Читать книгу Gracious Living - Andrea Goldsmith - Страница 6

For the first thirty years of her life Elizabeth Dadswell was tied to family, friends and background. She was married at twenty-one to Adrian Dadswell, who, with more ambition than ancestry, was not quite the husband her parents would have chosen; however, this being the late 1960s when so many sons of respectable families were going to ruin, they decided he would have to do. At twenty-three she became mother to a premature baby whose damaged brain defied the sweet destiny of pedigree. Such misfortune would have overwhelmed most people, but not Elizabeth who persisted with her exquisitely tailored life, struggled along in a fog of fatigue, until at a miserable thirty she asked herself, ‘What price love? What price heritage?’ and rifling through dreams dusty from neglect found no answers. At thirty-two she asked Adrian to leave and she and Ginnie, who was only nine at the time, set about making the house their home.

Elizabeth gave Adrian’s dun-coloured leather chair to the Salvation Army; she sold his desk to the plumber and bought a new bed. With the assistance of old Mr Jamieson the gardener, Elizabeth set up the new bed in the formal lounge, the room in which for the ten years of their marriage, Adrian had dispensed liquor and camaraderie to miscellaneous companions – some of whom were Elizabeth’s friends, many of whom were not. Adrian dispensed alcohol and crudities and Elizabeth dispensed food and refinement. Adrian liked her to be present while he entertained, and so she was, until the teetering canopy of her marriage finally collapsed and she asked him to leave.

Adrian was annoyed, the marriage suited him and it should have suited Elizabeth; after all, she had everything – housekeeper, gardener, nice clothes, another child if only she were more sensible. He was also inconvenienced: in the midst of a big subdivision project he had more pressing things to do than look for a place to live. Elizabeth was being rash, he said, and should take time to reconsider. He suggested a week up north for her to relax and come to her senses, he even promised to join her for a couple of days; but she remained firm. He said she was being unreasonable and not at all refined. He said she would regret it.

But she did not.

And so he left. He left the woman he had married, the imperfect daughter he had fathered, the house his in-laws had bought: he left a life which had served him well. He also left the liquor cabinet, left it full. Elizabeth divided the contents between Mr Jamieson, who thought Adrian had a drinking problem, and Jack the plumber who had bought Adrian’s desk. With the alcohol neatly distributed, the cabinet became home to Elizabeth’s underwear. Now it stood in the former lounge alongside a cedar wardrobe and chest from the 1850s and opposite a delicate desk from a few decades earlier. Over on the western wall, in front of the bay windows, was an exquisitely carved couch where Elizabeth often sat, her shoulder-length auburn hair blending with the burnished wood. She would sit and look and admire this grand room with its great carved ceiling and marvel how, in the ten years since Adrian had left, his room had become her own. (For the first time it occurred to her: ten years married, ten years divorced – she was just about even.) As for the old bedroom, she had converted it to a studio and any remnants of Adrian were now smothered in clay and marble and sandstone.

Kate Marley, who had lived in the bungalow beyond the tennis court these past ten years, said the lounge-bedroom was far too sparse. ‘It looks bleak, lonely, people will feel sorry for you,’ – as if a room were equivalent to a life. Elizabeth disagreed. How, she asked, could anyone pity her this room with its antique furniture, its crystal lamps, its marvellously intricate ceiling mouldings? How could anyone who had known her in the parched years of her marriage pity her? But it was easy, Kate said, people remember things not abstractions, and the things they remembered from Elizabeth’s marriage were her full, noisy house and her personable, if unfaithful, husband.

‘People remember what they thought you had, what you ought to have had,’ Kate continued. ‘To suggest you’re happy now is, in the minds of your old friends, a pitiable lie.’

But she was happy. Where others might see her tethered to loneliness, condemned to an unnatural post-marital spinsterhood, Elizabeth saw fulfilment. Others remembered the abundance, the things of her married life, while Elizabeth remembered an unleavened woman tracing the years in circles, hopes scudding to the horizon like leaves before the wind.

As for things, material things, she had always possessed them and still did. The cedar wardrobe and matching chest, the writing desk, the bookcases, the Charles Conder, the Grace Cossington Smith, a whole houseful of things remained, only Adrian was gone. So what did these eyes of judgement see? That she no longer had company at her dinner table? No one to accompany her to parties? And yet on such occasions Adrian had never stayed with her, always he went in search of more exotic game, leaving Elizabeth to play through a tired repertoire of pleasantries with an assortment of acquaintances. It wore her down after a while and people were heard to comment that pretty Elizabeth Dadswell was ageing badly, that poor Elizabeth Dadswell was being shrivelled by her sad heap of a daughter; what Elizabeth Dadswell needed, they all agreed, was another child, a normal one.

But she did not. She needed fewer people, not more. It was Adrian who was wearing her down; Adrian, whom she had regarded as essential, was pillaging her youth. That’s what neglect can do, that’s what pretence can do – and there were generous amounts of both. The neglect was simple: with the pressure of work and his affairs, Adrian spent very little time at home. As for the pretence – pretending she knew nothing of his infidelities, pretending he loved his daughter – in those days she thought it was the right thing to do; besides, like her mother before her, Elizabeth did not believe in making scenes. As to whether he loved her, it became a moot point; in time he seemed not to notice her, just as he no longer noticed the wardrobe and chest, the writing desk, and the Cossington Smith.

