‘Yer won’t get no answer terday,’ said the pram-pushing escort who’d crowded round him the moment he entered the court.
‘No? Why not?’
‘’Aven’t you ’eard? ’E’s gorn orf. Both of ’em. They’ve gorn west. All the way to America!’
‘West? Ah, yes,’ mumbled Cottingham. ‘Seems a long way to go for an eye operation but I suppose they have good surgeons in New York. Devious old devil! Like son, like father, I suppose!’
‘Wot you on about, mister? ’Ere – you’re the one as fancies cats, int yer?’
She delved into the mass of cushions and blankets in her box pram and produced a cat. The cat. ‘Left ’im behind. Auntie Bella can’t stand cats. Don’t suppose you’d take ’im off our ’ands? Let yer ’ave ’im for a bob!’
Cottingham sighed. ‘Well, I suppose we ginger-nuts must stick together . . .’
Rehearsing a speech for his wife, Cottingham tucked the cat into the basket of his bicycle and pedalled back up west.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Lydia’s asked me to bring you a tea tray, Joe,’ said Dorcas, waking him from a blessed snooze in the sunshine on the lawn. ‘You’ve got Assam and scones and jam. We’re finishing up last year’s strawberry so you can have lots. And I made the Madeira cake. Oh, let me pour, you’re still half asleep! Can it have been that exhausting, working at the Palace for two weeks? She’s sent out the Tatler as well.’
‘Thanks, but I don’t read scandal magazines,’ said Joe.
‘That’s very narrow-minded of a man in your questionable employment,’ said Dorcas sententiously, using phrases he thought he’d heard his sister use more than once. ‘You need to know what all these villains are getting up to . . . who’s divorcing whom, who’s lost all his money gambling and what that Duchess gets up to on the Riviera. I’ll read it and tell you the interesting bits.’
Dorcas fell silent, all her attention on the much-treasured and pored-over society magazine. For a child who never went out in society, Joe had noticed that she knew a very great deal about the way it worked. He was still feeling guilty about his impetuous burdening of Lydia and her family with the refugees from King’s Hanger. But at least now, most of the troops had returned to barracks. Orlando had arrived, to beg them to come back. Had even apologized to Joe for wasting police time with his stories. ‘Couldn’t resist, old man!’ he’d had the effrontery to remark happily. ‘Can’t stand coppers. None of us can see the point of them. Thought I’d make life easier for myself and save you the fag of going around checking up on me. If you’d just taken my word for it you’d have saved yourself hours of work.’ Joe embarked on a defence and explanation of police procedure and gave up after three halting sentences, seeing Orlando’s eyes glaze over.
Dorcas had stayed behind to ‘go into training’ as Lydia put it. ‘Give me that girl for two years and I’ll have her curtsying to the Queen, just you watch!’
Joe wasn’t so sure. Still, he approved of the newly clean face and combed hair, the freshly ironed, red-striped dress.
‘Oh, you’ll want to see this, Joe!’ Dorcas crowed. ‘Friends of yours on page twenty. Isn’t that the lady policeman you brought down to King’s Hanger?’ She thrust the magazine in front of him and pointed. ‘It’s on the “Forthcoming Marriages” page. Look!’
Unwillingly, Joe looked. And looked again. He snatched the magazine from Dorcas and peered at it closely. Tilly’s shining face beamed exultantly out at him as she stood posing in a photograph that might have been taken by Dorothy Wilding, so smooth and professional was it. Her groom-to-be stood by her side, with slightly the air of a buffalo surprised at a water-hole, Joe thought unkindly.
‘Great heavens!’ was the only expletive he could allow himself in the presence of a child and he felt it didn’t go far towards expressing his astonishment.
Excitedly, Dorcas took possession again. ‘Bloody hell!’ she said. ‘Who on earth writes this nonsense? Just listen to this!’ She read out: ‘“In the turbulent wake of broken engagements, disaster and family loss on both sides, the happy couple announce they are putting the years of unhappiness behind them and, after a whirlwind romance, are to be married in the autumn. They will start their new life together in the groom’s ancestral estates in Norfolk. On the death of his grandfather the Earl of Brancaster last week, Sir Montagu Mathurin inherited the title and much else. The ring . . .” Look, Joe, you can just make it out. “. . . is a rose diamond set in platinum and was bought for the bride-to-be at Asprey’s.” Asprey’s! Huh! They’ll need the “much else” if the bride has such expensive tastes. Will you be sending them a wedding present, Joe?’