Marriages are Made in Bond Street

by Penrose Halson

  ‘But that’s not a pillar box!’ exclaimed the friend.

  ‘Oh, but it looks like one,’ said Cora. ‘If it’s not a pillar box, what is it?’

  ‘It’s a Chelsea pensioner! Wearing his best scarlet uniform. He was walking ahead of us, but now he’s sitting on a bench. He doesn’t want a letter in his mouth, or even in his pocket, so let’s keep walking!’

  Cora delighted not only in her new-found sight but in life itself. Her sense of gratitude, her humour and her enthusiasm were boundless and infectious. But how might she react, wondered Bottle, to a man as disfigured as Cyril? She asked Cora to come into the office to discuss the possibility.

  At first Cora was doubtful. After so many years of blackness, then greyness, before at last achieving clarity, she now took immense pleasure in being able to see beauty. She was fearful that she might shrink from a scarred and distorted face. But the more Bottle talked about Cyril, the more Cora warmed to the idea of meeting him. After all, she was committing herself to no more than an hour or two with a man who had given and lost so much, yet who was resolutely rising from the abyss to start again, as she had done. So she agreed to be introduced.

  Cyril and Cora met in the huge foyer of the Cumberland Hotel in Marble Arch. As usual, Cora wore a brightly coloured frock, for after so much time living in monochrome she relished colours. Cyril recognized her immediately, feeling the glow that seemed to emanate from her. Fearful that she might shy away in repugnance when she saw his face, he approached her boldly, holding out his hand as he announced: ‘I am Cyril King and you must be Miss Cora Church. I am very pleased to meet you. Would you like to go to a very amusing show at the Players’ Theatre? We can get a taxi cab and be there just in time, and we can eat during the performance. Have you ever been there? I think you will like it. Hattie Jacques is on tonight, a new star and extremely funny. It’s Victorian music hall. What do you think? I’ve booked. Let’s go!’

  Startled by Cyril’s masterful insistence, charmed by his melodious voice, and given no chance even to think let alone refuse (as indeed Cyril had intended), Cora hardly noticed his damaged face, but accepted his arm as they left the hotel, laughing and talking like old friends.

  The Players’ Theatre, nestling in a basement in Albemarle Street, not far from the Bureau, was a revelation to Cora. Cyril cleared the way for her to get through the queue of people waiting on the street hoping to get in. Downstairs, in a haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, a pot-pourri of people, many in uniform, some in dinner jackets accompanied by bejewelled women, were laughing and joking as they jostled their way to their seats in the tiny auditorium. With great solicitude Cyril ensured that Cora was seated before going to the bar, returning with bowls of soup and glasses of wine balanced precariously on an old tin tray.

  A pretty girl twitched the bustle of her long satin Victorian dress to one side as she sat down at the piano and began to play familiar old songs. Some of the audience joined in, others went on joshing and teasing, in high spirits. Suddenly, to huge applause, an imposing man in full evening dress, complete with gleaming black silk top hat, scarlet-lined opera cape, silver-topped walking cane and red carnation in his buttonhole, swaggered onto the stage. He announced himself as the Chairman, lit the two candles standing on a small pink-velvet-covered table, banged his gavel and proposed a loyal toast: ‘To Her Great and Glorious Majesty, Queen Victoria, God Bless Her!’

  ‘Everything from now on happens in 1899,’ whispered Cyril to a bemused Cora, as the audience rose and drank the toast. Then the first artiste appeared, singing a tragicomic ballad which reduced her to tears of laughter. Act after act followed: singers, mimics, jugglers, dancers, tellers of far-fetched hilarious stories and dramatic monologues. The Chairman wisecracked with artistes and audience alike, calling out, ‘You, sir – yes, you,’ to a late arrival, a respectable-looking gentleman trying to shuffle in unobtrusively. ‘No luck in Shepherd Market?’

  ‘More fun here!’ riposted the gent.

  Cora and Cyril joined the rest of the audience in singing choruses, letting rip with ‘My old man said “Follow the van!”’, ‘Come into the garden, Maud’ and a romantic ditty beginning,

  I want to meet a good young man,

  A model young man, a proper young man,

  I want to meet a good young man,

  Who never goes on the spree.

