I did not say anything to Elspeth immediately about getting married, but I felt that she must sense my new internal stability. We spent a most enjoyable week-end. I had told her I was going to tell Robert about us, and she asked me what he said.
‘He was very pleased,’ I said. ‘He told me I was lucky …’
Elspeth said, out of the blue as far as I was concerned: ‘I told Joan.’
Joan was Elspeth’s friend on the staff of her school. I said: ‘And what did she say?’
‘Oh, I think she seemed pleased …’
The following evening I did a thing that I very rarely did. Instead of walking straight up the hill from the bus-stop, I dropped in at a public-house for a drink on my own. The saloon bar was large but at that time of day it was likely to be deserted. I was prepared to see a workman chatting over a pint of beer with a barmaid, or a couple munching pork pie and potato salad, and to hear the wireless playing what sounded unremittingly like the Light Programme. I glanced round – and saw Harry. He was sitting at a small table, opposite a man who had his back to me.
‘Joe!’ he called, in his high sweet voice. ‘Come and join us!’
I went.
‘This is a surprise for you,’ said Harry, as I got to the table and his companion turned towards me.
His companion was our hall-porter.
‘You know Jamie Gordon,’ Harry went on with cheerful effrontery. ‘Jamie used to be a lab-attendant at the first anatomy lab I ever attended.’
I looked at Gordon – I had not recognized him at first because he was not in his uniform.
‘It’s my day off, sir,’ he said, grinning. In ordinary clothes he looked slightly less like a big cheeky rabbit, but that was not saying much.
I pulled up a chair to the table. I looked at Harry, and then at our hall-porter. So much for Elspeth and me trying to keep Harry from knowing what we were up to!
‘I ran into Jamie,’ Harry explained, ‘just outside the pub.’
I did not know what I was expected to say to that.
The wireless said: ‘This is the Light Programme,’ as if it were necessary.
However, when Harry went to the bar to buy a round of drinks, I could have sworn he set up slightly less whirling disturbance in the air.
And when I stood up to leave after we had finished the drinks, he said: ‘Come in and see us soon,’ in a slightly lower voice than usual.
I could not help smiling. I had caught a glimpse in Harry’s small, inquisitive, brown eyes of something I had rarely seen there before – shame.
The next day I told Robert about the incident. Robert had for some time shown a peculiar passion for hearing about Harry’s manoeuvres – I could only suspect he was thinking of someone like Harry as a character for his next novel. On this occasion, however, Robert’s passion seemed to be less. He scarcely waited for me to finish before he said:
‘Did you know that Elspeth had been talking to Annette about her career?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t see what help Annette could be, anyway.’
‘The situation, old boy, is the other way about. Elspeth has been seeing fit to give Annette help, if that’s what you choose to call it.’ He paused. ‘Elspeth has been asking Annette why she, Annette, doesn’t become a teacher.’
‘What sort of a teacher?’
‘The same sort of teacher,’ Robert said crossly, ‘as she, Elspeth, is.’
You will remember the emotion with which I first perceived that Elspeth was a person who existed in her own right outside the bounds of my egocentric cosmos, that she was a living, whole, human person – and what a delightful one, at that! – separate, independent, and so on … Well, it is one thing to perceive that the girl at the other end of one’s problem is a living, whole, human person, separate, independent, and so on: it is another to contemplate her taking separate, independent action in one’s friends’ affairs.
Robert had been taking it as settled, now that Annette was married to him, that she would give up exercising moral choice over careers and occupy herself with social duties on his behalf. His projected series of grand dinner-parties, I was happy to note, had already begun. Elspeth and I had been to one of them – wonderful food from Fortnum’s and the men all in dinner-jackets. (Annette, somewhat startlingly, had worn her wedding-dress.)
‘What are you going to do about it?’ I asked him.
Robert shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked away. ‘I think perhaps you might have a word with Elspeth.’
I thought perhaps I should have to.