When Adrian left and Elizabeth and Ginnie settled into their life together, weariness and torpor slipped away; Elizabeth gained a little weight and the premature wrinkles thawed. People were heard to mutter that Elizabeth Dadswell, always so prim and proper, had taken a lover – which she had not. At first she tried to explain that her former life, apparently so attractive, was a confected lie, and the man they found so amusing was a shallow clown, but her friends did not want to know, they did not want the truth about a life so very similar to their own. As for Ginnie, she was consumed by the disability as far as the friends were concerned. She had cerebral palsy causing slurred speech and cumbersome movements, and yet, her achievements were many: she had made the junior swimming team, was a top student, and a favourite with her peers. But to the gaze of the Dadswell friends, directed as it was by a firm belief in appearances, Ginnie was less than human. So Elizabeth, a long-time expert at concealment, stopped trying to explain her life. Within a few short months, refined, warm Elizabeth Dadswell was regarded as refined, a little less warm and somewhat enigmatic. Within a year she was described as private and withdrawn and no longer appreciative of old friends. So sad about Elizabeth Dadswell, people whispered behind manicured hands.

But in recent times the whispering had stopped. After a decade of counselling and assertiveness training, the old crowd never whispered, the old crowd spoke its mind and searched for new experiences. People studied her work, running their fingers over the sculptures trying to prise secrets from the stone. They bought her work, they said it made them feel good. Elizabeth Dadswell, former princess of the social set, had become a different sort of curiosity. Of course the old friends still pitied her, never having experienced a mature relationship, never having known the beauty of normal motherhood, but they also envied what they described as her ‘own person’. ‘You are your own person,’ they said solemnly, ‘you’ve reached in deep and found yourself.’ Elizabeth Dadswell had regained her worth and once again the old crowd wanted to know her.

More than she wanted to know them, she thought as she rearranged her pillows and sat up. With her exhibition only a couple of weeks away, the idea of all those people eyeing her work was terrifying. She was about to get up and leave her fears with the early morning when she heard the squeak of the autotray from the passage. She smiled and settled back into the pillows.

‘Are you awake?’ It was Ginnie’s measured voice.

The autotray appeared in the doorway. Behind it, using the trolley in place of her walking sticks, was Ginnie. She crossed the room, her stuttering gait and the sculptured carpet playing havoc with breakfast.

‘Breakfast for two. Coffee, cold toast, slopped orange juice and yesterday’s mail.’

Elizabeth leaned forward and guided the autotray alongside the bed; she moved over and patted the spot next to her. Ginnie flopped down, fell back against her mother, kissed her and swung her wayward body to a sitting position.

‘You were late last night,’ Elizabeth said moving a glass of orange juice to within her daughter’s reach. ‘I thought you were going to Kate’s only for an hour.’

‘I was, but Kate was in top form – a fresh bottle of Scotch, Philip Glass on CD, and a cache of stories I’d never heard before.’ Ginnie drank the juice through a straw and took a piece of toast. She settled back against her mother’s legs and started to laugh. ‘Kate told me how she and Vivienne first met. What a joke boarding school must have been! Has she told you about it?’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘And Shakespeare’s sonnets, have you heard about them too? How she and Vivienne spent years studying them for clues that they were written to a man?’ Ginnie stopped to take a bite, chewed and tipped her head back to hasten a swallow. ‘Kate says the sonnets taught her about love. Sex too. It all sounded so old-fashioned, two children learning about love from Shakespeare’s sonnets; more like the nineteenth century than,’ she paused a moment, ‘what would it have been? 1960? 1961?’ Elizabeth nodded, around that time. ‘Kate also told me Vivienne saved her life.’

‘Vivienne’s very good at saving lives,’ Elizabeth said softly.

Ginnie raised her eyebrows.

‘Another time, darling,’ her mother said. ‘More toast?’

The two women ate in silence. Elizabeth gazed through the bay windows at the brilliant flurry of bougainvillaea, while Ginnie concentrated on eating with minimum spillage. There was little to mark them as mother and daughter, and yet to Kate, to Vivienne, to a few close friends there was a strong resemblance, caught in gestures and mannerisms, words and intonation, a marked similarity despite Ginnie’s erratic arm movements and facial spasms, despite her slow laboured speech. Physically they were very different: Elizabeth small and delicate, and Ginnie much bigger, not fat like Adrian, but with his large frame. Her shape had been further modified by her disability: broad-shouldered from years of using elbow crutches, tapering to narrow hips and wasted child-like legs. The legs were spastic but straight as a result of interminable physiotherapy and occasional surgery. When sitting down with her arms at rest she looked to be a strong, hardy young woman; when she stood it was as if the wrong bottom and top had been paired together in a game of ‘Tops and Tails’.

Ginnie dressed carefully, in slacks never skirts, choosing vivid colours to add bulk to the shrivelled limbs. She wore the colours well having inherited Adrian’s dark hair and skin. Her hair was short, framing a face reminiscent of a sleek, intelligent cat. And cat-like she was with people: intensely loyal to a few, aloof with the rest. For a long time Elizabeth had wondered whether her daughter was more shy than aloof, but Ginnie had said that wasn’t the case, rather she liked to try people out before they had an opportunity to reject her. She was very capable in that way, and rich in humour, a gentle mocking humour. Almost self-parodying, Vivienne had once said, like Jewish humour.

Elizabeth passed Ginnie another piece of toast and settled back into the pillows and sipped her coffee. Over the rim of the cup she watched her daughter eat, saw her determination, challenging the food to escape, daring it to defy her. That was Ginnie: determined, dogged, courageous – and it had saved her. With less courage Ginnie might not have learned to walk and talk, with less determination she would not have won a place at the university.

