The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Doctor Bentley, dearest. He is here to see our new house guest, Vice Admiral Ward, who is not at all well,’ Portia murmured as she passed Phyllis in the upstairs corridor, to allay any fears that she might have had when she saw their granite-faced visitor.

  Phyllis had no idea why the doctor had been called, and as it happened cared less. She hated London so much that she would have been quite happy if Portia had told her that the doctor had been called for her, and that they must all return straight away to the country.

  ‘Who is Vice Admiral Ward,’ she demanded a few minutes later of her mother’s maid. ‘And why is he staying with Great-aunt Tattie?’

  ‘The Vice Admiral is unwell, miss, and on no account must you go in there. He is not to be disturbed, not nohow, not by no-one. That is how it is, and no argufying, please.’

  Phyllis walked round in front of Evie, who was busy ironing some of Phyllis’s underpinnings in the small sewing room off her bedroom reserved for such niceties. To attract the maid’s deliberately averted gaze Phyllis frowned at the garment the older woman was holding in her hand, and said, ‘Uh – look, there’s a crease there!’ which had the desired effect of sending Evie hurrying back to the ironing board, and giving Phyllis an added purchase on the conversation.

  ‘He may be unwell, Evie, but who is he?’

  Evie frowned at the petticoat she was holding and her face assumed its most vague expression.

  ‘He’s an old friend of your mother’s family, Miss Phyllis. He and your mother, as I remember it, used to go sailing together when they were young, and that. His family kept a house nearby, and they sailed together. Your mother always was a great sailor, not that you would know much about it, you having stayed at home with me rather than going off on a long and exciting voyage with her and the other children.’

  But Phyllis was not really listening. Instead, she sidled out of the sewing room and walked down the corridor. She could not say why – it was probably because she was bored – but she truly had an impish desire to see this ‘Vice Admiral Ward’ for herself. Hearing her mother and the doctor’s ebbing voices, she quickly stared over the banisters. A look at their heads below her, going further and further away, told her that the Vice Admiral must be all alone now.

  It never occurred to her, because Phyllis was not blessed with an imagination, that the Vice Admiral, or whatever he was, might be truly ill with something horribly catching. Not even when she felt the handle of his bedroom door, turning it slowly one way and then slowly the other, only to find that the key had been on her side all the time. She had always found adventure and daring, most particularly doing things that she should not, to be intoxicating, ever since she was quite tiny. Apart from anything else it was always such fun to see how much attention was paid to the truly wicked – much more than to the vaguely good.

  She turned the key in its lock. It made a reluctant, and finally quite a sharp click. She paused. Again she turned the door handle, and pushed open the large, old polished mahogany door. It went heavily and slowly across the thick carpet, inch by little inch in her cautious hand, until eventually Phyllis’s head followed its direction and she could see into the room from where she stood beside it.

  In front of her was a group of chairs, set about quite invitingly, two of which perhaps had only just been vacated by the doctor and her mother. Phyllis, who had large grey eyes, just like her mother, and a slender figure, just like her mother, and hair that although it was much lighter in colour than her mother’s was nevertheless of the same texture, stared at the last, still seated, occupant of the casually arranged furniture. He was a tall man. To Phyllis of course he was an old man, perhaps forty. His hair was swept back in a rather old-fashioned way, and he had a beard, which gave him the look of some old tar, like those Phyllis had used to see when walking with her papa along the harbour-side when they were going to and from their much beloved family yacht.

  Bold as brass Phyllis remained standing by the door until eventually, slowly, and quite obviously reluctantly, perhaps awakened by the sound of that first click of the key turning in the lock, the tall man slouched in the chair turned and stared up at this latest arrival in his dressing room.

  ‘Hallo.’ Phyllis shifted a little from foot to foot, knowing very well that she could be ruined for ever for just entering a gentleman’s rooms on her own. But then that was what made it so particularly fascinating to be there, the knowledge that it was so daring, so wicked, so completely wrong.

  ‘Who are you? Whoever you are! Get out!’

  It seemed that the occupant of the chair was perfectly aware of the rules too, for he was frowning at her. No, he was positively scowling at her, but Phyllis, who always boasted that she was not frightened of anyone or anything, held her ground.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she told him in her determinedly truculent way. ‘You’re someone who used to go sailing with—’

  But that was as far as she got, because of a sudden he sprang to his feet and started to lunge at her with a strange wiping gesture, as if he thought she was a ghost, or some sort of manifestation, and was wishing her a million miles away from him.

  This was too much, even for Phyllis, and she darted quickly out of the room again. Having locked the door once more, she leaned against the outside wall half laughing and half gasping at her own audacity. No sooner had she calmed herself a little than she heard her mother’s familiar quick, light step on the staircase leading up to the upper bedrooms, so she darted off once more towards the sewing room to find Evie still ironing and talking to herself.

  ‘I will say for your mother that she never does pass up an opportunity to help another. A true Christian is your mother, Miss Phyllis, even if she does take it into her head to sail halfway round the world with her children and her dogs at a moment’s notice, leaving me to look after you – what is such an ’andful that most people would rather catch a bolting horse one-handed than chaperon you for more than two minutes flat, Miss Phyllis, and that’s a fact, so it is. That is a fact.’

  Evie finished the garment that she had been ironing and held it up in front of her to inspect it. In the silence of that moment Phyllis decided on distraction as being the better part of valour.

  ‘Learned any more new words today, Evie?’

