Two weeks later, despite the bitter March weather they rode by buggy to Hannaville, where the Methodists had arranged temporary living quarters for them – a room, so they understood, in the house of somebody by the name of Mrs Chawder. The trip took three hours; Sarah talked all the way and he listened to the cadences of her voice – its stops and starts and sudden enthusiasms – trying in vain to rearm himself against her.

‘Oh, Johnny, I’ll make the most beautiful house for you to live in – curtains, I’ll make the curtains myself – I know how – blue curtains with tassels and a draw-line – and a pelmet!’

‘What’s a pelmet?’ he said. But his mind was on the arch of her neck and the flecked-hazel color of her eyes.

‘It’s a thing that goes – didn’t you ever have curtains, Johnny? Of course you didn’t. I’ll teach you all about it. Oh, we must have curtains – the pelmet goes on top, and carpets and wallpaper, and a piano, too – and a potted Christmas cactus—’

When they reached Hannaville the cedar trees that encircled the town were hung with ice and snow; they glistened in the winter sunlight.

‘Um,’ Sarah said, looking around her. ‘Just the place for blue curtains and a pelmet.’

4

Mrs Chawder’s face was papery yellow. Her head wobbled on a scrawny neck that jutted out from her shoulders, and her braids, piled into a crown, had slipped down over one ear. She sighed, shivering under a heavy stole and leaning on the doorknob as she peered out at Jonathan and Sarah. ‘You’re the preacher?’ she said.

‘Yes, and this is my—’

‘Where you been? We been holding up the wedding for two weeks now – how soon can you do it? Tomorrow?’

‘What wedding?’ he said. ‘Look, it’s very cold—’

‘People get married wintertime same as summer.’

‘Hadn’t we better come inside and talk about it?’

Mrs Chawder turned away, and the jerky, dismissive shift of her body brought to his mind the jerking of a train about to stop. ‘We ain’t got no time to lose, Preacher.’ They stood in a small one-room area, the whole of the downstairs, half kitchen, half living room, partially warmed by a pot-bellied stove.

‘May we sit down, Missis Chawder?’ Jonathan said. ‘I understand—’

‘You don’t understand nothing,’ she said. ‘Can you do it tomorrow? You got all the right papers? You know how to do a wedding, don’t you?’

‘Well, I’ve never done one before—’ Jonathan began.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Mrs Chawder leaned her body against the wall and buried her head in the crook of her elbow. ‘Lord God! What am I going to do?’

‘Who’s the bride, Missis Chawder?’ Sarah said. ‘Is it your daughter?’ Mrs Chawder nodded. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Carma.’

‘Carma?’ Jonathan said. ‘I knew somebody named that once before.’

‘God be merciful. Who cares who you knew?’ Mrs Chawder kept her head averted.

‘I do,’ Sarah said brightly. ‘You never said anything about a Carma to me before, Johnny.’