‘As long as you remember that you’re too old for fairy tales,’ he said abruptly, and then turned away and started to look around the narrow streets.
‘Do you know,’ he said suddenly, ‘I remember that gasworks the woman mentioned. It was enormous – like a giant drum, a tall and enormous drum; I can remember looking up at it.’
‘Let’s go and see the place where you were living when you were little – I know that it will be different, but you never know – some other memories might come back to you,’ said Daisy. Somehow she wanted to prolong the morning. Perhaps it was the interest of finding out about Morgan’s past, or whether it was his undemanding company, but the bitter humiliation of the interview with Lady Cynthia had been soothed and she was conscious of feeling genuinely happy.
‘Come on,’ she said turning back towards the car. ‘Let’s go to Albert Row.’
Albert Row had never really recovered from the explosion. There were still rows of ruined tiny terraced houses, back to back with each other, with only narrow, weed-filled yards separating them from each other. Here and there a couple of houses had been rebuilt, but the place was filthy and derelict. They both got out of the car and walked around.
‘Mustn’t have been much fun living here,’ commented Morgan.
‘Do you remember anything?’ asked Daisy. ‘See that place up there . . .’ She went a bit nearer to a big building and made out the words ‘LABOUR EXCHANGE’ beneath the burned-out roof.
‘Nothing; it doesn’t seem a bit familiar.’ Morgan looked around him. ‘It’s funny, but I thought we had a garden. I seem to remember a garden. Yes, I do!’ He stopped suddenly and thumped a fist against a letter box. ‘We did have a garden. I remember having my birthday in the garden. And the sun was out. I was born in June, like she used to sing to me, not in December! They’ve got the wrong boy! I’m sure of it now. This wasn’t the place where I lived.’
Daisy looked at him with excitement. ‘Let’s have a look around – just walk around and see if anything comes back to you. This is like a detective story – like one of those books by Agatha Christie where Tommy and Tuppence were going around London picking up clues.’ To while away the time as they walked, she chatted about the film that she was editing with the Bright Young Things pouring out of the taxi and dancing in the jazz club. ‘I need a good name,’ she finished. ‘Can you think of anything?’
‘Perhaps just call it Jazz or Jazzy – it’s the most fashionable music at the moment,’ he suggested, but he wasn’t giving her his full attention. ‘There!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s where the gasworks used to be – see, it’s a coal yard now, but you can still see the remains of it.’
‘How near were you to it?’ Daisy found herself getting excited.
‘Not very, I don’t think. I remember going for a walk and smelling it before I got close. I don’t think that we could see it from our garden. But of course I was only three.’
‘Look over there – something that wasn’t burned down.’ Daisy pointed to a church. ‘I’d say that’s a few hundred years old. Great-Aunt Lizzie used to teach us about different styles of church building.’ Suddenly an idea came to her and she said quickly, ‘You can’t find your birth certificate if you don’t know your real name or your real date of birth, but we could look at the records of children baptized in the parish in June . . . what year was it?’
‘1900,’ he said, and then grinned. ‘I lied about my age to get into the army and then had to lie to your father when I went for this job. I’m twenty-three, nearly twenty-four now though – a nice respectable age if they want to start another war.’
‘Let’s go to the vicarage,’ said Daisy.
The vicarage was a newly built house surrounded by a moss-infested lawn with the stump of some ancient tree in the middle of it. They rang the bell twice before it was answered by a maidservant in a dirty apron.
‘Yes,’ she said snappily.
‘We’d like to see the vicar.’ Daisy took charge. She sensed that Morgan was almost reluctant to uncover the past any further. Perhaps, she thought, he feared the destruction of his memories of a happy and pretty young mother singing songs to him and holding a party tea for him in a garden full of June flowers.
‘What about?’ The maid sounded most unfriendly and Daisy saw Morgan take a backwards step.
‘We’d like to look at the baptismal entries for June 1900,’ she said, trying to sound a little like Great-Aunt Lizzie. The girl’s eyebrows shot up and she gave Daisy a wondering look. Daisy stared back haughtily. None of your business, she said to herself.
