Paddington Green, page 36
‘You are mocking me!’ Abby said. ‘I meant only that he is out of the world in so many ways, and as I recall lived only for work and study. If you can encourage him to seek the company of friends, and to go out to dine sometimes, perhaps to a theatre—’
‘That he will never do,’ Miss Ingoldsby said flatly.
There was a silence and then Abby said softly, ‘You know about that? About her?’
‘I know. He has told me.’ Her nose became pinched suddenly and small as she was she became very dignified, her anger giving her stature.
‘She was a very wicked woman. She tried to damage your father— and your brother—and now—’ she shook her head. ‘I am glad she has suffered so. Is that very wicked? Well, in this matter I am wicked. I am glad.’
Abby leaned over the pile of silks and satins between them and impulsively kissed Miss Ingoldsby’s cheek. ‘Oh, I am so glad you are to be my stepmamma!’ she said. ‘You are all any daughter could wish for a bereaved father,’ and they smiled at each other in great good humour.
So Abby looked forwards to the wedding with pleasure, and told herself firmly that she would enter fully into the joys of the day, a quiet one though it was planned to be, and would give no thought at all to the painful memories of her own long ago wedding, or of her present situation. And set out on the day in a hired carriage wearing a new dress of lemon tarlatan with the most handsome embroidered mantle to surmount it, and a bonnet trimmed with osprey and brown silk ribbons, knowing herself to look very well.
But the wedding service worked its insidious magic on her, as she should have known it would. She sat in the cool shadows at the back of the church beside Martha, quiet in brown merino and a severely untrimmed bonnet but looking most elegant, and looked at her father’s straight back as he stood before the altar waiting for his bride. He might be past fifty, she thought with a stab of pride, but he is a most handsome man still, with his thick pepper and salt hair and his straight posture and broad shoulders. She had never regretted the loss of his company during the past ten years more keenly than at that moment, and bit her lip then took a deep breath and adjured herself firmly to look forwards and not back; and gazed about the church at the few other people there.
John Snow was standing as best man beside her father; Nancy was sitting resplendent in a crimson gown trimmed with pink ribbons that clashed most dreadfully with her high complexion, with beside her three or four nurses from the hospital; and that was all.
Abby was angered at Rupert’s absence, though not because of Bart’s or Gussy’s; Miss Ingoldsby had told her that they had not been expected to come so far from Leicestershire for such a reason ‘and anyway, Mr Lackland did not attend Bart’s wedding, you know, and he sees no reason why he should come to ours! I cannot blame him. I hope, in time, to arrange some reconciliation there.’ She had looked at Abby with a wry little smile, ‘He has been a difficult father, I know, Abby. But he could not help it—’
She was pulled from her reverie by the sound of the music as the organ broke into a solemn air and the few people rose to their feet in a rustle of silk and a shuffling of feet on the stone floor. Someone gulped and sniffed and Abby could see Nancy with her handkerchief to her eyes and smiled at Martha who looked irritated and scornful; but that was Martha—she has no atom of sentiment about her, Abby thought indulgently, and turned to look at the door of the church.
Miss Ingoldsby, in a very simple cream gown and holding only a prayer book, was standing there and looked at her from behind her small plain veil, and Abby saw the glint of a smile in her eyes and smiled encouragingly back; then, to the sound of the music now reverberating through the echoing church, she walked, holding the arm of a distant cousin she had found to perform the giving-away ceremony, towards the man who had been her employer for the past twelve years, whose children she had reared, whose wife she had cared for so devotedly, and who she had loved so helplessly for the whole of that time.
It was curious how tall and slender she looked as she moved so serenely down the carpeted aisle, her eyes on Abel. He turned expectantly towards her, and Abby looked at him, and saw the expression of peace on it and closed her eyes in a moment of gratitude. Whatever her own situation was or might be, her father, the man she too had loved so much and for so long, was to be happy. And that was much to be glad for.
And later, when she had drunk the couple’s health in a little champagne at Gower Street, and hugged her new stepmother and wished her happy, she found a chance to speak for a moment to her father. He was standing in the embrasure of the window in the drawing room, watching his wife talking to John Snow and Martha with some animation, and there was a faint smile on his face.
‘I am very happy for you, Papa,’ she said softly, and he turned and looked down at her and smiled, and it was strange how much younger he looked, and she smiled back at him and said impulsively, ‘Oh, she is so good for you!’
He nodded and looked at his bride again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She gives me such peace. I did not know it could be possible. I am more fortunate than I deserve to be, I think.’
He looked at her again, and his voice tightened a little. ‘Abby, I feel I must—I need to say to you what I never said to her. Your Mamma—’
‘Oh, please, Papa! Not now—the past is past and—’
He shook his head. ‘No, I must say it. I could not be free until I did. I was not kind to her, Abby. She loved me dearly, cared only for me, and I treated her with a cruelty that fills me now with much pain when I think of it.’
‘She was happy with you, Papa. She understood. I did not know then what it was that had happened, but I know now, and can see her more clearly than I ever did while she lived. She loved you in her way, and was happy to do it.’
