Suki, p.57
Suki, page 57
By the time they’d been walking out for a month, Marianne felt there wasn’t much she didn’t know about him except whether he loved her, although she assumed he must do or they wouldn’t be keeping company and that was now such an established thing that her neighbours were beginning to talk about it. It disappointed her that there’d been no love talk between them — and surprised her, too, for her friends were always telling one another what nonsense men talked and she’d been quite looking forward to it — but maybe that would come later. For the moment, it was enough that he’d singled her out and they were known to be courting.
Then one evening, he arrived at her house with a bunch of daffodils and without saying a word, thrust them into her hands. Now that’s a deal better she thought, lifting them to her face to smell them. Flowers were known to be love tokens. Everyone said so. And this is my first. My very first. She thanked him kindly and found an old jug to put them in, arranging them prettily and smiling at him all the time. And when he suggested that they should take a turn about the town, she went with him happily.
It was a balmy April evening and because she was so grateful for the flowers she put her hand in the crook of his arm as they walked along and gave it a squeeze. Now, she thought, we shall have some love talk, surely. He might even propose.
“Where are we goin’?” she asked.
His answer was rather a surprise. “To Mother Catty’s,” he said. “I got something to show you.”
So they walked through the alleys to Mother Catty’s lodging house, which was a small narrow building, where the amiable Mrs Catty plied her trade as local nurse and midwife and let out her rooms to augment her earnings. The door was ajar, as it usually was, so they walked into the hall which was very dark and smelt of cabbage and old shoes, and Jem led the way up the staircase, taking care to avoid a broken tread, up one floor, up two, until they reached the top of the house, where there were two closed doors giving out to a small landing.
“Here we are,” he said, and opened the nearest door with a flourish. “This here is our room, what I’ve took for us.” It was a wonderful moment. Our room, what I’ve took for us.
It was a small square room with a shuttered window looking out over the backyard and a fireplace with two trivets. There was nothing in it except for a brass bedstead with no mattress, an empty coal scuttle and, standing in rather splendid isolation in the middle of the room, a brand-new chest of drawers, smelling of new wood and varnish.
They stood side by side with their hands on the wood. “I made this,” he told her proudly. “An’ ’tis the best thing I ever done. What do ’ee think?”
“’Tis a fine piece,” she said, and meant it, for she could see what care he’d taken with it.
“I shall furnish this place with everything we could want,” he told her and walked about the room showing her where the furniture was going to be put. “A table and two chairs under the window, don’t ’ee think? An’ some shelves here for our pots and pans and so forth, an’ a washstand in this corner, where ’twill be neat an’ tidy. You shan’t want for nothing, I promise you.”
It wasn’t exactly love talk, but it was the next best thing. My home, she thought, standing in the middle of the room and gazing round at it. My own home, where I can have a table an’ chairs of my own an’ a washstand an’ a chest o’ drawers…
“So we’ll call the banns, shall we?” he said.
That wasn’t exactly a proposal either, but she said “Yes” at once. Now, she thought, he will kiss me. She did so want him to kiss her, or put his arms round her, or even do some of the exciting things that married folk were permitted to do. She didn’t know what they were, because she’d only heard them spoken about in hints and whispers but the whispers had been too breathy and the hints too sly to leave her in much doubt that they were pleasurable. She lifted her face towards him, ever so slightly but enough to show that a kiss would be welcome. Oh surely he’ll kiss me now, she thought.
But, to her great disappointment, he didn’t. “Good,” he said. “I’ll arrange it on Sunday.”
Her father roared with laughter when she told him. “He don’t let the grass grow under his feet, that young man a’ yourn,” he said. “I’ll say that for him. So when’s the wedding?”
“He’s arranging it on Sunday,” Marianne told him.
It was arranged for four weeks later, in the week after the banns had been called for the third time and, as her mother was quick to tell her, it would mean a lot of work in so short a time. “He could have give us a bit more notice surely to goodness,” she said.
“He wants it settled,” Marianne tried to explain, and then blushed because that made it sound as if he was in a rush to get her to bed and that wasn’t the truth of it at all, although she wished it could have been. “I means for to say, now we got the room an’ all, an’ he’s makin’ the furniture an’ everything.” But it upset her to think that she’d be making extra work for her mother. “I know ’tis a lot to do,” she said, “but I’ll help ’ee with it.”
“I daresay Lizzie Templeman will make the pies,” her mother said, “bein’ it’s her trade, an’ we can manage the custards atween us. But then there’s bedding to get. You’ll need a mattress and blankets and a couple of pillows at the very least. Goose feathers, I think. They’re the best. I daresay your Aunt Min will make ’ee a bedspread. It’ll be a bit of a rush for her but she does ’em lovely. And then you’ll need a new gown for I can’t have you married in rags. That would never do. We’ll go to town this afternoon and chose the material.”
Preparing for a wedding was really quite exciting, even if there hadn’t been any kisses. They chose a length of sky-blue cotton and set to work that evening cutting it out and basted the pieces together. When Jem arrived to ask her to come out for a walk, he grinned to see how busy they were.
“I en’t sure I can this evening,” Marianne told him, biting the thread. “There’s rather a lot—”
But her mother was taking the cloth away from her. “You go, child,” she said. “’Tis a fine evening an’ the walk’ll do ’ee good.”
So they walked. But even then there were no kisses because he was so busy telling her about their new furniture. “I got a fine set a shelves made for our pots and pans,” he said, as they headed off into the fields. “I shall put ’em up tomorrow an’ you can come an’ see ’em.”
“Yes,” she said. “I would like to.” He was so excited about all this furniture she could hardly say anything else. And it was good furniture. There was no denying that.
So the banns were called and the pies and custards were made and her dress was stitched and ready and the flowers were ordered and the night before her wedding, she and Jem went to Mrs Catty’s to put the final touches to the room that was going to be their home.
It really was a very fine room now that everything was done. The little wooden table he’d promised stood beside the window with two chairs set beside it, the shelves he’d put up were full of pots and kettles and dishes, for all the world as if they were part of a dresser, and the chest of drawers was set against the wall and full of their clothes, all neatly folded away. There were coals in the scuttle and a salt pot and two candlesticks on the mantelpiece and the trivets on the hearth were polished shiny ready for use. And dominating the room, the high bed stood waiting, all neatly made up with its two goose-feather pillows and its thick straw mattress and the cotton counterpane her aunt had made for her, spread cleanly over it all. My home, she thought, enjoying the sight of it and tomorrow I shall start to live here. I can’t wait.
She looked so happy standing there that Jem was almost tempted to kiss her. But he thought better of it. He’d controlled himself admirably all these weeks for fear of doing the wrong thing and ’twas only a matter of hours now and then they’d be man and wife and nothing they could do could possibly be thought wrong. There’ll be time enough for kisses tomorrow, he thought. I can’t wait.
Beryl Kingston, Suki
