The Granville Sisters (2 page)

Never intellectual, nor over-bright, she nevertheless grew into a sweet and attractive woman of shallow depths and few persuasive abilities but great charm. As their five daughters were born, so also was her ambition that they should marry as well and as happily as she had.

Henry realized this was what was behind her wanting the girls to make ‘good matches’. And if he secretly wished her ambition was less obvious, he said nothing, but took it as a compliment, for it meant she had found happiness with him.

‘I’d have gone to the loo before we left if I’d known we’d have to sit here for hours,’ Rosie grumbled.

It was the 8th of June. The four of them had been sitting in the car for two hours, and they were still stuck in the Mall, several hundred yards from the gates of Buckingham Palace.

‘We should have left home earlier,’ Henry remarked heavily, looking distinguished in black knee breeches, stockings with buckled shoes, and his war medals. ‘All that fussing with your headdress, Rosie, has made us dreadfully late.’

‘It’s much more difficult to fix the feathers with this new short hairstyle, than it was when one’s hair was long,’ Liza said placatingly. Wearing a silver lamé dress, with a silver lace train, and a dazzling diamond tiara and necklace, her face glowed with happiness. ‘As long as we’re in the palace by eight o’clock, it’ll be all right,’ she added, smoothing her gloves.

Juliet smiled smugly. Her long thick tresses, which she’d refused to have cut, had been arranged into a Grecian knot, so the hairdresser had had no problem in pinning the three white Prince of Wales feathers into
her
hair. She was just cross that she hadn’t been allowed to borrow one of her mother’s tiaras.

‘Only married ladies are allowed to wear them,’ Liza had explained.

The long line of large black cars, like hearses on their way to a morticians’ convention, edged slowly forward. The route was lined by thousands of people, agog to see the ladies in their finery and blazing jewels.

Juliet loved this attention, but Rosie looked embarrassed.

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t wave back, Juliet,’ Henry said at one point, as she raised a white gloved hand to acknowledge the crowds. ‘You’re not royalty.’

Royalty. Juliet savoured the word and imagined she was some foreign princess, accepting the adulation of her subjects.

Newspaper photographers had started taking their pictures now, through the car windows.

‘I didn’t know it would be like this,’ Rosie said, appalled, while Juliet smiled flirtatiously into the lenses.

‘The women come to see what people are wearing,’ Liza observed, blasé. ‘It’s like a fashion show to them. They haven’t come to see
us
.’

Getting out of the car when they arrived was a hazard neither of the sisters had forseen. Trains had to be draped over their left arm, heads had to be ducked so they wouldn’t break their feathers, bouquets of gardenias and roses must be carefully clutched.

When a liveried footman offered his white gloved hand to support Juliet, she grasped it with the fervour of someone thrown a lifeline as they are about to drown in a rip tide.

‘Gosh!’ she murmured, climbing up the steps that led into the palace.

Once inside, Rosie and Juliet had never seen such a blinding mix of scarlet and gold in their lives, with a carpet that stretched ahead of them like a red ocean.

‘Golly!’ Rosie echoed, with awe.

‘What happens now?’ Juliet asked her mother.

‘Follow us,’ Liza whispered, leading the way with Henry up the grand sweeping staircase, past ranks of Yeomen of the Guards, until they reached the top, where powdered footmen collected Liza’s white fox cape and Juliet and Rosie’s ermine wraps.

Whilst the men greeted their friends, gentle preening was going on amongst the mothers and daughters, like doves attending delicately to their toilette.

Then they moved forward into the White Drawing Room, which was already crowded. To one side there were rows of gilt chairs.

‘Go and sit there,’ Liza told them. ‘You’ve got your cards of command, haven’t you?’

They nodded, clutching the precious cards bearing their names, without which the court usher would not allow them to go forward to be presented.

‘Where are you going, Mummy?’ Rosie asked in alarm. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t leave us.’

‘I have to go ahead of you, darling. You’ll follow, with the rest of the girls, in due course.’

They took their seats and watched for what seemed ages as their mothers disappeared through the far doors into the adjoining Throne Room. Then it was the turn of the débutantes.

Rosie moved with determination to be in front of Juliet, her blue taffeta dress and train echoing the colour of her eyes, her cheeks flushed, and her hands trembling with nerves.

Moments after, it was Juliet’s turn.

