The Night Following

Chapter 4: The Wedding Day Dawns

Evelyn breathed carefully on the long mirror and wiped at it with the corner of her bath towel-she wasn’t risking her lovely velvet sleeve on a misted-up old mirror! It was kind of Mam to let her get dressed in her own bedroom on her Big Day, in front of the grand old walnut wardrobe with the full-length mirror, but it was such a heavy, old-fashioned thing and the mirror glass wasn’t as clear as it used to be. You had to go right up close to get any idea of how you looked.

She stopped rubbing, stepped forward, and peered at herself. She was positively tingling with excitement. Stan might have had a sixth sense, the way the locket matched everything! The silver was just right with the dark green velvet of her suit and the white lace jabot at the neck. She gave a little twirl. She never thought she’d be getting married in bottle green, but it was beautiful velvet, real dress quality. Daphne had seen suits in practically identical velvet on the Ladies’ Floor at Kendal Milne in Manchester and at more than three times the price. It would make the day more memorable, wearing an unusual colour. Dove grey, lavender, and cream were more common if you weren’t in white, but those light colours showed your size and shape and Mam had insisted that come the big day, she wouldn’t set a foot out the door, wedding or no wedding, if Evelyn’s condition was at all noticeable.

“You’ve given me heartbreak, young lady. You’ll not give me a red face to go with it,” she had said. Softening a little, she had gone on, “You’ll be all right, lass. Stan’s a good enough ‘un.”

Evelyn frowned a little in the mirror and fingered the cuff of her suit. The moment you felt the velvet in your fingers you could tell it was good stuff. The dark green was more pine than bottle, when you looked closely, and the jacket had a slight flare at the front and a bit of swing in the back, so nothing would show. And she had her pretty lily-of-the-valley posy, waiting downstairs in the cool of the scullery, that she would carry, and the white silk and lace jabot, her “something borrowed” from Auntie Violet, was the real thing. Auntie Violet had always had style. After today Evelyn would have to give it back, but if ever a special occasion came round again, a plain blouse would do quite well under the jacket. She could probably take a panel out of the skirt as well, that’s if she needed to, if she got her figure back after the baby. Some women didn’t. Anyway, it was hard to imagine the day when she would ever wear the suit again. Evelyn gave herself a little shake. No, how silly of her! Of course! Someday, surely, there would be Daphne’s wedding.

Just then Mam disturbed her reverie by knocking on the door. She came in carrying Evelyn’s hat. “Here we go, love,” she said. “Let’s get this on. My,what a hat! It really is the last word, isn’t it!”

Evelyn dipped forward and let Mam place the pine green velvet beret-style hat on her head. Standing with her daughter before the mirror, Mrs. Leigh fixed the hat in place with Evelyn’s “something old,” the pearl pin that had belonged to her own mother, and wiped a tear from her eye. Together they arranged Evelyn’s curls around the soft brim and primped the little bunch of white feathers that Mam had sewn onto one side under a white velvet bow.

Evelyn eased her toes into her new, dark green mockcroc shoes, and picked up her white gloves from the bed. Mam tutted and shook her head, and then smiled sadly.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mam,” Evelyn said. “But don’t fret, it don’t matter. It would have been a waste of money.”

Mam sighed and sat down for a moment on the bed. “Aye, but it were lovely, that little green bag.”

She was referring to the beautiful mock-croc clutch bag they had seen in Lewis’s that matched the shoes. It was small, elegant, and as Evelyn said, shockingly expensive.

“If your Da was still here there’d be more money,” her Mam sighed, “for a proper do. There’d be a bit spare, for the likes of that bag. If he was here, we’d be splashing out a bit,” she added, forgetting perhaps that the circumstances of Evelyn and Stan’s wedding would have provoked an altogether different reaction in Evelyn’s father.

“Now Mam,” Evelyn said sensibly,“you can’t say that. Look at all them’s that been laid off in’t last six months, there’s nothing you can take for granted these days. And anyway, we agreed. It was a beautiful handbag but there’s better ways to spend money, especially when I’ll not be working for a while and there’s more expense to come.”

Mam murmured agreement.

“And a little clutch bag’d be all very well for the Big Day, but what about afterwards?” Evelyn said, smoothing down her skirt. “It don’t hold hardly anything. Besides, it leaves you just the one free hand.”

“Aye, that’s true enough.” Mam chuckled. “Never thought I’d say it but you’re more practical-minded than me, Evelyn Alice Leigh.”

“Oh, a little clutch’d be all very well for Lady Muck. But Stan’s not exactly the gentleman, opening doors for me wherever I go, is he?” Evelyn went on.“I need both my hands, I do.”

“Aye, and your wits about you,” Mam said absently.“With a baby on t’way and a husband to look after.”

“Exactly!” Evelyn said, sighing happily. “Stan’s Mam’s not going to be much help to us, neither. She’s going to let us fend for ourselves, she says, it’s better that way. So there’ll be Stan’s tea to get, never mind seeing to the baby, and I’ll have to rise to more than toast and dripping, won’t I, even if he does get his canteen dinner. I can’t be lugging shopping and a baby on and off the tram with a clutch bag, can I?”

