Debutantes: In Love

by Cora Harrison

  For a moment Daisy thought of refusing, but then decided against it. She made as if to walk briskly away, but stopped as soon as she had reached the corner and stole back to stand behind one of the marble pillars.

  ‘Get him certified?! A lunatic asylum!’ Justin’s voice rose up high and astonished. The lawyer said something inaudible in reply. Daisy moved closer to the shelter of another pillar.

  ‘Of course, a man who is out of his wits cannot be deemed responsible for his actions,’ came Jack’s voice, measured and considering, with none of the horror that had sounded from Justin. ‘It is a point.’

  ‘The Earl could always recover,’ said the lawyer, ‘and then of course there would be no problem with reversing his certification. At least the house and such income as there is would be retained for his dependent daughters, for the moment.’

  ‘Worth trying,’ said Jack.

  ‘Let’s just step into this room – we’ll be undisturbed here. We need to make a few notes of occurrences and things said by the Earl – anything to back our case.’ The lawyer sounded his usual self, urbane, sensible, businesslike . . .

  Daisy could not bear to listen to any more. She wanted to confront them, to shout at them, but she was shaken by sobs and knew that she would just be put aside as a hysterical child. She had to think what was best to do. Far, far better to give up Beech Grove than to have her father imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. That would kill him. He was not insane, just depressed and shaken by fits of nerves. She would look after him, she decided – just as he and his wife had looked after her when her own mother did not want her. Stifling her sobs, Daisy ran down the steps and flew towards the narrow side street where the Humber had been parked. Morgan saw her coming and got out of the car instantly.

  ‘What is it?’ His hands were on her shoulders and as she threw herself against his chest she felt his arms tighten around her.

  ‘Oh, Morgan.’ She could say nothing more. Sobs were choking her.

  ‘Try to tell me.’ His voice in her ear sounded hoarse.

  ‘They’re plotting to have my father declared a lunatic, to have him put in an asylum.’ She choked over the words. ‘The only thing that will save him from that will be for him to give up Beech Grove Manor.’

  There was a silence for a moment. She stood there with his arms around her, her cheek resting against his broad chest. She could hear his heart hammering against her ear and somehow the sound soothed her. After a minute she raised her head. He dug a large clean white handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her, but still kept his other arm around her. She dried her eyes and nestled into his warmth while her thoughts moved, sifted themselves and clarified inside her head.

  ‘Once Elaine and Jack go back to India,’ she said after a minute, ‘I’m going to get myself a couple of rooms in London – they’re not expensive out near where the film studios are. I’ll keep Father with me, and Violet can look after Great-Aunt Lizzie – though she’d probably prefer to go to her cousin. Rose can spend her holidays with Poppy, Lady Dorothy and Joan.’ She was pleased to hear how firm her voice sounded, but when Morgan said nothing she looked up at him a little defensively.

  He was not looking at her, just gazing ahead with a strange frown on his face.

  ‘Father will be just as well off without the responsibilities of Beech Grove Manor,’ she assured him, ‘and you know that Baz and Poppy will want to employ the band in the club. Lady Dorothy is very rich, you know. There’ll be money for everything to do with the jazz club now.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that; I’ve had an offer from the Savoy Hotel for the post of drummer for three nights a week. That will be enough for me to live on – enough to get married on too,’ he added softly.

  ‘Married?’ Daisy let the word fall.

  He said nothing and she forced herself to go on. ‘Have you found someone that you would like to marry?’ she asked.

  He hesitated for a moment, looking around the deserted street. She moved back into the shadow of an archway and he followed her. In a second his arms were around her again, holding her very tightly and his burning lips were on hers, not a tentative kiss, but passionate and demanding, sending excited ripples running through her. They stood there for a long moment, locked in each other’s arms, until the sound of newspaper boy crying the evening papers made them break apart.

  ‘I may be a nameless nobody,’ he smiled, ‘but if you marry me I’ll love and cherish you for all of your life. You will never want for anything while I have a breath in my body.’

