MARRIAGE IN HASTE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 475, 30 July 1948, Page 10

MARRIAGE IN HASTE

| Written for "The Listener’ ||

by

CARR

TAYLOR

HERE had been a frost that morning, but now it was past noon and the sun, shining strongly, had drawn all sharpness from the clear, still air. "Hi, Dad, look at the beach. Look at the beach, Dad!" the children shouted from the back seat. "Dad used to live here once, don’t forget," Edith said. Arnold slowed so that they could see better through gaps in the sprawling pohutukawas at the edge of the road. The autumn had been like this just before he had left here 15 years ago, he remembered. The spell of calm fine weather had not broken by early winter, and the last time he had passed the beach, travelling the other way, the sun had struck sparkles from the sea as it did ‘to-day. ' Edith wished the children could have had a run on the sand. But she knew Arnold wanted to push on. Difficult driving lay ahead, on the steep twisting road beyond the next township-the one Arnold had lived in for a while years ago-and he wanted to get the worst of it over in daylight. She was enjoying the trip, seeing new places, having a holiday from house-

work. Not that holidays were at all important to her. She was much too happy at home. All the things she most wanted to do she could do best therequiet, simple things, reading and sewing and gardening and planning for the welfare of Arnold and the children. HE car climbed a hill and turned a corner and they could see the township below. Funny to think that when Arnold had lived in one of those houses he hadn’t even known she existed... . The winter he had left here she had already been at Green’s Corner Drapery, in the town 20 miles from her father’s farm, for six months. Her mother had found her the job. "You'll never meet anybody stuck here on the farm. You don’t want to be an old maid like Aunt Cissy, do you?" Indeed she didn't. Shé was too inexperienced and unthinking to realise that there might be more desirable and dignified forms of spinsterhood than Aunt Cissy’s. Her aunt was unhappy when she lived alone, and when she stayed with her relations most of them shamelessly made use of her. Her health was poor, her eyes were often red, her manner either aggrieved or deprecating. But not wanting to be like Aunt Cissy hadn’t prevented Edith from hating the t

drapery job and the boarding-house she had to stay in; even the week-ends at home were spoilt by her mother so obviously hoping to hear she had "met somebody." One stinging winter afternoon she walked from work feeling more miserable than usual. She could feel the hot itch of incipient chilblains on her fingers. There would be shepherd’s pie and bottled plums and watery custard for dinner-Monday’s menu. Afterwards the three old ladies would pull their armchairs close round the fire and Edith would have to say she was quite warm enough and sit on the sofa with her feet going numb. One of the two old bachelors would sit beside her and tell her stories of old days which grew to him more absorbing and remarkable with each telling, though to her without interest or reality. After she went to bed she would stay cold half the night, because the two kettles on the side of the fire held just enough water for the old ladies’ hot-water bags, and she was too much in awe of the landlady to use the gas. As she reached the boarding-house

gate that afternoon a young man who had been walking behind her in the early darkness stepped forward to open it and to introduce himself as a fellowboarder who had arrived during the week-end .... At dinner he sat next to her, and before the end of the meal asked her if she would go to the picturés with him. T seemed extraordinary to Edith now to remember that six weeks later, when Arnold proposed to her and she accepted him, she still felt nothing (continued on next page)

fcontinued from previous page) stronger than the astonishment and gratitude of that first night. She was flattered too, of course; for in . spite of her diffidence, she could think "of no reason for his quietly determined pursuit except that he had fallen in love with her almost at first sight. But the real reasons why she married him were Aunt Cissy and her mother; and Mr, Green, under whose sarcastic eyes she always cut material crooked and tied parcels clumsily. She married him because of chilblains and the boardinghouse, the selfish old ladies and the tedious old man. His nature and personality were unimportant beside the fact that she had news for her mother at last and that she could give notice at the Corner Drapery. Remembering it now, the only thing

