Spare Brides

by Parks, Adele

  No one had thought that the Honourable Lawrence Chatfield would ever climb to become the heir apparent, that Lydia might one day become a countess, but within two years of their marriage both of Lawrence’s older brothers were dead. The middle son, a member of the British Expeditionary Force, died at the Battle of Mons, just weeks after war was declared. There were calls for the eldest son to enlist immediately, to justify and honour his brother’s death presumably. No doubt he would have done, but before he could respond to Kitchener’s pointing finger, he fell off his horse and broke his neck whilst chasing a fox with some pals and a pack of hounds. The consequences of these terrible losses were that Lawrence became the earl’s only chance and Lydia’s name appeared on a great many more invitation lists.

  Janice too metamorphosed; she became Dickenson and, as such, she visited the finest houses in Britain, twice saw the King through a window and, now that peace was restored, had travelled with her mistress to Cannes, in France, and Lake Garda, in Italy. Whilst by Janice’s standards Lady Chatfield’s house, Dartford Hall, here in Hampshire, was very impressive – and certainly enough work to manage – she’d now seen enough to know that there was better out there, far better. Houses with a confusion of staircases and countless gilded rooms, coats of arms, turrets and chimneys aplenty, manicured lawns and hectares of hunting grounds. No one had hoped for as much for Lady Chatfield, but now it was acknowledged to be not only possible, or probable but a certainty. When the current Earl of Clarendale finally did die, Lydia would be raised to new echelons. His house, in West Sussex, sat in a six-hundred-acre deer park; it had more rooms than Janice could hope to count, and a full staff was guaranteed. There would be no need for her to chip in with the kitchen staff and scrub vegetables. The old duffer wasn’t in hail health; he’d had a bad bout of bronchitis before Christmas, his third attack in eighteen months. Many said he was just hanging on to see a grandchild.

  Dickenson knelt before Lydia, carefully drawing delicate silk stockings over her feet and smoothing them high up her legs to the top of her thighs. Lydia rose, allowing the maid to fit the long stays of pink coutil round her hips and clip suspenders to the stockings, then Janice carefully spread a pair of peach satin drawers in a ring on the floor, and Lydia stepped into them. Dickenson bent to pull them up, her ear inches away from Lydia’s mound of pubic hair. Neither woman ever considered the intimacy of this process excessive. Janice did the dressing. Lady Chatfield was dressed. It was what it was, as it had always been.

  ‘What will I wear tonight, Dickenson?’

  ‘A man arrived from France just half an hour ago, my lady.’

  ‘The dress!’ Lydia clapped her hands with excitement.

  ‘Yes, my lady. It’s being steamed this very moment.’

  ‘A delivery on New Year’s Eve! Gosh, aren’t the French wonderful?’ Lydia was glad she hadn’t voiced her earlier opinion about their friends on the Continent. It didn’t do to appear too changie-mindie; this was one of the many reasons Lydia rarely spoke up. ‘So tenacious,’ she added.

  Janice sighed and conceded, ‘They certainly value the gown, my lady. I’ll say that.’

  2

  SARAH GORDON AND her sister Beatrice Polwarth waited patiently in the drawing room for their sister-in-law, Cecily, to join them. They sat with straight backs and did nothing; they did not fill their hands and time with embroidery, or a book, or even a glass of sherry. Instead, Sarah silently noted that the silverware was gleaming, but the hearth rug was becoming rather worn, especially in the left-hand corner where people walked through the room; it probably needed turning. Beatrice listened to the fire cracking and popping in the hearth; she appreciated its woody scent as well as its almost too ferocious heat. Bea was rarely warm enough.

  The sisters were never certain, until the moment of her appearance, whether Cecily’s arrival could be guaranteed. Their brother, Samuel, was extremely unlikely to join them tonight. He rarely went out, and never to a ball; if he did venture forth, it would be to attend afternoon tea at the home of a close friend, something he’d accomplished twice in three years. No one blamed him, but it would be wonderful if Cecily joined them this evening; jolly. Samuel and the children were already in bed; they’d all be asleep before half past eight. Surely Cecily wouldn’t choose to spend the last day of the year alone in her bedroom. She couldn’t want that, could she? Everyone was aware that she needed some respite, although no one would ever say as much out loud, least of all Samuel’s devoted sisters. The sad fact was that Cecily’s life was as truncated as her husband’s body. Her ability to have fun – even her sense of entitlement to fun – had been blown away with Samuel’s limbs on 9 October 1917; flesh and hope splattered across Flanders and buried deep in the mud there.

