Never too Late

He made no effort to move away; after a small silence Tony took Prudence’s elbow and walked her off. ‘It’s fortunate that van Vinke is unlikely to see much of us,’ he observed frostily. ‘I dislike that type of man.’

‘What type is he?’ asked Prudence; she had her own ideas on that, but it would be interesting to hear Tony’s opinion.

‘Arrogant, conceited, not bothering to make himself agreeable. I suggest that you avoid him for the rest of the day, Prudence—besides, he’s a foreigner.’

She was struck dumb by the appalling thought that over the years she had allowed herself to be dictated to by Tony. After all, they weren’t married yet; he had no right to expect her to conform to his ideas. She said baldly: ‘I like him.’ She picked up a glass of champagne from the buffet table they were passing, tossed it off, shook his hand from her arm and joined a group of aunts and uncles she barely knew except for the exchange of Christmas cards each year. The champagne, coupled with her indignant feelings, gave her unwonted vivacity, so that her elderly relatives, watching her as she left them presently, remarked among themselves that dear Prudence seemed to have changed a good deal. ‘Of course, she is twenty-seven,’ observed the most elderly aunt, and pursed her lips and nodded her head wisely, as though twenty-seven was a dangerous age when anything might happen.

The reception, following a time-honoured pattern, drew to its end. The bride and bridegroom disappeared, to reappear shortly in tweed outfits suitable for their honeymoon in Scotland. It was still late August and warm, but Little Amwell, buried in the heart of Somerset, was undoubtedly milder in climate than the far north where Nancy had decided they should go. When Prudence had asked her why, she had said simply: ‘It sounds romantic.’

Prudence, handing out bags of confetti among the guests, remembered that remark. Only that morning when 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 phenomenal speeds. Perhaps she would do better at some other job, only she had no idea what it might be. Nursing had crossed her mind, but she was a bit old to start training—besides, although she had done her St John Ambulance training to set a good example to the village, she had never quite mastered bandaging and finer variations of the pulse had always evaded her. All the same, she didn’t lose heart. She welcomed Tony at the weekend when he called after church, and listened to his plans for the trip to New York with becoming attention, while her head was filled with vague hopeful plans for her own future. It was on the tip of her tongue several times to tell him that she had decided that she couldn’t marry him after all, but that, she realised, would be silly. She must wait until she had a job—any job that would make her independent. He was so sure of her that he wouldn’t believe her; she would need proof to convince him.

August slipped gently into September and Nancy and James came back from their honeymoon to spend a few days at the Vicarage before setting up house in Highgate. It was at the end of this visit that Nancy suggested that Prudence might like to spend a weekend with them. ‘James thinks that we ought to have some of his friends who couldn’t come to the wedding, for drinks one evening—it’ll be a Saturday, so why don’t you come for a couple of nights? I don’t know many of them and it would be nice if you were there too. Let’s see, it’s Thursday—what about Saturday week? Come up on Friday night so that you can help me get things ready.’

Prudence hesitated. ‘It sounds fun, but won’t you and James want to be alone for a bit?’

‘Well, we won’t be alone if we have a party, will we?’ Nancy declared. ‘And Tony’s off to the States anyway. Say you’ll come?’

So it was arranged, and Tony, when he was told, thought it a very good idea. ‘You’ll find it dull without me,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides, I daresay you’ll meet some people who may be useful later on.’ He patted Prudence rather absentmindedly on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, old girl, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.’

And by then, thought Prudence, I’ll have got myself a job. For a moment she felt a guilty pang, borne away on a tide of indignation when he said casually: ‘There’s a chance I’ll have to go to Portugal in a couple of months; some tycoon wants a villa designed in the Algarve and he wants someone over there for consultation. A bit of luck for me—the weather should be pretty good in November.’ He paused and glanced at her. ‘I don’t care for the idea of a winter wedding, do you, Prudence? And there’s no hurry. I’ll take a couple of weeks off in the spring…’

‘What for?’ asked Prudence in a very quiet voice.

‘It’ll be a convenient time for us to get married. I’ll be able to give you a definite date later on. Though of course, if anything turns up…’ He gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘I am rather in demand.’

Prudence’s eyes glittered greenly. ‘Your career means a lot to you, doesn’t it, Tony?’ she asked.

‘Well, of course it does—darling, you do say the stupidest things sometimes! Well, I must be off. You’re going to Nancy’s next Saturday? I leave on the Monday after that, I’ll give you a ring if I can’t find time to get to Highgate.’

Prudence drove herself up to London in the secondhand Mini Aunt Rachel had given her for her twenty-first birthday. It was a bit battered by now, but it went well enough, and she was a good driver. The flat in Highgate, the ground floor of an imposing Victorian mansion set in a roomy garden, had welcoming lights shining from its windows as she stopped the little car before its door. Nancy had said, ‘Come in good time for dinner,’ but Prudence had cut it rather fine, what with having to type her father’s sermon at the last minute, and round up the choirboys for an extra choir practice for Harvest Festival.