  Cora became almost hysterical with laughter watching Hattie Jacques, constantly turning her radiant face to Cyril as she clapped and clapped.

  At the end of the show, the audience stayed to drink and eat mushroom pie and dance on the stage. Cyril was a good dancer, guiding Cora with skill, quietly singing in her ear; and she fell silent for the first time that evening, wondering if she was imagining things.

  ‘It was wonderful!’ cried Cora, as they emerged into the dark street. ‘I completely forgot about the war. I have never laughed so much for so long. Oh, please can we come again? We can, can’t we?’

  ‘Oh, I believe so,’ agreed Cyril gravely, taking her arm and trying to quell the feeling of hope which was rising in him. ‘It’s a club, and I am a member, so although it is fantastically popular, if I book in advance we shall get in. It’s a sort of home-from-home for me. And if we come on a bad night for bombs, they’ll let us stay and sleep on the stage.’

  Both Cora and Cyril reported back positively to Bottle, who felt torn between excited optimism and gloomy fear that one lucky evening might never lead anywhere, that anything further would be an unmagical comedown. Sighing, Bottle turned to the problems of another young woman, Martha Webb.

  Martha, the young woman who had been raped during an air raid and become pregnant, had been devastated by Mary Oliver’s departure from the Marriage Bureau. Although Mary had not found her a possible husband, she had listened to the distraught young woman with great sympathy, and had even had conversations with Mr and Mrs Webb. As Martha had predicted, her parents were willing to help, but had not the remotest idea of what they could do. The prospect of their much-loved unmarried daughter having an illegitimate baby by an unknown father was shattering to the devoutly Roman Catholic couple. They could not pluck up the courage to talk to their priest, fearing that he would condemn Martha and forbid her to take communion, so talking to Mary brought them much relief.

  Martha knew that as soon as her pregnancy became apparent she would have to give up her job as a postal censor. So she had insisted on carrying on with her ARP work; until one black night when she was four months pregnant, feeling her way along the murky street by the feeble light of a small torch, she bumped into a lamp post and fell clumsily to the ground. Poor Martha knew immediately that something was very wrong. A woman passing by tried to help but, lying on the cold pavement, deafened by the drone of the V2s overhead, Martha miscarried.

  Nobody dared say that it was a blessing in heavy disguise. Martha spent months in a state of profound shock, throwing herself into her work as if her life depended on it – as indeed her parents feared it might. But walking down New Bond Street one Saturday she passed number 124 and, without thinking twice, turned back, walked up the stairs, and was greeted by Bottle.

  Bottle had just said goodbye to a potential client of forty-two who had waltzed in without an appointment, and been so pleased with himself, so confident that he was the catch of the season – ‘If not of the year or even of the decade,’ muttered Bottle tetchily to herself – that she had firmly put him right. He had told her that as he was very well dressed and good-looking he required his future wife to be equally attractive and polished, as well as domesticated, and fond of gardening and country life (though he admitted that he lived in an uninspiring suburb). Bottle asked him if he liked an occasional theatre or dinner in London, but he said no, he worked in London and couldn’t get out of the city fast enough. Every weekend, he said, he went sailing, and every evening too, when it was light enough, and invariably for holidays.

  Puffing calmly on her cigarette Bottle heard him out, and as he paused for breath
she announced, ‘I am afraid that the Bureau cannot be of service. It would appear that you are so set in your ways that a wife would be a mere appendage. You have not for one moment considered her desires or needs. I suggest that you go away and think more deeply, and perhaps come back later.’

  Stunned by this withering pronouncement by an apparently benign old lady, he gasped in shock and amazement, garbled an apology and scuttled down the stairs like a rabbit fleeing from a fox.

  Bottle had been told Martha’s sad story, and turned welcomingly to the tense, strained-looking young woman. ‘Miss Webb! This is a pleasant surprise! Funnily enough, I was thinking about you earlier this morning. Do sit down. Would you like a cigarette?’