‘I wish I could be so certain,’ he said sombrely. ‘Be certain that she was happy—’ He shook his head.
‘She told me, Papa. She told me before I married James that every woman should marry where her heart lay. That I should do as she had done, and follow my own love, for that was the only way a woman could be happy.’
He looked at her with an almost shy eagerness upon his face. ‘She said that, Abby? In those words? That she had been happy with me?’
‘Yes, Papa. It was but a week or two before—before her accident. She told me.’
He took a deep breath then, and closed his eyes and nodded softly and then opened them and looked across the room at his new wife and said softly, ‘I do not deserve such good fortune. To be loved by two such women—’
‘I hope you can love Miss Ingoldsby as much as she deserves, Papa,’ Abby said and then laughed. ‘It is difficult to think of her as anything but Miss Ingoldsby!’
He laughed too, and set his glass down upon the window sill. ‘Well, you must learn to address her as Maria, must you not?’ he said and put his hands upon her shoulders and looked closely at her. ‘Abby, I was cruel to you as well. I should not have been so angered by your marriage. I ask your forgiveness.’
She looked up at him and smiled tremulously. ‘I had him, Papa, a little while. And that was worth the pain of losing you—but I am happy not to have lost you for good and all. Be happy.’ She lifted her head and kissed him and he hugged her briefly and went away across the room to stand beside his Maria, and Abby saw her look up at him with an expression of such trust and adoration on her face that she was almost embarrassed and turned to go.
She was in the hall below, putting on her mantle, when Maria came rustling down the stairs. ‘I saw you were going,’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘I could not set out upon my wedding journey without thanking you, Abby.’
‘Thanking me?’ Abby stared at her. ‘Whatever for? I have done nothing!’
Maria shook her head. ‘You do not know how much you have done. It is your warmth and understanding, all the goodness of your nature that gave me the courage that made me find myself where I am this afternoon. I loved him, you see, but I was so afraid of him.’ She smiled shyly. ‘I may dissemble well, but I am very ordinary below the surface, Abby. And I would not have dared to tell him of my love for him had it not been that I knew of your sweetness. It seemed to me that if you could be his daughter, could love him enough to come here as you did after so many years of bitter separation, why then, he must also be different under the surface, have warmth and springs I could not see. Was lonely perhaps and in as much need of love as I was. So I thought of you and spoke to him and—’ she stood on tiptoe and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, Abby. I wish for you only the same happiness I now enjoy. A husband who can love you and be loved in the same way. I can think of no greater felicity.’
Abby could not help it. She smiled wryly and said, ‘I doubt that will ever come to me.’
Maria set her head on one side and looked at her shrewdly. ‘Why not?’
Abby shrugged and began to fasten the neck of her mantle. ‘Because the man I—the only man who could be my husband cannot be. I love him and he me, but—’ she shook her head again and closed her lips firmly and turned to go.
‘Is he already married? Or committed in some other way? Why cannot you marry him?’
‘You, who never gossip, asking such questions? Why, Stepmamma! I am surprised at you,’ Abby said in a rallying tone, and Maria smiled and patted her arm.
‘Well, I will not spoil matters by becoming some sort of ogre of a stepmother! You must keep your own counsel. But I tell you this, Abby. You are not the woman I believe you to be if you let anything stand between you and the man you want. Anything at all. I looked at your father and there were the shadows of dead women to keep us apart and anxieties about his children, about the hospital, about so many things, but it seemed to me that if I did not have the courage to face them and surmount them or the courage to help him face any pain those troubles might bring to him, why, then I did not deserve to be happy! So I found the courage and here I am today, quite the happiest woman alive! I can only wish you the same. Goodbye, my dear Abby. We will see you again soon, I am sure—’
She stood upon the step outside looking along Gower Street at the flat-fronted buildings with their iron balconies, the houses amongst which she had grown up, the cobbles and pavements she knew so well, and thought of her father there behind her, in his own peaceful haven at last; of her dead mother and husband, of the whole of her past life as well as theirs, and felt tears rising in her. She should be as happy as her father was, she thought, she should have as hopeful a future. And then chided herself for being so petulant. To have that she must be as strong as her father, as brave as Maria, and go to get what she wanted, whatever it might lead to, whatever pain it might cause.
She turned her head to look the other way along Gower Street, in an easterly direction, towards the spires of the City and the roofs of Cheapside and Bishopsgate, Poultry and—Lombard Street. And suddenly seemed to hear her mother’s voice thin and distant, ‘—when it is time for you to wed, follow your heart as I did—at whatever cost to yourself and others—however your lines fall thereafter it is all a woman can ask of life. To get love is good, but to give it is so much greater!’—and it was almost as though Dorothea was standing there beside her and speaking in her ear.
Abby turned and looked up at the bedroom window on the second floor behind which her mother had lain so silent for so long and which would now be the room shared by her father and his Maria. And took a deep and shaking breath.
Had she the courage to do as her mother had done and ‘follow her heart’, no matter whom it hurt? Had she the courage Maria had shown? She did not know. But suddenly she lifted her chin and picked up her skirts and went down the steps to climb into her carriage. She did not know. But she could try.
Claire Rayner, Paddington Green
