Free Voices in a Haunted Room by Philippa Carr Page B

their minds.”
    “Charlot was the same.”
    I wished I had not said that. We were always trying to avoid any mention of what had happened.
    “Charlot is so much a Frenchman that he cannot accept anything that is not French. My father is the same about England.”
    “It seems to be a masculine failing.”
    “Well, perhaps. Your mother, it seems, could be French or English… whatever is demanded. So can you, Claudine.”
    “Home is where those whom you love are. It is not a house or a piece of land surely.”
    “So this is your home, Claudine.”
    “My mother is here. I suppose home would always be where she is.”
    Then he said: “And others… perhaps.”
    I looked at him steadily and replied: “Yes… and others.”
    “Myself, for instance?”
    “You, of course, David.”
    “You will marry me, won’t you, Claudine?”
    And I said: “Yes, David, I will.”
    Afterwards I wondered why I had answered so promptly, for although since Jonathan left I had been more and more drawn to David, in my heart I was still unsure.
    Looking back, I think I wanted to escape from this slough of despond into which we all seemed to have drifted. I wanted something to happen, anything which would lift us out of it. Since Jonathan had gone so lightly, so eagerly abandoning me for the sake of a new adventure, I had been telling myself that it was really David whom I loved, because I was sure that with David, I came first. And having promised, I tried to convince myself that I had done the right thing—that which in my heart I had always known.
    David was jubilant, and almost at once the atmosphere in the house lightened. The gloom lifted and for a while I too felt quite joyous. The change in my mother was amazing and Dickon was so delighted that it appeared that what he wanted more than anything at this time was our marriage.
    My mother threw herself into preparations with an almost feverish energy. When should the wedding be? There should not be too long a wait. Summer was the time for a wedding. Of course the summer would soon be over. This was August. There must be some time for preparation. What about the end of September? Or the beginning of October? It was finally decided that it must be October to give us the time we needed for preparation.
    It had been late February when the young men had left for France. Somehow it seemed like years.
    As the days began to pass I was telling myself twenty times a day that I had done the right thing. I was very happy. David and I had everything in common and we would be happy all our lives in the heart of the family.
    “It is true,” I would say to myself. But why should I have to tell myself so insistently?
    I was happy, however, to see my mother so absorbed. She was almost her old self wondering whether Molly Blackett was capable of making the wedding dress or whether she should risk hurting her by engaging a court dressmaker. While she concerned herself with such a matter at least she was not brooding about what might have happened to Charlot.
    At length she decided that fashion must be sacrificed to human kindness and Molly set to work with yards and yards of pure white chiffon and delicate lace. And there was I standing, while she knelt at my feet, with the pincushion beside her, and my thoughts went back to another occasion when Jonathan had burst in on us and lured Molly away on a false pretext while he held me in his arms.
    The dress turned out to be quite a triumph, and the joy of Molly Blackett’s life. It hung in my bedroom cupboard for a whole week before the wedding, and every night, before I got into bed, I would look at it, and very often I thought it was like a ghost standing there—not a ghost from the past, but the ghost of what was to come. Once I dreamed that I was wearing it and Jonathan came and slipped the bodice from my shoulders and kissed me.
    I supposed that every girl felt a little apprehensive before her wedding. I often pondered on those marriages which were