( Chapter Eight: A MOUTH OF CHERRY FLAVOURED GIN )
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THE PROCLAIMED "HONEYMOON PHASE" WAS DONE AND DUSTED, and the weekend felt like it had only just started when it was over. Matters were only made worse when Robin Winifred was invited to an uber-formal dinner with the Hamiltons, for a proper introduction to Hiram Dearing, whom had requested specially to meet her in person. She'd much rather have spent the evening practicing dressings and bandages on a borderline unwilling James, who so often complained how he felt like it was bad luck to do so. She'd snap at him in response, as he knew full well that it was preparation for the nursing exam that she had fast approaching.
It would have been ideal to spend another evening that way: in a meadow with a picnic blanket and Robin's nursing kit. She felt like a child playing nurse as she wrapped his arms with white felt, humming gently as he looked for four-leaf clovers and flowers that he thought would look quite swell tucked behind her ears.
Instead, however, the brunette was spending her time alone with Mrs Hamilton, whom was brushing rather vigorously through her short hair with one of Millicent's old hairbrushes. It was because, she claimed, Mr Hiram Dearing was keen on meeting her, after hearing Harold speak so highly in her honour. Quite why this toff was seeking out the nanny of a six-year-old with a furrowed brow which he'd inherited from his mother that gave him a permanently anxious look was above her pay grade, but as Irene had said, she was in no position to deny an aristocrat his needs, especially if she was from downstairs.
"... This is upon the request of Mr Dearing. Harold's been speaking of you so fervently that it's made him keen for you to show up at some point throughout the duration of his stay. I expected that casting you away for a little bit but would allow things to settle down, but it seems that he's hellbent, so we're going to have to doll you up enough to make you seem like something more than working class, like a nanny with some spunk."
"How did things go between himself and Millicent?" Robin asked politely, watching Irene's withered face contorting above her own in the mirror. She was an odd old thing, having had her first child at twenty-eight, Millicent, in '18, just at the end of the war — and then, on the other end of the spectrum, Cyril in '37, when she was forty-seven years old. It was quite the miracle that she didn't miscarry, but it wasn't Robin's place to say anything about it, especially due to her social inferiority.
Irene dragged a fresh fall of brown hair out of Robin's face with the horsehair hairbrush. The little spines were scratching the brunette's scalp painfully with every stroke, but she chose not to speak out about it, out of fear of aggravating the older woman. Irene continued to gush, "Our matchmaking doesn't seem quite to be up to scratch at the moment. Their interaction thus far has been the epitome of disastrous, I'm afraid. It's become quite evident that Millicent is too eager to keep herself on the market for those blasted American men to even bother having a go. She just won't cooperate."
