Debutantes (31 page)

‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘I suppose you were.’ But it was easier to go on buying clothes and chattering about dances, she thought silently. ‘Nobody told me,’ she added. ‘I just guessed. I found a letter that you wrote – I found it in the stables.’ She stopped and then said, ‘Tell me about my father.’

Deliberately she did not look at Elaine, though she was sure that she heard a sharp intake of breath or even a stifled sob. Resolutely she suppressed the pity, resolutely she stopped herself saying
Never mind, let’s talk about Violet’s season.
I have a right to know, she said silently.

After a moment’s silence Elaine said in a wavering tone, ‘Michael—’ There was a question in her voice.

Daisy interrupted her impatiently. ‘Was it Clifford Pennington?’ She took from the pocket of her skirt the weather-stained envelope with its sheet of paper inside.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Elaine take it out and read it through, and then – before Daisy could stop her – she threw it on the fire. For a moment they both watched it ignite, blacken, curl and fall away in tiny specks of grey ash.

‘He was killed the day I wrote that.’ Elaine’s voice was bleak and hard.

‘What did you do?’

‘Waited, hoped, feared, despaired . . . and then one day I saw Mrs Beaton look at me oddly and I realized that I had begun to show. I could wait no longer then, so I confessed it all to Aunt Lizzie. It was either that or drown myself in the lake. I suppose I lacked courage for that.’

Daisy thought about it. Elaine had not been much older than herself. If that happened to me, would I have considered suicide? she wondered, and knew that she would not. I would have gone to London, she thought but did not say.

‘You were an heiress though, weren’t you? You would have had plenty to live on.’

‘Not until I was twenty-one. Aunt Lizzie was my guardian – Aunt Lizzie and some law firm in the city – but they did everything that she told them to do.’ Elaine paused for a moment as if expecting Daisy to say something, then continued, ‘She made all the arrangements. Mary was expecting a baby. It was Aunt Lizzie’s idea to tell everyone that Mary was expecting twins. She took me out to India – supposedly on a holiday as I was tired after all the balls I had been going to. She took a house up in the hills – there was plenty of money – engaged a midwife and a wet nurse, and a few weeks after you were born, you were taken down to Mary and Michael and I was married within three months. Aunt Lizzie thought an older man would be good for me and would steady me.’

‘But you named me first before you handed me over.’ Daisy turned to look into her mother’s face.

‘How did you know that?’ For the first time Elaine smiled slightly.

‘Your doll was called Daisy. I found it under the floor-boards. I’ve got it safe for you.’

Daisy got to her feet. She should kiss Elaine; she knew that. But somehow she could not. ‘I’d better go,’ she said lightly. ‘Poppy will moan if I wake her up and she did look very sleepy, didn’t she?’

Poppy was in her nightdress with her hair braided in one long plait, but she was not in bed when Daisy opened the door. She had a bottle in her hand and was pouring some sherry into two small glasses.

‘I brought up the biscuit barrel too,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to be living in the land of plenty. Now drink down that sherry. There’s plenty more in the bottle and I’ll replace it before anyone sees it.’

Daisy tilted the glass and felt the warmth run down her throat and into her stomach. She took a bite of a chocolate biscuit and then had another swallow. She smiled at Poppy. ‘You’re a genius,’ she said.

‘Tell me all about it,’ said Poppy, tossing back the contents of her glass.

Daisy shrugged. ‘Not much to tell, really,’ she said. She was determined not to cry. ‘It was a Romeo and Juliet story, except that this Juliet gave in to her family. She did what Great-Aunt Lizzie told her – gave up her baby and never bothered to try to see her again. And married a rich Anglo-Indian Great-Aunt Lizzie picked out for her, of course, just to give herself the final touch of respectability. I don’t think she cared too much about me. Anyway, let’s not think about the past. Let’s make the most of our visit to London. What does Baz think about the chances of a jazz club doing well?’

The weeks are just flying by, thought Daisy as she and Poppy relaxed by the cosy fire in the morning room. Violet was back from her weekend at the house party, but had given them very little detail about it. Poppy and Rose were due to go back to Beech Grove Manor the following day, but Elaine had begged for Daisy to stay until the end of the month when the house lease would be finished, saying that she would be company for her as Violet was out for most of the day and almost every evening. Daisy was pleased to stay on – she had fallen into the pleasant habit of spending a few hours every day at Sir Guy’s studios and knew that she was learning a huge amount about how to make films. She was thinking now about what Sir Guy had said to her yesterday, when there was a sound of running footsteps on the stairs outside and Rose came in clutching her large notebook.

‘Want to read something?’ Rose’s voice was casual, but it did not deceive her sisters. Daisy buried her head in a book that Sir Guy had given her and Poppy hurriedly picked up
Tatler
magazine.

‘I say, Rose,’ she said, holding it out. ‘Do you want to read this? Violet’s in this one three times! “
The lovely Lady Violet Derrington looked exquisite in a robe of shimmering satin
.” And there’s more. Loads of pictures of the house party at Marjorie’s place – most of them of Prince George, of course. Vi only gets a look-in because she was dancing a lot with him, and she had supper with him.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ said Rose. ‘But do you want to read my story?’

‘How long?’ asked Poppy with a yawn.

‘Forty pages,’ said Rose proudly.

‘Forty pages!’ Poppy was horrified. ‘I’m a slow reader – give it to Daisy. Anyway,’ she continued, glancing up at the pretty clock on the mantelpiece, ‘I must go – meeting Baz. It’s his last day of freedom too.’

