8

‘I am absolutely delighted,’ declared Miles, appearing early the next morning to discover me alone in my dressing-gown. ‘And Dame Hilda’s absolutely delighted, too.’

‘Glad to be spreading so much happiness this beastly foggy weather,’ I sneezed modestly.

‘Anemone is not only such a nice girl, but her experience as a social worker will have an invaluable effect on you. I only hope and pray, Gaston – as your cousin you must occasionally allow me a certain frankness–’

‘Always very refreshing, I assure you.’

‘I pray Anemone will bring you to your senses and restore you to the proper paths of medicine. Instead of frittering away your life ever since publishing that frivolous novel of yours. You have not only found a wife, Gaston. With her you will find your soul.’

Decent of him, except his tone gave the impression a soul like mine hadn’t much market value.

‘Both the delights and duties of married life are, I fear, shabbily regarded in this sinful age,’ mentioned Miles, putting a thermometer under my tongue. He went on to point out how he himself at home was a combination of Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert and the Swiss Family’s Mr Robinson. ‘Now that young Bartholomew has arrived to share with Connie and myself our little nest–’

‘Talking of little nests,’ I remarked, removing the thermometer, ‘I shall be needing a bit of the old grandpa’s cash you’ve been holding in trust for me.’

‘Rest assured, Gaston,’ said Miles, putting it in again, ‘that I shall promptly make over your portion of the estate on your marriage.’

‘But now we’re pretty well ordering the cake,’ I indicated, taking out the thermometer, ‘I expect you’d like to let me have a little on account.’

‘I shall unobtrusively slip the cheque into the tail pocket of your morning coat in the vestry,’ said Miles, popping the thermometer back. ‘Just as soon as you have signed the register. Ninety-eight point four,’ he added. ‘You may go out.’

I felt sorry for old Miles, with that nasty suspicious mind of his. In fact, I had never been engaged before – admittedly, on occasion I might possibly have been party to some perfectly informal arrangement – but once Anemone and I had plighted our troth in The Times I was solidly determined to do the right thing by her. After all, we Grimsdykes have our honour, even if it does need a bit of breathing on and polishing up from time to time. When we pledge our heart – or even our grandpa’s old pocket-watch – we are perfectly sincere about it. Particularly, I kept reminding myself, as I’d picked such a nice girl as Anemone.

‘When, my children,’ asked Dame Hilda over the teacups, during the week-end I spent with the delinquent females before slipping off to New York, ‘are you thinking of naming the happy day?’

‘Ah, yes. The happy day,’ I observed.

‘Mind you,’ Dame Hilda went on, ‘I am not saying that you should in any way rush matters.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘In my work I see far too many tragedies from young people rushing blindly into marriage.’

‘Very tragic, yes,’ I agreed, exchanging a nod of agreement across the table with Anemone.

‘I do indeed often feel we have swung too far from the Victorian concept of long engagements,’ reflected her mother.

‘Jolly wise birds, the Victorians.’

‘But you have,’ murmured Dame Hilda, passing the Madeira cake, ‘now been engaged over eighteen months.’

‘Oh, really?’ I looked surprised. ‘Time does fly, doesn’t it?’

‘Indeed, it does.’

Dame Hilda paused to pour the tea. She was a handsome woman, like one of those old-fashioned opera singers, well nourished on bites of managers and conductors. If I’d been a delinquent female, she’d have scared the daylights out of me.

‘I read in a magazine the other day the Bourbon kings were engaged to their future queens for years and years,’ I remarked, feeling she might be interested.

‘They were, of course, betrothed in early infancy,’ returned Dame Hilda, rather distantly. ‘However, I’m sure you both know your own minds.’

Anemone herself was far too nice to enter a delicate conversation like this, but she now chipped in with,

‘Mummy, isn’t it smashing – Gaston says he can come on our fortnight at Whortleton-on-Sea after all.’

Dame Hilda’s eyes lit up.

‘So you managed to free yourself from all those professional entanglements?’

‘Been working at it like a Houdini.’

