Free For Love Alone by Christina Stead

Aunt Eliza knew where it was, not even the bridegroom’s mother—and it was better so.
    â€œI can’t help thinking,” she said, “how strange it is, the first night, the very first. I can’t help thinking of those innocent young babes starting out on life’s journey together hand in hand and of them there together, alone at last, you know, for the first night of a lifetime. And then, you know—when you think—they were never allowed to be together till tonight, and now, tonight, it is right and proper, but it must be—” She stopped with a high giggle. Anne was silent. One of the girls said,
sotto voce:
“There’ll be a hot time in the—” She was hushed. Some of the girls laughed. “I just can’t help it,” said Bea, “and it’s only natural, isn’t it? It’s natural for them to be together now!”
    â€œMother,” said Anne, in a low voice.
    â€œWhat is it, darling ?”
    â€œLet’s ask Terry home.”
    â€œWhy, darling, I think that Aunt Eliza and Uncle Don want me to go along with them and cheer them up. Of course, they’ll be feeling rather down in the mouth at spending the first night without their darling girlie, and I have such a natural gift for making people merry, that I think my first duty is with them, you see, and they want you too. They’re so fond of you.”
    The guests drifted out, saying good-bye again, to each other, to Bedloes they would never see again in their lives, to relations they would see perhaps in another year or two at another family wedding. There were good-byes between cousins who were intimate friends and between Teresa and Anne, who had once been together for several years in their childhood and were closer than sisters. Thiswas the best of all, a warm, scarcely articulate conversation between friends who hoped to see each other again soon.
    But Donald and Eliza March went out to dinner with the bridegroom’s parents and left poor Bea stranded there among the very last departing. She turned eagerly to find Teresa left and Teresa went home with them. Teresa was bursting with marvellous news—Kitty, the mouse, the nun, had gone off by herself, at the invitation of Cousin Sylvia, to a moonlight picnic. What would Daddy say? They tried to guess and they laughed.
    â€œI am glad you girls are beginning to come out of your shells at last,” said Aunt Bea. “A little drop of wine didn’t hurt you, you see.” Teresa would not admit she had been wrong and so said nothing about it.
    Aunt Bea lived with Anne in Rose Bay. The three of them came home by tram. There was a glorious sunset, a sudden dusk, and the bays were twinkling as they came along in the tram. It was still very hot, human beings smelled like foxes, the thick new-washed hair of women gave off the scent of little woodland beasts; the paint and dust on the tram, the heated metals, the summer trees outside, the petrol in the air made a delicious, stimulating, heavy drink, taken in by the nose. At first Aunt Bea was inclined to grumble because she had turned down a ride in a Packard, to wait for Eliza and Don, but her easy good humour soon returned and she said how nice it was of Uncle and Auntie to think of the poor Bedloes, poor things, she was like a secondhand stuffed armchair and he was got up like a sore thumb, Uncle and Auntie had only met them once before today, but what did it matter, it was Harry she was marrying. Bea accompanied this with a great many other consoling reflections and in a short time was saying that they had never, never had such a lovely wedding, and that Malfi was such a tender, youthful little bride, that she had cried at the church, and dear Harry was such a young man to be taking up the burden of a household. At this moment they were on the rise of Darlinghurst and Aunt Bea broke off suddenly to giggle withthem about the “juicy details of that den of