Outbreak of Love (29 page)

At a brief meeting with Russell in the tea-room where they had gone on that first day, she said: “I am longing for it all to be over and to get away. I want things simplified.”

She tried to escape her divided feelings by concentrating on the arrangements for the wedding, to make them as perfect as possible though this again was partly as a compensation to herself. Her own mother had been so bitterly disappointed at her marriage to Wolfie, that she had left all the arrangements to Cousin Sarah, her Calvinistc housekeeper, who had taken a sadistic delight in making them as drab as possible. She had made up for this by later generosities, trips to Europe and presents of good jewellery, and by leaving her more than her sisters, but Diana had never forgotten the humiliation of her wedding day. Through Josie she would wipe it out. All the same she could not rid herself of the feeling that the wedding was some kind of test which she herself had to pass through.

The wedding was at All Saints', East St Kilda, which was not as smart as St John's, Toorak, but it was the church where all the family had been married since the early days. The day turned out to be fine, full of the winter sunlight of Walter Wither's picture, but shining on a slightly different scene. In the morning Diana had to take Josie and her luggage to the Radcliffe's where she was to dress. Then she had to return to Brighton for a picnic lunch with Wolfie and Harry, dress herself, and supervise Wolfie's adornment in a new morning coat and white spats. He was more anxious about his appearance than the bride, and required nearly as much attention.

Harry had no morning clothes and he wore his best navy-blue suit, which was a year old, and too tight for him, as his muscles had developed on the sheep station. Diana had wanted him to have a morning coat made quickly in time for the wedding, but he had refused saying: “I'm not going to pretend to be an Englishman.”

When they came out into the sunlight he looked at Diana and said: “You're too dolled up, Mum.”

Diana had a black velvet toque, into which she had pinned with a diamond brooch, a tuft of blue feathers that matched her dress. She had long white kid gloves and she wore her pearls, and pearl and diamond earrings, but she did not think that she was over-dressed. When she was dressed for a party she always looked a little dramatic. She could not help it, and in fact she enjoyed it. It emphasized her natural distinction. When she had taken no trouble with her clothes, she attracted no attention, except from a connoisseur like Russell. Harry would not have objected to her appearance if she had looked like a rich Toorak lady, but she was not fat enough, and they did not have her kind of face. But she had a moment's qualm. Would they say afterwards that she had been showily dressed at her daughter's wedding?

Harry sat opposite her in the car, the contrast between his slightly gingery hair and his blue suit making him look like a Presbyterian empire builder on Sunday morning. Wolfie said: “Do I look nice?” When Diana, to make up for Harry's surly manner, told him with warmth that he looked very nice, he said: “I am the King of England,” and he raised his top hat and bowed to the empty streets. Then she was annoyed that Harry had again forced her into this defensive attitude towards Wolfie, and when he showed so obviously that he did not find his father amusing, she said sharply:

“The wide open spaces seem to have made you exceedingly stuffy, Harry.”

When they arrived at the Radcliffes', Jack Radcliffe said: “By Jove, Diana, you'll steal Josie's thunder,” and she felt cheerful and confident again. She went up with a sudden access of happy excitement to see Josie, and to do the final arrangement of her dress, her wreath and the old lace veil which Lady Wendale had lent her.

At last she set out for the church with Harry and the Radcliffes, leaving with their butler the responsibility of sending Wolfie off with Josie at exactly twenty past two.

When she arrived at the church she went with Harry up to the front pew on the left. Daisy and Jimmy Byngham were already there, Jimmy looking arrogant and slightly mad. She had given Daisy a cheque to buy a new dress, but they had spent it on a week's holiday in Sydney, and Daisy, who had something of her own flair for clothes, had reconditioned a dress she had given her last year. Fortunately, though they looked odd, they had an air which prevented them from being entirely discreditable. If they had been in rags they would still have seated themselves in the most prominent position. Diana wondered if she and Wolfie had been quite as troublesome when they were young. But Harry's surliness, and Daisy's absolute selfishness in spending the cheque in that way, made her feel that it would not cause her such a great pang to leave them.

