Fancy That!

ROMANTIC SHORT STORY BY ALISON CARTER

Would Isaac make a suitable husband for Dainty?

She had taken a fancy to him when they were both at the Good Friday service in Wendlestead.

There were a lot of people there, because the village churches joined together for worship on some of the more important festivals.

Dainty spied him on the opposite side of the aisle, and he happened to see her at the same moment.

His eyes lingered on her, and he smiled.

It was the sort of smile that suggested to her that he had taken a proper fancy to her, too, right in that moment.

Dainty hated her name. It had been her mother’s choice, and now that she was eighteen years old she did not hold back from complaining about it.

“I am not dainty, Mother. Nobody can say it of me!”

Her mother gave Dainty an affectionate slap on the cheek and said she was bonnie and precious and ought to get herself a husband.

“Like an apple about to fall from the tree,” Mistress Gregg declared. “And I don’t care if you love the name or not.”

Now the smile on the face of the young man died as quickly as it had come, and he faced forward, concentrating on the priest.

Dainty saw him glance for a moment at his father, who was standing on Dainty’s side of the young man.

He was checking that his father had not noticed his inappropriate grin.

He cared very much, Dainty noted, what his father thought.

She had seen the young man before.

Wendlestead and Careborne and Hamblin, the three villages, were not big places, so it was inevitable.

She remembered his arms most particularly.

Dainty’s own father had long arms. Her uncle said he was like a Barbary monkey, which seemed rude to Dainty.

But he did have unusually long arms, and he said that they were an excellent thing in a wheelwright.

“For reaching,” he explained to her. “From one side of a cartwheel to the other. You want to find a husband with a long arm, whether or not he makes wheels.”

Dainty sneaked another look across the aisle.

Yes, the young man’s arms seemed of a good size, though his jerkin might have had the sleeves shortened so as to make them look long.

It was hard to tell.

In any case, he had a good square chin like her father’s.

Dainty had considered other men before when taking a look around for a husband, but none had really caught her attention.

She wished her parents would stop nagging at her to get one, in fact.

But if she was going to, she wanted the right one, and she could not abide a soft chin or short arms.

She had her preferences and was not ashamed of that.

Outside the church, a March wind was blowing caps off heads.

The priest told the Gregg family that next week’s Sunday service was an important one – a blessing on the King, Henry Tudor, anointed of God, and they must attend.

The new priest was bossy, and Dainty told her mother so and was hushed.

Then she saw the young man again, standing beside his father, who was a little shorter, and she remembered their name – Oates.

The younger one was Isaac, the father Barnaby, and Barnaby Oates owned a good deal of the best land to the west of Careborne.

Isaac’s mother, as far as Dainty could remember, had died of a fever a long while back.

“That’s Isaac Oates, isn’t it?” she said to her mother.

Dainty wanted to draw her mother’s attention to him, because a second opinion, even from her mother, might be useful.

“Goodness,” Mariah Gregg replied, “how tall he’s got.”

“We could go over and ask if they are well,” Dainty suggested, but her mother seemed doubtful.

Who one approached in the church porch depended on one’s social capital, one’s level of wealth.

A wheelwright was a wheelwright, while a prosperous farmer was a cut above.

But Dainty was aware that her family were shifting upward in the social ladder.

There had been two wheelwrights for the three villages, but the older one had moved to be nearer a son and daughter-in-law.

Dainty’s father had therefore got much more business.

She took another look at Isaac Oates and wondered if, were he to acquit himself well, she might think about a match with him.

The Oates men lived in the Careborne parish, but that Easter and in the weeks after it, they came to Wendlestead’s church.

Then Barnaby Oates called at the Gregg house, knocked on the door and was admitted by Mariah.

Dainty was sewing – not an activity she enjoyed but one she had to do.

Master Oates took his cap off and bowed low to her mother, whereupon Mistress Gregg turned quickly to Dainty.

“Go and feed the hens,” she ordered.

Dainty had done that exact thing no more than a half hour before, and she said so.

“Even so,” her mother said sharply.

On her face there was suddenly a strange expression, her eyebrows shooting right up and almost vanishing under her hair, her lips set thin, her whole face insistent.

Dainty argued the point, because it was ridiculous to feed hens twice and everyone knew it, until her mother took her by the arm and pushed her through the door.

“Go and see to the fowl,” she repeated with a warning look.

“Whatever they need, and take a quarter hour about it!” she added as she prepared to shut the door on Dainty.

