Someone Special (67 page)

Anna was extremely happy at the London School of Economics. She was reading economics and found her work hard but perfectly possible. She had expected to be years older than the other students, but this did not prove to be the case. Quite a lot were men who had fought in the war and were returning to the universities in droves to continue their studies, and even among the female students there were a good many of Anna’s age, late starters for the same reason as their male colleagues.

The wedding was a topic of great interest to all of them, though it was a shame that it would take place in term time.

‘But we’ll be given a day off,’ Billy Prince said, looking up from his ink-stained notebook at Anna, sitting opposite him in the small café where they were studying and drinking coffee just to be in the warm rather than roaming the chilly November streets. Anna was not supposed to take men up to her room and Billy was in the same boat, which meant that mutual studying had to be done in public places. ‘We could go up West, and see the whole thing. Would you like that, Anna?’

Billy Prince was short and muscular, with tousled light brown hair and a pair of sensitive, honey-brown eyes. He had been a paratrooper during the war and one of the first
ashore at the D-Day landings. Sometimes his whole face would jerk into a spasm. The hair hanging over his brow hid a bayonet scar three inches long, and the bayonet had done something to his face-muscles. It only happened now and then and since Billy never let it bother him, no one else did either.

The two of them had got on well from the moment they’d met, and not only because they had a subject in common. Billy was reading economics because he wanted, he said, to go into politics.

‘Not immediately, but when I’m about thirty,’ he’d said when Anna had asked why he had chosen their particular subject. ‘I’ll do something in industry first, probably, but you need a good grounding in economics to run the country.’

Anna, who was reading economics chiefly because she wanted to work abroad and had been told by the course tutor that a BSc in Economics with French as her second language would be helpful, admired Billy’s zeal and foresight and took her problems to him. He was twenty-four, fiercely intelligent, ambitious and rather prickly, possibly because his mother was a hospital cleaner and his father a Billingsgate porter. Billy told everyone about his background as soon as he saw they might be friends; it was simpler, he told Anna, to get it over with, but despite this openness you still had to be careful what you said to him. Sometimes he took offence over a casual remark and that meant many of the students, particularly the younger ones, either avoided close contact with him or treated him with kid gloves.

Anna did neither of these things. She liked him very much, envied him his clear, analytical brain, enjoyed his company and always said just what she thought, soon realising that he valued her frankness more than empty compliments or constant agreement.

‘You’re an inverted snob, hoping someone will drop
you because you’re working class,’ Anna accused early in their acquaintance, but Billy only grinned his lopsided grin which revealed his two broken front teeth, also a souvenir of Normandy, and shook his head.

‘It isn’t that at all. It’s a kind of test. If they pass it, I know we’ll get on okay and I don’t have to worry about them. If they don’t, then I shan’t waste my time learning about them.’

‘Your time! You’re so damned clever that you’ve more spare time than the rest of us put together,’ Anna told him. ‘Billy me darlin’, are you going to explain this to me like a kind little paratrooper? Because if you don’t I’ll fail my finals and then we’ll never dance naked on the principal’s lawn, as you said we would.’

It was Billy’s boast that he didn’t give a damn about anyone, and at some stage he had told Anna that if they both passed he would buy her a bottle of champagne, help her to drink it, and then assist her to dance the tango, in her birthday suit, outside the principal’s windows. But right now, sitting in the steamy little café with a cup of acorn-tasting coffee, Anna’s mind was on higher things than champagne or naked dancing. She was thinking how nice it would be to see Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten married. She had never told Billy about the shared birthday because it had never come up, but she did so now, ending, ‘So you see I really would like to go to the wedding. And I could, because my Aunt Ella lives in Bloomsbury, so she’d put me up if I needed a bed. I’m sure she’d put you up as well, Billy, if you’d like to come with me.’

‘That’s kind, but if you want to see anything you’ll have to nab a spot near the palace or the abbey and sleep on the pavement,’ Billy said with relish. ‘No use strolling down the road at half-past ten and expecting the crowds to part for you, like Moses and the Red Sea. It won’t happen, honey-pie.’

