Chapter Text
‘The ceremony must take place at Trinity Church.’ Mrs Ernestine Fife leaned across the white marble table at the Vendome to show she was as earnest as her name. ‘Just think, the names of Ford and Fife will be in the annals of Boston history for years to come. Imagine the distinction it will confer upon us all.’
Jack Ford cleared his throat before addressing his soon-to-be mother-in-law. ‘We were going to suggest a private ceremony in your drawing room, Ma’am. Weren’t we, Father?’ The whole production was blowing up into something huge.
Mrs Fife raised her lorgnette and gazed across the table at him with narrowed eyes as if he was a specimen beneath a glass case. He’d surely grow used to her fixed beady gaze during the years to come. ‘Would you have it done in a parlor, young man, as if dear Caroline is a tradesman’s daughter?’
Jack’s face burned. He felt like a bug pinned to a display case.
His fiancé, Caroline, squirmed in her seat across from him.
Old Elmer Fife boomed, ‘It will be the biggest, most important day in each of your lives, son. We’ll spare no expense. You know your father and I can cover it.’
‘That’s right, now is not the time for pinching pennies, Jack.’ Caspar Ford, his own father, gave him a sly kick on his ankle beneath the table. ‘This will be a day for being out in the open, proving our refinement. Not for hiding like crabs beneath a rock.’
With a curt nod, Jack chewed a mouthful of roast duck. Of course, that’s what this is all about. Both his family and the Fifes were regarded by the Boston Brahmins as vulgar new money with dollar signs for eyeballs. For his father, this union would be a day to prove his impeccable taste and flaunt his wealth before all the world. Then Jack would be left to live the rest of his life with a girl he barely knew.
‘I simply thought you’d wish to utilize your drawing room for the reception, ma’am. Imagine the effect when all those lights are switched on.’
‘The lad does have a point my dear.’ Mr Fife’s moustache twitched over his wine glass. ‘Electric lighting is still so novel and who else has a line of chandeliers across the ceiling as breathtaking as ours? When will we have a better chance to simply flick a switch in front of so many people than at the wedding breakfast? With those velvet drapes of yours hung to full advantage across the wall of windows, it will look like fairyland.’
His wife folded her soft, dimpled hands on the table. ‘Well, maybe the church first and the reception at home afterwards. Let’s consider the guest list. We must fit everyone comfortably into the space we have.’
Caspar Ford and Elmer Fife took turns rattling off a whole slew of important big-gun’s names who absolutely must be invited. Some of them, Jack didn’t recognize at all. Others were well-known financiers, bankers, and stockbrokers. Successful men of business and social climbers like themselves, with a few token ‘old money’ names thrown in.
‘Should we cap the invitation list at three hundred then?’ Mrs Fife’s forehead furrowed.
‘Three hundred mouths! That’s a regiment, not a wedding!’ Her husband threw back his grizzled head and laughed. ‘Of course we can’t exclude people of consequence.’
‘At five to seven dollars a head for multiple courses and drinks, it’ll be a veritable banquet of bank notes,’ Caspar added.
‘We mustn’t forget table centerpieces, bridal gown, and flowers,’ Ernestine Fife said. ‘The florist insists on two hundred dollars for orchids alone.’
‘Good grief, for flowers that perish in one night!’ Elmer gaped at his wife.
‘Don’t complain, dear. We knew this day would come when we had a daughter. It’s all about what people see.’
Poor Caroline’s eyelashes came down like window shades.
‘Do they see our little Caroline? Or the orchids?’
‘Both dear. Preferably at the same time.’
Elmer began making calculations on his stubby fingers. ‘So far, let’s say seven dollars a head for three hundred people, plus two hundred for flowers and five hundred for the bridal gown. Goodness me, it would be handy to have a pencil and paper.’
‘Two thousand eight hundred,’ Jack shot out.
Mrs Fife tilted her head at him. ‘Really?’
‘Take his word for it.’ Caspar grinned at his son with a form of pride. ‘He’s quick as lightning at mental arithmetic.’
Caroline directed Jack a sideways glance and moistened her lips. She was a girl of few words.
‘We must have Caroline’s school mistress,’ Mrs Fife put in. ‘Caroline was head girl at Saint Angelica’s, so dear Mrs Abercrombie wouldn’t miss it for all the world.’
‘Of course,’ Jack murmured, since those glittering eyes seemed to be fixed right on him.
Mr Fife tilted an oyster out of its shell and into his open mouth. ‘How about you, my boy? Should we add the masters of your old school to the list? Where was it?’
