The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Dearest.’ Emily leaned over the table and touched Portia’s arm with her gloved hand. ‘I have to confess that I am not at all confident of my Edith’s having the necessary social graces to take her through a London Season – Ireland, you know. We are more informal, our butler rarely out of his outdoor clothes. I really think she will have to be consigned to the Lodge and Lady Devenish for at least a month before she can be taken to even an At Home.’

  Portia heaved an inward sigh of relief. Thank heavens for Emily O’Connor’s honesty, for her kindness, for her ability to say what was what.

  ‘Do you know, Emily, ever since you snatched at the bridle of my bolting horse, all those years ago in Rotten Row, I have thanked God for your friendship. The truth is …’ Portia paused and sighed. ‘The truth is I returned from my voyage on Belvedere III to discover my Phyllis gone – how can I say – from wayward to – well – feral is the only way I can put it. She bicycles around our estate in a pair of those dreadful old bicycling bloomers that fast young women made so fashionable some years ago. You can imagine what that does to the gardeners. I should never have travelled as I did. But she would not come with me on Belvedere III, as her younger sister and brothers did. They came along for the adventure, but she, being the eldest, elected to stay at home with her dog and her governess. I should never have gone! I say that to myself every night after I have said my prayers. My only excuse for going was that my grief was inconsolable. In desperation, while I was still on the high seas I had her sent, with my Aunt Tattie, to darling Childie’s Italian estate near Florence, but she was back soon enough, unchanged by Art, unchanged in every way. Only Aunt Tattie was transformed, and is now become a Papist, would you believe?’ Portia laughed suddenly at the irony, only to find it was Emily’s turn to sigh.

  ‘Ah me, my dearest friend, and here was I hoping that Phyllis would be a good influence on my Edith. I was sure you would, without any doubt, have produced a daughter of quiet good manners and composure.’ There was a pause, as their ices were delicately masticated, and then: ‘Feral, you say?’

  ‘Quite, quite feral.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, that is the very word to describe Edith. She will suck on straws and whistle in front of the servants as soon as beat the band. As to her courtesy, it is non-existent. She reminds me of … how shall I put it? She reminds me of the scandalous Lady Caroline Lamb of Lord Byron fame, with a little touch of Queen Boadicea.’

  ‘Then it is to Lady Devenish that they must both go, and at once.’

  Emily nodded in agreement with her old friend’s pronouncement, but remembering how she herself had made Lady Devenish’s life a misery she felt her heart sink.

  Portia half rose, such was her eagerness to go back to her London house and put into motion their plan, and then she remembered.

  ‘But May. We have not spoken of our darling May.’

  Emily too sank back in her seat. ‘Nor we have, Portia dearest. And she must be on both our minds, since she has only sons, and no daughters.’

  They both nodded. A silence followed. May was now the Duchess of Wokingham. A former chorus girl and protégée of Herbert Forrester, a rich Yorkshireman, she was as good as she was beautiful, and having been brought up in a convent had more common sense than both of them put together.

  ‘Have you seen May since the birth of her sons?’

  Emily shook her head. She had seen no-one except the followers of her husband’s hunt, since only the most intrepid of country house guests ever hot-footed it to Ireland, and then only for the sport.

  ‘I have seen her, although, I must admit, infrequently of late. She has been the delight of her husband and his family.’ Portia smiled wryly. ‘Edward, my bachelor brother, is continually holding up May and her household as being everything that an English family should be.’

  ‘But your son is as fine as anyone’s, surely?’

  ‘Yes, Tristram is a good boy. There at least I have comfort. But my younger girl, Arabella … oh, Emily, she is such a handful, and behind her little Blakey, so dreamy and already so eccentric, so very Tradescant, so like his Uncle Lampard.’

  Emily nodded, but a little impatiently. ‘We must stop wallowing in self-pity, or we will not last the week, let alone the Season. It is most important, dearest, that we do not find ourselves, how shall I say – up against each other in the coming months?’

  Portia stared blankly at Emily for a second.

  ‘I am saying, dearest,’ Emily touched her friend on the arm with one gloved hand, ‘May has a handsome son, a future duke, and likely to be the catch of the Season. Which of our daughters will take his eye?’