  Daisy lifted her lips to his and, oblivious to the grinning newspaper boy, they kissed again.

  ‘I, Daisy Carruthers, do take thee, Morgan the Impresario, as my lawful wedded husband,’ she said softly.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wednesday 4 June 1924

  It’s been nine days, thought Daisy as she and Morgan walked silently towards the vicarage, nine days of contrasts. Bliss and deep contentment whenever she thought of Morgan, whenever they stole a moment together and discussed their future home and their plans. And frantic worry when she thought of Michael Derrington. They had decided to tell no one of their engagement. It was essential that no word of it should come to the Earl’s ears while his mental state was so precarious. Now he was lying in his bed and obstinately refusing to eat. The doctor had talked of removing him to a mental hospital where he would be force-fed, but Daisy had argued strongly against it. His momentary flicker of interest in jazz had given her hope, but that had fizzled out, and when Poppy had bravely taken her clarinet into his bedroom he had shouted at her to go away and to stop tormenting him, before drawing the bedclothes over his head.

  It was lucky that Rose had gone back to school. The sight of her father in this very much worse state would have deeply upset the child. Now she was happily back with her friends and writing outrageous letters about ‘The Case of the Mysterious Disappearance of the Mad Maths Teacher’, which amused everyone at breakfast table, making Jack laugh so much that he choked over his coffee.

  But Michael Derrington only turned his face to the wall when Daisy offered to read Rose’s latest epistle to him.

  She sighed, averted her mind from the unsolvable and went back to Morgan. She tucked her arm into his and steered his reluctant feet towards the vicarage.

  ‘I wonder what we will find out,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you might be the son of someone married to a rich American. Who knows? Perhaps you might be Morgan from New Orleans after all.’

  The vicar was surprisingly young – and harassed. There was the noise of a baby crying loudly upstairs and of a toddler scampering around overhead. He gave one glance upward but then ushered them into his study.

  ‘I’ve prepared for your visit,’ he said. ‘I’ve got out the church baptismal records.’ He pulled out a heavy, thick, leather-bound book and placed it on the table. ‘Now let me see . . .’ he said and looked expectantly at them.

  Morgan pulled from his pocket the birth certificate he had received from Somerset House and silently held it out to him.

  ‘It was filled out by the people at the orphanage when he was three years old,’ said Daisy, when the silence had lengthened without a word from Morgan.

  ‘Yes, orphanages will do that if there seem to be no records for the child,’ the vicar explained. For such a young man he had a kindly manner, thought Daisy, but she braced herself against a disappointment. ‘I fear that the chances of your having been baptized if there was no birth certificate registered are fairly low. Nevertheless . . .’ He checked the date of Morgan’s birth and turned the pages.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. There is no record of a child of that name being baptized here in this parish. With that address you would have definitely been christened in this church.’

  ‘The only thing is,’ said Daisy urgently, ‘that he thinks that his first name was Bob, not Edward as it says here on the birth certificate – on the evidence of a fire officer – that’s what the orphanage said – and he wa
s the one who thought the child was born in December. But Morgan thinks . . .’

  ‘So you think this might not be you?’ The vicar turned to Morgan.

  ‘I thought . . . I think that I was born in June,’ said Morgan huskily.

  ‘And that his middle name, or more likely, his surname is St Clair,’ said Daisy, taking her courage in her hands.

  Lucinda St Clair, she thought, picturing the pretty young governess turned away from Beech Grove Manor by the virtuous and horrified Great-Aunt Lizzie. She might well have been already pregnant.

  The vicar turned the pages back to June. It seemed to have been a good month for baptisms; there were two pages of them.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said looking up from the book. ‘There is no child of the surname St Clair here.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Daisy. Her eye had caught something. A familiar name had jumped out at her. ‘Turn back the page,’ she said urgently.

  She could sense that he didn’t like her looking over his shoulder, but she persisted until her eye found what she was looking for. And she read aloud the familiar name: ‘Derrington, Robert St Clair.’

