The Dust That Falls from Dreams (32 page)

A
s her wedding to Daniel approached, Rosie felt doubt and apprehension weighing her down, but she was committed and could hardly back out. She thought that she probably loved him, or might be able to, but it still did not seem right. In some ways he was too much like Ash. He was not only bold and athletic and amusing, he was even an engineer. How would she ever be able to behold him without seeing the ghost of Ash over his shoulder? Or embrace him and notice how different his body was?

Rosie went to church and prayed. In her room she frequently unwrapped her madonna and looked into that painted face for some hint of advice or direction. She went and sat by the Tarn. She went down into the orchard and looked at Bouncer’s grave, as though that might yield a little inspiration. She sat in the conservatory flicking through her autograph book, looking at the loving messages and beautiful drawings, the humorous cartoons of the men she had nursed at Netley. Their faces had faded already, leaving behind an atmosphere in place of an image.

Rosie knew what convention required. Before you married you destroyed all your love letters from everyone else. That’s what you had to do, and it made some symbolic sense; it was how you signified that there was now, irrevocably, only one man in your life. It was like the commitment you made when you changed your name.

She had a thick sheaf of Ash’s letters, from 1910 to 1915, bound up in a ribbon, and she kept them in her dressing-table drawer, right at the back, behind the powder puffs and compacts, and the cotton wool. They had acquired the feminine smell of cosmetics and scent, and there was no longer any point in sniffing at them. She took them out often and reread them. Their passionate hyperbole never failed to fill her with longing and regret. In those days every month had seemed to be July.

One Sunday after matins she was whiling the time away before lunch when she suddenly found a politician’s solution to her dilemma, and accordingly she went out on Monday and bought a small ruled notebook from the stationer’s. It was bound in red-and-black leather, and had a ribbon that served as a bookmark. She calculated that it should be exactly the right size if only she edited out the chit-chat and unnecessary detail, and just retained all that was most beautiful and moving. Sitting at the escritoire in her room, with a photograph of Ash propped up at the back of it, she wrote on the first page
‘The past is part and parcel of the present’
and then she began to redact.

‘You are now a part of me
–
I hold and cherish you as a thing sacred.’

‘Dearest, dearest heart, my soul calls to yours and I feel worn out.’

‘To me you are holy and I sometimes wonder if Heaven is better than your dear kisses.’

‘My thoughts are my visionary arms. They cling to you always.’

‘Last night I dreamed that you came to me and kissed me, and said “I have come to stay with you tonight”
–
why is Heaven so cruel? Just as I was about to cling to you I was awakened.’

‘I sit all alone from 8.30 to 10.30 thinking of you
–
these hours are the most sacred in the day, beloved.’

‘When you smile on me again the curtains will be drawn from the sun.’

‘I want to be alone in sunlit fields and feel your dear head against mine until the end of all things.’

‘I would work and give my life’s blood to win you, my beloved. I know I am not worth considering, but I love, want and must have you. I crave for you all day, and sometimes find myself not listening to people, but hearing your voice calling me.’

‘During the evening will you give yourself to me for just one second? All things earthly and heavenly are outshone by you.’

‘My prayer tonight is: God, You can take away all that I have, but give me a garden of flowers with my sweet one, for us to live in.’

‘All I want is a kiss from your lips to fire my blood.’

‘You know, dearest heart, how an autumn morning can make your blood tingle. Well, that’s what happens when I think of those kisses I shall steal from you.’

‘You will probably never appreciate or understand the gaps you have
filled in my life. I was so very lonely before you came. You seemed to understand at once how desolate this country seemed to me, how I struggled with its rigid ways, even as a little boy, and how I couldn’t understand its archaic institutions, how I felt so much like a bird forbidden to fly, how I longed to go home to America. It was you who gave me England, made England my home. Thank you for giving me England. Flower of my Eden, goodnight.’

On the eve of her wedding to Daniel, having copied out all that was most intimate in Ash’s letters, when the rest of the house was all afluster with preparations and jollity, Rosie set about doing what she had resolved to do. She arranged balls of newspaper in her grate, adorned them with kindling, and placed lumps of coal strategically. She took the box of matches from the mantelpiece, and found that they were damp. The head of the first match simply came off, and the second broke, but the third one caught, and she tilted it to make the flame climb. Carefully she set light to as many balls of paper as she could. She laid the letters reverently on top.

