‘Thank you, Peggy dear.’
‘I hope you’ll find in him all you wish.’
‘Of course I shall. He’s in my room now. I hoped you’d be able to join us.’
Peggy smiled with irritating scepticism. ‘You can do without me. Just pass me down the bottle of Formamints before you go back to him, would you please, Griselda?’
‘Is there anything else I can get you?’
‘No thank you. I don’t know how you’re placed, but I could borrow my sister’s wedding-dress if you’d like it. She was just about your size when she married and I know she’s kept it for my nieces.’
There was something about Peggy, fond though Griselda was of her, which tempted to the outrageous.
‘Thank you. I doubt whether white would be appropriate.’
But Peggy only smiled and said ‘That’s for you to say.’
XXIX
A special licence proved unnecessary, but there were difficulties of domicile, and it seemed that for the ceremony the only day convenient to all parties (but especially to the Registrar) would be Christmas Eve. Questioned as to his religion, Kynaston stated that he was loosely attached to the Baha’i Movement; and though Griselda belonged to the Church of England, she had small inclination for the chilliness of so many empty churches on a December morning. The Registry Office, though perhaps little warmer, offered a briefer ceremony, and one free from that undertone of morality still characteristic of so many churches.
As the day drew near, Griselda felt quite resigned. After Beams, her life had subsided into very nearly its former uneventfulness; so that for the present a change of any kind made an unconscious appeal. The only marked modification in her behaviour, however, was that she ceased to buy so many clothes. Also she spent two evenings a week trying to clean and decorate Kynaston’s attic flat, which was to be her home until something more suitable could be both found and afforded. Lena assisted: clad in a dun coloured boiler suit, and after a busy day at the shop, she distempered the ceilings in pink and blue, and made water come out of the tap, before returning to Juvenal Court to resume work on her new novel, ‘Legacy Grass’. Kynaston came to approve of her more and more until Griselda felt that she ought to feel jealous. Griselda, though good at walking, and good at the design part of interior decoration (she suggested they should try to instal some means of heating the water, even if obtained second-hand), was less good than Lena at implementing her suggestions. Kynaston had become radiantly happy, and restive about his terms of employment.
‘After we’re married, and now you two have got the shop,’ he said to Lena, who was laying a carpet which had been found rolled up behind some old stock in Mr Tamburlane’s former office, ‘I shall try again with my plastic poses. I often think they’re the only thing I’ve gone in for which has community value. After marriage one must think of that.’
Lena stopped hammering. ‘Think of what?’
‘Community value. After marriage I mean to be less of a parasite.’
‘It’s much more important for you to keep Griselda’s body happy. Concentrate on that.’
‘Зa va sans dire.’
‘No man’s quite a parasite who can do that for a woman. It’s your only hope, Geoffrey.’
‘Hadn’t we better change the subject? It’s in poor taste in Griselda’s own home.’
‘Griselda’s opening a tin. Go and help her.’ Lena resumed hammering. The carpet was difficult to penetrate and smelt dreadfully of the East.
As a matter of fact, moreover, Lena was wrong for once. Griselda had heard every word.
She eyed Kynaston across the tin of pilchards. She supposed there might be some joy in the relationship which so many sought for and hoped for and worked for and suffered for. It certainly could not compensate for the loss of Louise, but it might be not wholly barren. Griselda shuddered slightly. It was attractive and Kynaston kissed her.
‘Why pilchards, Geoffrey? Why not squille?’
‘Because pilchards are cheap.’
‘They seem very oily.’
‘The fish themselves are quite dry.’
There was no doubt he had a well-shaped body and much patient persistence in pursuit. It was necessary to hope.
On Christmas Eve it was foggier than on the day Miss Otter died and Griselda inherited the shop. Griselda and Peggy took forty minutes to find the Registry Office from Holborn Station; but fortunately (at Peggy’s suggestion) they had started very early. Of the two Peggy looked much more like a bride: at extravagant expenditure she had acquired a magenta woollen dress with a salmon-coloured belt. The gesture testified all the more to her warmth of feeling, because, as she explained to Griselda in the Underground, it would be out of the question for her to wear the garment to the office.
The occasion had attracted an excellent attendance from among the friends of both bride and bridegroom (whose friends, as it happened, were largely held in common), and from the people of the surrounding district. Among the latter was even a barrister, on his way from Gray’s Inn to Lincoln’s Inn, whose large black hat and resonant professional diction enormously raised the tone and spirits of all present. When Griselda arrived, he was explaining that he had just been consulting his solicitor on a normal routine matter and had since been lost in the fog. The contingent from Juvenal Court had shared the cost of a taxi (which the barrister explained was a breach of statute) and stood grouped together protecting the bridegroom. They all wore sapphire coloured orchids paid for by Lotus, who, dressed in black chiffon and a Persian lamb coat, and pale to the lips and ears, was a centre of speculation among all who did not know her. Guillaume wore a fashionable suit hired from a reputable but humble competitor of Messrs Moss Brothers; Florence a pale grey coat and skirt, home-made but none the less well made, and dark stockings sent as a Christmas present from Paris by an old admirer who had fled despairing her marmoreal devotion to another. Monica Paget-Barlow crotcheted away behind the Registry Office font. Freddy Fisher was interviewing the press, who took him for the bridegroom because he looked young and innocent and wore morning dress.
Kynaston entirely resembled Prince Charming in a midnight-blue suit he had salved from an unsuccessful production of a play by Maeterlinck.
As Griselda handed her raincoat to Peggy (she had followed Mrs Hatch’s precept and acquired a substantial one), Kynaston stepped forward from his ring of supporters, extended both his hands, and said ‘My love! This is our day. Let us not flinch.’
‘All right,’ said Griselda. ‘Shall we start?’
The Registrar’s wife ceased her voluntary, and the Registrar himself loomed through the fog which filled the precincts. He was an impressive figure with a cold and wearing a frock coat, at which Griselda stared with interest. It was exactly like that worn by Joseph Chamberlain in Herkomer’s portrait, a fine engraving of which hung above the sideboard in her Mother’s dining room. Griselda supposed that her Mother might have forgiven her as it was her wedding-day. On the whole, she was glad that the chance did not offer.
The sacristan, a sleek young man in a pepper-and-salt suit reminiscent of Kempton Park, arranged the bride and bridgroom into a procession. At that moment, Griselda’s eye fell upon Lena, for whom she had been searching. Lena, in a semi-polar outfit (she was much the most suitably dressed person present), sat in a corner of the Registry Office, obviously trying to comfort someone in distress, whose face was entirely concealed by Lena’s handkerchief. The distressed one’s clothes at once spoke for themselves, however. Before Griselda lighted up the entire half-forgotten panorama of society at Beams. Horror! It was Doris Ditton.
Now Griselda began herself to weep. The picture of Louise had projected itself with the rest in the so far greater intensity that memory offers than life.