Marriages are Made in Bond Street Page 7

  ‘First, chase up the After Marriage Fee from existing clients who are about to tie the knot. War will sharpen the focus of everyone who is thinking of marrying – the uncertainty will make them want to get on with it quickly.’

  ‘Not a good reason for getting married, but you’re right. We can’t force them to marry, though, and in any case a few After Marriage Fees won’t be enough to keep us going, will they? We must get more new clients or we’ll have to close down, won’t we?’

  ‘Over my dead body!’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do? More publicity? The press have been very good to us ever since we opened. I’m sure we could persuade them to give us a bit of extra help now. What do you think, Heather?’

  Mary spoke tentatively, for she knew that Heather had reservations. When Mary had first suggested, in early April, that they contact the newspapers, Heather had been alarmed and argued against it. Mary had been amazed, but came to realize that there must be some reason for Heather, usually so poised and commanding, to be apprehensive. She had pressed her friend, who eventually confided that when she was eight, one of her cousins had been kidnapped. Her family had been horrified by the publicity about the case, for fear that the girl might have been raped (though nobody uttered that fearful word), and that the press would report the whole story. If they did, neither the girl nor the family would ever be able to escape the notoriety. The child had been rescued and restored, unharmed, but the family still recoiled from the memory, judging the press as terrible people, to be avoided at all costs. The prejudice had stuck in Heather’s mind. She left the journalists to Mary, whose turn of phrase delighted them, as in August when her stout defiance of critics of the Bureau was reported: ‘Miss Oliver considers she is performing a national service, and adds that if she established a bureau in Germany Hitler would see it in the right light.’

  Soon Heather began to accept that the situation was critical, and that her reason for disliking the press was irrational. She could also see that Mary was very popular with the journalists, and that their articles brought results. So with Heather’s blessing, in the dark days of September 1939 Mary assiduously wooed journalists as if they were potential husbands. She buttered them up, flattered them, sympathized with them (she was a devoted listener), got to know their personal histories and genuinely liked them. They responded to her cajolery and to the story of the Marriage Bureau: a wonderful tale of imagination and initiative, a welcome contrast to the unremitting gloom of war stories. They delivered a fresh round of positive stories featuring the two charming match-makers, their novel ideas and their marvellous success.

  Mary also devised a small brochure to help people understand what the Bureau was doing. She wrote:

  POSSIBLY YOU MAY be feeling a little uneasy at having this brochure in your possession. The English still regard marriage in rather a sentimental light, and forget that in most Continental countries it is rightly considered as a contract of such importance that it is carefully arranged – not left to chance.

  THERE IS NO reason to feel ashamed because you want to marry the right person. Indeed, you should congratulate yourself on your good sense in trying to make sure that you have every opportunity of meeting and getting to know the type of person whom you would like to marry. You would consider yourself unwise and improvident if you did not make provision for other aspects of your life – how much more important is this question of making the right match!

  THE MARRIAGE BUREAU will put you in touch only with people who fulfil the qualifications you demand. Afterwards it is entirely for you to decide whether you want to marry – for, needless to say, mutual attraction and affection cannot be guaranteed! We cannot play the part of Cupid, we can only introduce you to people who have already expressed a wish to marry somebody like yourself.

  TWO SENSIBLE PEOPLE who know what they want are introduced to each other. If they are not attracted – if friendship does not ‘ripen into love’, as the saying goes – no harm is done, and it is our business to try again on behalf of both our clients until they are satisfied.

  Slowly, thanks to press articles and Mary’s reasonable and reassuring words, the Bureau welcomed more new clients, including increasing numbers of foreigners. Heather and Mary were legally obliged to report to the police any non-Allied potential clients, who might be enemy aliens: fifth-columnists trying to infiltrate themselves by marrying an English spouse. Most of the foreign applicants were men, though more and more women, often Austrian, turned up at the Bureau, anxious to marry an Englishman and thereby avoid internment and the restrictions on aliens. The police were concerned about illegal marriages, such as one, reported in the press, made by a father of eight whose hapless wife discovered that he had bigamously married a German Jewess. So Mary and Heather sent off to Scotland Yard details of foreign nationals who applied, but they seldom discovered whether those they had interviewed, but who subsequently did not register, had been interned, or had simply decided not to proceed with the Bureau.