‘Well, you can’t. Vicar’s away on his holidays – won’t be back until the second of June. Mr Hardiman from the next parish comes to take the Sunday service, but he won’t have no time for looking at registers.’
‘Well, we’ll make an appointment for the first week in June, perhaps the fourth?’ said Daisy firmly. ‘Three o’clock. Perhaps you would be good enough to write it down.’
‘What name?’ asked the maid reluctantly, taking a large, leather-bound diary from the hall table.
‘Carruthers,’ said Daisy. ‘Miss Carruthers.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Friday 9 May 1924
‘Oh, my dear children,’ said Lady Dorothy. ‘Oh, Basil, how could you? Poppy, you naughty, naughty girl. People keep phoning me! Now what are we going to do? Your brother is going to be so, so furious with you, Baz.’
‘Sorry,’ said Poppy demurely.
‘Oh, Mama,’ said Baz, ‘you don’t mind really. You’re just worrying about what Ambrose will say.’
‘Oh, goody,’ said Rose. ‘You’ve got the papers.’
‘Yes, indeed. Joan was up early and she bought them.’
‘Dearest Mama, I cannot tell a lie,’ said Joan, yawning. ‘In truth I was out so late that the morning papers were already on the streets when we were coming home. Some of my crowd went on to Mary’s party after yours finished,’ she explained to Poppy. ‘It’s just too sick-making to go home early.’
‘Oh, pray, look at this!’ said Rose, enraptured. ‘Earl’s Daughter Drops Bombshell – and a great picture of Elaine and Jack with their jaws dropping – pity you’re not a duke’s daughter, Poppy. It would have sounded so much better – Duke’s Daughter Drops . . . now what can I use instead of “bombshell”? I know – this is better. Shock Disclosure from Duke’s Daughter – Dashing Debutante Dares All in Her Desperation. This Is the Man I Love, Says Lady Poppy Derrington.’
Poppy smothered a giggle and turned a bland face to Lady Dorothy, who was shaking her head and repeating the words ‘my dear children’ over and over again.
‘Don’t fuss, Mama,’ said Baz, dropping a kiss on top of his mother’s fashionably cropped hair. ‘We’ll be all right.’
‘It’s what your brother will say,’ mourned Lady Dorothy. It was amazing, thought Poppy, how elderly relations continually repeated themselves.
‘Well, Ambrose wanted me to go to Oxford, the silly chump, and that would have cost him a packet – all those Oxford fellows get into debt all the time. Let him give me what he would have spent on my getting a BA from Oxford, and that will keep us going until the Jazz Club makes a fortune.’
‘Failing a BA, probably, dearest,’ said Poppy gently. ‘Oh, don’t do that, you beast. Lady Dorothy, rescue me!’
‘You are a silly pair.’ Lady Dorothy shook her head sadly and Poppy pulled herself away from Baz, threw a velvet cushion at him and began to think hard.
‘How much?’ she demanded. ‘How much was your brother going to give you?’
Baz shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to go.’
‘Honourable Basil Pattenden Disdains Oxford Honours.’ Rose had her notebook open and was busy scribbling, murmuring to herself as her pencil moved along the lines. ‘Lady Poppy Is More Precious Than Academia, Says Son of Earl.’
Poppy thought hard for a moment and then went across and sat on the sofa beside Lady Dorothy. It was important, sh
e felt, that her future mother-in-law be swiftly reconciled to their engagement.
‘Dear Lady Dorothy,’ she said, stroking the woman’s hand, ‘you are so understanding. I do love you so much.’
‘It will have to be a very long engagement,’ said Lady Dorothy. Her tone was intended to be severe, but Poppy could hear that she was weakening.
‘We’ll do whatever you say,’ she murmured submissively. Baz, she thought, looking across at him lovingly, was adopting the pose of a man of the world, with his thumbs stuck into his waistcoat pockets, but his eyes had the faraway look which showed that he was thinking of a jazz tune.
‘Baz and I,’ she said appealingly to Lady Dorothy, ‘we love each other very much; we will just be so happy together.’
Lady Dorothy kissed her affectionately. ‘My dear, you two are like the little babes in the woods,’ she said, but there was a soft look in her eye and she looked helplessly across the room at her daughter.
