Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  She found herself laughing. It was all so unexpected, so typically Tommy, so right. ‘Oh Tommy!’ she said. ‘What am I to do with you?’

  ‘Say yes,’ he told her. ‘That’s all you’ve got to do. Just say yes.’

  So she did. And a very happy ceremony it was.

  Afterwards, when they walked out of the Hall arm in arm, there was a wedding car waiting for them by the kerb, hung about with white ribbons.

  ‘How long have you had this planned?’ she asked as she climbed in.

  ‘Years,’ he said, sitting beside her and putting his arm round her. ‘Planning’s my forte, remember.’

  ‘You’re the most artful man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘And if that’s not the nicest thing a wife can say to her husband I’d like to know what is.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the reception.’

  She’d forgotten the reception and it seemed a little out of place now. Not quite the sort of thing to be attending when you’ve just got married. ‘We won’t have to stay there long, will we?’ she asked.

  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ he said.

  She realised that she was being ungracious. ‘Just for a little while then,’ she said. ‘To show willing.’

  They seemed to arrive very quickly after that and from then on everything was sped up. They were out of the car and into the building in two steps, they were walking towards a door, he was opening it and ushering her through and then there was an uproar of cheers and squeals and the air was full of rose petals and she realised that this wasn’t the official reception she’d expected but a wedding reception and that they were cheering the bride and groom, they were cheering her and Tommy. Oh my dear good, God, he has planned this well.

  Emmeline’s face swam into focus from the crowd of people smiling in front of them. ‘Is the deed done?’ she called.

  He lifted her hand so that they could see the ring on her finger. ‘Signed, sealed, ship-shape and orderly,’ he said and walked her into the crowd.

  There were so many people there and all of them old friends. She walked from one to the next, gasping in surprise and pleasure. Emmeline rushed to hug her, followed by Edith and Arthur.

  ‘Good God!’ Octavia said to him. ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘I’ve been here for ten days,’ he said. ‘Edie couldn’t tell you because of the surprise.’

  She leant forward to kiss him. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Glad to be home.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ And there was John, beaming at her, with Dora and David beside him. ‘Oh John, how good to see you.’

  He was shy, of course, stammering, ‘C-congratulations, Aunt.’ And now Emmeline was pulling another guest forward and it was Johnnie with Gwyneth beside him, prettily pregnant. ‘Johnnie, my dear boy! How did you get here?’

  ‘We flew.’

  ‘And so did we,’ another voice said from behind her, and she turned and there were Mr Mannheim and his wife. ‘From Hamburg,’ he said. ‘Courtesy of your husband.’

  ‘He must have been working on this for months,’ Octavia said, looking round for him. He was over by the table talking to Lizzie and Ben. And there were Frank Dimond and Mrs Henderson. And Janet, with two little boys. She never told us she’d had another baby. ‘Oh, it is good to see you all,’ she said as she walked towards them.

  ‘A happy, happy day,’ Mrs Henderson said, ‘and well deserved.’

  ‘And so say all of us,’ Miss Gordon said, joining them.

  ‘Morag, my dear,’ Octavia said. ‘This is so extraordinary I don’t know what to say.’ Then she noticed Phillida and Alice, and behind them Elizabeth Fennimore and Jenny Jones and Maggie Henry and Sarah Fletcher. ‘Oh, oh, my dears, are you all here?’

  ‘Naturally we are,’ Joan Marshall said, striding into the group. ‘We wouldn’t have missed this for worlds.’

  Time passed in a blur of greetings and congratulations as she moved from one old friend to another. Mr Mannheim told her that he and his wife were working in a camp for displaced persons, helping them to find their way home and doing what they could to ease them away from the horrors they’d endured.

  ‘It is very hard work,’ Mrs Mannheim said, ‘but we are glad to do it. It is the least we can do.’

  Then Ben and Lizzie were rushing towards her and they both kissed her and Ben told her he’d been in the parade.

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ Octavia said.

  ‘I saw you,’ he told. ‘Just after I’d spotted my Lizzie. You were only a few yards apart.’

  ‘I didn’t see you either, Lizzie,’ Octavia confessed. Now that they were standing in front of one another she was feeling unsure of herself, wondering what this dear girl must be thinking to see her headmistress married to her father.

  ‘Is it any wonder in that crowd?’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve never seen so many people.’

  ‘I expect this is a bit of a surprise,’ Octavia said.