In general I was convinced that ‘speaking’ to people was liable to do more harm than good. In this particular case, it suddenly occurred to me after I had left Robert, it might also bring worse things to light. Suppose that in their state of admiring and envying each other, these two girls had exchanged suggestions – suppose that in return for Elspeth’s suggestion Annette should become a school-teacher, Annette had suggested that Elspeth should take a degree in philosophy. I saw myself married to a wife who kept going out every evening to lectures at a Polytechnic. What a thought! What a marriage! I decided not to ‘speak’ to Elspeth. Undesirable ideas are best left unwatered by discussion.
And so Elspeth and I came to Christmas, nearly a year since we first met. We were each going to spend the holiday with our families – should I ask her before or after? I had not made up my mind. It was to be one or the other, anyway. I was now so certain that I was going to marry her that I had been to my tailor’s and ordered a new overcoat and new evening-clothes, on the grounds that if I did not get them before I was married, I should never be able to afford them after.
On the last evening before we went away, Elspeth came to stay at my flat. She was just thinking it was time to start cooking the dinner when, to our embarrassment, the doorbell rang. We straightened ourselves up and went to the door. It was Harry.
We were surprised. Since the occasion when I had found him drinking with Gordon, the hall-porter, Harry had kept out of my way. Elspeth had seen Barbara from time to time down at Bethnal Green, but we had not been invited to their house.
‘Can I come in?’ Harry said.
‘Of course.’
Harry’s face looked less pink than usual. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said nervously. ‘I expected I’d find Elspeth here too.’ He was carrying a parcel. ‘Just some Christmas presents for you both.’
The presents were a bottle of whisky for me and a bottle of scent for Elspeth. It was the brand of whisky I liked best and the most chic and expensive kind of scent. Both Elspeth and I were touched.
‘Let’s open the whisky!’ I cried.
Elspeth laughed at me. ‘Let’s open the scent!’
While Elspeth took the scent into my bedroom, I poured out some large drinks. Harry was satisfied. He sat down fatly on the sofa, his face as pink again as ever.
‘Barbara was sorry she couldn’t come,’ he said. ‘She’s gone to listen to somebody giving a paper at the B.M.A.’
If I knew anything about it, Barbara had never been consulted. ‘M’m,’ I said.
Elspeth came in and we smelt the scent. ‘I’ll sit by you,’ she said to Harry. He sprang up politely, and a whirling gust of air set up.
We started to drink. Harry, in high spirits now, seemed determined to show us how affectionate and uninquisitive he was. I have to say that he succeeded. You see, for the present he really was affectionate and uninquisitive.
We invited him to stay for supper. He accepted. We had a huge dish of eggs and bacon. By the time we were drinking our coffee our rapprochement was complete, in fact perfect.
In a gust of boundless, selfless, uninquisitive concern for our happiness, Harry said to us:
‘When are you two going to get married?’
I saw Elspeth blush, and my confusion was so unbearable that I looked down at the table and could scarcely form an intelligible reply. In fact I cannot remember what I did reply. Somehow we managed to pass the hiatus over. But I swore to myself that I would ask Elspeth to marry me immediately I got back from the holiday. ‘I really can’t let that happen again,’ I kept saying to myself, not only that night but every time during the following week at home when I remembered it.
Actually Harry, when he left us that night, said to me while he was putting on his overcoat:
‘I’m glad you didn’t take it amiss when I said that.’ He wagged his globe-shaped head with boyish satisfaction. ‘I thought I’d chance my arm.’
At home my mother, though occasionally permitting herself an oblique reference to ‘your Elspeth’, made it clear that nothing would persuade her – not that she had any need to fear persuasion from me – to mention my marrying Elspeth. With my father I had no private discussion. His clerical duties, i.e. preparing his sermons, delivering them and visiting his parishioners, resulted, as always, in his being either incommunicado or not.
I had resolved to ask Elspeth to marry me immediately I got back. I did.
Elspeth came round to my flat on the evening of our return to London. I still kept remembering Harry’s kindly, hopeful, selfless, uninquisitive question … We were washing up after dinner, or rather Elspeth was washing up while I changed the living-room back from dining-room to sitting-room. We were conversing while Elspeth stood at the sink and I moved to and fro. The emotion I was feeling!
