Marriages are Made in Bond Street Read online

  ‘Then her hair started to change colour. First it went from grey to mousy-brown, and from there to a fierce chestnut, the colour of a spaniel, but dry and woolly, not sleek and shiny like a dog’s, and the next week it was a strange orangey-red carrot colour. Until the chestnut stage it had still been done in a tight little bun, but between then and the carrot stage she had it cut off and permed. She appeared one morning crowned with an alarming frizz of very stiff, tight, carrot curls, sticking out at all angles. It put me in mind of an unexpectedly coloured lavatory brush. I gasped when she opened the door, but as usual she didn’t say a word, just made for her chair and attacked the typing.’

  To begin with, Mary and Heather were pleased, because they thought their secretary was enjoying her job, and that it was doing her good and making her feel more attractive. But as the changes became more eye-catching, and clients started to look shocked when they saw her, Heather wanted to say something. She didn’t like to criticize, though, because both she and Mary thought it would be impertinent.

  ‘If she had been our own age,’ reflected Mary, ‘we would have been bolder, but as it was, we just tried to whisk clients past her very fast, talking to them nineteen to the dozen, so that they didn’t have a chance to stare at her.’

  Early one morning a very rich client of the Bureau, an industrialist in Birmingham, rang and said curtly that he had a serious complaint to make, so would one or other of the partners kindly meet him for a drink after work that evening?

  Mary and Heather fell into a flutter of anxiety. They had had nothing but very minor complaints – a letter not arriving in time, a client turning up late at a meeting – and Mr Baldwin was not only a very nice but also a very important client. He was forty-nine, a widower who had hesitated for weeks before plucking up the courage to come to the Bureau. Despite his huge wealth he was a modest, quiet, polite man, a proper gentleman. Heather, who had interviewed him, was terribly keen to find him the right wife, and to make him feel at ease with the process. She had so far introduced him to two candidates, both of whom he had liked and remained on cordial terms with. His letters had been considerate, courteous and approving: ‘I deeply appreciate the confidential nature of your ingenious operation, which as you know is of great importance to me and for which I am most grateful.’

  ‘Mr Baldwin is my client,’ pronounced Heather, ‘but I’d like you to come with me, please, dear Mary. Let’s make ourselves as soignée as possible. You don’t really need much make-up with that complexion of yours, but try a little more this evening. Here, have some of my lipstick: we need war paint for this skirmish!’

  Heather dabbed her own and Mary’s wrists with her favourite Gin Fizz scent and pinned an elegant flowered hat with a flirty little veil on top of her chignon. Emboldened, the two match-makers stepped into the bar of Brown’s Hotel with a confident air. But they had had all day to wonder what on earth could have happened, and to worry themselves to distraction. Mr Baldwin must have realized how upset they were, for he settled them in deep armchairs (Mary’s feet did not reach the floor, she was so tiny) and gave them each the strongest G&T they had ever tasted – strong even by Heather’s standards – before launching into his cautionary tale.

  Mr Baldwin disclosed to his match-makers that a woman had written him a very good letter telling him that his name and particulars had been given to her by the Marriage Bureau. She was a widow of forty-two living in London, having moved there from the Midlands in 1928, when she married. She wrote that she had no children, a very good income as her husband had been wealthy, lived a pleasant life meeting friends, going to concerts and theatres, but that she was at times lonely, and although she enjoyed all the activity in London she yearned to return to her home territory. She sounded intelligent, pleasant, friendly, unassuming, and not a gold-digger (what had finally driven him to the Bureau was a spate of impoverished Birmingham widows who had descended on him from the very day his wife died). So he agreed to meet her. Her name was Mrs Gladys Robertson.

  ‘She’s not one of our clients!’ exclaimed Mary. ‘She can’t be! I remember all the names!’

  ‘Mary’s right,’ agreed Heather. ‘What was she like?’