Ginnie wiped her mouth, pushed the autotray away and leaned back against her mother’s legs. ‘Did you finish it?’ she asked. ‘Did you finish Doublet?’

Elizabeth smiled. ‘I think so.’

Doublet, the last piece for Elizabeth’s university exhibition, was solid sandstone with deep lazy markings, all curves and two figures barely decipherable, the smaller clasped into the body of the larger.

Ginnie bent forward, and in a ragged caress touched her mother’s arm. ‘When will I see it?’

‘Soon. Perhaps later today, depends on how long we’ll be at the university. My appointment with the curator will be no more than an hour, but enrolment could take you all day.’ Elizabeth sighed and stretched. ‘It’s good to be finished.’

‘Does this mean the household will return to normal?’

Elizabeth smiled and nodded. ‘You’ve been very patient.’

Ginnie indicated the mail. ‘Well let’s begin, I’m dying to see what’s in the tinfoil envelope.’

Elizabeth already knew, only Adrian was capable of such vulgarity. It was an invitation to the opening of Eden Park Resort, Adrian’s all-consuming passion these past few years, a gigantic venture that had cost him millions and would reap him millions more. Elizabeth opened the envelope and withdrew a folded card, also in silver foil and embossed in a purple print that was legible only if held at a certain angle. There was a border of Australian insignia – purple kangaroos and emus playing hide-and-seek among sprays of purple wattle – and a request that Elizabeth and ‘little Ginnie if she were well enough’ would join Adrian, as his special guests, in celebrating this great Australian event.

‘What a load of hype! And I do like the bit about how I too can attend his “great Australian event” if I’m well enough.’ Ginnie grasped her throat and pretended to gag. ‘Comments like that make me sick.’

Elizabeth reached across and took Ginnie’s hand. She held it and said nothing because there was nothing to say; Adrian had been a terrible father. She stroked Ginnie’s hand and the two of them sat in silence watching the mosaic of light playing across the wall as the sun caught the diamond rosette of Elizabeth’s ring. And then Elizabeth stopped stroking and the splinters of colour disappeared and the moment was broken. Ginnie reached out and took the invitation; a smile appeared as she looked at it.

‘Was he always so sleazy?’

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite that way myself, but yes, always.’

Twenty years ago he had been described as out-going, a ‘people person’, a fine addition to any party. The girls loved his naughty ways, and the boys considered him a mate – a good drinker, easygoing, and always ready to recount his sexual exploits with names and places intact. He met Elizabeth Bainbridge when she was nearly eighteen; three years later they were married. She was his opposite, people said – quiet to his rowdy, reserved to his affable, petite to his bulky – but, they were quick to add, opposites attract. Unfortunately, no one had bothered to investigate if the attraction of opposites could be correlated with long-term happiness, and no one would until much later, far too late to benefit the Dadswells.

When they first met, Elizabeth Bainbridge was a likeable girl, artistic, and from a good family. At the time she was going out with Oliver Warby, the man both the Bainbridges and the Warbys hoped Elizabeth would marry; but Oliver was not an easy person to like despite Elizabeth’s best efforts. Later, when the supercilious air of the twenty-year-old became a mummified arrogance in the man of forty, Elizabeth felt exonerated. But in the mid-1960s it was different.

That Elizabeth and Oliver would marry had been their parents’ wish ever since the Warbys had joined the Bainbridges for Sunday morning tennis and the two little Bainbridge girls and the three young Warbys were thrown together to entertain themselves for three sets of mixed doubles and midday drinks. With the passage of years, Sunday morning tennis became Sunday afternoon golf and still the children were left to entertain themselves, this time in a deficient little playground attached to the club house. When the parents had finished their game they would return to the children and remark how very well they all got along, particularly the pre-pubescent Oliver and Elizabeth, and they would mutter among themselves that only time would tell.

As it did. Oliver at twenty and Elizabeth at nearly eighteen had been going steady for over a year. Oliver was happy with the arrangement: Elizabeth, so sweet and pretty, suited him well. The two sets of parents were also happy, only Elizabeth was not. And so she grew fat, petite Elizabeth started eating and grew very fat indeed. She ate alone, pounds and pounds of chocolate, plain dairy-milk chocolate and chocolate-covered peanuts; she ate pineapple doughnuts and coffee scrolls and cheese by the pound. She grew fatter and fatter and Oliver grew ever more alarmed. Elizabeth was letting herself go, he said; when she gained a few more pounds he said she was letting him down, a few more and he was reluctant to be seen with her. It was during this period that Adrian Dadswell appeared, Adrian who was a bit overweight himself. Oliver had said that if Elizabeth gained any more weight he would leave: she did and he went. The two sets of parents were distraught; we will speak firmly with Elizabeth, the Bainbridges said to the Warbys, and arrange for some professional help; and we’ll speak firmly to Oliver, the Warbys replied, advise him to be patient. The Bainbridges put aside the list of wedding guests, golf continued, bridge began and the parents waited.

Adrian at this stage played only a minor role. He was not interested in Elizabeth as a girlfriend, she was far too fat for that, but he liked her parents’ swimming pool and swam there on three or four occasions. And he was very pleasant to Elizabeth, joking and gossiping and treating her like one of the boys. Then the university year commenced and swimming stopped.

Elizabeth was enrolled to study at the Melbourne School of Fine Arts, Adrian was in the final year of a law degree. Six months passed before they met again – at the twenty-first birthday of a mutual friend – and by then everything had changed.

