Inside the room they went on talking. But everyone’s voice had dropped. Emily might be standing there, pressed up against the door.

Late that evening the telephone bell rang in Katharine’s flat. William had gone. The noises in the Mews had for the most part died down. One persistent radio still discoursed dance music at a penetrating pitch, and now and again a car came home to one of the old stables turned garage, but most of the daytime noises had ceased. Even if they had not, Katharine would not have noticed them. During these days she was withdrawn from a harsh external world into her own place of happiness and peace. The telephone bell surprised her, because no one knew she was here. The bank or the post office sent on her letters, but she had not given her address to anyone at all. Of course it might be someone ringing up Carol-

She went over to the writing-table, lifted the receiver, and it was Brett Eversley.

‘Katharine – ’

She was both surprised and angry. She had refused him in as definite terms as a woman can use, and she had refused to give him her address. By what means he had discovered it, she had no idea. It wasn’t until her name had been repeated that she spoke.

‘What is it, Brett?’

‘Have I dragged you out of bed? That’s what you sound like.’

‘No.’

‘Katharine, you’re angry.’

‘Yes.’

‘With me?’

‘Yes, Brett, with you.’

‘But why, my dear?’

‘I didn’t give you my address because I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t give you my telephone number.’

He laughed.

‘And I didn’t take no for an answer. Come – it’s a compliment, you know. You don’t expect a man who’s in love with you to resign himself to not knowing where you are, or what you’re doing, or even whether you’re well or ill.’

She bit her lip.

‘You saw me on Wednesday. I wasn’t ill then.’

He said, ‘Wednesday!’ And then, ‘A tantalising drop of water to a man who is dying of thirst! How much satisfaction do you think I got out of seeing you hemmed in by Cyril and old Holden?’

She said, ‘How did you get my telephone number?’

‘I don’t know. Someone told me Carol had lent you her flat. Look here, I won’t bother you, but what’s the sense of shutting yourself up like this? Dine with me tomorrow. I’ll call for you at seven.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

‘Can’t – or won’t?’

‘Both, Brett.’

‘You’re being rather hard on me, Katharine – don’t you think so? What do you think I’m made of? You go away suddenly without a word to anyone – it’s not very easy to put up with. If we’re nothing more, we’re cousins and friends, and – I love you.’

Her tone softened a little.

‘I’m sorry, Brett, it’s no use.’

‘You don’t give me a chance to make you care.’

‘Brett, there isn’t any chance.’

‘I don’t accept that. There’s always a chance. I’m only asking you to give me mine.’

She had begun to feel as if she were holding a door against which he was pushing hard. It tired her. She wished very much that he would go away. She had said no, and she had meant no, and he wouldn’t take it. Where did you go from there? She said,

‘It’s no use, Brett – there’s no chance for me to give you. I’m going to marry someone else.’

She heard him say ‘Who?’ but she didn’t answer that.

She said in a tired voice, ‘It isn’t any use,’ and put the receiver back.

William Smith was married to Katharine Eversley at St. James’ Church, just round the corner from Rasselas Mews, at half-past two on Saturday afternoon. All the morning they painted together in the workshop behind Tattlecombe’s Toy Bazaar. At one o’clock William drove Katharine home. They had lunch together, after which he put on his best suit, a neat and quite undistinguished blue serge, in what had been Carol’s spare room. It was going to be his dressing-room now. He unpacked and put his things away with the feeling that this unbelievable happiness seemed real and felt real, but all the same he didn’t see how it could possibly be true. There was something reassuring about getting out his shaving things and putting shirts away in a drawer. He put everything away very neatly. Every time he folded anything or opened a cupboard door it seemed to make it more probable that he was going to marry Katharine, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be unpacking his things in her flat.

Katharine dressed for her wedding with as much care as if the congregation in whose face she was going to be married to William would fill the church and set up the highest possible standard of distinction and elegance, instead of consisting of Abigail Salt and Mrs. Bastable, together with any stray passer-by who might scent a wedding and drop in to see the bride. The dress, of rather a deep shade of blue, threw up her skin and brought out the gold lights in her hair. The long matching coat with the touch of fur at the neck was soft and warm. The small hat, hardly more than a cap, was made of the same stuff, with an odd little knot of the fur.

They walked round to the church together and were with Abigail Salt and Mrs. Bastable as witnesses. To Katharine the church was not empty, or cold, or dark. It was full of her love and William’s.

The immemorial words of the marriage service sounded in the echoing space and trembled away into silence – ‘I require and charge you both, as ye shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it…’ The silence seemed to echo too.

Katharine lifted her head and looked up into the reds and blues of a stained-glass window where Christ turned the water into wine.

Now the old betrothal service followed, and the vows ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…’ William’s voice quite steady, quite sure of what he was promising. Then her own, rather soft – ‘to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part according to God’s holy ordinance.

William putting the ring on her finger – ‘with my body I thee worship…’

And the prayer, the joining of hands, and – ‘those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder… ’

The young man who took the service had a pleasant voice. It came out strong and full when he pronounced them man and wife and blessed them.

Mrs. Bastable sniffed and dried her eyes. Weddings always made her cry. Abigail Salt sat up very straight in a black coat with a fur collar. Because it was a wedding she had put an unseasonable bunch of cornflowers in her hat. They made her eyes look very blue.

In the vestry Katharine signed her name and looked at it and smiled a little, and stood aside for William to sign too. He wrote his William Smith.

The young parson stopped him as he was turning away.

‘Your father’s name too, Mr. Smith.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know it.’

William was quite simple and unembarrassed. It was the parson who coloured.

‘I’m afraid – ’ he began, and stopped.

‘You see, I’ve lost my memory. I can put blank Smith if you like.’

Well, of course, it wasn’t what he liked or didn’t like. He really didn’t know. He would have to tell the Vicar. After all, if a man didn’t know his father’s name he didn’t.

William wrote Smith with a dash in front of it on the register. And then the young parson called Katharine back.

‘You have to give your father’s name too, Mrs. Smith.’

Still with that small faint smile, Katharine leaned over and wrote. Then she turned round to be congratulated by Mrs. Bastable.