Tony had called in on his way to the church, he had made some measured remark about combining business with pleasure when he and Prudence went on honeymoon. There were clients in Hamburg and Oslo who were considering giving his firm a big contract— as he had said, time enough to talk about that when he got back from America; she was content enough at home. Suddenly she knew that she wasn’t.
The guests went away slowly, stopping to chat, mull over the wedding and discuss each other’s appearance. When the last one had gone, Prudence kicked off her slippers, flung her hat on to a chair and went to the kitchen to give Mabel, grown old in her parents’ service, a hand with the tea-tray.
With it in her hands, she kicked open the creaking baize door leading to the front hall and paused to say over her shoulder: ‘I’ll be back presently, Mabel, and we’ll think about supper. Did you enjoy the wedding?’
‘A fair treat, Miss Prudence, but you’ll look just as pretty when your turn comes.’
Crossing the hall, Prudence had the strange feeling that Mabel’s words sounded like a death sentence.
Her parents were in the drawing room. Not alone, for old Aunt Rachel, who lived miles away in Essex, was to stay for a day or two before going home by train. And Tony was there, stretched out in one of the comfortable rather shabby armchairs, looking, thought Prudence crossly, as though he owned the place. To make matters worse, he looked up and grinned at her as she went in, without bothering to get up and take the tray from her. Was he so sure of her already? She dumped it on the sofa table near her mother’s chair and sat down, a slow buildup of ill-usage creeping over her. Furthermore, her teeth were set on edge by his careless, ‘Tired, old girl?’
She was not his old girl, she argued silently, she was his fiancée, to be cherished and spoilt a little, and certainly not to be taken for granted.
She said haughtily: ‘Not in the least,’ and addressed herself to Aunt Rachel for almost all of the time they took over tea. And when the elegant little meal was finished, she picked up the tray once more, observing that Mabel needed a hand in the kitchen and adding in a decidedly acidulated tone: ‘And perhaps you would open the door, Tony?’
She dumped the tray on the kitchen table and then went to the stove, where she clashed saucepan lids quite unnecessarily until Mabel looked up from the beans she was stringing.
‘Now, now! Hoity-toity!’ said Mabel.
Prudence didn’t answer; she had heard Mabel say just that whenever she or Nancy had displayed ill humour since early childhood, for Mabel had joined the Trent household when Mrs Trent had married and had taken upon herself the role of nanny over and above her other duties, and since Mrs Trent was still, at that time, struggling to be the perfect vicar’s wife, Mabel had taken a large share in their upbringing, a process helped along by a number of old-fashioned remarks such as ‘Little pitchers have long ears,’ and ‘Little girls should be seen and not heard,’ and ‘Keep little fingers from picking and stealing.’
And when Prudence didn’t answer, Mabel said comfortably: ‘Well, tell old Mabel, then.’
‘I don’t think I want to get married,’ observed Prudence in a ruminating voice.
‘And what will your dear ma and pa say to that?’
‘I haven’t told them—you see, I’ve only just thought about it in the last hour or so.’
‘The wedding’s unsettled you, love—seeing our Nancy getting married—girls always have last-minute doubts, so I’m told. Not that you ought to have with such a nice long engagement. They do say, “Marry in haste…”’
‘Repent at leisure. I know—but, Mabel, Tony and I have been engaged for so long there doesn’t seem to be anything left. I think if I married him I’d regret it to my dying day. I want to stay single and do what I want to do for a change, not sit here at home, doing the church flowers and helping with the Mothers’ Union on Thursdays and waiting for Tony to decide when we’re to be married. I want a career…’
‘What at?’ Mabel’s voice was dry.
‘Well, I can type, can’t I? And do a little shorthand and I’ve kept the parish accounts for Father for years. I could work in an office.’
‘Where?’ Mabel put the bowl of beans on the table and went to the sink to wash her hands.
‘How should I know? London, I suppose.’
‘You wouldn’t like that. You listen to me, love. You go back to the drawing room and talk to your Tony, he’s a steady young man, making his way in the world.’
‘Oh, pooh!’ Prudence started slowly for the door. ‘For two pins I’d slip out of the garden door!’
‘And what’s unsettled you, my lady?’ asked Mabel. ‘Or is it who?’
But Prudence didn’t answer, only the door closed with a snap behind her.
Tony was still there when she got back to the drawing room and he barely paused in what he was saying to her father to nod at her. Prudence went and sat down by her mother and listened to that lady’s mulling over of the wedding in company with Aunt Rachel.
‘And when is it to be your turn?’ asked her aunt.
‘I don’t know,’ said Prudence, then raised her voice sharply. ‘Tony—Aunt Rachel wants to know when we’re getting married.’
Tony had frowned slightly; he did dislike being interrupted when he was speaking and Prudence’s voice had sounded quite shrewish. ‘At the moment I have so many commitments that it’s impossible to even suggest a date.’
His voice held a note of censure for her and Aunt Rachel asked in surprise: ‘But I always thought that the bride chose her wedding date?’
He chose to take the remark seriously, and it struck Prudence, not for the first time, perhaps, that his sense of humour was poor. ‘Ah, but I’m really the one to be considered, you see. I have an exacting profession and Prudence, living quietly at home as she does, need only fall in with my wishes, without any disruption of her own life.’
Mrs Trent looked up at that with a look of doubt on her face and even the Reverend Giles Trent, a dreamy man by nature, realised that something wasn’t quite as it should be. It was left to Prudence to remark in a deceptively meek voice: ‘Nothing must stand in Tony’s way now that he’s making such a success of his career.’
She looked at them all, her green eyes sparkling, smiling widely, looking as though she had dropped a heavy burden. Which she had—Tony.
She didn’t say a word to anyone, least of all Tony, who, the day following the wedding went up to London, explaining rather pompously that there was a good deal of important work for him to do. ‘Stuff I can’t delegate to anyone else. I shall probably be back at the weekend.’ He had dropped a kiss on her cheek and hurried off.
She wasted no time. With only the vaguest idea of what she intended to do, she spent every free moment at the typewriter in her father’s study, getting up her speed, and after she had gone to bed each evening, she got out pencil and paper and worked hard at her shorthand. She wasn’t very good at it, but at least she had a basic knowledge of it, enough perhaps to get by in some office. She began to read the adverts in the Telegraph, but most of them seemed to be for high-powered personal assistants with