‘Miss Juliet Granville,’ boomed the usher.

This was it. Juliet’s moment of glory. With her head held high, she swept forward to present herself before the King and Queen of the British Empire, an Empire so vast it was said the sun never set on it.

Gripping her bouquet, she dropped into a deep curtsey before the King, and then moving on, curtsied to the Queen. And suddenly it was all over.

She found herself in the Blue Drawing Room, where Rosie and her parents, looking proud, were waiting for her.

‘What now?’ Juliet asked.

‘When the King and Queen leave the Throne Room, there’s a champagne supper, and then the car will come to collect us,’ Henry told her.

Juliet’s face fell. ‘Is that all?’

‘No, we’ve been invited to a party at the Savoy, where, if you’re lucky, you can dance the night away,’ he replied, smiling.

‘Oh, Daddy, how wonderful!’ she exclaimed loudly, flinging her arms around his neck to kiss him, much to the horror of the other girls and their parents.

‘I think we’ll reserve the hug for later, sweetheart,’ Henry said, good-humouredly extricating himself.

‘We mustn’t forget where we are, dear,’ Liza said in a stage whisper.

Juliet looked unabashed. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel absolutely at home here.’

On arrival at the Savoy, the cloakroom was crowded with mothers and daughters shedding their trains and feathered headdresses, bouquets and gloves. The formality was over. The mothers were dying for a strong cocktail; the debutants were dying for a strong man to sweep them on to the dance floor.

Seated at a long table for thirty, Liza took a quick look at the other guests, congratulating herself on having cultivated Lady Carmichael for the last twenty years, including making her Rosie’s godmother. She’d known all along that Trudie Carmichael, having a daughter the same age, would be entertaining lavishly during the season of ’35. Whilst the Carmichaels weren’t as rich as the Granvilles, they seemed to know a large number of ‘young things’, and so it was with satisfaction that Liza noted that both Rosie and Juliet had eligible young men on either side as they took their seats for supper.

Carroll Gibbons and his band livened the atmosphere with romantic popular music, and couples crowded on to the dance floor to the strains of ‘I Cover the Waterfront’, and ‘Dancing in the Dark’.

Juliet looked sparkling and confident, Rosie looked hopeful.

‘Isn’t this a dashed good party?’ remarked the young man on Juliet’s right, who had introduced himself as Archie Hipwood. ‘Been to Buck House, have you?’

Juliet nodded. ‘Do you think I can have a sip of your wine? My parents are here, and I’m not allowed alcohol yet. Such a dreadful bore,’ she added, imitating his drawl.

‘How dashed unsporting of them. Here, swapsies!’ He pushed his glass surreptitiously towards her, and took her orange squash.

‘How angelic of you!’ Juliet said flirtatiously.

The man on her other side leaned towards her. ‘Hello. I’m Colin Armstrong. You must be Juliet Granville.’

Her eyes widened. ‘How did you know that?’

‘News travels, when there’s a new beauty on the scene. Like to dance?’

Juliet took a quick sip of wine. ‘I’d adore to. I just
love
this tune.’ And away she skimmed in her ivory satin dress, with his arm around her waist, as she looked up laughingly into his plain but charming face.

Further down the table, Rosie was talking to someone called Charles Padmore.

‘So where do you live?’ he asked.

‘In Green Street.’

‘Enjoying your first season?’

‘Yes. It seems to be great fun.’ She looked towards the dancing couples with envy, especially when she saw Juliet swinging past as the band played ‘Let’s Make Hay While the Sun is Shining’.

‘Do you ride?’

‘Not so much now, but we had ponies when I was young,’ Rosie replied, looking towards her mother for help. Why wasn’t she having as much fun as Juliet?

She turned to the man on her other side, hoping for better luck. ‘Hello, I’m Rosie Granville,’ she introduced herself shyly.

‘Hello there. I’m Peregrine Carnegie.’ He smiled affably.

‘And … erm … do you go to lots of these parties?’

‘Not really. Aunty Trudie roped me in for the evening. I’m at Oxford, reading economics, actually. I don’t have time to go to parties. Isn’t your sister Juliet Granville?’

‘Yes,’ Rosie replied icily.

‘Thought I recognized the name. Word’s already got around, according to my aunt, that she’s a smashing beauty who might become the Deb of the Year!’

