Marriages are Made in Bond Street

by Penrose Halson

  ‘Such nonsense!’ Heather broke in. ‘Really, Mary, you are taking off at as great a speed as if Hitler has dropped a bomb at your feet. Fate has played one of its tricks, aided and abetted by you – and by Elsie’s sister too, let me remind you. If it ends happily ever after we shall all bless fate, and if it ends in tears we shall all curse fate. It’s as simple as that. Now do brace up and let’s get on with answering all these letters.’

  Mary meekly picked up her letter opener, slit an innocuous-looking pale violet envelope, studied the violet-scented sheet of paper, and burst into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, Heather, you won’t believe this one! We are invited to judge a baby show!’

  ‘What? Why? I don’t know anything at all about babies, and neither do you. Who’s the invitation from?’

  ‘The Lady Chairman of the Women’s Institute of some place I’ve never heard of, in Surrey. She read about that scheme we had for rewarding clients who had a baby.’

  Heather grimaced, remembering the plan she and Mary had dreamed up to publicize the Bureau at the same time as being patriotic. They had offered £50 for each baby born to a client, on three conditions:

  1. Both parents must have married through the Bureau (no payment to a client who had married ‘out’, to someone who was not a client);

  2. The father must be a member of the fighting forces;

  3. The baby must be born within a year of the marriage.

  The Sunday Chronicle had quoted Heather: ‘It is essential that the population should be maintained at such a time, and we hope we will have to make many £50 payments.’ Almost immediately, a recently married Colonel client had written to announce that, ten months after his wedding to his much-loved Bureau wife, with whom he was deliriously happy, he had become the proud father of twins. Biting her lip, Heather had sent the now even more crazily happy couple a congratulatory letter enclosing £100. Her very next letter was to the insurance company, adding to the Bureau’s policy a codicil insuring against future twins, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets.

  The violet invitation to the match-makers was for a charity fête in aid of refugee children, mostly Jewish, whose parents had managed to get them out of Germany. When they arrived at a mainline railway station in London, with a label attached to their clothes and carrying only a small dented suitcase, the forlorn little mites were greeted in a strange language, in an alien country. They were then assigned to an unknown family who might welcome them, but equally might resent them and treat them shabbily. Mary and Heather were eager to help these pitiful lost souls.

  So, on a boiling hot day a few weeks later, the two match-makers motored in the Morris to a Home Counties meadow, dressed in their very smartest white outfits complete with kid gloves, jaunty hats, dainty handbags and snow-white shoes, Mary nursing a deliciously delicate white lace parasol, a relic of her Assam trousseau. Drawing near, they were astonished to hear raucous music and shouting: ‘Roll up! Roll up! Madam Arcati tells your fortune!’ ‘All the fun of the fair!’ ‘Roll up! Pin the moustache on Hitler! Roll up!’

  As they rounded the last corner a great crowd of people hove into sight, garishly coloured paper hats balanced on their heads as they stuck greedy tongues into swirls of frothy pink candyfloss, spluttering, laughing and giggling, pushing and shoving. Roundabouts were whirling, swing-boats plunging and swaying, bumper cars bouncing off one another with alarming bangs, the drivers squealing with delight. Men, women and children were flinging balls at coconuts, aiming rifles at moving plastic ducks, trying their hand at hoopla, or thwacking a small sandbag resembling a rat as it hurtled down a chute. All were in high holiday mood, united in their determination to ignore the war and enjoy the sweltering afternoon to the full.

  Following a sign pointing to ‘BABY SHOW, 2 P.M.’, Heather and Mary fought their way round the stalls, tottering through the crowds on their high heels in the rough grass, to a roped-off part of the field. All around was confusion and noise, since hundreds of mothers had in tow not only their babies, wailing in the uncomfortable heat, but also their other children, who were too young to be let loose in the fête field, but too old to be remotely interested in a baby show. So they grizzled and grumped, to the frustration and rising anger of their mothers (their fathers having long since escaped to a beer tent tucked away in a corner of the field).