  One day, Mary interviewed a forceful man who exuded both a seductive magnetism and a sinister aura she found disturbing and threatening. When he had telephoned to make an appointment Mary had puzzled about his accent: he spoke English fluently, but with odd hints of an American twang – and surely a guttural, Germanic note crept in too. The minute she set eyes on him she felt instinctively that there was something false about him, something ‘actor-y’, which put her on her guard.

  Clicking his heels together and nodding a little bow, the well-dressed, stoutish visitor held out his hand and gave Mary’s such a firm shake that she winced. He produced his registration form, already filled in in clear, bold handwriting and, without waiting for her to ask questions, proceeded to fire facts at her as if shooting bullets at a target. He was a German count. He had been born and brought up in America. He was an insurance agent. He was fifty-six. His many English friends had begged him to leave Germany. In 1938. He was passionately attached to England. He was residing at the Hampden Club in Marylebone. He was buying a flat in Knightsbridge. He had divorced his wife. He had a son living in South America. He had a good income and wide interests. He wanted to marry a well-bred lady of good family, figure and income. She must have been previously married.

  Mary mouthed ‘Yes’ and ‘Certainly’ and ‘Naturally’ and ‘How interesting’ as the Count fired on, ignoring her. When he came to a halt he thrust his head forward questioningly and switched on a dazzling smile.

  ‘I felt as if I was about to be interrogated,’ Mary recalled. ‘He unnerved me. I felt certain that he was acting, especially when he smiled at me: his lips curved, but his eyes did not follow suit: they were cold and hard and dangerous, like little lumps of coal. I stalled, told him I would contact some ladies on his behalf and write to him when I had a positive reply.’

  Mary reported to Heather, who immediately dispatched the Count’s details to Scotland Yard. Three days later, a high-up friend in the Yard informed Heather, confidentially, that the man had spied for Germany in the Great War, but had somehow offended his government and so was persona non grata in both Germany and England. The high-up thanked Heather for helping to put the Count where he should be: in prison.

  One foreigner considered safe by the police was ‘the Sheikh’. But once again, Mary’s bones urged her to beware. In her view, the police must have been so baffled by the Sheikh that in the end they gave up. He claimed to have been born Lebanese, of a French Christian father and a Syrian Mohammedan mother who moved to England in 1890, when he was only ten, and got themselves British passports. He did not know why they left Lebanon. He was fluent in French, English and Arabic, so he worked as a translator, then fought in the British Army in the Great War. He survived the trenches, though he was vague about that period, and then moved to Wales.

  ‘I asked him, why Wales?’ said Mary. ‘But he was elusive, just like Cedric Thistleton was about his background – remember, Heather?’

  Heather did indeed remember, but was more perturbe
d by the Sheikh than by Cedric, who had been all bluff and self-important bluster but basically harmless. Though she trusted Mary’s bones when they sensed a good introduction, she placed less reliance on her friend’s intuitions of dark and possibly unsavoury secrets, putting them down to over-sensitivity. But there was something about the Sheikh Heather could not put her finger on, something oddly disturbing. Perhaps it was just his unfathomably black eyes, hooded like a hawk’s. Otherwise, his appearance was faultless: of medium height, clad in an expensively well-tailored suit, a large red rose in his buttonhole and a matching silk handkerchief in his top pocket, his surprisingly small feet shod in fine leather brogues. Though a shade saturnine, his face was attractive, his features sharply boned, his nose a curved hook – like an eagle’s beak, thought Heather, who found herself constantly reminded of a bird of prey.

  The Sheikh spoke perfect English with an engaging little lilt – no doubt acquired in Wales, presumed Heather. He bowed to the match-makers as he made his entrance, kissed their hands, disposed himself in the chair and lit a black and gold cigarette. The aromatic fumes rapidly filled the small office, mingling with the faint whiff of attar of roses he exuded. Heather and Mary observed his coal-black hair (suspiciously uniform in colour, judged Mary), sleeked down with Brylcreem, and his gleaming white teeth (a fine set of false snappers, thought Heather), curiously at odds with his fingernails, which were unattractively over-long and edged with grime.