‘I don’t know if you would have heard of it, sir. A place called Plumfield.’ Jack would never dream of inviting the Bhaers to his wedding in a fit. Even if they remembered him with any fondness, they’d consider it tastelessly ostentatious anyway, being as Spartan as they were. He could envisage Mother Bhaer’s tightly pressed lips, even though he hadn’t seen her in ten years. Part of Jack withered inside.
‘It’s an elite establishment that only took on a limited number of gentlemen’s sons,’ Caspar embellished. Jack had heard this same spiel many times over the years. ‘The proprietor is a celebrated professor from Germany. And his wife is well-known now, as the author of a bestselling novel.’
Of course she was. That was another of Jack’s fatal omissions that had probably nailed his coffin lid with the folk at Plumfield. He’d never written Mrs Bhaer to congratulate her on her success. He’d seen reviews of her novel in the newspapers. It sounded to him like a moralistic piece of work brimming with the homilies she used to spout every day, written in the guise of a children’s novel. All of her other ex-students had no doubt gushed but he wasn’t really interested. No doubt his oversight, if noticed at all, had been taken as a deliberate snub. Yet another reason why he couldn’t possibly expect them to attend his wedding.
‘Yes, why not invite them along?’ Dad wore his squinty, speculative smile. ‘I hadn’t given them a thought in years, but it will be the biggest, most important wedding they’ll ever be likely to attend.’
Jack gritted his teeth. He attempted an imperceptible headshake at his father. ‘I doubt they’d want to come.’ Need he remind Dad that he hadn’t been their favorite student.
Then Mr Fife said something that made him jump. ‘Is that the small school just outside of Concord?’
Jack jerked up his chin. ‘You have heard of it then, sir?’
Mr Fife gave a gusty sigh. ‘Only because of a notice in the paper. They’ve suffered a spot of grief very recently. A nephew of theirs was drowned at sea.’
The back of Jack’s neck turned icy cold with a prickly sensation like tiny footsteps. ‘Er, how do you know this, sir?’
‘As I said, it was in yesterday’s Clarion. He was a sailor whose ship went down.’
Now all of the plates, terrines, terrapin shells, and finger bowls seemed to swirl before Jack’s vision, as if they were sinking in the ocean themselves.
‘Well, what do you know,’ Dad breathed. ‘It must’ve been that friend of yours with the one-track mind to go off to sea. What was his name again?’
‘Emil.’ Even though everything felt so unreal, Jack automatically fielded questions and kept the conversation going. He’d had too much practice not to.
‘That’s right. It’s a sad piece of news. What a waste to have let him go at all. They might have guessed how dangerous it would be.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Caroline’s regretful treble hung in the air for a moment.
But her mother had already drifted on to another subject. ‘I hope the time of year will be fine enough for Caroline’s veil of Honiton lace.’
Jack blinked, trying to remind himself that this bombshell needn’t rock his world at all. He hadn’t seen Emil for over ten years, and he’d had no intention of ever seeing him again. It was time to tuck this new piece of knowledge away because it wasn’t relevant in his current life.
‘Honiton?’ he asked. ‘What sort of fabric is that?’
Mrs Fife tittered until she coughed. ‘Oh deary me, it isn’t an actual fabric, my dear boy, but the place from which it is was first made. How like a young man to ask such a thing.’
Jack flushed yet again. Once upon a time, Emil would have appreciated his unintentional gaffe. As schoolboys, they might have sniggered together about it. Now his eyelids burned.
‘We must have a string ensemble.’ Mr Fife dug his knife into another oyster shell. ‘Think of it, four string musicians playing waltzes.’
‘That will be very elegant,’ his wife agreed.
‘Now, do we know anybody who plays a stringed instrument?’ Elmer Fife pondered.
Nat Blake. Jack crumpled his napkin on his lap. That name always sprang to mind whenever anybody mentioned violins. He didn’t speak it out loud. Even if he’d seen Nat within the last decade, he could never bring himself to ask him to play at his wedding because of the frigid history between them. He guessed nobody at Plumfield had ever quite forgiven him for stealing Tommy Bangs’ money and letting Nat take the blame.
‘No, nobody I know,’ Jack said.
‘Our niece, Lillian, has a friend who knows a violinist,’ Mrs Fife said. ‘Dearest Lillian and Amelia will make the most beautiful bridesmaids, don’t you think?’
‘Indeed they will.’ Another of Caroline’s short interjections.
‘Now Jack, who will you choose for best man?’ Mr Fife asked.
‘I don’t believe he’s given it much thought yet,’ said Caspar Ford. ‘Time to start thinking, son.’
The wave of grief Jack had held back suddenly swamped him. He’d never had another friend like Emil. It should have been Emil. When they were boys at school, they would’ve pledged to be each other’s best man, if they’d ever even given such matters a thought.
