Читать книгу A Mother’s Spirit - Anne Bennett - Страница 9

When Gloria arrived home in the summer of 1925, she had finished school for good. To celebrate, Brian bought her a car.

‘A Model T Ford,’ he told Joe. ‘And a snip at three hundred and fifty dollars. I don’t know why you don’t buy a car of your own. You said to me one time that you had a heap of money stashed away and you have had a rake of rises since then. Why don’t you spend some of it?’

‘I suppose if I am honest, sir, it is because I have been encouraged to be frugal all my life,’ Joe said.

‘What are you saving for?’ Brian asked, adding sarcastically, ‘Your marriage?’

‘Hardly, sir, with no one on the horizon.’

‘Well, your funeral then?’ Brian said. ‘And after your death you can have a great mausoleum built and people will come and look at it. “Joe Sullivan,” one will say to another, “Who was he now?”

‘“Well, now, I am not too sure,” will be the reply, “but he must be someone important to have this huge monument built.”’

Joe was laughing as he said, ‘Not that either, sir.’

‘Then what, for God’s sake?’ Brian said. ‘What is the point of saving for saving’s sake? As you are not prepared to enter the marriage stakes, there won’t even be a son or daughter to leave it all to after your day.’

Joe said nothing, but he knew there would never be a child for him, because he had given his heart to Gloria Brannigan. That was a great cross for him to bear, especially as he knew that all he could ever be to her was a friend.

Everyone, even the servants, had looked forward to Gloria coming home for good. Joe felt the same, but with some trepidation because he knew what a strain it had been living in the same house as her in the holidays, and yet he couldn’t wait to see her. She had always been like a ray of sunshine in the house and brought the whole place alive, and Joe knew that Brian and Norah looked forward to having their little girl back home again, where they thought she belonged.

But it was soon apparent to Joe that Gloria had changed. She had finally grown up, he supposed, but there was no trace of the fairly compliant child about the girl that faced them across the table on her first night home.

They had almost finished the meal when she said, ‘I am tired of learning now. I want to live a little and have some fun with my friends.’ She turned to her parents. ‘You have to realise that I am an adult now and entitled to more freedom.’

Joe could see her point, though he didn’t say so. He found while he could chat easily to Brian and Norah when Gloria wasn’t around, he was much more reticent with her there because her nearness affected him alarmingly.

He doubted that Brian or Norah noticed this for they were used to their daughter holding the floor. He too loved to hear her talk, the words tripping over her pretty little lips; he liked to watch her face light up and her eyes sparkle as she told them all some amusing tale, and to hear her tinkling laugh. To him she was a perfect being, truly beautiful, and although he knew it was futile to love her as he did, he couldn’t seem to help himself.

‘Really, women today want to have the same freedom as men,’ Gloria was saying.

Joe heard Norah’s sharp intake of breath, but Gloria either didn’t notice or didn’t care because she continued, ‘Many of my friends have older brothers and they have all sorts going on at the colleges they attend – ball games, crew races and college hops. Oh, the list is endless. They want us to go along and enjoy it and, really, why shouldn’t we?’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Brian exploded. ‘A little freedom is one thing, but this is nonsense, Gloria. You must see that.’

‘No, I don’t see that at all,’ Gloria stated flatly. ‘What’s wrong with what I said?’

‘This silly nonsense about being equal with men, for one thing. It isn’t how respectable women talk at all.’

‘And you can’t go to events at men’s colleges unchaperoned,’ Norah put in.

‘Will the pair of you stop being so old-fashioned and stuffy?’ Gloria cried in exasperation. ‘And if Joe will show me how to drive the car, how will you stop me going out when I want to?’

‘I could forbid it,’ Brian said.

‘Yes, Daddy,’ Gloria said. ‘And I could just as easily take no notice.’

Brian’s face went puce with temper, but Gloria ignored him. She leaped to her feet, saying as she did so, ‘Anyway, no time like the present. I’ll wait for you outside, Joe,’ and she disappeared out of the door.

She had put Joe into an intolerable position. He looked across the table to Brian and said, ‘What d’you want me to do, sir?’

Brian shook his head. He looked like a defeated man and Norah seemed horror-struck at the turn of events. Joe felt sorry for them both, though. In a way, he thought, they had brought it upon themselves because the two of them had indulged Gloria for far too long to start denying her things now and expect her to just accept it.

This was proved when Brian said, ‘I don’t know, Joe. I am not sure that I know anything any more. But you best start teaching Gloria to drive the car if she is so set on it. Better that than she takes it onto the roads without the least idea of how to drive it and ends up having an accident.’