  Martha refused the cigarette and sat, her shoulders tensed, gripping the edge of the desk, as she poured her hopes and fears into Bottle’s receptive ear. She wanted to marry, she felt that Eustace, her dead fiancé, would have wanted her to find a husband, she longed to have a family; but would any good man consider her? She had been raped (she whispered the petrifying word), she had become pregnant and miscarried. Would not any decent man regard her as horribly damaged goods?

  Bottle put down her cigarette, placed both her hands on top of Martha’s bitten fingernails and gave her a smile of such luminosity that the unhappy girl could not resist returning it with a tentative twitch of her lips as she blinked back tears.

  ‘My dear,’ soothed Bottle, ‘any man who thinks a young woman who has been visited by such tragedy as you is “damaged goods” is not worth tuppence. Not even a ha’penny. He is beneath contempt. He is to be avoided at all costs. Now tell me what sort of man you would like to meet.’

  Martha and Bottle went through the questions on the registration form. Martha’s ideal husband was to be a Roman Catholic or, if Church of England, sympathetic to her religion and willing that any children be brought up as Catholics. He would be aged up to about forty-five, a bachelor or a widower, preferably living in London as travelling in wartime was difficult. He would not necessarily earn a great deal. He should allow his wife to have a job if she wanted, though she would be happy to stay at home and look after any children.

  ‘If he were a widower and already had children, would you be prepared to take on the whole family?’ queried Bottle.

  Martha pondered only momentarily. ‘Yes, provided that he is not looking only for a mother for them rather than a wife for himself. And provided that he wants to have more children, and also that he is not still hopelessly devoted to his dead wife.’

  ‘And would you consider a man living abroad, say in South Africa, or Australia, or Singapore?’

  Martha hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t want to leave my parents: I am an only child and they are ageing – the war is wearing them out, and my troubles are an added burden. But if there is a nice man working far away for only a limited time, and is coming back after the war, that would be different.’

  Bottle leaned back in her chair and blew a perfect smoke ring, which Martha’s gaze followed as it drifted up to the ceiling. Bottle was visualizing a man she had never met, but whom she felt she knew well. Heather had often spoken about Frederick Joss, a client who had registered in May 1939, and Bottle had read the many letters he had subsequently written to the Bureau after his return to his Colonial Service job in Nigeria. He had met three young women before his home leave had ended, had liked them, but not enough for marriage. He had corresponded with another, and had written to Heather that he might meet her when he returned to England as he intended to do after the war. ‘I cannot envisage living permanently in Nigeria,’ wrote Frederick.

  I came here with high hopes, and in theory the life of an Administrative Officer is worthwhile, interesting, and comfortable enough on account of plenty of servants. Certainly I don’t have to do much towards running the household – or rather, shackhold! – though the cook is a rascal, feeds his family better than me, and pretends he can’t understand me (but I’ve heard him gabbling away in pidgin English).

  I am a Magistrate too (not properly qualified, but there was nobody else) and have to pass judgment on natives who simply don’t think like us. Recently some villagers claimed they needed more land in a forest reserve for farming. In fact, food drops off the trees all round them and they don’t know what poverty means; but they do know that the British government will not hesitate to send an expedition costing £50 to make sure that the poor darlings have enough to eat, and will almost certainly give them more land. So the District Officer ordered me to travel through the foulest bit of forest imaginable, nothing but damp and mud and swamp, in the heat of the day, to listen to their claims and complaints. I wanted to help them, but while I sat in their filthy village they told me lies, contradicted themselves, deliberately showed me the wrong boundary, and laughed up their sleeves at how they had previously tricked the Government into giving them extra land.

  On the way back a labourer said quite casually that there was a body with a lot of flies just off the track, so I went to investigate, and, indeed, there lay some bleached bones, most of the flesh eaten away – the local vultures – and a great grey cloud of wrathful flies buzzing furiously around. A woman, I think, judging by a few scraps of fabric held together by a safety pin.