She laughed. “Anyway, all that’s as may be.” She fished in the breast pocket of her jacket and drew out a tiny pair of nail scissors. “Here, Mam, take these for me. I’ll need them later. Hang on to them till I ask for them, all right? And don’t look like that!”

Mam sighed and shook her head. “I won’t pretend to know what you’re up to, Evelyn Leigh. But if you say so, love,” she said.

“Thanks, Mam. Now I’m all ready, aren’t I? I’m wearing my locket and I’ve got my posy to hold. I’m marrying Stanley Ashworth today and there’s nothing more I need. I never wanted a big shindig, anyway. So let’s be going.”

27 Cardigan Avenue

Dear Ruth

Carole takes the view I should keep these letters going. She says undoubtedly not getting any reply is hard, but coming to terms with that can be part of the process.

Anyway, easier to fit in time for a letter as I’m off my feet, in general.

Also have plenty of time for reading.

Your pages made me think of our wedding. You never wanted a big shindig either, or so you said. It seemed quite big enough to me when it came to it, though. Looked out our Order of Service, here it is.

All right, I didn’t look it out, it just came to hand, unearthed from bowels of attic. Hadn’t seen it for years. It’s easier to put my hand on things, now stuff is down from attic and where I can get at it.

Order of Service

Wedding of Arthur and Ruth

St. Mary’s Church, Abbotsbourne

14 June 1972

The Procession: A Whiter Shade of Pale

Introduction: The Reverend Geoffrey Greene

Hymn: “Jerusalem”

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountain green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

The Marriage

The Lesson and Reading

Hymn: “Lord of the Dance”

(see separate sheet)

The Prayers

The Apache Blessing

Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth to the other. Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before you. May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead and through all the years. May happiness be your companion and your days together be good and long upon the earth.

The Signing of the Register

Hymn: “Blowin’ in the Wind”

(see separate sheet)

Reminds me what you were like in those days, not that you went the whole hog on the hippie front. But you and your Apache blessings and blowing in the wind and all sorts. Remember the arguments? I’m glad I won the day over Jerusalem. I’m glad you wore white, even if it was a kaftan, and at least the daisies in your hair didn’t start to wilt till after we were out of the church.

I’m glad I held my own and didn’t let you get me in a caftan-I won that argument, thank God, ditto matching daisies for a buttonhole.

A nurse has been. Mrs. M muttered something to the effect she’d called the doctor for me. Not a face I knew, the nurse, but she insisted she knew you. She’s attached to the community nursing team. I said oh, attached are you, so where’s the strings, but she was looking at my legs and didn’t laugh.

Legs very sore. Nurse says they need bandaging. This kind of thing takes time to heal, she says, she’ll be popping in to keep an eye, or it might be somebody else, all depends on rota. She left leaflets about support hose and hot meals. I put them with Carole’s about loss.

But how long is all this meant to go on for is what I want to know, and of course nobody’s got a leaflet about that.

Or about the dreams I get. Maybe dreams are more vivid if you sleep in daytime, I don’t know. The latest one was me following a man who’s got his back to me and I was following him because I was going to kill him with my bare hands. Quietly and calmly, but quite certainly, I was going to kill him. I couldn’t see his face, but it was the driver of the car.

Well that’s all

Arthur

Cardigan Avenue was the kind of place I would never have just happened into, even in daytime. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. The road beneath the moon swayed in shallow intentional curves between trees set at intervals along the pavements, its nonchalance contrived for what would no doubt be labelled residential charm. The houses, set in large competitive gardens, stared out through luminous windows. There was something about them that would deter loiterers, an atmosphere of settlement that was not the same as neighbourly. I moved carefully from tree to tree, pausing under each one. Up ahead of me somebody’s feet were stopping and scraping on the pavement; a chain clinked and I heard whispers urging a dog to hurry up. I waited in the dark. After a while there was more shuffling and then from further away more words to the dog and the sound of a door closing, and I moved on.

Number twenty-seven, its number and name, “Overdale,” spelled out in looping black wrought iron fixed to the wall, sat quietly among its neighbours. But it didn’t quite match up to them and their immodest embellishments; everywhere along the avenue were conservatories, jutting extensions, gazebos, many of them floodlit in the dark. The front windows of Arthur’s house were black and all the curtains were closed.

Earlier that evening I had studied a follow-up piece in the paper under the headline TRAGEDY DEEPENS. The report heaped new and wretched detail upon the case, as if the woman’s being merely killed would not interest the readers for long. It outlined the hope and waste, the ruined plans. Arthur and Ruth had been about to go on the trip of a lifetime, a world cruise ending in Australia where they were planning to spend at least six months, and possibly settle for good, in order to be close to Ruth’s bedridden brother Graham and their nephew and his family. There was a picture of retired engineer and widower Graham (74). He was propped up in bed wearing short-sleeved pyjamas. His face was swollen, and he was wincing gamely at a small burning forest of candles on a cake on a trolley, watched by a cluster of people, including some nurses, holding Styrofoam cups. The caption said:

HAPPIER TIMES. Arthur, Ruth and friends mark Graham’s 70th birthday in 2000.