Joe went, but he was cross with Gloria and within a few minutes of him getting in the car, she was aware of it.

‘You’re annoyed with me, aren’t you?’ she said.

Joe was too angry to be his usual cautious self when dealing with Gloria and he burst out, ‘Yes I am, Miss Gloria. You were totally inconsiderate of your parents’ feelings tonight and put me in a devil of a fix, and really the only crime they have ever committed is that of loving you too much.’

‘I know, Joe,’ Gloria said. ‘And I am sorry for them really. I am not completely heartless, but I know them, and if I’d shown any sign of weakness, they would have ground me down like they have in the past. Do you know, Joe, I had more freedom at the convent than I have ever been allowed here. What madness is that?’

Joe sighed. ‘And I have seen how frustrated you have got at times, but really it’s because your parents love you and don’t want anything to happen to you.’

‘I know, but, Joe, they are smothering me,’ Gloria cried.

‘Miss Gloria, they have missed you sorely when you have been away at school,’ Joe told her softly. ‘It isn’t unreasonable for them to want to spend some time with you now that you are finished with education. I bet that’s what they were looking forward to. Couldn’t this great declaration of your need for freedom have waited at least until you’d been home with your family a while, and then introduced it more slowly?’

‘I had to do it while I had the courage,’ Gloria said. Then, catching sight of the reproach on Joe’s face, she cried, ‘Don’t look at me that way. I talked it over with the girls and we all agreed that it was best to be straight with them from the start.’

‘Better for you,’ Joe said. ‘Sometimes you have to consider other people’s feelings too, and if necessary put them first for a change. Still,’ he said heavily, ‘I suppose the damage is done now.’

‘I suppose so,’ Gloria said, ‘though I promise that I will try and make amends, and one thing I can be grateful for anyway is that you have lost that artificial and stiff way you used to talk to me, even if you are taking me to task.’

‘Miss Gloria –’

‘Why did you change so completely, Joe?’ Gloria said. ‘I often wanted to ask you.’

Joe’s heart was hammering in his chest so loudly that he was surprised that Gloria couldn’t hear it, and the roof of his mouth felt unaccountably dry. He forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. ‘I changed because you changed,’ he said. ‘As you grew from a child to an adult, I could no longer treat you in the free and easy way that I once did.’

‘Oh, stuff and nonsense, Joe!’ Gloria exclaimed.

‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate.’

‘Joe …’

Joe knew that he had to put an end to the questions before he betrayed himself altogether and so he faced her and said, ‘Miss Gloria, do you want me to teach you to drive this car or don’t you, because we are losing all the light and there are many other things I could be doing?’

‘In other words,’ said Gloria, ‘end of conversation.’

‘Unless it concerns the motor car or driving, yes.’

Gloria had no desire to alienate Joe. To obtain true freedom she had to learn to drive the car and to do that she needed him. ‘All right then,’ she said. ‘You win. Show me what I have to do.’

Gloria soon picked up how to drive the Ford, and Joe was glad, for it had been agony for him to sit so close to her, to breathe in her heady perfume, longing sometimes to kiss those luscious lips. He was often truly uncomfortable because she did use the confines of the car to ask him personal questions and tease him in the way she had used to. He was glad when he felt that she had the confidence and skill to drive the New York streets in comparative safety.

After that there was no holding her at all. She’d be off to New York on vast shopping trips, returning with her friends, the car packed to the gunnels with bags full of clothes. They would often be wearing the new creations as they sat down to dinner, dresses made by the most fashionable designers, Chanel, Lanvin and Patou.

The girls were inspired by the styles of stars of the cinema screen, such as Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford, which they’d discuss endlessly and in glowing terms, and would scrutinise the fashion magazines like Vogue, or Queen or Harper’s Bazaar to be sure they were up to the minute.

These clothes were nothing like the conservative outfits Norah wore in mainly pastel shades. The majority of the new fashions were in vivid vibrant colours of green, blue or red, or in loud floral designs. The young were done with restricting corsets too, and instead wore silk camisoles, which flattened their chests in line with the fashion for the slightly boyish figure, suited to shift dresses with no waist and knife-edge pleats in the skirts.

‘Jean Patou has a darling little suit in wool and jersey,’ Gloria said one day, drawing the pillar-box-red illustration from her bag. ‘Just right for the cooler days of summer, don’t you think?’

