Debutantes (21 page)

‘Thank you, Robert. Could you just show me where the morning room is?’ Daisy was surprised how confident her voice sounded. She was getting used to all of this, she thought. And she nodded intelligently when the Duchess told her the exciting news that a friend had telephoned to ask permission to bring one of the royal princes to the ball that evening.

‘Of course, these horrid journalists and photographers from
The Sketch
and
Tatler
will haunt him, no matter who he talks to or what he does – that is what always happens when the young princes attend a party. They follow them everywhere. And often they like to take pictures of their royal highnesses leaving a party and that is always a disaster for the hostess as it looks as though they were bored. I do hope that does not happen tonight, but whatever you do, make sure that you take some good film of him dancing with Catherine,’ she finished. ‘He’s bound to ask her,’ she went on with a slight note of doubt in her mind. ‘It is, after all, her ball.’

‘I’m sure he will,’ said Daisy. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, I shall go and load a new film in my camera. I want to make certain that everything is right for this evening.’

‘Dinner at eight,’ said Her Grace. ‘Don’t use up much film on that – it will just be the house party.’

Poppy was the only member of the family present when Daisy pushed open the door to their rooms. She was standing by the window, playing her clarinet softly – a sad, lonely wail of a tune. When she turned round Daisy was horrified to see marks of tears on her twin sister’s cheeks.

‘Pops, what’s the matter?’ she exclaimed.

‘I hate this place,’ sobbed Poppy. Carefully she put her beloved clarinet back into its case and threw herself on her bed. ‘Oh, I wish I’d never come. I want to go home. I had such a boring morning tramping around that endless British Museum with Paula and her governess. Governess! I ask you! And – you won’t believe this – she’s got a nanny! And she’s sixteen years old!’

‘You’re just missing the jazz band and all the fun with them,’ said Daisy wisely. She thought of her day at the film studios and knew that if she got used to that free-and-easy companionship, she would miss it immensely if she had to give it up. ‘Where’s Rose?’ she asked.

A reluctant smile came over Poppy’s face. ‘Oh, she was having such fun with the governess, asking her difficult questions! She impressed the wretched woman so much that she was hauled off to the schoolroom to see Paula’s encyclopaedia when we came back – serve her right! Did you have a nice time, Daisy?’

‘I did.’ Daisy decided not to go into the details of her conversations with the young film-makers. It might just make Poppy even more homesick. ‘Something funny happened though,’ she said slowly. ‘There was a young man there who does the title cards and the artistic work – he had been working as a draughtsman in India, but he got malaria badly and had to come home – and he told me that on the ship back from India he met a lady who looked just like me. He said she looked like my sister, or even my twin, except that she was lots older.’

Poppy sat up on the bed and stared wide-eyed at Daisy. ‘Don’t tell me . . .’ she began.

Daisy nodded. ‘He couldn’t remember her name – well, he could, but it was her married name, Mrs Coxhead – but he remembered that she had been brought up in Kent. Well, he was telling me that, and then at the very last moment he suddenly remembered that he had heard one of the other women passengers call her—’

‘Not Elaine?’

Daisy nodded but could say no more as there was a knock on the door.

‘Excuse me, your ladyships, but this lady is the nanny here – she’s been here for twenty-five years. She’d like to meet you both.’ Maud had tapped on the door and ushered in a very ancient and very tiny figure wearing a frilly white cap who came in saying, ‘And I was Her Grace’s nanny before that, when she was a little baby.’

Poppy gave a groan and muttered, ‘A nanny!’ She jumped off the bed and made for the bathroom, clutching a handkerchief to her lips.

‘I’m sorry, my sister is not feeling well,’ said Daisy politely. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘I will and welcome. These stairs are a bit much for my old legs these days. I’m eighty years old but I wanted to see you and your sister. I looked after you both when you were young, you know. Your father and mother stayed here for a few days when they came back from India. I didn’t have much to do with the older girl – she clung to your mother – but the two babies were in my charge completely.’ She peered at Daisy. ‘You were the little blonde girl,’ she said, and added with a look of surprise, ‘You’ve grown.’

‘A bit,’ said Daisy, trying to suppress a giggle. She wished that Poppy would come back and they could exchange glances.

‘You were the tiniest three-month-old baby I’ve ever seen in my life and I can tell you I’ve seen a lot of babies,’ went on the old woman. She stared intently at Daisy and then, to Daisy’s relief, looked over her shoulder as the door handle turned and Rose came in.

‘Well, this is the little one I never met. I’m the nanny here, my dear. Lady Rose, isn’t it? I was just telling your sister that I looked after her for a week when she was a baby. She was just so undersized and backward then. The other twin was a beautiful child.’

The old woman nodded her head wisely and then her eyes brightened as Poppy came out of the bathroom. No doubt she had been listening at the door and was amused. She wore a slight smile and all traces of tears had gone.

‘Ah, there you are, my dear. Feeling better now, are you? Yes, I remember you were called Poppy and I was ever so proud to take you out in the pram with Lady Paula. Lovely little girl you were. Hair beginning to curl and everything. But the other poor little thing!’ Her eyes returned to Daisy. Poppy gave her twin a quick wink, while Rose preserved a face of solemn seriousness and Daisy bit her lip, trying not to giggle.

‘I must tell you, my dear,’ continued Nanny in a congratulatory voice, turning to Daisy, ‘that I’m glad to see you looking so well. I never thought that I would see the day. “Mark my words,” I said to Mabel, the nursery maid that we had then – good girl she was, very respectful – “Mark my words,” I said to her, “there’s something badly wrong with that little blonde one; a three-month-old baby as backward as six-week-old one.” Yes, very backward, you were,’ she repeated and gazed at Daisy with a puzzled expression.

