Caroline's Dress

"All right, all right. I'll be down in a moment."

They were starting to get impatient. I could hear the bustle and the small talk, the guffaws and the laughter. And I knew they were waiting for me, and I wasn't nervous, not really, not then. I just wanted to get it right. There were clothes literally heaped up on the bed, just about everything I had. They say that when a woman reaches a certain age, the right outfit is everything. She literally lives and dies by it. I'm being melodramatic of course, but it's pretty much the truth.

I slipped the purple cocktail dress off my shoulders and let it slip to the floor, surrounding my bare feet like silky lips. My gosh, I almost felt it could have eaten me. Perhaps it could. So many other girls I grew up with seem to just live for clothes. They want to be swallowed up by them, as if the dress were a new skin, an identity. But I was never like that! Tony said I could have had something new. He almost insisted on it, but I said, "Why? It's not like I've lost my figure. No. What I have is just fine, thank you." And here I am, imagining being eaten by a dress I bought all the way back in nineteen sixty-one. Or was it sixty two?

I remember because of the peerage, and Sir William, of course. Poor Tony. He and his father argued sometimes, but really they were very close. Still I remember the only thing anyone seemed to say back then was, "The peerage. The peerage.' as if it were the peerage that was truly alive, not the person, at all! Of course, I never really wanted to be a viscountess, whatever my mother might have thought.

They were wild times though. The public support was incredible. People shouted encouragement and cheered us in the streets. And everybody loved Tony back then, at least for a while. And after the by-election when he took back his seat in the commons, the party got together to celebrate, and that was where I wore the purple dress. Tony said that I looked far beyond any royalty. And I felt that way too, as I spoke passionately, and I hope lucidly, to Anthony and to Harold about the relative benefits of comprehensive education. Oh, change was in the air back then, so sweet you could taste it. I don't think a queen could ever feel like that.

But that dress wasn't right. Not for now. I hooked it under my foot and, lifted it up. I clutched it fondly for just a moment, and I cast onto the bed.

There was only one dress left in the wardrobe now. Truthfully, it was the one I'd always thought I'd wear, only it scared me a little. Tony always said that I was far braver than he, but I only raised the children, hid myself away. I've never really been a showy kind of person at all, never ostentatious. Most of the time I don't even wear lipstick. Even that, just lipstick, makes me feel more exposed, more vulnerable somehow, I think. I know that's the opposite of how you're supposed to feel but I think that I'm just happy as myself. Make-up makes me feel a little bit like a fraud and, of course, I'm terrible with it anyway. Some of my friends have make-up cases, all layered with careful, precisely sized compartments. They terrify me! The truth is I'm just not an organised person. I'm just not, that's all.

Anyway, the red dress scared me like that.

I remember how the china clinked as busy undergraduates bustled up and down the aisles at Worcester College. I'd been in England no more than a couple of months but - what better place to be than Oxford! Back in Cincinnati I'd heard that British people were supposed to be all stuffy and superior, but I thought they were quite charming. Anyway, it was a formal tea and I was there with Jennifer - I've always been lucky enough to make friends easily - and we were just there, exchanging small talk. Two boys were sitting next to us talking very seriously about socialist politics and I, well, I found myself eavesdropping a little more than was polite to them or to Jenny. One of them, a rather long-faced young man, with intense and dark eyes, spoke with such passion and eloquence - even then - that I couldn't help but steal the occasional glance at him when he spoke. Tony says now that he was looking right back, but I don't know if that's true. He was saying (to the other boy, not to me) that economic efficiency necessitates a certain amount of inequality. And you know what I did? I leaned right over and I spoke to him.

"But there are things we can do to minimise that inequality," I said, not really sure where I was going at all.

"Go on."

He was looking at me with all that intensity that comes with youthful zeal. I was stuck for a moment, thinking I'd started something I couldn't finish. But then I said it. I must have half blurted it out, but say it I did.

"You could buy me lunch tomorrow. I'm broke."

That was the first time I saw him laugh.

I've never been one for the long game, and so we went out that same evening. He told me how he'd seen Attlee in forty-six, and about flying planes in the war, how he'd lost his elder brother, and how the state should belong to its people - and me? I was hooked!

We saw each other every day after that, every night - and then, just nine days later, we found ourselves on a bench in Florence Park - we'd just come up from feeding the ducks at Iffley Lock. I remember now, how nervous he'd seemed, the unusual stiffness in arms as he threw out the bread - and that was where he proposed to me. A park bench in Oxford - we have it in the garden now, if you'd like to see it. Tony bought from the council! He proposed on a park bench in Oxford in less than ten days, and I, I accepted! I was wearing the very same red summer dress.

And now here I am more than fifty years later (Oh, how time flies!) standing in front of a full length mirror in the same red dress that I wore that momentous day in Oxford. And Tony and Stephen and Josh and Hilary and Melissa, all of my wonderful family, are waiting for me, waiting for me this wonderful, wonderful day! I do up one last button, and I put on my red lipstick, and make my way to the top of the stairs.

I see that Melissa is waiting at the bottom and she calls out into the hall, "Everybody! She's coming!" and it all goes silent. Slowly, I start my descent. I hold the banister with one hand, placing one foot in front of the other with all of the grace and poise I can muster. And as I descend I can see people gathering, coming out from the living room, and gathering at the foot of the stairs. And they start to clap, and then before I'm halfway down the whole hall is filled with people, all of them applauding, applauding me! And I'm looking down and I see Tony right at the front of the crowd, right at the foot of the stairs and I see him applauding too, his beautiful long face. I see him smiling and clapping and I see him crying. And as I reach the foot of the stairs he offers me his hand and I take it, and he leads me out through the house and into the garden. Out into the garden, to the very same park bench we sat on in forty-nine, and we sit there, I in my red dress and Tony in the dark blue suit that I helped him to choose, and he is sinking down onto one knee, taking my hand in his, and he is saying, "I love you, my Pixie."

And the tears are ruining my make-up as I say, "I love you too!" And as he is holding me I hear the cheering and whistling from the terrace, and I am crying for my wonderful, wonderful life.