Right Under Her Nose

This romantic short story by Alison Carter is set in the 1960s.

Judith was known for her matchmaking skills. But was she missing the most obvious match of all?

IT had been such a good job, and now Judith had blown it. Walking down the steps of the register office in the rain, she wondered how she could have been so silly.

“I simply did not see Mr Warren coming,” she said to a lamppost.

Mr Warren, her boss, had been outside the door, waiting to slip in once the nice couple from Knutsford had gone. And, as it turned out, to give her the sack.

She had only been giving them a tiny bit of leeway.

“You may feel, Miss Gorman,” Mr Warren had said, looking over his glasses, “that we can make executive decisions at this register office. You may want us to embrace the ‘Free Love’ movement and let any Tom, Dick or Harry marry any . . .”

He was searching for three corresponding female names, but gave up.

“You may think that standards can be loosened. But they cannot.”

On a few previous occasions, Judith might have taken an imaginative approach to marriage licensing. This had been what Mr Warren called “the last straw”.

But in the case of the Knutsford couple, he was being very unfair. Just because it was 1969, Mr Warren went on a lot about moral standards. But she hadn’t been encouraging “free love”.

She had merely sped up normal procedures because the couple were heading off shortly on what sounded like a super honeymoon. To make them wait would have put a spanner in the works.

True enough, they hadn’t exactly had the right documentation about their persons, but Mike

Browning and his fiancée Beryl were lovely people; both in their mid-fifties, clearly in love.

“Maisie – my first wife – she left me in 1947,” Mr Browning had said. “She ran off with a chap from Cheadle. I was relieved, honestly. And in the excitement of getting Beryl to marry me I forgot –”

“He forgot he’d ever been married to her!” Beryl cried. They tended to finish each other’s sentences. “Oh, Mike, you are a one!”

“I ought to have known how a previous marriage might affect things,” Mike said, a little embarrassed.

“You were relieved when she ran off?” Judith asked. She found other people’s romances – or lack of them – endlessly fascinating.

“Oh, she was awful.”

Beryl took her fiancé’s hand. “She never let Mike get a word in. She and I worked together in the Auxiliary Fire Service during the war, and she drove us all potty.”

“You are really supposed to bring your Decree Absolute, Mr Browning,” Judith said.

“I didn’t know,” he replied. “I didn’t think. I’ve got my new passport here.”

“And I’ve got mine,” Beryl chimed in. “We’re going to Majorca.”

Judith dithered.

“But you can fetch the Decree?” She glanced towards Mr Warren’s office. “I mean, we don’t know – officially – that you’re not still married to the first Mrs Browning.”

They burst out laughing. “I can tell you that Mike made sure of that.”

They swore to Judith that they’d be in with all necessary documents Monday next, and begged her to “set the ball rolling”. A delay would put Majorca in jeopardy.

“Majorca’s all booked,” Mr Browning said.

* * * *

So Mr Warren had fired her.

She tugged down her tartan mini, patted her beehive – which was fast losing its shape in the rain – and set off for the bus stop.

She told herself that love had been her guide in all the decisions she’d made at the register office.

There had been that African couple who were a few days off the required residency period, but who had travelled a long way on the only day off they could get in the hope of sorting things out.

Then there was the charming lady from Stockport who had spilled tea on her birth certificate, and had been obliged to leave it drying on a radiator. It was weak tea, too, with hardly a dash of milk, she’d assured Judith.

Mr Warren had scolded Judith, and made her stick to procedure.

She saw Dougie Johnson coming along the wet pavement towards her, with a friend. Dougie worked at the register office, too, in “Births and Deaths”.

“Judith!” he called out. “Early lunch?”

Judith got through the explanations quickly. She had a very particular reason to speak to Dougie: she had recently identified him as the

perfect boyfriend for Pippa, her flatmate.

Pippa was serious, and kind, and needed someone just like Dougie.

Judith invited them both to her party. She and Pippa often threw parties, which Pippa had dubbed “Judith’s Marriage Bureau, But With Cheese Balls”.

“It’s kind of you to invite me,” Dougie’s friend said. He was freckled, with light brown hair and a mouth that was permanently a little turned-up at the corners. His name was

Alan.

“What do you do for a living?” Judith asked. She kept a mental folder of relevant information on single persons.

Alan coloured.

“I’m sort of between jobs,” he said. “I was with the local evening paper, but they decided to reduce staff, and –”

“That makes two of us, then.”

Alan seemed friendly. His curly smile was infectious.

Judith immediately decided that he might get on with Pippa’s friend, Roberta.

“See you on Saturday, about eight,” she said as they parted. “Bring a bottle.”

* * * *

At the flat, Judith told Pippa her tale of woe.