  Morgan said nothing, just stared at her with white lips, so Daisy read on, her mind whirring with the thoughts that dashed into it.

  ‘Mother: Lucinda Derrington, née St Clair.

  Father: the Honourable Robert Derrington.’

  Still Morgan said nothing. His face was pale under his tan, giving him a sallow look. The young vicar looked from one to the other. He picked up the baptismal records saying, ‘I’ll leave you to yourselves for a moment. This seems to have come as a bit of a shock.’

  And then he was gone, and Daisy took Morgan’s hand.

  ‘It did cross my mind that you might be the illegitimate son of Lucinda – because of your connection with the name St Clair – Rose had a story – Elaine confirmed it – that Lucinda St Clair, the governess, was having some sort of love affair with Robert – the younger brother of . . . my . . . of Michael Derrington. Great-Aunt Lizzie found Elaine reading her love letters – Elaine was only a child at the time – and . . .’ Daisy stumbled over the story, still holding his hand and telling how Robert had left Beech Grove Manor and had joined the Buffs and gone to fight against the Boers – and how he was killed in that war. ‘And of course your mother talked to her baby son, about Kent and about the woods and the bluebells, which are so wonderful in beech woods and so, when you saw Beech Grove Manor, Kent, you applied for a job there as a chauffeur,’ she finished up.

  ‘You’re saying that I am the illegitimate son of Robert Derrington . . .’ Morgan was so dazed that he hardly noticed the vicar coming back into the room, the leather-bound book still tucked under his arm and followed by the maid, carrying a tray with some teacups and a teapot with a chipped spout.

  ‘You must have a cup of tea,’ said the vicar hospitably, pouring some into the cups and adding apologetically, as he looked dubiously at the watery mixture that came through the strainer, ‘It’s not very good, I’m afraid.’ He waited until the maid had closed the door behind her, before saying, ‘Let’s have another look at that entry. You said something about “illegitimate” – you were mentioning that as I came in – but this document states that your father was the Honourable Robert Derrington and your mother was Lucinda Derrington,’ he said, his voice firm and decisive. But he cast a dubious glance at Morgan’s chauffeur uniform.

  ‘Perhaps . . . Perhaps she said that because he was the father . . . Perhaps she hoped that they’d get married?’ Morgan’s voice broke, and Daisy went across and sat on the arm of his chair and stayed there with her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Not possible.’ The vicar was brisk and decisive now. ‘She would have had to produce the marriage certificate in order for the baptism, for the child to be registered in the name of Derrington rather than St Clair. I wonder whether they were married at this church. It’s worth a try. I’ll go and fetch the volumes for 1899 and perhaps for 1900 as well. Not earlier, you think?’

  ‘No earlier,’ said Daisy. Her mind went back to the photographs in the gallery. Robert’s eighteenth birthday had been marked as 23 February 1897. To get married without his father’s knowledge or permission he would have had to be twenty-one. February 1900 would have been the month of Robert’s twenty-first birthday.

  ‘Try February or March of 1900,’ she said when the vicar came trotting back, a little out of breath but looking quite excited.

  ‘There! I’ve got it. Twenty-third of February,’ he said after a minute. And then continued, ‘Yes, they were married in this church: “Marriage between the Honourable Robert Derrington of Beech Grove Manor House, Kent, aged twenty-one, and Lucinda St Clair, spinster, aged twenty-three, of 27, Waterside Gardens, of this parish.” I’m not sure where that is – may not exist now – but it definitely says “of this parish” – witnesses are the caretaker of the church and the wife of the caretaker – they didn’t have any friends or family around them, poor young things.’

  ‘Is it legal?’ asked Daisy. Morgan seemed too dazed to say anything. So Robert came back from the Boer War on his twenty-first birthday, came back to marry the woman that he loved, the woman who was bearing his child – due to be born that coming June, by which time his father would already be lying dead on the battlefield out in Africa. In fact, thought Daisy, I think that he was killed in March of that year.

