On the morning of the wedding Nell asked me to fasten the last hook at her neck.
I had been useful since six without once being indispensable. Nora and her daughter had agreed to help with the food; Mrs Pike had brought the cake out of its long summer in the tin; Ada had gone to collect something Nell had left at the new rooms. The little gathering afterwards would take place at Arthur’s parents’, where the furniture had not recently been sold. I had a dress to put on and time in which to do it.
Still, when my daughter stood in the doorway I rose as if I had been waiting to be required.
“Will you?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She turned. The cream wool lay smooth across her back. At the waist she had put the blue ribbon Bessie gave her, a narrow colour which appeared only when the light caught it. I fastened the hook and took my hands away before they could begin adjusting things she had not asked me to change.
She looked in the glass.
“Does the sleeve still pull?” I asked.
She raised her arm, smiled and shook her head.
I had pinned a small brooch to my own collar. Thomas gave it to me after Nell was born, a plain little oval which I had almost sold before discovering that the dealer valued it less than the cabinet I scarcely liked. I touched it while she settled the ribbon. Nell saw the movement in the glass.
“I’m glad you’re wearing that.”
“So am I.”
For a moment she stood very still. Then she turned towards me.
“I miss him.”
“I do too.”
There was no need to decide which Thomas we were missing: the man who worried about his baby’s feet, the father who listened when Nell explained a sum, the husband who had bought a piano and never quite understood why I stopped finding time to play it. The morning could hold more than the kindest version of him without spoiling its love.
Nell came close and put her forehead briefly against my cheek. Her hair caught on the brooch, and we disentangled it before she stepped away.
“We’ll walk together,” she said.
She had asked me a week before, after speaking to the minister about the arrangements. I had not believed her at first. There were uncles, Arthur’s father, men who might expect the place. She wanted me. I had managed not to ask if she was certain more than once.
“Yes,” I said.
Ada returned with a glove. She had gone all the way to the new rooms for one glove, discovering only on arrival that the other was safely in Nell’s pocket. She held it up between two fingers.
“The bride is not yet too grand to lose things.”
Nell laughed and kissed her. My sister’s hands were better that morning; she could manage her own buttons, though the smallest still defeated her. I helped with the one at her wrist while she looked at my brooch.
“That suits the dress.”
“It was the only one I had.”
“You could simply accept the compliment.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
We went downstairs. Grace stood in the hall with the flowers she had brought, a few stems tied together rather than an arrangement which required someone to carry it all morning. Mrs Keene had a handkerchief in her hand already and said it was for the wind. The day was dry and almost still.
Outside the street looked much as it had on the first of April, though the leaves on the chestnut had begun to turn. The house needed paint near the lower window, a problem I would attend to when there was money for it. The new lodger’s curtain moved at an upper window. Someone I did not know walked past carrying a basket. Nell took my arm, and we set off.
At the church Arthur waited with his father. He looked at Nell before he saw anyone else. His face changed so completely that I could remember, without effort, why a sensible woman might consent to a frightening new life with another person.
Nell’s hand tightened once against my sleeve. We went forward together. At the appointed moment I gave her hand as we had arranged, then stepped into my place beside Ada. My sister’s shoulder touched mine. She did not take my hand, perhaps because she knew I would not be able to keep my face composed if she did.
I listened to the words. Some I had said myself. Some, heard after twenty-five years of marriage and widowhood, seemed larger than any pair of people could know how to promise. Nell spoke clearly. Arthur’s voice caught once, then steadied. They had postponed one day, lost one set of rooms, argued about work, money and whose comfort would determine the shape of their home. Now they stood side by side and chose what they could honestly promise in the hearing of people who loved them.
When it was over and the books signed, Mrs Pike came to me with tears in the corners of her eyes. She had held herself so firmly all summer that I had forgotten she might have been frightened of losing something too.
“She looks happy,” she said.
“So does he.”
We stood together while the young people were surrounded. Ada went to tell William something, Mrs Keene found her handkerchief insufficient to the wind, and Grace began trying to persuade everyone to stand in a light which suited the drawing she wanted to make later.
Bessie arrived at the gate just as we were leaving. She could not get away from work earlier. She had put a bright pin on the hat with her own ribbon and carried a little parcel which she gave directly to Nell. It was a pair of pillowcases, neatly made, with a small embroidered mark in the corner.
Nell unfolded one enough to look. “Did you make these?”
“Yes.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They’re meant to be washed,” Bessie said. “Don’t put them away where no one will use them.”
Arthur promised they would be used. Bessie looked at him, decided he meant it, and stayed to walk with us to his parents’.
The food had been laid out before we arrived. I went towards the kitchen, thinking of plates and cups, but Mrs Pike caught my sleeve.
“We’re sitting down first.”
“I only thought—”
“So did I. Nora told me.”
We sat. There was enough to eat and not so much that the leftovers became an indictment of our judgement. Mr Pike made a speech in which he forgot the order of two things and had to begin the middle again. Arthur thanked him without making it worse. Ada talked to Minnie, both of them evidently explaining that they remembered me differently. I left them to it.
When the cake was cut Mrs Pike watched the first slice with an anxiety which vanished at Arthur’s expression. He took a bite, shut his eyes for a moment and said it had been worth waiting for.