What had happened was this: Oliver left and with him the threat of a Bainbridge-Warby union, and Elizabeth commenced her art studies. Her new friends at the college seemed not to notice she was fat and if they did they did not bother about it. She was very happy and very productive. Early in the year she was invited to join the master sculpture classes, an honour rarely extended to a first-year student; it was an exciting time. As for the fat, it was there and then it was not, her body seemed to shrink exponentially with the growth in her work. At the end of first term she had returned to her old weight, at the end of second term Adrian had reappeared, and by the end of third term she had slept with him.

Then there was no going back, not in 1965, not even if you had a nascent nervousness about the man you now had to marry. More than a nervousness, Elizabeth had a curdling suspicion that Adrian was loud and lightweight and mightily self-centred. But it was too late, she had slept with him and she was scared: scared of pregnancy, scared he would not propose, scared he might leave. The first problem, the one of pregnancy, she solved with a strange doctor in a strange city who had no notion that asking for a prescription for the pill was the most nerve-racking experience of her young life. As for the other problems, they persisted until two years later when Adrian proposed.

They were in bed together, a single bed at the Bainbridge beach house, the place Elizabeth and Adrian went for Saturday-night sex after dinner or the cinema. For unmarried couples in the 1960s Saturday night was always the night for sex, but at the time Elizabeth did not know this and feared she was the only one. Adrian rolled over, propped himself on an elbow and proposed.

‘Well, what do you think?’ he said.

What did she think? The relief was enormous! Elizabeth threw herself on top of him, laughing and hugging and crying and squirming and kissing big, wet, grateful kisses, and Adrian interpreting her relief as passion, joined in her excitement, and there she was bouncing on top of him like a baby, aware of his penis inside her but much more excited that she would not have to be a lonely old maid or a tarnished younger one. And suddenly the guilt of two years of sleeping with him evaporated. She sighed with pleasure. Adrian was delighted: ‘If I’d known it would have that effect, I would have proposed ages ago.’ He called her hot and sexy and congratulated her on the orgasm she had failed to notice. He suggested they marry in March of the following year. Again she felt that bliss of relief, that shiver of escaping stress, and Adrian now at the ready, finally understanding, he said, that insecurity about the future had dammed the full rush of her sexuality, and Elizabeth in a cloud of happiness moved with him in joyous rhythm, her large breasts bobbing above his face.

Relief and gratitude in 1967.

‘But you already knew what he was like!’ Ginnie, the voice of the 1980s would say, and Elizabeth would respond that to a girl with a Bainbridge background who was no longer a virgin, Ginnie’s comment was simply not relevant.

One of the problems, Elizabeth was to realise much later, was her limited experience of men. Of course she knew Adrian was a shallow and egocentric person who seemed happier with his male friends than with her, but then her own father was much the same, as were all the other men she knew. The boys at college had been different, but so different she hardly thought of them as men, and she was sure they did not regard her as a woman; they were peers, colleagues, friends with whom she talked for hours, days, years; as for girlfriends they went elsewhere. So, within her experience of men who became husbands, Adrian was not unusual: a little more raucous, a little more flirtatious than most, but the basic ingredients were the same.

The Bainbridges disagreed; Adrian’s background was very different to Elizabeth’s, indeed, in Bainbridge terms Adrian had no background. Adrian’s father had been born in the north of England – Manchester – which was almost as bad as being a southern European. He had worked for years as secretary to an obscure company, and there he would stay until he died or retired, whichever came first. Adrian’s mother had at least been born in London, but that was where the good fortune ended. As soon as her children were at school she started work at Myer department store and was still there, in the homewares section, ‘So useful for when the children are married,’ she had said in what Mrs Bainbridge considered to be extremely poor taste. In truth, Mrs Dadswell was a buyer for the homewares section, a respected employee who had done extremely well, but as far as the Bainbridges were concerned, once a shop assistant always a shop assistant.

The Bainbridges changed their mind about the marriage only after Phillip Warby, Oliver’s younger brother, turned out so badly. And if it could happen to Phillip who had enjoyed every advantage, then it could happen to just about anyone. The Bainbridges had known Phillip from babyhood, had watched him grow into a fine young man, had celebrated with him when he was accepted into medical school, and a year later commiserated with his parents when he dropped out. That marked the turning point: one day he was normal and the next he was touting the North Vietnamese flag and supporting the NLF. He was a communist, he said, and a draft resister, and he had pledged to smash American imperialism. Coincidentally, both the Bainbridges and the Warbys harboured a deep concern over the usurping of good British values by crass Americanism and were, therefore, more than happy for American imperialism to be crushed, but they believed it should be done quietly, with decorum, not with the vulgar ravings of Phillip and his companions.

The Warbys were beside themselves. The Bainbridges did their best to reassure them that Phillip was only going through a phase; in time, they said, he would succumb to the lure of good breeding and return to the family that loved him. And return he did, but neither cured nor alone. Nor did he return for love, that, he said, he had found elsewhere, and introduced them to his friend, a big handsome man dressed almost entirely in a pale pink that clashed dreadfully with the red Phillip had taken to wearing in support of the people’s struggle. Phillip said he was a special friend, a homosexual who was out of the closet.