And there she was: Ruth Mitchell in spectacles and a pale trouser suit, a practical, drip-dry Down Under outfit. Her hair was cut sensibly and a scarf, loosely held in a scarf ring, hung around her neck. Next to her, Arthur stooped towards the camera with his cup in one hand and a bottle in the other, proposing a toast. He was square-shouldered, gaunt, and spoon-jawed. His grin revealed a row of sheeplike teeth that met his upper gum in a row of high arches. His present devastation was analysed under the subheading DREAMS SHATTERED.

The garden of his house was not as tidy as the others. A dustbin sat out on the middle of the drive near the end, under a tree. The grass was uncut. There were dark stains in the drifts of fallen petals on the front path and the smell that exuded from them was the familiar sweet stench of dying flowers. In the borders, unidentifiable stalks stood skinny and naked as pencils among sparse flower heads, spent and weather-battered.

I made my way up the drive close to the boundary wall. I was intending to wheel the dustbin further up, nearer the garage doors, where it would be more convenient. Just as I reached it, something made me turn my head. It was something that eyes weren’t much use for, not a figure nor quite a shape nor barely a movement, but something under a tree on the other side of the garden, more like a shimmer near the ground. It was the aftershock of a tiny disturbance, the merest righting of the surface after a departure just accomplished, the air closing again around an absence. And while I couldn’t tell that it wasn’t caused by something quite ordinary and solid and swift such as a cat, I couldn’t be sure it was, either. Perhaps it was just the passing moon shadow of a branch lifted by the wind. I waited, shivering, for what might come next.

Then, from deeper in the garden over at the side of the house came sounds actual and unambiguous enough, the crick-cruck of a gate latch and the scrape and squeak of hinges. Footsteps sounded on the path, and receded. I stepped silently over the concrete in front of the garage and crossed the front lawn. I trailed through the long wet grass, tugging up strands and soaking my feet. I dared not follow at once into the gully between the house wall and the boundary fence so I paused at the side gate, which stood open. There was a faint, human sourness of sweat and exhaled breath lingering there, I was certain of it. I peered up the gully. Something was moving away from me into the darkness of the back garden. I saw no shape or outline. I knew this presence in the way a bat would; I sensed a greater density, a different dark in the dark, swaying ahead of me. I waited for a while longer and then, making no sound, I followed.

At the corner of the house, I crouched against the wall and that’s when I saw him, limping across the lawn, stepping in and out of white light and shadows cast over the grass by the moon. He was tall and rather tottery; in the moonlight his hair and clothes gleamed palely. He was clutching what looked at first like sticks and leaves for the compost heap but was actually a handful of broken flowers picked from the front garden.

Though he was unsteady on his feet and his progress was unhurried, he moved rather fast into the shadow cast by the house, shrugging the light from his back as he would discard a coat. He mounted some shallow steps up to a patio and from there he passed into a long, leanto conservatory built against the back wall. The interior was unlit and I watched him make his way along it, neither furtive nor afraid, merely discreet, solitary.

I could not bear to see him go. There was a shed set deep in a curve of shrubs against the garden’s back wall and I moved towards it across the grass, becoming, like him, only a swift, darker presence in darkness. It was a small wooden pavilion with a window on each side and a shallow porch; I settled myself on the steps and leaned against the low balustrade. A white lilac tree swayed above and all was quiet but for the rasping of its branches on the asphalt roof. The drowsy, creosotey damp mingled with the sharp sweetness of lilac blossom. I sat shivering with cold, and the house before me was still.

Suddenly lights came on in an uncurtained upstairs room. In the glare of four overhead bulbs that beamed into all the corners, I could see him, carrying armfuls of papers to and fro. His mouth was working, talking to his dead wife, Ruth, I supposed, and when he paused near the window I caught glimpses of his face wretchedly pained and channelled with deep lines. Once or twice he stopped and covered his eyes, and his body shook with weeping. But he kept doggedly at his work, his moving shadow split by the angled lights across the yellow wall. Although it was bright, the room seemed colder and bleaker and lonelier than out here where I sat on the damp step.

I realized that all my pointless roaming was at an end. Who better than I to ease the burden of the poor man’s distress? My being the cause of it bound me intimately to his suffering; surely an obligation to witness and relieve it must be the reason I was still alive. He needed comfort. He needed me, or he would, eventually, and perhaps with urgency and at a time not of my choosing. And it would be a fitting, if only a small beginning, to keep vigil until I could be of use to him. I would have to be here every night. If I failed to watch, his loneliness would increase; if I ceased watching, I would surely find myself responsible for some new disaster. I would stay here, all night if need be, watching his shadow pass forward and back across the room. I would no longer notice the cold. That would be as much, for the moment, as I could do.