‘She still is, Nanny,’ said Rose earnestly. ‘We just try to hide it as much as possible. For the sake of the honour of the family, you know.’

‘I know what you mean, dear,’ said Nanny in a hushed voice. She gave Daisy another look and said encouragingly, ‘Still, she looks very well; pity about being so small, but it can’t be helped, can it?’

And with that she tottered out on Maud’s arm. When she was safely through the door Maud looked back in a slightly worried fashion, but Daisy and Poppy were stretched on the bed, clutching each other and laughing, so she just gave a grin and left them.

‘Well, that’s done me good!’ said Poppy. ‘Wasn’t she gorgeous? Baz would have enjoyed that. I must write to him.’

‘You’ll be back home the day after tomorrow,’ pointed out Rose.

‘Just pop down to the library and get some writing paper for her, Rose,’ said Daisy. And then as Rose made a face, she said coaxingly, ‘By the way, the library has a whole table with magazines and newspapers spread out on it. It’s got
Tatler
and
The Sketch
and all those kinds of magazines. I saw the footman tidying them when I went out this morning. You could bring a few up here.’

‘
Tatler
!’ said Rose ecstatically and went off without another word.

‘Poppy,’ said Daisy when her youngest sister had left the room, ‘I think that the mysterious Elaine Carruthers might be in London. At least, of course, she’s not Elaine Carruthers now; she’s Mrs Elaine Coxhead and she’s a widow. The young man I met today who had journeyed back from India on the same ship a few weeks ago said that she talked of being brought up in Kent, but that she wanted to live in London.’

‘Could be another Elaine,’ said Poppy. ‘It’s an unusual name, but not that unusual. And Kent is a big place.’

‘But you’re forgetting that he said she was the image of me. He kept staring at me and then he explained. He said he thought she might be a sister of mine. Remember, she was only about four the year that Father and Mother married. She would be thirty-five or thirty-six now. Not that old.’

‘But why didn’t she get in touch with Father or Great-Aunt Lizzie if she was coming back from India?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Daisy, ‘but this boy, Fred, spoke of Elaine saying she hated Kent. We already know there was some sort of a big row. Perhaps she never wants to see the place again.’

‘Now, stop worrying your little head about things that you don’t understand,’ teased Poppy. She started giggling again. ‘It’s hard for backward people like you to understand the big grown-up world.’

‘That nanny must be in her second childhood,’ said Daisy. ‘Still, it’s quite nice of the Duchess to keep her on. I don’t suppose that Paula really wants to have her around. Anyway, wait till you hear – one of the royal princes is coming here tonight.’

‘I wonder if he’s interested in jazz?’ said Poppy, and Daisy laughed.

‘I think Vi will say a bit more than that. I say, do you think that if you ring that bell Maud will come?’

‘Try it,’ said Poppy with an indifferent glance. ‘And if someone else comes then you just say, “Send me my maid, please.”’

Maud appeared before Daisy made up her mind to touch the bell and Poppy decided to go and get the writing paper herself. She was eager to write to Baz.

‘Rose is probably working her way through all the magazines down there,’ Poppy said. ‘She’s obsessed with all this society stuff. Honestly, talk about half-witted. That child! And she could be a really good musician too. Morgan says she has a great ear and a great sense of timing.’

‘I’ve been dying to know how you got on this morning, Maud,’ said Daisy when the door closed behind Poppy, adding hurriedly, ‘Don’t tell me though, unless you want to.’

‘Well, I saw my birth certificate, found my date of birth at least,’ said Maud readily. ‘It’s on or about the eleventh of June 1909, so that means that I’m two years younger than I thought I was. I was registered by the orphanage, but I suppose they got it right. I think I must have been sent to school early so I was always a couple of classes ahead of girls of my own age. I’d say that I thought I was five when really I was only three and it went on from there.’

‘So you’re only fourteen, not sixteen,’ said Daisy, feeling sorry for the girl.

‘That’s right, my lady. That was about all I found out. I was registered by the orphanage people. Nothing about my mother. And not a word about my father, of course – just a blank space.’

‘And you must have been only Rose’s age when you started work at Beech Grove Manor.’ She tried to imagine what it would be like to go through life not knowing how old you were.

‘And there was no trace of my mother or of anyone of the name of Bucket in any villages in 1901, so I suppose she might well have been a housemaid at Beech Grove Manor – Lady Rose thinks so anyway,’ she added with a slight smile. ‘She had a big story made up about my mother being betrayed by someone in the big house and being driven forth to give birth to an infant in the snow – except that now I find I was born in June.’ Daisy thought about the letter that she had found in the old stable. The date on that had been March 1906.

Whoever wrote those anguished words ‘
They can’t say that we’re too young now
’, it could not have been Maud’s mother if Maud herself was not born until three years later.

So who had written the letter?

‘Look!’ Violet was back, wildly excited, her cheeks flushed. She took from her handbag a tiny book tied with a tasselled cord. It had a lily of the valley on the cover and a minute pencil dangled from the cord. She opened it proudly and showed it to her sisters.

‘It’s a dance programme,’ she said. ‘Look, all of the dances are listed – see how many of them are booked already.’

‘Oh, I say,’ said Rose. ‘So that’s what a dance programme looks like. I hadn’t realized they were so small. Who’s David? You seem to have him down for lots of dances.’

‘He’s the eldest son of the Earl of Mulqueen,’ said Violet triumphantly. ‘And he has his own estate.’

‘Ah, an eldest son,’ said Rose knowingly.