A Country Wedding
Pierre woke suddenly with a start. For a moment, cocooned in the stale warmth of his box-bed, his mind was empty. Then a gnawing thought gripped his heart and he felt suddenly sick, not the kind of sick that comes with drinking too much of Père Evence's cider, although he had drunk a small boatful of that too last night; he remembered, with physical pain, that today was his wedding day.
The noise of his mother clattering the coffee pot, the singing of birds outside the window, and the sunlit motes of dust dancing through a gap in the curtains of his bed all told him that he had slept late, not his normal habit. On the end of his bed were a new white linen shirt and black trousers that his mother had stayed up all night to finish sewing. Perhaps, he wondered, he could stay here safe all day and avoid disaster?
He thought back to the start of all the trouble. Every midsummer day, it was traditional in his village for there to be a wedding ceremony for all young couples betrothed that year, held in the early evening so that the work in the fields was not interrupted. Pierre's seven brothers and sisters had all married in this way, leaving him, at twenty-five, alone living with his mother, Jeanne. Last year the neighbours had started their teasing of Jeanne: 'What is wrong with that Pierrot of yours, is he good looking but stupid, like a donkey, not able to do anything without his mother? Why is he not married yet?' and so on.
At last, tired of his dreaminess, of his staring into the embers of the fire every evening, of his boots caked in mud, of his complete calm like a cream-fed cat, tired of planning his wedding down to every last detail in her head, tired of doing everything for everyone all her life, Jeanne told the whole village that Pierre would be marrying this year. She had planned it all and wasn't going to be stopped just for the lack of a bride.
Last month, at midnight, she had slipped out to her father's grave in the small churchyard at the centre of the village and she had confided to him her plans. In the moonlight, she sat on his tomb and whispered how she had worked hard to make sure all her brood was settled but now she just wanted to rest in the sun and let the cobwebs spin for the last few years she had left. If her father found her weight a little heavy, lying over his brittle bones, he politely said nothing.
The next evening it was Pierre's turn to visit his grandfather. He complained of his mother's impatience with him, how she sighed when she served him his soup, how she tried to send him out on errands to the neighbours' houses each evening, in the hope that he would be charmed by one of their daughters. The old man wondered when he himself would be left in peace, but, wisely, said nothing. Wisdom, after all, was what was expected from the dead.
The following evening, after he returned from his work at the quarry, Jeanne sent Pierre to the mill at Goudelin with some grain. He went through the woods and across the fields which was always the quickest way, and which also meant he could avoid the prying neighbours. He came to a clearing and was annoyed to find himself in company. A young woman of about twenty was picking wild flowers. She turned to smile at him, which only made him more cross.
'You must be going to grand-père's mill', she said, 'I'll walk back with you'. Her hair was yellow, not like the black hair of the local girls, and she was very pale. She told him her name was Blanche and she had arrived from St Brieuc to look after her grandfather, Jan Pen. She ignored Pierre's surliness and kept up her chatter, like a babbling brook, for the half hour they walked together in the evening sunshine. By the time they arrived at the mill Pierre was charmed; by the time he ran back through the woods to his cottage he was elated; and when he arrived back on his doorstep he was in love; his mother had been right, he did want to marry. 'Mother, mother, you were right, I want to marry Blanche, the miller's granddaughter from St Brieuc!' he shouted out.
Jeanne then discovered that a woman who gets her own way is not necessarily a happy woman. All her life she had been motivated by her zeal for nagging others into action despite themselves. 'Non, non, non,' she said, 'Not that old fool Pen. I won't have our family insulted by a union with that crafty old man. He has brought his granddaughter here because he has always wanted my field, that one by the stream, and now he thinks he'll trick me out of it. No son of mine will be seduced by a town girl. What for, to leave so I never see him again? Never.'
As the weeks to midsummer passed by, both Pierre and Jeanne became more desperate. Each evening Pierre went out to meet the girl in the woods and Jeanne was left alone. Pierre poured his heart out to Blanche in uncharacteristic animation while Jeanne stayed in her darkened house polishing her copper bowls and darning bed linen.
Jeanne went back to visit her father in his tomb, and he groaned as he heard her approach. Tired of hearing her prayers for a perfect bride for her youngest and most favourite son, he suggested, in fun, that she make one for him herself. Jeanne was entranced by the idea and ran off immediately, leaving the old man in peace. Back at the cottage she worked all night in the light from the full moon and she gathered all the prettiest materials she could find; dried purple heather for the girl's eyes, sea moss and lilac for her dress, white wind-whipped sea foam for her skin, and gorse flowers for her hair. As she worked, she sang:
'Make me a bride for my son Pierre
Who will be wise and true and fair,
Flowers sing and dance with air.'
The flowers floated and danced in the air, shimmering and iridescent, slender and lithe.
It was traditional in that part of the world to invite all one's dead ancestors to a wedding, even considered ill-mannered to ignore them, so Jeanne invited them now and prayed for their assistance in her scheme. Then, exhausted by her emotions and hard work, Jeanne fell asleep in her chair and snored loudly.
So today, at last, was the day of the wedding. Pierre's mother would tell him nothing of his bride except that she was the most beautiful creature ever, a fairy queen, who would meet him at the church gate at 5 o' clock. Pierre had said tearful goodbyes to Blanche last night, and she too had sobbed, having at last fallen in love with Pierre out of pity and pique. As they cried, their tears joined and flowed into the millstream, which flooded its banks and ran around the houses of the village weeping. When the villagers arose the next morning, they cursed the stream for muddying the roads.
