Amber (“Berry”) and
Aster Finch
The Farmhouse, Finch Dairy Farm, Combe
It had started very small, and with the count of days, of weeks, had gathered size. Now the basket threatened to spill sweet, soft baby clothes and blankets all across the bed. Already the expectant mother had begun to spill tears from her brimming eyes. One hand brushed gently over the curved fall of her dress, which had also started very small, and gathered size. She also. It felt that there was no baby at all readying to come unto the world, but merely a ball of bursting emotion so strong she could not tell if it were sorrow or were joy.
Aster glanced into the quiet of her daughter's room and caught the scene which played upon her heartstrings. Silently she patted the pile of laundry down on the bed, and took
Berry into an embrace. "
I love you so much." The words had often been repeated. Whether days were glad or sad. Whether there was fear or hope. There was always pride and love and happiness. "
Come now," the farmer's wife choked back emotion all her own and caught her daughter's golden hair up in both hands. "
How are you going to have your hair ?"
There was no need to add onto the sentence .. 'for your wedding day'. That had been the unspoken cause of every which conversation that came of the house for months. Times it seemed that the entire family was caught up in a whirl of planning, testing cakes and choosing flowers. The dress that the bride would wear had been a focus of obsession, as had many baby clothes that both
Berry and her mother, and the local sewing circle had all contributed to. But the dress was all her own work, a clandestine project. The bride was so awfully afraid that anyone would say that she looked less than perfect, she had not shown anybody.
It was conceived of a dream she had loved as a little girl, a dream she had clasped and coveted forever since. The milkmaid had been darning her socks and mending her clothes as long as she could remember. Often 'mending' meant 'maintaining standards' for she always had ideas that far outreached her mother's practical designs.
Aster had shown patience and a wisdom that only a mother could, in allowing her
Berry to work on her 'little projects'. It leant motivation for the girl to practice and perfect the art of dressmaking, which was nothing to say that it taught her that you get what you work for, a motto her parents strongly believed in. So her little dolls throughout the years sat a parade of growing skill along the daughter's bed. Each improved, each more extravagant. But nothing would compare with the dress which the bride had devoted such time to.
It was a shame she could now not wear it. Like the basket of baby belongings, so had the girl's stomach grown. It had started, when she'd started working, oh so very small, but then with the count of days, of weeks, had gathered size. Now the beautiful dress would not fit her. And time was short, too short to start over.
"
Not a single person will be looking at my hair," she bemoaned. "
All eyes will be on the bride too fat to fit into her dress !" And with that the highly emotional young dressmaker let her fair hair tumble against her mother for comfort. For perhaps the last time she imagined that she might, before she too became a mother. And what wonderful magic that came with that miracle of life,
Berry hoped she would too gain the insight of always knowing quite what to do or say. Or at least how to fix this latest problem.
Caldwell and
Coleman Finch
Outside, Finch Dairy Farm, Combe
Hands took
Cole by both his shoulders and steered the young man out of the house.
Cal didn't answer when his son started to ask "
What ? Where are we going ?" The farmer held onto his words until they had made their flight and escaped far across the yard.
"
Didn't want to be going in there,"
Mr Finch declared, sagely. "
Trust that."
With a shrug, the youth joined his parent in leaning upon the fence. If he was extremely truthful, he had no clue what to say to his sister anyway, or whether he ought to say a thing upon the matter. There was no doubt that he ought not tell his father though. And so
Cole took what solace he could from at least one certainty of conscience. "
She's getting wed," he recollected. As though anyone on the farm had chance to forget such a thing. With a blink, the farmer's son sought to shake some sense into the world and found he could not.
Caldwell Finch dug out his pipe and pipeweed from a pail that seemed strange to be set out there. "
Pa !" his son admonished, albeit halfheartedly.
"
What your Ma don't know, won't hurt her,"
Cal munched into his forbidden habit. Not that he was not allowed to partake but that he knew
Aster couldn't abide the smell. The thing with his line of work though, he could like as not concoct some errand which would douse the smell of weed with the smell of some other stronger scent. Strange enough, his wife was more like to embrace him then, believing the image of him hard-work worn.
