“I’m not in the least sorry for her. If she’d got on with my dress when she said she would, it would have been finished, and hanging in my cupboard by now.”
“Well, at least we know where we stand.”
“Yes. Stark naked. Without a thing to wear.”
Mary told herself that she must keep calm. “Shall we go to London? Now. Today. And see if we can buy something?”
“I’ll never find one I like. I know I won’t.” Vicky’s voice rose. She was beginning to sound hysterical. “And I am not going to get married in a crinoline with frills of lace, looking like something off a tea-cosy.”
“Darling, there are places you can hire dresses. They might have more choice. Or second-hand shops…?”
“We haven’t got time to go browsing around all the second-hand shops … We’ve only got a week…”
“Vicky, I know that—”
“If I don’t get the sort of dress I want, then I’ll get married in a boiler suit…”
“Oh, darling, don’t get worked up…”
Vicky sprang to her feet. “What else is there to do? I wish it was all over. I wish Hector and I could just run away … I’d like to cancel the whole beastly affair…”
“Oh, Vicky…”
“And not get married at all.”
The kitchen door slammed shut between them. Vicky’s footsteps fled upstairs. Then her bedroom door was slammed. Then silence.
* * *
For a moment Mary sat where she was. To begin with, she thought that she was going to cry. And then, perhaps, scream. She then decided that she was about to become so angry that she would not be able to answer for her actions. That decided it. Before she should break something, or dash upstairs after Vicky and hit her, or say something unforgivable that could never be unsaid, she picked up her bag, walked out of the house, got into her car, and drove the ten miles to Dorothy’s house.
* * *
She found Dorothy gardening. Even when she gardened, Dorothy looked neat, in well-cut slacks and a net over her white hair. She was forking over her rose border, but when she saw Mary approach across the grass, she instantly laid down the fork and came to meet her, stripping off her canvas gloves.
“My dear.” Her face was all concern. I must look truly frightful, Mary told herself. She tried to speak, but before she could say a word, had burst into tears.
Dorothy was very kind. She led her gently indoors, settled her in a chair in the sitting-room, and tactfully disappeared. The sitting-room was cool and orderly and smelt of polish and linen loose covers. The window was open, the morning air fanned the crisp chintz curtains. Gradually soothed by this calm ambience, Mary controlled her weeping. She found a handkerchief and blew her nose. Dorothy returned, bearing, not coffee, but a small glass of brandy.
“Drink this.”
“But Dorothy, it’s not ten o’clock yet.”
“Medicinal.” Dorothy sat down in the other armchair. “You look totally shattered. Drink it up.”
Mary did so. The brandy hit the back of her throat and descended warmingly into her stomach. She at once felt stronger. She even managed a weak smile.
“I am sorry. It’s just that everything’s so awful and I knew I had to get out of the house and talk to someone. And you were the only person I could think of.”
“Is it Vicky?”
“Well … yes. In a way. It’s not her fault. She’s really helped me get this wedding together, and I began to think we were going to be able to do it without a single row.” She laid down the empty glass. “I know you always thought Harry and I spoilt her, and perhaps we did, but the truth is that Vicky and I are very different people. I don’t seem to have anything in common with her; not even friends. And I think I irritate her most dreadfully. It’s all right when we’re not living together, and it’s all right when things are going smoothly, but this morning…”
She related the disastrous saga of the wedding dress.
“But it’s not your fault,” Dorothy pointed out when she had finished.
“I know. I think perhaps it might be easier if it was. But Vicky knows she’s made a fool of herself, insisting on that idiot Regina making her dress, trusting her to have it finished in time. And now, of course, we’ve only got a week to find another. And Vicky’s got such violent ideas about what she’s going to wear. She won’t even agree to try the shops, or the hire-firms, and she says she’s going to wear a boiler suit, or run away with Hector, or even not get married at all.”
