Debutantes (3 page)

‘Poppy,’ she said, ‘come into the dairy with me. I want to show you something.’

The letter was written in faded ink, but the words were still quite legible. The paper was stiff and glossy as Daisy unfolded it and held it out towards Poppy. They both moved nearer to the window and Poppy peered at the faint handwriting.

‘
My darling
,’ she read, and then stopped.

‘Hey, Daisy,’ she said indignantly, ‘that’s someone’s love letter. We can’t read that.’

‘Look at the date,’ said Daisy. She knew what Poppy meant. She had felt quite embarrassed at first.

‘What!’ Poppy narrowed her eyes and peered at the faded numbers. ‘Twentieth of March 1906! Before we were born!’

‘Poor girl, whoever she was,’ said Daisy. She read over the words again to herself. The message was short but its meaning unmistakable.

‘
They’ll have to allow us to get married
,’ read Poppy aloud. ‘And look –
They can’t say that we’re too young now
. She says that she’s a month overdue so she must have been two months pregnant – that’s right, isn’t it? I wonder how old they were. Perhaps he was a stable boy and she was a housemaid.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Daisy. ‘The paper seems good quality though. Look how it’s lasted. And the handwriting . . .’

They stared at each other uncomfortably and were almost relieved when they heard a heavy step outside.

‘Here I am,’ said Morgan, pushing open the door. ‘Yes, this would be very nice, my lady. You’d have plenty of room here to develop your films. You leave it to me – I’ll have this done in half an hour. Give it a couple of hours to dry and then you’re in business.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Daisy had wondered if she should offer to help, but she guessed that Morgan would probably be quicker on his own.

‘You’re the bee’s knees, Morgan,’ said Poppy affectionately. She and her friends in the jazz band were full of expressions like that. ‘Come on, Daisy – let’s go and find Violet and tell her about our brilliant idea.’

She opened the swing door leading to the hall, almost bumping into Rose.

‘What are you doing down here?’ she asked. ‘You know Great-Aunt Lizzie said it’s too cold and damp down in the basement for you,’ she added in a lower tone as Rose put her finger to her lips.

‘Looking for Maud to help me with my sums,’ she said. Rose was a gifted child so far as English literature and writing stories were concerned, but she hated maths and was in despair until she found that Maud, the scullery maid, was a genius with numbers and was of far more help to her than any of her older sisters.

‘Well, she’s cleaning out the fireplace in the library while Father is having his after-lunch walk,’ said Poppy.

‘What’s that?’ Rose had spotted the envelope.

‘None of your business,’ said Poppy.

‘Oh, let her look,’ said Daisy. She hadn’t a great imagination herself, and neither had Poppy. Rose would be the one who might reconstruct the story that lay behind the letter. With a cautious glance at the closed drawing-room door, she moved across to the window beside the hall door.

‘That looks like Great-Aunt Lizzie’s handwriting,’ said Rose as she unfolded the sheet of paper, ‘and it looks like her writing paper too.’ Her eyes widened as she read the letter.

‘I say!’ she exclaimed. ‘
Romantic Past of Earl’s Aunt Uncovered
.
Shocked Nieces Hang their Heads in Shame.
’

‘It’s a good job you have Maud to do your sums,’ said Poppy with a giggle. ‘Look at the date! Great-Aunt Lizzie would have been at least sixty back then.’

‘Makes it even more shocking,’ said Rose primly. ‘She was old enough to know better. Anyway, I’d better find Maud and tell her that the fireplace in the schoolroom needs cleaning. If she doesn’t come to my aid soon, I shall be found to have expired from brain fever.’

‘Give me back the letter.’ Daisy followed her sister into the sunny library. The windows there faced south and gave a view of the front lawn and the main avenue. There was a young man riding down it.

‘Baz!’ exclaimed Poppy and ran out to greet him. This was Basil Pattenden, son of a local landowner and Poppy’s best friend. Soon Edwin and George would arrive with their instruments and then there would be a full-scale jazz session in Morgan’s cottage in the midst of the beech woods.

Rose gave the letter back reluctantly, but her mind was on her sums so she did not make too much of a fuss. Already she was holding out a mass of figures to Maud, the scullery maid, who was on her knees before the fire, carefully removing the hot ash into a metal bucket.

Maud had been working for the Derrington family for over two years and as scullery maid all the hard, unpleasant jobs fell to her. She was an orphan and had been brought up in the village workhouse, attended the village school until she was fourteen years old and was then sent off to work as a scullery maid in the big house. The village schoolmistress had hoped that the clever girl might become a monitor, helping with the younger ones in the school, and perhaps eventually a teacher. However, the Orphanage Board were not prepared to house Maud for any longer and so she had gone into service. Daisy had listened to her explaining maths to Rose and thought what a good teacher she would have made if things had been different for her. Certainly her knowledge of maths was far beyond that of any of the Earl’s daughters.

Some day, Daisy told herself, I must do a film about her. She has the most unusual face. She comes out really well on film.

‘Why don’t you stay here, Rosie?’ she said. Maud would light the fire in a minute and would have an excuse to linger until it was burning well. Rose would be nice and warm there and her father had gone for a ride so they would be undisturbed for the next half an hour.

Violet was sitting on the window seat of the blue bedroom with a book of Tennyson’s poetry on her lap when Daisy went in, camera in hand. Her face was tragic as she turned to her younger sister.