‘Don’t
you
want to read my story, Daisy?’ pleaded Rose. Daisy stretched out a reluctant hand but then said, ‘On second thoughts, why don’t you read it to me?’ The fire was warm, the room was cosy and she could sit looking into the glowing coals, thinking her thoughts, while Rose read her latest story to her – inspired by Violet, guessed Daisy, as she listened to the sentimental love scenes. It had what Rose said triumphantly was a lovely romantic ending where the poor girl gave up the heir to the throne, telling him that he had to marry a princess.

Violet herself came into the room just as Rose said dramatically, ‘
and the waves breaking on the shore seemed to her to be the very sound of her breaking heart.
’

‘Oh, Rose,’ shouted Poppy from the hallway, ‘Morgan says that it would be nice if you came too, and Maud, and if you do, he’s going to take us to a lunchtime jazz club. Do come. Morgan says that I can’t be the only girl, but it would be all right if I have a maid and my sister to chaperone me. He’s so old-fashioned,’ she added with a giggle.

Rose was out of her chair in a flash, dropping the notebook on the rug as she went flying upstairs, shouting for Maud at the top of her voice. Daisy listened until the slam of the front door and the clatter of footsteps on the steps outside had died away. Then she leaned forward, picked up the notebook and put it on the small low table by the chair, arranging it tidily with its edges square to the outside rim of the table. Only then did she say, with a half-smile, ‘So you’ve turned down a prince.’

‘He just wanted to have fun,’ said Violet indifferently. ‘It was a lovely house party though.’

Daisy said nothing. Violet was temperamental these days, one minute snubbing her younger sisters and telling them that they were just children, and the next minute reacting bad-temperedly to any joke. She seemed to want to talk now, though, and Daisy prepared to listen.

Slowly and dreamily Violet went through her weekend: the arrival at Marjorie’s place, the names on the bedrooms, everyone’s titles carefully written up, the elaborate dinner on the first night and the moonlit walk afterwards.

‘They have an old abbey attached to the house,’ she said. ‘It’s just a ruin. But Prince George said that he could not wait until daylight to explore it. And of course everyone was keen. We all had plenty of champagne – and you know how you feel after that.’ Daisy said nothing but continued looking into the fire.

‘I’m having such fun with my season,’ went on Violet. ‘Oh, I hope and hope that Elaine doesn’t go back to India. I want you and Poppy to have the same fun that I’m having – you could come out next year. People whose birthdays are in the autumn usually come out when they are seventeen.’

‘Tell me about the moonlit walk,’ said Daisy, and Violet laughed softly.

‘You can imagine what it was like. We were all rushing upstairs to put on something warm and Marjorie’s mother was fussing a little but no one took any notice. And, of course, it was Prince George who wanted to do it, so she didn’t dare say no. I was so thankful that Elaine bought me that fur wrap – so much more romantic than that awful tweed coat.’

Violet stopped and shuddered slightly as if at the thought of their past poverty-stricken wardrobes.

‘It’s beautiful, the abbey,’ she went on dreamily. ‘You just can’t imagine what it’s like. There was a big window – the eastern window – over the place where the altar used to be. No glass in it, of course, but those soaring pointed arches, and the moonlight making the stone seem so dazzlingly white, and the dark trees on the hill beyond showing through it – just as if the window framed the picture.’

It
was
romantic, thought Daisy, feeling a little envious of her sister. She had something that she had to tell Violet, but she would wait for a while, for the right moment.

‘Any ghosts?’ she asked lightly.

Violet didn’t answer that for a while.

‘It must be a strange thing to grow up being a prince,’ she said after a moment. ‘Everyone is so deferential to you – even Marjorie’s people, who are very grand. Her mother looks as though she would happily throw herself on the ground and be trampled by Prince George – and he’s only twenty-one years old.

‘So when the Prince and I wandered out of the church and into the cloisters, no one followed us, no one shouted out teasing remarks the way that they were doing with Marjorie and Brian when they slipped upstairs to the old ruined dormitories. There were about thirty of us there that night, you know, and yet nobody came too near us, nobody joked with us, the way that they were joking with each other, laughing and calling out when someone put an arm around a girl.’

‘So you wandered in the moonlit cloisters with Prince George,’ commented Daisy. ‘I’m not surprised that Rose found that romantic.’

Violet smiled a little. ‘I made up a nice ending for her. You know – about honour and duty and all that sort of thing.’

‘What did happen?’ asked Daisy, looking closely at her sister.

‘Nothing really,’ said Violet with indifference. ‘We were pacing the cloisters all by ourselves. He had his arm around me. I didn’t mind that – I was a bit flattered, to be honest. And then all of a sudden he gave this stupid artificial jump and said in a sort of idiotic squeal, ‘A ghost!’ and then he grabbed me in his arms, really crushing my dress, and tried to kiss me, and . . . well, you can guess . . . And I didn’t particularly like him doing that so I just pulled away and said, “No, Your Highness; that was just a rat.”’ Violet giggled. ‘You should have seen the jump he gave that time! It was a real genuine jump. He let go of me and started to look all around and I just slipped back into the abbey church again.’

‘And that was the end of that,’ said Daisy regretfully. ‘I wonder if Prince Albert did that sort of thing to win Lady Elizabeth.’

‘Well, she turned him down three times before she accepted him,’ said Violet with a nervous laugh. ‘And that’s not all. I kept away from Prince George the next day, but then David started haunting me. Even at breakfast time he was pestering me for loads of dances. I gave them to him, because I was pretty sure that Prince George wouldn’t ask me but the others might think that I was booked by him. I didn’t want to be a wallflower.’

‘So you danced with David. Don’t tell me that he tried something on – you didn’t go out into the cloisters with him, did you?’