With horrible detachment she began to watch as Ash’s messages burned, the beloved handwriting turning brown and then flaring.

Suddenly she knew that she couldn’t bear it. She saw the fire taking, and had the wild thought that if only she acted fast enough her fingers would escape the flames. Her hands darted in, and seized one letter after another, dropping them on the hearth and beating out the flames. She felt the sting and sear of it, but knew that it was too late to stop trying to rescue the letters.

Once all the charred paper was on the hearth, she realised that she had burned the backs of her hands as well as the palms and fingers. As the horrifying pain welled up and the skin blistered, she knew there was nothing she could do but run for the bathroom.

Her hands were too damaged to grip the knob. She kicked furiously at the door and began to wail and moan, waving her hands in the attempt to cool them with currents of air.

It seemed like an age, but it was moments before Millicent opened the door, and Rosie rushed past her, falling headlong on the landing, and unable to use her hands to save herself, she crashed down on her face and elbows. Sobbing, she scrambled to
her feet and ran. Millicent ran in her wake. Once in the bathroom, Rosie cried, ‘Turn on the tap, turn on the tap! Quick, Millie, quick!’

As Rosie stood there with cold water running over her burns, crying with the agony of it, Millicent hurtled downstairs and, on her own initiative, ran out of the front door without her hat and down Court Road to fetch Dr Scott.

Later that evening the entire family held court in the drawing room whilst the two servants hovered in the hall. Rosie was their favourite of the sisters, and they were overcome with anxiety and confusion. Rosie had resisted being taken to hospital, and had duly succumbed to shock. She had lain on the sofa, pale and with almost no pulse at the wrist, cold sweat pearling on her brow. She neither moved nor seemed to breathe, and the family were appalled by the prospect of her dying the night before her marriage. Hamilton McCosh went up to her room, inspected the charred letters, and immediately understood what had happened. When he returned and informed the others, they all had the same thought. Ottilie said, ‘The wedding’s got to be called off. Sophie, you and Fairhead will just have to go ahead and get married on your own.’

Dr Scott, a portly middle-aged man of great experience and considerable natural wisdom, arranged Rosie so that her feet were above her head, in order to increase the flow of blood to the brain. ‘It’s more important to treat the shock than the burns,’ he told the family. ‘The burns can wait, and they aren’t nearly as bad as they look. Kindly ask one of the servants to fetch a large bowl or bucket. The other must fetch blankets, and make as many hot-water bottles as you have in the house. Otherwise I must ask you to remain calm and not to interfere.’

Mrs McCosh bridled, not because she wanted to interfere, but because she felt it was something to which she had the natural right.

Just as Dr Scott had hoped and anticipated, Rosie woke up and was promptly sick into the bowl that he had requested. ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Now we can be certain she’ll live. A pot of weak tea please!’

Dr Scott set about preparing the wounds for dressing. The split
in her lip he did nothing about. He made sure that no charred paper still adhered to the wounds on her hands, and cleaned them very gently with warm water. Rosie winced and whimpered, and Sophie went behind her and put an arm round her shoulder, placing her head side by side with Rosie’s. ‘Be most heroical and valorifical and undauntical,’ she whispered, and Rosie managed to laugh.

The doctor punctured the blisters and snipped away the pieces of loose skin. He rummaged in his substantial Gladstone bag, and produced a bottle of picric acid, with which he soaked several pieces of gauze. Carefully he arranged Rosie’s fingers in a natural position and placed gauze between each one so that scarring would not seal any of them together. Then he placed more soaked gauze over the remaining burns, and gently wrapped the hands in bandages.

In the hall he gave his instructions to Mrs McCosh. ‘The dressing can stay on for several days unless there is considerable discharge, in which case I must be sent for. It is possible that shock may return. It sometimes does. If so, send someone for me immediately. The patient will be in great pain for some considerable time, but in my opinion most of the burns are second degree and should not scar to any great extent. If the picric acid soaks through to the outside of the dressing, I must warn you that any linen she touches will be stained a pleasingly deep shade of yellow.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Mrs McCosh, genuinely grateful. ‘Please do not omit to send your bill at the end of the month.’

‘That is something I never forget to do,’ said Dr Scott, ‘however great the temptation. And I trust that you will pay it promptly, as is sometimes not your wont. Good day to you.’ And with that he donned his top hat and set off briskly for home.

