The FitzOsbornes in Exile (11 page)

18th May 1937

Goodness, I’ve been busy these past few weeks—yet somehow scrubbing floors and whitewashing walls has proved to be far less tiring than standing round a drawing room eating creamed chicken and trying to make polite conversation. Why
is
that? Perhaps it’s simply that being useful always makes one feel better.

We are now back in London, but only for a few days. I felt bad about poor Parker having to drive us back and forth between Milford and London, but things will be easier now that Veronica has passed her driving test and appropriated Toby’s Lagonda. I’m not sure what Aunt Charlotte will think about two young ladies zooming around the countryside in a red sports car, all by themselves—no, actually, I have a fairly shrewd idea of what she’ll think. Perhaps we should just forget to mention it to her …

The Old Mill House, the reason we were in Milford, is now looking much improved. Its last tenant departed ten years ago, and although the roof and walls were sound, the insides were rather depressing—mildewed plasterwork, dirt caked on the flagstone floors, and not a stick of furniture. It took us (“us” being the Reverend Webster Herbert’s housekeeper, half a dozen village women, Veronica, and me) five days just to clean the place, then another couple of days to paint the walls. We brought over some tables and chairs from the attics at Milford Park, and Anthony has arranged for the delivery of two dozen camp beds and a couple of boxes of kitchen equipment. When Veronica and I left yesterday morning, the Milford Park handyman had just arrived to fix the boiler, and some of the women were making curtains out of the bunting used to decorate the village for King George’s coronation. I’m afraid the house will still be fairly primitive—only one bathroom, no rugs, and heaven knows what we’ll do for heating upstairs. But perhaps there’ll be good news from the Spanish front, and the refugee children will only need to stay a few months. Besides, spring is sweeping so beautifully across the countryside at the moment that it’s hard to imagine winter will ever make an appearance.

In London, spring is rather more subdued. The sky is still ash-gray, any flowers daring to unfurl their petals are immediately showered in soot, and the trees seem yellowish and stunted after our week in Dorset. It
is
a little warmer than before, and the afternoons do seem a bit longer. And of course,
the Season
has officially begun …

I attended my first ball last week, but I must admit it was more exciting to anticipate than to experience. Getting dressed up was probably the most enjoyable part. I wore a violet gown with a white lace overskirt and white kid gloves that reached nearly to my armpits (it took Phoebe and me twenty minutes to tug the gloves on and get all the pearl buttons fastened). Aunt Charlotte lent me a sapphire-and-diamond necklace with matching bracelets, I had my hair done by Monsieur Raymond, I curled my eyelashes with little tongs as Julia had shown me, and I painted my lips Pearl Pink. I really did look quite pretty, I thought, as I inspected myself in the long looking glass in the hall at Montmaray House. Toby started to agree, then got distracted by Veronica descending the marble staircase in a swish of black taffeta.

“Oh, absolutely
not
,” he exclaimed. “Those shoes have
got
to go.”

With her long hair heaped on top of her head and her two-inch heels, she towered over him, to his indignation and her great glee (the two of them have been comparing heights ever since they were old enough to stand up straight).

“Well, don’t expect
me
to dance with you,” he said. “I’ll look ridiculous.”

He was joking, of course. He had the first waltz with Veronica while I danced with Simon, then we swapped partners. I sat out the next dance (trying not to think about how warm and firm Simon’s hand had felt resting on my waist). Anthony and Julia arrived fashionably late, and Anthony asked me if I’d care to join him for the fox-trot, although he was so bad at it that we quickly agreed to sit down. Toby was swamped with girls wanting his initials on their dance cards but managed to fight most of them off. He waltzed with Julia, though, three times, and they looked superb together, whirling around the floor. Later I found out they’d practiced for a whole winter, rolling up the rug in the drawing room at Astley Manor and trying to get Rupert to join in. I half wished Rupert could have been at the ball—not so much to dance with but to talk to—except he was at school, of course. Julia was busy catching up with her friends, Veronica got embroiled in a political debate with two elderly gentlemen from the Foreign Office, and Simon was occupied with Aunt Charlotte, keeping her supplied with champagne and vital information (“He’s the Brazilian Ambassador, you met him at the Londonderry dinner … She’s the niece of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No, yellow
isn’t
her color, you’re quite right … That’s Miss Rosalind Christie, her mother writes those detective novels …”). So I spent quite a lot of time perched on my gilt chair watching the dancers, hoping no one was watching
me
and thinking what a wallflower I was.

