A Scattering Of Daisies by Susan Sallis

Author:Susan Sallis [Sallis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

THE DAFFODILS OF NEWENT

Chapter One

IT WAS JUNE the twenty-first, the longest day of 1919, and April Rising’s wedding day. She woke at five o’clock and lay still in the bed she was sharing with her visiting sister May, watching the morning light around the edge of the blind in their attic bedroom, her body burning with fever one moment, shivering with panic the next. Eight months before on Armistice night, when she had still been sixteen, David Daker admitted his love for her in a kiss which had at last accepted that she was no longer a little girl. Now, only just seventeen, she had penetrated his post-war withdrawn soul, and together they had overcome the considerable family opposition to their marriage. She had no idea how it had been done, but here she was seven hours away from a proper white wedding with her two sisters as attendants.

She sat up very carefully so as not to disturb May who was, after all, seven months pregnant. Naturally May, innately indolent, merely puffed a little sigh and slid a hand over her abdomen. She was as beautiful as ever, her blonde baby-fine hair curled in wisps over her shoulders like the illustrations of Rapunzel in the book of fairy tales belonging to Mother. April smiled affectionately, hoping that she would have children, and as gracefully as May seemed to be having this one. April’s other sister, March, asleep next door with her baby son, had looked so thin and haggard when she had come home at Christmas.

April pushed her feet into the felt slippers Mother had made so long ago, and crept quietly out of the bedroom and down the stairs to her father’s workroom where the dresses hung limply from their padded hangers. Her own, cream satin cut on the cross in panels that swathed themselves to her, was March’s creation, inspired by sketches and descriptive letters from May. The two attendants’ gowns were entirely May’s idea, and had been copied down to the tiny roll hems from some Grecian dresses she had seen in Weymouth during the war. They were sleeveless and straight up and down like silken sacks. Will Rising, the girl’s father, had refused to make them: ‘I’m a tailor, not a French blouse maker,’ he had protested. So May had come down three weeks ago and she and March had cut and stitched and talked as they never had before. May, engrossed in her own pregnancy, was flatteringly deferential to March, who had already ‘gone through it’.

April let her fingers brush lightly against the fine materials and linger on her mother’s grey chiffon, then she moved to the window. Through the frosted glass, inlaid with her father’s name and trade, the sun was already warm. She put her fingers to the W. of ‘W. Rising’ and traced it carefully. She had not been close to her father since he had condemned David Daker two years ago, but before then she had been his favourite daughter. She thought that now he had forgiven David everything would be all right again.

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