Debutantes (19 page)

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said Daisy decisively. ‘Sir Guy is calling for me with a cab soon after breakfast. I’ll tell the Duchess that I will be taking my maid with me – she’ll like that. Then we can get the cab driver to drop you off at Somerset House, wherever it is.’

This would clear up the mystery of the letter once and for all.

When Daisy had finished her bath she went into the bedroom and took her tweed skirt and the black cashmere jumper out of the wardrobe. A pair of black silk stockings and her new black pumps would complete the outfit nicely.

Violet, Daisy had to admit, had a wonderful eye for clothes. That soft black really suited her and as for the skirt – well, it was just gorgeous. Woven from a mixture of white and carmine strands of wool, the finished result was a clear sharp pink which enhanced the soft depths of the black jumper. The overlong sleeves had been sewn with rows of elastic so that they could be pushed up from the wrists and allowed to balloon becomingly over her arms. She took out Sir Guy’s necklace and fastened it behind her neck, admiring how the black set off the shimmering pinkish-white of the pearls.

By the time Daisy had finished dressing, there were sounds of Violet rousing Rose. Poppy was now awake, humming softly to herself, luxuriating in the warmth of the glowing coal fire. Daisy went to the dressing table and sat down in front of the looking glass.

‘Maud, would you put up my hair for me?’

‘I thought we agreed that we would only do that for the ball,’ said Violet, coming through the door. The night’s sleep had not done much for her humour and she had dark shadows under her eyes.

‘You said that was what you were going to do,’ said Daisy calmly. ‘Oh good, you’ve found the hair clips, Maud; here’s the comb.’

‘I was going to wear the jumper and skirt today, and now I can’t since you are,’ complained Violet.

‘Try a pinafore – you can borrow Poppy’s if you forgot to bring your own,’ said Daisy sweetly, but then she felt a little sorry. After all, this visit was all about Violet’s dream of becoming a debutante and making a splash in London society.

‘Why don’t you wear that green jersey dress – you know, the one where you sewed the narrow fur stole to the hem? That looks very smart and you don’t want to be wearing the same thing all the time, do you?’ she said consolingly.

Violet cheered up at that and when they went down to breakfast all four were dressed differently. Poppy was in a short pleated burgundy-coloured fine wool skirt with a white blouse, her hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck and brushed out over her shoulders by Maud. Rose, to her huge delight, was allowed to wear a pale blue tweed suit.

‘Elaine must have been really small, mustn’t she?’ Daisy remarked, observing with interest how the shoulders of the jacket fitted her sister’s shoulders. Rose, after all, was only twelve and though tall, she was very thin. Violet had taken up the skirt, of course, but nothing else needed to be done.

Breakfast was a revelation. Daisy blushed at the thought of the Duchess having breakfast at Beech Grove Manor where she would have been given a choice of boiled eggs, fried eggs or scrambled eggs. Here every inch of the sideboard was crowded with silver dishes sitting on top of small spirit lamps and each one had its cover. Two footmen were in attendance and the atmosphere was so starchy that for a moment Daisy found herself envying Maud. Breakfast in the kitchen would have been more fun, she thought, though apparently Her Grace the Duchess was breakfasting in bed. That was one relief.

‘Morning!’ Justin was behind her in the queue, saying in her ear, ‘May I help your ladyship to a piece of burned Spanish omelette?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Daisy emphatically. ‘I’ve never eaten such a thing in my life. The last Spanish omelette that I ate was perfectly cooked.’

‘Thank you, Robert. Just a little kedgeree and some coffee and toast for me,’ said Violet in a stately manner.

‘What’s this about Spanish omelettes?’ asked one of Justin’s admirers.

‘Well,’ said Justin, ‘wait till I get a bite to eat before telling you the story of Daisy’s omelette. Let me lift a few lids first – I’m a great lifter of lids at breakfast time.’ After giving the other footman a huge order for almost everything under the silver covers he came over and sat down, looking around the table to make sure that he had a responsive audience.

‘Well, when I was at a house party at the Derringtons’ place, Daisy cooked an omelette in a giant pan – the size of this table.’

‘Oh, what fun,’ said one of the girls uncertainly and Daisy stole an uneasy glance at Violet.

‘It was enormous fun!’ To her surprise, Violet had decided to make a dramatic story out of the whole incident. ‘We all went down to the kitchen feeling hungry.’

‘At the witching hour of midnight,’ put in Rose dramatically.

‘And Daisy suggested cooking a Spanish omelette,’ said Justin. ‘Of course, I was the only one who had been to Spain so I was in charge.’

‘I’d love to see you in a chef’s overall and cap, Justin,’ said a girl called Giselle daringly and Catherine, at the head of the table in her mother’s absence, looked around nervously. However, the guests were all laughing and animated and every eye was on Violet as she told the story of the omelette and how the boys chopped the potatoes and Poppy and Basil Pattenden had whipped up about three dozen eggs.

‘Four dozen,’ said Rose, not to be outdone in the matter of exaggeration.

‘And there was Daisy with this enormous pan ordering us to put spoons on the kitchen table and eat straight out of it.’

‘Oh, I say, what fun! Vi, dear girl, pray do ask me when you have your house party for the season!’

‘I love that sort of thing – so modern and up-to-date!’

‘Priceless!’

‘Gorgeous!’

‘Absolutely!’

‘These stuffy old parties with chaperones watching our every move and footmen standing around like statues are just so boring,’ complained Giselle.

Poppy turned her head and looked at the footmen behind her and then turned back and whispered in Daisy’s ear: ‘Didn’t move a muscle, either of them.’

‘What I want to know,’ asked a man called David, ‘is what our dear Violet was doing at this famous omelette orgy.’

Everyone screamed with laughter at this – David was obviously the wit of the gathering.