Dorothy listened to all this, and then shook her head. “It sounds to me like a clear case of wedding nerves. For both of you. A wedding is twice as much work when you haven’t got your husband to help you. In fact, I’ve been on the point of ringing you up, more than once, to suggest I lend a hand with the organization, but I was frightened you’d think I was interfering. And as for Vicky, you’ve been splendid with her. It can’t have been easy without Harry. She is, after all, your only child. And you let her go off on her own to London, and make her own way, and never tried to stop her. I really admired you for that.”
To be admired by Dorothy was an entirely new sensation.
“I always thought you thought I was a fool.”
“Oh, my dear. Never that.”
A silence fell between them. It was not a difficult one nor strained in any way. Mary had never felt so at ease with Dorothy before. She smiled and put her handkerchief away. She glanced at the clock. She said, “I feel better now. I just needed to talk. I should be getting home.”
“What are you going to do about the dress?”
“I have no idea.”
Dorothy said, “I have a wedding dress.”
* * *
Mary drove home at a tremendous speed, feeling ridiculously light-hearted. The garden, as she came up the drive, had never looked so dear or so pretty, and the climbing rose that smothered the front porch was covered with tight pale-pink buds. She got out of the car, took the huge old-fashioned cardboard dress-box off the back seat, carried it indoors and upstairs to her bedroom. She laid the box on her bed (still unmade) and sat at her dressing-table to do something about her face. Crying when you were fifty-six was really most unbecoming.
“Mummy?” The door opened and Vicky appeared. “Are you all right?”
Mary did not turn. “Yes, of course I am.” She smothered creamy moisturizer onto her cheeks.
“I couldn’t think where you’d gone.” Vicky came from behind her, put her arms around Mary’s neck, and bent to kiss her. “I’m sorry,” she said to Mary’s reflection. “For flying off the handle like that. It’s entirely my own fault that I haven’t got a stitch to wear, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“Oh, darling.”
“Where did you go? I thought I’d been so beastly, I’d made you run away from home.”
“Just to see Dorothy.” Vicky went and sat on the bed. Mary reached for her foundation cream.
“Dorothy? Why did you go and see her?”
“I had a sudden, irresistible urge to get out of the house and go and talk to somebody sane. And she is the sanest woman I know. It worked. She gave me brandy and she gave me a wedding dress.”
“You have to be joking.”
“I’m not. It’s in that box.”
“But whose wedding dress is it?”
“Dorothy’s own.” She set down the jar of Elizabeth Arden and turned to face her daughter. “We all think we know so much about other people, and we don’t know anything at all. When Dorothy was nineteen, she was engaged to a young naval officer. The wedding was to be in September 1939, but then war broke out and it was postponed. He went to sea, and was almost at once lost with the submarine Thetis. So that’s why Dorothy never married.”
“But why didn’t we know about this before? Why didn’t Daddy know?”
“Harry was just a little boy of nine, away at boarding-school. I don’t suppose he ever realized it happened.”
“Oh, dear, how dreadfully sad. It d
oesn’t bear thinking about. And then she went on to make such a terrific life for herself. And we all thought she was so frigid and tough.”
“I know. It makes me feel a bit red in the face. But that’s not the point. The point is that she says that if you like it, you can have her dress. Circa 1939. A real museum piece, and it’s never even been worn.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No. She just gave me the box.”
“Let’s look.”
They sat together on the bed and untied the knot of the string and took off the lid of the box and folded aside the sheets of tissue paper. Standing, Vicky carefully lifted the dress out, to hold up in front of her. Folds of pure silk satin whispered to the floor; a flowing skirt out of the bias, puff sleeves, the shoulders padded, the neckline low and square and embroidered in pearls. There was a faint smell, sweet and musty, like old bowls of potpourri.
“Oh, Mummy, it’s blissful.”
“It is rather lovely. But the shoulder pads…?”
“They’re high fashion. I think it’s perfect.”
“It’ll be too long.”
“You and I can hem it up. Dorothy wouldn’t mind, would she?”
