Stardust

1 bottle of mushroom ketchup

5 lb of rice

1 tin of golden syrup

2 lb of currants

a bottle of cochineal

I lb of barley sugar

1 shilling box of Rowntrees Elect Cocoa

3d tin of Oakey’s knife polish

6d of Brunswick black

1 packet of Swinbome’s Isinglass

1 bottle of furniture cream

1 basting ladle

a ninepenny gravy strainer

a set of kitchen steps

Tristran read it to himself, looking for something about which he could begin to talk: a conversational gambit of some kind—any kind.

He heard his voice saying, “You’ll be having rice pudding, then, I would imagine, Miss Forester.” As soon as he said it, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Victoria pursed her perfect lips, and blinked her grey eyes, and said, “Yes, Tristran. We shall be having rice pudding.”

And then she smiled at him, and said, “Mother says that rice pudding in sufficient quantity will help to stave off chills and colds and other autumnal ailments.”

“My mother,” Tristran confessed, “has always sworn by tapioca pudding.”

He put the list on a spike. “We can deliver most of the provisions tomorrow morning, and the rest of it will come back with Mister Monday, early next week.”

There was a gust of wind, then, so strong that it rattled the windows of the village, and whirled and spun the weathercocks until they could not tell north from west or south from east.

The fire that was burning in the grate of Monday and Brown’s belched and twisted in a flurry of greens and scarlets, topped with a fizz of silver twinkles, of the kind one can make for oneself at the parlor fire with a handful of tossed iron filings.

The wind blew from Faerie and the East, and Tristran Thorn suddenly found inside himself a certain amount of courage he had not suspected that he had possessed. “You know, Miss Forester, I get off in a few minutes,” he said. “Perhaps I could walk you a little way home. It’s not much out of my way.” And he waited, his heart in his mouth, while Victoria Forester’s grey eyes stared at him, amused. After what seemed like a hundred years she said, “Certainly.”

Tristran hurried into the parlor, and informed Mr. Brown that he would be off now. And Mr. Brown grunted in a not entirely ill-natured way, and told Tristran that when he was start younger he’d not only had to stay late each night and shut up the shop, but that he had also had to sleep on the floor beneath the counter with only his coat for a pillow.

Tristran agreed that he was indeed a lucky young man, and he wished Mr. Brown a good night, then he took his coat from the coat-stand and his new bowler hat from the hat-stand, and stepped out onto the cobblestones, where Victoria Forester waited for him.

The autumn twilight turned into deep and early night as they walked. Tristran could smell the distant winter on the air—a mixture of night-mist and crisp darkness and the tang of fallen leaves.

They took a winding lane up toward the Forester farm, and the crescent moon hung white in the sky and the stars burned in the darkness above them.

“Victoria,” said Tristran, after a while.

“Yes, Tristran,” said Victoria, who had been preoccupied for much of the walk.

“Would you think it forward of me to kiss you?” asked Tristran.

“Yes,” said Victoria bluntly and coldly. “Very forward.”

“Ah,” said Tristran.

They walked up Dyties Hill, not speaking; at the top of the hill they turned, and saw beneath them the village of Wall, all gleaming candles and lamps glimmering through windows, warm yellow lights that beckoned and invited; and above them the lights of the myriad stars, which glittered and twinkled and blazed, chilly and distant and more numerous than the mind could encompass.

Tristran reached down his hand and took Victoria’s small hand in his. She did not pull away.

“Did you see that?” asked Victoria, who was gazing out over the landscape.

“I saw nothing,” said Tristran. “I was looking at you.”

Victoria smiled in the moonlight.

“You are the most lovely woman in all the world,” said Tristran, from the bottom of his heart.

“Get along with you,” said Victoria, but she said it gently.

“What did you see?” asked Tristran.

“A falling star,” said Victoria. “I believe they are not at all uncommon at this time of year.”

“Vicky,” said Tristran. “Will you kiss me?”

“No,” she said.

“You kissed me when we were younger. You kissed me beneath the pledge-Oak, on your fifteenth birthday. And you kissed me last May Day, behind your father’s cowshed.”

“I was another person then,” she said. “And I shall not kiss you, Tristran Thorn.”

“If you will not kiss me,” asked Tristran, “will you marry me?”