A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

from where he sat. ‘It says she is getting married in August. She has asked us to be present.’

‘Never!’ he exploded, leaping up to go over to the window to gaze out.

‘She asks if you would give her away,’ Dorothy ventured timidly.

‘I cannot give away what I do not have,’ he returned, his back still to her.

‘But she is our daughter, dear. We ought at least…’

Swinging round so viciously that he caused her to jump, he blared, ‘Enough! We have no daughter, Dorothy! The author of this letter is nothing to do with us. You would be well advised to remember that fact.’

It sounded as though he were addressing his board of governors. His tone seemed to stab into her heart like a knife wound, so harsh did it sound and quite suddenly his anger made her feel bolder than she could ever remember.

‘You may not like it, Aldous,’ she heard herself say, ‘but she is still my daughter. I bore her, fed her at my breast, tended her and cared for her. She is…’

‘Enough!’ he thundered, moments later drawing an impatient breath as she began to weep. ‘I am not prepared to countenance her nor be present at the wedding of someone I do not know, whoever the man is. Nor will you, Dorothy. I am disappointed in you. I did expect you to be in total agreement, which is why I called you in here. But it seems your answer to everything is to dissolve into tears so there is no point saying any more. As to this letter I shall not even respond to it. And neither will you. Now you may go back to whatever you and Mrs Plumley were doing.’

With that he returned to his writing desk and sat down, continuing to ignore her presence until slowly she turned and went from the room.

Outside the door she stood sniffing back the tears. Finally she slowly straightened her back and lifted her chin, whispered softly, almost defiantly: ‘But she is still my daughter.’

She began to make her way back along the hall, not to the kitchen but to the stairs leading up to her little parlour on the second floor where she would write her own letters to people she knew, one letter which at this moment she needed very much to write.

After only three months of preparation, neither she nor James hardly needing to lift a finger towards the day, his having arranged it all to be done for them, she had still felt that she was living in a dream world, that nothing was real. From that very evening when James had proposed to her, such as it was, and she had accepted, again such as it was, everything had felt as if it wasn’t happening, the world itself seeming to have receded, as if she were floating through it.

The war too, even now, seemed to pass her by. And yet it held enough stark reality to make her feel otherwise – daily the newspaper headlines, the sight of maimed and blinded men on the streets, Lord knows how many thousands more languishing in hospitals all over the realm, the sight of drawn blinds in almost every other street – to make it all real, so horribly real.

Sometimes she thought of Hamilton Bramwell. She rather felt he still survived, conducting operations from some safe distance, a command post well removed from the front, maybe still safely entrenched in some HQ in England. Other times her thoughts wandered to Freddy Dobson, a common soldier no doubt fighting in the trenches. That was if he was still alive or had he been killed, shot in what they called No Man’s Land or blown to pieces in some trench? If so had he been found or did he lay buried, unknown? Had he married his fiancée never uttering a word about his casual affair and a silly young girl he’d left pregnant with his baby? Did he and his wife have a child of their own, a child borne in wedlock? Another thought, if he’d been killed, his wife would now be a widow. Or maybe he’d been sent home maimed for life or blinded by chlorine gas, which the papers had reported to be like a sickly, greenish-yellow fog that drifted across open ground towards the still mainly unprotected Allied troops. Freddy’s wife would be left to nurse him for the rest of their fives, that once handsome and vigorous young man who had turned her heart, stricken and scarred forever.

Part of Madeleine’s reaction to that speculation was that such an end was exactly what he deserved, moments later to feel chastened and full of remorse at such a wicked thought. But it was no concern of hers any more. She had a new life now and it was wonderful. Whatever had befallen Freddy Dobson was way in the past.

Ten

Amazing how quickly summer had flown. Only two weeks to her wedding. Not that there’d been much for her to do, James having taken charge of almost everything.

It was to be a quiet affair, with few guests invited. ‘Far better that way don’t you think, my dear?’ he’d said, and as she nodded, glad enough for it to be so, continued, ‘Not as though I were marrying for the first time and I assumed you wouldn’t care for anything ostentatious in light of the present situation between yourself and your family.’

Even though it had been said kindly with smiles intended to comfort, his words had bitten deep. But she knew what he meant. There’d been no reply from her parents to his invitation, not even to decline, making her half wish he hadn’t included them at all.

There had been one reply; from her mother’s sister Maud whom she hadn’t seen in years but had hoped might accept but even that had been to decline with the excuse that a recent bout of ill health would prevent her attending. Whether true or not, Madeleine rather suspected