  Mr Baldwin grimaced. ‘She was awful. You cannot imagine how awful. You remember that I asked you to introduce me to ladies in their late thirties or early forties? Well, this, this . . . female . . . was fifty-five if she was a day. But her age was the least of the horrors. She was made up like a tart (forgive me, ladies), with blood-red lipstick smeared all over her mouth, heavy white powder on her face except for round red clown blobs on her cheeks, eyes she could hardly see out of, the lids were so weighed down with green muck and some kind of waxy-looking black stuff on her lashes. Her hair looked like a ginger tom-cat who’d seen the vet bearing down on him with a castrating knife (forgive me again, ladies) and had leapt in terror onto the top of her head.

  ‘She was squashed into a bright green shiny dress, much too tight, with a very low neckline filled with a cheap flashy necklace, and a nasty bit of moth-eaten musquash round her shoulders. Her legs were encased in those black stockings full of holes – what do you call them? Fishnets? And she tottered on her shoes, which had arrow-shaped toes and ludicrously high thin heels. She had a hideous old handbag from which she took a bottle of scent and poured some onto her wrists. The smell was so sweet and at the same time sour and musty that it made my stomach heave. And when she’d done that she ferreted around in the dreadful bag and got out the bloody lipstick (forgive me, ladies) and painted her mouth, as if it wasn’t dripping with gore already. She did all this in front of me in the bar where we met. I had to buy her a drink, then I turned on my heel and left. I didn’t care what happened to her. If she’d gone out into the street and been treated like a whore (forgive me, forgive me, ladies) I wouldn’t have helped her – that’s what she was asking for. How in heaven’s name did she get to know about me?’

  All through this dreadful saga Mary and Heather had been thinking the same thoughts and coming to the identical conclusion: the Perfect Secretary would have to go. They explained to Mr Baldwin, apologizing with every other sentence they spoke. Very luckily he sympathized and took their side, and for the rest of the evening he regaled them with stories of tricky and recalcitrant employees of his factory. They parted the very best of friends and, to Heather’s particular delight, a week later he met a perfect candidate, a charming widow of forty-three who, as it turned out, had known and liked Mr Baldwin’s wife, but had been too reticent to contact him after her death for fear of being thought grasping. She was his match in money, modesty and simple niceness, which they both recognized in each other the minute they met.

  Fear of war looming made Mr Baldwin and his beloved act quickly: they married a few weeks later. The Bureau sent them a congratulatory telegram, ambiguously worded so that nobody at the reception would guess how they had met. In return came the sweetest thank you letter, with a cheque, a huge bouquet of red roses (‘Bloody red!’ grinned Mr Baldwin on the telephone) and a little white and silver box containing two slices of wedding cake.

  As for the Perfect Secretary, Heather and Mary both jibbed at the prospect of dismissing her. Mary wanted them to toss a coin to see who would have the unsavoury task, but Heather refused and they agreed that it would be a joint effort.

  The interview was painful but brief. The Perfect Secretary remained mute throughout, but she knew she had been caught red-handed, and when Heather and Mary stopped speaking she picked up her handbag, put on her coat, hat and gloves, and walked out without a word or a backward glance. Heather sent on what she was owed in wages, and thankfully she faded out for ever.

  Mary was very cautious when choosing the next secretary; but she struck lucky with Miss Blunt. ‘I hesitated about Miss Blunt because she was so terribly young, but there was something so grown-up, so reassuring about her, she positively glowed with competence and calm, and she had the most captivating smile imaginable. So I took a chance, and am eternally grateful
that I did for she turned out to be really perfect for us. She started as a junior at 30s a week, for she was only just sixteen, but her typing was as good as her predecessor’s, and she developed the most extraordinary filing system which could produce anything you wanted in a matter of seconds. She always seemed to know by instinct the people to whom we wanted to talk on the telephone, and the ones we wanted to avoid.’

  Mary heard the superbly efficient Miss B. flummoxed only once, when a man telephoned: ‘I hope you have someone who might suit me. I’m keen on fellatio.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Miss Blunt eagerly. ‘That’s stamp-collecting, isn’t it? Yes, I am sure we can help you!’