  The word Passchendaele haunted the house. It could be heard in the tick-tock of the clocks, in the tip-tap of the servants’ footsteps on the wooden floorboards. Passch-en-daele, Passch-en-daele, Passch-en-daele. It could be heard in the swoosh of the water pouring from the jug as Samuel’s bath was filled; a heartbreaking weekly exercise that Beatrice in particular hated. Naturally, the manservants assisted willingly enough, and they had trained themselves not to recoil at the sight of their master’s half body, but Beatrice could never bear to think of her brother naked and exposed so. Passchendaele was whispered by the wind as it whipped down the chimneys and crept into every room and could be heard in the thud of the gamekeeper’s axe when he chopped firewood, and in the horses’ hooves on the cobbles of the courtyard.

  It was never heard on anyone’s lips.

  A carriage clock ticked out the oh-too-slow minutes. Seconds were fused as the hand relentlessly progressed and gobbled up time.

  ‘Do you think Cecily will join us this evening?’ Beatrice asked her older sister. The question was so frequently addressed that she knew the reply by rote, but at twenty-six years old, she still felt compelled to fill silences. She had not, as yet, met any that were comfortable and was only acquainted with the awkward variety.

  ‘I do hope so,’ Sarah replied, as Beatrice knew she would, as she must.

  ‘I do too.’ Beatrice fingered her beaded bag. It really needed a stitch or two. She could ask the housemaid but she didn’t like to be a bother. She ought to have done it herself; she certainly had enough time. Guiltily, she arranged her fingers to cover the shabbiness.

  ‘Although she may be exhausted. Her work is very tiring,’ added Sarah, always the first to offer up an excuse for Cecily.

  ‘Will my dress do?’ Beatrice’s change of subject was not motivated by vanity or selfishness; it was the result of a perpetual feeling of inadequacy that Sarah understood and instantly forgave.

  ‘It’s very pretty, darling. Quite suitable.’

  Beatrice wanted to be convinced but wasn’t. Something new would have been lovely. Out of the question, but lovely.

  ‘Silk georgette wears surprisingly well and lace will forever be a firm favourite,’ Sarah added, smiling.

  ‘At least I can be sure that I won’t encounter anyone in the same gown,’ murmured Beatrice, looking forlornly at her lap.

  It was odd that she minded. Given everything. After all, she was lucky to have been invited at all this evening: a duchess’s party was bound to be deliriously exciting and beyond lavish, and her name being on the most fashionable invitation lists certainly wasn’t a given; she was neither rich enough nor pretty enough to guarantee that that would be the case. She was only invited to so many delicious parties because, before the war, her brother had been close chums with all the great and the good: he’d played tennis and golf with the sons of Earl Lanestone-Holder, Lords Renwick, Elphinstone and Gainsborough and the like. He’d joined the Duke of Marlborough for the Glorious Twelfth, and danced with Ladies Lytton, Allesbury, Chatfield and countless other pretty debs; so many that Beatrice struggled to recall all their names. The ones left standing had pulled together, as was proper. Lydia in particular was fastidious about the issue: she always made sure Sarah and Beatric
e were invited to every party she agreed to attend and, as a significant beauty and hostess, wife of the heir to an earldom, there weren’t any parties that Lydia was not invited to, and only a very few that she failed to grace. Beatrice had never pursued the thought too thoroughly, but the truth was, she was invited to parties because her brother was a cripple and her brother-in-law was dead. Everyone felt sorry.