‘I’m sure a rest by the sea will do you the world of good. You know Whortleton already, I believe?’

I nodded. ‘Though I haven’t had a dip in the briny there for years and years. And I’ve probably quite lost my touch with the local shrimps.’

‘We always stay in that charming hotel overlooking the prom. Anemone and myself share a room, and now I shall ask the management to reserve another for you. I’m sure you young people will find plenty there to amuse yourselves. Perhaps you remember, there is the Aquarium and the Floral Clock, and in the evenings an excellent pierrot show on the pier and bingo in the Winter Gardens.’ Dame Hilda gave a smile. ‘I fancy, Gaston, you won’t leave Whortleton without definitely fixing your wedding day. Not after I’ve had a fortnight’s work on you – I mean, not after a fortnight of its romantic charm has worked on you. Do have one of these little pink cakes. You’d never imagine the girl who made them cut up her baby brother.’

Anemone and myself then went out for a nice game of tennis (she knew some very nice people in the local tennis club). But I must say, I bashed the ball over the net with the faint feeling that Dame Hilda sometimes tried to organize my life rather. Come to think of it, I recalled, watching Anemone’s nice service, ever since I’d been engaged Dame Hilda had treated me as though I were on the strength of her delinquent females. There’d been no end of a row that winter, just because I’d slipped over to Paris with some of the chaps from St Swithin’s for the rugby International. It seemed Dame Hilda somehow disliked my escaping from the respectable network of British Railways, so I didn’t go out of my way to mention I was making for New York.

I hated lying to a nice girl like Anemone, of course. Even when there was a jolly good chance of my never being found out. Now I reflected that two weeks of looking at Dame Hilda in a swimsuit was going to be hell, and that wasn’t to mention those pierrots, but if I’d backed out of their holiday as well, when I was dead and opened they’d have found ‘Whortleton’ written on my heart.

All this didn’t stop me feeling a frightful cad as I put down the telephone after ringing Anemone the morning of my return from New York. I got into the bath deciding that my conduct certainly wasn’t that expected of a man shortly coming up to his second engagement anniversary. Saying you’re in Cheltenham when you’re really in America might be passed off as a mere slip of geography. But making dates with beautiful girls in aeroplanes wasn’t at all the same thing, even if you’d once been sick with them behind the same bathing hut. Odd, I mused, how my sex life over the years had centred round the Whortleton seashore, like the gastropoda. I turned off the hot tap with my toe, making the decision of Sydney Carton under similar circumstances. If by any chance Lucy should happen to telephone, I would merely plead an urgent engagement in Yorkshire and send her a slice of wedding cake.

The telephone rang.

‘Hello?’ I said, dripping a good deal on the carpet.

‘Gaston?’

‘Why, hello, Lucy.’

‘I hope it’s not inconvenient for me to ring?’

‘Inconvenient? Good lord, no. Not in the slightest.’

‘I wanted to say how sorry I was missing you at the airport. I wanted to offer you a lift into Town in my car.’

‘That Customs man was a bit foxed over the tariff on models of the Empire State Building, with snowstorm.’

‘But that isn’t all. I got home to find George had turned up. He’s in a terrible state.’

‘I’d suggest a cup of black coffee and an aspirin for a start–’

‘I mean, the poor dear’s in an awful state of nerves. I’m sure his work is getting far too much for him, Gaston. He really ought to see a doctor, but Mummy’s in St Tropez and Daddy’s organizing a new branch of the bank in Karachi, and of course George won’t do a thing I tell him myself. So I wondered if it would be an awful bore for you to come round and look at him?’

‘Bore? Good gracious, no. Absolutely delighted to have a look at George any time.’

After all, meeting beautiful girls on the quiet for drinks was one thing. But a professional visit to the family was quite another.

‘Gaston, you’re a dear, and I’ll never be able to tell you how grateful I am. Our flat’s in Brook Street, near Claridge’s. If you’re not too exhausted after the flight, why not come round this afternoon for a cup of tea?’

I scribbled down the address, climbed back into the bath, soaped myself all over, and sang Rule Britannia.