  The Lady Chairman bore down like a ship in full sail to greet them, a formidable figure encased in a gown of intricately pleated and folded scarlet satin, strained to splitting point by her redoubtable torso. She was immense, positively pneumatic and, as the match-makers shook her plump hand, they observed the sweat stains on her gloves and under her arms, visible despite a wreath of silver fox furs round her neck, the black reynard eyes glinting glassily in the sunlight. Her width was to some extent balanced by her height, which was increased by a froth of a hat, a confection composed of feathers and bows and artificial flowers perched on top of a cascade of auburn waves.

  Mary and Heather were marched off to a series of competitions: the Baby With The Bluest Eyes, the Tallest Baby (impossible to judge with any accuracy as none of the cherubs could stand), the Best Dressed Baby (‘but a nappy is a nappy, surely!’ murmured Mary), the Happiest Baby (‘meaning the one who cries the least,’ whispered Heather), the Fattest Baby, the Thinnest, the Prettiest, the Ugliest, the Baby With Most Hair and many more.

  The first competition was for the Most Healthy Baby. Perspiring in the heat of a large tent, Heather and Mary surveyed the hot, sticky, snivelling entrants, conferred, and decided that they all looked much the same.

  ‘Pick them up and hold them in your arms,’ encouraged the Lady Chairman, demonstrating by scooping up a podgy specimen who howled himself purple in the face. ‘Like this. Then you’ll get a good feel of their darling little bodies.’

  The prospect of proximity to the dribbling infants horrified the two judges, so they hastily settled on the cleanest, declaring him most wonderfully healthy, a tribute to his mother and certain to become a highly desirable husband whom they would one day welcome to the Marriage Bureau with open arms.

  ‘What do you mean, a desirable husband?’ squawked the indignant mother. ‘She’s a girl!’

  ‘In that case she’ll be a beautiful bride to some very, very lucky man,’ declared Heather decisively, flashing a crushing smile as she swept on to the next competition, leaving the prizewinner’s mother muttering, ‘Those two la-di-das don’t know anything about babies, they’re just posh friends of our Lady Chairman.’

  For every new contest, Mary and Heather walked up and down the aisles, inspecting with their untrained eyes the squirming infants laid out like so many freshly caught fish on the slab. They cooed at the contestants, smiled consolingly at the anxious mothers whose precious babes failed to win, commented as intelligently as their ignorance permitted, until at last every competition had been judged. But the weary adjudicators still had to face the prize-giving, which was to take place on a temporary stage cunningly concealed by large white sheets dotted with potted plants of patriotic red, white and blue flowers.

  The Chairman introduced Mary and Heather to the dignitaries on the stage, representing the Women’s Institute, Child Welfare Committee, church and parish council, all seated on flimsy bentwood chairs. A reluctant little girl dressed like the Sugar Plum Fairy, with elaborate sausage curls tumbling to her waist, was shoved by her mother up to the stage. Her lips parted to reveal a hefty wire brace on her teeth as she scowled at Mary and Heather and thrust a bunch of wilting rambler roses at each of them.

  ‘Oh, she was an evil child!’ complained Heather later, as they motored home in the fading light. ‘I am convinced she had stripped the thorns off the stalks where she held them, but left the rest on purposely so that we should get pricked. My gloves are pierced beyond repair. I could have slapped her then and there.’

  ‘It’s just as well you didn’t. We were supposed to be representing the Marriage Bureau, advertising the civilized way we work. Walloping a child would have be
en truly frightful publicity.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. But I really cannot imagine what good publicity we achieved. It was after all a fairly disastrous occasion.’

  The disaster had been caused by the Lady Chairman’s husband, a man as portly and as heat-struck as his wife, whose ample backside bulged over his modest-sized chair. As Madam Chairman rose, like a whale ascending out of the sea, to introduce her husband (whom everyone present except Heather and Mary already knew and heartily disliked), he had lurched in her backwash and lunged towards Mary, imprinting a sweaty palm on her pristine white skirt. He then steadied himself, stood, and staggered towards the front of the stage.

  With a protesting groan, the over-burdened boards had yielded, tipping Lady Chairman, husband, dignitaries and guests into an undignified heap, spattered with small clods of earth and displaced flowers, horribly resembling disturbed graves. The chairs fell higgledy-piggledy, some of them disintegrating into broken flying sticks. The prizes and certificates, which had been proudly displayed on a rickety table, were torn and crushed in the mêlée.

