Excerpt from a letter from Nell’s mother to her brother.

I wonder if you will be very surprised to hear that Ted Berryman is in love with Nell, he spoke to Father yesterday, it is arranged that if they are in the same mind at the end of the six months they may be formally engaged then, & in the meantime nothing is to be said to anyone about it, but I do not see how it is to be kept secret for so long. What do you think about it, I like Ted very much but Nell is very young for him, however I feel sure he will be very good to her.

My mother, writing in the 1980s, said:

The six months edict lasted exactly a week, during which Ted collected Nell every day from her typing school and gave her lunch at the Gloucester Club… John Fielding, who also lunched at the club, realised that everyone else must see how things were and bowed to the inevitable, as much as to his own relief as that of the young couple.

The Berryman family were delighted.