Strange Recompense by Catherine Airlie

avenue unexplored. He set to work with a grim determination which surprised even Anna, who had been prepared for anything, throwing copies of half a dozen newspapers at her across his desk.
    “Read through these and see if they mean anything to you,” he commanded. “We may as well begin at the beginning.”
    While she read he worked at his desk without appearing to remember her at all, and as she turned page after page and no one item of news stood out for her to claim her interest over the others, which she supposed was what he wanted, she felt the old sense of hopelessness creeping over her and grew more nervous and restive with each passing minute.
    Finally he pushed back his chair and came towards her, his grey eyes steady on her flushed face.
    “All right,” he said, “don’t make a labor of it. We’ve drawn a blank, so we’re going to fold up the newspapers and go out.” He turned back his cuff to look at his watch. “Slip across and borrow a hat from Ruth, and don’t be any longer than you can help.”
    She obeyed him without question, although she could not understand why he should suddenly want her to wear a hat.
    Anna inspected Ruth’s hat in the mirror, satisfied with what she saw apparently, because she was still smiling when she met Noel in the hall.
    They drove swiftly down the tree-lined approach to the hospital and out through the south gates towards the edge of the town where a small chapel stood on a hill and several cars were already parked on the gravel sweep before the main door.
    “We’re getting out here,” he told her as he pulled his own car in behind the others. “Don’t worry about anything that may happen, Anna,” he added. “I shall be in charge and nothing can harm you.”
    It was strange the amount of comfort she found in that thought although she could not understand why he was taking her to a Welsh Methodist church at this time of day and on a Tuesday into the bargain. Then, as he led her swiftly down the aisle after a hurried consultation with someone at the door, she realized that they were about to witness a wedding.
    Organ music filled the church, swelling to a final magnificent chord as they found a seat at the side of the aisle, in full view of the waiting bridegroom and the assembled guests, but the notes were no more than a dreadful avalanche of sound to Anna as she sat with bowed head, trying to restrain an almost overwhelming impulse to rise and run back down the aisle to the sunlit world outside. A feeling akin to claustrophobia clamped down on her senses and it seemed as if she was beating against bars in some narrow prison.
    “I can’t go through with it,” she murmured. “I don’t want to let you know, but I can’t go through with it. It’s not that my love has changed,” she added in a breathless whisper, the words forced from her against her will and almost as if she were repeating a formula. “It’s just that I don’t want to be married...”
    Noel Melford’s fingers closed firmly over hers and somehow she knew that the words she had repeated were not her own. They had the hollow quality of an echo about them, an echo out of the past, but she could not nail them down to any memory. Her head was spinning round and her mind so confused by the impression she had received since entering the dim, cool chapel that she could no longer reason clearly. All she could feel was that desperate desire for escape, and then she knew that she could not escape because Noel Melford sat between her and freedom and his hand was firm and detaining on her arm.
    During the ceremony, as the kindly old parson’s voice suggested the full meaning of the marriage bond, Noel did not turn his head once to look at her. He appeared to be deeply engrossed by what was being said, his keen mind weighing each phrase, each turn of a sentence, to extract the fullest meaning from them, but when the happy couple followed the parson to the vestry and some of the guests made their way