Belle - Lesley Pearse [225]
Yesterday she hadn’t got up till late, and then Mog had commandeered her for the rest of the day, taking her to a dressmaker to see about getting a dress made for her wedding. Belle could have come home after that and talked to Jimmy, but instead she encouraged Mog to stay out with her for the afternoon shopping in Regent Street. During the evening Jimmy was behind the bar, so they had only had brief, snatched conversations.
What made it even harder to talk to Jimmy was that both Mog and Garth obviously had high expectations for them. She could see it everywhere. A bedroom on the top floor had been prepared for her with pretty flowery wallpaper, flouncy curtains, and the kind of new double bed with a fancy carved headboard that a newly married couple might choose. The room next to her bedroom was empty of furniture, and Belle was sure this was because it had been earmarked as a living room for her and Jimmy if they did get married.
While she knew that these types of assumptions and plans were commonplace in families where there were two young people considered ideally suited for each other, she found it oppressive and unrealistic. She really liked Jimmy; he had every quality that any girl would want in a husband. In fact if she hadn’t been snatched away at such a young age, she had no doubt that they would have become sweethearts and might even have been married by now.
But Mog and Garth weren’t taking into consideration that she wasn’t an ordinary, innocent young girl any longer, and that her experiences had created a huge gulf between herself and Jimmy. She felt Mog and Garth ought to be able to see this for themselves, but because they’d found love, they had this rather sweet but potentially dangerous idea that Jimmy’s devotion to Belle could wipe out her past.
Belle took Jimmy’s arm as they walked down Villiers Street towards the Thames Embankment to catch a boat a little later that morning.
‘Remember that day we came running down here in the snow?’ he said.
‘I used to think about it all the time when things were bad,’ she admitted. ‘It’s so strange to find ourselves all grown up now; we’ve both changed so much in two years.’
‘I don’t think I have,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘Grown a couple of inches, built up a bit of muscle, but that’s all.’
‘No, there’s more than that,’ she said. ‘You are a man now, you’ve developed confidence in yourself. You were still a boy grieving for your mother when I met you.’
He pulled a face. ‘You make it sound as if I was drippy.’
Belle laughed. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I was fairly drippy too, I didn’t know anything then, I’d hardly been out of Seven Dials.’
They continued to chat as they joined the long queue for a boat to Greenwich. Belle’s spirits were rising because Jimmy wasn’t attempting to make her talk about the two missing years. He was telling her stories about neighbours, some of whom she remembered and some she didn’t, but they were all funny. He was a good raconteur, descriptive, yet veering towards cynicism as if he’d studied the people he was talking about quite closely. She found herself laughing easily, and by the time they got on to a boat and found seats up by the bow, she was feeling very glad that they’d come out, and very comfortable with him.
There was a big mix of people on the boat: young couples like them, families, old people and quite a few foreigners on holiday in England. The sun was very warm, making the river sparkle, and everyone was jovial and friendly in anticipation of a good day out.
‘I always wanted Mog to take me on one of these boats,’ Belle said as the crew cast off and the boat began to chug away downriver. ‘I used to think she was mean because she didn’t, but I suppose Annie never let her have a whole day off.’
‘She told me once that she asked Annie if she could take you on a little holiday to the seaside,’ Jimmy said.