‘I’d think more of it if there were more to it,’ Brian growled. ‘That skirt is far too short.’

‘Oh, Daddy, you’re funny,’ Gloria said. ‘Most skirts are short now.’

Gloria was right: nearly every outfit she owned was like that, the skirts with gathers, pleats or splits in them. She seemed oblivious to the disapproval of her parents, and the day she came home with her hair bobbed in the Eton crop Joe thought Brian was going to have an apoplectic fit, but Gloria was unabashed at the furore.

‘Stop roaring at me, Daddy,’ she commanded. ‘And stop glowering at me in that way. I don’t know why you are so cross or, indeed, what it has to do with you either. Since it is my hair on my head, surely I should be the one to decide how to wear it, and anyway, with long hair how could I put on my new cloche hat?’

‘That’s hardly a good enough reason for having all your hair cut off like that,’ Norah said.

‘On the contrary, Mother, it is a perfectly good reason,’ Gloria retorted. ‘Louise Brooks looks divine in hers and everyone wants to copy her. And she has her hair cropped too. Many girls do these days, Daddy. I am afraid you and Mother are very behind the times.’

That wasn’t how Brian saw it at all, but the deed was done now and he could do nothing about it, especially as all Gloria’s friends had had their hair bobbed too and were similarly unashamed about it. They seemed remarkable close, the friends Gloria had made at the convent, and when they weren’t meeting up, Gloria would be having long and involved conversations with them on the telephone.

Gloria’s friends’ parents seemed incredibly lax and lenient with their daughters, which Brian found hard to accept. Not that the girls cared a jot for how he felt. They visited often, and the rooms rang with their laughter, jazz would reverberate all over the house, and the girls would be dancing together or else trying out Gloria’s cosmetics. A couple of them actually took up smoking.

‘It’s so different from when I was growing up,’ Norah said one day as she sat down to dinner with Brian and Joe. ‘You had to wait first to be introduced to a young man, and then if he asked permission from your parents to walk out with you, then that was the young man that you would become engaged to and eventually marry. This way … well, there are so many men, but when I cautioned Gloria that she would make a name for herself, she laughed.’

It was the men that bothered Joe too. Brian always worked shorter hours when Gloria was at home – that is, if he went in to work at all – and so Joe often saw the young men, sometimes known to the Brannigans in only the vaguest way, who would come scorching up the drive in their sports cars. They would stop suddenly with a squeal of brakes and a spray of gravel, and Gloria would come running from the house and be spirited away to some venue or other, from which she might not return for a day or two.

But what really disturbed Joe were the languid young men who turned up to play tennis. He considered the girls’ attire almost indecently short, and these people were so easy with one another that a young man seemed to think nothing of throwing a casual arm around Gloria’s shoulders, or even embracing her if he felt they had played well together.

And yet as the summer passed, Joe sensed that Gloria was not truly happy, that her gaiety was forced. Eventually the frivolity and freedom would end, and when that happened, he imagined Gloria would probably have chosen one boy over all the others. That was the one she would marry, and the day she did that would be the day that he would leave the Brannigans’ household. He couldn’t have stayed and watched her married to another.

Summer gave way to autumn and then winter, and the dresses were swapped for thick skirts in bright colours, lurid jumpers and multicoloured scarves, which the girls wore with their ‘up-to-the-minute’ checked and baggy coats.

Joe watched Gloria anxiously. She seemed more dejected than ever. The frenetic pace of her social life had slowed somewhat as the colder weather settled over the city, but when she didn’t pick up in the early spring either, and was still listless and eating less than a bird, Brian and Norah were all for calling out the doctor to her, though Gloria wouldn’t hear of it.

And then just a week away from her nineteenth birthday she went to her room even earlier than usual. Joe had watched her moving her dinner around her plate and fully understood her parents’ concern. He decided that he would seek her out at the first opportunity and try to get to the bottom of what was wrong with her. So engrossed was he that he didn’t notice that Gloria’s door was unlatched as he passed her room on the way to his own further down the corridor.

He’d hung his jacket over a chair and had removed his tie and loosened his top button when the knock came to the door and he was stunned on opening it to see Gloria there.

‘Are you all right, Miss Gloria?’

Gloria didn’t answer. Instead she said, ‘Can I come in?’

It was the last thing that Joe expected her to say, and he looked down the corridor to see if there was anyone about who might have overheard her, before replying, ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’

‘I need to talk with you privately and I can’t think of any other place where we can do it,’ Gloria said. ‘Please let me in?’