The test which she thought the wedding would be for her, was to behave towards these people, even to her closest relatives, with adequate and controlled friendliness, but with no open affection which she felt would make her vulnerable to their censure when she had left them. Combined with the need for this effort was the anxiety that everything should go perfectly.

The Governor-General, Lady Eileen, the Wendales, Lord Francis Blake and Miss Rockingham came and sat across the aisle. The State Governor and his suite followed and sat in the pew behind them. If the whole Royal family had been coming, Diana thought ironically, Daisy still would have spent her cheque on a trip to Sydney.

John, in dark green uniform, with Freddie in scarlet, came in from the vestry and stood at the right of the aisle. Diana, remembering what he had told her about Josie and the pot of daphne, with that instinct she had for making a simple decoration an allusion to something else, had pots of this plant, now in its waxy bloom, put at the chancel steps. He caught their scent and looked down. When he saw what it came from, he turned and gave Diana a quick shy smile of gratitude.

A few moments later Josie arrived at the west door, and came slowly up the aisle on Wolfie's arm, followed by six bridesmaids in peach-coloured dresses, carrying posies of coppery roses. Suddenly all Diana's intentions for herself and her demeanour were swamped in a wave of maternal pride and love. Josie had arrived safely, and her anxiety about the success of any arrangement which depended even in a partial degree on Wolfie, evaporated. She did not realize that this love which she sent like a blessing towards Josie, included Wolfie in the orbit of its kindness. When he had given his daughter away, obeying careful preliminary instructions, without which he might have followed her to the altar, he joined Diana in her pew. He had the blissful expression of a good boy, and continuing in this role he took up a prayer book, with some difficulty found the marriage service, and held the open book towards her, so that they might follow it together.

A little more than twenty years ago, where John and Josie were now standing, she had been married to Wolfie. Because of the way she had defended him against Harry, and because of her expression when he rejoined her in the pew, he thought that he was now quite forgiven for Mrs Montaubyn, and Diana realized that when he held the book out to her, he intended their sharing it to be a kind of re-marriage service. After a few minutes she turned away from it, as if she wanted to watch Josie at the altar.

She felt again a touch of the same kind of panic she had when she was waiting for Russell, before John and Josie arrived. In this church, the first she had ever attended, where she and her children had been christened, where most of her relatives and friends had been married, from where her parents had been carried to the grave, she was the victim of more enduring and potent influences even than those of her own house at Brighton. She could not keep her reserved attitude towards her own flesh and blood, who were all around her. She did not want to become an outcast from them, and she wished that the service would soon end.

When it did, and they went with the Caves and the Wendales to sign the register, she looked down the church for a glimpse of Russell, to feel the reassurance which the sight of him might give her, but she could not see him.

At last they came out into the sunlight, and with all the liveliness and laughter she recovered her composure. Russell had not come to the wedding, and she believed that he had stayed away so that he would not embarrass her. She thought the only thing to do was to pigeon-hole him in her mind. She could no longer try to think of her intentions and her immediate situation at the same time.

Soon she was standing again where she had stood eight months earlier, at the end of the arcaded lobby leading to Elsie's drawing-room, but now with John and Josie and the Wendales, who were
in loco parentis
to John, as the Governors were not allowed to visit private houses since Lord Brassey had gone to the wrong people. Everyone was lively and charming and she could not help responding without reserve to the flattery and affection showered on herself as well as on Josie. The present was the only reality, and all her plans and problems were a half-forgotten dream. She was speaking to Arthur who was admiring the lace of Josie's veil, when suddenly she heard behind her the loud announcement of Russell's name. She turned with a start, and saw him standing before her, holding out his hand. She did not immediately offer her own.

“Oh,” she said, almost with a note of accusation. “I thought you weren't coming.”