We were supposed to be talking about our plans for the week-end. Above the rattle of crockery in the sink, Elspeth was shouting to me:
‘I think we ought to stay in, just by ourselves, this week-end.’
‘I think,’ I shouted back, ‘we ought to get married as quickly as possible, don’t you?’
‘What?’ Something splashed into the water. She sounded amazed.
I felt amazed.
I went into the kitchen – it was a very small kitchen. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘we ought to get married as quickly as possible, don’t you?’
She had turned from the sink to look at me. Her pale complexion was suffused with carmine, her sparkling blue eyes seemed to have gone smaller. Looking at me she saw the truth of my generalization, that when somebody says something and you cannot believe your ears, they certainly have said it.
Her lips were moving, the lines at the corners of her mouth flashed in and out. ‘Well, yes …’ I rushed to embrace her.
There was a flap, which came down from a cupboard to form a table, that served as an obstacle between the door and the sink. ‘My darling!’ I cried, putting one hand on her waist and rubbing my hip with the other.
We kissed each other.
‘My darling!’ ‘My darling!’ We kissed each other again. She was fumbling to take off her rubber washing-up gloves.
‘Darling, I love you,’ I cried. ‘I want us to be married as quickly as possible.’
She looked at me. Tears were coming into her eyes.
‘For ever,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, that’s what I want, too …’
I lifted the flap so that we could get past. ‘Let’s go and sit down!’
She managed to get the gloves off and left them on top of the refrigerator.
We went and sat on the sofa and kissed each other many times. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ I said.
Elspeth nodded her head.
‘I love you,’ I said.
She touched my lips with the tip of her middle finger.
‘I do so want us to be married.’
‘Yes …’ she whispered.
After a while she looked down at her lap. ‘But you didn’t ask me,’ she said.
‘Didn’t ask you what?’
‘Well, if I’d marry you.’
‘Oh dear! I wanted to come to the point as quickly as possible.’
She looked back at me. The corners of her mouth showed a fleeting grin.
‘I thought,’ I said, ‘you would marry me …’
She was smiling.
‘Didn’t you think I’d marry you?’ I asked.
She stopped smiling. ‘Yes, I did to begin with, but I began to wonder …’
‘But I always meant to.’ I took hold of her hand.
‘Darling.’
This kind of conversation went on for some time, but gradually it became less romantic and more practical. I wanted to settle where and when we were to get married. I wanted to be married by a registrar.
‘The alternative,’ I said, ‘if we were to be married in a church, would be to be married by my father. We should have to tell him, and he’d volunteer to do it. I really couldn’t face that.’
Both Elspeth and I were unbelievers. If we asked my father to marry us, I knew he would conclude that somewhere in us lay the seed of belief. I did not like the idea of unbelievers taking advantage of believers any more than I liked the idea of believers taking advantage of unbelievers.
‘At a registry office,’ I said, squeezing Elspeth’s hand, ‘we can get married sooner.’
Elspeth squeezed my hand in return.
In the end we decided to get married at a registry office without telling anyone but the witnesses. An exciting, romantic atmosphere came back into the conversation. (Perhaps I ought to say that in our romantic excitement we innocently overlooked the construction that some people – I will not say what sort of people – put on marriages that take place in a hurry.)
Next morning I set about making arrangements to marry Elspeth. I had some surprises. When I asked the registrar how soon we could get married, I learnt that for £3 6s. 9d. I could get married in two days’ time.
And then I took Elspeth to buy a wedding-ring. Robert and I had a habit of looking in the windows of jewellers’ shops. (I thought we were odd until I did a day’s count of the relative numbers of men and women who were doing the same as us.) Robert had a particular taste for sapphires. I chose diamonds that were not pure white, especially pinkish ones. The rings we were used to staring at often cost thousands of pounds, though of course I knew there were presentable rings to be had for hundreds or even tens of pounds. I had no idea that wedding rings were to be had for units of pounds.
