Marriages are Made in Bond Street

by Penrose Halson

  Archie was white as a sheet and I thought he might faint. He stood still, in silence, like a statue, then he grabbed my hand and we walked out. We drove back to London and he didn’t say a word all the way. I got out at my door and he still said nothing. He’s dead but he was alive then and he was in hell. I was too.

  Unable to control her tears, Bottle put the pages down, pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket to rub her eyes, tugged a cigarette from the packet and lit it with trembling hands.

  I cried all night and at six o’clock in the morning my landlady banged on my door and said irritably, ‘It’s the police for you.’ I put on my dressing gown and went downstairs and a young constable was there with an envelope with writing on it. I recognised the writing, it was Archie’s, it said ‘Miss Ivy Bailey is my love. PARK 4589 is her telephone number.’ The constable asked, ‘Are you Miss Ivy Bailey?’ and of course I said yes, and he asked if I knew who had written my name on the envelope and I said ‘Archie’, and he said very kindly, ‘I’m very sorry, Miss, I’m afraid Archie is dead.’

  They had found him in the dark little alley next to his flat, hanging from a lamp-post. He had strangled himself with his new white shirt. He had cut it into strips, I saw it at the police station. It was beside his body. He looked calm and peaceful and he was dead. He is dead.

  He did it because he knew I was his only hope of a happy life. He knew that if he disobeyed his parents they would destroy us, him and me too. He told me they had always terrified him, he told me that when he was alive. He told me when he told me about being strangled at school. The boys were only seven but they were all at a boarding school. He told me the parents didn’t love their children so they sent them away. The boys were very cruel to each other and they had games to prove that they could stand up to things, only they weren’t games. In one of them a new boy had to cut up his shirt and join the strips into a sort of rope, and the others wound it round his neck and pulled the ends hard until he almost choked to death. Then he had to pretend to the matron that he had eaten something nasty which made him feel sick, and he had to pretend that he’d somehow lost his shirt, and so he had to pay a fine for being careless.

  Bottle’s hands were quivering so violently that she dropped her cigarette into the ashtray. Half-blinded by tears, she lifted the remaining pages nearer her face.

  Archie is dead so I can tell you. He hated his parents but he had to pretend to love them. And he hated his prep school and he hated his public school. At that school he told me he was a ‘fag’, a sort of servant of an older boy. He had to clean this boy’s shoes and make him toast and run errands for him and do whatever the boy asked. And one day the boy asked him to touch his private parts and when Archie refused the boy beat him.

  And he hated India, the heat and the flies and the sickness and the smells, and he hated the Army too. In the Army there was a young subaltern who was under Archie. They both slept in a big tent which was divided by a partition. Archie slept one side and the subaltern the other. The subaltern wanted to get promoted, so he asked Archie to recommend him, but Archie didn’t think he was good enough so he said no. And in the middle of the night, when it was very hot, and Archie had only just got to sleep, he thought he heard a bump. He didn’t do anything as there were always a lot of funny noises outside the tents. In the morning he called the subaltern, as usual, but there was no answer. So he pulled back the partition and saw the young man hanging from a high cross pole supporting the tent. He was dead. He had cut a shirt into strips and hanged himself.

  My parents are dead, my sister and my granny are dead, most of my friends are dead, the subaltern’s dead and Archie’s dead. In the envelope in his pocket there was a bit of paper with ‘Sorry’ in his writing; and a beautiful little gold ring with an emerald. He always says my eyes are green like emeralds.

  Bottle could bear no more. She dropped her head into her hands and howled. The cigarette smouldered, flickered, faltered and went out.

  18

  Mr Hedgehog, Journalists, a Tiny Baptist and Lies

  As post-war supplies of paper gradually improved, and newspapers had more pages to fill, the press grew increasingly interested in the Marriage Bureau. Journalists reported Heather’s succinct, authoritative views on the marital chances of ex-servicewomen, the cost of weddings and the foolishness of old men seeking young brides. Heather and her Marriage Bureau developed into a gold-mine from which newspapers could always extract a shiny nugget on the importance of family life and babies, the demands for equality of women who had done men’s jobs in wartime, on loneliness, divorce and personal problems of all kinds.

