We'll meet again

"Oh that! That was nothing compared with this.”

"I expect it was rather awful while it lasted," said Mary Grace.

"It wasn't the same. Won't it be fun when it's over? I reckon there won't half be some goings-on.”

"People don't take things as they used to," commented Marian.

"In the old days..." She sighed. "There was the Queen's Golden Jubilee. There was a day's holiday from school. There she was... a little old lady in a carriage. She was queer. Anyone could see that.”

Suddenly she stopped and a look of panic came into her eyes.

"Do you feel all right, Marian?" asked Mary Grace.

"Oh yes ... yes, I'm all right. Just felt a bit strange for a moment.”

"It's the sherry," said Peggy.

"I don't know. It just came over me." Her hands were shaking.

"You were telling us about Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.”

"Oh no... no. I didn't mean the Golden Jubilee... it was the Diamond.”

"Sit quiet for a bit," said Florette. "Then you'll feel better.”

Marian did so and closed her eyes. We all watched her in consternation, but after a few minutes she opened her eyes and smiled at us.

"It's all right," she said. "Just a bit of a turn." Then she started to talk about some horses she fancied for a coming race.

"It's all a matter of form," she said. "That's what you have to study.”

We understood. She did not want to talk about the "bit of a turn.”

Mary Grace and I discussed the incident afterwards.

"Something upset her," I said. "It was when she was talking about the past.”

"I think something must have happened. Some tragedy that she was reminded of, and it was connected with the Golden Jubilee.”

"That was years ago. I should have thought she wasn't born then.

She said the Golden Jubilee... and then seemed anxious to tell us that it was the Diamond one. It must have been the Diamond. If she had been at school, which she rather implied, she would be over sixty and they don't have people in the Ministry over that age. I wonder what it was that happened?”

Marian became a cause for speculation at that time because both Florette and Peggy had been very much aware of the shock she had had in the Cafe Royal.

Whenever Marian was absent we talked about it. They fantasized about her. Peggy thought she had been "crossed in love." She had met a young man who was above her in station.

"You know how she is about station and that sort of thing? He promised her a grand future; she thought she'd have a beautiful home where she would be petted and made a fuss of for the rest of her life. Then, right at the altar, he jilted her. Then she married Mr. Owen.”

Florette said: "He was a good husband, but he was not her true love and she never forgot. She had this rich lover. He was a great musical hall star and all the women were crazy about him. He saw Marian and she was different from all the rest. Those actors fall in and out of love very easily. He seduced her and there was a child.

She gave the child away and then one day at this Jubilee thing she saw her child, grown up into a beautiful young woman.”

"She couldn't have been more than five years old at the time of the Diamond Jubilee," I protested.

"Oh, it wouldn't have been that then. It was some other procession.

There was the coronation of Edward VII, wasn't there? I reckon it would have been that.”

"Well, whatever it was," said Mary Grace, "it was undoubtedly there and we must not try to probe. She might tell us in time. Let us be especially gentle with her until she does.”

So we were. I wondered whether Marian realized this. There was certainly something stricken about her and it became more apparent since that outburst at the Cafe Royal.

It was about three weeks later when we discovered Marian's secret.

It happened in an unexpected way.

We came in one morning to hear that an inspector had arrived at the Ministry. There was a good deal of gossip about this.

"He's come to investigate," said one of the women.

"Do you think there is a spy here?" asked another, looking round suspiciously.

"Something like that," said the first speaker. "Well, it's ever so exciting and there's a war on anyway.”

As the morning progressed, I noticed that Marian was in a state of increasing uneasiness. Mary Grace noticed it too.

"I am sure she is worried," she said to me. "I wonder what it is she has done... or is doing?”

"I could not imagine Marian as a spy, or involved in anything dramatic," I said.

"You never can tell," said Mary Grace. "I could not imagine it either, but sometimes the most unlikely people do these things.”

Two or three days passed. We heard that the inspector was to be at the Ministry until Thursday. No one had any idea what he was doing. Billy Bunter was now and then called to his office and came back looking more important than ever.

Poor Marian was in a nervous state, I could see. Every time the door opened and someone came into the department there would be panic in her eyes. I tried to think of what misdemeanors she could have committed, and came to the conclusion that they must be serious to have this effect on her.