  The Sheikh’s wife had died some years ago, for reasons he declined to give (nothing about the Sheikh was ever glowingly clear). Now he wanted to marry a very smart lady who would entertain his guests in style. ‘She must be charming and sophisticated,’ he explained, waving his cigarette perilously near Mary’s face, causing her to cough. ‘Alas, such ladies do not exist in Wales. They are all Welsh there,’ he added cuttingly.

  Mary, proud of her part-Welsh ancestry, bristled, but kept silent while the Sheikh enumerated his other requirements: ‘It is imperative that my bride is English, elegant, slim and beautifully dressed, by couturiers.’ He winced in aesthetic pain as he added, ‘Not clothes off the peg, NO! NEVER! She must also be without children, not even grown-up ones, for I am unable to abide children of any age. She must be not a day over forty-five, and not an inch over five foot three. It is also vital that she is well born, an aristocrat or at least of your noble upper class. She must have knowledge of the world and its ways. Finally, she must have an excellent income to match my own.’

  Despite much skilful probing, the match-makers failed to establish either the size or the source of the Sheikh’s income. As with everything about him, the subject was mysteriously cloudy. He was enigmatic, even evasive, as he deflected Heather’s questions onto yet more requirements of his dream wife: though a sophisticate, she must not be an entirely urban lady. She must like the country, birds and animals. ‘I do not mean that she should be adoring of dogs or dedicated to horses,’ he elaborated, ‘as so many of you English ladies are, but only that she should have an affection for our friends who are not human, but who are as deserving of our love as many people. Perhaps more deserving.’

  ‘That’s easy, at least,’ declared Mary to Heather after he had left, ‘since so many of our female clients describe themselves on their registration forms as “fond of animals and children”. Only the British put animals and children in the same category,’ she added, with uncharacteristic acidity.

  Heather and Mary picked out a Mrs Pratt-Evans, a widow, barely five feet tall, extremely smart, expensively preserved, beautifully coiffured and manicured, and something over forty (unclear how much, probably quite a lot; but luckily her daintiness suggested youthfulness). She loved music, the countryside, fashion, theatre-going and, especially, animals. She lived in London and in her husband’s family home in Shropshire, a convenient thirty miles from the Sheikh.

  Heather wrote to Mrs Pratt-Evans, describing the Sheikh, listing his interests: languages, country life, fine porcelain, the animals and birds which he owned. ‘Oh, I speak Spanish and French, and I am utterly convinced that I shall adore his pets,’ she gushed down the telephone, ‘for I adore all God’s creatures! I seem to understand them, you see, and they will do anything I require of them. My little pooches would die for me if I asked them to. Isn’t that too divine?’

  Mary was quite sure that Mrs Pratt-Evans had no more love of animals nor influence over them than Heather, who greatly disliked all four-legged friends except for Blanche, her own beloved Peke. She was equally sure that Mrs Pratt-Evans was desperate to marry again, knew her chances were diminishing daily, and would claim anything at all that might help her to capture a suitable man.

  Mrs Pratt-Evans had been married to a Welshman with whom she had emigrated to Uruguay, where he ran a ranch until a bull went berserk and gored him so badly that he slowly expired in a great pool of blood, witnessed by his mesmerized wife. She had recounted this shocking story to the two match-makers in such a dispassionate way, as though his frightful death had been no more than a tiresome interruption to her ordered life, that they felt sure she could hold her own with such a forceful character as the Sheikh.

  Mrs Pratt-Evans and the Sheikh exchanged several letters before he invited her to luncheon, sending her directions. After days of indecision she settled on a simple floral frock, perhaps a trifle girlish, but it fitted her lightsome mood of excited optimism. She applied her make-up with exceptional care, coaxed her slightly thinning hair into a becoming bob, topped by a delicious little veiled hat, and drove off humming happily in near-ecstatic anticipation.

