‘Darling,’ said the editor, putting her head round the door, ‘no orgasms in the office, please!’ But called over to the table, given a magnifying glass, she was as excited as Blanche and said there were at least three covers there, and she had no idea which to choose. The art director was called in; usually very cool, he became quite noisy and voluble himself, and suggested they used two pictures on one cover – that, in itself, would cause a huge stir.
Blanche was so excited she called Wendelien Bellinger to see if Diana was still in London and if she’d like to come over and see the pictures. Diana, who wasn’t going back to Yorkshire till the morning, said a whole herd of wild horses wouldn’t keep her away and abandoned Wendelien and her new baby with a certain guilty relief. When she arrived there was something of a party going on; Blanche had produced a bottle of champagne, and both Freddie and Cedric, the art director were there; they all raised their glasses to Diana and, struggling to appear cool, she took her glass and smiled at Freddie with a look of complicit satisfaction. He returned the look rather seriously and kissed Diana on the cheek. ‘She’s one hell of a broad,’ he remarked to the room in general.
Diana rather liked being called a broad; it had unladylike, raunchy connotations. It wouldn’t have gone down well at all in Yorkshire society, she reflected.
‘Thank you,’ was all she said; but when the champagne was all gone, and Freddie suggested they went on and shared another bottle at the Connaught, where he was staying, she said she couldn’t think of anything she’d love more.
‘You sound so ridiculously English,’ said Freddie, laughing, and Diana said what else should she sound like, and he said he had no idea but the way she looked in the photographs, a Brooklyn growl would be quite appropriate.
‘I don’t think I’m sure what a Brooklyn growl sounds like.’
‘Come along,’ he said, holding out his hand to her. ‘Let me give you a lesson. And maybe we’ll have Martinis, rather than more champagne. It’ll help get you into character.’
Blanche and the other two exchanged glances and expressed huge regret that they were unable to join them; but when they had gone Blanche said anxiously that maybe one of them should have gone ‘to act as chaperone – she is a married woman after all’.
‘Blanche, darling,’ said Cedric, ‘you just saw before you the beginnings of a great affair. Do you really want to see it stillborn?’
‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Blanche. ‘I feel highly responsible.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly. Diana Southcott is a very sophisticated, hard-headed young woman. Perfectly capable of saying no all by herself. Or choosing not to.’
‘Well, exactly,’ said Blanche.
Chapter 26
1951
The wedding somehow got into the papers. Well, one paper. The Daily News. Quite a prominent item, quarter of a page complete with picture, there it sat on page 4, captioned, Tom Knelston, marked out as a young man to watch in the political scene, was married on Saturday to Alice Miller, a nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital.
Everyone had been surprised by the choice of Josh as best man, even Tom himself. But time had been pressing on him, and a decision had had to be made, and suddenly he thought that Josh would be as good as anyone; he liked him a lot, he had met him the night he had properly met Alice, and he was a cousin of Jillie’s.
His brothers thought he was selling out to what they thought of as the opposite side. The Sunday lunch had been a fairly dismal failure, despite Alice’s superhuman efforts to make it work. The brothers were uncomfortable and silent, and their wives likewise. Tom’s sisters made a big effort and really liked Alice, thought her efforts to greet Mary and make her feel at home and welcome were touching and genuine, and were fascinated by her life as a nurse.
It was actually Donald Herbert who suggested Josh as best man. Tom was having a drink with him one night, voicing his concerns about who he might choose. The real subject under discussion was the forthcoming election, which Donald was cheerfully certain would be won by the Tories and an apparently revived Winston Churchill, but Tom’s forthcoming nuptials were clearly rather in the forefront of his mind and the vacant position of best man in particular.
‘He’s good fun, you get on well, you certainly share political views, you both love Real Ale. Why don’t you think about it? Or I could do it,’ he added.
Tom had an uneasy feeling Donald was not entirely joking.
Alice didn’t really mind. She liked Josh and thought he was fun, and had forgiven him for the Battersea funfair debacle. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea,’ she said to Tom.
And really, how much did it matter? She had had a wonderful wedding day, the sun shining, Tom looking amazing in his morning dress, and telling her he loved her at least ten times, both in his speech and quietly, in odd, unexpected moments of privacy; then again when they finally arrived at their honeymoon destination, a pretty, secluded cottage they had rented for a week, on the south Devon coast near Kingsbridge. She had half hoped for a fancy hotel, but Tom had said it was asking too much of him and his principles to stay in some lackey-filled establishment. ‘I would just feel too uncomfortable, Alice, I’m sorry.’ The Millers, who were giving them the honeymoon as a wedding present, were probably more disappointed than Alice was, but they clung tenaciously to the bridal suite for the weekend at the Salcombe Bay hotel, saying it was too late to cancel. It was rather wonderful, filled with huge vases of flowers and a bottle of champagne on ice waiting for them, with its huge bed, and balcony overlooking the estuary. Tom submitted to this with a good grace and, extremely clearly, enjoyed his four-course dinner and the dancing afterwards, in the hotel ballroom; he fell asleep very suddenly as soon as they got into bed, which was a bit of a disappointment to Alice, but she went out onto the balcony and looked at the moon shining on the water, and although it was hardly a substitute for sex, she felt extraordinarily happy and blessed. It was only when she got back into bed that the anxiety came to her unbidden as to whether he slept through his wedding night to Laura: and then she couldn’t sleep for hours.
The cottage was lovely, though, and seemed to act on Tom like an aphrodisiac; they spent most of the week, it seemed to Alice, in the big bed in the small, whitewashed bedroom, the windows open to the lovely sea-washed air.
Chapter 27
1951
She couldn’t be pregnant, could she? Not so easily, so swiftly, so terrifyingly soon?