Marie Larkin and Mr. Charlton's marriage

Mariette Larkin and Mr Charlton’s marriage transforms an initially awkward encounter between a tax inspector and the Larkin household into a public commitment, a joyful wedding, and a practical partnership. Its course is shaped by the family’s exuberant hospitality and Mariette’s directness, while its aftermath reveals how marriage draws Mr Charlton into the family’s work without making him adopt Pop’s disdain for official paperwork.

Identity and Introduction

Mr Charlton enters the relationship as a young tax inspector charged with asking Pop about an unfiled income return. Pop’s first response is to question why a return is expected at all; before the official business can proceed, he is offering the visitor dinner and a succession of drinks. The invitation becomes an encounter with the whole household: at a crowded table, Mr Charlton is given tea amid pineapples, fish and chips, ice cream, jam, Guinness, biscuits, and iced buns. The contrast between his briefcase and the family’s lavish table gives the relationship its first setting. He arrives to collect information, but the Larkins make him a guest.

That hospitality is more than a single meal. When Mr Charlton tries to leave, he discovers that the eight o’clock bus has been discontinued since petrol rationing began. Pop turns the practical obstacle into an invitation to stay the night, and Ma agrees; Pop proposes making a bed on the billiard table. Later, Ma again invites him to Sunday dinner rather than have him eat cold food alone. Repeated offers of food and lodging loosen the boundary between official visitor and family acquaintance, even as Mr Charlton continues to approach the household with the reserve of an outsider.

From Visitor to Beloved

Mariette’s attraction to Mr Charlton becomes unmistakable through physical closeness rather than formal courtship. She watches him closely, touches his cheeks, and kisses him; his response is an embarrassed confession. Later, she pins him against the dark stair’s newel post and kisses him again. He is left divided between the sensations of this growing intimacy and his unsettled feelings about the buttercup field, the nightingales, and a goose that had entwined its neck around his leg. The book makes his emotional disorientation comic, but the pattern is clear: Mariette acts decisively, while Mr Charlton struggles to reconcile desire with his cautious, self-conscious habits.

Pop’s welcome helps turn attraction into an extended stay. He argues that Mr Charlton should use the National Health service and take sick leave, treating the public provision as something the tax inspector has already paid for through weekly contributions. Mariette adds her own invitation to remain for a week and then the following weekend. The combination of practical persuasion and intimate attention moves Mr Charlton further into the household’s orbit. The relationship is not presented as a carefully negotiated social match; it takes shape amid meals, overnight accommodation, family interruptions, and Mariette’s frank pursuit.

Engagement and Wedding

The engagement becomes official during the family’s noisy fireworks celebration. Amid rockets, Roman candles, and golden rain in the garden, Mr Charlton asks Pop for permission to marry Mariette, explaining that Ma has said she can marry him if Pop agrees. Pop answers at once that he will let her. Mr Charlton then asks Pop to announce the engagement, again relaying Ma’s suggestion that the moment is right. A quarter of an hour later, Pop stands on a chair outside the billiard room and tells the gathered guests that Mr Charlton is going to marry his daughter. He calls for a toast to Charley and Mariette, just before an explosion knocks him yards backwards.

The public announcement makes the marriage a family occasion rather than a private arrangement between two young people. Pop’s pride is touched with sadness, and the guests are assembled in the smoky garden as the fireworks continue. The announcement also marks Mr Charlton’s changing place in the household: the man who first arrived to question Pop’s income return now asks Pop to bless his marriage and becomes the subject of Pop’s toast.

The wedding is remembered as a day of sunshine, a large marquee, iced port, cold salmon, and champagne. Mariette wears a striking yellow silk dress that suits her dark hair, and carries stephanotis and cherry-red nerines; her sisters Zinnia and Petunia, along with Victoria and Primrose, serve as bridesmaids in deep cream, with golden-rose headdresses and lily-of-the-valley posies. Ma, Edith Pilchester, and several friends weep openly, and Pop has a tear in his eye. The detail of the clothing and flowers gives the occasion a ceremonial beauty that contrasts with the Larkins’ usual informality, without severing the wedding from the family’s abundant, sociable style.

Married Life and Work

After the wedding, Mariette and Mr Charlton return from their honeymoon, and their marriage quickly becomes part of the family’s everyday future. At a later family gathering, Pop admires Mariette in a black cocktail dress and affectionate­ly kisses her; Ma kisses both newlyweds, and Mr Charlton and Pop shake hands. Pop’s thought about Mariette and the baby—that it is just as well to start with a clean sheet about these things—links the couple’s new household to the family’s concern with children and beginnings.

Their working life also reflects a negotiated difference in outlook. After marrying Mariette, Mr Charlton leaves his job at the tax inspector’s office, to Pop’s great satisfaction: Pop considers a family connection to the tax service worse than having someone who has served time. In recognition, Pop gives the couple five hundred laying pullets, setting them up in the egg business. In less than a year they make enough profit to buy another five hundred hens. The gift is both practical support and a route into the family’s independent rural economy. Yet Mr Charlton continues to make proper income-tax returns on their earnings, a habit Pop considers distinctly unwise. Marriage brings him into the Larkin enterprise, not wholly into Pop’s resistance to the state.

Family Consequences and Significance

The marriage also brings the couple into discussions about the next generation and the household’s unresolved legal status. When Pop announces that Ma is going to have another baby and that he and Ma have thought of getting married, Mr Charlton immediately recognizes that the situation needs careful thought. Later, while the family plans a French holiday, Mr Charlton raises the delicate problem concerning Pop and Ma in connection with passports, suggesting that it might have been better if they had married. The contrast is significant: Mariette and Mr Charlton’s marriage is publicly celebrated and socially settled, while Pop and Ma’s long partnership remains entangled with practical questions that marriage might affect.

Pop has also promised to build Mariette and Mr Charlton a bungalow from materials salvaged from Sir George Bluff-Gore’s mansion. The promise is tied to Pop’s proposed demolition work, but the job is delayed as he becomes occupied with other ventures. The house therefore remains an unrealized extension of the couple’s new life: family support is real, but its delivery follows Pop’s own shifting priorities.

Mariette and Mr Charlton’s marriage completes his passage from official stranger to son-in-law, family worker, and participant in the household’s future. Its story is told through concrete acts of incorporation—meals, a bed on the billiard table, the engagement toast, wedding gifts, and five hundred hens—rather than through abstract declarations. But the union does not erase difference. Mr Charlton leaves the tax office while still filing returns; he belongs to the family while sometimes supplying the practical caution that its other members resist. The marriage’s happy public form thus sits alongside the book’s continuing comic tension between affection and administration, shared life and official rules.