The Wedding Group Read Free Page A

world of Quayne might collapse, Rachel, in terror, trying to patch it up for Harry’s sake, desperately ladling out the good soup – for the Quayne crises were very much mealtime events – and passing down bowls as fast as she was able. Cressy could imagine her poor grandmother.
    From her place by the wall, she saw at last her cousins – Mo and Pet – come out of the chapel with their grandmother. They shook their long, blonde hair loose in the sunshine, and went off towards the kitchen, and their duties there. There was church for them – at one time or another – every day of their lives. And every day, too, mounds of potatoes to be scrubbed, or hay to be turned, sheets to be mended. (Cressy lumped church in with the other labours.) They knew nothing of the outside world, except for their school years at Chantoiseau in Sussex, and occasional holidays – mass holidays – in Wales. The company they had was one another. All three had been born within two years. The boy cousins were on holiday from Ampleforth, the school bills from there being paid by Harry.
    They were now, the girls, quite isolated from the world.
Quayne Only
was on the signpost at the bottom of the hill, pointing up the rutted, leafy lane, down which water ran in torrents when there was a storm.
    Harry came out of the chapel last, and stood for a momentlooking about him. The Master, one of his students had called him, and the family had taken it up, not unencouraged by him. At first they had used the name with a mingling of teasing and respect. It had stuck; until it seemed natural. He even thought of himself by the name, and now surveyed his world as someone of that title should. All that was done, and had been done, he thought with satisfaction, was to the glory of God, simply, reverently, and also by hand.
    Cressy watched him with dislike, and she trembled a little.
    He was a short man with a grey beard, rather long hair, thin on the crown, and protruding eyes. Always he wore a blue painting smock and sandals. He had hired a suit when he went to get his C.B.E., and he and Rachel – in clothes borrowed from her sister, a worldly woman – had looked very odd as they set out.
    He came now slowly across the courtyard on his way to the workshop. Cressy made herself stay there by the wall, although she longed to dart away, and knew that she should be in the kitchen with her cousins. She had always feared and disliked her grandfather. When he came close to her, she stared into his brilliant blue eyes without blinking, waiting for the storm to break. He rested his hand on her head for a moment, as if she were ill, and then went on towards the barn.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    ‘So many leaves,’ Midge said. ‘So many, many leaves.’
    With a glass in her hand, she stood at the window looking at them.
    Some sons may have a picture of their mother knitting by the fireside – but David’s was of Midge with glass in hand, railing against something. The railing was hardly ever seriously meant. It was intended to interest, or amuse, or fill in a gap in the conversation, which was something Midge deplored.
    This was a completely different world from Quayne, although David, at that moment, opened a letter from there.
    ‘One is smothered,’ his mother went on. ‘Smothered and stifled by them. All dark green and black and dripping. I feel that they are growing out of my ears.’ She was still on about the leaves. ‘And so much grass! Your father always said that grass should be brown, if at all.’
    Not that one took into account what
he
had said, she thought: but that little remark, which she had argued about at the time, had somehow stuck.
    David, reading his letter, murmured something in reply to her, but the letter was so surprising that it held his attention.
    ‘Dear Mr Little,
    ‘Your article in the coloured supplement has caused me great concern.’ The writing was childish and also backward-sloping. He read on, managing to get the sense of it, despite all