  Tonight the theme was White Winter, which meant that all the women were required to dress in white or shades of. It simply hadn’t been practical for Beatrice to consider buying a new white frock. If they were to stretch to a new gown at all, they would have to pick a sensible colour, one that she would get more wear out of: navy or green, something dark that wouldn’t show every mark and would flatter her too full figure. Unfortunately, big-boned Beatrice never benefited from cast-offs. Sarah was older by five years but shorter by four inches. She had inherited their mother’s grace, good skin and elegant bone structure. Bea had been left with their father’s heaviness. Tonight she had had no alternative other than to wear one of her old debutante dresses. They’d had it altered substantially; they’d had to: when she’d first come out into society, dresses were still dragging along the floor, and shoulders were strictly covered. There was a photograph of Beatrice in this very gown’s first incarnation; she’d worn it to the Queen Charlotte Ball. Uncomfortable in starch and bones, she stood in an old-fashioned ornate silver frame just two yards from where she sat now. She would not let her head turn in that direction; she’d never liked the photograph, and wished they’d take it down. Her season had been so horribly short.

  Beatrice was terribly grateful to Lydia for her consideration and inclusion; if only she had more to spend on clothes. Still, a small bubble of excitement fizzed deep in her belly. Tonight would be thrilling; everyone had been talking about it for ever. Or at least for a fortnight. At the Duchess of Pembrokeshire’s last party there had been fireworks and a champagne fountain, they’d eaten caviar and the band had been brought in all the way from Chicago, Illinois!

  ‘Who do you think will be there?’ she asked.

  ‘Everyone you’ve ever known,’ replied Sarah with a big smile.

  Beatrice thought that at least half the people she’d ever known were dead, but she bit her tongue and did not say as much. Such a comment would sour the party atmosphere and mark her out as the old maid that she quite certainly did not want to be. She’d promised herself never to talk about expense or her health, even if someone enquired. Both topics were ageing and no one was really interested.

  ‘Should I ring down and ask if Cecily has given any word to her maid?’ she asked with barely concealed impatient excitement. ‘We might be waiting for her and she might have no intention of showing up.’

  ‘Yes, do.’

  Beatrice got up, strode towards the bell rope and tugged it. Then she stood by the fireplace, lingering in the warmth of the flames. If Cecily was coming, Beatrice wished she’d get a move on. She didn’t want to be insensitive to the demands placed upon her sister-in-law, who had three children and an invalid husband to care for, but she had made such an effort with her hairdo, teasing her wiry, fiery locks into smooth finger curls, and she did not want to miss a single moment of the ball.

  3

  ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’S Eve, darlings.’ Ava Pondson-Callow, only child of Sir Peter and Lady Pondson-Callow, burst into the centre of the gathering and announced grandly, ‘I’m here. Let the festivities begin.’

  From anyone else this would be shocking, vain. From Ava it was simply an assertion of fact. Now that she had arrived, the party could at last begin in full. The grand ballroom had been carefully prepared and was beyond sumptuous – large and high-ceilinged, it was decked with an abundance of holly and ivy; candles in solid silver candelabras almost obscured the coats of arms that stained the windows. Lavish handfuls of white and silver beads were scattered over every surface imaginable and hundreds lay clustered in the corners of the room; the beads had caused two or three ladies to almost topple from their high heels, but no one could deny the effect was stupendous. Yet it only seemed to truly sparkle now that Ava had stepped on to the flagstoned floor.

  It seemed that every attendant at the ball paused as Ava glided through the crowds; they craned their necks to see what she was wearing, stood on tiptoes to find out who she had arrived with, and practically pushed one another aside to discover how she’d styled her hair. The women lusted after her look; the men lusted after her full stop. Ava was simply mesmerising; she always had been and always would be. She was the one woman in London who had managed to remain glamorous throughout the Great War and beyond. Somehow, all the other women seemed to be stained with grime and grief, as though they’d fought alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons in the dirty trenches. Not Ava. She’d looked exquisite even when she’d worn black for two of her cousins, and when she’d said goodbye to more than a handful of wonderful chaps whom she’d once danced with.

  Ava was fast, but rich enough for it not to matter a jot. She was thoroughly modern. She wore lipstick, rouge and mascara; she smoked in public, drank cocktails, and it was rumoured that she had danced with a black man when she visited America last summer. At the very least she’d danced with him.