Rosie resolutely refused to cancel or postpone her marriage, repeating, ‘I never break promises.’ Despite her inability to exorcise Ash, she had an intuition that marrying Daniel was the right thing to do, and in any case she could not spoil the day for Fairhead and Sophie.

I
t was a splendid morning, to the immense relief of the household, who had set up trestles in the garden, spread with crisp white linen, and laden with food and champagne. A little boy armed with shingle and a catapult had been hired to fend off any birds or squirrels that might take an interest whilst everybody was at church. However, he made more inroads into the spread than the wildlife might have done, and was entirely responsible for the disappearance of a bowl of Brazil nuts and two pies. Caractacus made off with a large cube of Cheddar cheese and ate it in the orchard.

Cookie had been working flat out for days making delicate little items for the reception, and had been adamant that a cake must not be bought in. Accordingly she had created two tremendous confections in three tiers that occupied the centre of the kitchen table, and around which the rest of the preparations had to be conducted. She fussed and perspired and frequently declared that she had never been so busy or so put upon in all her born days.

Ottilie and Christabel had had the idea that it would be very fine if Daniel and Rosie were to be married by Fairhead, prior to his being married to Sophie by the rector, but ultimately it seemed altogether too complicated, and Fairhead himself said that it would be impossible to concentrate on the other wedding when he was preoccupied with his own. Christabel had also had the idea that she should take the wedding photographs, until Rosie had pointed out that if she was taking the photographs, then she herself would not be able to be in them, and that in any case it would seem a bit strange to have one of the bridesmaids take the pictures, all dressed up in frills and furbelows, and partially concealed under a black cloth. Gaskell offered to step in, but in truth Mrs McCosh, for all her egalitarianism when it
concerned her own case, was not to be convinced that a lady photographer could be relied upon to do the job properly, so Gaskell curled her lip in quiet disdain and resigned herself to being a mere guest. She arrived on a motorcycle, attired in a manner that would have reminded many people of the flamboyant costumes of Oscar Wilde, were it not for the flying helmet and goggles.

Daniel, in the full dress uniform of the RAF, a sword buckled at his side, strolled down Court Road, past the solid mansions of the new bourgeoisie, to St John’s. At his side was Fairhead, dressed in the number ones of the chaplaincy. They had little to say to each other, but enjoyed the quiet reassurance of masculine company. They felt as if they were walking towards the gates of the Garden of Eden, their minds whirling both with nervousness and vague, sweet optimism. They fell into step. They had decided to swap being best man, and carried the other man’s ring in their pocket. In Daniel’s case Archie had declined the job, quite brusquely – ‘Out of the question, old boy, couldn’t possibly’ – and Fluke had merely said, ‘Sorry, old fellow, I’ve got other plans. I’m afraid I can’t even turn up until the reception, much as it pains me to say so.’ Strangely enough, the other members of his squadron had told him the same thing. As for Fairhead, it seemed perfectly obvious to him that Daniel should be his best man, since he really had become his best friend in the last few months. Like many clergymen, he really preferred the company of sceptics.

‘I’ve got one more medal than you,’ teased Daniel, as they passed the palace.

‘No one will notice,’ replied Fairhead. ‘We both have quite a chestful, and for all anyone knows, mine might be better than yours. Yours might be for peeling potatoes in the face of the enemy. And you don’t have a silver crucifix.’

‘No, I’m not that kind of sky pilot.’

Ten minutes after the grooms were settled in church, the brides and bridesmaids arrived in an open carriage drawn by a pair of plumed greys. The maids were Ottilie and Christabel, carrying bouquets, and dressed in blue silk that Gaskell and Christabel had designed and made between them, so that they looked like heroines from a medieval legend or a fantasy by
William Morris. About their heads they wore garlands of small white carnations and both wore their hair straight, brushed to a deep shine. They had tossed a coin to decide which was to be bridesmaid to which bride, and Ottilie had been assigned to Rosie, and Christabel to Sophie. Rosie and Sophie were dressed very like the maids, except in white silk, with a simple headdress, also reminiscent of medieval times, and also made by Gaskell and Christabel during many long companionable evenings in the Chelsea atelier. Neither Rosie nor Sophie had wanted to wear a veil, and Mrs McCosh would therefore, very grumpily and resentfully, have to forgo that moment in the ceremony when the bride reveals her face to the groom in time for the kiss.

