Marriages are Made in Bond Street

by Penrose Halson

  At 8.45 on the morning after this meeting Myrtle was waiting outside the Bureau’s door when Mary arrived. Tearfully, she blurted out that the civil servant had kissed her! On her lips!! What should she do? Was he not a wicked man??

  Mary realized that Myrtle’s sheltered background had given her no inkling whatsoever of how men (other than the Rector) might behave to a woman. She was aching with anxiety to please a man, but had no idea what to expect from him. Mary sought advice from Heather.

  ‘Myrtle is dying to do the right thing, but she is too eager – it’s small wonder our nice civil servant kissed her first time. It’s pitiful, like the way she used to arrange the church flowers, and then go to early morning communion and matins and evensong, and help with the Sunday School, hoping her adored Rector would notice. What shall I do, Heather?’

  ‘Sit her down and go through a few simple facts about men,’ advised Heather with her usual practicality. ‘Myrtle’s intelligent, though woefully ignorant. Persuade her to look at men more calmly – and keep calm yourself. I’ve been observing your Myrtle, and I am certain she will manage.’

  Myrtle rented a flat in Kensington and met more of Mary’s Men, not revealing to Mary whether they kissed her or not. But she gave her fairy godmother happy descriptions, such as of an evening in a dance hall, where the civil servant had introduced her to the Palais Glide. ‘I’ve never danced before! I adored it!’

  Myrtle and the civil servant liked one another, but neither envisaged a future together. Mary’s Men included also an MP, a clergyman, a country solicitor, a naval officer and a businessman. Myrtle wrote Mary lengthy letters giving her views.

  She heartily disliked the MP:

  He kept questioning me about politics and I did not know the answers. I am certain that he knew that I could not answer, and that he kept asking merely to make me feel embarrassed. His only concern is politics, which do not interest me a jot. He has a very good opinion of himself, but I found him badly wanting in good manners.

  The clergyman irritated her:

  He is the most frightful fuddy-duddy, nothing like my old Rector, who was a dear. He sermonized and I was bored.

  She was offended by the solicitor:

  I am sure he was at least fifty-five, though he said forty-five (which was too old anyway). He took me to an afternoon tea dance, where tea in the ballroom cost 2s 9d, but at the entrance, only 1s 6d. He said that the ballroom was full, so we would have tea at the entrance. But there were hardly any couples dancing in the ballroom, it was just that he was too mean to pay. And he wore a toupee which kept slipping down his forehead.

  She was attracted by the naval officer:

  He is a very handsome man, and very pleasant too. We spent an enjoyable evening at the theatre and I should have liked to hear from him again.

  The businessman’s appearance did not have the same effect on her as hers on him:

  He is not a cultured man but certainly successful – he informed me with great pride that his income is about £2,000 a year. But his suit was of purple checks and his waistcoat scarlet, he carried a black silk top hat which was unsuitable for the occasion, and his short socks revealed an expanse of pasty white lower leg which repelled me.

  Myrtle assured Mary that she followed her advice by not behaving too eagerly, yet all the men referred directly or indirectly to her advances.

  The MP dismissed her out of hand:

  She is uneducated, ignorant and overbearingly flirtatious. Flightiness is most undesirable in a politician’s wife.

  The clergyman wrote:

  Her conversation was limited to clothes, which are of no concern to me, and dancing, which to me is an athletic activity verging on the pagan. She appears to regard her religion merely as a social activity.

  The solicitor was disconcerted:

  She planted a large kiss on my unsuspecting lips as we were dancing, at our first (and only) meeting. In endeavouring strenuously to please, she fails to understand that she denies any man his role of seducer.

  The naval officer was nervous:

  She is engaging and warm-hearted, but I fear that when her husband is at sea, such a gregarious soul would hanker after the company of other men. Her need of affection is touching in its transparency.

  The businessman was not altogether negative:

  She dresses in a style of which any husband would be proud, and her conversation has a girlish appeal. She combines an engaging youthfulness with a most tasteful and inviting appearance. She will make an ideal wife for a man who loves both the innocent girl and the uninhibited woman in her.

