Whittingham was in here earlier with that chap of hers,’ Lizzie told Dulcie, coming over to her whilst Dulcie was tidying up her counter. ‘Arlene Watts from Elizabeth Arden makeup said that Lydia told her that they’re getting engaged on her birthday.’
Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug. ‘So what?’
‘So what? Have you forgotten that you said that you were going to get her beau to go dancing with you?’
‘Of course not,’ Dulcie answered scornfully, ‘not when I put a bet on it – and he will go dancing with me.’
‘You mean that you’d go out with an engaged man?’
‘I want to go dancing with him, not get married to him,’ Dulcie replied. It was the truth. And a large part of the reason she wanted to go dancing with David James-Thompson was because she wanted to rub Lydia Whittingham’s nose in it a bit.
She’d disliked the other girl, with her snooty airs, from the minute she’d set eyes on her and it would be amusing to know that she’d persuaded her fiancé to go out with her behind Miss Snooty’s back.
‘You mean you aren’t sweet on him? Why do you want to go out with him then?’
‘’Cos he looks like going dancing with him would be fun.’
That was the truth too. ‘If you aren’t careful you’ll get yourself a bad reputation and then no decent lad will want to marry you,’ Lizzie told her warningly.
Dulcie laughed. ‘There’ll always be lads who want to marry me, but they’ll have to prove to me that they’re worth marrying before they get to put a ring on my finger. Besides, I don’t want to get married for years yet.’
Lizzie was aghast. ‘Every girl wants to get married,’ she protested.
‘I’ve seen what happens to a girl when she gets married,’ Dulcie defended her intention. ‘She ends up running round after her husband, being told what to do, and then being lumbered with squalling kids. That’s not for me. When I do decide to get married it will be to someone who puts me first, not himself.’
Twenty minutes later, as she sauntered out of the store into the sharpness of the early evening, the camel coat she was wearing over her tweed skirt and silk blouse showing off her blonde hair, she was so busy mentally planning what she was going to wear for tomorrow night’s dance, that she didn’t see David James-Thompson until he stepped in front of her.
‘You’re taking a risk, aren’t you?’ she taunted him. ‘Waiting for me when you’ll soon be an engaged man.’
Unabashed, he laughed and bent his head to tell her quietly, ‘I like taking risks and something tells me that you like taking them as well.’
He was carrying a large Selfridges bag, and unwilling to let him see how impressed she was by both his nonchalance and his response, Dulcie pointed to it and demanded, ‘What’s in there, her ladyship’s lizardskin handbag?’
Again he laughed, shaking his head as he told her, ‘No. This is for you by way of apology for the fact that I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept your invitation – at least not this Saturday.’
‘It wasn’t an invitation. I was just saying that I go dancing of a Saturday,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘And what do you mean, it’s for me. What is it?’
‘Have a look,’ David smiled, handing her the large bag.
For all her confidence with young men, Dulcie was not used to receiving gifts from anyone outside her family. And even when presents were given and exchanged they were small modest things, that most definitely did not come in large Selfridges bags. When a man who wasn’t part of your family, or who you weren’t courting, gave you a present, though, Dulcie knew exactly what that meant. For all her enjoyment of riling other young women by flirting with their partners, Dulcie had neither the desire to nor the intention of allowing any man to take things further than that.
Looking David James-Thompson squarely in the eye she told him bluntly, ‘If you’re thinking that by giving me some kind of present I’m going to let you take liberties with me, then you’re going to be disappointed, because I won’t.’
‘That isn’t why I’m giving you this.’
Dulcie looked searchingly at him, and then, sensing that he was telling her the truth and after a brisk accepting nod of her head, she opened the carrier bag and looked cautiously inside. When she saw what it contained, though, her head came up and she looked speechlessly at David before looking back into the carrier again at the cream and tan leather vanity case she had coveted so much, and which now so unexpectedly was hers.
‘I told them not to gift wrap it because I wanted to see your face when you saw it.’
‘I wasn’t going to pinch it. I just wanted to see what it looked like. Gracie Fields has got one. I saw a photo of her in Picture Post carrying it,’ Dulcie defended her actions earlier.
She meant it, David recognised, contrasting her blunt outspokenness with the coy but unmistakable promise Lydia had made him earlier about showing him later, when they were alone, how pleased she would be if he bought her the handbag she wanted. A coyness that had repulsed him every bit as much as Dulcie’s bravado delighted him. Right now she was like a child at Christmas desperately trying not to look as excited as she felt, David thought, laughing as she immediately folded up the paper bag and then opened the vanity case to put the discarded bag and her own small handbag inside it, before triumphantly locking it and taking a couple of steps holding onto it.
Without having to discuss it they’d both automatically moved into the shadows away from the store as they spoke and out of view from anyone else leaving.
David had only bought the vanity case for Dulcie on impulse after Lydia had left him to go home with her father, but now he recognised that he was glad that he had.
‘I suppose you’re taking Miss Iron Knickers Lydia somewhere posh tonight, are you?’ Dulcie asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No. I’m going back to my rooms to study some briefs. It’s a legal term meaning papers,’ he explained when he saw her looking puzzled.
‘Does that mean that you’re a judge, like your dad?’ Dulcie asked him, remembering that Lizzie had said that his father was a judge.
David grinned. ‘No. I’m actually a barrister, a very newly qualified and junior barrister,’ he added wryly. He’d taken off his hat when he’d first greeted her, but now he put it on again.
‘A barrister? What’s that?’
Both her naïvety and her lack of self-consciousness about questioning him appealed to David. They spoke of a freedom from the constraints of ‘correct behaviour’ and a zest for life. Things sorely lacking in both his mother and Lydia.
‘Basically a barrister is someone who is instructed by a solicitor on behalf of that solicitor’s client to present and plead or defend a case that is put before a judge and jury. In my case it means grubbing around in a second-rate set of chambers, hoping that the clerk will throw me a few scraps in the form of a brief.’
‘You don’t like being a barrister then.’
She