  The shrieks rending the summer air from the stage were as dozy murmurs compared to the hooting and yelling of the mothers, all ghoulishly rejoicing in the discomfiture of the Chairman’s unloved husband. The babies bawled even louder than before, bursting their little lungs they knew not why, and the children, given licence to shout and boo, hollered their juvenile heads off while rushing hither and thither, dive-bombing one another in an ecstasy of unrestrainable pandemonium.

  Nobody was injured except in their pride, but the show could not go on. The Chairman’s husband heaved himself up and, wisely skipping his not-longed-for introductory speech, made a blessedly brief announcement that the prize-giving would be deferred to a more auspicious occasion. Exhausted, and politely declining rather lukewarm invitations to stay for tea, Heather and Mary had pleaded anxiety about driving in the blackout and stumbled back over the meadow to their car.

  ‘I wasn’t overly fond of babies before today,’ groaned Heather, ‘but now I never want to clap eyes on another one. My gorgeous white suit is ruined by infantile dribble, my shoes are covered in grass stains, which are impossible to get out, my gloves are spoiled, and my precious chapeau fell off and got squashed when that pathetic stage collapsed.’

  ‘Well, at least your handbag’s all right, unlike mine. And my pretty parasol, which Uncle George gave me for my trousseau when I was supposed to marry that dreary man in Assam, was trampled on and torn. But you must admit that the day had its moments. When we all fell like ninepins I was stunned at first, then a great slippery gleaming mass rose and fell inches away, like a beached whale. And four wicked little jet eyes winked in a knowing kind of way at me, as if to say, “How are the mighty fallen!” It was the Lady Chairman, of course, rolling around in all her satin and foxes!’

  ‘She was truly as blubbery as any whale. She put me in mind of lots of little barrage balloons stacked on top of one another. And wasn’t the face of the Ugliest Baby’s mother a sight to behold? It was the most hideous fizzog, all huge hooter and mean piggy eyes. The wretched baby had just the same features – like mother, like daughter. I was longing to announce that the winner obviously took after her mother!’

  ‘Oh, Heather!’ hooted Mary, ‘I thought you knew a lot about sex but you’ve got some really glaring gaps. The Ugliest Baby was a boy, not a girl!’

  ‘You never can tell precisely at that age unless you unpin the nappy,’ said Heather defensively. ‘And I certainly wasn’t going to do that!’

  Two days later, Mary opened another violet-scented letter from the Lady Chairman, thanking them effusively for their gracious presence and their marvellous skill in judging the delicious little angels. ‘And I wonder,’ she concluded,

  if you would help a friend of mine, Etheldreda de Pomfret? She has been married three times, but, alas, her husbands did not survive, and so she was compelled to consign them to her past. She would so love to find a worthy husband, and I should so love to help her. I have given her your name and address and told her to write to you, or telephone. She will do as I say for she is a most dear friend, a friend of my bosom, we are like two peas in a pod.

  ‘Never mind peas in a pod, more like whales on a beach! Etheldreda sounds ghastly. Even her name is fearsome. I pity all three consigned husbands from my heart. What shall we do, Heather?’

  Heather did not yet know. She was becoming increasingly aware of how odd and difficult some clients could be. Recently a Mrs Barnabas had telephoned demanding to speak to Miss Jenner and only Miss Jenner. She had read that Heather’s birthday was, like hers, in February, and that Heather’s eyes were green, like hers. This meant that they were in sympathy, and that Heather would indubitably find her a man born under Taurus, whose lucky colour was aquamarine and whose guiding number was eight. Mrs Barnabas accepted that Heather would not automatically know all the relevant facts about her clients, but if Miss Jenner would but present Mrs Barnabas with a selection of men, she herself would contact them all to ask if they satisfied her criteria. Heather had had great difficulty in shaking her off.

  However, Heather did know, adamantly, that never again would they judge a baby show. Never. Not even if it were the most wonderful publicity in the world.

  Mary nodded her agreement, only half-listening. She was already bending her mind to possible husbands for Mrs de Pomfret. Which of the clients might be persuaded to marry a woman the same age as the Lady Chairman and probably equally mountainous, who had somehow seen off three husbands. What on earth had happened to them? Had she poisoned them?