  Portia coloured slightly. Emily had always been more direct than herself, but to state their positions quite so clearly was, to Portia at least, embarrassing.

  After a few seconds she smiled. ‘Poor George Cordrey, I almost feel sorry for him. The handsome son of a duke, he really has no chance against all these girls, does he?’

  ‘Not a hope.’

  ‘The Countess of Evesham will have laid her plans already, as we said at the start. She will be hoping that her American gel will catch the young Marquis’s eye. Have you heard whether or not the Countess’s American protégée is a beauty?’

  ‘Dearest …’ Emily paused, before pronouncing, ‘It is a rule of society that every woman worth several millions must be a beauty.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course.’

  ‘First things first. The girls must meet Lady Devenish, and each other of course, as we did.’

  Inwardly both women sighed. If only Phyllis and Edith would behave themselves. If only Lady Devenish could convert them to civilisation. If only they would be, as their mothers now remembered themselves, and so clearly, two perfect cygnets just waiting to turn into a perfect pair of graceful swans.

  ‘So, it is done. We are agreed.’ Portia looked solemnly across at Emily before summoning her maid to pay the bill. ‘Either Phyllis must capture the Marquis, or Edith. Whatever happens he must not be snaffled by the Countess for her protégée. But we must be realistic, dearest. The American gels have quite captured Society over the last twenty years. And to be fair they are beautiful. The Duchess of Marlborough … all of them who have succeeded are beautiful.’

  ‘We must just trust to Lady Devenish to work a miracle on Phyllis and Edith.’

  They both smiled, but despite the smiles, and despite any agreement that they might make, neither of them felt hopeful that either Phyllis or Edith would have a single chance of capturing a future duke.

  ‘And yet,’ Emily said, laughing, suddenly knowing how they were both thinking, ‘if Lady Devenish could work something of a miracle with me, Portia dearest, surely she could do the same with our two?’

  ‘You were beautiful,’ Portia stated loyally, both of them knowing that Emily had hardly entered a ballroom before every young man within a mile was scrambling to write his name in her dance card.

  ‘And you were both pretty and personable. Your Childie fell in love with you at first sight. I remember you writing to tell me that was what he told you. That he saw you at Medlar House, at your Aunt Augustine’s At Home, and knew at once that you were for him.’

  ‘And that despite Aunt Tattie’s wearing her favourite old hat with the dead bird on the front!’

  Portia started to laugh and there was a small pause as both their eyes softened, remembering. Portia’s husband Lord Childhays had been one of those people who had the habit of softening people just by his presence, and before he had even uttered a word.

  ‘Well, now, we must put our best feet forward, into the future. No more looking back to the golden days.’

  Their eyes met and for a second Emily could appreciate the determination in her friend’s eyes, knowing that what she saw in them was only a reflection of how she herself was feeling. Between them, they must ensure that one of their daughters married May’s son, if only to thwart the Countess of Evesham.

  Past Participants

  The subject of so mu
ch conversation between Emily O’Connor and Portia Childhays, Daisy stared at her face in her silver-backed hand mirror, and sighed, for her, quite deeply. Just for a tiny second she had a perfectly horrid feeling that she was not just feeling but looking her age. She said as much to Jenkins when the maid brought her ladyship her usual cup of early morning chocolate in a small eighteenth-century cup decorated with ribbons of turquoise and tiny flowers – flowers so small that it was only when a person truly stared into them, as Daisy was intent on doing, that they revealed themselves to be made up of as many as six different colours.

  Daisy closed her eyes momentarily. It was too awful to think of all those poor people ruining their eyes to paint those flowers, and then, doubtless, not getting paid a single little sou for what they had so painstakingly accomplished. But then she remembered that since the china cup was foreign the people concerned would not have been English, so she stopped concerning herself with them.

  She was sure she was looking older. She put her silver mirror back on the side table beside her bed, and called to her maid.

  ‘Jenkins!’

  Jenkins was busy stoking the fire that must always burn in my lady’s bedroom. Daisy could see the maid through the fine old silk curtains that draped her bed at each corner. She had not turned at being called, so Daisy threw a book at her back. Well, not exactly at her back, to the side of her. At which noise Jenkins at last turned.