Sophie had been so well made up that she looked beautiful for the first time in her life. Her stiff frizzy hair had been tamed into a bunch behind, and her dress evened out the lines of her small breasts and wide hips. Rosie’s long chestnut hair had been plaited and arranged about her head like a chaplet, exposing the fair skin of her neck and the fine line of her jaw. Both carried a small bouquet of white flowers. They had borrowed a set of pearls from each other, and wore sapphire and topaz earrings inherited from their grandmother. They had each tied a blue ribbon around their leg, just above the knee, where it would not slip.

These young women were handed down by their father, and took up their station at the church door, until such time as the organist would strike up the Wedding March. Sophie stood clutching her bouquet, almost quivering with delight and anticipation, and Rosie stood motionless, feeling that she had been caught up in a strange dream. She looked at the edifice of the church and reflected that this was where she would have married Ash, had he lived. How strange that life was unfolding without him. Her hands were stinging terribly from their burns of the evening before, with agonising flushes of heat coming and going in waves. She now felt ashamed and embarrassed by what she had done, but helpless in its aftermath.

Mr McCosh felt familiar pangs of pain in his chest and left arm, and thought that he really must ask Dr Scott to call round again. Mrs McCosh, conscious of her role, and magnificent in an
enormous floral hat that entirely blocked the view of those behind, fretted inwardly about the success of the reception. Now that there were no servants to speak of, one had to rely on people who were hired in, and results were so much more unpredictable.

When the organ struck up and the brides entered on their father’s arms, neither Daniel nor Fairhead turned round to look; they wanted to delay the surprise and pleasure.

The service, as it turned out, was slightly muddled, since, although the plans had been carefully laid, the rector became confused under the pressure of the event. He addressed Fairhead as Daniel Pitt, and had to be corrected, and seemed startled when Hamilton McCosh stepped forward to give away each of the brides, and equally startled when each groom presented the other with the ring for his bride.

The greatest difficulty occurred when Daniel had to put the ring on Rosie’s finger. It had occurred to no one, not even to Rosie, that the moment would come when she would need an unbandaged ring finger. Daniel took her hand, perceived the problem, was momentarily appalled and perplexed, and then put the ring to the tip of the finger. He held it there for a few seconds, and then palmed it, and was only able to transfer it to his pocket when they all they left to sign the register.

Sophie’s infectious joy gave lift to the whole occasion, and when she went up on tiptoe to kiss Fairhead she put her arm round his neck and drew his head down to receive her lips. Rosie surprised herself by kissing Daniel with real tenderness. How strange but delightful it was to be Mrs Pitt.

When the time came to leave, the organist pulled out all the stops, and played Widor, causing the whole church to reverberate. The two couples emerged arm in arm into the sunlight and passed beneath the glittering arch of swords provided by the grooms’ military friends, all of them beautifully got up in the bright uniforms of their regiments. The happy crowd of friends and family threw rice over them, clapping and cheering. Some of the women wiped tears from their eyes, and the men necessarily restrained their own.

As the open carriage departed, this time bearing the couples, Sophie threw her bouquet to Ottilie, who skipped a little as she caught it. Rosie’s bouquet flew quite accidentally towards Gaskell,
who caught it, looked at it with puzzlement, as if it were an inexplicably large and exotic insect, and then tossed it on to Ottilie. ‘I can’t have two!’ she protested, and Gaskell said, ‘Of course you can. It’ll double your chances!’

At the reception Mr McCosh made a speech in which he declared his regret that he could not have married all his daughters off in one go, and that it would seem terribly dull marrying off the other two in separate ceremonies, but he feared that they might never get married anyway, because there were only two men in the world good enough for his daughters to marry, and they had been snaffled by Sophie and Rosie already. Christabel felt a little peculiar as she listened to this, given that Gaskell was by her side. Ottilie looked over at Archie, who was making a point of standing on his own, grimly enduring the loss to his brother of the woman he had always loved. Ottilie felt very sorry for him, and wished he would notice her, but she knew that he never would, and that one day she would probably find someone else.