Now, around 1967 in the Warby-Bainbridge circle there were no homosexuals either in or out of the closet, it simply wasn’t done. Mrs Bainbridge wondered if Phillip had been experimenting with some of the mind-expanding drugs one read about; Mr Warby blamed his wife’s great-uncle Herbert for their trouble, certainly there was nothing on his side to account for Phillip. Mr Bainbridge spoke privately with Mr Warby, suggesting that what the boy needed was discipline, a spell in the army would, he believed, do the lad a world of good. Mr Warby couldn’t have agreed more, but by this time Phillip had been forced underground, having failed to register his name for the conscription ballot that was sending young men to Vietnam. For the next eighteen months, while Phillip was being shuffled from one safe house to another, the Warbys had time to recover from their son’s terrible defection. As for the Bainbridges they, too, had time, and while Phillip Warby was the only homosexual they knew, there were plenty of other young men who as 1967 advanced seemed to forget their privileged backgrounds and turn into rebellious riff-raff.

Adrian Dadswell started to look a lot better.

In September, after their nephew had been arrested outside the American embassy, the Bainbridges gave their consent; in October there was a magnificent ‘at home’ to celebrate the engagement. In March 1968 the wedding was held.

And what a wedding! – although it was not without its difficulties. The church was the main problem. It was customary for wedding services to be held either in the groom’s old school chapel or that of his university college, but Adrian had neither. It was all so embarrassing, Mrs Bainbridge confessed to her sister, the mother of the nephew who had been arrested, a real dilemma. ‘Not at all,’ the sister said, ‘what about Elizabeth’s school chapel?’ So Elizabeth’s old school chapel it was, and in the years that followed the Bainbridges were to note with some satisfaction that Elizabeth’s wedding had started a trend, and the chapels at the various girls’ schools became a popular choice among some of the better-known families.

The day of the wedding was perfect March weather, a day when the light rises rather than falls in a marvellous matt blue. Elizabeth saw the day and was pleased; she was searching for signs, omens to suggest she was doing the right thing. Not that she wasn’t happy and excited, she was, for this was her day, her own star-spangled day, but a mutinous spiral of doom, now no larger than a bacillus, was tailing her pleasure, wiggling and waggling and slowly gaining on it, and the future trembled in its wake.

‘All young brides are nervous,’ her mother said over breakfast, ‘and so they should be. It’s the biggest day of a girl’s life, the most important decision she’ll ever make.’

Elizabeth sipped her coffee and said nothing. The decision to marry Adrian had, in fact, been quite simple, it was the decision to sleep with him that had been an agony. As for the wedding itself, once the announcement was made, little had been required of Elizabeth, she had merely drifted along in the grand wake of tradition and Mrs Bainbridge, meeting with caterer, dressmaker and florist as required. As for today, her own special day, all Elizabeth had to do was be accessible to the various hands that would do her nails, her hair, her face, dress her, guide her down the aisle and accompany her back up again. So when her mother leaned across the breakfast table to hold her daughter’s hand, the left hand with its emerald-cut diamond, Elizabeth gave it up without a thought; and when her mother said that Elizabeth had made a good choice in Adrian, Elizabeth promptly smiled – a blank smile thick enough to conceal the months of her parents’ opposition, their insistence that Adrian was a ‘nobody’, their pleas to ‘try Oliver again’, months soggy with blame and a bubble or more of hate.

‘You’ve made us so proud,’ Diana Bainbridge continued, ‘your father in particular. Both you and I know he’s not one for showing what he really feels, but he’s very proud of you and loves you very much.’

Elizabeth heard it all across a great chasm of years; is this what she would be saying to her own daughter on her wedding day? ‘Darling, Adrian loves you, but he can’t tell you about it.’ Would these be her words? And if so, what is this fumbling atavism that renders fathers mute and mothers their apologists? She listened hard, trying to hear the words of love spoken to her unborn daughter, but could summon up only a picture of a kitchen much like this, with Adrian standing large and stern, and Elizabeth seated at a table her head in her hands, and the sound of voices sharp and urgent–

‘She hasn’t eaten properly, that’s the problem.’ Harold Bainbridge stood in the doorway of the kitchen while his wife knelt next to Elizabeth’s prostrate body loosening buttons, fanning the air, inspecting her daughter’s skin for injuries. ‘The girl’s got to eat to maintain her strength.’

‘Yes Hal, I know, but I can’t force-feed her.’

Harold came a little closer. ‘Has this ever happened before?’

Elizabeth’s throat felt dry and swollen, she asked for some water.

‘Well has it?’ Harold persisted, ‘have you ever fainted before?’

‘Of course.’ Make light of this, Elizabeth told herself. ‘Hasn’t everyone?’

‘I certainly haven’t.’

‘That’s because you’ve never been a young bride, Harold,’ said Mrs Bainbridge as she wiped her daughter’s brow.

An hour later, fully recovered and fresh from a shower, Elizabeth sat in the living room while Tanya did her nails. Tanya, the volatile pixie from Hungary who knew women’s bodies better than their maker, was, according to Diana Bainbridge, crucial to the success of the wedding. Tanya, who shared the same opinion, had set aside the entire day so that Elizabeth and her attendants would look their best.

‘Now tell me about your bridesmaids.’ Tanya was rubbing cream into Elizabeth’s cuticles. ‘I know there’s your sister, Rosie.’

‘Yes, and Adrian’s sister Cathy. And my friend Susie Warby.’

Tanya raised her eyebrows. ‘Surely not a sister of that Phillip Warby who’s doing all those disgusting things?’

Elizabeth decided to ignore the question, Tanya the queen of gossip knew exactly who Susie Warby was.

‘And Lydia Branch, my matron of honour.’