“She doesn’t want it back. She says you can keep it forever. Try it on.”
Vicky did so, tearing off shirt and jeans and slipping the soft silk over her head. It slipped into place, and Mary did up the dozens of tiny buttons that ran down the back.
“They only had zips for suitcases in those days, not for wedding dresses.”
Vicky moved to the long mirror. Aside from the fact that it was far too long, the dress might have been made for her. She touched her hair into place, turned to see her own back view, to admire the cunningly cut skirt, which fanned out into a fish-tail of silk to form a little train.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “I’m going to wear it. I couldn’t have found anything so beautiful if I’d looked for a hundred years. How kind of Dorothy. I can’t think why she should be so kind…”
They undid all the buttons again and Vicky took the dress off. Then Mary put it on a padded hanger and hung it on the door of her wardrobe, where it looked impressively rich and significant.
“Goodness, Mummy, what a stroke of luck. It’s like a miracle. I must go and ring Hector and tell him. No, I’m not going to. I’m going to surprise him. I’ll ring Dorothy instead. Right away. How could I have been so horrible about asking her to the wedding? You didn’t tell her I was horrible, did you?”
“No, of course I didn’t.”
Vicky hauled on her jeans. “You were right.” She zipped them up. “We think we know so much about people and we don’t know anything at all.” She buttoned up her shirt and hugged her mother. “And as for you, you’ve been a veritable saint.”
She took herself off. Moments later, she could be heard speaking to Dorothy, her voice loud with delight and gratitude. Mary shut the bedroom door and sat down once more at her dressing-table. She looked at the dress, and knew that, for once in her life, Vicky would allow herself to look truly beautiful. She thought about the wedding, in just a week’s time, and for the first time found herself looking forward to it. She thought about dear Hector, who was going to become her son-in-law, and she thought about Dorothy, and it was like having just met and made a new friend. Soon, after the wedding, they would lunch together. There was much that they had to talk about.
She thought about Harry. Amongst the bottles and jars on her dressing-table stood a photograph of him, in a heavy silver frame. She smiled at it. You don’t have to worry about a thing, Harry. She felt full of confidence. “It’s all going to be all right.”
She looked at her own reflection; powdered her face, and then, feeling light-hearted as the girl she had once been, reached for her lipstick.
WHISTLE FOR THE WIND
It was Saturday morning. Blinks of golden light lit the trees, and cloud shadows raced across the face of the hills, chasing each other out to the distant blue line of the sea.
Jenny Fairburn, heading home for lunch after a walk with the two family dogs, was pleasantly tired because she had been a long way—right around the loch and back by the rutted, winding farm road. Home lay ahead, an old Manse alongside a ruined church. It was sheltered from the north by a stand of pines, and the south-facing windows flashed in the sunlight as though sending out signals of welcome. Jenny thought about lunch, because she was hungry as well as tired. She knew that it was roast lamb, and her mouth watered, like a hungry child’s.
She was, in fact, twenty, a tall, thin girl with the reddish blonde hair and pale skin that she had inherited from her father’s mother, a true Highlander. Her eyes were dark, her nose narrow and tip-tilted, and her mouth wide and expressive. When she smiled, it lit up her face, but she knew that when she was feeling cross or depressed she could look sulky and plain.
In the back porch, she gave the panting dogs a drink and then toed off her muddy boots. From the kitchen she could hear her mother’s voice, presumably chatting on the telephone, because Jenny’s father had spent the morning on the golf-course and his car was still not back in the garage.
In stockinged feet, she let herself into the kitchen, and smelt the roasting lamb and the sharpness of mint sauce.
“… how very kind of you,” her mother was saying. She turned, saw Jenny and smiled in an abstracted sort of way. “Yes. Yes. About six-thirty? All of us. Well, we’ll look forward to that. ’Bye.” She put down the receiver and smiled at her daughter. “Did you have a nice walk?”
She sounded a little too bright. Jenny frowned. “Who was that on the telephone?”