‘It’s incredible,’ I said to Robert, ‘you can get married in no time at all, for next to no money!’
‘Society sees to it that getting married is made easy.’
‘I’ll say it does.’ We used to entertain ourselves with the concept of The Pressure of Society. As far as getting married was concerned, it seemed to me now that you had only got to make the smallest first move, and the pressure of society rushed you through the next before you knew what you were doing. No wonder some bridegrooms looked white as a sheet on their wedding-day – finding themselves at the ceremony perhaps a good six months, perhaps a good six years, before they meant to.
Four days later Elspeth and I got married. I did not look specially white in the face nor did Elspeth. But Robert and Annette did.
Elspeth and I arrived at the registry office about ten minutes late, because we had begun our preparations by spending too long over titivating my flat for the reception. It was decorated with large branches of mimosa which we had been keeping cool in the bathroom till the last moment. There was a bottle of champagne and a luscious cake from a French shop in Soho. The guests, our witnesses, were Robert, Annette and Elspeth’s school-teacher friend, Joan.
Anyway, we arrived at the registry office, and there in the waiting-room we found Robert, Annette, and Joan. I had never seen Joan before, and expecting her to be the plain partner in the alliance, was surprised to find her quite as pretty as Elspeth. We were ten minutes late. Annette looked pale. Robert looked chalky.
The ceremony seemed to be over in no time, and Elspeth and I were delighted with the result. The thin gold ring was on her finger – never, on any account, to be taken off, I told her. We got into a taxi and embraced each other all the way home. Married! Married for good! I got out of the taxi first, and while I was paying the driver saw Elspeth pause, before she got out, to pick something off the floor.
‘Look what I’ve found!’ she cried, holding out her palm for me to see what was in it.
It was a small coin, silver, stamped 1 Rupee.
The taxi drove away leaving us standing there, smiling with delight. It was an omen. It was too fantastic to be anything but an omen.
‘Darling, keep it!’
‘Of course I shall,’ Elspeth said, putting it in her bag.
Hand in hand we went quickly to the lift, so as to get up to the flat before the others arrived. When we opened the door the smell of the mimosa was overpowering.
The reception was a success. The guests ate some of the cake and drank all the champagne, and then did not go away. It is difficult to know what to drink after champagne at five in the afternoon, if your host has not got more champagne: they all said they would like some tea. I did not hurry them, I was so happy. I was triumphant, if it comes to that. They had all said I could not get married, but I could. I had done it.
Suddenly, looking at Robert, I realized why he had looked chalky. When we were ten minutes late he must have thought I was not going to turn up. Silly fellow!
As soon as they were gone, Elspeth carried the telephone into the room and we began sending telegrams to our families and ringing up our friends. While Elspeth was talking on the telephone, I was drafting the notice of marriage for The Times and the Daily Telegraph. I felt in this case it ought to appear surrounded by a special border like that on a greetings telegram. Or possibly just encircled by a wreath of laurels. They had said that I could not get married, that I had missed the boat. Not a bit of it. I was on the boat. I looked at Elspeth. What a boat! My boat …
Elspeth was ringing Harry and Barbara.
‘It’s Barbara,’ she said, handing the receiver to me. ‘She wants to congratulate you.’
‘Well she may!’ I whispered to Elspeth. Then I said: ‘Hello, Barbara. What do you think of the news? Isn’t it wonderful.’
‘It really is. Congratulations, Joe.’
‘I’ve pulled it off. What do you think of that?’
‘Splendid,’ she said.
‘I’ve got married after all.’
At that I heard Barbara laugh. ‘Yes, you have, Joe,’ she said. ‘But you have to remember getting married is very different from being married.’
‘What!’ I cried. And then added: ‘Well, of course it is. I can see that all right.’
‘You have my congratulations, all the same,’ she said.
I handed the receiver back to Elspeth. ‘It’s your turn to talk to her now,’ I said with my hand over the mouthpiece.
I did not listen to what Elspeth was saying to her. Of course there was a difference between getting married and being married. Or was there? What the hell did Barbara mean?