‘Now there’s a lovely girl, really knows how to look after herself. Beautiful skin, perfect figure, truly feminine. I only wish we could cure her of her nail-biting.’

Elizabeth glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, nearly half past ten. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

And there they were: fat Cathy, fat but desperately dieting Rosie, beautiful blonde Lydia and tall slim Susie, all chattering excitedly, reassuring Mrs Bainbridge that everything would be perfect, joking with Elizabeth about her imminent loss of freedom, admiring recent photographs of the happy couple, expressing approval of such an amiable husband – particularly Lydia Branch, whose own husband David was as dreary as he was devoted – discussing the groomsmen, and sharing rumours about Adrian’s bucks’ night.

‘Did you know there was a stripper?’ Susie was seated at the manicurist table; she twisted around to see Elizabeth’s reaction.

‘Yes, Adrian told me. I can’t see the attraction myself.’

‘That’s why bucks’ nights are for men only, I suppose.’ Susie stood up. ‘Who’s next for Tanya?’

Steadily, efficiently, expertly, all nails were manicured, and at half past eleven the girls were sitting at the dining-room table with sparkling pink pearl extremities, even Lydia whose customary raw stumps had been extended with the latest in false nails. The table was laden with party food – ribbon sandwiches, egg and bacon slices, canapés filled with salmon, éclairs and vanilla slices, caramels and chocolates. ‘We may as well eat up,’ Rosie said, ‘it’s too late now to lose any more weight.’ And so they did, pink nails flashing, jaws gnashing, cream dripping, and all the while maintaining an incessant banter to soothe poor Elizabeth’s nerves. Talk of friends and clothes and holidays was interspersed with compliments about Adrian, truthful compliments, of that Elizabeth was sure, because everyone now adored him, adored him unequivocally, only Elizabeth had her doubts.

Twenty years later with her eighteen-year-old daughter seated beside her, Elizabeth again recalled the doubts. The problem was that everyone told her the doubts were normal – her mother told her, Lydia Branch told her, anyone who was married told her, and Elizabeth, who in those days was an indiscriminate listener, believed them all. So there she was at lunch on her wedding day, helplessness clutching the pit of her stomach, a throbbing despair in her temples, doing her best to be happy on this the happiest day of her life.

After lunch, Antoine and his assistants arrived with a lorryload of dryers and head rests, shampoos and hairsprays, pins, rollers and hairpieces – not that he approved of the latter, Antoine was quick to explain, being a man of the Sassoon school, but he had noticed at the practice session that one of the young ladies had rather thin hair. He and his people set up their equipment in the main bathroom and adjoining dressing room.

The girls had changed into button-through housecoats and within a short time Rosie was under the dryer, Lydia’s hair was being put into jumbo rollers, Susie was having a special conditioning treatment – hers was the hair that was thin – and Cathy’s hair was being washed. Antoine was telling Elizabeth of his plan to weave strands of hair through the band of miniature orchids which would hold her veil.

‘It will look perfect, trust me.’

‘But Antoine, I like the way you did it at the rehearsal.’

‘Ah yes,’ he smacked his lips, ‘but now I have something better.’

And Elizabeth gave in – Antoine would do as he liked anyway, so she might as well be seen to agree.

After the hair was finished the girls moved on to Tanya for makeup. By twenty past four the attendants were complete. Each wore an identical hairstyle: straight to the shoulders in a loose page-boy cut, a heavy fringe and the rest brushed back with a little height and liberal amounts of hairspray. Each girl wore a crown of miniature orchids with fine curls of pink satin ribbon to match the pink spotted voile dresses. Tanya had worked wonders with the makeup: all eyes had been enlarged and darkened, blemishes had been camouflaged, Rosie and Cathy had acquired cheek bones, and each girl had been given a moist, pearly pink mouth.

At half past four the photographer arrived and set up his cameras in the formal lounge room. At four forty-five Elizabeth descended the staircase, a traditional bride in a gown of exquisite chantilly lace overlaying satin which revealed glimpses of tanned young skin. The lace was repeated on the satin shoes and in a fine border on the tiered veil. Her hair was brushed back from the face and curled up loosely at the shoulders.

The photographer applauded her – how tired he was of Twiggy eyes and gimmicky gowns. ‘Such a beautiful bride,’ he said over and over again as he arranged her for the photographs, ‘beautiful, beautiful.’

In later years Elizabeth would recall the photograph session as a speeded-up old film. She stood first this way and then that, head raised in hopeful expectation, head lowered in the pose of the virgin bride. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, she stood silhouetted by the bay windows, she held her bouquet to her cheek, she held it in outstretched hands, she stood and never sat, stood in a hundred different ways. She stood alone, she stood with her mother, she stood with Rosie, she stood with her mother and Rosie, she stood with her grandmother who sat, she stood with her mother and Rosie and grandmother. She stood with her father, she stood with her father and mother, she stood with all the family. She stood framed by attendants, she stood looking at attendants, she stood facing a line of attendants, she stood laughing with attendants, she stood looking dreamy with attendants, she stood with attendants admiring the emerald-cut diamond engagement ring. Then, with little time to spare, they all dashed outside so she could stand with the pink camellias, and with pink camellias and pink attendants. She stood with Rosie and Cathy whose long strapless brassieres were wrestling with their short buxom figures and with Lydia and Susie who were slender and elegant.