At about eleven, there was a great surge from the ballroom into a smaller room next door, where a sit-down supper of caviar, lobster, quail, asparagus, strawberries, and cake was served. I forgot to mention how hot and stuffy the ballroom was, with all the lights blazing away and the hundreds of sweaty dancers, and how noisy, with the band and the chatter. The supper room wasn’t much better, so Julia and I climbed out some French windows onto a balcony for a breath of fresh air. Normally, London balconies are too sooty to go anywhere near, but this one had been draped in red felt for the occasion.

“That’s better,” said Julia, fanning herself. “Well, Sophie, what do you think of Society?”

As I hadn’t talked with anyone new, apart from the maid in the cloakroom, it didn’t seem I was any more a part of Society than before. Julia laughed and said it would get better, then teased me about a young baronet she claimed had been gazing across the ballroom at me.

“More likely gazing at Veronica,” I said. We both looked back through the window to where Toby, Veronica, and Simon were leaning into each other over the tablecloth. Veronica and Simon were squabbling about something, and Toby was laughingly trying to insert himself between them. Veronica looked especially beautiful, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed, her lips as red as the rubies glowing at her throat.

“What a
very
good-looking family you have,” sighed Julia. She tilted her head towards me. “And they
are
all family—aren’t they?”

I paused. The Stanley-Rosses are our closest (really, our
only
) friends, so it seemed silly to keep secrets from them. Yet Julia
did
love to gossip … But I’d hesitated too long.

“I
knew
it,” she said triumphantly. “Veronica and Simon are so awfully alike.”

“Don’t say that around Veronica,” I warned her. “And Aunt Charlotte isn’t exactly thrilled about it, either.”

“Oh, of course,” Julia assured me. “My lips are sealed. Although I think it’s rather romantic—it gives him a mysterious, brooding air.” This certainly seemed to be a view shared by others, because after supper, Simon was dragged onto the dance floor by a succession of glamorous women. Not that I paid any attention to that. Well, not much.

Veronica and I went back to Milford the next day, but Toby and Aunt Charlotte stayed because they’d been invited to King George’s coronation at Westminster Abbey. Toby gave a very funny account of watching the peers shuffling into the Abbey with packets of sandwiches concealed under their coronets and flasks of whisky tucked inside their robes. He said he wished
he’d
thought to do the same, because the ceremony seemed to go on for hours, enlivened only by a couple of mishaps. The Archbishop of Canterbury fumbled with the crown at a crucial moment, and a bishop stepped on the royal robes as the new King was trying to get out of his chair. Little Princess Margaret, watching from the royal gallery, squirmed about, tapped her feet, poked her sister Elizabeth in the arm, yawned widely, and otherwise made her boredom very clear. It was some consolation to hear that there are other badly behaved princesses in these parts, because Henry, we discovered when we arrived at Milford Park, had just chopped all her hair off with the garden shears.

“Much easier to manage,” she said cheerfully. “This way I don’t have to curl it or comb it or whatever it is Miss Bullock keeps trying to make me do.”

Henry’s governess had also ordered a lot of new summer clothes for Henry, but as they are mostly frilly and pastel-colored, Henry refuses to wear them. She stomps around in her riding gear or Toby’s old trousers, which aren’t nearly as long as they used to be on her—she’s shot up at least three inches this year. It must be all the good food. She certainly seems happy, spending hours hurtling over fences on her pony or taking Carlos and her piglet, Estella, for long walks. (Estella’s name comes from
Great Expectations
—she’s a very haughty-looking piglet.) I must say Henry was also very helpful at the Old Mill House, washing our paintbrushes, running errands, and chopping wood for the stove. And I suppose there’s still another six or seven years before she needs to put on a frock and start practicing Court curtseys.