Joe was in a quandary, but he couldn’t leave Gloria standing there and so he opened the door and she walked past him and sat on the bed. He sat on the dressing-table chair opposite her, and for a second or two they stared at one another.

Gloria looked terrible, Joe thought, and with his heart in his boots he asked tentatively, ‘Are you in trouble of some sort?’

Gloria shook her head. ‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ she said, and Joe let his breath out in a sigh of relief.

He was totally shocked when Gloria went on, ‘It’s just … Joe, what do you really think of me?’

‘What tomfool question is that?’ Joe got to his feet. ‘I really think it would be better to return to your own room now, Miss Gloria.’

‘Hear me out,’ Gloria pleaded. ‘Please sit back down, Joe, and let me finish.’

Joe sat down heavily, aware that the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling with apprehension and his palms felt clammy. He said almost gruffly, ‘Miss Gloria, why are you asking me this question?’

‘Because I need to know,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t want you to think of whether it is right or wrong and whether it’s your place to say anything about it. I just want to hear what you really think of me from your own lips.’

Joe couldn’t trust himself to speak and eventually, when the silence had stretched out between them, Gloria went on, ‘All right then. I guess it is up to me to bare my soul.’

‘Please, Miss Gloria,’ Joe pleaded, ‘don’t say anything that you are going to regret.’

‘Will you shut up, Joe?’ Gloria retorted. ‘I must tell you. I think that I have fallen in love with you.’

Joe just stared at her. He felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach by a mule. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The words he never imagined would be said to him had been said, and by the young woman he loved with all his heart and soul. Yet he had to reply. ‘Miss Gloria, don’t be cross at what I am about to tell you. You are young still, and the young often get crushes on people. You will probably fall in love many times before you are ready to settle down.’

Gloria leaped off the bed and stamped her foot. ‘Don’t you dare patronise me, Joe Sullivan!’ she cried. ‘I have loved you all my life, since that day on the docks when you opened the carriage door and asked me if I was all right.’

‘Miss Gloria, you were a child then.’

‘I know that,’ Gloria snapped. ‘And then I loved you as a child, but that love has changed as I have grown. Now I love you like a woman, and for God’s sake will you stop calling me Miss Gloria?’

Joe just stared at her without a word and when the silence got uncomfortable Gloria sighed and said sadly, ‘All right then. You can’t blame yourself for not being able to love me in return. At least now I know where I stand.’

Joe felt as if he was breaking up inside at seeing Gloria so upset. As she reached the door, he cried, ‘Wait, please …’

Gloria turned. ‘What for? More humiliation?’

‘No,’ Joe cried. ‘Oh God, I have no wish to humiliate you or hurt you in any way, for you are dearer to me than anyone, and that is why I cannot take what you offer. A fortnight ago I was thirty-six and you aren’t quite nineteen yet.’

‘I don’t care how old you are.’

‘You must care. I care. And I am also employed by your father. I am a working man, Mi—Gloria.’

‘And none the worse for that,’ Gloria said. ‘But none of this – your age or what you do for employment – has any effect on one’s love for another.’

‘Gloria, I cannot return your feelings because I will not allow myself to,’ Joe said. ‘You know many young men, who move in the same circles as yourself, who speak the same language. Any of those—’

‘All of those young men were measured against you and found wanting,’ Gloria said. ‘I was hoping that being in their company would help me to get over the feelings I had for you, but in fact seeing them made me value you more.’

Joe felt as though all his limbs had turned to jelly, but there was a pain around his heart.

Gloria, watching his face, suddenly said in a voice that shook slightly, ‘You said that I am dearer to you than anyone. D’you think you could ever come to love me?’

Joe looked at the face of his beloved, at the tears now seeping from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks, and knew she deserved the truth, even if he was to go no further than this. ‘I love you with all my being,’ he said gently, ‘and have done for a long time. I love you so much it hurts.’

‘Then, Joe, if we love each other, together we can conquer the world.’

Joe smiled. ‘It would be nice to think so. But there are numerous obstacles in our path. Your parents will never agree to any sort of match between us. They will have a much better marriage planned for their only child. In fact, they might send me packing for even considering it.’

‘No,’ Gloria declared. ‘I won’t let them. No one will part us. I will speak to my parents – not now, for they have probably retired for the night, but certainly in the morning.’

