Between Two Worlds by Between Two Worlds (retail) (epub)

Author:Between Two Worlds (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788639118
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2020-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

On January 24th, 1915, the British public learned over its toast and marmalade that Miss Ruby May had become Mrs Oliver Plantaine.

Gregory opened his News of the World and choked on his tea. He handed the newspaper to his wife, while Alison pounded him on the back.

A moment later she ran to fetch smelling salts for her grandmother, whose colour was now as ashen as her grandfather’s was puce.

When Alison returned from upstairs, it was her mother who looked about to faint.

Hermione waved away the bottle of pungent crystals. ‘Nothing can help me now, Alison. Or any of us, I fear.’

Alison noted that her grandpa was now sitting with his head in his hands. Her grandma was clutching her heart. And tears had begun trickling, unheeded, down her mother’s cheeks.

It’s like a scene from a melodrama, Alison thought, managing not to giggle. All that was missing was the moustache-twirling villain! She had yet to learn why these three pillars of her life had suddenly crumbled before her eyes. But the word ‘villain’ made her think of Oliver.

Alison no longer wanted to giggle. Had something terrible happened to her uncle?

She forced herself to pick up the newspaper, which had fluttered from Hermione’s fingers to the floor, and found herself looking at a picture of Ruby May and Oliver, flanked by the twins.

Ruby was not one to overlook the publicity value of her marriage into the Plantaine family and had made sure that the press photographers would be waiting outside Caxton Hall when she emerged on Oliver’s arm.

‘How absolutely marvellous!’ Alison exclaimed. ‘I’ve now got two more cousins, and don’t they look nice? But fancy Uncle Oliver having a whirlwind romance!’ she added, quoting from the much-embellished details included in the caption. ‘I’m so happy for him.’

But nobody else seemed to be – on the contrary. ‘One would think you’d seen a picture of Uncle Oliver’s funeral,’ she observed to her elders.

They did not tell her that, in their opinion, in effect they had.

‘Not his wedding,’ Alison went on. She eyed her grandmother’s gloomy countenance. ‘I’ve heard you say, lots of times, Grandma, that you wished he would get married.’

But not to that common creature, Jessica thought. ‘I would have preferred him to choose someone more suitable,’ she said.

Exactly, Gregory thought. He had not dared to hope that his son would one day take a wife. Now, miraculously, Oliver had encountered a woman who aroused in him manly feelings. But why, Gregory asked God, did it have to be Ruby May?

Neither Gregory nor Jessica had met Ruby. But her reputation and appearance were enough to cause them to recoil.

Hermione’s feelings were more personal. Ruby had continued to be for her inexplicably a threat. The earthy, full-bosomed, magenta-clad figure, viewed from afar on a railway platform, had been grotesquely enhanced by Hermione’s imagination. Now, she had entered Hermione’s life.

Alison saw her mother shudder and her grandfather make an effort to pull himself together. Her grandmother was staring down at the congealing fried eggs on her plate.

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