‘If you’re with me you can push and shove and get me to the front,’ Anna pointed out, sipping her coffee and wrinkling her nose with distaste. ‘This stuff’s bad enough hot, but cold it’s disgusting. Can we run to another cup or shall we hie us to a library?’

Libraries were another place where they could study together on a rainy day when neither had a lecture.

Billy considered his own cup, almost down to the dregs. ‘You’re right, it’s pretty foul,’ he admitted. ‘I’m skint, as usual, so we’d better find a library. This place is great in summer, but pretty grim in winter. Still, we can sit in a pub this evening if we choose a quiet one.’

He stood up and Anna followed suit, gathering her books and papers and shovelling them into the ancient canvas bag she carried around with her.

‘Right, we’ll do that. And shall we go up West for the wedding, Billy? I’m game if you are.’

‘Yes, sure. It’s probably the only way I’ll get you to sleep with me, out on the pavement with a thousand other people in the same bed.’

Anna chuckled and headed for the door. ‘Much you care! Look, if we go round to my aunt’s place after the wedding, she’ll give us a meal. How about that? I’d like you to meet her.’

‘Let’s play it by ear,’ Billy said, seizing her hand and swinging it so vigorously that a passing cyclist swerved and swore at them. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t see you … I’m beginning to look forward to this royal wedding; it might easily be a lot of fun.’

It was not a bad day, weatherwise, which was a pleasant surprise, everyone having steeled themselves for rain or worse. Hester and Nell had been too excited to sleep much, though they had a blown-up air mattress between them and a blanket each, as well as their thickest jerseys and winter coats.

‘We may not have slept, but you and Matthew snored like pigs,’ Nell told Snip as she offered him hot coffee from the second of their flasks. ‘Mum and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if we’d not been too excited. Gosh, I’m stiff, but haven’t we got a good place?’

They had. Quite near the abbey, so that they would see the Princess going in and the married woman emerging, with friendly people around them, all as keen to see the happy couple as were the Coburns and Morrises.

‘I’d like a walk,’ Snip said presently, but it was impossible, so he and Nell paraded up and down in front of the crowd to stretch their legs while Hester and Matthew guarded their small piece of pavement.

‘You’re bearing up fine,’ Nell whispered as they walked. ‘Even on the train you were fine and it was hellishly crowded, far worse than I thought it would be.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Morris. The train was trying, I admit, but here I’m out of doors and with you – what more could I ask?’

‘A seat? A place in the abbey? A proper cup of tea, not one from a flask filled more than twenty-four hours ago?’

Snip laughed and squeezed her shoulders. ‘Let’s buy some roasted chestnuts – there’s a vendor farther up. At least it’s a change from curling sandwiches!’

‘They’re coming … hear the murmur as they draw level with each section of the crowd? Well, I reckon he’ll be pleased, he’s been waiting for long enough! Oh, Billy, look! She’s just one big smile and a little hand and something sparkly on dark hair. Oh, Billy, doesn’t she look
happy
?’

The shouts from the crowd were deafening, but Nell put her head close to Snip’s and breathed her words straight into his ear.

‘The dress, Snip – she looks like a perfect lily, so small and straight. It’s simple, perfect. I thought it would be all frills and lace, but it’s far, far more beautiful than that – Norman Hartnell got it just right! She’s smiling, smiling as if she’ll never stop … how
happy
she looks.’

‘She looked straight at us, at me,’ Hester said to Matthew. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful young girl? Purity personified … oh Matt, I’m so happy I could cry. I feel as if she and Nell and me … as if we’re all a part of the same thing, somehow. Aren’t I silly?’

Matthew’s arm tightened around her waist. ‘No, not silly. You’re just feeling what every woman in this crowd feels this moment, I reckon. Every woman in the country, very likely. She’s a nice kid, I reckon, just like our Nell.’

The ceremony was over; rings and vows had been exchanged, and Huntie, sitting in Poet’s Corner to be near but not too near, mopped tears from her cheeks and smiled encouragingly at her pupil’s slender, straight back.

It had been wonderful, absolutely wonderful, the most moving experience of her life … and Lilibet had done so well and was so radiant as she turned to walk back down the aisle.