When it was all over Elizabeth went back inside for last-minute touch-ups and descended the stairs again, this time on the arm of her father. There were photographs of her on the stairs with her father, and photographs of him kissing her goodbye, photographs of Elizabeth and her father getting into the vintage Rolls, photographs of Rosie helping the tiered veil into the vintage Rolls, photographs of Rosie, her mother and grandmother in the second vintage Rolls, photographs of Lydia, Susie and Cathy in the third vintage Rolls. And then the photographer packed up all his equipment and with extraordinary speed arrived at the chapel before the wedding party. He’d done it all before, he said.

Everyone agreed the service was beautiful and Elizabeth was radiant; in fact, everything was just right – an opinion repeated the following week in the social pages. And as the carillon played ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’ even Elizabeth cast aside her doubts.

‘But how could you?’ Ginnie said every time she heard the story of the wedding. ‘How could you?’

And Elizabeth would admit to her folly, wryly, but no longer bemused. Such a glittering occasion it had been, and not just the ceremony but the reception as well. A marquee had been erected over the tennis court and a parquetry floor laid on the en-toutcas. The canvas awnings on the long western side of the tent had been raised to reveal the terraced garden and swimming pool. Lights were everywhere, and dotted amongst them were insect flares shooting a brilliant incandescence into the night sky. Rafts of flowers floated in the pool, ringlets of flowers graced the posts of the marquee, adorned the canopy, the tables, flowers so exotic – anthuriums and strelitzias flown in from tropical climes – and tuberoses as numerous as daisies.

Diana Bainbridge had said from the beginning that it would be the wedding of the year. And it was. But richer than the flowers and brighter than the lights were the people in their satins and silks and laces and brocades and shining purses and glittering jewels. Such jewels! Gusts of jewels released from bank vaults just for the occasion coruscated freely in the radiant night. Jewels nodding and waving and gossiping, jewels in groups, jewels in couples. Never had there been such a spectacular display.

‘A magnificent evening and a beautiful bride,’ a woman daubed in diamonds and emeralds said.

‘Beautiful,’ replied her friend, raising hand to neck so the light caught her matching necklace and bracelet in baguette diamonds.

‘Although there’s a bit too much pink with all those attendants,’ another said who had chosen rubies for the occasion.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Mrs Warby’s diamonds flashed at the insult to her daughter.

‘Oh, no no!’ Rubies said quickly, ‘I don’t mean your Susie, she looks beautiful, I was referring to the more buxom girls.’

‘Yes, I have to agree,’ diamonds and emeralds said with a wave of a glinting green hand. ‘But it’s so difficult finding friends of similar shape. I know when our Debbie was choosing her bridesmaids – ’

So much bubble and sparkle and catching the light, the flittering hands and fluttering eyes of those of infinitesimal concentration, then hors d’oeuvres were over and people moved to the tables for the meal: the ubiquitous smoked salmon but so elegantly presented, a lemon sorbet to cleanse the palate, followed by a choice of beef Wellington or fresh shellfish – a rhapsody in king prawns, oysters open on the shell and crayfish cradled among delectable accompaniments. And as the guests savoured the fine flavours and sucked on their cigarettes the opinion was Raleigh Price had surpassed himself. What would the master do next? they asked. What indeed? He would do the dessert, a pièce de résistance that warranted a knighthood, so the people said.

Lights were dimmed, the band struck a march, and a phalanx of waiters appeared each carrying a silver platter of bombe Alaska lit by a sparkler. The applause was spontaneous, the admiration sumptuous. The waiters marched to the centre of the marquee where half turned to the left and the other half to the right and like prancing Lippizaners they circled the tables rearing and bowing to their audience. And before the sparklers were quite spent the waiters re-formed in front of the top table and raised platters in homage to those seated in the place of honour. Even when the performance was over the applause continued, never had there been anything like it. Although there would be again, the performance was repeated many times in years to come, but the first time was at the Bainbridge-Dadswell wedding and that would never be forgotten.

What an evening! Uncle Freddy was drunk rather earlier than usual, but Robert his butler had the matter entirely under control, appearing at regular intervals to take Freddy to the toilet, thereby avoiding a repeat of the embarrassment at the Wadsworth party the previous month. And Martha Potter – people said she looked like a young bride herself – was ecstatic. Finally, after a twenty-two-year courtship, Hugh Nethercott had proposed. ‘It was his father’s fault it took so long,’ Martha said to Diana Bainbridge, ‘he always said I wasn’t good enough. But now he’s dead, there’s nothing to stop us.’ And was she resentful? Not at all, she just hated the old bastard and thought he’d got what he deserved.

Oliver Warby was there with a new girlfriend, Paula Barnes, a tall blonde woman with a magnificent figure, rather too much of which was revealed by a clinging silver-mesh dress. It was Lydia Branch who said that what Paula lacked in jewels she made up for in the glittering gown; indeed, Lydia’s raised eyebrows said a lot more than that. But despite Paula Barnes’ being away from her usual milieu – her grooming, her gown, her broad vowels all betrayed her – she appeared to manage all right and the men, including, apparently, Oliver Warby, loved her

All Adrian’s mates were there, laughing and drinking and recalling old times. In the break between the main course and dessert, Adrian and his best man Jules took to the stage and performed a song and dance routine to the delight of everyone. For an encore they did a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers number, with Adrian as a gorgeous if over-sized Ginger and Jules a most graceful Fred. When it was time for the speeches Adrian and Jules were a little the worse for wear and Adrian forgot to begin his speech with the traditional ‘My wife and I’; but Jules, ever vigilant, scribbled a reminder on the damask table cloth and Adrian included it in his final remarks.

