Nor would she allow his study to be disturbed. She seemed to have become possessed with the idea of keeping his memory alive. Having read that Queen Victoria had behaved in much the same way when her beloved Prince Albert had died, Julia shuddered. Perhaps her mother was going funny in the head.
Julia found herself thinking that somehow she was going to have to reason with her mother and make her see that life had to go on and they must now face a different future and be strong. She must use her own strength to help her mother to become strong as well. Otherwise how would they be able to keep things going?
The thought pulled Julia up sharply. It was easy for her to keep going. She had her circle of friends and she had Chester. Soon they would be married, have a family, a lovely home, a bright and promising future, and never want for money. What did her mother have? The woman had lost her mainstay in life. Her children had their friends and would eventually go off and get married, leaving her a middle-aged woman with nothing to look forward to but a lonely old age, enlivened only when her grandchildren were brought to see her.
Julia couldn’t envisage her mother ever marrying again. She was a person who did not make friends with other women easily; it seemed even less likely that she would ever meet another man to marry. It was true that this new decade since the end of the war, with its forward-looking attitudes, had dispensed with many of the old Victorian standards, but she couldn’t see her mother keeping up with the times.
Julia stared down into the grave where the coffin now lay. As they buried her dead father, she hoped her mother would not descend into a living burial and hide herself away from the busy world.
The vicar was intoning the final words of the ritual: ‘… the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. Amen.’
Julia came to herself with a jolt. People were beginning to move away slowly and quietly, as if leaving too hurriedly would be almost irreverent. Someone had come up to her mother and was embracing her, immediately prompting an outburst of tears. Stephanie and Virginia had also gathered tearfully around her. Julia stood back and waited. It was all she could bring herself to do.
Chester’s arm came about her waist. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ he asked gently as she looked up into his handsome face. She forced a smile.
‘Yes,’ she replied, love springing up at the sound of his voice. ‘But I’ll be so glad to get back into the car.’
‘Of course,’ he said and began guiding her away from the deserted graveside. ‘But first you ought to go over to comfort your mother. She looks utterly drained, it’s to be expected.’
‘I’ll do that in the car,’ she replied. A strange sense of panic was building inside her; a desperate desire to be away from the place. ‘I’ll need you to be with me, darling.’
‘I can’t, my love,’ he reminded her. ‘I’ll have to be with my parents in theirs.’
‘I forgot.’ She wilted a little, glancing across at the two black, box-shaped limousines that had crawled to the cemetery behind the horse-drawn hearse, now departed. Her mother, wishing to keep to the old style for her husband’s sake, had insisted on the hearse and its black-plumed horses with their padded hooves. ‘But I would much sooner be with you, Chester,’ she added sadly.
He bent and gave her a swift but loving kiss. ‘You will be when we reach your home. We’ll have a quick glass of wine and a brief bite to eat, make our condolences then perhaps go off somewhere quiet and be together. I still haven’t given you your ring, my love. I couldn’t before, under the circumstances.’
He hesitated out of respect to her feelings, and then began again: ‘Well, it’s done now, and I think it time we got on with matters that concern us. I mean setting a date for our wedding.’
An hour later, having made dutiful conversation with the few mourners who had gone back to the house, and attempted to console her mother without getting too caught up in the tears of grief that each embrace prompted, Julia and Chester sat holding hands on a bench by Victoria Park Lake while strollers sauntered by, enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
The day of mourning seemed far away as Chester extracted from a little blue velvet box the lovely engagement ring with its band of five huge white diamonds and gently eased it on to the third finger of her left hand.
His words, ‘Marry me, darling, be my wife,’ set her blood tingling, her heart racing with joy.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘with all my heart.’
‘I love you very much, my dearest,’ he told her quietly.
‘And I love you too, so very much,’ she whispered as he kissed her, a long fingering kiss that had passers-by smiling. But she didn’t notice or care.
Victoria Longfield had never felt so alone – abandoned, almost.
‘We’re engaged!’ Julia had come home to announce, flashing her ring for her mother to see, Chester standing behind her, smiling. And on such a day! Victoria couldn’t help herself; she burst out, ‘Your father was buried only this very morning,’ before fresh tears welled up and overflowed.
Her other three children, sitting beside her on the sofa where they had been comforting her since the departure of mourners from the house, had gasped but Victoria had had more to say through distraught gulping.
‘Doesn’t that matter to you? How could you both be so cruel? Could it not have waited at least a few more weeks? Are you so indifferent to my poor feelings, Julia, and to the loss of your dear father?’
Julia’s eyes, glowing with
