Page 56 of The Sapphire Child
‘Me too,’ Yvonne said, laughing.
Stella moved aside for other guests to greet the newly-weds. Jimmy winked at her. He was beaming. She’d never seen her brother looking quite so smart, in a new suit with his round face freshly shaven and brown hair gleaming with brilliantine. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
‘Settling down at last,’ she teased. ‘You’ve made Ma and Pa very happy.’
‘It’ll be you next, Stella,’ he said with a grin and a nod towards Monty Gibson. ‘Can’t keep him hanging on forever.’
‘You’re one to talk.’ Stella nudged him and laughed.
She glanced at Monty and sighed inwardly. It would be so much easier to marry Monty than put up with her family’s constant questions about her courtship with the Gibson boy. The pressurefor Stella to marry had increased since her cousin Ada had married Monty’s twin brother Clive the previous year. Monty was passably handsome, despite a crooked nose from a cricket injury that marked him out from his twin. He was sociable and had a steady job as an engineer in the Public Works Department. He didn’t seem as ambitious as Clive, who was gaining promotions in the Posts and Telegraphs Department, but that didn’t bother Stella. He was thirty years old and she was twenty-six. Recently her mother was beginning to despair of her.
‘It’s high time you were married and making a home of your own. If you’re not to have a vocation like nursing, then marriage is the next best thing. Surely you don’t want to end up an old maid?’
Only her father defended her reluctance to get engaged. ‘Sweet Pea will decide in her own good time. If we nag and nag, she will run off to sea with a captain and never come back.’
‘Charlie, you do talk nonsense!’ Her mother couldn’t help laughing. Her father was good at defusing people’s bad tempers.
But today was Jimmy and Yvonne’s special day and Stella was happy to be in their shadow. An hour ago, the young couple had married in StJoseph’s Roman Catholic Church, with Yvonne’s uncle from Lahore leading her down the aisle. Now the guests – Jimmy’s family outnumbering Yvonne’s tenfold – were being greeted in the hotel foyer, handed a drink and shown into the dining room.
Stella’s parents had gone to great lengths to decorate the hotel dining room with bunting and flowers, and the tables were groaning with food. All the residents had been invited to the wedding feast. Ansom was dressed in old-fashioned tailcoat and spats, while Fritwell was squeezed into army uniform. Baroness Hester was wearing a green velvet gown – rather frayed at the collar – and an eye-catching headdress of green and orange feathers. MrTamang had taken it upon himself to be in charge of pushing MrsShankleyin her wheelchair so that Stella didn’t have to worry about looking after the elderly missionary.
‘Welcome one and all!’ Charlie greeted the wedding guests, his round face creasing in a wide smile. ‘It is a great honour and a privilege to be your host.’
Stella was glad to see her father was wearing the red bow tie with the black polka dots that she had brought him back from Scotland over five years ago and that he only wore on very special occasions.
The Lomaxes had been invited, but Esmie had sent a message to say that Tom had come down with influenza and couldn’t travel. They had sent a canteen of silver cutlery in a beautiful walnut box as a wedding present. She knew how her parents – her father in particular – had been disappointed by the news. Privately, Stella had wondered if it was just Tom’s reluctance to travel that kept them away. His nerves had been playing up this past summer, ever since they had got word from Tibby that Andrew had decided not to go to university but to join the army instead.
Both Andrew and his friend Noel had been accepted for officer training and would now have already been at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst for nearly three months.
Tom had been deeply upset by the news. ‘The bloody fool! I bet Lydia’s been filling his head full of nonsense about honour and sacrifice.’
‘Maybe he just wants to prove that he can be a soldier too,’ Esmie had dared to suggest.
‘Well, it doesn’t impress me,’ Tom had railed. ‘I’d have told him that soldiering just perpetuates war – and warfare is a terrible thing.’
Against Esmie’s advice, Tom had written a hasty letter to Andrew telling him not to throw away his chance of doing a degree. A university education would be a far better attainmentthan blindly following his Lomax ancestors into the army as cannon fodder. The indignant reply he had received a month later was a further blow. Tom had been very upset by it. Esmie had later shown it to Stella.
... I’m sorry if you think so little of me that you believe I haven’t thought long and hard about my future.
You have been out of Scotland for too long, Dad, otherwise you would know that there is a real fear of Hitler. There is talk of war.
How could I possibly put my studies first? I have talked to many people about this – not just Mamma and Grandmamma – and have had nothing but encouragement. Even Auntie Tibby says it is entirely my decision.
I have also been talking at length with an old army friend of yours and Mamma’s. He’s recently been invalided out of the cavalry but spent six years out in India – the North West Frontier – just like you. He sends his regards. His name is Captain Dickie Mason and he’s now living just down the coast from here in Berwick.
I’d hoped that you might have been proud of me, but I intend to join up anyway.
Your (not so) obedient son,
Andrew
‘He seems very determined,’ Stella had said. She couldn’t help being impressed by Andrew’s passionate conviction that he was doing the right thing.
Esmie had confided, ‘It’s not so much Andy’s determination to join the army as the mention of Dickie Mason.’
‘Why, who is he?’
Esmie had given her a harrowed look. ‘He’s the young officer that Lydia had an affair with – he’s the main reason Tom’s marriage to her fell apart. He’s furious that she’s introduced him to Andrew as an old friend of his.’