  ‘My lady wants me,’ she stated.

  ‘Yes, Jenkins, of course, uvverwise why on earth should I haff frown a book at you, for heaven’s sake? Of course I want you. People such as myself, Jenkins, do not go round frowing books at people for no good reason, believe me. It is just not done.’

  ‘And what is it my lady wants?’

  ‘Come here, Jenkins. No, here! That’s right. Now, tell me, and you must be truthful, do I look older van I should, Jenkins? Now, do I?’

  Jenkins narrowed her eyes at her mistress.

  ‘My lady asked me this yesterday—’

  ‘Well of course I asked you vis yesterday, Jenkins, and now I am asking you vis again. Do I look older van I should, given that everyone says I am looking so young? They have said it so often of late that I now fink I really must be looking older, or they would not keep saying how young I look.’

  ‘As old as your tongue and a little bit older than your teeth, my lady.’

  ‘Jenkins, vis is not a time for levity and awkwardness. You know how very much I dislike people who will insist on going round saying fings that uvver people have said. Vis is a time for calming me at an anxious moment. A time for calming her ladyship, not exciting her, Jenkins.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Jenkins moved away, continuing her routines, as she always did, with her usual deliberate calm, ignoring her mistress.

  As Daisy watched the bath tub in front of the fire at the other end of the room being filled with perfectly warmed water she stared once more at Jenkins’s back. She had always disliked Jenkins, who had been her maid for well over – well, a long, long time at any rate, and she knew, instinctively, that Jenkins disliked her, but that they were stuck with each other. There was no other expression for it, vulgar though it might be. No-one could dress Daisy’s hair the way that Jenkins could dress Daisy’s hair, no-one could lay out her clothes so perfectly, no-one else, worst of all, even knew exactly where Daisy’s jewellery was kept – quite apart from when to put it out. No-one else would handle jewels the way that Daisy liked to have her jewels handled, with care, with reverence, with the sort of awe that Daisy expected of a maid. And yet, for all this, Daisy was perfectly aware of exactly why Jenkins stayed with her, and it was certainly not for love.

  ‘Jenkins …’

  ‘Yes, my lady?’ Jenkins leaned over the bed, smelling slightly of smoke from the fire and slightly of very strong tea, and her now whiskery face stared into Daisy’s still remarkably unlined and beautiful visage.

  ‘You have not answered my question, Jenkins,’ Daisy demanded as if Jenkins was a doctor with a doubt about her prognosis. ‘Well? What do you say in answer to my question, please?’

  ‘My lady looks younger than ever,’ Jenkins pronounced. ‘My lady looks as young as my lady looked last Season. There are no new lines,’ she added emphatically.

  ‘There are some new lines, Jenkins, but you are not prepared to see them, vat is what I think. There is one new line here, underneath the curls at the top of my forehead. I know there is.’

  ‘No, my lady, that is just where the hair stops.’

  Jenkins turned away, satisfied, as Daisy took up her cup of chocolate once more.

  Daisy realised that Jenkins was lying, of course, but nevertheless it was reassuring. She knew that if there was some frightful change in her face Jenkins would, in the end, take great satisfaction in telling Daisy about it. Jenkins had her nasty side, of which Daisy was only too aware, and for which she was oddly grateful. Half an inch on my lady’s waist and my lady knew all about it from Jenkins. Still, she must be thankful, for in many ways it was Jenkins’s being so very beastly that kept Daisy up to her mark.

  ‘So, vat is vat. And vat being so, Jenkins, you may now lead me to my bath.’

  The bath was laid out in the old-fashioned way in front of the bedroom fire. Daisy still insisted on this, and Jenkins too. They were neither of them prepared to change in any way at all. The fashion for installing marble bathrooms all over London and country houses was not one of which either of them could approve, for, apart from anything else, it would mean that Jenkins would have less work with which to fill her day, and that would never do.