  The caller promptly put the telephone down, leaving Miss Blunt perplexed and wondering anxiously if she had somehow offended him.

  Miss Blunt stayed on as a full-blown secretary at £3 a week until after war was declared, when she was called up to work in a Ministry. She grew achingly bored because there was very little to do, and she was so efficient that she could do a day’s work in two hours, so she used to go back to Bond Street and type the Bureau’s letters in her lunch hour. She would fly in, dash off scores of letters, and rush back to the Ministry, waving her sandwich and mouthing, ‘Goodbye! I’d better skedaddle! I’ll see you tomorrow!’

  Mary and Heather were growing practised in the art of interviewing and dealing with their many and varied clients. The grander, aristocratic ones tended to get on well with Heather, whose cool style they understood, while Mary’s warmth and sympathy particularly appealed to the poorer, humbler clients.

  In 1939 nobody, rich or poor, was used to talking much about themselves, their feelings and hopes, especially to someone they didn’t know. Nor were they used to filling in forms about personal matters, so the Marriage Bureau’s registration form had to be short, asking only for dry facts such as name, age, occupation and marital status, which did not provide much insightful information to the interviewer. The two match-makers grew adept at encouraging applicants and making them feel relaxed – sometimes so relaxed that they poured everything out without a pause. ‘Awful talker,’ wrote Mary as she interviewed a middle-aged woman who bent her ear for an hour. ‘Extremely nice gent,’ she noted of an elderly widower, ‘charm. Talked but also listened. No left hand but is not incapacitated in the least by his disability. Wants to meet a lady who is interested in humanity, like himself.’

  Such comments helped to fix a client in the interviewer’s mind. So too did clients’ own descriptions of themselves and their desired spouse. ‘I have always lived in the country,’ stipulated a herdswoman of forty-one, ‘so do not want to meet an urban type. Someone unafraid of cows and dogs would suit, though I am not a dog worshipper, and with a thoughtful frame of mind and of course a dash of humour (NOT a parson).’ A South African gentleman farmer required ‘Good old family, good health, good rosy colour, auburn hair, not moon-faced, not bandy-legged, in fact good to look at. Not prudish. Not subject to mooch. Must be prepared to live in South Africa. Must have £800 unearned, free of tax. Ought to be mainly self-supporting after my decease.’

  Both match-makers felt that their desk was a useful aid to conducting an interview. ‘One becomes vaguely disembodied,’ recalled Heather, ‘like a hairdresser or a dentist, who traditionally receive the most astounding confidences. And one must be prepared for the unexpected – one man, as I entered the interviewing room, turned pale and exclaimed, “Good heavens, you’re the image of my fourth wife!”’

  Everyone who found their way to the Marriage Bureau got a sympathetic and constructive hearing from Heather or Mary, or from the new interviewer, who was needed by June. But the office was too small, even with the extra room, so when the match-makers heard of a good space to let on the first floor of a building just up the street, they hurried to look at it. The tenants had left London, along with many other people who could see that war was certain to break out. There were a few weeks left on the lease, which the tenants offered to Heather and Mary, saying that the landlord would surely be reasonable if they renewed the lease at its end. Heather’s solicitor friend Humphrey, who had been helpful from the outset, warned that they would be taking a bit of a chance, but thought the landlord was unlikely to be unreasonable, indeed that he would be thankful to have a tenant in such uncertain times. However, he advised spending the minimum on any equipment so that they could move quickly if necessary.

  Heather and Mary moved in, and were so delighted with their new premises that they became over-confident. They painted the walls, festooned the windows with lilac satin curtains which framed love-birds in a pretty cage, and laid pale carpet on the floor – only to find that all their friends swarmed in for coffee and a chat in such pleasant surroundings. Far worse, the landlord insisted on a new seven-year lease at a much higher rent.

  ‘What shall we do?’ wailed Heather to Humphrey. ‘We’re doing well, but not enough to afford the rent they want – it’s extortionate. And who knows what will happen when we’re at war, as we surely shall be? And we’ve got only three weeks left on the lease!’