It was traditional for the couples who were to be married to walk together to the little chapel at Liskorno, and for the elders to follow at a distance. Jeanne spent a half hour running around the little cottage she had prepared for Pierre and his bride, putting everything right. Every time she was just about to leave she would notice just one more thing not quite right, some dust on the table, a lace flounce askew on the carved oak bed, a fine cobweb over the doorjamb. At last, she left in a race for the chapel, having sent Pierre ahead.
As she passed the crossroads, she heard a terrible groaning. 'What is all this noise, why is everyone racing around today?' It was Antoine, the hanged man, who always hung around at the crossroads. He was skeletally thin, with straw in his hair, having given up on his appearance centuries ago. Jeanne, who was one of those women who always had to be the first with any news, good or bad, stopped to enlighten him. 'Today my son is getting married!' In reality Antoine, who had plagued passers by at the crossroads for two hundred years out of terminal boredom, knew very well that today was the wedding day, but he didn't want to move from his post and liked to be kept involved in all parish events. His technique would be to ask question after question to win himself some company. 'So who is your son marrying, and who has prepared the flowers, and is Francois Le Floch still the priest, so who made the bride's dress?…' and on and on. After Jeanne had spent half an hour explaining the details she dragged herself off, afraid that she would be late.
As she ran up the muddy road in her sabots, seeing the wedding procession half a mile up the road just arriving at the church, she felt a firm hand around her ankle. This time her assailant was Toussaint, the suicide who slept on unhallowed land at the edge of the village. His skin was of a grey hue and he was heaped carelessly in a pile. 'No-one invites me to weddings any more,' he moaned. 'Now Toussaint, you know you aren't allowed on church land,' Jeanne chided him. 'Yes, I know,' he moaned, 'but it is still nice to be invited.' She managed to escape him by promising to bring him a jug of cider, and left him feeling sorry for himself in a corner.
The chapel bells were ringing as Jeanne reached the church gate. Beside her, she heard a sneeze, then found herself drenched by a sudden shower. Then she recognised the man standing at the gate as her dead husband Joel, who was 'perdu en mer'. His long grey hair was wet, and his skin had what looked suspiciously like barnacles clinging to it. She resisted the impulse to ask why he had turned up in such a state to his own son's wedding, as she knew he had travelled a long way to be there. He had drowned on a fishing trip off the Terre Neuve twenty years earlier, so he had twenty years of news to catch up with.
As she explained the marriages of their own seven children, the seven newly married couples of today spilled out of the church and up the lane to the village hall. The men wore black breeches, buttonless jackets and embroidered velvet waistcoats with wide brimmed hats over their long hair. The women had delicate flowered lace coiffes over their coiled hair, with black dresses and coloured petticoats and gold embroidered shawls. Pierre was hand in hand with his golden haired bride who wore a mask of flowers and a lavender coloured dress. Jeanne followed behind in her drenched dress with her husband, who was shivering. 'I think I've caught a chill,' was all he could say.
In the hall the dancing had begun, a foot-stomping kind of dance, round and round on the beaten earth floor, to bombarde and biniou music. There were barrels of cider for the revellers made thirsty by their activity.
The music was so energetic that Antoine, the hanged man, left his post at the crossroads and stood at the back of the hall shaking his bones. Toussaint, the suicide, stood on the threshold peering in, sipping at a bowl of cider. Later in the evening, they could be seen talking together about the bride's dress and the price of fish. Joel, the drowned, sat in a corner in a puddle of seawater, trying to get warm, and asked for fresh water to drink, after years of only salt water. Outside, as the music floated out in the clear midsummer evening air and the sky started to get pink, the oak trees moved an inch or two closer and the willows swayed to the music. In the village cemetery the grand-père tapped a foot bone.
Pierre danced with his flower bride, first in a large circle, shyly, with all the other newly wed couples, then holding her tightly, round and round. As they danced, petals fell from her lilac dress and fair hair and were crushed by the other swirling dancers until the air was perfumed and heady. Where the petals fell on the earth floor some started to grow, sweet peas and poppies and cornflowers, tripping up the other dancers. As the perfume wafted out in the night air, rabbits and voles, sparrows and owls, even a few scrawny chickens, approached a little closer, befuddled by the scent.
Jeanne busied herself serving cider to her neighbours. As she served the cider, she also tasted it to check the quality. All her friends complimented her on Pierre's bride. Jeanne danced with her husband Joel, although it seemed more like swimming and the beaten earth floor became muddy wherever they trod. At midnight, she forgot her grudges and even danced with old Jan Pen the miller. Who knows at what point in the evening she suspected that that old man, her father, had tricked her into distracting herself by making a magic dress of flowers? Stoically, she kept silent.
The next morning, the Sunday, the villagers would all awake with thick heads and tongues, tired after dancing until dawn. To get to church they would have to cut through the tangle of ivy and flowers that had grown around all the stone cottages, all that remained of the ghost wife. That year would always be spoken about for its bounteous harvest, and for many years after, at midsummer, flowers would blossom in profusion from buckets and chimney pots, in barns and pigsties and stables and from thatched roofs.
As Pierre and his bride slipped away to the cottage prepared for them, as stars encrusted the night sky, as little boats on the coast rocked a lullaby on the waves, the grand-père in his grave relaxed and settled down to rest. He recalled the previous night, when Blanche had come to him in tears and he had told her where to find the floating flower garments that Jeanne had prepared and he had told her to meet Pierre at the church gate to marry him. The old man knew he would not be popular in the morning, but what did it matter - he was dead.
© Jacqueline Mézec
(This short story was first published in the Jersey Evening Post as part of a winning entry in the Jersey Evening Post Writing Competition of 1998)