Daniel and Fairhead managed to combine their speeches as both grooms and best men, under strict instruction from Hamilton McCosh to keep it brief. Fairhead quoted the Song of Solomon in honour of his bride, looking at her directly, and reciting: ‘ “Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue…” ’

Sophie glowed with pleasure and clapped at the end, jumping up and down like a schoolgirl. Mrs McCosh found herself crying unexpectedly. The speech had caused her to remember her husband’s early passion.

Daniel’s speech had only just got under way when a droning sound from the south began to get louder and louder. Those who had experienced the Zeppelin and Gotha raids began to feel distinctly uneasy. Daniel was drowned out, as the racket grew suddenly deafening and it grew clear what was happening.

Daniel’s entire squadron of Snipes came over at roof level, led
by Fluke’s diminutive and impertinent Sopwith triplane, with his Squadron Leader’s streamers trailing and flapping from the struts. The three flights peeled apart and began to put on a display of synchronised formation flying, looping, banking, flying upside down, missing head-on collisions at the last moment, and diving on the house. At the end they dived together, shot up into the air, hung there for a second, stalled, sideslipped, and fell into a collective falling leaf that had Daniel’s heart in his mouth. He was possibly the only one there who knew how dangerous it could be, but it did look wonderful. At the last minute the engines roared back into life, the planes pulled out of their fall, and rose back up into the clouds to perform one more loop with a roll on top. They then set off in the direction of the golf course, whose fairways on this day were to contain an unusual number of fighters. The club’s members turned out to watch them coming in to land, asking each other rhetorically whether one really would have to play the ball where it lay, even if an aeroplane happened to be obscuring one’s shot.

A few minutes after the squadron had gone, Fluke’s little triplane reappeared, trailing behind it a banner that read ‘Hallelujah!’

Rosie suddenly remembered the day when they had had their coronation celebration for King Edward VII, and the garden seemed to fill with ghosts. Ash and his brothers, little boys back then, had grown into men and marched away, to vanish into the insatiable stomach of war.

Mme Pitt appeared at her side, dressed in the Parisian style, in a hat with a curved brim trimmed with artificial roses. On her chest she wore a silver-mounted tiger-claw brooch that Rosie had always hated, because she did not think that any animal should be made into jewellery.

‘You are remembering, I think,’ said Mme Pitt, ‘when my boys came over the wall.’

‘It was quite a stunt,’ said Rosie, a little feebly. Mme Pitt smelled very powerfully of lavender.

She looked Rosie straight in the eye, as if to imply a threat, and said, ‘You must look after my son.’ Then she kissed her on the cheek, patted her on the shoulder, and left her to herself.

After the traditional reading of the telegrams, just as Rosie was
laying her injured right hand lightly on top of Daniel’s for the cutting of the cake with his sword, the pilots of his squadron appeared en masse, full of high spirits, to organise leap-frog competitions and wheelbarrow races, and perform treetop fights and handstands. They took Daniel and Fairhead on their shoulders and bore them round the garden in triumph. The level of general happiness and rejoicing seemed to ratchet up several notches, and the level of decorum plummeted. All the champagne and food disappeared. Mrs McCosh became tipsy, and had to totter indoors and lie down.

In her wedding photograph Rosie’s bandaged hands are mainly concealed by the long lacy cuffs of her dress, and the monochrome does not reveal the deep yellow stains in it. The split in her lip is discernible but not distracting. The brides’ and grooms’ friends and relatives look grim, as they always do in pictures where one has had to pose in perfect stillness for too long a time. Sophie and Fairhead are looking at each other. Daniel is smiling, the sole one there who believes that Rosie had an accident with a brazier in the kitchen. He looks handsome, vigorous and happy in his RAF uniform with its double row of medals, and his sword hanging from the Sam Browne. His brother Archie looks magnificent and dignified in the uniform of a major of Rattray’s Sikhs. His face reveals nothing of the fact that he is irretrievably in love with the woman who has become his brother’s wife. Mme Pitt, his mother, looks as if she is waiting to do something mischievous. Rosie looks subdued and wistful. She is niggled by the promise she once made to Ash, that she would love him and him alone for all eternity. Hamilton McCosh is supporting his wife on his arm, and worrying that Rosie might have done the wrong thing by this young man that he likes and admires. Mrs McCosh is thinking about whether or not there is any cachet in being mother-in-law to someone who is half French. Ottilie and Christabel are wondering what the wedding nights will be like.