But now Emil, that liveliest of friends, was dead. Sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
‘Excuse me for a moment.’ Jack rose from the table, dropped his scrunched napkin onto the velvet chair, and lurched toward the restaurant door. He glimpsed the startled expression of a waiter. Jack had probably made a scene. He hadn’t thought to monitor the expression on his face as he walked away.
Once outside, he gulped a breath of fresh night air and beelined to the darkest retreat he could find, a bench seat sheltered by a canopy of tangled vine that dripped with purple wisteria during summer months, overlooking a pond with lily pads the size of dinner plates. Jack rested his face in his hands.
* * *
‘Um, Jack, are you alright?’ Caroline’s quiet voice spoke behind his elbow.
He jerked to attention. ‘Sure, did they send you out after me?’ It seemed he had made a fool of himself.
She shook her head. ‘No, I came out on my own. You looked pale.’
Rolling his shoulders, he supposed he owed her some explanation. ‘It was just such a shock. Hearing about my friend.’
Caroline’s curls bobbed as she nodded. ‘I thought it might be that.’
‘We hadn’t made an effort to keep in touch,’ Jack went on. He scuffed the bottom of his shoe through the seed pods that lay underfoot. ‘Well, he tried but I didn’t follow up – for various reasons. But I never dismissed the thought that maybe we’d just happen to bump into each other someday. Impossible now.’
Caroline sank gingerly onto the bench, taking care to leave a space of several inches between them. ‘Of course. It’s the finality that hurts.’
‘You could say that.’
‘A bit like marriage maybe.’
Jack swiveled on the bench to look at her. He could tell from the scanty light of the distant lanterns that Caroline regretted her words.
‘Sorry! I didn’t mean that marriage… to you… will be like death.’ She clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Goodness me, I’d better keep quiet. I’m making things worse.’
Jack let out a sudden laugh. That was the longest speech he’d ever heard from Caroline. If it turned out to be typical, no wonder she kept her comments brief. Yet somehow her blunders suited him better than any of her mother’s sharp rejoinders.
‘That’s alright,’ he mumbled. ‘He would’ve laughed to have heard you. My friend, Emil, that is. In a friendly way, I mean. Don’t get me wrong, he wouldn’t have laughed at you. Just at the notion that being married to me might be worse than death.’ Jack bit back a groan. Perhaps he should stop talking too.
‘He sounds like a good friend.’ Caroline was winding the ribbon from her sash round and round her index finger. ‘Not for laughing. Simply because he felt comfortable enough with you to say exactly what he thought.’ She let out a squeak. ‘But I don’t mean that you’re formidable. Not at all.’
Shaking his head, Jack decided to cut in and take Caroline out of her misery. ‘There was nobody else quite like Emil. He was sea-crazy, just as my father said, long before he ever got to go on a proper journey. The Commodore is what we all nicknamed him. He’d sing sea shanties all day long if he could. If he forgot the words, he’d make them up and somehow they’d fit and have us rolling on the grass in stitches.’ Jack scratched his head. ‘I doubt I’m doing him justice with my description. I suspect I make him sound like one of those one-track bores we all try to dodge when we see them coming. But Emil wasn’t like that at all. He made us all want to love something as much as he loved the sea. Perhaps you had to know him to appreciate him.’
‘I’m sorry I’ll never get that opportunity,’ Caroline said.
‘I don’t know if it would’ve ever happened anyway,’ Jack mumbled.
After a lengthy pause, Caroline asked, ‘Well, did you?’
Jack twisted around to face her again. ‘Sorry?’
She stared down at the ribbon twisted around her fingers. ‘Did you love anything as much as Emil loved the sea?’
‘No,’ Jack said shortly. ‘I’m born cynical, you might say. Although the other fellows used to say I loved money as much as Emil loved the sea.’
‘Ah yes, money.’ It seemed Caroline had reverted back to brief statements.
‘I’d give anything to have replied to his letters now.’ Jack had already said so much, he might as well plow on.
A sudden voice called, ‘Caroline, dear, did you find him?’
They both turned their heads toward the piazza. There stood Mrs Fife, her bustle rippling like a sail in the wind.
Caroline was on her feet. ‘Yes, Mother.’ She cast Jack a quick smile. ‘You needn’t come back yet. I’ll give everyone your apologies.’
‘I hope you don’t think I’ve deserted the wedding planning.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that.’ She sighed softly. ‘The decision makers are all still present. Sometimes I can’t help thinking it’s our parents who are being wed.’
Only when Caroline returned inside did Jack reconsider his reply to her question. Should his proper response have been that he loved her, Caroline Fife, as much as Emil had loved the sea? He seized a twig from the ground and strode around the pond, snapping bits off and flicking them in.
Oh well, never mind. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway. She hardly knows me. And if she did know me well, she probably wouldn’t be marrying me.