When she came back inside, Dainty learned that Isaac Oates was willing to take her as a wife.

Master Oates had gone away and her mother was excited.

“He acknowledged your father’s standing. What about that?”

“I’m glad of it,” Dainty replied.

Her own heart was aflutter, too, because she had taken a real fancy to Isaac as those Sundays had gone on, and it felt like a miracle that he felt the same.

Isaac and Dainty were left alone together a few days later.

The meeting did not go at all as Dainty expected.

She was unclear exactly what the activities at a first wooing might be, but she had some expectation of compliments and possibly a gift.

Actually, there was a gift – a length of sheep’s fleece.

“It’s been cleaned properly,” he said as he handed it over. “Note the lack of odour.”

After that he was serious, and even haughty, and he talked a lot about “mutual benefit” and “future prosperity”, just as though he was deciding whether or not to buy a pony.

“This is a good arrangement,” he said.

Dainty felt his eyes on her as she poured him a glass of wine, but nothing he said matched the smile he had given her on that Good Friday.

She was mightily displeased and most disappointed.

She had, to all intents and purposes, plighted her troth to the fellow, and her troth was as good as any other girl’s.

But she had taken a fancy and was sticking to that. Master Oates looked in on them after a while, and looked hopefully from one to the other.

His son gave him a sober nod, then father and son went away together.

Dainty decided to carry on for now and see.

She liked his arms so much, and his face, too, however proud he was.

But she would have liked to see what a kiss felt like before being sure.

They walked together as the weather improved at the end of April, and Isaac put a stiff arm around Dainty’s waist, barely touching.

They talked, and he stuck to topics such as where they would live and what linens she might bring to the marriage.

“Will we marry soon?” she asked. “What about June?”

They had stopped by a fallen log, and she waited to see if he might lay his jacket on it, against the damp, but he just sat down, so she sat, too.

He shrugged.

Isaac Oates was a great one for shrugging, Dainty had noticed.

“If you like,” he said.

She was getting annoyed.

“If you don’t want it as soon as June, that’s all right for me,” she said.

Let him make some effort!

“Well, I don’t mind,” he replied.

Fury rose in her.

“If you don’t mind, then let’s forget June. Let’s say next Easter or, in fact, let’s say next summer.

“Let’s see, that will be the year of our Lord 1500, unless I am mistaken, and so a nice round number.”

He said nothing for a minute.

“If you want June,” he said finally.

“It’s not for me to say,” she retorted. “I’ll be led by my husband.”

“I’m not your husband yet.”

“No,” she agreed. “And you won’t be until the next century, if you would prefer to wait.”

“No, June is fine,” he said.

“No, no, we’ll say next summer,” she replied. “I don’t want to nag about it.

“Perhaps Lammastide. August can be pleasantly warm.”

Dainty knew she was sulking, and she didn’t care.

They walked home with no resolution reached.

Then came a supper for both families, and a date was not mentioned at the event.

Dainty understood that it was down to the “young people” to settle on it.

Over roast meat and good white bread, she watched Isaac trying to impress his father.

It might well be that his decision to have her really was about money and about a good arrangement.

Were both men so little concerned with love?

The trouble was that, through all her frustration, Dainty couldn’t resist Isaac.

Even his haughtiness was attractive to her, which was driving her to distraction!

On his next visit, Isaac returned to the topic of a date.

“June is, I now see, a common time for weddings,” Isaac said. “I’d not considered that.”

“Is it?” Dainty asked, picking up her sewing.

“One marries in June, I’m told,” he added, “so that the first baby is born in time for the wife to be up and ready for the harvest the following year.”

“You’re quite the romantic,” she said.

There was a long silence.

“Then there are the blossoms,” he went on.

“For a bridal bouquet?”

“It’s more about this,” he replied, “that after an annual bath in May, the sweet smell of a person is beginning to lessen, and a bunch of June flowers serves to –”

Dainty jumped up to stop him talking and her sewing flew across the room.

“I’m a great deal cleaner than a May-time bath once a year, Isaac Oates! And I won’t marry a man with such habits!”

Dainty knew that many people swore by one bath a year, whether they felt they needed it or not, but her mother had raised her better than that.

Isaac was flustered.

He said he’d read about once a year bathing being a common habit, but added that he and his father took far more baths than that.

Dainty thereby learned that he could read, and despite her irritation she notched that up as another reason for keeping to the betrothal for now.