  The Daily Express published Heather’s assessment of the post-war marriage market:

  Things have changed entirely since VE Day. Until then, most of the younger women who came to me wanted anything but English husbands. They favoured Americans particularly – seemed to think that if they got to America they would all live like Hedy Lamarr. Now, suddenly, they are clamouring for Englishmen again. Women aged between thirty-five and forty-two are the most difficult to get fixed up. They try to be too coy and young. After about forty-two the job gets easier – I can get women of fifty-five off like shelling peas.

  One pea who was not shelled with such confident ease was Miss Doris Burton. She had registered soon after the Bureau opened in 1939, saying that she was thirty-nine, though Mary Oliver had been convinced she was nearer forty-nine, and quite possibly a lesbian. Over the next few years Miss Burton had been introduced to several men but with no success, for they all found her off-puttingly businesslike, severe in her attitudes and in her somewhat mannish looks: ‘I felt as if I was summoned to my bank manager to explain why I had exceeded my overdraft, and she disapproved of my jacket too,’ was a typical reaction.

  Miss Burton had cancelled her membership of the Bureau when she took up with a smooth talker who came into her tobacconist’s shop in search of cigarettes. Mr Smooth was addicted to smoking but earned little from his intermittent job as a cosmetics salesman, and with cigarettes in very short supply he sometimes had to resort to the extortionate black market. He had immediately sensed Miss Burton’s loneliness, and put himself out to be so irresistibly agreeable that she, unaccustomed to male admiration, sold him a packet she had kept under the counter for a favourite customer. Emboldened by this stroke of luck, Mr Smooth had ratcheted up the compliments, flattering Miss Burton so fulsomely that one thing rapidly led to another and, shortly, to him moving into her small flat above the shop.

  Convinced he had fallen on his feet, with no rent to pay and an unfailing supply of his favourite Players cigarettes to hand, Mr Smooth grew careless, helping himself to too many packets from Miss Burton’s secreted hoard. She soon found him out, wrathfully brushed his compliments and pleadings aside, kicked him out, licked her wounds and devoted herself to her shop. Until one gloomy rainy day she thought again of the Bureau.

  Heather calculated that, as Mary had judged Miss Burton to be nearly fifty, she must now be not far off sixty. She still wanted the same solid type, a man with no encumbrances such as children or dependent parents, and enough money for a home. However, since her unfortunate experience with Mr Smooth, and some other dishonest customers, she had grown disenchanted with running her tobacconist’s, and resolved to leave town and live in the country. As a competent businesswoman she visualized herself helping her husband in some small enterprise. Having originally said a categorical NO to any pets, she now fondly imagined the pleasure of owning a dog, cat or other animals.

  ‘It is only a pity,’ reflected Heather, ‘that Miss Burton is no more attractive a proposition than she was when younger. She still smokes like a chimney, which makes her skin so leathery – apologies, dear Bottle. But you seem to be lucky, all your smoking doesn’t seem to affect your complexion!’

  ‘Pure luck,’ smiled Bottle, who knew very well that Heather abhorred her smoking, but tolerated it. ‘What about Sidney Headley for Miss Burton? He’s embarrassed about still being a bac
helor so he says he’s fifty, but I’m sure he’s older. You can’t tell properly because you can’t see much of his face except his eyes, he’s got such thick hair, and great bristly sideboards too, as well as a scrubby beard and a rather moth-eaten moustache. Hair everywhere, even sprouting from his ears! And he snuffles. I felt as if I was interviewing an over-sized hedgehog blowing its nose on a rather smelly handkerchief – it smelled of petrol.’

