The Giver of Stars(127)

‘If?’

‘To see …’ she swallowed ‘… if we had …’

‘You had what?’

‘Done it,’ she whispered.

‘To see if you had done what?’

She threw her hands up to her face and wailed, ‘Oh, why are you making me say this?’

‘Just trying to understand the facts of it, Alice.’

‘If we had done it. Married love.’

Fred put down his glass. A long, painful moment passed before he spoke. ‘You don’t … know?’

‘No,’ she said miserably.

‘Whoa. Whoa. Hold on. You don’t know if you and Bennett … consummated your marriage?’

‘No. And he wouldn’t talk about it. So I have no way of knowing. And the book told me some things but, to be honest, I still couldn’t be sure. There was a lot of stuff about wafting and rapture. And then it all blew up anyway, and it’s not as if we ever discussed it so I’m still not sure.’

Fred ran his hand over the back of his head. ‘Well, Alice, I mean – it’s – uh – pretty hard to miss.’

‘What is?’

‘The – Oh, forget it.’ He leaned forward. ‘You really think you might not have?’

She felt anguished, already regretting that this would be the last thing he remembered of her. ‘I don’t think so … Oh, Lord, you think I’m ridiculous, don’t you? I can’t believe I’m telling you this. You must think –’

Fred stood up from the table abruptly. ‘No – no, Alice. This is great news!’

She stared at him. ‘What?’

‘This is wonderful!’ He grabbed her hand, began to waltz her around the room.

‘Fred? What? What are you doing?’

‘Get your coat. We’re going to the library.’

Five minutes later they were in the little cabin, two oil lamps burning as Fred scanned the shelves. He quickly found what he was looking for and asked her to hold the lamp while he flicked through the heavy leather-bound book. ‘See?’ he said, jabbing at the page. ‘If you haven’t consummated your marriage, then you’re not married in the eyes of God.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you can have the marriage annulled. And marry who the hell you like. And there’s nothing Van Cleve can do about it.’

She stared at the book, read the words that his finger underlined. She looked up at him, disbelieving. ‘Really? It doesn’t count?’

‘Yes! Hang on – we’ll find another of those legal books, and double-check. That’ll show you. Look! Look, here it is. You’re free to stay, Alice! See? You don’t have to go anywhere! Look! Oh, that poor damn fool Bennett – I could kiss him.’

Alice put down the book and looked at him steadily. ‘I’d rather you kissed me.’

And so he did.

Forty minutes later they lay on the floor of the library on Fred’s jacket, both of them breathing hard and a little in shock at what had just transpired. He turned to her, his eyes searching her face, then took her hand and raised it to his lips.

‘Fred?’

‘Sweetheart?’

Alice smiled, the slowest, sweetest smile, and when she spoke it was as if her voice dripped honey and was shot through with happiness. ‘I have definitely never done that.’





28


From the body of the loved one’s simple, sweetly coloured flesh, which our animal instincts urge us to desire, there springs not only the wonder of a new bodily life, but also the enlargement of the horizon of human sympathy, and the glow of spiritual understanding which one could never have attained alone.

Dr Marie Stopes, Married Love




Sven and Margery were married in late October, on a clear, crisp day where the mists had lifted from the hollers by dawn and the birds sang loudly about the importance of a blue sky and squabbled noisily on branches. Margery had told him she would agree under sufferance because she didn’t want Sophia yammering on at her till the end of time, and only if they told nobody and Sven ‘didn’t make a thing of it’.

Sven, who was agreeable in almost all things where Margery was concerned, greeted this invitation with a hard no. ‘If we marry, we do it in public, with the town, our child and all our friends in attendance,’ he said, his arms folded. ‘That’s what I want. Or we don’t marry at all.’

And so they were wed in the small Episcopalian church up at Salt Lick, whose minister was a little less picky than some about children born out of wedlock, and in attendance were all the librarians, Mr and Mrs Brady, Fred and a fair number of the families they had brought books to. Afterwards they held a reception at Fred’s house, and Mrs Brady presented the couple with a wedding quilt that her quilting circle had embroidered, and a smaller one for Virginia’s cot to match it, and Margery, despite looking somewhat awkward in her oyster-coloured dress (borrowed from Alice, the seams let out by Sophia), wore an expression of embarrassed pride and managed not to change back into her breeches until the following day, even though it clearly pained her. They ate food brought by neighbours (Margery hadn’t intended so many people to come, and had been a little taken aback by the endless stream of guests), someone started up a hog roast outside and Sven wore a look of intense happiness, showing off Virginia to everyone, and there was fiddling and some fine dancing. At six, just as dusk was falling, it was Alice who left the wedding party and finally located the bride sitting alone on the library steps, gazing up at the darkening mountain.