The Forsyte Saga, Volume 3(135)

Now the bridesmaids! Hilary’s two girls, her cousins Monica and Joan, slender and keen, Little Celia Moriston, fair as a seraph (if that was female), Sheila Ferse, dark and brilliant; and toddly little Anne – a perfect dumpling!

Once on her knees, Dinny quietened down. She remembered how they used to kneel, nightgowned, against their beds, when Clare was a tiny of three and she herself a ‘big girl’ of six. She used to hang on to the bed-edge by the chin so as to save the knees; and how ducky Clare had looked when she held her hands up like the child in the Reynolds picture! ‘That man,’ thought Dinny, ‘will hurt her! I know he will!’ Her thoughts turned again to Michael’s wedding all those ten years ago. There she had stood, not three yards from where she was kneeling now, alongside a girl she didn’t know – some relative of Fleur’s. And her eyes, taking in this and that with the fluttered eagerness of youth, had lighted on Wilfrid standing sideways, keeping watch on Michael. Poor Michael! He had seemed rather daft that day, from excessive triumph! She could remember quite distinctly thinking: ‘Michael and his lost angel! ’ There had been in Wilfrid’s face something which suggested that he had been cast out of happiness, a scornful and yet yearning look. That was only two years after the Armistice, and she knew now what utter disillusionment and sense of wreckage he had suffered after the war. He had been talking to her freely the last two days; had even dwelled with humorous contempt on his infatuation for Fleur eighteen months after that marriage which had sent him flying off to the East. Dinny, but ten when the war broke out, remembered it chiefly as meaning that mother had been anxious about father, had knitted all the time, and been a sort of sock depot; that everybody hated the Germans; that she had been forbidden sweets because they were made with saccharine, and finally the excitement and grief when Hubert went off to the war and letters from him didn’t often come. From Wilfrid these last few days she had gathered more clearly and poignantly than ever yet what the war had meant to some who, like Michael and himself, had been in the thick of it for years. With his gift of expression he had made her feel the tearing away of roots, the hopeless change of values, and the gradual profound mistrust of all that age and tradition had decreed and sanctified. He had got over the war now, he said. He might think so, but there were in him still torn odds and ends of nerves not yet mended up. She never saw him without wanting to pass a cool hand over his forehead.

The ring was on now, the fateful words said, the exhortations over; they were going to the vestry. Her mother and Hubert followed. Dinny sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the East window. Marriage! What an impossible state, except – with a single being.

A voice in her ear said:

‘Lend me your hanky, Dinny. Mine’s soakin’, and your uncle’s is blue.’

Dinny passed her a scrap of lawn, and surreptitiously powdered her own nose.

‘Be done at Condaford, Dinny,’ continued her aunt. ‘All these people – so fatiguin’, rememberin’ who they aren’t. That was his mother, wasn’t it? She isn’t dead, then.’

Dinny was thinking: ‘Shall I get another look at Wilfrid?’

‘When I was married everybody kissed me,’ whispered her aunt, ‘so promiscuous. I knew a girl who married to get kissed by his best man. Aggie Tellusson. I wonder. They’re comin’ back!’

Yes! How well Dinny knew that bride’s smile! How could Clare feel it, not married to Wilfrid! She fell in behind her father and mother, alongside Hubert, who whispered: ‘Buck up, old girl, it might be a lot worse!’ Divided from him by a secret that absorbed her utterly, Dinny squeezed his arm. And, even as she did so, saw Wilfrid, with his arms folded, looking at her. Again she gave him a swift smile, and then all was hurly-burly, till she was back at Mount Street and Aunt Em saying to her, just within the drawing-room door:

‘Stand by me, Dinny, and pinch me in time.’

Then came the entry of the guests and her aunt’s running commentary.

‘It is his mother – kippered. Here’s Hen Bentworth!… Hen, Wilmet’s here, she’s got a bone to pick…. How d’you do? Yes, isn’t it – so tirin’…. How d’you do? The ring was so well done, don’t you think? Conjurers!… Dinny, who’s this?… How do you do? Lovely! No! Cherrell. Not as it’s spelled, you know – so awkward!… The presents are over there by the man with the boots, tryin’ not to. Silly, I think! But they will…. How d’you do? You are Jack Muskham? Lawrence dreamed the other night you were goin’ to burst…. Dinny, get me Fleur, too, she knows everybody.’