“I’m going to have to economise,” she said. “Is there a tin of soup?”

“Eat the cheese that’s going hard at the back of the fridge. And the bread. I’m off out.”

“What bread? What cheese?”

“You never see what’s right under your nose,” Pippa said, pulling open the fridge door. “Look: put the one on the other, and grill them!”

“Oh, yes – I didn’t see.” “You never do.”

“By the way, Dougie

– the one I told you about – he’s coming on Saturday, plus a new and promising chap called Alan.”

“And you have plans for both of them, I bet.”

“I might. Dougie you know about, obviously.”

“I’ve never met Dougie.”

“But you know that he’s perfect for you.”

“I. Have. Never. Met. Dougie,” Pippa said slowly.

“He’s perfect. Alan is good for Roberta Pinsent, I think.”

“Judith?”

Judith looked up. “What?”

“Oh, never mind.”

* * * *

Judith passed Friday and most of Saturday looking in the jobs pages of the newspaper, but finding nothing.

Saturday evening arrived, and the party was a success. By the end of it, Dougie Johnson and Pippa were practically in love.

“He’s OK,” Pippa said, as they washed up.

“You’re glowing.”

“Am I?” Pippa’s hand hovered in mid-air, the bubbles dripping into the sink. “You could charge for this, you know.”

“For what?”

“Finding people for other people to love . . .” She blushed. “I mean ‘like’ . . . I mean, people to go out with, once or twice.”

“You’re going out with Dougie?”

“Maybe.”

* * * *

As Judith lay under the eiderdown that night, she wondered about the idea of being paid for matchmaking.

A young librarian had turned up late to the party, and when Judith had steered him in the direction of Maria, who loved to read, the spark had been immediate.

And Roberta had obviously been struck by freckly Alan, which was not a surprise. He looked rather dishy in a polo sweater.

In the morning, Judith brought up the idea that had been keeping her awake all night.

“A lonely hearts agency? I don’t suppose it would need much outlay,” Pippa said thoughtfully.

“A typewriter, some stamps. Put an ad in our corner shop, and I could put another in the work canteen at the factory.”

“Would anyone trust me, though?” Judith asked.

“Well, I can endorse you in the Linton’s staff room. And you know so many people that word would get around.

“You can only try. The rent’s due.”

The doorbell rang in the hall below, and they heard their landlady open it and send someone up. Alan with the freckles walked in.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I left my umbrella.” Judith laughed.

“I’m sure I reminded you about that umbrella as you were leaving. Roberta was talking to you, so I bet you were taken up with that.”

“Oh, maybe,” he said. “Sorry to bother you.”

Judith pointed to a stand by the door.

“Bright red – gosh, you’d think nobody could miss that. What do you think of a matchmaking agency, Alan?”

He looked startled.

“Love. Romance, you know.”

He stared, and Pippa laughed.

“Judith is thinking of starting an agency.”

“Aren’t you in newspapers?” Judith asked him. “I bet you write like a dream.”

“Do you need some help?”

And that was how he ended up lending a hand.

* * * *

The initial work was surprisingly simple, and Alan’s ads were terrifically smart. It took less than three days for a letter from a potential client to come in.

It was from a young woman who had just started work at another factory near Linton’s.

“What do we do with this?” Judith asked Alan. “Of course we need a chap before we can match her up. I haven’t thought this through.”

They had taken to meeting in a coffee bar near the flat. The owner was beginning to suspect they were using his café as an office, and insisted they buy coffee every hour.

Judith peered at the small, square photo that Victoria had enclosed.

“Look here, Alan, might you go on a date – you’re unattached, aren’t you?” “Not my type.”

“You haven’t looked.”

“It’s unethical.”

He looked mildly irritated, and Judith left it alone.

“We just have to wait,” he said after a moment. “Be patient. Clients will sign up.”

Judith was already impressed with Alan’s business sense. And he was organised, too. She had no idea why he’d called himself forgetful.

He’d also waved aside her worries about not having a wage to pay him.

“I’ll stick around,” he’d said, “until something comes up, or until you become a millionaire. Whichever is sooner.”

The coffee shop owner was bearing down on them with two more cups.

“We’d better get it off the ground soon,” Judith said. “I can’t afford this place.”

* * * *

Less than six weeks later, the Gorman Agency had a small office above the coffee shop, and Alan was still around.

Judith surveyed their client book. There were upwards of fifty names in it, and another twelve neatly crossed out in ink.

“Gone off into the blue yonder, in love,” Judith said with delight.

“Well, gone off having paid us seven pounds and eight shillings each,” Alan replied.

He was smiling at her with his signature smile, the one that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. For the first time in a long time, Judith felt good. And secure.

