Unknown by Unknown Page B

smile of reminiscence. ‘One member of the jet set found himself lumbered with Philip, who was cutting teeth at the time, and with Shirley who was having hysterics because she was being kept awake by his crying. It served him right! He shouldn’t have assumed that he was God’s little gift to the female sex.’
    Jerome nodded as if he was satisfied and went on to detail arrangements.
    ‘Today is Monday, tomorrow I shall apply for a licence and we shall be married on Saturday morning at a small church nearby. No!’ he raised his hand to stop her comments, ‘it will be done as quickly as possible under the circumstances, but unfortunately for you, there will have to be some show and publicity. Afterwards there’ll be a reasonably large reception, but the gentlemen of the Press will be barred from that. My mother will make all the arrangements. I don’t need any information from you for the actual application for the licence, I have it all already.’
    ‘Your private spies!’ Kate made them sound like the Gestapo.
    ‘Precisely. I know your date of birth and where you were born, I know your mother’s maiden name and the profession of your father, so there’s no need for any more nonsense about the “lower orders”. Since when has a professor of English Literature earned his bread with sweat?’
    ‘My father’s hobby was bricklaying,’ she told him sweetly. ‘He often said that he was a better bricklayer than a professor.’ She choked back the rest of the sarcastic remark which she had been going to make so that it died before it reached her lips. She was going to be calm, placid Kate, she remembered; sensible and boring! ‘Is that all?’ she enquired, ‘because, if it is, I think I’ll ask you to excuse me. It’s been a long upsetting day and I slept badly last night. I’m feeling very tired.’
    ‘One or two things more.’ He was watching her closely and she felt like a mouse being stalked by a hungry cat. ‘After the wedding, we shall take a short honeymoon. I’m afraid it will have to be short, I have some business coming up. Where would you like to go?’
    Kate yawned pointedly at him. ‘Anywhere, I suppose. I’m not greatly interested.’ She didn’t sound interested. ‘Somewhere Philip will enjoy, somewhere warm and sunny, it’s not been a very nice winter for him. As long as he’s happy, I don’t give a row of pins where we go.’
    ‘I hadn’t envisaged taking Philip.’ It was the growl of the big cat just before it unsheathed its claws.
    ‘Not take Philip!’ Calm, sensible Kate nearly vanished in a blaze of indignation. ‘What did you propose to do with him, leave him in a luggage office labelled “To Be Called For”? He’s a little boy, not a parcel, and where I go, he goes.’
    ‘Not on your honeymoon.’ Jerome contemplated the burning tip of his cigarette.
    ‘Then there won’t be a honeymoon.’ She was defiant. ‘You can take us where we’re going to live and we’ll stay there. It will save time, money and all the bother of travelling. It will be better for Philip anyway, he’s at an age when he needs a settled home. The cottage was all right, but the weather was bad and I wasn’t the best of company, although I tried hard not to let it show. I was nervous about being found. Oh, and by the way, don’t suggest that we live in this apartment, because I refuse. It’s not at all the sort of place in which to bring up children.’ She cast a glance around the modernistically immaculate room. ‘It looks like the waiting room in a private clinic.’
    He ignored this last remark and the several preceding it, fastening on an earlier one. ‘So, the weather was bad, you were nervous all the time and I think you were running short of money.’
    ‘We had enough,’ she glared at him. ‘We could have managed for quite a long time, until April at least, and then I had the offer of a temporary post at a school in Sussex, so don’t think you’ve saved us from starvation,