  Mr Hedgehog was Better Than Some, had never married but lived with his parents on a decaying smallholding in Northamptonshire. Their death from pneumonia in their vast mouldering bed at last set him free to find a wife, but the few local girls had long since got married, or moved to a town to get a job during the war and not returned. He wanted an honest, practically-minded woman who would interest herself in his home, his work and his person: although not bad-looking he was scruffy, his jacket patched, his shoes scuffed, his teeth heavily tobacco-stained (though partially concealed by his moustache). He was a decent, steady type, a gauche ‘set bachelor’, as the Bureau termed such men. His conversation about his three cows and twenty chickens was stilted, but a torrent of words spilled out on the glorious subject of his petrol pump.

  Mr Hedgehog’s petrol pump was his pride and joy. After his parents died he had heaved the mildewed mattress off their bed to burn it, along with the filthy, torn, worn bedclothes, and had been flabbergasted to discover £1,000 tucked into the bed springs. Poor downtrodden Mr H. had never been allowed to go anywhere without his domineering mother’s permission, nor to spend anything unless his magpie father agreed. So with this miraculous windfall he splashed out on the object he had long craved: a shiny silver petrol pump. He had shrewdly realized, even during the war, that more and more people would buy cars, and the cars would need petrol. His cows and chickens produced a modest income, but he lived on a small country road which was due to be widened, traffic would increase, so surely a petrol pump would make the Headley fortune.

  Heather summed up: ‘The future Mrs Hedgehog should be prepared to live on a busy country road, serving petrol and taking an interest in Buttercup, Daisy, Clover and chickens. How can anyone be interested in chickens? They are loathsome creatures, I detested mine (and they returned the sentiment). But now she’s disposed towards animals, perhaps feathered clucking creatures will be just up Miss Burton’s street!’

  ‘You may not be able to understand how she can be interested in chickens, Heather,’ commented Bottle, ‘but she would be baffled by your interest in clothes. She favours the simple look: plain, austere, sombre – though impeccably clean. I am sure she will have a beneficial effect on Mr Hedgehog.’

  Bottle introduced Mr Hedgehog and Miss Burton. Several weeks later a knock on the office door preceded an unrecognizable Mr Hedgehog who, seeing the bewildered look on Bottle’s face, burst out, ‘Mr Headley, Sidney Headley. I’ve come to thank you.’

  In a flash Bottle took in the transformation. Gone were the brown stains on his teeth, the sideboards, the patched jacket and scuffed shoes. Mr Hedgehog was dressed in a smart grey suit, polished black shoes, blindingly white shirt, pristine navy handkerchief (for show only) and navy-and-white-striped tie. The shaggy tangle of hair was reduced to a short, Brylcreemed back ’n’ sides, the moustache to a close-clipped line, the beard to a neat equilateral triangle which lent him a jaunty, vaguely Continental air. His ears were hair-free. He looked dapper and only faintly self-conscious as Bottle, beaming in anticipation of the announcement of his engagement to Miss Burton, held out a congratulatory hand. ‘Oh, Mr Headley! You look wonderful! Congra—’

  She got no further as Mr Hedgehog interrupted. ‘Thank you for sending me Miss Burton. She did me a power of good – cleaned me up a treat, she did. When I went into the garage in Kettering to look at their petrol pumps, the nice lady in the office, who’s often talked to me, couldn’t believe I was so different. We chatted as usual, and she showed me their new pumps, and I took her to the pictures, and we’ve been out dancing and now – you won’t believe it, Miss Harbottle, but we’re engaged!’

  Poor Bottle struggled to look delighted as her heart sank under pity for Miss Burton, mingled with dismay at the fearsome prospect of trying once again to marry her off. Heather was annoyed at so narrowly missing an After Marriage Fee.

  While Bottle disconsolately resorted to the records, Heather was ensconced with a journalist. She had long since lost her anxiety about the press: now she basked in their attention, as they featured not only her opinions but also her appearance: ‘THOUSANDS WANT PARTNERS’ proclaimed the Star.