Joe nodded, but he was certain that they wouldn’t stand for any sort of union between their daughter and Brian’s secretary, but he didn’t say this, for he couldn’t bear to dim the light that was setting Gloria’s face alight. When she asked, ‘Will you kiss me, Joe?’ he could no more have stopped his arms going around her than he could have stopped the sun from shining, but he knew that for him it was the end of the road for his career with Brian, which had once seemed so promising.

The next day Gloria faced her parents over the breakfast table and told them point-bank that she and Joe had discovered that they loved each other.

Brian was both astounded and furious. Banging his fist on the table, he said, ‘Well, my dear, you will have to unlove Joe, for I am afraid I will not have it. By God, the barefaced nerve of it amazes me. I have taken that man in, given him a leg up, thought of him as my right-hand man, and this is how he repays me – taking advantage of my own daughter. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.’

‘It wasn’t like that, Daddy. It wasn’t at all,’ cried Gloria. ‘You have no right to say any of this. I had to almost drag the words from Joe, yet I know that I have always loved him. And don’t say that I loved him as a child alone. He said that too and I gave him the same answer as I give you: that as I have grown and matured, so has the love I have for him. Does my happiness mean nothing to you? Why d’you think I have been so miserable for months?’

‘Gloria, you really have no right to speak so to your father,’ Norah said. ‘As for not caring about your happiness, you know your father and I have tried to make you happy since the day you were born.’

‘Then let me marry Joe!’ Gloria demanded.

Brian rubbed his chin while he looked at his defiant daughter. ‘It’s such a surprise,’ he said, ‘the last thing I had expected, to tell you the truth, and judging by your behaviour of the past months.’

Gloria sighed. ‘I went about with those boys to try and erase thoughts of Joe from my mind.’ She shook her head. ‘It didn’t work, though, and in fact it only made me love him more.’

‘And you say you truly love this man?’

‘Oh, yes, Daddy, with all my heart and soul. I ache with love for him. He feels the same, though he would say nothing at first because he is so much older than me and employed by you.’

‘What do you make of it, my dear?’ Brian asked Norah, who was looking at Gloria with a slight frown puckering her brow.

She often thought afterwards that had Gloria not been so wild for almost a year, not in the least circumspect or prudent as became a young lady, her reaction might have been different, for all she liked and admired Joe greatly. She feared that Gloria’s antics with hosts of young men had laid her wide open to ridicule and scorn, and possibly damaged her reputation. If that had happened she knew the doors to any form of respectable society would be closed to her and an advantageous marriage out of the question. Far better surely to have her safely and respectably married before more damage was done. However, marriage was a big commitment and not one to be entered into lightly.

‘You are still very young, my dear,’ she said to her daughter. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

‘Absolutely sure,’ Gloria said determinedly. ‘In fact, if I don’t have Joe then I will not have anyone.’

‘Do you not mind, though, that Joe is many years older than you?’ Brian asked.

‘No,’ Gloria replied. ‘Whatever age he is, Joe Sullivan is the man I love and the man I want to marry.’

Norah thought of the often brash and rootless young men that had been Gloria’s companions of late. They seemed to have no aim in life other than the pursuit of pleasure. She doubted that any one of them had ever done a day’s work in his empty life. She would have hated her daughter to have married one of those people.

Joe was different. He was the sort of man that could be relied upon, one who knew what hard work was and thrived on it. It didn’t matter a jot to her about the age difference. In fact, she saw it as an advantage. Joe had his feet firmly on the ground and she felt Gloria would be much safer with someone like that.

‘Well, at least we can’t say we don’t know the man,’ Brian said. ‘We have had years of getting to know him.’ He gazed at the daughter he loved so very much and felt a lump form in his throat as he realised that another man was now more important in her life than he was, and so his voice was husky with emotion when he said, ‘If this is really what you want, my love, then you have my blessing.’ He gazed at his wife, saw her smiling and relieved face, and added, ‘And I can see your mother approves too. Now where is the man in question hiding away?’

‘In his room,’ Gloria said, leaping up from her chair. ‘I’ll tell him now.’

In the cold light of morning, Joe had gone over the scene of the previous evening in his bedroom and regretted it bitterly for he had no doubt that Brian would send him packing now and he had only himself to blame. If he didn’t love Gloria so very much, he could have parried her questions. Too late now. With a heavy heart he dragged his case from the wardrobe and began putting his clothes in it while he waited for the summons from Brian.

He had almost finished when Gloria burst through the door. He could hardly believe his ears when she told him that her parents had both given their approval for the match. He wanted to whoop with sheer unadulterated joy, for it seemed to be filling his whole body, but he contented himself with catching hold of Gloria and holding her close.