Speeches and dancing and a night full of dreams and already it was time for the bride and groom to change into their going-away outfits, but Adrian had disappeared. Elizabeth sent her attendants to find him, and when at eleven o’clock he still had not appeared, Elizabeth, accompanied by her three bridesmaids – Lydia had been lost in the search – went to change without him; Adrian would turn up, she said, he always did. It took Elizabeth only a short time. The outfit had been chosen for ease and comfort – a two-piece suit in reverse checks of pink and white, very tailored, with boxer sleeves and straight skirt. She patched her makeup, combed out her hair and pronounced herself ready. Cathy Dadswell offered to look for Adrian, but just as she was leaving, a flushed and rumpled Lydia arrived.

‘I found him,’ she said. ‘He was in the little room near the kitchen tidying up the presents.’

‘From the look of you, you could do with a bit of tidying yourself,’ Susie said.

Lydia crossed to the mirror and laughed. ‘I see what you mean. Anyone have a comb and some lipstick?’

Elizabeth passed her both. ‘Well, is he ready?’

Lydia concentrated on her hair. ‘He said he’d knock on his way past.’

And there he was, three neat knocks and in he came. He kissed Elizabeth and apologised for keeping her waiting, but she knew he’d never been one to leave a good party early. Then he moved to the mirror where Lydia was still rearranging herself, and smoothed his hair. With his gaze directed at Lydia, he said, ‘When do I get to thank the bridesmaids for their magnificent assistance to my bride?’

Mrs Bainbridge appeared in the doorway. ‘Now’s your opportunity,’ she said, ‘I want to have a private word with Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth walked over to her husband, gave him a peck on the cheek and followed her mother from the room. They went into the upstairs den and sat down. Mrs Bainbridge gave her a small parcel. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘open it, I’ve been saving it for you.’

Inside was a ring, a rosette of diamonds set in a fine platinum band. ‘It was your great-grandmother’s,’ Mrs Bainbridge said.

‘It’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen it before, why don’t you ever wear it?’

‘I’ve had it in the bank for years. My grandmother gave it to my mother and she gave it to me the day I married your father. And now it’s yours. It’s very special in our family.’

‘So why don’t you keep it, there’s plenty of time for me to enjoy it.’

‘No darling, it wouldn’t be right, that’s not the tradition.’

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Elizabeth said again and slipped it on the ring finger of her right hand. She looked at her mother, ‘I’ll treasure it always.’

‘Good, darling. Now give it back to me and I’ll return it to the bank on Monday.’

‘What on earth for! I’m going to wear it.’

‘You can’t, that’s not the way we do it! Besides what will Adrian say? Won’t he be offended if he sees you wearing diamonds other than his? And you wouldn’t want to upset him – not on your wedding day!’

‘What an extraordinary suggestion! Of course he wouldn’t be offended. Besides, Adrian is unquestionably of the school that believes the more diamonds the better.’

‘That’s not very nice, Elizabeth, not everyone has been as fortunate as you.’

And again the thought hacked its way to the surface: what an unexpected ally Adrian had gained.

Elizabeth looked at the rosette of diamonds. It was one of the few remnants of Bainbridge life remaining to her. Twenty years ago all her hopes had been shaped by the Bainbridge heritage: she had expected a comfortable life with a husband and three children, a complete life as wife and mother; now, of all that, she had only the diamonds and the mothering. She turned to Ginnie and smiled – she had the best, of that she was sure. Ginnie smiled back and touched the rosette of diamonds. ‘Such a pretty ring,’ she said.

‘It’s yours when I’m dead and gone.’

‘Fortunately I’m happy to wait a good long time.’ Ginnie laughed, she had heard the story of the ring many times. She glanced at the clock. ‘What time are you meeting with the curator?’

‘Not until ten o’clock.’

‘Well I’m afraid you’ll be awfully early. I’d like to leave in half an hour, so let’s get going.’

Elizabeth jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom. She stood under the shower, aware of her aching shoulders and tired eyes as the water washed over her. Soap caught in her ring, it was desperately in need of a clean; she made a mental note to soak it in gin that evening. She smiled as she remembered Adrian’s horror when first he discovered her diamonds twinkling in the bottom of an eggcup full of gin. She had explained that her Aunt Leila insisted this was the only way to clean diamonds, but Adrian had been unconvinced. He was scared something would happen to them – but then his tendency always had been to worry about things; things above all else. It was one of the problems of their marriage: where Elizabeth’s interest lay with ideas, Adrian’s was directed at things – big things, valuable things, sometimes beautiful things, other times grotesque.

‘Come down to earth,’ he’d say to her. ‘Or better still, come to bed.’

Things and sex, that was Adrian. So many things and so much sex, and then with Ginnie’s birth and the problems, less sex, until he decided Elizabeth was frigid and should seek professional advice. Which she did. But after a few sessions the counsellor said there was little more she could do unless Adrian were willing to attend, which he was not. After the counselling finished, the sex recommenced and continued until the end of the marriage. Elizabeth simply complied with his expectations, proficiently but, as he was quick to remind her, without the passion she had shown in the early days.

There was a knock at the bathroom door and Ginnie entered. She was dressed in a pair of brightly coloured harem trousers and a loose, yellow shirt.

‘Well?’

Elizabeth peered around the shower screen. ‘Perfect,’ she said, and silently hoped that everything would be.

‘Good. Now will you please hurry – I want to leave in ten minutes.’