  Mary sighed gustily as she read between the lines: Myrtle was frightening off any man she liked by making the running. Her little virgin was mutating into a man-eater. So when Roderick O’Rawe wrote from Ireland, Mary held her breath, for every line spoke the single word: Myrtle.

  Roderick was thirty-six, the inheritor of a ramshackle Irish estate which he farmed single-handedly, despite bouts of asthma. He wanted a wife to contribute vivacity and gaiety to his solitary life. The local Catholic girls were too bashful, shy and provincial for his taste, unblessed with the zest and exuberance for which he hungered. He was coming on a quick visit to London next week: could the Bureau help?

  Mary never forgot her joyous amazement at the turn of events. Rory and Myrtle met in London on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday they married, Mary standing witness. On Saturday they set off for Ireland, from where Rory shortly wrote:

  She is enchanting, ravishing, so pretty in her dainty clothes, always smiling. Her joie de vivre lights up my life. She makes me happy as a pig in muck! Myrtle too is tickled pink, she is helping me to plan improvements to the estate, which I can now afford. She is learning the lovely Irish songs and jigs, and she entertains me in the long evenings. Her singing and dancing transport me to realms of wonder and glory. She is also learning to play the darling Irish harp. I am in heaven, bewitched by my golden-haired angel. We shall remain grateful to you for ever and a day.

  Rory’s extravagant signature, all curls and flourishes, was followed in Myrtle’s childish handwriting: ‘PS I adore him! THANK YOU!!’

  ‘Well done, dear Mary,’ Heather applauded. ‘I only hope that the magical enchantment will endure longer than the golden hair – which must benefit from an exceptional Irish hairdresser, for it was surely a nondescript brown!’

  8

  The Mansion and the Mating

  By the autumn of 1939 new applicants were visiting or writing to the Marriage Bureau hourly. The Daily Mail reported that ‘among the businesses that are booming since the outbreak of war is the Marriage Bureau conducted by Miss Heather Jenner and Miss Mary Oliver in Bond Street. Last week eighty of their clients married – making, therefore, forty marriages.’ Heather was quoted: ‘There are so many young men wanting to marry before they go to the Front, or at any rate to have someone waiting for them when they return and to write to while they are away.’ And women, remembering the dire shortage of men after the slaughter of the Great War, were anxious to secure a husband, even though he might be killed later.

  Heather and Mary were becoming increasingly skilled at matching clients, and both were deeply committed to their work. But like everyone running a business, they were profoundly apprehensive about the likely effects of war. The certain prospect of bombing, which might destroy the office and all its records, brought them out in a cold sweat.

  Stubbing out her cigarette, Mary shuddered. ‘A single bomb could wipe us out. And I wouldn’t put it past that Hitler fiend to drop a multitude of bombs on London.’

  ‘You’re right, he is the devil incarnate. And he could obliterate the Bureau as if it had never existed.’

  ‘And us too.’

  ‘Never mind us – we must do something about the Bureau. We should make copies of all our records and store them in a second office, in another street.’

  ‘But that could easily be bombed too. Nowhere in London will be safe. Or in any other big cit
y, come to that. But what about the country? We could have an office somewhere rural and quiet, somewhere unlikely to be a Hitler target.’

  This sombre conversation took place as the two match-makers were driving from London to visit friends near Aldershot. Steering her precious Morris 8, Heather’s eyes were fixed firmly on the road ahead while Mary looked out of the window, relishing the vistas of trees and green fields – until she turned to Heather, her eyes sparkling. ‘What about near here? The Hun wouldn’t waste his precious bombs on farmland, with hardly any buildings. Look, there, above that high wall, there’s a house agent’s board. Let’s investigate!’

  Heather drove through two huge, rusty, wrought-iron gates, propped open and leaning at a perilous angle across a gravelled drive which led to a Victorian red-brick mansion smothered in Virginia creeper. Tentacles of blood-red leaves crept across the windows, giving the impression of half-closed eyes in a building fallen asleep, with no doubt a somnolent princess reclining inside, waiting to be kissed awake by her resourceful prince.