Nell laughed. Not the careful laugh she had given so many people through the summer, but a sound which seemed to come from a life she was already living. I turned towards the window until I could trust my face, then took the piece Nora offered me.
Later my daughter came to sit beside me while Arthur spoke with his father. Her ribbon had loosened a little. I could see where to put it right, but she was comfortable and so was I.
“Will you be all right tonight?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to say yes immediately.”
“I shall miss you. That isn’t the same as not being all right.”
She looked down at her hands. The ring was unfamiliar enough that she kept touching it with her thumb.
“I am still angry sometimes,” she said.
“I expect you will be.”
“But I don’t want that to be all we talk about.”
I set my plate down. There were answers which would have made her reassure me, declarations of sorrow which had begun to resemble requests. I had given her those already.
“Neither do I,” I said.
She leaned back beside me. For a while we watched the room: Bessie showing Grace the stitching on the pillowcase, Edith listening to Arthur’s father, Mrs Keene carrying the flowers out of a draught. Nell told me a small story about the neighbour in their new house, who had asked whether Arthur played the violin because someone upstairs did and she wished to identify whom to blame. It was not important enough to have been saved for an occasion. She had told me because I was beside her.
I laughed. She finished her cake and went to find her husband.
They left together before the gathering ended. There were no speeches at the door, no last instruction I could disguise as a blessing. I kissed Nell, kissed Arthur when he bent towards me, and told them I would come on the day they had invited me.
Nell looked back from the step. She lifted a hand. I lifted mine, then let her go without following her into the street.
That evening Ada came home with me. We took off our hats in the hall and looked at one another, both with flattened hair and the tiredness of women who had spent a whole day trying not to spoil it by crying.
“Tea?” I asked.
“Please.”
“You’ll have to help me find it.”
She laughed. We made it together, then sat in the green room with the last light coming in. The space where the piano had been was still strange. Ada looked at it once and did not offer me another one.
She told me about her new companion, Mrs Gould, who had informed William on the first morning that she finished at a stated time and would not carry messages between husband and wife. Ada had been offended for perhaps ten minutes, she admitted, before discovering how useful it was not to be able to conduct an argument by proxy.
“Is she kind?” I asked.
“Yes. But not always in the way I intended.”
I smiled into my cup. We spoke about something else before the sentence could become a lesson for either of us.
The first time I went upstairs after she left, Nell’s room was empty. There were marks where her mirror had hung, a pin on the floor, the faint smell of the soap she had taken with her. The new lodger would arrive the following week. I had clean sheets ready and had promised a room with afternoon light, not a place preserved around my grief.
I picked up the pin and put it in the little dish on my own dressing table.
In October Arthur helped me carry the hall table upstairs. We had to turn it twice on the landing. He kept the heavier end without telling me he had done so, and I kept hold of mine until it was through the door.
It fitted under my window. The drawer opened cleanly now. I put paper in it, my exercise book on the top, and the book I was reading beside the lamp. I moved the mending basket under the bed and read until the clock struck six.
Mr Leach sent a card saying the new supper was perfectly adequate and the room not so quiet as he had been led to expect. I wrote back that his old one had been let, but he could come for tea if he gave me notice. Mrs Keene had complaints about the kitchen shelf and no intention of leaving. One of Grace’s pupils left a painting of a jug in the sitting room; for three weeks nobody would sit beneath it, certain it was about to tip.
No further enquiry about the census came to my door. I did not know what names or notes had eventually been put beside our address. Sometimes a letter in an official hand still made me pause before opening it. Usually it concerned the house. The women had not gained a parliamentary vote that spring. Ada’s next meeting was in November; she sent me the particulars in a letter which began with news about the garden.
Nell came on the second Tuesday in October to check the accounts.
She arrived with her own pencil, looked at the sums for the month, found one omitted charge and said so without either of us hearing an accusation. I paid her for the hour. She gave me a receipt in the same clear hand as the one I had once dreaded seeing, then put her book in her bag.
“Would you like supper?” I asked.
“Not tonight. Arthur’s cooking.”
“Then I won’t tempt you.”
“You could tell me whether he’s likely to ruin the pan.”
“What is he making?”
She told me. I said the pan would probably survive. She laughed and began putting on her gloves. I had expected her to leave at once, but she stopped beside the stair.
“Can I see the table?”
“Of course.”
We went upstairs. In my room the late light fell across the open page. The table was plain and too narrow for much display; the little mark where Bessie had rested the inkstand remained near one corner. Nell ran a finger over it, pulled out the drawer and shut it again.
“It looks as if it’s yours.”
“It is.”
She looked at the book. A strip of red ribbon marked the page, cut from the length left after Mrs Keene and I trimmed the hat. Nell picked it up, read a little, then began to smile.
“I don’t remember this part.”
“I had to read it twice. I was laughing the first time.”
She sat in the chair by the window, still holding the book. Downstairs someone came in, hung up a coat and called to Grace on the stairs. A door opened. The house went on around us without a question which only I could answer.
Nell gave me the book, her finger keeping the place.
“Read me that bit,” she said.
I sat down beside her and began.
THE END