Teddy chuckled while Mrs Hobbes tutted at them.
‘You know I don’t approve of these heathenish fairground tricks, Topsy,’ she said sternly. ‘They’re not for well-brought-up young ladies.’
‘Oh, Maimie, it’s only fun. You act as if I’d made a pact with the Old Gentleman. I don’t know a thing I’m talking about, you know.’
Norman woke up and let out a resentful honk in Bobby’s direction. Topsy glanced up.
‘Birdy, you’re here at last,’ she said, beckoning her forward. ‘I was worried you wouldn’t make it in time. Join us, do.’
Bobby noticed a glint in Topsy’s eye that she had come to know well over the past year. It usually meant she was plotting something. The last time her friend had got that look in her eye, Bobby had found herself playing Cinderella in a Christmas pantomime. What could Topsy be planning to recruit her for this time?
‘A good thing someone’s come who won’t shy away from hard work,’ Mrs Hobbes said, pursing her lips at Topsy. ‘Madam here thinks her share of the sewing is to be done by the fairies while we sleep, I’m sure. She hasn’t lifted her needle in an hour.’
‘Maimie is ever so cross tonight,’ Topsy whispered as Bobby drew a chair over to the fire. ‘It’s all Jemima’s doing.’
Bobby raised an eyebrow. ‘Norman’s wife Jemima?’
‘Oh, her marriage vows mean nothing to her, the brazen hussy. Maimie caught her canoodling on the lake with another gander. At least, Jemmie allowed him to give her a bread crust as a gift. I said there was probably nothing in it, but Maimie is furious on Norman’s behalf.’
‘These geese ought to be in a moving picture, do you not think, Bobby?’ Teddy said, laughing. ‘What colourful lives they lead! We are all quite dull beside them.’
Mrs Hobbes smiled. ‘Such nonsense you young people talk. Topsy, hand over some of those napkins for Bobby or we’ll never be done.’
‘Here you are, Birdy,’ Topsy said, passing them to her. ‘They’re to be hemmed with gold thread so they’re all matching, like these finished ones. Maimie had some thread saved from before the war. It all feels rather extravagant, doesn’t it? But I’m only going to do this once, I suppose.’
‘And so you ought to suppose,’ Teddy said, bending to kiss her head. ‘I do not intend to let you go once you’re lawfully mine, Topsy.’
Bobby threaded her needle, smiling. ‘I thought it was to be a quiet wedding.’
‘Oh, it is,’ Topsy said. ‘At least, the ceremony will be quiet. That will just be us and those we love best at St Peter’s. Still, we must put on a good do afterwards. It’s a shame it has to be in the church hall instead of at Sumner House as it ought to be, but there is a war on.’
Teddy sighed. ‘I confess, I would much prefer something small and quiet, with just our few friends. But I want Topsy to be happy, and it is the bride who must have her way on her wedding day.’
‘It isn’t for my sake, darling,’ Topsy said, looking up at him. ‘It’s for yours.’ She looked determined suddenly, and rather fierce. ‘I won’t have Aunt Constance and all those toffee-nosed friends of my father’s thinking I want to hide you away. If I was marrying a sultan, there couldn’t be a grander reception – you know, wartime allowing.’
‘I wish you would not, Topsy. I don’t need the acceptance of your father’s friends, or of anyone.’ He took her hand. ‘Only the love of my wife.’
‘You’ll always have that,’ she said, pressing his hand to her lips. ‘Still, I want them to know just how proud I am of you. I want everyone in the wide world to know.’
‘Your high-born friends will think you mad, to be proud of one who is poor, and foreign, and a cripple.’
‘Oh, they can think me mad all they like. I’m sure they always did. But they’ll never think I’m ashamed.’
Mrs Hobbes smiled, glancing around the cluttered room. ‘I should say there’s little chance of that, Topsy.’
Bobby followed her gaze to the piles of embroidered linen that filled the room. A table heaved with tinned food, sweetmeats and bottles of wine, all donated to the happy couple by Topsy’s relatives and society friends. It looked like a feast to make Bacchus weep. Topsy was refusing to let anyone but Mrs Hobbes see her wedding gown, which had been refashioned from a family heirloom, but Bobby felt sure that it, too, would be fit for a princess.
Certainly, wartime weddings were very different when you belonged to Topsy’s class. Just before Christmas, Bobby had made a telephone call to her old schoolfriend Bess Jenkins – Bess Slater as was – to congratulate her on her own recent marriage. Bess had described the difficulties of arranging a wedding when there was a war on: how her soldier husband had only been able to get forty-eight hours leave in which to rush home, marry his fiancée, enjoy a short wedding night and hurry back to his barracks. How her wedding dress had been a simple cotton frock, the best she could buy with her clothing coupons; her bouquet a handful of Michaelmas daisies plucked from the back garden; the wedding cake a small, un-iced malt loaf, and the gifts from family and friends merely vegetables gleaned from allotments or contributions from their precious rations – technically against the law, since rations could only be transferred within a household, but everyone did it.
Yet it had been a joyous event, humble though it was. Bobby could hear Bess’s love for her new husband suffusing every word she spoke. That, at least, she and Topsy had in common. While Topsy might feel she needed gold thread and iced fruitcake to prove to the world she was proud of the man she was marrying, it was Teddy himself – and the presence of all those who truly valued the bride and groom – that would make the event a happy one.
Bobby couldn’t help but think of her sister. She was counting down the days until Monday: the day set aside for Lilian and Tony’s wedding. Just four days until it was all over. What a different event that would be! No gifts, no cake, no dress, no feasting – no celebration of any kind.
Not that any of those things mattered, if there was love between the bride and groom. Dresses and gifts weren’t what was important. What counted was that the couple were able to share the joy of being united as man and wife with those who cared for them.
But when there wasn’t that love, it all felt so bleak and empty. There would be no festivities for Mr and Mrs Scott on their wedding day. Only the bittersweet satisfaction of an unpleasant but necessary task completed.
Topsy tapped Bobby’s arm, interrupting this sombre train of thought.