that made her feel less guilty and ignoble was to reflect that before the year was out and their first child was born her indifference had changed: to devotion. By then she had matured far beyond the silly girl who had longed for a wedding ring from any source. She realised that if Arnold

ball hadn’t been as dependable and sympathetic and_ considerate as he had_ daily shown himself to be she couldn’t have loved him. And she knew enough now to guess that marriage without love might be the bitterest of all roads. She had deserved disaster, and through Arnold’s qualities she had found happiness. HEY were in the main street of the township now. "Surely you’d like to have a look round," she said. "I should if I were you. You might meet someone you used to know. Didn’t you tell me it’s the sort of backwater where people stay for ever?" "Well... ." he looked at his watch. "It’s still early,’ she urged. "The children and I ‘would rather like ‘a walk." "Just up and down the main street, then." They hadn’t gone 50 yards before Arnold did meet someone he knew. A dumpy woman with sharp brown eyes stopped square in front of him. "Arnold! After all these years! Don’t say you don’t remember me! Grace Mitchell!" : "Of course," Arnold said. "My wife, and these are my youngsters. Mrs. Mitchell, Edith. I used to be cobbers with her husband. Old Fred still building houses?" "Oh yes, he’s still building houses." She was trying not to stare too hard at Edith. "But look, how long are you staying? I’ve got a hair appointment now, I’m late already. But what about dinner to-night? You must! Fred would . . ." : They were just passing through, they said, and after she had expressed in a flurry of italics the chagrin Fred would feel she had to leave them. "What a pity you couldn’t,’ Edith said. "I can imagine how disappointed he’ll be when she tells him." Arnold could imagine a good deal more than that. But then, of- course,

he had all the clues. After he had started driving again, he thought about Grace and Fred discussing him over their evening meal. Memories were long in the little town for anything approaching a scandal, and of course Fred had been a friend and had actually built the house for him. He remembered the lovely autumn evening when it was finished, and he and Cynthia had walked together through the empty rooms that smelt of sawdust and varnish and still enclosed some of the day’s warmth. That was the first time she had been preoccupied and, silent, unable to respond when he pictured their future there together. "How long before the wedding was it that she threw him over?" Grace would say to Fred. "Only a week, wasn’t it? Remember how he chucked

his job-practically a partnership, too, and cleared off nobody knew where?" He’d found a new job easily enough, though it had hardly seemed important at the time. What had seemed important — how young he had been, picturing the situation crudely, without half-tones or bal-

ance-had been to change as quickly as possible his unbearable status of fejected lover. He wasn’t heart-broken, as he had at first supposed. His love for Cynthia had gone no deeper than the romantic first love of any idealistic young man who lacks the measuring-rod of experience. It was his self-esteem that had been beaten to the ground. He had grasped at Edith to build it up again. "TI took a good look at the wife," he imagined Grace saying. "I wonder how they get on. Because of course he must have asked the first girl he met. Remember how soon we heard he was married . . . weeks before Cynthia married that other fellow!" All he had perceived about Edith at first had been that she was reasonably good-looking and intelligent and likeable. Her eager "Yes," when he asked her to marry him, affirmed his eligibility, in spite of Cynthia. . . . It wasn’t till a few months after marriage, when she had her first severe bout of morning sickness, and tried to smile at him in spite of physical misery, that he had a sudden positive feeling of admiration and tenderness. Well, things couldn’t have turned out better. But if it had been ‘anyone except Edith, devoted, uncomplicated, what a noose he might have made for himself. .. . HE two children were tired and had stopped chattering. There was only the noise of the car. Edith hoped that the rooms they had booked in the big town ahead would be nice, and that the weather would hold for Arnold’s golf. On a straight stretch of road she patted his arm and accepted his smile in lieu of conversation. Inthe early stages of her love for him, she had often longed when he was silent to know exactly what he was thinking. But they were so close now, after all the happy years together, that she was sure she could always feel the texture of his_ thought, even if she didn’t know the precise strands that had woven it.