Chapter 11

Three hours later, on the train back to London, Tilly was exhausted. In the luggage net above them was a small pigskin suitcase with all her acquisitions from Dorothy. Next to it was a wicker hamper stuffed with cold meats, cheese, eggs, vegetables and home-baked bread and cakes. She looked up at them, hugging her good fortune to herself.

"I'm going to be so popular in the nurses' home," she said smugly. "But, God, I'm so tired."

"Mother does tend to have that effect on one." Johnny grinned. "She has to be busy, you see. She needs projects. You've been a godsend for her."

"What about the debutantes? Why weren't they godsends?"

"Oh God, we're not back on the debutantes, are we?"

"We've never actually been on the debutantes, never mind back on. Nobody will tell me anything. I mention debutantes and everyone laughs. What actually happened? And who is Hermione Worthington-Smythe?"

Johnny started as if he'd been shot. "Who told you ?? Oh, I suppose I might as well come clean. But you have to understand that if you have no sisters and you go to boarding school, the only girls you meet are other chaps' sisters. And they are, without exception, bloody debutantes."

"Well, what's wrong with debutantes?"

"What's wrong? The problem with debutantes is they are trained for one thing and one thing only, which is to marry well. They go to finishing schools in Switzerland and they learn how to look beautiful and dress well and how to look interested when a chap is talking. But they don't actually listen, you know? They look at you with their chin resting on their hand but all the time they're weighing up how good a catch you are."

"And are you? A good catch, I mean."

"Well, I don't have a title, so that's a bit of a drawback. But there's every chance that Father will get a knighthood for services to industry sooner or later. And, of course, we're not short of the old readies. And that's getting more important these days. A lot of the old families are running out of funds, so the sons are looking to marry American heiresses and the daughters are expected to marry the sons of captains of industry."

"Like James."

"Like James," Johnny agreed. "But I didn't understand all that at the time. When I was at King's other chaps kept introducing me to their sisters and I'd take them out to tea or for a punt down the river and it didn't seem particularly strange to me how keen they all were to meet my family. Of course, Mother saw through them like a shot. When I asked her what she thought of one of them, she'd say something like 'very well-groomed' or 'very attentive.' I mean, that's not what you say when you like someone, is it? You say things like 'what a jolly girl' or 'isn't she intelligent?' So I knew she didn't like them but couldn't quite see why. They seemed all right to me. Most of them were quite attractive. I didn't really expect girls to have any conversation, you know? I thought they were like a different species. Anyway, I kept bringing these girls home and Mother was polite to them and Father kept having to leave the room to have a laugh and nothing came of any of it."

"Until Hermione?"

"Yeah!" Johnny sighed. "Hermione was rather more - proactive, shall we say? She let it be known that we were going to be married without me ever having asked her. She said things like ' Johnny and I haven't decided yet whether to live in Yorkshire or Suffolk, but I suppose one has to follow one's husband and live where he wants to live.' Well, I just didn't know what to do about it. She seemed to think I had proposed marriage and I couldn't think how to disabuse her. Then Mother collared me and demanded to know why I had proposed marriage to such a nincompoop and when I denied it, she laughed like a drain. She laughed so hard, in fact, I thought she was going to bust something."

Tilly cracked out laughing at Johnny's rueful expression.

"When she finally calmed down, she called Father in and told us how we were going to handle it. She said the last thing we wanted was a breach of promise case, so we needed to persuade her that I wasn't a good prospect."

Tilly raised her eyebrows.

"The next time she came to visit Mother said, 'We're so glad Johnny found you Hermione. It's so important for him to marry into a wealthy family. Quite frankly, the business is in such a bad way, we were at our wits' end.' Well, she shot up out of her chair like she had a red hot poker up her arse. I don't know how Mother kept her face straight and as for Father, I daren't look at him for fear we'd both start laughing. 'I'm sorry, I have to go,' she said. 'I forgot I have an appointment in town this evening. Could you take me to the train, Johnny? Such a lovely afternoon. Thank you.' And I put her on the train and that was the last that I saw of her. And my parents haven't stopped laughing since."

Tilly, who was herself helpless with laughter, gave him a huge hug. "Good old Dorothy," she said. "What a trooper!"

****

She had no clear memory of the next few weeks. Time seemed to fly by in a succession of shopping trips and fittings. Dorothy's 'little man' in Jermyn Street turned out to be an incredibly expensive shoemaker. In fact, shoemaker seemed too lowly a term for him. He took Tilly's feet, one at a time, onto his knee, holding them with a kind of reverence, and then he measured them with minuscule attention to detail. "The forms will take me two weeks to make, madam," he said, "and then the shoes themselves can take up to eight weeks."

Tilly stared at him in astonishment. Eight weeks to make a pair of shoes!

But Dorothy was unabashed. "I think that will be fine," she said. "We haven't set a date for the wedding yet. We're waiting for my son to be de-mobbed."

The shoemaker shook his head. "I've heard it's going to take a long time. Months rather than weeks."

Dorothy looked slightly alarmed for a moment and then recovered her aplomb.

"We'll see about that," she said to Tilly as they left the shop.