For Love Alone by Christina Stead

just take anything. They seemed to fit in the shop, such a bargain, I couldn’t resist it, twelve-and-six, bronze kid, but now they fit me all over nowhere.”
    They could not fill in the time. The tables waited, the musicians waited, the Don Marches had done shaking hands and the reception was beginning to fall flat; for it was queer and depressing that Malfi had not yet come in but was sitting, nerve-shaken, prostrated by the heat, in a cloakroom at the end of the corridor.
    In the moist heat which intoxicated them, and the expectancy, the groups flowed together again, friends together, and the boys and the girls in different circles began to murmur jokes. From each joke flew off a flock of relieved laughs. Their bodies relaxed wantonly, they shook their hips and pressed their shoulders together unconsciously. The gaiety started up again. They stood with their backs to the tables, trying to forget the claret cup, the home-made lemonade, the champagne, only turning back from time to time to see that they were not left out, that no one had sat down. The men, ashamed of their dirty turn of mind, looked around self-consciously and tried to keep their talk decent, and a silence fell on any unseemly guffaw; but the irritated lasciviousness of the girls, on whom the heat and the thought of the wedding-night worked as an aphrodisiac, their impatience, curiosity, and discontent, threw them into a fever. It was perhaps Aunt Bea who set the off, running round to each group with a busy gossip’s smile and naïve lecherous interest in the wedding only half-accomplished. She kept saying: “The new wife, the wifein name only,” and “A married woman
de jure
but not
de facto
”; and made remarks about the weather, “I hope it will get cooler for the poor things, imagine sleeping together for the first time in such weather.” She pushed these remarks farther than was her custom for the pleasure of hearing her nieces “go off into a roar”.
    Teresa and some young cousin, awkward, flushed and astonished, stood on the outside of a group of four girl cousins listening to Madeline, the prettiest of them all, a golden-brown ringleted girl with blue eyes. She kept doing a dance-step, wriggling her hips, foxtrotting in and out of the group and singing quatrains, or reciting limericks and cracking jokes at which the girls cried: “Oh, that’s too raw,” or “How absolutely killing!” or “You’re vile,” or “Where on earth do you get these things?” They stood listening, unable to believe what they heard, with red cheeks, baited but ashamed. Madeline sang:
“In the park, after dark, without pants in the park after dark”,
her curls flopping, her face jovial. Aunt Bea had thrust her brown head in amongst them, its skinny stalk growing among all the satiny, round stalks, her young eyes gleaming. When the two sisters heard the conclusion of this song, Kitty turned her hot brown eyes quickly to Teresa and at this Teresa tried to walk off unobserved. Kitty followed. No one but Bea saw them go. A shriek of laughter burst from the group but was quickly hushed. Aunt Bea came after them at once.
    â€œWhat is it, girls? Are you having a good time? You mustn’t mind what Mad says, she means no harm, it’s all innocent fun to her, there isn’t a lovelier, purer girl than Mad. I know you two are two little prudes but there’s a charm in a little fun. Of course, I think Mad oversteps the fine line between broad humour and the coarse, sometimes, but she’s so wholesome. But you can’t have too many prunes and prisms at a wedding, for, after all, what is a wedding about”—said Aunt Bea, excitedly, going far beyond what she would have said to the two little prudes at any other time. Bored with them she looked around, said: “I do think Malfi ought to make a little effort and not make her guests wait, I’m dying of thirst and that