‘I’m never
ever
going to go to the same party as Juliet again,’ Rosie exploded, on the verge of tears, as she and her mother went to powder their noses later on.

A look of panic floated across Liza’s face. This was only the first night of a season; another twelve weeks lay ahead of them.

‘There’s your joint coming-out ball next week, darling,’ she stammered, flustered, knowing now she had a real family crisis on her hands.

The atmosphere in 48 Green Street was charged with a mass of conflicting emotions on the morning of the ball.

Liza was up early, nauseous with a mixture of nerves and excitement. She looked at herself wistfully in the mirror.

Why was it that the way she
thought
she looked and the way she actually looked widened with every passing year?

Downstairs was all hustle and bustle. Boxes of flowers were borne aloft into the house like floating herbaceous borders, and the caterers had already delivered a load of little gilt chairs with red velvet seats.

In the kitchen, Mrs Fowler, the cook, was casting a beady eye over the food being prepared for breakfast for the two hundred guests, while she remained jealously in charge of the menu for the dinner party for twenty-five before the ball. She was a whippet-thin little woman, with a tired face framed by whisps of ginger hair, and when she smiled, she bared her teeth in a canine grin.

‘Put the hired crockery and glasses in the passage outside the skullery,’ she commanded in a rasping bark. ‘Don’t go bringing no crockery in here.’

Meanwhile Parsons, the butler, cast a worried eye over the dozens of cases of champagne, and wondered how long they’d last.

To add to the chaos, removal men had arrived to clear the drawing room and morning room of furniture, so there were frequent collisions in the hall between what was going out and what was coming in.

Even the nursery was in turmoil, as Charlotte kept jumping up and down, exclaiming, ‘I want to
dance
with Daddy tonight!’

‘We
are
going to be allowed to watch people arriving, aren’t we?’ Louise asked anxiously.

‘We’ll see what your mother says,’ Nanny retorted.

‘But I want to dance with Daddy,’ Charlotte wailed.

Louise said comfortingly, ‘I’ll dance with you on the landing, where no one can see us.’

Charlotte’s bottom lip quivered. ‘But Daddy won’t be on the landing,’ she gulped.

Nanny spoke crisply now. ‘Charlotte, if you don’t eat up your cereal, you won’t be dancing with anyone.’

The triumphal cascade of pink champagne, flowing from the top of a pyramid of wine glasses into a base of white marble, drew gasps of delighted amazement from the guests who arrived to have dinner before the ball. It was the
pièce de résistance
of the evening, and the first time anyone had seen the like at a débutante ball.

‘It’s too, too divine!’ exclaimed Lady Sibyll Lygon, who wrote articles about society parties for
Harper’s Bazaar
magazine.

Lady St John of Bletso, gazing at the sparkling pink display, agreed. ‘Too marvellous for words, my dear. Do you suppose it will keep flowing all evening?’

Behind her even the Aga Khan looked impressed, while the Duke and Duchess of Rutland ‘smiled appreciatively’, according to a report in the
Tatler
magazine.

At the top of the stairs, Louise, Amanda and Charlotte, in white organdie party frocks with blue sashes, peered down through the bannisters, fascinated by what was going on.

‘They all take after you, Liza,’ Lady Diana Cooper, a famous beauty herself, remarked. ‘You really must get them painted by Philip de Laszlo. He’s done an exquisite portrait of Princess Elizabeth, you know.’

It seemed to Rosie, beautiful in a white lace dress and long white gloves, that the whole of London was taking part in her coming-out ball tonight.

Unfortunately, she raged inwardly, so was Juliet.

It had all started to go wrong before the dinner-party guests had even arrived. She was waiting with her parents to receive the guests when Henry spoke.

‘Where’s Juliet?’

Rosie shrugged. ‘I haven’t the faintest.’

‘She’s ready, isn’t she?’ Liza asked, fanning herself nervously.

‘I’ve no idea, Mummy. She’s been cooped up in her room all afternoon.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake …!’ Henry sounded rattled.

‘I wanted her to see the champagne cascade and the flowers before anyone arrived,’ fretted Liza. ‘She
must
be ready.’

She herself had been made-up, hair curled, and tiara in place for
hours
.

‘
Juliet!
’ she called, a touch frantically.

‘She’ll never hear you, darling,’ Henry pointed out. He strode over to the bottom of the stairs, a distinguished figure in white tie and tails.