  Humphrey advised sitting tight until they had found somewhere else. The lease was in Heather’s name so, in Humphrey’s opinion, if the landlord sent in the bailiffs, it should be easy to avoid them as it was only Heather they were out to catch: they were not interested in Mary or anyone else.

  There were two doors to the new office and a fire escape, so twice, warned by the invaluably quick-witted Miss Blunt that a bailiff was approaching, Heather managed to disappear just in time. Heather cast her mind back to what happened next. ‘After three weeks of living in a state of siege we found another suitable office, and I was due to sign the lease a few days later (I always did the business side, Mary not being interested). Vastly relieved, one evening after the staff had left we settled down to finish off the day’s mating – my favourite occupation! I adored plotting and planning who should be introduced to each other! We forgot to lock the door as we usually did, and suddenly it flew open and a respectable-looking man asked, “Miss Jenner?” Automatically, without thinking, I said, “Yes.” Without more ado he banged a writ down on my desk.

  ‘I was appalled, but tried to remain calm, and asked him to sit down and tell me what I was meant to do next. He chose a swivel chair which we had just bought secondhand, and as he leaned back in it something snapped, and he did a backwards somersault onto the floor (we never have had much luck with swivel chairs, somehow). We all rushed to help him up, and luckily he wasn’t hurt, in fact he softened up and confided that in his line of work he usually had a far more unpleasant reception. He dealt with really gruesome types, he said with some relish, robbers an’ crooks an’ wide boys of all ’orrible sorts, not nice ladies like our good selves, who he could tell hadn’t done nuffink properly wrong, bless our hearts: “Crikey, you two young ladies wouldn’t know how to do nuffink a person could rightly call wrong!” (Little does he know.) He said we should see our solicitor, so we did, and the blessed Humphrey saved us again.’

  A week later Heather signed the lease for a spacious office on the second floor of 124 New Bond Street. It had four rooms: a waiting room, a secretary’s office, and two front rooms, one for interviewing and one for doing the mating. This office became the permanent home of the Marriage Bureau. In 1939 Heather paid the princely sum of £35 4s 11d a quarter.

  Mary and Heather felt that the Bureau was now securely established in as safe a home as possible. But in August 1939 nothing was secure: everything was uncertain and potentially dangerous. Closing the office every evening Mary and Heather joined the people scurrying along Bond Street, their faces set and tense with anxiety.

  In September, Heather, who was virtually bilingual in French, was due to spend a weekend with friends in Le Touquet; but the news was so threatening that, reluctantly, she cancelled her ticket. Knowing that at any minute war would be declared, she and Mary went down to the River Hamble for a ‘last’ weekend’s sailing on a friend’s yacht. Heather reclined languidly whi
le Mary put all the knowledge she had gained as skipper of a forty-five-foot sloop to good use.

  It was a golden weekend, until Sunday, when it was devastatingly shattered by the Prime Minister’s grim announcement on the wireless:

  This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

  Mary and Heather knew that everything had changed irrevocably. ‘We sat down, feeling weak at the knees. Darkness was descending. The world as we knew it was at an end.’

  6

  New Clients Wanted – But No Spies, Please

  Britain’s declaration of war with Germany on 3 September 1939 had an immediate effect on the Marriage Bureau. People behaved as if frozen, so chilled by shock and hideous memories of the Great War that they were unable to act except robotically. Going to a Marriage Bureau was not a priority. The phenomenal rush of clients generated by the press publicity only five months earlier, when the Bureau opened, was not sustained. The papers were focused on the war, as too were people’s minds. Mary and Heather were deeply concerned.

  ‘I’ve just been to the bank,’ announced Heather, her voice darkening, ‘and our account contains precisely 11d. No pounds, not even any shillings. Just eleven pence. Mr Gentle was sympathetic but when his secretary put our statement on his desk he could not help but look sombre.’

  ‘Whatever shall we do?’ An anxious frown marred Mary’s pretty and usually smiling face.