and dance.
It wasn’t the first time he’d said he wanted to marry her; they’d teased around the topic before, whispered conversations of ‘Imagine if …’ at the back of dim cafes in the parts of town her parents never went to. She always found the subject deeply exciting; unspoken, but implicit in their playful descriptions of the farmhouse they’d live in and the life they’d have together, was the suggestion of closed doors, and a shared bed, and a promise of freedom—both physical and moral—that was irresistible to a schoolgirl like Dolly, whose mother still ironed and starched her uniform shirts.
Imagining the two of them like that made her giddy, and she reached for his arm as they left the sunlit fields and wound their way through the shaded alleyway. When she did, he stopped walking, and pulled her with him to stand against the stone wall of a nearby building.
He smiled in the shadows, nervously it seemed to her, and said, ‘Dolly.’
‘Yes.’ It was going to happen. Dolly could hardly breathe.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, something important.’
She smiled then, and her face was so glorious in its openness and expectation that Jimmy’s chest burned. He couldn’t believe he’d finally done it, kissed her like he wanted to, and it had been every bit as sweet as he’d imagined. Best of all was the way she’d kissed him back; there was a future in that kiss. They might come from opposite sides of town, but they weren’t so different, not where it counted; not in the way they felt about each other. Her hands were soft within his own as he said what he’d been turning over in his mind all day, ‘I had a phone call the other day from London, a fellow called Lorant.’
Dolly nodded.
‘He’s starting a photojournalistic magazine called Picture Post—a journal dedicated to printing images that tell stories—he saw my photographs in the Telegraph, Doll, and he’s asked me to come and work for him.’
He waited for her to squeal, to jump, to clutch at his arms with excitement. It was everything he’d dreamed of doing, ever since he’d first found his father’s old camera and tripod in the attic, the box with the sepia photographs inside. But Dolly didn’t move. Her smile was lopsided now, frozen in place. ‘In London?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re going to London?’
‘Yes. You know, big palace, big clock, big smoke.’
He was trying to be funny, but she didn’t laugh; Dolly blinked a couple of times and said on an exhalation, ‘When?’
‘September.’
‘To live?’
‘And work.’ Jimmy hesitated; something was wrong. ‘A photographic journal,’ he said vaguely, before frowning. ‘Doll?’
Her bottom lip had begun to tremble and he thought she might be going to cry.
Jimmy was alarmed ‘Doll?—What is it?’
She didn’t cry though. She flung her arms out to the side and then brought them back to rest on her cheeks. ‘We were going to be married.’
‘What?’
‘You said—and I thought—but now—’
She was cross with him, and Jimmy had no idea why. She was gesticulating with both hands now, her cheeks were pink, and she was speaking very quickly, her words a blur so that all he could make out was ‘farmhouse’ and ‘Father’ and then, oddly, ‘bicycle factory’.
Jimmy tried to keep up, didn’t succeed, and was feeling pretty bloody helpless when finally she gave an enormous sigh, planted her hands on her hips, and looked so spent from the whole monologue, so indignant, that he couldn’t think what to do except take her in his arms and smooth her hair as he might have done with a cranky child. It could have gone either way, so he smiled to himself as he felt her calming. Jimmy walked a pretty steady emotional line and Dolly’s passions caught him off guard sometimes. They were intoxicating, though: she was never pleased if she could be delighted, never annoyed if she could be furious.
‘I thought you wanted to marry me,’ she said, lifting her face to look at him, ‘but you’re going to London instead.’
Jimmy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Not instead, Doll. Mr Lorant is going to pay me, and I’m going to save everything I can. I want to marry you more than anything—are you kidding? I just want to be sure and do it right.’
‘But it is right, Jimmy. We love each other; we want to be together. The farmhouse—the fat hens and a hammock and the two of us dancing together in bare feet …’
Jimmy smiled: he’d told Dolly all about his