Loser Takes Al

“There may be residence qualifications—they must settle those. They can include him on their staff for the last six months. They will have to see the British Consul too. You had better speak on the telephone to M. Tissand, but don’t bother me about it. I want to hear no more of it. Oh, and tell Sir Walter Blixon that we have found an error in the Revolg machines. They have got to be changed at once. He had better consult Mr Bertrand who will advise him. I want to hear no more of that either. The muddle has given us a most exhausting morning. Well, Mr Bertrand, until the 30th then. Bring a set of Racine with you. Leave the rest to Miss Bullen. Everything is settled.” So he believed, of course, but there was still Cary.

FIVE

The next day was a Saturday. I met Cary at the Volunteer and walked all the way home with her: it was one of those spring afternoons when you can smell the country in a London street, tree smells and flower smells blew up into Oxford Street from Hyde Park, the Green Park, St James’s, Kensington Gardens.

“Oh,” she said, “I wish we could go a long, long way to somewhere very hot and very gay and very—” I had to pull her back or she would have been under a bus. I was always saving her from buses and taxis—sometimes I wondered how she kept alive when I wasn’t there.

“Well,” I said, “we can,” and while we waited for the traffic lights to change I told her.

I don’t know why I expected such serious opposition: perhaps it was partly because she had been so set on a church wedding, the choir and the cake and all the nonsense. “Think,” I said, “to be married in Monte Carlo instead of Maida Hill. The sea down below and the yacht waiting…” As I had never been there, the details rather petered out.

She said, “There’s sea at Bournemouth too. Or so I’ve heard.”

“The Italian coast.”

“In company with your Mr Dreuther.”

“We won’t share a cabin with him,” I said, “and I don’t suppose the hotel in Bournemouth will be quite empty.”

“Darling, I did want to be married at St Luke’s.”

“Think of the Town Hall at Monte Carlo—the mayor in all his robes—the, the…”

“Does it count?”

“Of course it counts.”

“It would be rather fun if it didn’t count, and then we could marry at St Luke’s when we came back.”

“That would be living in sin.”

“I’d love to live in sin.”

“You could,” I said, “any time. This afternoon.”

“Oh, I don’t count London,” she said. “That would be just making love. Living in sin is—oh, striped umbrellas and 80 in the shade and grapes—and a fearfully gay bathing suit. I’ll have to have a new bathing suit.”

I thought all was well then, but she caught sight of one of those pointed spires sticking up over the plane trees a square ahead. “We’ve sent out all the invitations. What will Aunt Marion say?” (She had lived with Aunt Marion ever since her parents were killed in the blitz.)

“Just tell her the truth. She’d much rather get picture-postcards from Italy than from Bournemouth.”

“It will hurt the Vicar’s feelings.”

“Only to the extent of a fiver.”

“Nobody will really believe we are married.” She added a moment later (she was nothing if not honest), “That will be fun.”

Then the pendulum swung again and she went thoughtfully on, “You are only hiring your clothes. But my dress is being made.”

“There’s time to turn it into an evening dress. After all, that’s what it would have become anyway.”

The church loomed in sight: it was a hideous church, but no more hideous than St Luke’s. It was grey and flinty and soot-stained, with reddish steps to the street the colour of clay and a text on a board that said, “Come to Me all ye who are heavy laden,” as much as to say, “Abandon Hope.” A wedding had just taken place, and there was a dingy high-tide line of girls with perambulators and squealing children and dogs and grim middle-aged matrons who looked as though they had come to curse.

I said, “Let’s watch. This might be happening to us.”

A lot of girls in long mauve dresses with lacy Dutch caps came out and lined the steps: they looked with fear at the nursemaids and the matrons and one or two giggled nervously—you could hardly blame them. Two photographers set up cameras to cover the entrance, an arch which seemed to be decorated with stone clover leaves, and then the victims emerged followed by a rabble of relatives.

“It’s terrible,” Cary said, “terrible. To think that might be you and me.”

“Well, you haven’t an incipient goitre and I’m—well, damn it, I don’t blush and I know where to put my hands.”

A car was waiting decorated with white ribbons and all the bridesmaids produced bags of paper rose petals and flung them at the young couple.

“They are lucky,” I said. “Rice is still short, but I’m certain Aunt Marion can pull strings with the grocer.”

“She’d never do such a thing.”