‘Me?’ said Violet on a rising note of query. She delicately rubbed the tip of her forefinger against her thumb and looked around at the tableful of eyes, smiling sweetly. ‘Me, I just crumbled a few herbs.’

Violet had definitely staked her claim to be a leader of fashion, thought Daisy, glancing around at the merry table. Even Catherine was laughing while one of the men choked on a kipper. Breakfast, compared with the boring dinner last night, was certainly going with a swing.

‘Well, what a fashionable young lady,’ said Sir Guy when Daisy ran down the stairs just as the hall clock chimed the hour of eleven. ‘Shouldn’t you put on your coat? Won’t you be cold?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said Daisy hurriedly. ‘London is so warm.’ The look on the Duchess’s face when she had seen their shabby, old-fashioned coats had made her resolve not to wear hers again unless she really had to. She saw him give a questioning glance at Maud but it was only when they were safely in the cab that he had hired that she explained the girl’s presence.

‘So do you know where Somerset House is, Sir Guy?’ she finished.

‘Yes, of course, it’s in the Strand; we can drop you off there, Maud.’ Daisy liked the way that he spoke to Maud, treating her as an equal and showing a calm interest in her story. ‘If I were you I’d also ask to have a look at the census of 1901 – before you were born, of course, but you might find your mother. You’ll find a census return for every village around, but I would start off at the village where the orphanage is and then work your way through the others. What’s your surname?’

‘Bucket, sir,’ said Maud. She twisted round and smiled slightly over her shoulder at Daisy. ‘The girls in the orphanage used to have fun with that.’

Daisy suppressed a giggle. Now she understood why Great-Aunt Lizzie, always such a stickler for correct procedure, had not told them to call Maud by her surname. It would sound too ridiculous to be calling ‘Bucket!’ or demanding ‘Bucket’ from one of those aloof footmen.

‘Hmm,’ said Sir Guy reflectively as the cab made its way around Trafalgar Square. ‘That’s not a Kent name. In fact, London is the only place that I have heard it. On the other hand, your mother was unlikely to have come all the way from London in order to leave you outside a country orphanage when there is the Thomas Coram place in Bloomsbury. But of course, she might originally have been from London and was working at Beech Grove Manor, or some other place. Or, of course, it might just be a name that the orphanage made up for you. Anyway, here we are now. Good luck to you, Maud, and here’s a couple of shillings in case you need them. You can find your way back all right, can you?’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ve written down the address in this, sir.’ Maud produced from her pocket an old copy book formerly belonging to Poppy. Poppy, in the days when Great-Aunt Lizzie still concerned herself with the older girls’ education, had done so little work that dozens of those quarter-filled books lay around in the schoolroom at Beech Grove Manor.

‘Interesting story – you might make a good film out of her one day,’ said Sir Guy, when they had dropped Maud off. ‘Interesting face too. Reminds me of someone. Anyway, Daisy, give me your film. I’m going to try a little experiment. I’m going to show it to my team and let them say what they think of it. That’s the way we work when I get a submission. We all sit around and argue about it. You won’t mind if they criticize, will you? This happens all the time. Sometimes they tear each other’s work to shreds.’

‘No, I’ll like it,’ said Daisy earnestly. This was the sort of thing that Poppy and her jazz band boys did – experimenting, suggesting and criticizing. She had often envied her twin sister this companionship and had wished that she were musical too, but now, perhaps, her talents had begun to emerge. ‘You’re so good to me,’ she added. ‘Aren’t I lucky to have you! Tell me again how you became my godfather.’

‘Well,’ began Sir Guy, telling the familiar story for the hundredth time, ‘I got a wire from your father when he was still on board ship on his way back to England, just after your grandfather’s death. He asked me to arrange a hotel for the two of them and the three children to spend the night before going down to Kent and he asked me to be godfather to one of the twins. I remember the telegram well. It was TWO INFANTS STOP TAKE YOUR PICK STOP.’

And you chose me,’ said Daisy, tucking her arm into his.

‘That’s right,’ said Sir Guy. ‘There was Poppy in your mother’s arms, screaming her head off – face as red as her hair – and there were you, curled up in your nurse’s arms, sleeping like a little kitten, and I said to your father, ‘Michael, old man, I’ll have the little blonde one.’

Sir Guy’s studios were in West London. Daisy had expected something grand, but they were just a collection of poorly built concrete sheds erected on the roadside in a stretch of wasteland. There were a few trees clustered in the corner, a murky pond and a concrete road beside a well-mown stretch of grass about ten foot square.

‘We can shoot a lot of outdoor stuff here,’ said Sir Guy, waving his hand around. ‘Woodland, forest – whatever you want, water – we’ve even got plans to do the Battle of Trafalgar with miniature boats on that, and then we have our lawn for garden parties and this piece of road can be the London-to-Brighton highway.’

Daisy began to laugh. ‘I don’t think that a garden party would be too convincing on that little square of lawn,’ she said.

‘Well, we’re not all like you – we don’t have access to debutante balls and garden parties,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘You’d be surprised what we can do with this little bit of grass. You have to work within your limits; you know that.’

Daisy nodded. She could see what he meant. When she had shot her hunting sequence it had been in miles and miles of woodland, but when the film was developed all that showed was a few beech trees in the background.

‘You’re right,’ she said.

How is Violet getting on with Her Grace?’ he asked with interest and nodded with satisfaction when Daisy told him that Violet was a great success.

‘Come and see our sets and don’t turn your nose up and say that they are not as good as a duchess’s drawing room. This one in here,’ he said, pushing open the door of one of the sheds, ‘is the throne room at Buckingham Palace. We’re planning a film on Queen Victoria. A bit ambitious, but I think we can pull it off.’