The image of
Berry crying, distracted
Cole from keeping up his rebuke. He had worried, that somehow his sister had found out. About what happened in the Prancing Pony not some nights ago now. About her prospective husband being so well drunk that he had mistaken another pretty blonde girl named
Amber, for his wife-to-be. It had been a mistake to have taken
Clay there, his best friend now knew, belatedly. But he'd not expected for the pending groom to spy
Bryony Spruce and get so het up over that 'carriage of injustice'. No, that wasn't right. 'Miscarriage of justice' …. He heard
Dessy in his head, correcting him, as she so often did. And was it any wonder then that she told him he did not make with words enough. More of a wonder was that he was thinking of her, when it had become abundantly clear that she did not think of him. At least beyond thinking him rather stupid, or too shy.
"
How old were you and Ma when you were wed ?"
Cole could not have said later whether he had meant to ask it quite out loud. Still it was done, and he given an answer before he could worry to regret the matter.
"
Same age you are now, I reckon. More or less."
Cal took a time out from indulging in his private pastime, and turned to his son.
"
So, the same age as Clay is too ?" the questions, spurred on by success, kept right on coming. A nod of assent from his father led on to a further "
Was Ma as old as Berry ?"
Berry. It was what the family called ‘their’
Amber; had done since she was a little girl and declared she would only eat strawberries. The recollection seemed to catch her father now in a daydream. "
Yes'm I figure she must have been not too far apart in age than your sister is now. Difference of course is .. well,"
"Ma wasn't .. ?"
Cole did not have to breathe the word .. Pregnant …
"
No she was damn well not !"
Silence reigned a time then, as the two men struggled to settle with the fact of the matter. That '
Berry' of course, very much was …
Cole sighed. "
S'funny is all. That she's getting wed. I mean, my little sister,"
Cal turned where he stood, took out a long drag of reflection and sought to read of his child's mind.
"
You thought you ought be set up first, that so ?" the murk of the matter began to clear, more so with each moment that
Cole felt some slight amusement in his father's tone. Saving himself, he hoped, from further embarrassment, the youth adopted his parent's own failsafe, and shrugged, nonchalant.
If he was the type of young man who could speak quite openly about his feelings, he might confessed all to his patriarch, his role model. He might have admitted that, yes, he’d been thinking that he ought to have been wed before his little sister. Of course to accomplish that, he ought be able to speak proper sentences to a girl, or to anyone in fact. Truth was when you have a best friend who never stops talking, and who all the girls in town want to talk to, when you have a little sister who all of the guys in town want to talk to … when .. Oh when was he to ever get a chance ?! It seemed to
Cole that he had spent his life listening to other's speaking and saying apparent nothing that when he found his chance to speak, he could not think of a thing to say.
It had been his idea to go to the Prancing Pony on the night in question, in some desperation in fact, for he had heard it said that a girl there would kiss you or be kind to you, if you asked. Maybe she would even agree to attend his little sister's wedding with him, to be seen in public with him. Having witnessed all too soon though, exactly what the rumours had been hinting at, the truth of this 'sure bet' had unnerved him more than the prospect of ever simply speaking to a girl. It had been as much annoyance at his own stupidity, his abject naivety, and still evident failure, that he had become so cross at
Clay for drunkenly laying a kiss upon that self same girl ! He might argue that he was concerned as
Berry's brother, for his best friend's antics, but the truth went much further than that. He was annoyed at his own apparent uselessness.
He'd believed until a certain point that he would simply attend the wedding with
Dessy, given that he was the groom's best friend, and she the bride's. But he had embarrassed himself by trying to speak with her so many times now, that he felt it might be better spending time with a girl who wanted him to speak, rather than confusing him every time she spoke ... Or at least with a girl who would not immediately tell his sister in some horrified reaction if he ever tried to put his lips to the back of her hand.
Somewhere outside the workings of the troubled young man's imaginings,
Cal Finch was recounting how he'd known
Cole's mother some good score of years before he ever dared speak out to her. Then one year they had sat next to one another on the annual wagon ride through pumpkin patch for Harvest's Fayre … and it occurred to
Cole. That he had sat next to
Liana Woods on the back of the wagon's ride through pumpkin patch last Harvest Fayre. Conjuring an image up of the sheep farmer's daughter, he could count the number of times that he'd seen her smile and laugh, and the way her curls fell prettily around her face.
"
Don't let Ma catch you out smoking," he advised, and caused premature ending to his father's romantic account of wooing a young
Aster Bay. Cole headed back toward the house, full of thoughts, leaving his father to chew on his own thoughts, and on his pipe with a slow contended grin.