Chapter Eighteen
There was a saying that one wedding brings on another.
‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ Rose asserted, when someone said it at the table. ‘It’s not going to happen by magic just because you say it.’
‘When’s your wedding going to be, Rose?’ Eddie chirped up from the lowly place at the middle of the table.
‘Don’t you be cheeky or I’ll come and clout you,’ Rose snapped.
‘We Italians love weddings,’ said Miss Petrocelli. Mr and Mrs Sebastian had returned from Town and not yet departed for Henley. ‘But they are different from yours.’
‘Tell us, then,’ said Daisy.
‘Oh, you walk through the village to the church with your family in a procession, and everyone comes to their door and beats on a saucepan with a spoon to make much noise.’
‘Ooh, whatever for?’ asked Doris.
‘To keep away the evil spirits. Sometimes there are firecrackers too. Devils do not like loud noise. And we would never get married on Friday, like your Lady Rachel. Or Tuesday. They are bad-luck days.’
‘Evil spirits and bad luck?’ said Rose. ‘You don’t have a lot of hope for it going well, then?’
‘Tell us another thing,’ Mrs Webster said hastily.
Miss Petrocelli turned dreamy eyes on her. ‘The bride wears her ring on the left hand, the third finger, because there is a special vein, the vena amorosa, which carries the blood from there straight to the heart.’
‘Oh, that’s pretty!’ said Doris.
‘Everyone wears the ring on that finger,’ Rose said flatly.
‘But nobody told us why before,’ Doris said, anxious to retain some romance. ‘Don’t you think that’s lovely?’
‘I think you’re a fool.’
‘Why are you so against weddings, Rose?’ Sam asked.
‘Cos nobody’s ever going to ask her, that’s why,’ Cyril said, and Afton leaned over and slapped the back of his head to save Rose having to get up.
‘You’re all idiots,’ Rose said. ‘Not you men – you get what you want, always do. But you girls, you think getting married is all lovely and romantic and everything’s going to be flowers and kissy-fingers.
But it’s cleaning up after a man and waiting on him hand and foot, that’s all. You’ll find out.’
Mabel said, ‘We do that anyway. I reckon I’d sooner clean up after one man than twenty. And you get someone to warm your feet on at night.’
‘Ooh, don’t talk so shocking, Mabel!’ said Daisy.
‘Well, what I say is—’ Mabel began.
But Rose had seen Ada slip from her seat to go and whisper in Mrs Webster’s ear, and she interrupted Mabel to say, ‘What’s she want? Whispering’s bad manners in company, Ada, you should know that.’
Ada, blushing, scuttled back to her seat, and Mrs Webster caught Moss’s eye down the length of the table, and tinkled her fork against her water-glass. ‘If I may, Mr Moss? Ada’s asked me to make an announcement.’
Moss first frowned, then smiled. It was for him to make announcements; but he could never be cross with Ada, his lily-white fairy with the spun-gold hair.
‘Carry on, Mrs Webster.’
‘Ada’s too shy to speak herself, so she’s asked me to say that she and George Soper – one of the grooms from our stables, for those of you who don’t know him – have been walking out now for nearly two years, and he’s…What was it, Ada?’
Ada, her transparent cheeks rosy with surging blood, her eyes cast down in agonised shyness, whispered something, which Tilda, sitting beside her, had to relay.
‘Got a new position.’ More whispering. ‘Groom to Mrs Peel in School Lane.’
‘That’s right, so he’s now in a position to ask her to marry him.’
The female half of the company, at least, responded with oohs and aahs. Afton, smiling, called down to her, ‘Felicitations, Ada. He’s a lucky fellow,’ and the male half made supporting murmurs.
‘In three weeks – is that right, Ada?’ Mrs Webster went on. ‘When the banns have been read. The wedding will be at St Leonard’s Church in Ashmore Carr—’
Whisper, whisper.
‘And we’re all invited,’ Tilda exclaimed.
Everyone cheered. Almost everyone. Mr Moss sat like a man stunned, still gripping his knife and fork, staring at Ada.
Afton looked at him, then caught Frederick’s eye.
Frederick shrugged, so Afton raised his voice and said, ‘I think we should drink a toast to Ada and her lucky George. Congratulations and the very best of luck to both.’
The toast was drunk in water, but it was heartfelt. Everyone had been feeling a bit let down after the wedding, but now there was something else to look forward to.