‘We need Chomondley,’ said Joan firmly. She crossed the room, picked up the telephone and asked for Mayfair 3493. She waited.
‘I don’t care if you were asleep,’ she said when the speaker at the other end of the line had spluttered into action. She listened for a moment and then said firmly, ‘Dearest man, if you are going to take that line with me, then I shall just put this telephone down and you’ll have to do your own job, instead of me giving you the most wonderful piece of copy for the evening newspapers. Now stop talking nonsense about the pain in your head and complaining about the racket the birds are making. Just take your pencil and write this down and then you can phone it through and go back to sleep for the rest of the day. Ready?’
‘A little bird tells me . . .’ prompted Rose, and Joan nodded and repeated the words: ‘A little bird tells that the owner of the latest and most fashionable jazz club . . . its name? – I don’t know . . . wait a minute.’ Joan covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with one hand. ‘What’s the name of the club, Baz?’
‘Dunno,’ said Baz after a few seconds’ thought.
‘Very Heaven.’ Poppy had suddenly remembered the line of poetry: ‘To be young was very heaven’. It had come true, after all. She hugged herself, kicked off her shoes and began to shimmy across the floor, rotating her hands vigorously backwards and forwards, keeping her fingers spread open with the palms facing out and facing first to one side and then to the other while maintaining the rhythm with her pointed feet.
‘To be young is very heaven!’ she sang, fitting the words to a jazz rhythm and noting with pleasure that Lady Dorothy was now smiling.
‘The owner of the latest and most fashionable jazz club, VERY HEAVEN, SUTCHELEY STREET, BELGRAVIA – put all of that in capital letters, Chomondley, won’t you? Yes, yes, put the address. I don’t care if the Social Editor doesn’t like addresses; do as I tell you – we want people to come . . . Where was I?’
‘Has presented his new fiancée to his mother,’ whispered Rose.
‘Yes,’ continued Joan. ‘The honourable Basil Pattenden has presented his new fiancée, Lady Poppy Derrington, to his mother. I have been reliably informed that Lady Dorothy is enchanted by the romantic match.’
‘“My dearest wish has been fulfilled,” said Lady Dorothy,’ prompted Rose.
‘“My dearest wish has been fulfilled,” Lady Dorothy told a close friend,’ Joan amended and then waited, impatiently tapping her foot, while Chomondley took the words down.
‘Joan!’ exclaimed Lady Dorothy helplessly, but Joan, prompted from time to time by Rose, was on a roll, and was not going to be easily stopped. Baz had by now pulled off his shoes also, and together with Poppy danced noiselessly around the morning room while phrases such as lifelong romance, stunning sensation, jazz geniuses, rumours are rife drifted to their ears.
It’s true; it’s true, thought Poppy. Baz and I are going to get married. We are going to have the best jazz club in London and we will make a fortune and live happily ever after and have a large family of musical children who will be playing tin whistles and drums in their cradles.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Friday 9 May 1924
‘Ah, there you are, Morgan. I was just coming down to see whether the car was back. Could you fetch Lord Derrington from Victoria Station at three o’clock?’
Daisy’s heart stood still for a moment. So her father had been told about Poppy’s shock announcement last night. She felt very guilty. If she hadn’t rushed out to meet Charles, if she hadn’t gone to his mother’s house with him, perhaps she could have talked Jack out of informing her father so soon. Perhaps things could have been smoothed over.
‘I wish you had waited,’ she said to him in a low voice as he helped her out of the car. Who did he think he was? she thought resentfully. He had no authority over Poppy or herself. He wasn’t even a real uncle.
‘My dear girl,’ he said in those smooth tones that he used when he was really annoyed, ‘don’t you realize? It’s in every paper this morning – there are even boards up on Westminster Bridge – saw them when I went out for my early-morning walk. Your father had to be told. I had to explain that your sister consulted no one and took it into her head to do such a silly thing. The manager of the Ritz is most upset. “If it had only been our own band, Sir John,” he kept saying to me, “our bandmaster would have known better. Those Americans don’t understand. The young people there are all wild and out of control” – that’s what he said to me,’ said Jack running out of steam as Daisy glared at him angrily.
