Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

‘There's no use making a fuss about it,’ Mrs Cosway said. ‘It's been said and now you might as well forget it.’ She addressed Eric. ‘If only Pontius Pilate had given one the tablets Selwyn Lombard prescribed none of this would have happened.’

‘It isn't too late, you know,’ Winifred said to her brother. ‘There are other doctors. You could be back on it next week and it won't be up to you. It will be Mother's decision.’ She turned to Felix and said in a scathing tone, ‘Asking Kerstin to marry him! That's the kind of thing that happens when he's deprived of his medicine.’

I didn't like this but there was nothing I could do. Throughout it all John had been half-buried as he always was these days in sleeping bag, quilts and blankets. Trailing them behind him, hitching them up as he went and still clutching the magnifying glass, he shuffled across to the high-backed sofa and crawled into the three-sided cave between it and the wall. A pink satin eiderdown effectively blocked the opening behind him. Everyone but Felix knew he would be there for hours, possibly all night.

Mark had gone to his parents in Shropshire. We hadn't met since that weekend when he proposed to me but this was as much due to the snow as to any awkwardness between us. Next morning I was due at White Lodge to spend a day and a night and a day with the Trintowels. Determined not to dwell morbidly on Winifred's remark, I fiercely pushed her words out of my mind. But what took its place wasn't much improvement. I went to bed early, thinking how absurd it was that I, who was quite without any religious faith, should be feeling melancholy and lonely because for once I was deprived of a Christmas Eve celebration with my parents and my brother and sister. I found it hard to sleep and I was still awake when Eric brought Winifred back from the midnight service of lessons and carols.

I had bought small gifts for Jane and Gerald Trintowel but nothing for the Cosways and I was surprised when Ella knocked on my door at eight in the morning with a present for me.

‘No one can sleep properly the night before Christmas, can they?’ she said. ‘So I didn't think you'd mind me bringing this bright and early.’

Not to be outdone and thinking fast, I gave her the gift of soap and perfume which was an extra I had wrapped up for Jane in addition to their wine and chocolates. Years later I told Jane. She smiled and said it was just as well as she had always disliked that particular scent.

‘I want to laugh,’ she said, ‘but I can't when it's anything to do with that family. It seems wrong to think of them in any way but tragic.’

Ella gave me a doll. It was smaller than those in her bedroom, a twenty-centimetre-tall blonde of the Barbie type in a short yellow dress and knee boots.

‘It's a Courrèges copy. I must say I'm rather proud of her boots. I made them out of the fingers of Mother's gloves. I'm keeping my fingers crossed she won't decide she needs them.’

I still have that doll. It is ugly and absurd and I would never have dreamt of putting it on show in any home of mine but somehow I can't throw it away. My daughter found it when she was a little girl and wanted to play with it. I refused – not because I ever treasured it but because of where it came from and the dreadful events associated with it. Thirty-five years later it is as clean and its clothes as exquisitely made as when Ella gave it to me in my bedroom at Lydstep Old Hall, as the sun coming up over Windrose coloured the fields of snow with her favourite pink.

With his bedclothes and his magnifying glass, John had buried himself behind the sofa for eighteen hours. Twice he had come out to go to the lavatory and on each occasion, she told me, Ida had been worried that he would lock himself in and carry on his vigil or strike or whatever it was from there.

‘There is nothing to be done, I suppose,’ she said. ‘If I take the key away it's going to be so embarrassing for guests not being able to lock themselves in. Did you have a good time?’

I said it had been very nice, thank you.

‘They've got two sons, haven't they? The younger one used to play the organ in church in the days when I went. I met the older one once. D'you know, Kerstin, I'd have thought he'd be just your type.’

She was right but of course I didn't say so, if I even knew it then. ‘I've got a boyfriend,’ I said.

The question of the hour – of several days to come in fact – was who was to give Winifred away. Apparently, in the absence of her father, some male relative of the bride or family friend had to do this and Winifred might have fixed on an uncle or the nephew who was one of the John Cosway Trust trustees. But the Lydstep Old Hall people, with the exception of Zorah, had fallen out with them and relations were now confined entirely to business.

‘Of course John ought to do it,’ Winifred had remarked during Christmas lunch while her brother was still behind the sofa. ‘He could have done if he'd still had his medicine. He'd have bumbled through it all right.’

Her mother told her not to be silly and Eric was very shocked. Ella, who told me about it, said, ‘So Mother said she assumed she was going to do it. It was surely possible for a woman to give her daughter away and Eric said, yes, it was, and it would be quite suitable. And then what do you think happened? You'd never guess in a million years. Winifred said, “Why shouldn't Felix give me away? He's a family friend and he's Eric's friend. I thought it would be nice for him to be Eric's best man but George Cusp is up for that, so why shouldn't he give me away?” Well, Mother was absolutely furious, she said she'd never heard of anything so preposterous and if that happened she wouldn't even go to the wedding.’

I asked Ella what the person who gave away the bride would have to do and say.

‘He isn't supposed to say anything. He goes with the bride to the church and takes her arm up the aisle – you see how John couldn't possibly have done it. The parson – it'll be the Archdeacon – says, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” and he doesn't say anything, just stands there, but most get it wrong and say, “I do,” and then he walks away and sits down and the bridegroom says that bit about taking thee to my wedded wife. Well, Winifred got quite excited at her idea and when we'd finished the Christmas pudding and Ida was handing round chocolates, she got the Prayer Book and she and Felix started going through it together, their heads touching if you can believe it, and laughing and reading bits out. I don't know what Eric thought but he didn't say anything. Felix read out the bit about the minister “receiving the woman at her father's or friend's hand” and said that was clear enough. It meant he was more suitable than Mother because there was nothing about the minister receiving Winifred at her mother's hands.’

‘So what happened in the end?’

‘Well, nothing really. Eric said it wasn't necessary to have anyone to give a bride away and it was time to change the subject. He seemed a bit uneasy by that time.’

I asked her why Winifred wanted Felix.

‘I see it as a symbol,’ said Ella. ‘It means she's giving him up to get married. He's giving her up to another man. You'll say it's in very bad taste and I'd agree but it's what a father does in a sort of way.’

‘In a sort of way,’ I said.

Zorah hadn't been with them at lunch but appeared in the afternoon, beautifully dressed, her hair done in a new way and wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes ‘I'd have given years off my life for’, said Ella. Having put away a ‘vast amount’ of the sherry, burgundy and brandy, all of it provided by Zorah, Felix had fallen asleep, sprawled out in the armchair where John usually sat. Mrs Cosway was also asleep, Eric dozing and Winifred lying back with closed eyes, fairly typical it seemed for any English family on Christmas afternoon. Zorah looked carefully at Felix, walking round him and putting her head on one side, like someone studying an unusual specimen of wildlife.