  Expecting a sheikh to reside in a grand mansion with sensational views, Mrs Pratt-Evans was disturbed to find herself following ever-narrower, overgrown roads before arriving in a bleak valley. She stumbled up a rutted path between neglected flower beds, avoiding two chained dogs which growled menacingly as she knocked on the door of a small, down-at-heel cottage. She perked up at the appearance of an elderly retainer, though he was dressed in flowing white robes and looked her up and down with an inscrutable yet somehow critical eye. He addressed her in fierce tones, in a language which might have been Welsh or Arabic. Flummoxed, Mrs Pratt-Evans nodded and smiled nervously, clutching her handbag in both hands and extending one foot over the threshold.

  ‘No!’ shouted the retainer in recognizable English, gesticulating wildly towards the side of the building, from where the Sheikh suddenly materialized, as if Aladdin had rubbed his lamp.

  Encouraged by Mary and Heather’s glowing description of the Sheikh’s style and suavity, Mrs Pratt-Evans had pictured an elegant, mature man, perhaps wearing sharply creased cream flannels with a silk shirt and cravat, who at first sight of her would fall into a stunned silence of worshipful disbelief. He would be enraptured by such a vision of delight, so miraculous a blessing, a dream of surpassing elegance: his ideal bride.

  But advancing towards her was a scruffy man dressed in a grubby nightgown, carrying a tin bucket in each hand, his shoulders hunched to support a large bird whose glittering eyes regarded her with such malevolence that she recoiled as from the devil incarnate. Parts of the infernal creature’s body showed pink where its feathers were moulting, and from its beak there dangled the remains of a baby chick, its dear golden fluffy little body streaked with gore and falcon dribble – for the hideous carnivore was indeed a falcon, such as had recently terrified Mrs Pratt-Evans during a visit to the zoo. She paled and stepped backwards, and when the bird uttered a great screech, letting fly the pathetic remains of its feast, unfolded its disintegrating wings and launched itself from its human perch towards her, she fell to the ground in a faint.

  As she revived, Mrs Pratt-Evans felt hands round her waist and chest, pulling her up. Glancing down at her torn frock, spattered with unspeakable remnants of baby chick, she wrenched herself free and fled to her car, abandoning her hat which had flown off. Gripping the steering wheel in hands trembling with shock, horror and disgust, she ground the gears and roared away, watched impassively by the She
ikh, his retainer and the glassy-eyed bird.

  Two days later, Mrs Pratt-Evans stalked into the Bureau.

  ‘Why, Mrs Pratt-Evans!’ Mary sang out. ‘Did you have a delicious luncheon with the Sheikh?’

  ‘I had no luncheon.’ Mrs Pratt-Evans spat the words out. ‘But luncheon was indeed had.’

  Mary looked puzzled.

  ‘Luncheon was partaken of not by me, nor even by the Sheikh, as you call him, though I call him a complete charlatan. Luncheon was partaken of by a foul, no doubt pestiferous, disgusting, diabolical, repellent, mouldering, cruel-eyed, savage, utterly ghastly bird. A bird of prey, to be precise. Or rather, the devil in avian form. The property of his hellish, filthy, accursed, be-nightgowned, utterly monstrous master, the Sheikh of Araby or Llandudno or wherever he is from.’ Mrs Pratt-Evans paused in her tirade, searching for more excoriating adjectives to hurl at the bird and its owner.

  Stunned by her client’s vehemence, and still at a loss as to its cause, Mary persisted. ‘But did the Sheikh not give you luncheon?’

  Now near-hysterical, Mrs Pratt-Evans poured out the entire saga. Mary was shocked and at first disbelieving, but the lady was so emphatic, so precise in her descriptions, from the Sheikh’s dirty nightie to the bloodstains on her frock, that eventually Mary came to believe her.

  At last Mrs Pratt-Evans departed, leaving a depressed and deflated Mary to recount the hair-raising drama to her fellow match-maker. Heather was normally much more cavalier and contained than her feelingful friend, but the more she heard of the Sheikh the more concerned she became for the reputation of the Bureau. She wrote an appeasing letter to Mrs Pratt-Evans, explaining that the police had cleared the Sheikh, that she was very obliged to her valued client for bringing the matter to her attention, and would waive any After Marriage Fee that became due – as Heather hoped it would – from Mrs Pratt-Evans. She received a grudging but mollified reply.