  Lizzie grinned at her. Really she was so like her father sometimes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not to us. We knew he wanted to marry you, didn’t we, Ben?’

  ‘Really?’ Octavia said, feeling very surprised. ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘Good God no,’ Lizzie said. ‘We just knew, didn’t we, Ben? When we saw you together at our wedding.’

  The question had to be asked. ‘And you don’t mind?’

  ‘No. ’Course not. Why shouldn’t you be happy together? Mind you, I’m not sure what I ought to call you now, but I expect we can sort something out.’

  ‘Why not “Smithie”?’ Octavia said, laughing. ‘That’s what you girls usually called me.’

  Now it was Lizzie’s turn to be surprised. ‘We thought you didn’t know.’

  Tommy was suddenly standing between them, with his arms round them both. ‘Aren’t you starving?’ he said. ‘I know I am.’ Octavia was too excited to be hungry but she realised that she and Tommy had to lead their guests into the wedding breakfast and that they were all standing around waiting for them to do it.

  ‘Oh Tommy,’ she said, ‘my dear, dear man. This is absolutely wonderful. All these people. I don’t know how you managed it. You must have been working on it for months.’

  He pretended to groan. ‘Are we eating or not?’ he said. ‘Tubby says he’s fading away. Isn’t that right, Tubby? I don’t want to have to catch him if he faints.’

  ‘Then I must take pity on him and lead him to the food,’ she said.

  It was an extraordinarily good meal – how did he manage that? – and they had extraordinarily good champagne for the toasts. And when the first toast had been drunk he made an extraordinarily good speech.

  ‘In a wedding like this,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t expect anything to be done by the book. The invitations certainly weren’t. And while I remember it, thank you all for keeping it under wraps the way you have. That wasn’t done by the book either and it’s much appreciated. Fact is, Tavy threw the book away years ago – and that doesn’t surprise you does it? – so we all have to improvise. There was a time when that would have terrified me but, over the last few weeks, I’ve come to see that there are one or two advantages in having to improvise, especially when you’re making a speech. For a start it usually results in something pretty honest. Or more honest than the general run of diplomatic speeches which I don’t need to tell my friends here are usually sycophantic tosh.’ He paused to give his friends a chance to laugh, which they did. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘when I thank you all for coming here this afternoon, you will know that I mean it, and when I say I understand what your presence here means to Tavy, you will know that I mean that too.’

  He paused again and gave Octavia a rapturous smile. ‘Strictly speaking of course,’ he said, ‘we’ve got no right to be sitting here at the centre of the high table.’ And when some of his guests looked surprised he explained. ‘We should be sitting at the end of the high table, not at the centre. That was where we first met, at the end of the high table at Emmeline’s we
dding when we were both eighteen, and years later we met again at the end of the high table at the double wedding of Dora and Edith. Now and just for once, I think I’ve persuaded our Tavy to take centre stage although how long I shall be able to keep her there is open to question. But then I think I’m safe in saying that it is Tavy’s method to question everything. And the one good thing to say about that is that it does keep you on your toes. It might present you with a few problems but it does keep you on your toes. Take for example the problem of what my new wife is to be called. When I first asked her to take my name she told me she’d already got a name. And a jolly good one too. So naturally I’m not going to ask her to change it now. She might be Mrs Meriton to me and to the Passport Office but in her school and in the wider educational world where she does so much good, she will always be Octavia Smith.’

  He picked up his champagne glass and raised it to her. ‘So when I give you the toast, ladies and gentlemen, you will understand that it has to be in these words. No others will do. To the incomparable Octavia Smith.’

  ‘That,’ she told him as the toast was drunk, ‘was perfect.’

  About the Author

  BERYL KINGSTON has been a writer since she was seven, when she started producing poetry. According to her, it wasn’t very good but she had a few more years to hone her skills before her first book was published in 1980. Kingston was a schoolteacher until 1985, becoming a full-time writer when her debut novel became a bestseller. She lives in West Sussex, and has three children and five grandchildren.

  www.berylkingston.co.uk

  By Beryl Kingston

  Gates of Paradise

  Octavia

  Octavia’s War

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2009.

  This ebook edition first published in 2012.

  Copyright © 2009 by BERYL KINGSTON

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The poem ‘Song and Dance’ by RG Gregory,

  has been used with the kind permission of RG Gregory.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1174–1