Milady
Beauty, Father and I agreed and I sent off the letter to Simon the very next day. He wrote back soon to let us know that they had begun construction at the western edge of the forest and hoped to make good progress. I consoled myself with the thought that the plans did not require the railway to go through the centre of the forest, but merely skirted along its western and northern edge, under the line of the hills. Much of it would remain intact, for the time being, although I knew that following the railway there would come settlements, roads, people. I told myself that we would not destroy the forest; all I wanted was for it to lose its essential elusiveness, its inherent mystery. I still felt sick at heart at the betrayal. We told Hob nothing of it.
It was a quiet spring and a quieter summer. The days floated by, endless and warm and none of us really seemed to feel the need to do anything much at all. Beauty and Simon went off travelling in August, to meet his family and see his home and so that lie became a belated truth. They were not officially engaged, but none of us felt the slightest doubt that they would be.
It was odd being without them, even for a few months. Since the end of the winter we had all become accustomed to having them both as part of the family, but then when they did get married we would have to get used to being without them. Anyway, it was an adjustment for us all: Hob and I had to get used to being two where we had always been three, Father to having only two daughters at home. The adjustment seemed most difficult for him to make, so I was glad when David agreed to living at home after our own marriage. It made sense from all points of view, and as I had been effectively running the house since Mother had gone it would also mean very little practical change was necessary.
David and I turned to planning our own wedding. I had thought of having a small family affair in the early autumn, a year after we had first become engaged. With my own relative lack of immediate family I did not think it would be hard to keep it small, but David’s was more extensive and there was all our acquaintance besides, so in the end the wedding was a rather more respectable size. The date, however, I was able to keep.
The week after it was agreed Father suggested that I wear Mother’s old wedding dress, so Hob and I went up to the attic to look it out, and see what state it was in and if it would fit.
“I never thought he would let one of us wear this,” I said, holding it against myself. The silk and lace had aged a little, and the once-white was now ivory, but the dress was still good.
“It looks good,” Hob said. “The ivory is a better colour for you now than it would have been when it was new.”
“Am I almost pretty, then?” I said.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “Didn’t you know? All brides are. It’s traditional.”
“Then I must be. I wouldn’t want to break with tradition.”
“It would be very bad luck…..I don’t think he will ever forget her, but perhaps the grief is less raw, now.”
“Do you think he will ever stop grieving, really?”
“Have you?”
“I – have you?”
“I don’t know. When she first…died, it was with me every day. I thought I would never breathe cleanly again. And now, when I remember her I miss her, I wish she was here, but she isn’t the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing at night any more.”
“Don’t you feel guilty? I do, sometimes. I haven’t forgotten her, I never will, but sometimes I feel so guilty that it took so little time.”
"It's nearly the anniversary. Is that why you chose that day?”
“No, but the coincidence…I can’t help but feel…”
