I closed my eyes, remembering her wedding day.
Though she was not particularly happy with her mother’s fashion choice, Effie gave her fairly free reign over the wedding preparations and bowed to her mother’s wishes regarding the dress. After all, to Mrs. O’Flahertie, this was the day a girl prepared for from the moment she was born. Despite Effie’s fledgling millinery business, her mother still felt down deep that her daughter should have no other ambition than to marry and marry well. We all felt she had, of course, since she was marrying my brother Michael.
In the end, Effie’s wedding dress was breathtaking. Wedding gowns fashioned by Worth in Paris were the ultimate status symbol, but they were too dear for a professor to afford for his daughter, so Effie copied one. Her dress was made of cream silk gauze, trimmed with silk embroidered net lace, flared sleeves and an attached draped silk polonaise overskirt, also bordered with lace. She wore a floor-length veil.
My brother had never looked more handsome. Michael wore a frock coat with a vest of black cloth, dark grey trousers, and a folded cravat of dark lavender with matching gloves stitched in black. Effie’s sister Marinthe was the ring bearer and their little cousin Geoffrey had the important role of holding the bride’s train. He dressed like a court page. Our mothers were dressed in elegant gowns, of course, Effie’s in lilac and my mother in a darker shade of orchid.
The ceremony took place at a chapel at Oxford. It was a small, intimate wedding and Oscar was the sole usher in charge of seating guests. He made the most of this occasion, dressing in a frock coat similar to Michael’s, but it was impossible for him to be completely traditional. He wore purple stockings and a matching cravat. When he saw me just before the ceremony, however, he was aghast. “You look like you cannot breathe,” he said.
“I can’t,” I choked out.
We walked back and forth on the green just outside the chapel, waiting for the guests to arrive. “Well,” he said, “do not be dismayed, Poppy. The beauty of a dress depends entirely on the loveliness it shields, and on the freedom and motion that it does not impede.” Laughing, he added, “In your case, today you have a monumental impediment.”
“But you love extravagant clothes.”
“Indeed, Poppy, I do. But one can have simple, charming garments in excellent colours and beautiful fabrics, like oriental material. I think I prefer a dress that hangs from the shoulders and allows freedom of movement. Beauty is organic. It comes from within, not without. And yours shines through even that medieval cage of armour in which you are imprisoned!”
He paused again, put out his cigarette in a flower pot near the church entrance and asked, “Do you remember, Poppy, when I told you about working with Professor Ruskin on the bridge over the swamp that made it difficult for the two villages to travel back and forth?”
“Yes, you told me a little bit about it.”
“I learned many lessons that winter,” he said. “It came to me that if there was enough spirit in me and my colleagues, we diggers, to go out and try to build a road simply for the sake of a noble ideal of life, then I could create a movement that might change the face of England. A movement to show the rich what beautiful things they can enjoy and the poor what beautiful things they can create.”
“To change the face of England?” I asked.
He nodded. “I simply mean to tell you, Poppy, that you are noble. You have noble ideals. Fashion changes every six months, after all. But you are timeless. I have always thought of you as the perfection of your own being, and when a woman is dressed rationally, she is treated rationally. She certainly deserves to be. You certainly deserve to be.” He conjured a wry smile. “And by the way, is Sherlock coming to the wedding?”
Of course, Sherlock was not coming. Marriage vows and celebrations meant little to him. I shook my head.
Effie arrived just then, brimming with vitality and energy. She stepped from the carriage, which, like the horses, was trimmed with flowers. The carriage to the ceremony was drawn by grey horses for luck. The ones that would take them back to the house after the ceremony would be white to symbolize the new and fresh beginning of their new life together.
She came up to us, a basket hooked over one arm. “Oscar, this is for you,” she said as she pinned a favour of white ribbon, flowers, lace and silver leaves on his shoulder. The house servants tossed blossoms of purple, white and lavender along the path to the front door of the church, making a carpet to assure the bride and groom a happy life. I felt dizzy, recalling the morning after Sherlock and I had finally expressed our feelings to one another. It was as if I were there, in the bedroom, waking to the sound of screeching seagulls in the distance, the marvelous sound of waves crashing to shore, the sunlight streaming through the windows. I could still see the incredible display of jewels on the fainting couch near the window, wild flowers of every kind strewn the length of it, blooms in gold and violet and blue and red, which Sherlock had gathered at dawn. Just thinking of it, I felt the same jolt of my heart as I had that morning.
When the servants had finished laying their carpet of blooms, Effie gathered them into a circle and handed out gifts she had made herself. She had known most of them since childhood because many moved with the family to Oxfordshire from The Broads when Effie’s father took the teaching position