But he wasn’t going to shut up about a June wedding.

“The month of June belongs to the Roman goddess Juno,” Isaac told her.

”Does it indeed?”

“She is the goddess of marriage,” he explained. “It is said that couples who marry in June will be blessed with prosperity and happiness.”

Dainty walked over to the far side of the room, and it was a large room, because they were in Barnaby Oates’s farmhouse.

She was cross and confused, and she had a horrible feeling that when she walked out of here there was a chance she might never come back.

Isaac had taken a fancy to her – she was sure of it, but perhaps that was inexperience talking.

Perhaps he did have no romance in him and did not care for her.

They sat silently for several minutes.

Dainty heard her mother and Mr Oates murmuring behind the door.

Her mother had warned her that men never take initiative, so she sighed and spoke.

“I said June when we sat on the log.” She looked at him. “It was a wet log, and my goodness, I didn’t have a dry thing to sit on, Isaac Oates!”

“Anyway, I suggested June, and you didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

“And now you want June, and I don’t know if that’s just to spite me, or if you –”

But she couldn’t say anything else, because he came across the room, practically flying.

He fell at her feet and his lovely long arms wrapped themselves around her legs, bundling up the skirts.

“Oh, I have got it all so wrong!” he wailed.

Once she got him to stand up and had straightened out her clothes, he explained that he had been wanting all this time to make his father admire him.

That’s why he’d tried to be sensible, to think about income and to be pragmatic.

“I didn’t want him to think I was choosing for love.”

Then he gave her such a look of affection!

It made her leap up and stand within two inches of him.

He explained that his father had stayed unmarried and dedicated to the farm and its success.

“Although I think a dozen women have set their cap at him. But he’s steadfast and a great man of business.

“I have longed to be like him, but now I have succumbed.”

“Succumbed?” Dainty repeated.

“To your charms, Dainty Gregg.”

She did kiss him then, because, she reasoned, what young woman could be expected to keep away from a young man who talks about her charms?

So Isaac was kissed, but he still had more talking to do.

“I want to be like him, you see – the most upstanding farmer in the three villages and a businessman.

“A man of business to his core, with the labourers’ welfare in mind, and the crop size and the flock.

“I want him to see himself in his son, and not a weakling made soft and stupid by a sweet girl, adored from Good Friday on!”

Dainty was minded to kiss him again, and repeatedly this time, but she heard a noise and turned to see that Master Oates and her mother stood in the doorway.

Master Oates had a tear in his eye.

“Oh, Isaac,” he said, and he strode into the room and took his son in his arms.

Dainty felt this was a bit much, since she had only just got close to the possibility of being in Isaac’s arms herself, but she let that go.

“Oh, my son,” the man declared, “this is all my fault!

“I did not tell you how much I loved your mother, the loveliest thing in the county!

“I have stayed unmarried because nobody could replace her.

“I have been stern and focused on the farm and only the farm to drive out my sorrow.

“How could you think that I wouldn’t want you to know love?”

He said that he had seen the look Isaac gave Dainty in Wendlestead’s church, and had recognised it.

“It may even have been in that church, and even that pew, that I laid eyes on my own darling.”

And at this point, at last, he turned to Dainty.

“You are a fine young woman and will make him a fine wife.”

Dainty curtsied and Mariah Gregg stepped forward.

“We hoped that a date might have been set today,” she told them. “Master Oates and I, and your father, have been puzzling about your seeming reluctance to name a day.”

She touched her hair and simpered.

“The wheelwright and I had a summer marriage.

“I made his wedding coat myself, in cambric with a lace edge – a light garment for the heat.

“I was amazed at the length of his arms, and I will tell you now that I had to take out the sleeves and do them again to make them longer!

“I liked a man with a good arm then, and I still do now.” She smiled at Isaac. “If you ever need to change a wheel, even if it’s only changing one, then arm length is more important than any man knows, and I’d add –”

“Thank you, Mother,” Dainty interrupted, and they all began to laugh.

Mariah raised her hand and confessed that she was over-excited, and that she must fetch her husband from his workshop for this happy occasion.

“But what I was coming to was this,” she said, “that John and I had a July wedding.

“Barnaby, did you have a July wedding? Shall we say…?”

“June!” Dainty and Isaac interrupted in perfect unison.

“We choose June,” Dainty repeated more quietly, “because of the flowers, and, well, for many reasons.”

“June,” her betrothed repeated, “as soon as the month begins.”

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