‘Are you two staying up for a while longer?’ Vivian stuck her head round the door to the back parlour. She had just seen off the last client and was doing her usual end-of-evening check and lock-up.
‘Yes, ma chère, we’re going to have a little nightcap before heading up. You get yourself off. And Vivian …’ Lily called her back. ‘I just want to say you’re doing a great job as head girl.’
Vivian’s face lit up.
‘Well, I aim to please,’ she said in her best Mae West drawl.
Lily looked at her longest-serving girl, with her platinum hair and voluptuous figure. She had changed a lot from the skinny, mousy runaway who had come knocking on her door late one night five years ago.
‘You have great professionalism. You keep the rest of the girls in line – ’ Lily poured out two cognacs ‘ – as well as the clients.’ She handed one of the drinks to George, who was sitting in the armchair next to the open fire. ‘And you’ve been great with the Brigadier of late, who I know can be a terrible bore and rather a challenge to talk to.’ The old man had a habit of spitting when he talked.
Vivian smiled a little self-consciously. She didn’t take compliments well.
‘And,’ Lily added, ‘now that the Gentlemen’s Club is really starting to get going, I think we’ll sit down and have a longer chat about your and Maisie’s idea to develop this “escorting” side of the business. I’ve been mulling it over. If it’s done properly, it could work well all round.’
Vivian nodded, smiled and said her goodnights.
She couldn’t wait to tell Maisie what Lily had just said.
‘So, George.’ Lily turned and sat down in the armchair next to her future husband. ‘Tell me how it went at Blacketts today with your fitting?’
‘All good, all good,’ George said.
Lily looked at him and then at the nest of tables next to his chair on which lay a hardback copy of a book emblazoned with the title Men at War.
‘Mmm,’ she said, eyeing the book. ‘Let me guess, you spent all of about fifteen minutes at the fitters and at least fifty in the bookshop? Hence the new read.’
Lily picked up the thick volume of short stories edited by Ernest Hemingway.
‘A strange choice for someone who purports to hate anything and everything to do with war.’ Lily looked at her fiancé.
‘You are right, my dear, in that I do indeed hate all things to do with war, but that’s not to say the very nature of war and the psychology of human violence do not interest me.’
Lily wasn’t sure whether this was quite the right start to the conversation she had planned to have with her fiancé that evening.
‘So, tell me my love,’ George said, looking at Lily and taking a sip of his cognac, ‘what’s on your mind? I know something is going around that very lovely but very complex and, dare I say it, calculating head of yours?’
‘George, mon cher, you know me too well.’ Lily stood and picked up her packet of Gauloises from the mantelpiece.
‘Well,’ she said, taking out a cigarette. ‘As you are more than well aware, I’ve been organising our wedding.’ She stopped and lit her cigarette. ‘Which, I hasten to add, is going to be rather spectacular. And I have to admit, despite my initial ranting and raving about us having to move the wedding to Christmas Day, I now wouldn’t want it on any other day. It’s somehow made the whole event doubly exciting. And doubly extravagant.’
George took a slightly nervous sip of his brandy. He wanted Lily to be his wife more than anything, but he would happily forgo the actual wedding itself. He envied Peter and Rosie their simple, and very private nuptials in Guildford.
He looked at Lily, who was now sitting back down in her armchair. ‘Spit it out, my dear. You make me nervous when you start beating about the bush. It says to me that you’re about to ask me something – or tell me something – that I’m not going to view favourably.’
Lily took a long drag on her cigarette.
‘Gawd, George, I wish you weren’t so perceptive,’ she said. Cockney was trumping français, as was the norm whenever Lily became angry or exasperated.
‘So, come on.’ George smiled.
‘Well, much as I adore the suit that we’ve chosen for you to get married in, and which will still come in handy as you were in desperate need of a new one anyway …’ Lily crossed her legs and leant forward so that she could touch George’s hand. ‘ … what would make my day even more special than it’s already going to be …’
Lily paused.
‘Yes?’ George asked, scrutinising Lily suspiciously. He had a horrid feeling he knew what was coming next.
‘Would be … if … on our wedding day, you would wear your uniform.’
The room was quiet for a long moment.
‘Lily, my dear.’ George turned to his fiancée with sad eyes. ‘I love you dearly, more than anything or anyone in this world. And you know I’d do anything for you. But this, I’m afraid, is something I can’t do. I don’t even know where my uniform is – or if it’s still in one piece – but even if I did, I wouldn’t.’
Lily smoked for a moment silently, undeterred. She knew exactly where his uniform was and precisely what state it had been in.
‘What I don’t understand about you, George …’ Lily blew out smoke as she talked ‘ … is why you seem to believe that what you did in the last war was something to be ashamed of.’
‘I don’t feel shame, my dear,’ George said. ‘I just don’t see that there was anything to be proud of either. And when one wears a uniform it should be with a sense of pride.’
‘But I’m proud of you, George,’ Lily said with a rare show of sincerity. ‘I – and many others – think what you did was incredibly brave.’
She looked at George, who was staring into the fire, lost in another world.
‘For heaven’s sake, George, they don’t just hand out Distinguished Service Order medals willy-nilly. You’re a war hero.’
Lily walked over to George, took hold of his hands and squeezed them.
‘Please, just for one day don’t hide your light under a bushel. Let me show people what a great man I am marrying.’
George got up and kissed Lily tenderly on the lips.
‘Come on, my dear. Let’s go to bed.’
Lily stubbed out her cigarette and took her future husband’s hand.
She knew by his silence that the answer was no, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up.