Ineligible Bachelorette

Chapter 1. Uncle Merton Gives an Ultimatum

"Violet, you simply must marry!"

Well—I mean to say! Not the sort of cheery subject to spring on a gi'l with a bit of a morning head and nothing to comfort her but a cup of tea. I don't mind telling you the delicate china trembled in my hand, and I felt a certain amount of Dante's hellfire playing upon my visage.

You see, Uncle Merton's declarative did not come altogether expectedly, though as soon as he mentioned it I regretted my lack of deductive capabilities. The obvious sign was that it wasn't like Uncle Merton to call on me first thing in the morning. Usually he waited until I had an evening free and leapt into my flat like a tiger, demanding I give him dinner and generally upsetting any plans I had for a lady's night out. He was one of those conservative chaps that fought the war for my sort and wasn't happy about the cavalier air of my demographic subcategory. He absolutely refused to see me in anything but a long skirt and my grandmother's jacket, and I wouldn't be surprised if he secretly ate old army boots and made his valet call him "commander". But he did give me my allowance, and being a well-bred sort of gi'l I did my best to respect the old eyesore. And now that he had spoken, the motive for his desire to see me bright and early on a perfectly good morning in May began to appear. The birds were chirping pretty enthusiastically in the rhododendrons outside Uncle Merty's study window, and there was a certain sort of whatsit in the air that makes every member of the indelicate sex start probing every teashop within twenty miles for unpaired females. A lady can't even venture outside without being harassed by two dozen men clamoring to offer their assistance down a step or through a door. It's enough to make even the most romantic lasses curse the very sight of spring flowers. I myself had been legging it pretty furtively from one knitting circle to another with my collar turned up, and I'd just narrowly managed to evade the bulk of the love-struck populus.

"Marry?" I ventured, taking a sip of tea to fortify myself, and I gave a light-hearted laugh. "My dear Uncle, whatever for?"

"What do you think for, gi'l? You ought to stop frittering your life away in craft circles and start a family!"

"Ah. Right." There was no doubt about it, Uncle Merty caught spring fever. The trick was, of course, to wriggle out of this nasty conversation without making him angry enough to threaten my allowance. Before the marriage business came up I had thought it would be a good time to gently ease in the idea that he might raise my allowance by a tenner or two a month. The old lemon hummed under my hat as I sought for a polite, but persuasive, reply. "Well—er—couldn't I just—"

"Pregnant!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said 'pregnant,' Violet, pay attention!" Uncle Merty's face had turned a trifle more pink, and he waved his arm in a northeasterly direction like a bosun giving the order. "Your cousin Ada is pregnant again! It's time you had a man saddled and started picking out colors for the baby rooms!"

"Uncle, please!" I said, coloring quite a lot myself.

"Come now, Violet, you'll have to face facts sooner or later. I'm old and feeble, you know!" He slammed his fist on his desk, making the lamp shake. "I can't go on taking care of you forever!"

"But—surely I can—"

"You'll have to marry, Violet, and that's that."

"What if—"

"Now, I think Mr. Forsythe is just the sort of lad for you," Uncle Merton continued. "He took you to the opera last week. Sensible, respectable chap. He works at the foreign office, you know—I'm sure that should please your adventurous side. And you know him quite well already, don't you?"

"Er, well, I suppose—" Mr. Forsythe was one of those clerks in British Foreign Affairs. You'd hope that an interesting job title like 'secretary to the secretary of the international syndicate' would make for interesting conversation during the twelve-hundred or so intermissions that seemed to plague opera from start to finish, but if my memory serves me the only bloody thing he could manage to say when I enquired about his work was 'Oh dear me, yes, I could tell you stories to make your hair stand on end! But if I told you, my dear, the foreign office would have to have you assassinated.'

Very true, no doubt. But when combined with a laugh that could impress a horse, Mr. Forsythe made an opera about the Hundred Years War seem just as long, if you understand me. A complete and utter bore.

It gave me an idea. "Well, it really depends, doesn't it?"

"On what?" Uncle Merton said. He was pouring himself another scotch.

"Well, you see, old-flesh-and-blood, that it's no good coaxing me to marry some blighted clerk from the West End by saying he's got an exciting job to keep me entertained on those long winter evenings, don't you know."

"What are you blithering about?"

"I'm not blithering, I'm only saying that working for the foreign office is not the great thing that novels make it out to be. The crux of the problem is that it's simply no good telling it on the mountaintops that you've got a cushy job with enemies of the free peoples making the job interesting if you can't even tell anyone about your adventures."

Uncle Merton blinked. My words appeared to have an effect on him. He wrinkled his expansive eyebrows until he was making the perfect impression of a walrus with a headache. "What?"

"Oh." My uncle wasn't what you'd call an intellectual. "Right."

He shook his head. "Please stop trying to confuse the issue, Violet. No, I'm quite settled on the matter. You will drive up to West End and throw yourself on his doorstep in a fit of love-crazed passion. Invite him to tea or something."

"But, Uncle-!"

"You will do this for me, child, or I'll have your allowance like that, and you'll have to go stay with your Aunt May in Lincolnshire."

"Oh, I say—really! I mean—there's nothing in Lincolnshire but a bunch of sheep!"

"Violet!"

"Oh—alright, alright. Alright?"

"Good gi'l. I'll tell Gerald to bring your car around. Lovely to see you, dear. Don't bother asking for money because you got your allowance last week. "

I stepped out of Uncle Merton's study. Have you ever felt like one of those women that get spirited away by fairies in the night, only to be left tottering on the hearth rug the next morning with bloodshot eyes and a vacant expression? Exhausted, don't you know, and a little foggy? It's just how I felt then.

"Oh, damn!"