Without Consent by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online

poorer and busier than they were. It was the cars that gave them away rather than the clothes. Each time Brigid met one or the other, she hoped for a kind of breakthrough into friendship. Or, failing that, some kind of clue as to how it was they seemed to manage their lives so much better than she did; something she could copy, so that she could laugh as they did. But she stood on the fringes, looking in, watching intensely, making them uncomfortable, all the time afraid they might discover how much she envied their self-command.
    Did they live in a state of mortal sin? Did they fear hell and any repeat of pregnancy as she did? They were a small element of this particular parish; minimal in comparison to those parishioners at the other end of the scale. This coterie existed to give, the bulk to receive, like a vast nest of baby birds with open mouths, Brigid thought, without condemnation. She had often wished she was one of the needy poor, then she might have greater licence to trouble the priest. One of the other women, only a couple of years Brigid’s senior, married young and looking forward to grandmother status by the time she reached a well-preserved forty, was showing the others photos of herdaughter’s wedding. Brigid had attended the service, without an invitation to the reception. She saw herself, skulking in the corner of one of the photos outside church, with her hat askew, and, looking at her shadowy depiction, felt shame in it.
    â€˜Didn’t she look a dream? All that lace …’
    â€˜Her granny’s veil, that was, you know. Must be a hundred years old. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
    There were photos pre-ceremony, photos after, careful to include costly cars and all the best frocks, or so it seemed to Brigid. The one thing which struck her most was the picture of the bride arriving with the veil over her face, ready to float down the aisle in ghostly anonymity, although everyone knew who she was. The veil said it all, Brigid was thinking. You arrived for your wedding shrouded in complete ignorance, thinking you knew about life, the universe and everything, while knowing nothing. Least of all the fact that you were a sacrificial lamb, for whom being in love was not going to help one whit. At least that was the way it had been for her. Might not be the same for a modern girl; but eighteen, this bride, for God’s sake. How much could any girl know at eighteen?
    The photos were bringing forth a flood of reminiscence, some of it surprisingly frank by their standards.
    â€˜I remember my wedding night,’ one remarked. ‘Lord, what a fiasco. I never thought I’d recover.’
    â€˜Was it such a great thing, Mary? Did you have to step over it?’
    They all snorted with laughter.
    â€˜Course, it’s not like that now,’ Mary continued. ‘Not that it ever really was. I was a virgin, God help me, but asfor my sisters … Nobody actually produced a shotgun, but Daddy might as well.’
    â€˜That was me,’ Brigid murmured, suddenly spontaneously bold. She only had to know, within rough parameters, the ages of these women’s children to know that the had-to-get-married scenario applied to more than herself. No one was shocked.
    â€˜Me too,’ said another, after a pause. She was another plump one, who knitted between bites of her cake; the last thing she needed. ‘Not that I have regrets, mind: I mightn’t have got him any other way,’ she said with her mouth full and they all laughed again. ‘And surely,’ the plump one went on, ‘there’s few enough years when the sex stuff matters that much. Thank God the old man seems to have forgotten all about it.’
    â€˜If only,’ Brigid said, further emboldened by the laughter. She spoke too fervently, her voice too loud. Now they were all staring at her, waiting for elaboration. She giggled, feeling herself blush.
    â€˜I mean, I wish mine would forget about…