“I couldn't get to the church,” he explained. “The car didn't arrive.” He passed on, leaving Diana dismayed by the sharp tone in which she had spoken. She thought that she had been like a child which repudiates a new friend when it meets its normal associates. She had acted from herd instinct. For the last hour she had been completely caught up in the atmosphere of the herd, and though it might be said that Russell was one of them, he was like that captive seagull which escaped and returned to its fellows, only to be destroyed by them because it bore the taint of humanity.

She was desperate now to speak to him and to have the opportunity to wipe out the effect of her involuntary rudeness. She sat by Lord Wendale at the wedding breakfast, and she hoped that he would put down her distracted manner to the natural feelings of a mother at her daughter's marriage. She could see Russell across the room, sitting at a table with Miss Rockingham and the Radcliffes. She found it hard not to look often in his direction.

There were speeches and John replied to the toast of the bride and bridegroom. “When I was young,” he began, and everyone laughed, as in spite of his uniform he looked so very young. “Well, I am a married man,” he protested, which made them laugh more. He went on: “When I was a small boy and wanted to do something and was prevented by the weather, our governess would say, it wasn't ‘meant'. I first saw Josie in this house, and I am glad the wedding party is here, because it shows that it was ‘meant', and I think the same about her today as I did then, or the other way round, and more so. I hope you see what I mean; thank you.”

There was a great deal of laughter and clapping. After some more speeches Wolfie rose to reply to the toast of the bride's parents. He said:

“Today I am sad, because my daughter is taken from me across the ocean many miles. But I am happy because she is Eva who has found her Walther, and my smile is larger than my tears. Now all our little sparrows are flown away and my dear wife and I shall be alone in our empty nest, where there will be quiet and wistfulness. But today, in the same holy place where we were married together twenty-three years ago, my wife and I were, as it may seem, married again. Then we were married for our children. Today we are married for ourselves. Then we knew that before us were troubles, for man is a wayward horse which must sometimes kick the fence. Now we know that before us is calm and trust.” He turned to John. “If you kick a hole in the fence, be careful you do not give your wife sorrow, for then you will be sad too. And you,” he said to Josie, “if sometimes he gallops in another field, do not grieve, for he will come back to you who are beautiful and kind, like your mother, my dear wife.”

If this speech had been delivered in plain English it would have horrified the listeners, but in Wolfie's idiom it merely struck them as quaintly sentimental and amusing. Shortly after this John and Josie left the table to change into their travelling clothes. Diana went up to help Josie and to say good-bye to her alone. When she came down again Freddie was tying an old shoe to the back of their car. He had with great ingenuity smuggled it all the way from Government House without John seeing it. He was very proud of this, and it was his chief topic of conversation for some weeks ahead. Diana contrasted the picture of Josie whom she had just left, tremulous and happy, with this traditional oafishness, but she knew that it would be thought outrageous if she interfered.

Someone said: “Here they come!” and John and Josie, sheltering their faces, made a dash from the door to the car. Freddie thrust a handful of confetti down John's neck, and Clara Bumpus, shrieking: “Keep him in the home paddock!” flung another handful in Josie's face. The car door slammed and in a minute they were out of sight.

Diana murmured: “Bless them,” and walked slowly into the house. Her responsibilities were over. She did not now mind much what happened and when she saw Russell in the hall she went up to him and said:

“It's over.”

“Everything went perfectly.”

“Yes, I think it did.” They spoke a little about the details of the wedding, and went to the billiard room to look again at the presents. There was no one there except a detective eating
foie gras
sandwiches. They went to a seat at the far end of the room.

“It's been rather a strain,” said Diana. “I hope I didn't show it.”

“Not at all. You looked wonderful.”

“When you arrived I wasn't expecting to see you.” She was trying to apologize for her instinctive recoil, without admitting that it had happened.

“You looked a bit startled,” he said.

“I was all strung up. Wolfie's speech was dreadful.”