  Heather stretched out her fingers to grip the immense black knocker and rapped firmly on the front door. After a few minutes it creaked open, to reveal a buxom, middle-aged Mrs Tiggy-Winkle wearing a sober grey dress and starched white apron, who introduced herself rather frostily as Mrs Plum, the housekeeper.

  Heather explained that she and Mary were looking for an office out of London. Unaware that Heather was using her increasingly well-honed interview techniques to extract information, Mrs Plum thawed and grew garrulous, telling Heather all she wanted to know.

  While Heather and Mrs Plum chatted, Mary gazed at the imposing hall, crammed with velvet-upholstered chairs, dusty tables with tops and legs so thick it must have taken a small army to move them, and cabinets filled with military medals, tarnished silver snuffboxes, ancient coins and miniatures of women in powdered wigs and men lounging in poetic poses. The gentle wind outside stirred the Virginia creeper, causing the thin streaks of light which filtered in through the filthy windows to flicker as they played on the marble walls and fluted pillars.

  Leaving Heather and Mrs Plum absorbed in conversation, Mary peered round a half-open door into a shadowy room in whose cobwebby recesses she glimpsed three once-glossy grand pianos. She stole across the parquet floor, scattered with fabulous Persian rugs, while from the panelled walls swarthy grandees, framed flamboyantly in gold, sneered down their cliff-edge noses at her. In the half-darkness, their haughty eyes, bejewelled silver swords, and arrow-shaped beards resting on stiff ruffs inspired in Mary a frisson of rapture and fear. She turned tail and escaped back into the hall.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Mary. Mrs Plum tells me the house belongs to a foreign diplomat who has fled back to his country, where he imagines Hitler will not find him. It is to be let with all furniture, four servants, twenty-five bedrooms, about twenty bathrooms (nobody has counted them accurately) and twenty-three acres. I have agreed to take it for an initial three months. We must hurry now, or we shall be late for our friends. Come along!’

  ‘But, but—’ Mary stammered as Heather strode to the door. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes, aren’t you? I thought you’d love it, dear Mary, it’s such a romantic place, exactly your style!’

  Mary took a deep breath, and turned an ecstatic face to Heather. ‘Yes, it’s the most romantic house imaginable, magnificent and scary too. And there’s pots of room for our records, and bedrooms for our newly married couples who loathe living with their parents but can’t find anything else in wartime. And in Aldershot there are soldier husbands who don’t like living in army quarters but have to be near. And—’

  ‘And it’s only twenty guineas a quarter! An entire mansion and acres of grounds for far less than our minuscule office! Mrs Plum wanted twenty-two guineas, but I pointed out that it is far from spick and span, and persuaded her that she would never find such good and honest tenants as we.’

  A week later, the two match-makers and two reluctant secretaries transported themselves, their clothes, and boxes of writing paper, airletters, envelopes, record cards, ledgers and registration forms to their new home.

  Mrs Plum welcomed them in some amazement. ‘Where are the servants?’ she enquired. ‘The house needs fifteen.’

  ‘We have brought two secretaries,’ replied Heather in her most authoritative manner, indicating the two girls, who were looking distinctly unenthusiastic.

  But even just keeping the rooms clean was far too much for the Bond Street contingent plus the four servants included in the rent: Mrs Plum, a ‘tweeny’ housemaid who flicked her feather duster right, left and centre, gaily redistributing the dust, and two ancient sisters whose rheumatic joints (or was it gin?) confined them to the servants’ wing. Heather and Mary spent their days cleaning, or typing out circulars extolling the glories of the mansion and the success of the Marriage Bureau, which they put in their bicycle baskets and distributed round Aldershot.

  For days nothing happened. The match-makers were beginning to despair when an elderly admiral telephoned, gave his name and abruptly demanded the price of a room. But he immediately put the phone down, cutting Heather off before she could reply.

