Read The Girl on the Beach for Free Online Page B

mind,’ Mrs Walker said. ‘Some of our relations can sit on your side of the church.’
    ‘Can’t we go to a register office, then it won’t matter?’
    ‘No, certainly not, that’s ungodly. You must make your vows in church. They are more binding that way.’
    ‘I do not need vows to bind me to Harry. And wherever I make them, they will be kept, I promise you that.’ She had spoken sharply and felt Harry reach for her hand under the table and squeeze it.
    ‘And where will you live?’
    ‘I’ll find a house to rent,’ Harry said. ‘Not too far from Chalfont’s – Southwark, Bermondsey, Lambeth, somewhere like that.’
    ‘But they’re nothing but factories and slums,’ his mother said.
    ‘Not all. A lot of the old unfit houses have been pulled down and there are some decent ones there now. And we need to go carefully to start with, until I make my way up.’
    ‘I don’t know if you’ll do that at Chalfont’s. You are marrying one of Sir Bertram’s servants, after all.’
    ‘I am no longer one of his servants,’ Julie reminded them.
    ‘We know that.’ Again that repressive tightening of the lips.
    ‘It wasn’t Julie’s fault,’ Harry put in. ‘And my choice of wife has nothing to do with Sir Bertram.’
    The tense meeting came to an end at last and Harry walked her home. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he said.
    ‘It was awful. Harry, I can’t go through with all that, I really can’t. Your mother made it very clear you were marrying beneath you. And the sort of wedding she’s talking about will make that plain to all your friends and relations.’
    He laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, sweetheart. Dad climbed his way up from being a delivery boy with a horse and cart and Mum was a shop assistant. We can do the same. I’ll make my way up in the world and you will be with me every step of the way. You have to believe that.’
    ‘I will, if we can be married quietly somewhere, just you and me and a couple of witnesses.’
    ‘They won’t like it.’
    ‘Then we won’t tell them until it’s over.’
    ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
    ‘Then you must love pomp and ceremony more than you love me.’
    ‘Oh, Julie, how can you say that? You’re not being fair.’
    ‘It’s you not being fair.’ They had reached her door and she stopped to turn and face him. ‘You don’t seem to understand.’
    ‘I’m trying.’
    ‘Try harder.’ She turned and let herself in the flat, leaving him staring at the green door with a number seven painted on its centre panel.
    He walked away, deep in thought. Was Julie being unreasonable? Was his mother intent on humiliating her?He did not think so, but in Julie’s shoes he might. She was extremely sensitive about her origins, or lack of them, and putting her into a crowd of his relations and friends might make her feel put down. All he wanted to do was put her on a pedestal and tell the world how wonderful she was.
     
    ‘It’s all off,’ she told Grace. ‘They are snobs and I’m not good enough for their precious son.’
    Grace put a cup of cocoa in front of her. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Harry was on their side,’ she said after she had told the tale. ‘I thought he would understand but he didn’t.’
    ‘He’ll be back.’
    ‘Not if his mother has her way.’
    ‘If she does, he’s not the man I thought he was and you’ve had a lucky escape.’
    Julie gave her a rueful smile. It was strange to think how close they had become, the anonymous orphan and the spinster teacher. When she had been at Coram’s, Grace Paterson had not shown her any favouritism, quite the contrary, but when she had gone to her in trouble, she had turned out to be a brick. Besides giving her a home, Grace had taught her how to speak properly and how to behave in company. It wasn’t that which was her downfall, but the fact she had no past, no family – ‘breeding’, the upper classes called it.
    ‘The Walkers aren’t upper class, nowhere near it,’