  I cannot ask a wife to live in this baleful place, and above all I want to marry and have children. Please would you put me in touch with a girl who would be prepared to exchange letters until I come home? From all we hear here the war cannot last much longer, and I have written to various friends with a view to finding a job. I am a good administrator, with a Cambridge degree in Modern Languages, so I think that I shall find a place helping the country’s reconstruction, which will surely start soon.

  Frederick was not a Roman Catholic, but had described himself on his registration form as ‘Church of England – fairly high’. He had also, unexpectedly, said that he would meet an unmarried mother, confiding to Heather at the interview that his very favourite aunt had given birth to a daughter while her fiancé was fighting in the Great War in 1917. He was an open-minded man with high ideals who had hoped to do good in Nigeria and was saddened by his disillusionment.

  Bottle got out Frederick’s details and showed Martha his photograph: a tall, spare, fair-haired man standing outside a straw-thatched hut, wearing baggy shorts and an open shirt, his eyes slightly narrowed as he smiled broadly into the African sun. ‘What do you think? Would you like me to put you in touch?’

  Martha did not hesitate. She nodded, giving Bottle a real, heartfelt smile which transformed her taut face and rejoiced Bottle’s heart. As soon as Martha had closed the office door behind her Bottle lit another cigarette, found a flimsy airletter form, and wrote to Frederick.

  While Bottle was writing, Picot was ushering into the office an elderly policeman who had panted up the stairs. When he had lowered himself into the chair she leaned across the desk and, sensing that the potential client was not at ease, asked tactfully whether he had brought his registration form.

  ‘Yes, Miss, I’ve got a form, but it’s not the one you’re meaning, I think. I’ve been married for forty years and I’m staying that way. I’m here on duty, and I’ve come about a man who isn’t married, I don’t think, and now he never will be. He’s had a bit of bad luck, you might say.’

  The policeman paused and Picot enquired sympathetically: ‘Oh dear, what has happened to him?’

  ‘He’s dead, Miss. Murdered. Very nastily and all, shot in the knees and in the head, and hidden under a great heap of rubble.’

  ‘Oh, how horrible!’ gasped Picot, shrinking back in her chair, horror-struck but also perplexed.

  The policeman reached into one of his pockets. ‘And in his coat pocket he had a bit of paper with your address written on it – here, look.’ The policeman pushed across the desk a scrap apparently torn from a notebook. Sure enough, in scribbled but legible handwriting, was ‘Marriage Bureau, 124 New Bond Street’.

  ‘I can’t imagine what this means!’ exclaime
d Picot in some distress. ‘Who is this man? What is his name?’

  ‘We don’t know, Miss. The murderer must’ve taken his watch and his wallet and his identity card – that’s if he ever had a card, of course. There’s a lot of foreigners around that don’t have a proper card like they ought to. This man didn’t look English, more Continental, if you know what I mean. Just middle-aged, shortish, dark hair. Do you get many foreigners coming along?’

  ‘Yes, quite a few. I’ll ask the secretary whether there have been any enquiries or appointments which might possibly fit, and I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss.’ The policeman lumbered off wearily. ‘We’ll try to find the murderer, but I’m not hopeful. There’s a terrible lot of wickedness about these days.’

  Picot rushed next door to tell Dorothy, who reached for another cigarette and gave one to Picot. ‘Well, Picot, you’re always complaining that you miss the drama of the stage. But there’s infinitely more drama in the Marriage Bureau than ever there was in the theatre!’

  16

  Peacetime Problems

  124 New Bond Street

  London W1

  9 May 1945

  Darling Heather

  The crowds in the West End yesterday were huge, everyone cheering, laughing, drinking, singing, dancing – Americans doing the conga and cockneys the Lambeth Walk – kissing, hugging, waving flags, bells ringing, some loonies lighting a bonfire. We’ll never forget VE Day. I drove round after dinner to see the celebrations. But I felt nostalgic and thankful rather than gay and triumphant. The destruction is horrific. And a friend in Berlin tells me that the Continent is crawling with displaced persons, criminals, starving survivors, ex-POWs hunting their torturers – ghastly. Where on earth do we go from here?