  ‘So far as it goes.’ The vicar was cautious. ‘The marriage was certainly legal. They were both of age. The banns had been called three weeks previously. They both must have shown their birth certificates. However, I’m not a lawyer, but if it were a matter of any property, I can see two problems. One would be the short length of the marriage – only three months – before the birth of a son, Robert St Clair, and the second, of course, would be the proof that you –’ he addressed himself to Morgan – ‘are indeed that same Robert St Clair Derrington, son of the Honourable Robert Derrington of Beech Grove Manor in Kent and not Edward Robert Morgan of the birth certificate that the orphanage furnished you with.’

  ‘There’s no way of proving that, is there?’ Daisy asked the question, as Morgan still said nothing.

  ‘Might be – mothers who abandon their children often leave something with them to identify the relationship if they can ever come back to reclaim them.’ The vicar’s face had a sad look and Daisy felt a slight lump in her throat as she thought of all the unfortunate girls who were forced to abandon their babies. ‘Of course, in this case the mother was lost in that terrible accident, that dreadful explosion, but the orphanage will have kept . . . do, by law, keep the clothes and anything else that was with you when you were found. I should go back there, if I were you.’

  ‘We’ll do that,’ said Daisy decisively. She rose to her feet and they thanked the vicar and made their farewells. If only there were some proof, she thought. Her mind went back to Lucinda St Clair, who had told her son that he was born in June, with a silver spoon, and that Kent was a lovely place with beautiful bluebell woods. And the son, as an adult, saw an advertisement for a position as chauffeur at Beech Grove Manor in Kent and had applied for it because of the never-forgotten words of his mother.

  The lady at the orphanage was not best pleased to see them again. ‘If there had been anything significant like a name on the clothes, that would have been recorded and I would have told you about it the first time that you came,’ she grumbled. ‘Still, I’ll get them and you can take them away with you; one less dusty box for us to keep.’ She took from Morgan the birth certificate made out in the name of three-year-old Edward Robert Morgan, thought to be born in December of 1900, and then disappeared, coming back with a box from which only the top layer of dust was blown off which she thrust into his hands.

  Morgan made no attempt to open it and Daisy understood why. This would be something almost sacred to him. On the morning of the gasworks explosion his mother would have dressed him in those clothes – would perhaps have sent him out to play in the garden tha
t he remembered, in Waterside Gardens – the fact that he was not in the house would account for the mother being killed but the child surviving.

  She held his hand tightly, but waited until they reached the car before saying, ‘Open it, Morgan.’

  Slowly and reluctantly he opened the boot of the car and laid the box into the empty space. For a moment he hesitated, but then he took the lid off. It held a small boy’s romper suit, a pair of shoes, two white socks, a blue jersey and . . .

  On top of everything was a threadbare toy – a pocket-sized rabbit with one ear missing.

  It was the exact match of the toy rabbit held by the Honourable Robert Derrington in the photograph taken in 1882, when Michael Derrington’s brother was about three years old.

  Robert had carefully preserved his rabbit – and his widow had handed it on to his baby son.

  Epilogue

  Sunday 27 July 1924

  ‘The wedding of the twin daughters of the Earl of Derrington, so lately and so romantically restored to the fortune of his forebears, has proved to be the event of the year. Even the royal wedding of the year before could not have outshone the occasion.

  ‘And yet there was no red carpet, no marble columns, no princes and princesses attending the event, no archbishop blessed the pair of happy couples; only a humble rector performed the ceremony, in a simple country church strewn in tasteful profusion with almond-scented blossoms of creamy meadowsweet wild flowers by the youngest sister of the brides.

  ‘The two brides were attended by the Lady Rose Derrington, who was dressed in an exquisite frock of priceless Parisian lace with a string of oriental pearls slung around her slender neck. Her naturally blonde hair was enclosed with a simple coronet, and a pair of sheer white stockings veiled her slim legs and complemented her silver shoes.