‘I don’t suppose it will ever happen,’ she said sadly. ‘I don’t suppose I will be invited to London by my godmother. I was just reading “The Lady of Shalott” and about how she floated down the river to Camelot. I’m like her – I’m sick of shadows, sick of reading about love and never finding it. If only I could be part of the real world.’

Daisy nodded sympathetically. She pushed away the thought that there was plenty of real life to experience in Beech Grove Manor. There were eggs to collect from the numerous hens that strutted around the woodland and late apples, stored in the attics, to be sorted; there were horses to be groomed and dogs to be brushed; there was stable manure to be shovelled . . .

‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said cautiously, watching her sister’s face for a reaction. ‘I thought it might be good to send your godmother an eighteenth-birthday portrait of you – it would be a subtle way of reminding her of you without making it too obvious. She’d think, “Eighteen! She should be one of this year’s debutantes!” What do you think? Would it work?’

‘Perhaps,’ sighed Violet. She turned back to the book on her lap.

‘
And moving thro’ a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear
,’ she murmured.

‘Bring the book with you.’ Daisy had suddenly got an idea. ‘Come on,’ she said. She seized the camera and ushered Violet out through the door, leading the way down the broad steps of the main staircase.

‘We’ll go out by the lake,’ she said over her shoulder. The background would be perfect for Violet’s starry beauty and the south-westerly sun would be in a perfect position.

The lake at Beech Grove Manor was a large one stretching over some twelve acres and reputed to be bottomless. A pier jutted out into it for about a hundred yards. Built by their father about twenty years previously, soon after he had inherited the estate, it was a good place to fish from on summer evenings if one did not want to disturb the fish by taking out a boat. There had been plenty of money to spend on the estate in those days, thought Daisy, as she positioned Violet on the pier railing, and their father had probably been extremely happy then, improving the estate’s facilities, mending roads, rebuilding the stables, caring for the woods and the lake. These days he seemed to be sunk in almost permanent gloom, unless entertaining one of his old friends.

‘Just read aloud to me, Violet,’ she said as she retreated a few feet. ‘Be quite natural about it. Read a little, then look at the lake, then read again.’

This was going to be a wonderful photograph. It was a beautiful poem and, although the Lady of Shalott was not her kind of girl, she liked the descriptions of the river and she liked even more the expression that it evoked on her sister’s face.

Violet read in a voice filled with emotion:

And there it was. The perfect look! Violet lifted her head from the book and stared straight at the camera.

Daisy snapped, and snapped again, and then for the third time, though she felt in her bones that she had already taken a superb photograph.

Suddenly Violet’s whole face blazed with eager excitement. She looked like someone who had seen a vision come true.

Daisy snapped again and again and then turned.

There, behind her, was an unknown young man.

He was standing at the end of the pier, one broad hand resting on the rail, and looking at them both. He had a square, determined chin with a scar running through the centre of it, cleaving it in half and forming a dimple. He had dark hazel eyes, crisply curling black hair and a well-shaped, curved mouth. He was dressed in riding breeches and coat and the outfit suited his muscular form. He has an interesting face, thought Daisy. Instinctively she lifted the camera and clicked.

He blinked and looked taken aback.

‘I’m Justin Pennington,’ he said rather stiffly, looking crossly at Daisy’s camera. ‘Are you Violet?’

‘I’m Violet.’ Her sister sounded rather breathless, and she smiled beguilingly at the young man.

‘Goodness!’ He looked intently at her and then began to laugh in an easy and rather familiar way. ‘I haven’t seen you for about six or seven years, I suppose. I didn’t expect you to look so old. I used to pull your pigtails. Do you remember me? I used to stay with my uncle over at Staplecourt.’ He spoke with the easy assurance of a young man about town.

A look of recognition and then disappointment crossed Violet’s face, and her smile faded. ‘Did you have lots of spots, then?’ she enquired sweetly.

‘I really can’t recollect,’ he said haughtily. ‘I came over to see your father. Apparently he’s out riding. Your great-aunt sent me out here after you. I’m staying with my uncle for a week.’

‘On holidays from school, I suppose,’ said Violet, her voice a good imitation of the way that Great-Aunt Lizzie spoke to the village children.

‘Just finished at Gray’s Inn in London,’ he said, his eyes roaming over the lake. ‘Get any good fishing here at this time of the year?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea,’ said Violet frostily. ‘It’s not a subject I am interested in.’

He must not be an elder son, thought Daisy. He wouldn’t have been studying to be a lawyer if he were. Of course! She remembered now. He was the youngest son of the Earl of Pennington. Violet had a good memory for that sort of thing – that was probably why she was being so unfriendly.

‘I recollect you now,’ he said, turning his attention to Daisy. ‘You’re one half of the terrible twins. The blonde and the redhead! I remember you and your sister were up a tree one day and you dropped handfuls of wet mud down on my head.’ His smile was friendly, but Daisy did not dare photograph him again. There was something rather commanding and forcible about him – an air of someone who was used to getting his own way.

‘I’m awfully sorry about that!’ she responded. ‘Now, I must go back and develop those pictures. Vi, you show Justin the lake and then bring him back for tea. Father should have returned by then.’

Let Violet entertain him, thought Daisy. It was the least she could do. Meanwhile, Daisy would be working hard on her sister’s behalf, to give Violet her heart’s desire of going to London as a debutante, having a season and being presented to the King.