It wasn’t, Moss thought in the privacy of his own room, sitting at his desk, that he’d hoped to win her for himself – or not after the first hot-headed folly, anyway, of falling in love with her and indulging himself in dreams that he saw plain enough, now, were sheer fantasy.
He was too old for her, and she was so delicate and dainty, like a fairy child, while he was…
a gnome or a troll or something big and ugly by comparison.
And, anyway, she had never shown any interest of that sort towards him.
Once his vision had cleared he had known he had no chance with her.
He had suffered agonies of jealousy when she started walking out with the third groom, George, torturing himself with images of him putting his coarse hands on her, kissing her with his rubbery lips, tarnishing her exquisite loveliness.
But he’d had to get used to the idea, and he’d been comforted just a little when discreet enquiries on his part revealed that George Soper was regarded as a good, decent boy who would – probably – never take liberties.
His mother was a pillar of St Leonard’s and his father was an honest builder and decorator and both were respected in the Carr, where Ada’s family also lived.
The Sopers would never have countenanced any hanky-panky and would have brought up their boy strictly.
And besides, he had thought, it was bound to be a long engagement: years and years before George could get on enough and save up enough to be able to get married.
People of that class often had ten-year engagements.
The job with Mrs Peel had come unexpectedly, he learned from listening in to a conversation between Cyril and Wilfrid.
George’s father had been doing a building job for her and heard her groom was leaving, and since Soper had done work for her and some of her neighbours in the past and given satisfaction, he was in good odour with her, and took a chance on suggesting his son for the position.
The job came with a tiny cottage attached to the stables, two rooms and a scullery downstairs and one room upstairs, just barely enough for a couple, but Mr Soper didn’t hold with mollycoddling.
George was anxious to get wed, and Mr Soper didn’t think any good came of over-long engagements.
He believed it was better for a young couple to muddle through and learn to cope on their own rather than be frustrated and fall into temptation. So he’d given his blessing.
So Moss’s precious Ada was going to have to ‘muddle through’ in some pitiful hovel, having to cook and clean, wash and scrub, with no comforts, probably not even any facilities.
He saw her downtrodden in a sacking apron, raking out the stove, boiling water in a bucket so that she could scrub the kitchen floor, carrying slops to the outhouse, her little hands growing chapped and red, her golden hair dull and unwashed, her shoulders slumped.
He whimpered in distress. George might be a decent lad, but there would be no money, never a new dress for her, not even a new ribbon for her bonnet, never a day of rest or an outing to raise her spirits.
And if a baby came along…He couldn’t even think about that.
She would have done better with him, he thought.
He might be older, and a troll, but he would have treated her like a princess.
She would have been the one to be waited on. And he had savings…
Oh, his Ada, his dainty, lovely, gold-and-white fairy girl…
His thoughts were interrupted by a tentative knock at his half-open door, and he looked up to see Ada’s face in the gap, wide-eyed and anxious.
‘Come in,’ he said, sitting up straighter, clasping his hands together, hoping his previous thoughts didn’t show on his face. He cleared his throat. ‘Have you a message for me?’ Because of her shyness it was usually necessary to prompt her. Mrs Webster had sent her with a message, most likely.
She arranged herself in front of him, small hands wringing themselves together with a fold of her apron. ‘No – I – there’s—’ she stammered.
‘It’s all right, Ada,’ he said kindly. ‘Speak out. I won’t bite.’
Colour flooded her face. She looked at her feet. ‘I wanted to ask you—’
‘Yes?’
‘If you’d—’
‘Yes? If I would what?’
She managed to look up, just for a peep, then down again. ‘If you would very kindly give me away. At the wedding.’
He couldn’t speak for a moment: to be asked that, of all things!
To give her away when he didn’t want to part with her under any circumstances!
The cruelty of Fate knew no bounds. But he saw her colour increasing and realised she thought she had offended.
He had to rescue her. ‘It’s very nice of you to ask me,’ he said, as warmly as he could, ‘but won’t your father be doing it? ’
‘M’father’s dead,’ she told the floor in her tiny, murmury voice. ‘Four years ago come Christmas.’
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I thought you lived with your mother and father before you came here.’
‘My mother. And my brother Harold and his wife live at home as well since Pa died, to take care of things.’ She looked up now, seeming to have accessed some courage from somewhere. ‘But I don’t want Harold to do it. He’d not do it right. And he’s not my pa.’
‘I’m not, either,’ Moss said.