simply hid his hurts better.
“And of course I must toast my bride.” James’s voice rang out a bit louder and Eleanor turned to look back at him. He lifted his glass, his gaze straying briefly to Katherine, and the faintest smile touched his lips. “To Katherine.”
“To Katherine,” everyone repeated dutifully, and Eleanor drank from her own coupe, the bubbles fizzing and popping on her tongue. It had not, she acknowledged, been the most romantic and loving of toasts, but at least James had got the job done.
She watched him and Katherine for another moment; they were like two stiff mannequins sitting next to each other, all tense faces and jerky movements. Despite all her determined cheer with Katherine this morning, looking at them now she had her doubts as to whether either of them would be able to find happiness with the other. And what of the anguish she’d seen in James’s eyes when she’d wished him well? Had it been real or imagined?
As guests began to mingle and talk, Eleanor moved off. Her headache of this morning threatened to turn into a migraine and she wanted to be alone. No one paid any attention to her as she walked away from the wedding guests and sought the sanctuary of solitude in the walled garden.
In the two weeks since she’d last been there, Jack had made great progress. He’d used the old sandstone blocks piled in the corner, taken from the monastery long ago, to make borders for the flower beds, and had begun to fill them with cuttings of herbs. Eleanor recognized spiky rosemary and could smell the sharp tang of mint and the dusty scent of lavender. With the damson trees and redcurrant bushes that had been left from another age now in blossom, Eleanor could almost imagine how the garden would look when it was finished, full of life and beauty, just as she’d wanted.
Carefully she lifted her skirt and moved through the garden. She had never walked the full length of the place, and now she studied the old slate path that had been buried under the soil and which Jack had scraped clean. He’d shown her the path when he’d first cleared it, seeming intrigued by the worn slates, and Eleanor had studied them scrupulously, simply to have a moment alone with Jack.
Now she saw the path led to the funny little shed in the middle of the garden; she didn’t go inside this time, although Jack had swept away all the broken glass.
Her gaze was caught by an old headstone leaning against the building; Eleanor could barely make out the faded inscription of a woman who had died in 1792. Here Lies Isabel, Always Remembered. The rest was lost. She shivered, wondering if the unfortunate Isabel’s bones lay beneath the rich black earth.
“Eleanor.”
She turned to see Jack standing in the doorway of the garden, looking serious, and her fingers clenched on the folds of her dress as anticipation leapt inside her, a wild, uncontained thing. She had, she realized in that moment, been waiting for him to come and find her.
“Is someone buried in the garden, Jack?” She pointed to the headstone. “It’s rather ghastly to think of, although I know we’re surrounded by graves.” If she stood on her tiptoes, she could see the cemetery that stretched out on three sides, the velvety green lawn dotted with headstones.
“I asked your father about that,” Jack answered as he came into the garden. “He said no one would be buried here, because it’s not consecrated ground. But the old headstone would have been removed from the churchyard, to make room for new ones.”
“But that’s awful.” She hadn’t spent much time considering the fact that she lived in the middle of a cemetery, but now she suddenly had a terrible image of all the bodies beneath the soil, all the people forgotten because too much time had passed, and the headstones that had marked their places had become faded and then had been taken away. “Is there no one left to remember those people?” she asked and Jack smiled a little.
“Over a hundred years later? Probably not.”
Eleanor shivered; her head was starting to ache abominably and even though it didn’t make sense, the thought of Isabel, with that inscription promising she would always be remembered when she’d been so clearly forgotten, and her headstone propped against a building like any old slab… it seemed quite terrible.
“Eleanor,” Jack said quietly. “Your family is looking for you. Miss Katherine and Master James are leaving shortly for their honeymoon.” Katherine and James were, Eleanor knew, spending the night in Carlisle before taking a short trip to Edinburgh. Then Katherine would live in Whitehaven with James and his parents, until they were able to find a house of their own.
Eleanor didn’t think she’d actually miss her sister exactly, but neither did she like the thought of her leaving.
“How did you know I’d be in the garden?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “I just knew.”
“I knew you would.” Eleanor smiled back, despite the continued ache in her head. She really wasn’t feeling all that well, and Jack must have sensed that, for he frowned and started towards her.
“Eleanor…”
She moved towards the door, or tried to, but it seemed to swim up towards her, which she thought rather strange. Her slipper caught in the muddy earth and the whole world started to tilt and slide as she reached out with her arms, blundering now as though she were blind, just like one of those poor veterans might have done. She began to pitch forward before Jack caught her up in his arms.
“I… I don’t feel very well,” Eleanor mumbled, and then she closed her eyes, letting herself sink into Jack’s embrace.