When their lips met it was as if a furnace had been lit inside each of them. The kiss the night before was one that Joe thought might have to last him a lifetime, but this kiss was like a promise of the joys to come, and when they eventually broke apart, they both groaned with desire.

Joe released her before he forgot himself altogether, and holding out his hand he said, ‘Come. I must see your parents immediately.’ Hand in hand, they left the room and ran down the stairs.

‘Well, well, well,’ Brian said when he saw Joe at the door. ‘Fine turn-up for the book this is. The minute my back is turned you are making love to my daughter.’

Joe smiled. ‘Not quite, sir. But I do love her very much and would like your permission to marry her.’

‘And you have it, Joe,’ Brian said, going forward to shake him by the hand. ‘And I hope you know what you are taking on. She can be the very devil when she doesn’t get her own way.’

‘You really can’t tell me anything about Gloria that I don’t know, sir,’ Joe said. ‘And there is nothing about her that I do not love.’

Gloria gazed at Joe and thought her heart would burst with happiness.

Everyone in the house seemed stunned by the news, and not everyone was that pleased either.

Kate said, ‘There is bettering oneself and taking advantage, and that’s what the young pup has done, setting himself up to marry that pretty young thing and him near old enough to be her father. Mark my words, it never works trying to mix chalk and cheese.’

Joe knew what they thought but there was nothing he could do about it, and anyway he was taken aback by the speed at which everything was decided. Gloria was now sporting a platinum engagement ring with a huge diamond in the centre of it, and Brian declared there was no need to delay the wedding.

‘The autumn I always think is a nice time of year,’ he said.

‘It is, sir,’ Joe agreed, ‘and though I am immensely grateful that you are taking over the entire cost of the wedding, I need a little time to save up enough for a deposit on some suitable place for the two of us to live in.’

‘What are you talking about, man?’ Brian said with a laugh. ‘You will live here, naturally.’

That hadn’t been what Joe had anticipated at all. He imagined he and Gloria in their own little house or apartment somewhere, but when he said this, everyone seemed to think it was all rather amusing.

‘Darling, I wouldn’t have the least idea how to keep house,’ Gloria said. ‘I have never had to do it, and as for cooking anything, well, I have never done that either. I honestly don’t know how to boil an egg.’

‘But did you not have any sort of cookery lessons at school?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, no,’ Gloria said. ‘Why would we? And I have never washed dishes, or really cleaned anything, and wouldn’t know how to start dealing with the laundry. We have servants to do those types of things.’

Joe realised then that after his marriage everything would go on as it always had done, and the only thing that would alter after he put the ring on Gloria’s finger was that she would share his bed.

Three rooms were being amalgamated to make a suite for Joe and Gloria, and when Joe was shown the plans for his approval he was staggered at the size of it. He knew he wouldn’t be sorry to leave the room that Brian had assigned to him when he had moved into the house. It had a carpeted floor, a blue fluffy rug by the large and comfortable bed that matched the drapes at the windows, a wardrobe, chest and dressing table in light wood, and a bathroom for his use off to the side. It bore no resemblance at all to his spartan cellar where he had felt so contented, and yet he had never felt at home in the luxurious and comfortable room.

The bridal suite was at least being planned specifically for Gloria and himself, and he was sure he would be happier there with Gloria by his side. In fact, if he wasn’t then he was a hard man to please

‘What is this room to the side?’ he asked Brian.

‘That is your dressing room,’ Brian said. ‘Will I have a bed installed in there too?’

‘What on earth for, sir?’ Joe asked. ‘The bed you tell me you have ordered for Gloria and me would accommodate half a dozen with ease. What use would we make of another bed?’

‘There are times when a woman might like to sleep alone,’ Brian told him. ‘Or when you are home late perhaps, or have to get up early and don’t wish to disturb. Believe me, a separate bed is essential.’

All of it was out of Joe’s understanding. In the world he came from, when a man and woman married, they bought a double bed and slept in it together thereafter night after night. They made love on it, babies were born on it, small children sometimes shared it and the marriage bed was often the most important purchase ever made.

He thought of the huge and beautiful bed Brian had ordered. Was it possible that Gloria would lie encased in that magnificent bed all alone, while he lay in another bed, the other side of the wall?

Brian saw the confusion on Joe’s face. ‘A dressing room and a separate bed were among the first things I insisted on when I married Norah,’ he said. ‘And she has been as grateful as I have been at times. I know that this is all new to you, but trust me in this.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said, knowing he had no alternative.