  Daisy stepped into her bath, sat down, and watched with some interest, as she always did, the perfectly warmed water rise to exactly the right height around her body. It was annoying, but it was a truth, Jenkins was, like Daisy, a perfectionist. She liked everything to be quite, quite perfect, as Daisy did. It was probably the reason why she was still in service. She would never have found perfection in marriage, certainly not to a member of her own class, and she would never have known perfection in motherhood. No, Daisy knew, she had really done Jenkins a great service. Although she was also aware that this was not the only reason why the woman was still happy to be Daisy’s maid.

  ‘Jenkins.’

  Daisy lifted up her leg for Jenkins to soap.

  ‘Jenkins, you know my samovar?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘I have told Ogilvy, my lawyer, that it is to be yours. I have made a – what is it called now?’

  ‘A codicil, my lady?’

  Inside herself Daisy purred with the perfection of the moment. Jenkins’s whiskery face turning to her, Jenkins’s eyes narrowed with the knowledge of what was to come to her when Daisy ascended (she would not go in any other way, naturally) to heaven.

  ‘Oh, how clever you are, Jenkins. Vat is right. A codicil. Vat is what I have made. So you are not only to get ve gold Russian box, ve Sèvres coffee cups and ve large ruby ring, but also, Jenkins, ve samovar. Will vat make you happy, Jenkins, do you fink? Will vat make you happy?’

  ‘Oh yes, my lady. Most happy. And more than that, it means I will have something to remember you by.’

  ‘How very touching, Jenkins. Very touching indeed, and what is more, when you retire, which I hope is not so soon, you are to have ve use of one of ve cottages on ve estate for your lifetime. Vat will suit you, won’t it Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Jenkins sponged off the second leg and hurried over to the wooden towel horse to fetch a large coroneted bath towel. As she did so, Daisy leaned back in the steam, her hair dampening. Nowadays she almost dreaded the moment when she was laced into her corset, when her hair was tonged back into its curly style, and she had to step into her high-heeled shoes and once more become ‘Daisy Lanford’, as she was still known, despite being the Countess of Evesham. She had to keep going, she knew that. And yet, sometimes, just occasionally, it was hard.

  She allowed herself a few se
conds’ indulgence in self-pity, and then she quickly turned her thoughts to her newest of new protégées, Sarah Hartley Lambert, the heiress from New York, whose ambitious mother had set her eyes on her daughter’s acquiring a titled husband at the end of a short London Season.

  She would have to get rid of the mother, as soon as was conceivably possible, or poor Miss Hartley Lambert would have no chance at all. But how to remove the mother when she was so fantastically rich? The fantastically rich were very difficult to influence, as Daisy knew to her cost. Even the old king, her dearest Kingy, could have his funny ways on a bad day, suddenly becoming stubborn over the silliest things.

  Daisy’s mind began to work towards this end, so deeply and so fast that by the time Jenkins was urging her to breathe in, more and more and more, until Daisy’s waist returned to a painful twenty-five inches (so ghastly after one was used to what had seemed to be going to be the forever and eternal eighteens) she was able to all but ignore the pain of it, so intent was she on making a plan of campaign.

  Perhaps it was because she herself had not had a daughter that she was able to take such an overt and particular interest in the launching of other people’s daughters upon the London Season, or perhaps it gave her a more substantial reason to follow the usual routines that Society demanded. Or perhaps, nowadays, to be perfectly candid, she just liked to be paid to introduce johnny-come-latelys to the right people. It made the fact that they were often so unreasonably dull more bearable.

  Not that she was not still quite rich, but no-one was ever rich enough, particularly when it came to the fripperies of life. She still dearly loved to expend money on Dresden figures and new parasols and other nonsense, and the knowledge that some debutante’s entrée had paid for these, that she was, in effect, getting them free, made their purchase a great deal more enjoyable.

  And of course, more than that, she felt a duty to keep up the old style, as it had been when the old king was alive. There was so much that was deplorable nowadays, so much that put you off life, like that silly suffragette killing herself by throwing herself under the present King’s horse at the Derby – such a nonsensical way of going on when all she had to be was charming. If only Mrs Pankhurst had come to Daisy, the whole Women’s Movement would have been over in a day. They would have got the vote in a tiny little minute, and in a much more enjoyable fashion too. But there, some women must like to suffer, otherwise they would not go on as they did. Daisy herself was intent on trying to teach the younger generation how to get their own way with style.