Again he laughed, shaking his head as he told her, ‘No. This is for you by way of apology for the fact that I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept your invitation – at least not this Saturday.’
‘It wasn’t an invitation. I was just saying that I go dancing of a Saturday,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘And what do you mean, it’s for me. What is it?’
‘Have a look,’ David smiled, handing her the large bag.
For all her confidence with young men, Dulcie was not used to receiving gifts from anyone outside her family. And even when presents were given and exchanged they were small modest things, that most definitely did not come in large Selfridges bags. When a man who wasn’t part of your family, or who you weren’t courting, gave you a present, though, Dulcie knew exactly what that meant. For all her enjoyment of riling other young women by flirting with their partners, Dulcie had neither the desire to nor the intention of allowing any man to take things further than that.
Looking David James-Thompson squarely in the eye she told him bluntly, ‘If you’re thinking that by giving me some kind of present I’m going to let you take liberties with me, then you’re going to be disappointed, because I won’t.’
‘That isn’t why I’m giving you this.’
Dulcie looked searchingly at him, and then, sensing that he was telling her the truth and after a brisk accepting nod of her head, she opened the carrier bag and looked cautiously inside. When she saw what it contained, though, her head came up and she looked speechlessly at David before looking back into the carrier again at the cream and tan leather vanity case she had coveted so much, and which now so unexpectedly was hers.
‘I told them not to gift wrap it because I wanted to see your face when you saw it.’
‘I wasn’t going to pinch it. I just wanted to see what it looked like. Gracie Fields has got one. I saw a photo of her in Picture Post carrying it,’ Dulcie defended her actions earlier.
She meant it, David recognised, contrasting her blunt outspokenness with the coy but unmistakable promise Lydia had made him earlier about showing him later, when they were alone, how pleased she would be if he bought her the handbag she wanted. A coyness that had repulsed him every bit as much as Dulcie’s bravado delighted him. Right now she was like a child at Christmas desperately trying not to look as excited as she felt, David thought, laughing as she immediately folded up the paper bag and then opened the vanity case to put the discarded bag and her own small handbag inside it, before triumphantly locking it and taking a couple of steps holding onto it.
Without having to discuss it they’d both automatically moved into the shadows away from the store as they spoke and out of view from anyone else leaving.
David had only bought the vanity case for Dulcie on impulse after Lydia had left him to go home with her father, but now he recognised that he was glad that he had.
‘I suppose you’re taking Miss Iron Knickers Lydia somewhere posh tonight, are you?’ Dulcie asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No. I’m going back to my rooms to study some briefs. It’s a legal term meaning papers,’ he explained when he saw her looking puzzled.
‘Does that mean that you’re a judge, like your dad?’ Dulcie asked him, remembering that Lizzie had said that his father was a judge.
David grinned. ‘No. I’m actually a barrister, a very newly qualified and junior barrister,’ he added wryly. He’d taken off his hat when he’d first greeted her, but now he put it on again.
‘A barrister? What’s that?’
Both her naïvety and her lack of self-consciousness about questioning him appealed to David. They spoke of a freedom from the constraints of ‘correct behaviour’ and a zest for life. Things sorely lacking in both his mother and Lydia.
‘Basically a barrister is someone who is instructed by a solicitor on behalf of that solicitor’s client to present and plead or defend a case that is put before a judge and jury. In my case it means grubbing around in a second-rate set of chambers, hoping that the clerk will throw me a few scraps in the form of a brief.’
‘You don’t like being a barrister then.’
She was sharp, David thought ruefully, he had to give her that.
‘It isn’t a matter of what I do or don’t like.’
‘Well, it should be,’ Dulcie told him stoutly. ‘Are you really going to get engaged to Miss Iron Knickers?’
‘It’s what my parents and hers expect.’
Dulcie gave him a look. ‘So you’re almost an engaged man but you’ve given me this.’
‘To make up for the unpleasantness this afternoon.’ He paused and then told her, ‘I’m sorry – about not being able to go dancing with you.’
‘Don’t be. I’ve got lads queuing up to dance with me,’ Dulcie told him truthfully, thinking gleefully to herself that being given the vanity case was far better than winning her bet with Lizzie. She just couldn’t wait to see the other girl’s expression when she told her about the case.
‘Where are you going now then?’ she asked him.
‘Like I told you, I’ve got to read some briefs. The senior partner wants my notes on them in chambers first thing on Monday morning.’
‘Chambers?’
‘That’s what they call the . . . the offices that barristers work from. Mine are at Gray’s Inn. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go.’
Before anyone saw them he meant, Dulcie recognised as she saw the quick look he gave over his shoulder. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to stay.
‘Suit yourself,’ she responded. Then giving him a dismissive shrug, Dulcie turned on her heel and walked away from him without a backward look.
Who’d have thought that he’d buy her the vanity case, she thought gleefully. She certainly hadn’t. Oh, she’d known from the look he’d given her this afternoon that he had a bit of an eye for her, but then she’d known that the first time she’d seen him. But buying her the vanity case . . . That would be one in the eye for Miss Stuck-Up Lydia Whittingham.
She wasn’t going to take her vanity case out with her when she went dancing tomorrow night, though, Dulcie decided, immediately protective of her new acquisition. All sorts went to the Hammersmith Palais and she didn’t want some other girl nicking it when she wasn’t looking. She would take it with her to church on Sunday, though. She couldn’t wait to see Edith’s face when she saw it, Dulcie thought happily, unconcerned both about the fact that a vanity case was hardly the kind of thing one would take to church and the fact that she wasn’t going to win her bet about dancing with David James-Thompson.
For much longer after he had left her than was wise or sensible David was still thinking about Dulcie and the way that talking to her had made him realise how little he wanted the future his parents had planned for him, and how constraining it felt, like wearing someone else’s clothes. But he had no choice; he had to wear them, just as he had to marry Lydia, or risk being labelled a complete cad – something his determined and icily proud mother would never tolerate or accept. Marriage was marriage, and if his was going to be a duty rather than a pleasure, well then, he’d just have to find his pleasure elsewhere. His parents moved in the same social circles as the Whittinghams. They were neighbours, living on the outskirts of the same small market town. He had known Lydia for ever, and his mother had made it plain that she wanted Lydia as her daughter-in-law. Or rather, that she wanted the money Lydia’s mother would inherit to come into their own family. His parents were comfortably off but not as well off as his mother would have liked. Her own grandmother had had country connections to the aristocracy, and she was an out-and-out snob, who never lost an opportunity to