Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Mr McCosh felt familiar pangs of pain in his chest and left arm, and thought that he really must ask Dr Scott to call round again. Mrs McCosh, conscious of her role, and magnificent in an enormous floral hat that entirely blocked the view of those behind, fretted inwardly about the success of the reception. Now that there were no servants to speak of, one had to rely on people who were hired in, and results were so much more unpredictable.

When the organ struck up and the brides entered on their father’s arms, neither Daniel nor Fairhead turned round to look; they wanted to delay the surprise and pleasure.

The service, as it turned out, was slightly muddled, since, although the plans had been carefully laid, the rector became confused under the pressure of the event. He addressed Fairhead as Daniel Pitt, and had to be corrected, and seemed startled when Hamilton McCosh stepped forward to give away each of the brides, and equally startled when each groom presented the other with the ring for his bride.

The greatest difficulty occurred when Daniel had to put the ring on Rosie’s finger. It had occurred to no one, not even to Rosie, that the moment would come when she would need an unbandaged ring finger. Daniel took her hand, perceived the problem, was momentarily appalled and perplexed, and then put the ring to the tip of the finger. He held it there for a few seconds, and then palmed it, and was only able to transfer it to his pocket when they all they left to sign the register.

Sophie’s infectious joy gave lift to the whole occasion, and when she went up on tiptoe to kiss Fairhead she put her arm round his neck and drew his head down to receive her lips. Rosie surprised herself by kissing Daniel with real tenderness. How strange but delightful it was to be Mrs Pitt.

When the time came to leave, the organist pulled out all the stops, and played Widor, causing the whole church to reverberate. The two couples emerged arm in arm into the sunlight and passed beneath the glittering arch of swords provided by the grooms’ military friends, all of them beautifully got up in the bright uniforms of their regiments. The happy crowd of friends and family threw rice over them, clapping and cheering. Some of the women wiped tears from their eyes, and the men necessarily restrained their own.

As the open carriage departed, this time bearing the couples, Sophie threw her bouquet to Ottilie, who skipped a little as she caught it. Rosie’s bouquet flew quite accidentally towards Gaskell, who caught it, looked at it with puzzlement, as if it were an inexplicably large and exotic insect, and then tossed it on to Ottilie. ‘I can’t have two!’ she protested, and Gaskell said, ‘Of course you can. It’ll double your chances!’

At the reception Mr McCosh made a speech in which he declared his regret that he could not have married all his daughters off in one go, and that it would seem terribly dull marrying off the other two in separate ceremonies, but he feared that they might never get married anyway, because there were only two men in the world good enough for his daughters to marry, and they had been snaffled by Sophie and Rosie already. Christabel felt a little peculiar as she listened to this, given that Gaskell was by her side. Ottilie looked over at Archie, who was making a point of standing on his own, grimly enduring the loss to his brother of the woman he had always loved. Ottilie felt very sorry for him, and wished he would notice her, but she knew that he never would, and that one day she would probably find someone else.

Daniel and Fairhead managed to combine their speeches as both grooms and best men, under strict instruction from Hamilton McCosh to keep it brief. Fairhead quoted the Song of Solomon in honour of his bride, looking at her directly, and reciting: ‘“Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue …”’

Sophie glowed with pleasure and clapped at the end, jumping up and down like a schoolgirl. Mrs McCosh found herself crying unexpectedly. The speech had caused her to remember her husband’s early passion.

Daniel’s speech had only just got under way when a droning sound from the south began to get louder and louder. Those who had experienced the Zeppelin and Gotha raids began to feel distinctly uneasy. Daniel was drowned out, as the racket grew suddenly deafening and it grew clear what was happening.

Daniel’s entire squadron of Snipes came over at roof level, led by Fluke’s diminutive and impertinent Sopwith triplane, with his Squadron Leader’s streamers trailing and flapping from the struts. The three flights peeled apart and began to put on a display of synchronised formation flying, looping, banking, flying upside down, missing head-on collisions at the last moment, and diving on the house. At the end they dived together, shot up into the air, hung there for a second, stalled, sideslipped, and fell into a collective falling leaf that had Daniel’s heart in his mouth. He was possibly the only one there who knew how dangerous it could be, but it did look wonderful. At the last minute the engines roared back into life, the planes pulled out of their fall, and rose back up into the clouds to perform one more loop with a roll on top. They then set off in the direction of the golf course, whose fairways on this day were to contain an unusual number of fighters. The club’s members turned out to watch them coming in to land, asking each other rhetorically whether one really would have to play the ball where it lay, even if an aeroplane happened to be obscuring one’s shot.

A few minutes after the squadron had gone, Fluke’s little triplane reappeared, trailing behind it a banner that read ‘Hallelujah!’

Rosie suddenly remembered the day when they had had their coronation celebration for King Edward VII, and the garden seemed to fill with ghosts. Ash and his brothers, little boys back then, had grown into men and marched away, to vanish into the insatiable stomach of war.

Mme Pitt appeared at her side, dressed in the Parisian style, in a hat with a curved brim trimmed with artificial roses. On her chest she wore a silver-mounted tiger-claw brooch that Rosie had always hated, because she did not think that any animal should be made into jewellery.

‘You are remembering, I think,’ said Mme Pitt, ‘when my boys came over the wall.’

‘It was quite a stunt,’ said Rosie, a little feebly. Mme Pitt smelled very powerfully of lavender.

She looked Rosie straight in the eye, as if to imply a threat, and said, ‘You must look after my son.’ Then she kissed her on the cheek, patted her on the shoulder, and left her to herself.

After the traditional reading of the telegrams, just as Rosie was laying her injured right hand lightly on top of Daniel’s for the cutting of the cake with his sword, the pilots of his squadron appeared en masse, full of high spirits, to organise leap-frog competitions and wheelbarrow races, and perform treetop fights and handstands. They took Daniel and Fairhead on their shoulders and bore them round the garden in triumph. The level of general happiness and rejoicing seemed to ratchet up several notches, and the level of decorum plummeted. All the champagne and food disappeared. Mrs McCosh became tipsy, and had to totter indoors and lie down.

In her wedding photograph Rosie’s bandaged hands are mainly concealed by the long lacy cuffs of her dress, and the monochrome does not reveal the deep yellow stains in it. The split in her lip is discernible but not distracting. The brides’ and grooms’ friends and relatives look grim, as they always do in pictures where one has had to pose in perfect stillness for too long a time. Sophie and Fairhead are looking at each other. Daniel is smiling, the sole one there who believes that Rosie had an accident with a brazier in the kitchen. He looks handsome, vigorous and happy in his RAF uniform with its double row of medals, and his sword hanging from the Sam Browne. His brother Archie looks magnificent and dignified in the uniform of a major of Rattray’s Sikhs. His face reveals nothing of the fact that he is irretrievably in love with the woman who has become his brother’s wife. Mme Pitt, his mother, looks as if she is waiting to do something mischievous. Rosie looks subdued and wistful. She is niggled by the promise she once made to Ash, that she would love him and him alone for all eternity. Hamilton McCosh is supporting his wife on his arm, and worrying that Rosie might have done the wrong thing by this young man that he likes and admires. Mrs McCosh is thinking about whether or not there is any cachet in being mother-in-law to someone who is half French. Ottilie and Christabel are wondering what the wedding nights will be like.