Speed Dating Events

But often when a man makes an ill-considered plunge into wedlock, it is more a question of his falling than being pushed. Such is the case of H. G. Wells’s hero in The History of Mr Polly. Vague feelings of dissatisfaction with his life, ambitions to open a shop, a sunny afternoon in the park and the presence of a girl he has been seeing for some time, all come together in one fatal impulse:

One did ought to be happy in a shop,’ said Miriam, with a note of unusual softness in her voice . . .‘I could be happy in a shop,’ he said.His sense of effect had made him pause.

`If I had the right company,’ he added.

She became very still . . . He stopped, and felt falling, falling, through the aching silence that followed . . . `You don’t mean you’ve got someone —?’

He found himself plunging.

`I’ve got someone in my eye this minute,’ he said. `Elfrid!’ she said, turning to him. ‘You don’t mean —’ Well, DID he mean? ‘I do!’ he said.

`Not reely!’ she clinched her hands to keep still. He took the conclusive step. ‘Well, you and me, Miriam, in a little shop, with a cat and a canary’ — he tried too late to get back to a hypothetical note. just suppose it!’

`You mean,’ said Miriam, ‘you’re in love with me, Elfrid?’ What possible answer can a man give to such a question, but ‘Yes’ ?

So Mr Polly’s sense of gallantry in part contributes to his undoing. Miriam is troubled with no such refinement of scruple. She claps hold of the stunned Polly, and seals the bargain with the first ‘reel’ kiss he has been granted. This is the only part of the process that Mr Polly can rumble the attraction of, for it is not a happy moment.

He had a curious feeling that it would be very satisfying to marry and have a Oft — only somehow he wished it wasn’t Miriam . . . For the life of him Mr Polly could not tell whether he was full of tender anticipation or regretful panic ..

She rose and made as if to take Mr Polly’s arm. But Mr Polly felt that their condition must be nakedly exposed to the ridicule of the world by such a linking, and evaded her movement . . . a flood of hesitation and terrors seized him.

`Don’t tell anyone yet a bit,’ he said.

`Only Mother,’ said Miriam firmly.

As in the marriage of Christina and Theobald, the mother is a formidable stage-manager and even director of these proceedings. But a young couple can trap themselves without any outside assistance, as the Fun Boy Three sing in ‘Tunnel of Love‘:

There are twenty-two catches when you strike your matches, Get down on your knees in the tunnel of love.

The tunnel of love, You fall in feet first, In the tunnel of love,

You think of yourselves As really good friends

But you know how it always ends

In the tunnel of love.

So you get engaged and have a party

Only seventeen when the wedding bells chime,

Got a room with a view and a kid on the way,

Hope you make it to the church on time . . .

This is exactly the situation of the young couple in Stan Barstow’s A Kind of Loving. The hero, Vic, is a rebel without a rebellion, James Dean northern-style (failed). He has been having sex with Ingrid, almost absentmindedly towards the end, on the Everest principle, because she’s there. And you’ll never guess what . . .

I know she’s pregnant. I know for sure. I know for sure I’m not going to get out of this one. I’m caught and that’s a fact. Capital F-a-c-t. This is where all the dreams end, Vic Brown. No need to go on looking for that girl. You’ve found her, the only one you’ll get now. You’re trapped and there’s no way out. Oh, what a fool, what a bloody, bloody fool!

So that’s it. It only wants saying, and I lean my head against the roof post and look out over the park and say it.

`Don’t worry. We’ll get married. That’s what we’ll do.’

She says nothing and in a few seconds I hear a little noise and I turn round and see she’s crying.

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