As the Crow Flies

“Just one letter to be posted” was all she said.

The preparations for the wedding became so frantic that once Daphne had passed over the letter to Wentworth she quite forgot about the problems of Guy Trentham. What with selecting the bridesmaids without offending half her family, enduring endless dress fittings that never ran to time, studying seating arrangements so as to be certain that those members of the family who hadn’t spoken to each other in years were not placed at the same table—or for that matter in the same pew as each other—and finally having to cope with a future mother-in-law, the dowager marchioness, who, having married off three of her own daughters, always had three opinions to offer on every subject, she felt quite exhausted.

With only a week to go Daphne suggested to Percy that they should pop along to the nearest register office and get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible—and preferably without bothering to tell anyone else.

“Anything you say, old gel,” said Percy, who had long ago stopped listening to anyone on the subject of marriage.

On 16 July 1921 Daphne woke at five forty-three feeling drained, but by the time she stepped out into the sunshine in Lowndes Square at one forty-five she was exhilarated and actually looking forward to the occasion.

Her father helped her up the steps into an open carriage that her grandmother and mother had traveled in on the day they were married. A little crowd of servants and well-wishers cheered the bride as she began her journey to Westminster, while others waved from the pavement. Officers saluted, toffs blew her a kiss and would-be brides sighed as she passed by.

Daphne, on her father’s arm, entered the church by the north door a few minutes after Big Ben had struck two, then proceeded slowly down the aisle to the accompaniment of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. She paused only for a moment before joining Percy, curtsying to the King and Queen, who sat alone in their private pews beside the altar. After all those months of waiting the service seemed over in moments. As the organ struck up “Rejoice, rejoice” and the married couple were bidden to an anteroom to sign the register, Daphne’s only reaction was to want to go through the entire ceremony again.

Although she had secretly practiced the signature several times on her writing paper back at Lowndes Square, she still hesitated before she wrote the words, “Daphne Wiltshire.”

Husband and wife left the church to a thunderous peal of bells and strolled on through the streets of Westminster in the bright afternoon sun. Once they had arrived at the large marquee that had been set up on the lawn in Vincent Square, they began to welcome their guests.

Trying to have a word with every one of them resulted in Daphne’s almost failing to sample a piece of her own wedding cake, and no sooner had she taken a bite than the dowager marchioness swept up to announce that if they didn’t get on with the speeches they might as well dispense with any hope of sailing on the last tide.

Algernon Fitzpatrick praised the bridesmaids and toasted the bride and groom. Percy made a surprisingly witty and well-received reply. Daphne was then ushered off to 45 Vincent Square, the home of a distant uncle, so that she could change into her going-away outfit.

Once again the crowds flocked out onto the pavement to throw rice and rose petals, while Hoskins waited to dispatch the newlyweds off to Southampton.

Thirty minutes later Hoskins was motoring peacefully down the A30 past Kew Gardens, leaving the wedding guests behind them to continue their celebrations without the bride and groom.

“Well, now you’re stuck with me for life, Percy Wiltshire,” Daphne told her husband.

“That, I suspect, was ordained by our mothers before we even met,” said Percy. “Silly, really.”

“Silly?”

“Yes. I could have stopped all their plotting years ago, by simply telling them that I never wanted to marry anyone else in the first place.”

Daphne was giving the honeymoon serious thought for the first time when Hoskins brought the Rolls to a halt on the dockside a good two hours before the Mauretania was due even to turn her pistons. With the help of several porters Hoskins unloaded two trunks from the boot of the car—fourteen having been sent down the previous day—while Daphne and Percy headed towards the gangplank where the ship’s purser was awaiting them.

Just as the purser stepped forward to greet the marquess and his bride someone from the crowd shouted: “Good luck, your lordship! And I’d like to say on behalf of the missus and myself that the marchioness looks a bit of all right.”

They both turned and burst out laughing when they saw Charlie and Becky, still in their wedding outfits, standing among the crowd.

The purser guided the four of them up the gangplank and into the Nelson stateroom, where they found yet another bottle of champagne waiting to be opened.

“How did you manage to get here ahead of us?” asked Daphne.

“Well,” said Charlie in a broad cockney accent, “we may not ’ave a Rolls-Royce, my lady, but we still managed to overtake ’Oskins in our little two-seater just the other side of Winchester, didn’t we?”

They all laughed except Becky, who couldn’t take her eyes off the little diamond brooch that looked exquisite on the lapel of Daphne’s suit.

Three toots on the foghorn, and the purser suggested that the Trumpers might care to leave the ship, assuming it was not their intention to accompany the Wiltshires to New York.

“See you in a year or so’s time,” shouted Charlie, as he turned to wave at them from the gangplank.

“By then we will have traveled right round the world, old gel,” Percy confided to his wife.

Daphne waved. “Yes, and by the time we get back heaven knows what those two will have been up to.”

COLONEL HAMILTON

1920–1922