Free The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam Page A

shone.
    “You are not looking happy, Elisabeth.”
    “But of course I’m happy, Mrs. Baxter.”
    “I am not a happy woman, either. I believe that you and I are very much alike. I thought so as soon as I saw you. I thought, She is born to tears and wrong decisions and she will need the consolation of Jesus Christ.”
    “You’ve got me wrong, Mrs. Baxter. I was thinking of my mother who never stopped laughing. I was a baby. She was beautiful, loving and hardly ever went to church.”
    “Died in the Camps, I hear? Well, I shall pray for you,” and she took out her handkerchief.
    “Mrs. Baxter. I am about to be married. I intend to be very happy. I’ll discover no doubt if I need Jesus Christ. And in what form. If it is in the form of sex and married love, then Jesus is for me. But I haven’t much hope.”
     
    Mrs. Baxter sat thoughtfully. Later in the day when the family were all home again, she still sat thoughtfully. When Amy said that it was time for her to be taken home she said, “I was a bride once.”
    “And I bet you looked lovely.”
    “Yes, Amy, I did. I had a very good dress, and it has survived. Elisabeth could wear it.”
    “Thank you, but I . . .”
    “Yet I feel that I should like to buy her a new one. I know a dressmaker and his wife who can complete it in three days including covered buttons down the back. I shall see to it all if you will draw me a pattern. I still have my wreath of orange blossom that went round my head, but it is rather flat and discoloured.”
    “Oh—I’ll get one made for her,” said Amy. “It can be my present. And I’ll get the shoes. Those green ones she has are the shoes of a whore.”
    “What I do possess,” said Mrs. Baxter, “and it will be in perfect condition in a tin trunk against weevils, is a veil of Indian lace. It is patterned with birds and flowers. St. Anne’s lace—a little pun—my name is Anne—made by the nuns in Dacca in what was then Bengal. You shall wear it—no, you shall have it. What use is it to me but as a shroud?”
    “Betty—you could keep it for the baby,” said Amy, and the baby hiccuped on yet another bottle, and the other children put rice in their hair.
    “My wedding day,” said Mrs. Baxter, “was on a green lawn at the High Commission in Dacca and there were English roses.” She wept.
    “Accept,” said Amy. “Quick. For God’s sake.”
    “Thank you very much indeed,” said Elisabeth. “I believe your veil will bring me happiness.”
    “Oh, I shouldn’t count on that,” said Mrs. Baxter.
     

PART TWO
 
Happiness

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    W hen he was very old and had retired to the Dorset countryside in England, and Betty dead, Old Filth, as he was always called now, reverentially and kindly, would walk most afternoons about the lanes carrying his walking stick with the Airedale’s head, pausing at intervals to examine the blossom or the bluebell woods or the berries or the holly bushes according to the season. The pauses were in part rests, but to a passer-by they looked like a man lost in wonder or meditation. A dear, ram-rod straight man of elegiac appearance. As he grew really old, the English countryside was sometimes on these walks shot through for an instant by a random, almost metallic flash of unsought revelation.
    One November day of black trees, brown streams blocked with sludge and dead leaves, skies grey as ashes, he found himself in his room at the Peninsular Hotel again, and it was his wedding day.
    It was early and he was looking down at the old harbour-front YMCA building, everything ablaze with white sunlight. The flash of memory, like an early picture show, was all in black and white. The carpet of his hotel room was black, like velvet, the curtains white silk, the armchairs white, the telephones white. In the bathroom the walls and ceiling were painted black, the towels and flowers were white. There lay on a black glass table near the door of the suite a white gardenia and he, Edward Feathers