much later, was her limited experience of men. Of course she knew Adrian was a shallow and egocentric person who seemed happier with his male friends than with her, but then her own father was much the same, as were all the other men she knew. The boys at college had been different, but so different she hardly thought of them as men, and she was sure they did not regard her as a woman; they were peers, colleagues, friends with whom she talked for hours, days, years; as for girlfriends they went elsewhere. So, within her experience of men who became husbands, Adrian was not unusual: a little more raucous, a little more flirtatious than most, but the basic ingredients were the same.
The Bainbridges disagreed; Adrian’s background was very different to Elizabeth’s, indeed, in Bainbridge terms Adrian had no background. Adrian’s father had been born in the north of England – Manchester – which was almost as bad as being a southern European. He had worked for years as secretary to an obscure company, and there he would stay until he died or retired, whichever came first. Adrian’s mother had at least been born in London, but that was where the good fortune ended. As soon as her children were at school she started work at Myer department store and was still there, in the homewares section, ‘So useful for when the children are married,’ she had said in what Mrs Bainbridge considered to be extremely poor taste. In truth, Mrs Dadswell was a buyer for the homewares section, a respected employee who had done extremely well, but as far as the Bainbridges were concerned, once a shop assistant always a shop assistant.
The Bainbridges changed their mind about the marriage only after Phillip Warby, Oliver’s younger brother, turned out so badly. And if it could happen to Phillip who had enjoyed every advantage, then it could happen to just about anyone. The Bainbridges had known Phillip from babyhood, had watched him grow into a fine young man, had celebrated with him when he was accepted into medical school, and a year later commiserated with his parents when he dropped out. That marked the turning point: one day he was normal and the next he was touting the North Vietnamese flag and supporting the NLF. He was a communist, he said, and a draft resister, and he had pledged to smash American imperialism. Coincidentally, both the Bainbridges and the Warbys harboured a deep concern over the usurping of good British values by crass Americanism and were, therefore, more than happy for American imperialism to be crushed, but they believed it should be done quietly, with decorum, not with the vulgar ravings of Phillip and his companions.
The Warbys were beside themselves. The Bainbridges did their best to reassure them that Phillip was only going through a phase; in time, they said, he would succumb to the lure of good breeding and return to the family that loved him. And return he did, but neither cured nor alone. Nor did he return for love, that, he said, he had found elsewhere, and introduced them to his friend, a big handsome man dressed almost entirely in a pale pink that clashed dreadfully with the red Phillip had taken to wearing in support of the people’s struggle. Phillip said he was a special friend, a homosexual who was out of the closet.
Now, around 1967 in the Warby-Bainbridge circle there were no homosexuals either in or out of the closet, it simply wasn’t done. Mrs Bainbridge wondered if Phillip had been experimenting with some of the mind-expanding drugs one read about; Mr Warby blamed his wife’s great-uncle Herbert for their trouble, certainly there was nothing on his side to account for Phillip. Mr Bainbridge spoke privately with Mr Warby, suggesting that what the boy needed was discipline, a spell in the army would, he believed, do the lad a world of good. Mr Warby couldn’t have agreed more, but by this time Phillip had been forced underground, having failed to register his name for the conscription ballot that was sending young men to Vietnam. For the next eighteen months, while Phillip was being shuffled from one safe house to another, the Warbys had time to recover from their son’s terrible defection. As for the Bainbridges they, too, had time, and while Phillip Warby was the only homosexual they knew, there were plenty of other young men who as 1967 advanced seemed to forget their privileged backgrounds and turn into rebellious riff-raff.
Adrian Dadswell started to look a lot better.
In September, after their nephew had been arrested outside the American embassy, the Bainbridges gave their consent; in October there was a magnificent ‘at home’ to celebrate the engagement. In March 1968 the wedding was held.
And what a wedding! – although it was not without its difficulties. The church was the main problem. It was customary for wedding services to be held either in the groom’s old school chapel or that of his university college, but Adrian had neither. It was all so embarrassing, Mrs Bainbridge confessed to her sister, the mother of the nephew who had been arrested, a real dilemma. ‘Not at all,’ the sister said, ‘what about Elizabeth’s school chapel?’ So Elizabeth’s old school chapel it was, and in the years that followed the Bainbridges were to note with some satisfaction that Elizabeth’s wedding had started a trend, and the chapels at the various girls’ schools became a popular choice among some of the better-known families.
The day of the wedding was perfect March weather, a day when the light rises rather than falls in a marvellous matt blue. Elizabeth saw the day and was pleased; she was searching for signs, omens to suggest she was doing the right thing. Not that she wasn’t happy and excited, she was, for this was her day, her own star-spangled day, but a mutinous spiral of doom, now no larger than a bacillus, was tailing her pleasure, wiggling and waggling and slowly gaining on it, and the future trembled in its wake.
‘All young brides are nervous,’ her mother said over breakfast, ‘and so they should be. It’s the biggest day of a girl’s life, the most important decision she’ll ever make.’
Elizabeth sipped her coffee and said nothing. The decision to marry Adrian had, in fact, been quite simple, it was the decision to sleep with him that had been an agony. As for the wedding itself, once the announcement was made, little had been required of Elizabeth, she had merely drifted along in the grand wake of tradition and Mrs Bainbridge, meeting with caterer, dressmaker and florist as required. As for today, her own special day, all Elizabeth had to do was be accessible to the various hands that would do her nails, her hair, her face, dress her, guide her down the aisle and accompany her back up again. So when her mother leaned across the breakfast table to hold her daughter’s hand, the left hand with its emerald-cut diamond, Elizabeth gave it up without a thought; and when her mother said that Elizabeth had made a good choice in Adrian, Elizabeth promptly smiled – a blank smile thick enough to conceal the months of her parents’ opposition, their insistence that Adrian was a ‘nobody’, their pleas to ‘try Oliver again’, months soggy with blame and a bubble or more of hate.
‘You’ve made us so proud,’ Diana Bainbridge continued, ‘your father in particular. Both you and I know he’s not one for showing what he really feels, but he’s very proud of you and loves you very much.’
Elizabeth heard it all across a great chasm of years; is this what she would be saying to her own daughter on her wedding day? ‘Darling, Adrian loves you, but he can’t tell you about it.’ Would these be her words? And if so, what is this fumbling atavism that renders fathers mute and mothers their apologists? She listened hard, trying to hear the words of love spoken to her unborn daughter, but could summon up only a picture of a kitchen much like this, with Adrian standing large and stern, and Elizabeth seated at a table her head in her hands, and the sound of voices sharp and urgent–
‘She hasn’t eaten properly, that’s the problem.’ Harold Bainbridge stood in the doorway of the kitchen while his wife knelt next to Elizabeth’s prostrate body loosening buttons, fanning the air, inspecting her daughter’s skin for injuries. ‘The girl’s got to eat to maintain her strength.’
‘Yes Hal, I know, but I can’t force-feed her.’
Harold came a little closer. ‘Has this ever happened before?’
Elizabeth’s throat felt dry and swollen, she asked for some water.
‘Well has it?’ Harold persisted, ‘have you ever