After another month,

Alan was a salaried employee.

“So many lonely hearts,” Judith said, during a quiet moment.

“People are shy. It’s hard.”

She noticed he’d had a haircut. There was a pale border of skin above his collar untouched by the

recent sunshine.

“How’s Roberta?” she asked.

“Oh, it didn’t come to anything. Pass me the petty cash box, will you? I need biscuits.”

It was a shame, because clearly Roberta was keener on Alan than he was on her.

“We need to find you a girl.” She laughed. “If only for the Gorman reputation!”

Alan rummaged through the box and drew out ten shillings.

“What about you?”

“Oh, custard creams, you’re going.”

“No, I mean a chap.” Judith blinked. It hadn’t crossed her mind. She’d been too busy.

“Oh, don’t waste time on me,” she said.

Alan banged the door behind him.

* * * *

if

The agency went from strength to strength, and Judith had to give up the space above the coffee shop and rent a ground floor office with a waiting room.

She was amazed to discover that she was making money, and when she went shopping for new work clothes, she found herself buying a black and white Pierre Cardin dress and not gasping at the price tag.

Alan stared at her when she walked into the office.

“I know, I shouldn’t,” she said.

“Shouldn’t what?” “Spend.”

“Oh. Your company’s doing well.”

“Our company,” she corrected.

He opened a drawer and shuffled things inside it.

“I’m just the help,” he said.

He seemed moody, and Judith worried that he was overworked.

Gorman’s certainly couldn’t afford to lose him, so she hired a secretary to help out. She turned out to be a real beauty, with Twiggy’s legs.

Judith hoped that maybe Alan could fall for her, too. He was handsome in his sandy sort of way, and his smile always improved the day. But the secretary was, annoyingly, engaged to a soldier.

Pippa, though, was in love.

That had been an early triumph of the Gorman system, and had added another photograph of a happy couple to the wall.

One afternoon, Judith stood looking at the photographs, feeling oddly low.

Pippa would be leaving the flat to marry Dougie soon, and she’d be finding somewhere else to live.

Here she was, surrounded by romance, and only now spotting that there was no love in her own life.

She was smarter now, and more elegant, with a new, sharp brown bob and some good jewellery, but nobody was there to comment on it.

“It’s tricky,” she told Pippa that night. “I’m surrounded by men seeking love, but I can’t touch any of them!”

“Poor Jude.”

“Not at all. I am lucky.

I’m making pots of money. I tried to give Alan a raise last week, you know, and he was having none of it.”

“Silly boy – that’s a lost chance. He’d never ask for himself, because he’s too shy to make demands on anybody.” Judith frowned.

“Alan isn’t shy. You should see him handling a demanding client.”

“Roberta said he was quiet.”

“Oh, but they didn’t hit it off. That was one of my rare failures.”

Judith clapped her hands together.

“In fact, there’s a project to get me out of the doldrums – a woman for young Alan. He’s lovely, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

But Alan politely resisted. He said he was busy, and that if he ever wanted a girlfriend he “wouldn’t use the agency, thank you”.

He got a bit cross about it, and Judith tried to make him take the day off, which only made it worse.

She hated to see him upset, and felt wretched, but work took over.

* * * *

The following few weeks were so frantic that Judith joked about neither of them ever getting time for romance, anyway.

An older, wealthy client accused Gorman’s of sending her a series of gold-digging men, which was not the

case. Alan took care of her brilliantly.

Then there was an embarrassing incident in which a date was set up between a brother and sister.

“They have different names!” Judith protested, once Alan had shown them out of the office with a full refund and a six-month subscription each.

“You need to let me find you a young lady, Alan,” she said one day. “You’re a real gem. And I still have the knack.”

“I told you that I don’t want any of the women on the books.”

Alan was tugging his coat down from the stand. She stepped over and unhooked it for him.

She held it out, ready for Alan to slip his arms in the sleeves, but something made her step back and hand it to him.

The thought of being that close, once his back was to her and the warm skin of his neck inches away, made her feel odd.

“Work shouldn’t be everything,” she said, backing off to the desk and reaching out to hold on to its hard edge for support.

“It’s what’s on offer,” he said, and was gone.

It bothered Judith more than she expected that her colleague was under the weather. The atmosphere suffered, as did her work.

She would sometimes sit in her car before setting off home and think about him.

People liked his signature smile. It grew imperceptibly from his usual expression, which made people smile with him. And that was good for business. He really did need cheering up.

The secretary left to marry her soldier, and Judith looked for another. A string of pretty young women, all with the appropriate skills and all keen to work at a modern dating agency, turned up, but Judith didn’t like any of them.

“Did you get a feeling for any of those?” she asked Alan at the end of a day.

