Ivy had left a note at the market stall for her mother to pick up when she took over on Saturday, and on the Monday she and George called by at Doreen’s cottage. The thatch needed money spending on it, and her precious prints – Goliath and the Lady of Shallot and Helen of Troy and some sweet little kittens and even sweeter rosy children in a Pears soap advertisement – were all looking rather the worse for wear, what with the damp and water actually coming through the kitchen ceiling. Ivy felt bad about that. She had given most of the parish money to George when it should have gone to her mother.
Doreen said as much. George said,
‘But what about your fancy man on the Parish Council, Doreen? Fine figure of a woman like you. He should make an honest woman of you; he’s the one to mend your roof.’
‘No one knows about that,’ she said. ‘What have you been saying, our Ivy?’
‘Everyone knows,’ said George, ‘or will soon.’
After that Doreen behaved. She liked George, with his jolly smile and dancing eyes, and his appreciation of a woman’s worth. If it wasn’t for Ivy she’d be after him herself.
She’d seen Jenny at the market on Saturday, she said, they’d even had a cup of tea together. She’d brought the subject round to Adela. Jenny said the girl spent most of her time looking at the swans on the moat. Yes, she’d been given the best room in the Palace, first floor just to the left of the portcullis.
‘It was her,’ said Ivy. ‘I told you it was her I saw in the window!’
‘All in the mind,’ said George, shutting her up. He couldn’t bear to be wrong, even in retrospect. ‘Let your mother get on!’
It seemed the lock on the door was faulty; had quite rusted away with age. Everything in the Palace was beginning to show its age. The door seemed locked but the floor wasn’t level so its tendency was to stand ajar. Jenny had been at the market buying yet more clothes for Adela. Everything in black, of course, but Jenny had drawn the line at crape, so scratchy, she went for a good bombazine, although it was twice the price. Crape was far too dismal for someone so young. Adela was bursting out of everything. She was in one of those growing spurts girls sometimes go through. Mind you, she’d just come on for the first time. Poor little thing, she had been quite shocked. Her daughter Agnes had done the same, but she’d warned Agnes what was going to happen to her, she didn’t care what people said. Ignorance might be bliss but it was still a shock to a growing girl. Adela had quite a bosom now. A few months and she’d turned from a miserable little waif into a real beauty. She was reading her way through the library, Jenny said, not that she’d find much to interest her there. It seemed a real waste to shut her up in a convent for the rest of her life. Jenny didn’t understand the way her family had just abandoned her. The wrong side of some family feud, it seemed, on the father’s side; something religious on the mother’s. There was a rumour that she was an actual Princess, which Agnes believed, but was probably a lot of stuff and nonsense, only they had put her in the best bedroom and she was allowed to dine at the Bishop’s table. She knew which knife and spoon to pick up which was more than a lot of the old codgers knew these days. She had a really good appetite, and if a footman passed a dish before her eyes she could be relied upon to eat some, even spinach. She had a beau already, Mrs Kennion’s nephew Frank, who had come into a fortune and was off to Australia and had been alone in the library with her for at least half an hour without a chaperone, but it wouldn’t come to anything: a girl like Adela wouldn’t look twice at someone like Frank Overshaw. He might be rich but he had pebble glasses and was very plain. His socks were smelly and the laundry girls would only go near them with tongs.
‘Jenny certainly talked a lot,’ said Ivy.
‘People confide in me,’ said Doreen. ‘I have that kind of face.’
‘I think we know all we need to know,’ said George. He seemed very happy. He handed over a wodge of fivers to Doreen and said, ‘That’s for the roof, Doreen. Just don’t let Fancyman get away with it. He’s a churchwarden at St Bart’s. I saw the way he looked at you at the funeral. Lock the back door against him until he comes to heel. He will.’
There was something about a roll of banknotes when a man takes them from a bulging wallet and peels them off one by one and hands them over, even though you’d handed him the notes in the first place. It made him seem generous and you feel grateful. Ivy felt quite jealous. But it was probably only about forty pounds in all, enough for her mother to get the roof ridge done, at any rate, and the kitchen roof mended and even a paraffin stove to dry the place out and rescue the prints, but the whole roof would be more like eighty pounds.
‘Ooh, you’re such a one, George!’ said Doreen. ‘If only all of my gentlemen were as generous as you!’
Ivy asked her mother if she still had the red velvet dress she’d taken from the Rectory the day before it burned down and Doreen said yes she had. Ivy asked her to take it out and Ivy shook it out, and all admired it. It was a quality dress.
George said they didn’t want to miss the bus to Yatbury, they should get back to Bath as soon as they could. He wanted to make a move tomorrow.
‘More haste, less speed,’ said Ivy and asked her mother for a pair of scissors and a needle and matching thread. George asked what on earth was she up to.
‘If a girl’s been wearing black for the past few months,’ said Ivy, ‘she’ll be glad to see a bit of colour, and there are a few seams I’m going to let out.’
‘I follow your reasoning,’ said George. ‘I’ll say this for you. You’re not slow. We’ll show her a new world, a new life. We’ll be doing her a favour. She was light as a feather when I took her through the flames. A child. A different kettle of fish now, to all accounts.’
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ warned Ivy.
‘Aren’t I married to you, Ivy, queen of my heart?’
‘Not yet you aren’t, George. Georgie Porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. Go down to the cowshed and get the envelope I left hidden in the cow stall while I do this.’
‘Why?’ asked George. ‘Nothing we can do about those: they’d bar the Abbey door to the likes of us. They’re just fancy tickets. Unless you can sell them in the market, Mother?’
‘Can’t do any harm,’ said Doreen. ‘Someone might want to frame them, hang them on the wall. Curiosities.’
‘I think Adela ought to have them,’ said Ivy. ‘They’re rightfully hers.’
‘Yes, but she’s rightfully ours,’ said George.
‘Supposing it’s true and she is a princess, then the Abbey’s where she ought to be. In Westminster Abbey on the 26th June with her own kind.’
‘Not if she’s foreign, she’s not,’ said George. ‘Supposing we don’t hurry up and she sails off to Australia or goes into a nunnery, and we lose her?’
Ivy sewed more quickly, while her mother put on the kettle to steam the fabric and bring up the pile where it had been mistreated. All agreed Adela would look a picture in it on a platform, with its trailing ribbons and fine pink lace. George went off to fetch the invitations. They left the envelope with Doreen for safe keeping and caught the bus back to Bath.