The Paying Guests(91)
At once, she wished she’d said nothing, or had kept the wryness out of her tone, because Edith blushed again, as if caught out.
Perhaps it made a bad start to the visit. She took the chrysanthemums to the scullery and put them into a vase, and when she carried them back to the drawing-room along with the tea-tray she found her mother settled in an armchair but Edith sitting at the front of the sofa, chatting brightly enough, but still wearing her gloves and her feathered hat. She kept the hat and the gloves on while Frances poured the tea. She shared her pieces of news, showed a photograph of her sister’s children; she took her cup, and a plate with a slice of sticky cake on it; and still, bafflingly, she sat there in her outdoor things. Finally Frances said, ‘Don’t you mean to stay long, Edith? Aren’t you hot, in all that get-up? You mustn’t stand on ceremony here.’
Edith looked less comfortable than ever. ‘Yes, I am a little warm.’ She rose, to unpin the hat at the mantel-glass and to tidy her hair, then returned to the sofa and drew off her gloves. Frances noticed nothing. But almost at once her mother said, ‘Edith,’ in a new sort of way.
Edith’s hands moved oddly, and she dipped her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, we must congratulate you.’
‘Thank you.’
Then Frances saw, and understood. In all these years since John Arthur’s death Edith had continued to wear her engagement ring, not on the ring finger of her left hand but on the corresponding finger of her right. Now, on the ‘real’ finger, another ring had appeared, a sizeable diamond in a square claw setting, rather putting John Arthur’s filigree band to shame. Frances looked from the wink of the diamond to Edith’s face and said, surprised and pleased, ‘You’re to be married.’
Edith nodded. ‘At the end of the month. And then a honeymoon. Six weeks. America!’
‘But, how marvellous for you. I’m so glad. And such a handsome ring! Look, Mother. Isn’t it terrific?’
‘Yes, I see it.’
‘Will you tell us about him, Edith?’
This, of course, was why she had come. Her colour now was the flush of relief. She said, ‘His name is Mr Pacey. He owns a business. Glassware – jars and bottles. Not very exciting! But he has built the business up over many years and made a great success of it. He’s rather older than I am. His first wife died, just a year ago. He has children, three boys and a girl, quite grown up already.’
‘So you shall be a mother right away.’
‘Yes.’ She put her hand to her heart. ‘That part makes me nervous, I must admit. But the children are very kind. The youngest boy is at school still. The girl, Cora, is nineteen. I hope to do my best by them. It isn’t at all what I expected. Two months ago I had no more idea of marrying than of flying to the moon! I met him only then, you see. Can you imagine?’
Frances answered with real feeling. ‘You’ll make him happy, Edith, I know it.’
‘I do hope so.’
‘Of course you will. Won’t she, Mother?’
‘Yes, indeed. And the children too! What an adventure. Your mother’s pleased, Edith, I dare say. How she’ll miss you though.’
‘Yes, it’s a great change for Mother. She means to write to you about it. I wanted to speak to you myself, before she did.’
‘I’m glad that you did. Thank you.’
‘Mother was so fond of Jack.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Jack’ was what Edith had always called John Arthur. The name had never sounded right to Frances; it was such a roguish sort of name, and John Arthur hadn’t been at all roguish, and neither was Edith herself. Had there been other marriage proposals, in the years since his death? If there had, Frances and her mother had not got wind of them. They had grown used to thinking of Edith as John Arthur’s widow; and Frances knew that widowhood meant something to the women of her mother’s generation that it did not mean to women now. ‘I’m delighted for you, Edith,’ she heard her mother say, but she could see, from the subtle working of her face, that she was not, at heart, delighted – or rather, that her delight was choked about by too many other feelings, too many griefs and disappointments on her own and John Arthur’s behalf. She asked to hear more about Mr Pacey, and Edith, still blushing, told them about his factory, his motor-cars, the suppers and tennis-parties he liked to host, his large house, with the garage attached, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. He sounded as unlike mild John Arthur as it was possible to imagine. He seemed almost, Frances thought, to sit in the room along with them, overbearing, slightly bored, now and then checking his watch. She saw her mother’s smile become increasingly artificial, heard her responses to Edith’s remarks grow briefer and more forced. From the cupboard at her side she had brought the family photograph albums, along with the muddy pencilled letters that John Arthur had sent from the Front: it was their habit to go through them, on Edith’s visits. Edith noticed them now, and remembered; they rearranged the chairs so as to be closer to each other. But the turning of the pages and the reading aloud of the letters felt dry, this time – like picking through dead leaves. And once the final letter had been returned to its envelope their voices died away, and they sat in a painful silence.
Frances suggested that they look at the garden. They went out and on to the lawn, made a tour of the asters and the dahlias, and that perked the party up a little. Edith described the grounds of Mr Pacey’s house, the Italianate terrace, the ponds, the fountain. The Wrays, she said, must be sure to visit her in her new home, and they promised that they would, adding that she must bring her husband to meet them, here at Champion Hill; perhaps the daughter too. She nodded at that, but her smile was rather fixed, and Frances guessed that neither visit would ever come off. It had been one thing for Edith to call as John Arthur’s fiancée; it would be quite another for her to arrive as the wife of Mr Pacey. And within a few months, of course – probably before she returned from her honeymoon – she would in all likelihood be expecting a child of her own.