  Stately, 6 feet tall, Miss Heather Jenner, who has been responsible for hundreds of happy marriages, left London Airport today to spend a fortnight’s holiday in Portugal. Miss Jenner wore a flowered hat with a casual veil on top of her head, a two-piece grey suit and a smart Russian enamelled brooch as she waited to board her plane. She told me that she had the names of seven or eight thousand people on her books who were looking for life partners.

  Many of the thousands of clients married: in December 1946 Heather announced that the Bureau had made nearly 2,000 marriages, an astonishing figure which eighteen months later rose to nearly 3,000. Many couples married within a few months, even a few weeks, of meeting; yet, despite this haste, Heather knew of only two couples who had ‘come unstuck’.

  Many non-bureau marriages did, however, flounder and fail, as spouses tried to readjust to married life after separation in wartime. One proposed remedy was that not only transport, major industries and medicine should be nationalized, but also marriage bureaux. Heather’s scathing rejection was reported in the press:

  If a Bureau is to function satisfactorily, it needs to be organised on a fairly large scale, so that for each client there is a wide choice of ‘possibles’. But Heaven forbid that it should be on a State scale with all that that implies, with all the unmarrieds tabulated and card-indexed and brought together on a national footing, rather like a national stud.

  Hitler organised something on similar lines not many years ago. And if a nationalised Marriage Bureau came to Britain we should know that totalitarianism was really upon us.

  The humorous writer Patrick Campbell, who stuttered incurably, tested the Bureau. In the Sunday Dispatch he described how, posing as ‘Sir Hubert’, he enquired on behalf of an invented friend, ‘George McKechnie’, who was, he insisted, too shy to appear himself but happy that his trusty emissary would find out all the necessary facts.

  The interviewer smelled a possible rat, but comported herself as if the client was genuine, politely asking him to fill in a registration form on behalf of his bashful pal. ‘Sir Hubert’ filled in the details of ‘George McKechnie’: ‘a chromium bathroom fitting salesman, earning £4 a week, aged forty-two, a Baptist, 5 feet 3 inches tall, slender, with reddish hair, living with his mother, sister and brother, interested in botany and club cycling.’ The interviewer did not turn a hair at this improbable description, for she had seen many details which beggared belief but which were in fact entirely true. Politely she requested information about Mr McKechnie’s requirements in a wife, adding that she supposed Sir Hubert knew what kind of person that would be?

  ‘Certainly I kn-kn-know,’ protested ‘Sir Hubert’, bridling at the faint implication that the interviewer suspected deceit. His friend, he asserted, was in search of ‘a fellow Baptist, 5 feet 1 inches tall, with a private income of £250 a year, of a quiet and studious disposition, interested in botany and cycling.’ ‘Sir Hubert’ leaned back in his chair and focused a challenging smile on the interviewer: ‘Look, I kn-kn-kno-know this may be irregular, b-b-but I don’t b-b-believe you’ve got a lady B-B-B-Baptist on your b-b-books, f-f-five feet high, who can ride a b-b-b-bicycle.’

  The interviewer’s eyes narrowed and glinted as she rose to the challenge: ‘I can’t tell you offhand, but I’m quite, quite sure we have.’

  ‘Show me. Have a look through the f-f-files. Show me one tiny f-f-female B-B-Baptist on a b-b-b-bicycle.’

  The
interviewer’s eyes contracted again until they were little more than arrow-slits, through which she fired quivering visual darts at ‘Sir Hubert’. ‘Very well. But you must realize that our business is entirely confidential. I must conceal the name on the card. But I will show you the rest of it.’ Whereupon she pressed the bell on her desk, summoning the receptionist, to whom she handed ‘Mr McKechnie’s registration form and whispered a few words which ‘Sir Hubert’, engrossed in smug satisfaction at the prospect of wrong-footing her, failed to hear.

  For the next five minutes the interviewer busied herself with forms on her desk while her self-congratulating client lolled comfortably, humming ‘Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do’ as he conjured up a mental picture of ‘George’ and his bride freewheeling into a roseate sunset on a dwarf-sized honeymoon tandem.