  So it was a surprise when the next evening the Admiral marched up the drive, carrying a battered suitcase and tugging a drooping bloodhound with a hang-dog look in its bloodshot eyes. Uttering not a word, he barged past Mrs Plum and set off up the stairs. He aimed straight as an arrow for the largest of the immense ex-diplomatic bedrooms, where he sniffed and harrumphed at the expanse of four-poster bed draped in faded, moth-eaten velvet. Silently, he inspected the pink marble bathroom and the shelves of leather-bound books. Then he dumped his suitcase unceremoniously down on a fragile, exquisitely inlaid writing table, Heather squirming at the thought of the replacement cost, and gave voice. ‘Used to live here myself. Wife’s family built it in 1870. Wife died. Too expensive to run. Damn foreigner bought it off me for a song. Dog can sleep in the kitchen. What time’s dinner?’

  The meal was not a success. Neither Heather nor Mary had any culinary skills, and the secretaries, exhausted by the daily cleaning and typing, refused point blank even to enter the cavernous kitchen. The ancient mystery sisters both claimed via Mrs Plum that their joints and hearts were so dicky that they could not even walk, let alone cook, and Mrs Plum, usually cooperative, tartly advised Mary and Heather that cooking was no part of her duties. So they had advertised locally for a cook, and had had no choice but to employ the sole respondent, a slatternly woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth who claimed to be a good basic cook.

  ‘She’s gloriously basic,’ groaned Mary, as the Admiral stomped furiously up the stairs after a dismal repast of cabbage so over-boiled it looked and tasted bleached, a scrawny boiling fowl and rock-hard grey potatoes, followed by a lumpy pink blancmange sprinkled with what looked suspiciously like cigarette ash.

  ‘She’ll have to go,’ said Heather, who was beginning to regret her impetuousness in taking on the mansion.

  At breakfast the next day Mrs Plum planted herself in front of Heather, arms akimbo.

  ‘That vile dog has diarrhoea. All over my kitchen floor. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand. I am not clearing it up.’ Uttering a snort of disgust and scorn she turned sharply and stormed off.

  At that very moment the Admiral banged his way downstairs, purplefaced, cursing and swearing as if castigating sailors, hitting the furniture with his suitcase, bellowing, ‘Appalling! Ruddy bed collapsed! Didn’t sleep a wink! Saw mice! Bath water muddy! Filthy food! Disgraceful! Not paying a penny! Out of my way! OUT OF MY WAY!’ Hearing the familiar voice, the sickly dog slumped out from the kitchen, shooed violently by Mrs Plum, and slunk off with its master.

  Although brought up on a farm, Mary had a horror of sick animals, and even the thought of canine diarrhoea made her retch. So it fell to Heather to clean up the kitchen, after which she downed three large gins. She listened as Mary sighed that they were losing clients in London, for who
m Aldershot was too far, especially with petrol rationing.

  ‘Nonsense,’ retorted Heather. ‘Chin up! It’ll just take time. Anyway, it gives us a chance to get on with some mating. Come on.’

  Mary had persuaded a local newspaper to take an advertisement under the heading ‘MATRIMONY’. Giving the Bureau’s address and telephone number, it stated that introductions were ‘AVAILABLE FOR ALL CLASSES’. English society was very class-conscious, and clients almost invariably wanted to meet someone from their own background – ‘Except for people like Cedric Thistleton,’ observed Heather, ‘who want to rise far above their own background by hitching themselves to a superior spouse!’

  So Mary and Heather had developed a ‘mating’ system, based on the all-important distinctions of class. It assigned each client to one of these categories:

  Lady and Gent

  Upper class, not necessarily titled but definitely of superior breeding.

  Gent For Here and Lady For Here (GFH and LFH)

  Upper middle class, public school educated

  (Here being the office, i.e. for our purposes).

  Near Gent and Near Lady

  (or Half Gent and Half Lady)

  Middle class, with a professional background.

  Gentish and Ladyish

  Lower middle or working class.

  WC (Working Class)

  Used in the very early days of the Bureau; soon replaced by MBTM (Much Better Than Most) and, a smidgeon lower, MBTS (Much Better Than Some). Both could have an added V: VMBTM (Very Much Better Than Most); or even a further addition, GOOD, creating GOOD VMBTM.