Our
curtseys at Buckingham Palace, I should note, went off rather well last night. I did wobble a bit coming up from one of them, but I don’t think anyone noticed—certainly not the King or Queen, who were propped like little wax dolls upon their thrones (and quite possibly asleep, in the case of the King). It was interesting to see Buckingham Palace from the inside. The furniture and paintings and chandeliers were certainly very grand, but it was disappointing to see how
grimy
everything was. Perhaps it was just the week I’d spent at the Old Mill House, but I found myself longing to give the walls of the Throne Room a good going-over with a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush.

After our official presentation to the King and Queen, we all trooped down some red-carpeted stairs for a champagne supper in the basement of the Palace, where Toby and Simon were immediately surrounded by admiring debutantes. The boys both looked very dashing in Court dress—black velvet coat with white lace jabot, blue sash and medallion of the Order of Benedict worn on top of that, black knee breeches, and black silk stockings (with black cotton ones worn underneath, so their hairy legs didn’t show). There’d been a lot of good-natured bantering between them over who had the better legs, although Toby said it wasn’t a fair competition, with one of his calves skinnier than the other after being squashed in plaster all that time. It was nice to see them getting on so well, because they were
very
formal and polite with each other for quite a while after the Elchester ball. I think Toby felt Simon had spent a bit
too
much time dancing with one particular lady. They must have made up while Veronica and I were in Milford. I am not going to speculate on
how
they managed this—although it may just have been that Toby felt sorry for Simon, who had to rush off to Poole to calm down Rebecca (she’d thrown a massive tantrum after her roommate was declared “cured” and sent home).

We’d been invited to several debutante dances scheduled for the same night as our Court presentation, but Veronica was most insistent that we attend one
particular
dance. I couldn’t understand why, as it was the coming-out ball for one of the most poisonous debutantes we’d encountered thus far (I shan’t call her
catty
—that’s unfair to cats). It turned out the girl’s godmother was a friend of Aunt Charlotte’s, so we didn’t have a hope of avoiding the occasion. The house in Cadogan Square was rather too small for the number of guests, and I lost Veronica in the crush soon after our arrival.

“Who’s that interesting-looking chap with Veronica?” Toby asked nearly an hour later, nodding towards the doorway. “The one in the baggy suit. He’s been talking to her for ages.”

I glanced over my shoulder and nearly dropped my plate of salmon. “It’s
Daniel
!” I whispered.

“Is it
really
?” said Toby, brightening. “Excellent!” He stood up and waved both arms over his head until he’d caught Veronica’s attention (as well as the attention of nearly everyone else in the room).

“Aunt Charlotte will be
furious
,” I groaned, but fortunately, our guardian didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby. “So
that’s
why Veronica was determined to come to this dance! She must have told him to meet her here.”

Veronica was leading Daniel over by then, and he looked exactly as he had four or five years ago, the last time I’d seen him. He wore the same round spectacles, which were still slipping down his nose and being shoved back into place with a long, ink-streaked forefinger; his warm brown eyes were still peering out at the world through the smudged lenses with amusement and a very gentle sort of cynicism; his dark hair was still straggling around his ears and down his neck, badly in need of the attentions of a barber. He wasn’t the slightest bit handsome, and yet he was undeniably pleasant to look upon. I couldn’t help grinning back at him as he arrived in front of me.

“Sophie, I would never have recognized you!” he said, grasping my hand with both of his. “All grown up, I see! And you must be
Toby
—I’ve heard so much about you!”

While Toby was complimenting Daniel on his suit (“You’ll start a new trend, like Oxford bags in the twenties.” “Well, actually, I borrowed it from my cousin—”), I pulled Veronica to one side and gave her a pointed, enquiring look.

“He was hungry, poor thing,” she said unrepentantly. “His landlady doesn’t feed him properly, and there’s always far too much food at these events. Besides, I needed to discuss the Basque refugees with him. He’s spoken to the Committee and got us a letter of introduction to the children’s camp. They’re supposed to be arriving on the twenty-third now …”