“Me?” He looked at her. “It’s not up to me. But there’s one candidate to come.”

“What?” Judith was tired, and jumpy for reasons she couldn’t identify.

“She’s outside.”

The final interviewee was a tall, bulky woman of about fifty. She suggested that their filing needed improvement, objected to the age of the typewriter she’d be working on, but admitted to a passion for romantic novels.

“I do love a happy ending,” she said.

Alan and Judith glanced at each other and smiled.

Judith felt better, as though the sun had finally shone again, and they hired her on the spot.

Despite her brusque manner, and a strange unmoving helmet of grey hair, Mrs Aldridge quickly became an asset.

Then, one morning, Alan walked in and sat opposite Judith with a straight back and a business-like expression.

“I’ve applied for a position at the newspaper I was working for when we first . .. I mean, when our paths first crossed,” he said.

“Oh.” Judith felt her Mary Quant dress tighten round her chest, and she tugged at the collar. “Oh, dear. It’s hot, isn’t it?”

She stood up, but one of her knees buckled and she hit the corner of the desk with her hip.

“Time to move on,” Alan said. He was looking hard at the photo of her mother on the desk. “I’d like to thank you for providing me with experience in an interesting field.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pick up a pen and begin waggling it between his fingers. She wondered how still the air in the office would be once he’d gone.

“I’ll be in classifieds,” Alan said.

“Some similar skills,” Judith said weakly.

“Right then.” He stood up.

“Three months’ notice?” she asked. Her voice was cracking oddly in her throat. “One month?”

“We never got round to a written contract,” he said. “It’s best if I just go, I think.”

He had his hand on the door a few seconds later.

A few minutes later, Mrs Aldridge came in with a cup of tea and a custard cream.

“That was an error,” she said. “No notice period set, I mean. I wonder if I might take over the personnel role . . .”

Vaguely, Judith wondered how Mrs Aldridge had worked out that tea was needed, and why there was so much sugar in it.

“I’m sure that would be fine,” Judith said. She stood up and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet, but couldn’t remember what was in it. “I’ll just see if –”

“Not now, Miss Gorman,” Mrs Aldridge said. “Sit down, please.”

Judith sat dumbly.

“I just need to check that you know you love him,” Mrs Aldridge said. She looked for all the world as though she was asking for the details of an invoice.

She didn’t have a pencil poised in the air over a notepad, but she might as well have done.

“I don’t think I quite heard you, Mrs –”

“Of course, Mr Morgan’s gone for the bus now. But I can say with some certainty that he loves you. Men are more transparent.”

All Judith could concentrate on was Mrs Aldridge’s grey helmet bobbing about. It was fascinating.

“I have only been employed here a month,” the secretary went on, “but already I note that – forgive me – you struggle to see what’s in front of your face.”

Judith had a vague idea that other people had said similar things.

Pippa, pointing to a pair of stockings which Judith had claimed were “utterly lost”; somebody at the register office warning her that Mr Warren was on the warpath when she’d not seen hide nor hair of him.

“Mr Morgan’s tendencies are just as problematic. He’s simply silent. If he were the sheikh in ‘The Sheikh’s Last Love’, for instance, he wouldn’t be slipping off to the classifieds with his tail between his legs; he’d be

. . . well, have you read ‘The Sheikh’s Last Love’?” “I don’t think so.”

“It’s good. The sheikh finally presses Clarinda against . . . well, that doesn’t matter just now. Your tea’s gone cold.”

She went to brew up again.

Was Mrs Aldridge right? It was true that Alan hadn’t taken up with Roberta; in fact, he hadn’t taken up with any woman, the whole time he’d worked at Gorman’s.

“It’s raining again,” Mrs Aldridge called from the kitchenette, and Judith remembered the morning Alan had called at the flat to pick up his red umbrella.

Was it possible that he’d wanted to come back? He wasn’t the sort of person to forget a thing, especially when people were shoving the thing under his nose.

His lovely, slightly turnedup, freckly, adorable nose.

Alan had been under her nose.

Judith got up, pushed back her chair and walked into the outer office.

“Back in a bit,” she called to Mrs Aldridge, who was humming to herself as she spooned the tea.

“The far bus stop,” Mrs Aldridge called back, “and there’s no bus until quarter to, so that’s all right. I’ll lock up, shall I?”

* * * *

Later, Judith found she couldn’t remember leaving the office, or the journey to the bus stop that lay just around the corner.

She could only remember his smile when he saw her, and some other people moving aside when they looked at her expression.

A moment later somebody pressed somebody else against the end wall of the bus stop. But it didn’t matter who did what.

And Alan missed the bus. But that didn’t matter, either.

The End.