Mrs. Fairburn was stooping to open the oven door and inspect the lamb. A fragrant gust of heat escaped into the kitchen.
“Just Daphne Fenton.”
“What does she want?”
Mrs. Fairburn shut the oven door and straightened up. Her face was pink, but perhaps that was just the heat. “She’s asked us all for a drink this evening.”
“What’s the celebration?”
“No celebration. Fergus is home for the weekend, and Daphne’s asked a few people in for a drink. She particularly wants you to come.”
Jenny said, “I don’t want to come.”
“Oh, darling, you must.”
“You can say I’m doing something else.”
Her mother came over to Jenny’s side. “Look, I know you were hurt, and I know how much you loved Fergus, but it’s over. He’s marrying Rose next month. At some point you’ve got to let everybody see that you’ve accepted this.”
“I think I will once they’re married. But they’re not yet, and I don’t like Rose.”
They gazed hopelessly at each other, then they heard Mr. Fairburn’s car coming up the road, turning into the gate.
“There’s your father. He’ll be starving.” Mrs. Fairburn gave Jenny’s hand a loving pat. “I must make the gravy.”
After lunch, with the dishes washed and the kitchen tidy, they dispersed on their various ploys. Mr. Fairburn changed into his gardening clothes (in which no self-respecting gardener would be seen dead) and went out to sweep leaves; Mrs. Fairburn disappeared to work on the new sitting-room curtains which she had been trying to finish for a month; Jenny decided to go fishing. She collected her rod and her fishing bag, pulled on her father’s old shooting jacket and the rubber boots, and firmly told the dogs that this time they couldn’t come.
“Is it all right if I borrow your car?” she asked her mother. “I’m going up to the loch to see if I can catch anything.”
“Catch at least three trout. Then we can have them for supper.”
As Jenny came to the loch, she saw the stillness of the brown water, scarcely touched now by the breeze. “Too still for fish,” Fergus would have said. “We’ll need to whistle for the wind.”
About a mile down the loch, a grassy track led off the road and down towards the water. Jenny took this, letting the small, battered car bump and bounce its way over tussocks of turf and h
eather. She parked a few feet from the shore, collected her rod and the bag, and made her way down to where the little rowing boat was pulled up on a sickle of shingle.
But she didn’t get into it at once. Instead, she sat on the bank, and listened to the silence, which was not a silence at all but a stirring and murmuring of tiny sounds. The buzz of a bee, the distant baa-ing of sheep, the sigh of a breeze, the whisper of water against pebbles.
“We’ll need to whistle for the wind.”
* * *
Fergus … What could you do about a man who had been part of your life since you were a little girl? A boy in patched jeans, collecting shells on the beach. A young man in a worn kilt, walking the hill. A grown man, immensely sophisticated and attractive, with a smooth dark head and eyes as blue as the loch on a summer day. What could you do about someone with whom you had quarrelled and laughed, who had always been your friend and your rival and finally turned out to be—she knew—the only man she could ever love?
He was six years older than Jenny, which made him now twenty-six, and the son of her parents’ friends, the Fentons, who farmed Inverbruie, two miles down the road.
“He’s like a brother,” people used to say to Jenny who was an only child. But she knew that it had never been like that. For what brother would spend patient hours teaching a small girl how to fish? What brother would dance with a gangling teenager at parties, when the room was filled with older, more charming and prettier girls?
And when Jenny, sent to boarding-school in Kent, hated being away from Scotland so much that every letter home begged to be allowed to return, it was Fergus who eventually persuaded her parents that Jenny would do just as well, and be a thousand times happier, at the local Creagan High School.
“One day,” she had promised herself, “I shall marry him. He will fall in love with me and I shall marry him, and I’ll move down the road to Inverbruie and be the young farmer’s wife.”
But this happy prospect was slightly dimmed by Fergus deciding that he did not want to follow his father into farming, but would go to Edinburgh to learn how to be a chartered accountant.