Outside, they waited. The patient men and women, the children, who had come to share this great day with their Princess. But none of them had been as patient as the Princess herself, sharing her life because that was her destiny, caring for the people who, one day, would be hers.

The King looked worn out. He had worked – and worried – too hard for years; now he was paying the price in ill-health and exhaustion. Miss Huntley found that she was praying for his life, praying that his life would be a long one, because he was a gentle, loving man who had done nothing but good for all of that life so far.

Elizabeth must have some time for herself, now, Miss Huntley told herself fiercely. She has cast off childish things, she and her husband are on their own. I pray it may be many, many years before her next great moment comes.

18

‘HAVE SOME MORE
marmalade, darling; you can’t imagine me actually making marmalade, I don’t suppose, but I assure you it was all my own work. I’m becoming tremendously domesticated – I’m still a member of the Women’s Institute, though I have to drive out to the village for meetings, but ever since the war I’ve really appreciated what they’ve taught me and now I’m putting it into practice for myself.’

Anna and her mother, both still in their dressing gowns, were sitting over a leisurely breakfast in Constance’s latest flat. It was on Ipswich Road in Norwich; a top-floor front in a large, red-brick block, and considering how difficult it was to find accommodation, Anna considered that Constance had surpassed herself in acquiring it, to say nothing of furnishing it with beautiful old pieces bought at country-house sales or from tiny junk shops tucked away in the older parts of the city.

Constance was looking good too. Sitting on the small, gilt chair on the other side of her walnut dining table, with her hair once more beautifully cut and delicately tinted, she had shed fifteen years, Anna considered, since she had left JJ. It was difficult to believe that the slim, elegant woman in the scarlet silk dressing gown writhing with black and gold dragons could be one and the same as the raddled, lack-lustre woman who had told her about JJ’s continuing infidelities half-a-dozen years ago. Now, Constance looked nearer thirty-five than fifty, but what was even more important she looked happy and fulfilled.

‘Anna, why are you staring? I suppose you think it’s decadent to loll around in a dressing gown, but Saturday breakfast is my treat; on every other day of
the week I’m in my office by nine, but on Saturdays I slouch and sip coffee and eat toast and don’t even think about advertising, or my favourite customers or my key accounts. Isn’t that an admission for you?’

Constance was an advertising executive for an up-and-coming local firm and enjoyed every moment of her busy life. But now Anna smiled at her mother and spread marmalade on a fresh round of toast.

‘If you’re decadent in a dressing gown, I am too,’ Anna pointed out. ‘If I stared it was because I think you’re looking stunning, Mummy – that housecoat is so elegant you could entertain royalty in it and no one would raise an eyebrow. And don’t fish for compliments, you know the marmalade is delicious, but it would be even nicer with more coffee. Any left in the pot?’

Constance chuckled. ‘You’re just like me, dear, good coffee’s like a drug; we need it to get going in the mornings. Many thanks for bringing that big bag of beans from France, incidentally; what a clever present! Now tell me, how’s life? Any fascinating Frenchmen courting my little girl?’

Anna, with a mouthful of toast, merely shook her head. She had been living in Paris and working for UNESCO for the past four years and had been out with several ‘fascinating Frenchmen’, but none of them had remained fascinating for long enough to interest Constance.

‘No? Anna darling, you haven’t let Daddy and me put you off marriage, have you? Because we had our good times … and anyway, all men aren’t like JJ, but you know that, of course. You’ve had some lovely boyfriends, I liked all the ones I met.’

Anna swallowed her mouthful and took a deep breath.

‘You don’t still believe that marriage is the be-all and end-all of existence do you, Mummy? Because just look around you – look in the mirror, come to that! You’re a
happy and successful woman, and I see no man lurking around the flat.’

The sunshine streaming in through the window made the marmalade glow like another small sun and gilded Constance’s hair to platinum, but it also made her blink so she leaned forward and drew the heavy brocade curtain half across the window, then leaned back once more and contemplated her daughter across the tablecloth.

‘You’re quite right, I’m far happier now than I was when JJ and I lived together. But you and Jamie are my
raison d’être
, Anna. Without you, my life would be pretty hollow.’