‘Well, I’m going to meet him at Victoria, not you,’ she said firmly, and was emboldened as Morgan gave her a grin from behind Sir John’s stately back. She stopped herself from saying that it was none of his business. After all, her mother’s husband did feel responsible for the girls – they were guests in his house, and Poppy should not really have made that impulsive announcement. ‘I think it will be best if I talk to him alone,’ she said quietly, trying to give the impression of being adult and in charge. ‘I’m sorry that you have been so troubled in this matter,’ she ended on a stately note and went into the house to speak to Elaine.
‘Why don’t you and Jack go out for the afternoon?’ she said when she had listened to all of Elaine’s self-justifications, which she was obviously practising on Daisy ahead of the arrival of her brother-in-law. ‘Go out straight after lunch, and by the time that you are back at dinnertime I may have calmed him down.’
‘But Jack—’ began Elaine.
Daisy quickly interrupted her. ‘Don’t let Jack talk to him before I have a chance to,’ she begged. ‘Please, Elaine. Tell him not to. Father will feel obliged to be even angrier if he sees that Jack is angry. It’s important to calm everything down now.’ She glanced out of the window and saw a quick flash of red hair as its owner bounced up the steps and put her finger on the bell.
‘Well, young lady?’ Jack was in the hall before Daisy had opened the door of the morning room.
‘It’s all fixed up,’ said Poppy, flashing a smile at him. ‘Lady Dorothy is delighted. Baz’s brother, Ambrose, is going to give him an allowance. And he’s got a house already so that’s all settled. And of course, once I am a married woman it will be quite respectable for me to play in jazz clubs, side by side with my dear old husband. I’d better go and get ready for lunch. Coming, Daisy?’ Rapidly she ran up the stairs before Sir John could say a word, and Rose followed, her cheeks pink with excitement.
‘In a moment,’ called Daisy after her. She could hardly prevent herself laughing. How like Poppy all of this was. She always managed to get her own way.
‘It will work out all right,’ she said reassuringly to Jack. It was, after all, good of him to concern himself so much about a pack of girls to whom he was not related. She was glad now that Lady Cynthia wasn’t going to make trouble for him.
‘The Pattendens are rich and very respectable,’ she added, and saw with satisfaction that he shrugged his shoulders with the air of a man who has done all that could be reasonably expe
cted of him.
‘I’m afraid that Father is on his way up here,’ she said when she reached Poppy’s bedroom. ‘Jack phoned him.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Poppy carelessly. ‘I wouldn’t want to tell him myself as he would make such a fuss, but I don’t want it kept a secret.’
‘Secrets,’ said Rose wisely. ‘Beech Grove Manor: A House Full of Secrets – that may be the title of a book that I shall write this summer. Doubtless it will sell a million copies and then I shall be fabulously rich . . . Oh, Daisy, you don’t know one of the secrets, do you? Elaine had a governess called Lucinda . . . think of it, Lucinda!’ she said rapturously. ‘Anyway this poor girl, just like Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey and all those other governesses, fell madly in love with the son of the house, Robert, and was turned out into the snow by Great-Aunt Lizzie—’
‘Beg your pardon, your ladyships,’ said Maud, tapping on the door and putting her head around it, ‘lunch is ready.’
‘It’ll work out all right,’ said Morgan on their way to the station. ‘To be honest, I was a bit afraid of . . .’ He gave her a sidelong glance and then said, ‘Well, you can probably guess. Now that it is all out in the open, and as long as the wedding isn’t delayed too long, then it should all work out. He’s a nice little chap and they’re like a pair of bluebirds together – very much in love. How’s the money situation with the Pattendens?’
‘Not at all like us,’ said Daisy promptly. ‘They’d be quite rich, really.’
‘They’ll probably be all right then,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit young for marriage but he’s a gentle fellow. Will make her a good husband. She’ll be the boss of course. She has a lot of determination for one her age. But I still think that eighteen is too young for a wedding – for a man anyway. Women grow up more quickly. Still, it can’t be helped.’
Debutantes: In Love Page 17