  As Mary reached for the Black Book she noticed an unopened letter, the envelope addressed to her in uneven block capitals. She extracted a thin sheet of lined paper carrying a pencilled message: ‘DEAR MISS OLIVER JOHN PARKER AND I ARE SUITED THANK YOU YOURS FAITHFULLY ADA BURNS MISS BUT SOON MRS.’

  ‘Hooray!’ Mary waved the letter in Heather’s face. ‘It worked!’

  ‘And a special hooray for your sagacious speaking bones! Whatever will they tell you next?’

  10

  While Bombs Fall the Bureau Booms

  The Phoney War came to a devastating end in the late afternoon of 7 September 1940, when more than 250 German aircraft dropped 625 tons of high-explosive bombs and thousands of incendiaries on London’s docks and East End.

  For the next eight months Londoners trod fearfully along blacked-out streets shrouded in dense fog, strewn with scorched bricks and wood, broken glass, twisted metal, shrapnel and forlorn remnants of people’s lives. They breathed in the mortar-laden dust, smelled the acrid stink of high explosives, seeping gas and sewage, their ears attuned to the ghastly drone of approaching aircraft, the wailing of warning sirens and the heart-stopping whine of diving bombs. The living comforted the sick, wounded and homeless, and buried the dead, knowing that at any minute they too might die. Some despaired and chose death, committing suicide by cyanide; but many sought life and love. The Marriage Bureau was inundated with people in many states of mind, from the pitifully lonely and fearful to the determinedly optimistic and defiant.

  ‘Three hundred applications today,’ counted Heather. ‘If this keeps up we shall have to employ another secretary, and that will be expensive.’

  ‘But if a bomb razes us to the ground, as it very likely will,’ countered Mary, ‘we shan’t have that or any other problem!’

  ‘That’s why we must think again of storing a second set of records somewhere safe.’

  ‘But what about a second set of us?’

  ‘Courage, mon vieux – or rather, ma vieille et chère Mary! We can but start with the records. I have arranged to see Humphrey and ask his advice.’

  Humphrey listened attentively, as he always did to one of his favourite (and increasingly lucrative) clients. He told Heather that she would certainly be well advised to keep duplicates out of London, since the situation was looking far from good – indeed, in his candid opinion the prospects were diabolical. Heather and
her Bureau had been fortunate so far, and their luck might hold; but as her legal adviser, and indeed her friend, he urged her as a matter of priority to seek a repository as safe as anyone could hope for.

  ‘I foolishly thought that diplomat’s mansion was safe,’ admitted Heather, ‘but I shall not repeat such a sorry mistake! I realize we had a lucky escape, for the mansion was not far from Aldershot. At the time we were optimistic and ignorant to the point of lunacy, but now we know a military centre is bound to be a target.’

  Humphrey nodded sympathetically as a possibility struck him: the clerk of a solicitor friend in Maidenhead, a town he imagined to be as safe as anywhere, had been called up. There were therefore two office rooms to spare. Would Heather like Humphrey to enquire?

  Heather agreed with enthusiasm; the friend proved willing; the rent was modest. So night after night the match-makers laboriously copied their record cards, ledgers, registration forms, letters and press cuttings, writing in the smallest hand possible, since paper was beginning to be in short supply. Then, one bleak November day, they motored down to Maidenhead in the heavily laden Morris.

  Several months later, Heather and Mary opened the Maidenhead office for two days every week. On the first afternoon, in glided a flawlessly chic designer, wearing a cape of American opossum over a perfectly cut two-piece of navy wool. She sat straight-backed, crossing her silk-stockinged legs, and explained that she had worked in Brook Street until a bomb had devastated her premises.

  ‘Luckily it was December 27th,’ explained Miss Easter to Heather, waving her ivory cigarette holder in a beautifully manicured hand, ‘and when the bomb fell I was having a little Christmas break, safely at home in Knightsbridge, but all my work went up in flames. I decided to evacuate myself. And luck has struck again: I had been meaning to come and see you, since Brook Street is only just round the corner from Bond Street, and now here you are, two minutes from my digs! It must be fate!’