  Whilst the women in the room felt eclipsed by her entrance, the men all seemed to twinkle a little brighter. They straightened their ties and backs, they broadened their beams and shoulders; they searched their minds for funny anecdotes and wondered how they could improve her comfort. Would she like a fresh drink, perhaps? Was she too cold, a little more coal on the fire? Or was it too hot in here? Ought they to open a window? They all instinctively raised their game because Ava had arrived. Lydia adored her, Sarah was amused by her and Beatrice sat in jealous awe of her.

  Ava was carrying three small packages, each carefully wrapped in brown paper and adorned with silver antique lace. The neat folds in the paper suggested that they’d been wrapped professionally by a girl trained in a shop. Ava knew that Lydia at least would recognise the ribbon; it was currently the favourite of an expensive jeweller in Bond Street. The other two were mystifyingly ignorant about such things. She held the three parcels as though she was delivering gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus Himself, with poise, grace and a smidgen of self-importance. Her maid trailed behind her, carrying a distinctly more cumbersome pile of packages.

  ‘I thought we agreed no gifts,’ commented Lydia lightly, as she leaned in to kiss her friend on the air that whispered near her cheek. Even though she outwardly chastised, she was beaming, and Ava could tell she was delighted that she’d chosen to break the embargo, although Sarah and Beatrice shared an odd little glance. They were so dull. Ava frequently wondered why Lydia wasted her time on such old-fashioned, steady types. Ava herself did so because she believed that they lent her an air of respectability which, whilst not absolutely paramount, created a charming paradox that confused people and there was nothing Ava liked more than being a mystery.

  ‘We agreed to buy nothing, and really these are absolutely nothing, just trinkets. In fact Lady Cooper hosted a party last month and all her guests were given one of these as a favour.’

  ‘But Lady Cooper is American,’ spluttered Beatrice.

  ‘By which Beatrice means very generous,’ added Lydia quickly.

  Ava knew that Beatrice had meant new and rather vulgar; she’d obviously momentarily forgotten that Ava’s mother was also American. Lydia was trying to cover her gaffe, but there was no need. Ava didn’t care. She was glad that Beatrice had for once forgotten about her ancestry; it meant Ava was doing a good job. She really shouldn’t care what a young, lumpy naïf like Beatrice thought anyway; yet despite her unmitigated success in society, Ava was, in the deepest part of her soul, ever conscious of her American mother and the fact that her father’s title was new, not inherited.

  ‘These are beautiful,’ Sarah offered, turning the gold lighter over in her gloved hand. ‘Lady Cooper really bought gold lighters for the
ladies?’ she probed, obviously unsure whether to be excited or scandalised.

  ‘No. In fact she bought lighters for the chaps and compacts for the ladies, but I thought that was predictable.’ Ava sighed. It was a very articulate sigh; it told the world that predictable was a crime in her book.

  ‘Very generous of you. Thank you,’ murmured Beatrice, carefully placing the gold lighter back into its box.

  ‘If you don’t like it, pass it on,’ snapped Ava as she drew on the end of her cigarette holder. Beatrice looked a little shamefaced and Ava knew she’d read her correctly. No doubt Beatrice was wondering whether her brother would enjoy the lighter; unquestionably it was far more impressive than the bottle of port she’d no doubt given him for Christmas.

  ‘Excuse me, m’lady, should I put these other gifts somewhere?’ asked Ava’s maid.

  ‘Yes, do.’ Ava sighed again, now blatantly bored with gift-giving. She couldn’t be bothered to tell her maid exactly where the packages ought to be stored. It didn’t make any difference; the girl would know what to do. It was a terrible problem, boredom. Ava had been so excited earlier this afternoon. As she’d driven down from London – a cold and bumpy ride only made bearable by the fur blanket Dougie had wrapped around her knees and the nips of whisky Johnnie had supplied, both men behaving very flirtatiously, touching her knee and elbow more than necessary – all she’d been able to think of was giving the gifts, but now she wondered whether she’d done the right thing after all. Sarah looked uncomfortable and Beatrice looked furious. How was she supposed to know they’d been serious about not wanting to exchange gifts? She’d been sure that was simply something one said to be polite. Why hadn’t they gone shopping? They couldn’t be that busy, could they? It wasn’t as though they’d spent hours on their party preparation; just look at Beatrice’s dress.