I don’t remember much of the service. We got married in church because everybody did, though I’m not sure if either of us believed in very much of anything, and we had pictures took outside. I’ve still got them on my mantelpiece at home, and one ofmy granddaughters come to me a few years ago for a copy because she wanted to have a set going as far back as she could go. So I had some run up for her and all.
Most days I don’t notice they’re there, the pictures. But when I do see them, really see them, I get all caught up and stopped short and feeling like—well, like nothing, really. That’s what’s odd about it. I look at that picture and it’s like a girl I never was.
She looks happy, though, and I’m glad for her. And I know she’ll go on to have a good life.
I don’t want to—I’m making this sound like there was something wrong with Bobby, and there weren’t. He was a good husband, a good dad, a good granddad. He never got to see the great-grandkids, but if there is a heaven or whatever, I’m sure he’s looking down and proud of them. Though if he’s looking down at me—at me right here right now talking to you—I don’t know what he’ll be thinking.
Because the thing is—the girl in them pictures—she feels like a different girl because sheisa different girl. Not because of how long ago it was, least not just because of that. But because who I was with Bobby and who I am now, talking to you. Who I was with Emily back when. They’re different.
And thinking about it, I don’t know if I made that as clear as I should’ve. ’Cause the thing is, I’ve not ever said nothing about this. Not to nobody. Especially not to my husband. I mean, what would I say? That I’d never love him the way I loved her? What’d be the point of that? It’d be cruel. So if you’re listening, Bobby, if you are up there or out there or something, I’m sorry you had to hear it. Least I saved it until after you was gone.
But I’m getting away from myself, ain’t I? I’m just trying to explain that this isn’t about Bobby, not at all really. He was a goodman and we had a good life together and when I look back I’d have not chosen another but—well—I suppose that’s where we came in.
It was my wedding day, and I was all twists and fidgets and I’d come to think that I was losing my mind a bit or at least that my eyes was playing tricks on me, because I kept thinking I saw her. Just on the street, in the crowd, on the telly sometimes if they was doing a bit about Ascot or one of them other things that the gentry likes to get in on. And I don’t know if it’d been fear or hope or regret but as we got closer and closer to the moment, I kept wanting to see her so badly.
And then I did.
I was walking down the aisle, proper done up for the day, sixpence in my shoe and all, which were a bit uncomfortable, but tradition is tradition and I reckoned we’d need a bit of luck what with everything, and I caught a glimpse of her face out the corner of my eye.
Well, for the moment I figured it was just my imagination, like it had been every other time so far, but when I got back to the altar I looked again, really looked, glad the veil meant nobody could see my face.
It was her. I knew it was real because she didn’t look like I’d expected her to look. It’d only been a couple of years since I’d last seen her but that was the thing with Emily—there were worlds inside her. And you never knew what she was going to be next.
I think maybe, her being there, that might have been why I didn’t remember much about the ceremony. The vicar said some things and Bobby said some things and I said some things and then we was outside getting our pictures done and all I could think of was her face. How she’d been watching me like I was—it’s hard to describe—like I was letting her down somehow.
We had the reception in a pub down the end of the road. It was back before everything was chains and my old man knew the landlord so we’d got a good rate on the whole do, and I was trying to just be happy, but now I’d seen her—and I knew I had, that it weren’t just my head like—I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
So there I was in my white dress, standing around while everybody said how lovely I looked and how happy I must be and everything folk say at weddings, and all as I really wanted to do was find her. ’Cept I didn’t know where to look, or even if she were still around.
A bit after sunset I slipped outside for a smoke—I know, I know, but it was 1953 and things was different—and she was there. I remember it had been a hot day so the cool of the pub wall behind me was a welcome change and I was just leaning there trying to enjoy it when I saw her, standing a little way back and watching me with them bright-as-onyx eyes she had.
And she said, “Hello, nymph,” like nothing had happened and no time had passed.
Fool that I was I nodded and said, “Milady,” like that was still who we were to each other. Like she was still my mistress, or still my…my whatever she’d been.
Then she said—and you’ll forgive my language but it’s what she said and while I don’t remember much else I remember this part clear as day—“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. And looking back I wish I’d asked all defiant-like, that I’d said it forceful and proud. But I didn’t. I talked like a servant.
“This,” she said, waving a hand at me and my dress and the pub as if it explained everything. “What are you doing with…all ofthis?”
“I’m getting married,” I told her. “I’ve justgotmarried. You was there.”
“Just because I saw it”—she was smiling at me, the way she did when she thought I was being an idiot—“doesn’t mean I believed it. Iknowyou, nymph. I know this isn’t what you want.”
The bitter thing was that she weren’t wrong. Because what I wanted—what I’d always wanted since I were a little girl—washer. But I couldn’t tell her that, so I lied and said, “It is.”
She stepped closer to me then, and even though I was only an hour and a bit out from my wedding, my whole body was screaming for her to touch me. So I didn’t move when she reached up and started undoing my hair from how it’d been put up for the church. “This,” she said as she smoothed it out over my shoulders, “this is you.”
I was trembling all over, wanting to go back in to my family and my husband, or wanting to run away and hide, or wanting to just take her and kiss her there and then, and not knowing which wanting to listen to. “You just let me go,” I told her. And I think I sounded stronger, then, than I had. Though maybe that’s just memory being kind to me.
And that did stop her, because—and I’m not proud of this—I didn’t often stand up to Emily, and when I did, she was, well, she didn’t always take it the same way. And the way she took it this time was to ask, “What choice did I have?”
“You could have said something. You could have told Sir Arthur that…I don’t know, that it was okay, that you wanted me to stay.”
“And how do you think that would have gone?” She had that you-bloody-idiot look again. “You think my father would have said, ‘Oh well then, you can carry on fucking my daughter’?”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said at once, but she only laughed.