  Phyllis looked up at the maid from under her fringe of curly blond hair. It always stopped Evie to be asked to name her ‘word’ for that day. Phyllis glanced slyly across at her, encouraging the maid with her most entrancing smile, knowing that the maid would not be able to resist her bait.

  ‘Pedagogue.’ Evie sighed with satisfaction, spelling out the word after she had named it. ‘It means someone who is a teacher,’ she added.

  Phyllis nodded, although she had not known this herself.

  ‘That is a good one,’ she said encouragingly, adding, ‘I did go to see the Vice Admiral just now, as a matter of fact, Evie. I cannot tell a lie to you, because you have always been such a friend to me. I went to see the Vice Admiral, or whatever he is called.’

  Evie went white. ‘You never!’ She darted round the other side of the ironing board and shook Phyllis hard and suddenly. ‘You never!’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Phyllis backed away, laughing.

  ‘Oh, Miss Phyllis, you are enough to give a person a twin fit, really you are. I just hopes that you does your courtesies and all that at Buckingham Palliss, and then gets on with it, and hops up the aisle with some unsuspecting young man what will never know until it’s too late what ’e’s lettin’ ’imself in for, that’s what I hopes for you. And for me too now I comes to think of it. Because as sure as eggs is eggs, Miss Phyllis, I have had more’n enough of you these last seventeen years, and that’s the truth. You are not what I would call a good gel, you really are not. You like to make unhappiness where there is none. Now sit down and stay sitting till I gets you into your walking clothes, and then good riddance to you until it’s time to go downstairs and out into the park.’

  ‘Sorry, Evie. I j
ust feel so cooped up here in London, just like one of Mama’s prize hens.’

  ‘Hens! You’re a beautiful girl, Miss Phyllis. You’re more beautiful than your mother was, I’ll say that for you, and you can ride better than a man, but if you ask me, honest, I would say that you make more trouble than a—’

  ‘Bolting horse – I know, so you keep telling me, Evie. But – I just feel so cooped up here.’

  ‘The very idea of teasing your Evie with that about visiting Vice Admiral Ward. I dunno.’

  Phyllis bit the side of her thumb. So what if she had seen some old lunatic in his dressing room? It was hardly like murdering someone, was it? Besides, he had not been in a state to do more than stagger to his feet and then fall back into his chair waving his arms helplessly at something she could not see.

  ‘As a matter of fact I did go to see the Vice Admiral,’ she reiterated, sulkily, but half to herself, knowing that Evie was not really listening. ‘And he’s as mad as May butter and as dull as a dead seagull.’

  She sighed suddenly, longing for the sea, longing to be small again, standing beside her father in his yachting clothes and holding his hand, and the whole world seeming to sparkle with the light on the water, and the gentle sound of the waves when they went below.

  But her father was dead, and she was in London, and sometimes it seemed to her that she would never see the sea again, and certainly she would never see her father again in this life.

  Of a sudden, and for no reason she could think of, she made up her mind to go to see the Vice Admiral again, unbeknownst to Evie, or anyone. It would be fun to go into the room again, and daring herself to do something would alleviate her boredom. And this time, this time she would not run away, she would stand her ground, and see what happened. Whatever did occur it would have to be yards more fascinating than sitting around waiting to be undressed and then dressed again to go for a walk in the Park.

  Downstairs Portia was trying to explain to her aunt something of Richard’s precarious state of health.

  ‘He has just the same problem as Uncle Lampard, Aunt Tattie, and we all know what that is. There is nothing congenitally wrong with him. Dr Bentley examined him, and he has pronounced him physically perfectly fit, but mentally unfit for anything except staying where he is, and being given large doses of strong tea to get him through the first few weeks. Strong, strong tea, when the urge to – you know – is upon him.’

  Aunt Tattie nodded. ‘Your Uncle Lampard, before he retired to the seaside, always swallowed black treacle. He swore that killed the urge.’

  ‘Black treacle? Well – that is interesting.’

  ‘Yes, black treacle.’ There was a small pause, and then, ‘You know he never speaks to me now – now that I have gone over to Rome? He will not communicate either by the telephone or by letter unless completely necessary. Lampard is cross with me. You know he has quite disowned me?’

  ‘I had heard.’

  ‘We always were spiritually miles apart, dearest, as you know, but now we are even further apart. He thinks it is unpatriotic to belong to anything but – well, you know how people think of Rome and the Papists, dearest. Papists are all meant to be spies and things, usually disguised as nuns, and working against England, when in truth it is just the oldest religion of this country. Really, dearest, quite the oldest religion.’

  ‘No, surely that would be the Druids, Aunt Tattie—’

  ‘The oldest Christian religion, that is. The old English way of worshipping which made people perfectly happy, really. And the monasteries and the abbeys were the hospitals and full of quite good people, not just wicked monks making Benedictine as is so fondly supposed by so many.’

  Portia nodded again. She had never been particularly religious. As a matter of fact she really rather took God for granted. Even now, despite Childie’s being taken from her, she still saw God as the beloved creator of the most beautiful parts of the world, and the devil as the cause of all the evil parts. But she nevertheless drew the line when it came to becoming too admiring of any one religion. Aunt Tattie’s recent conversion in Italy, while obviously suiting her beloved relative, would not suit Portia, any more than a fervent following of the Arts and Crafts movement had suited her when she was growing up as a child at Bannerwick.

  ‘You are just not a joiner,’ Childie would say, when Portia occasionally touched on such matters with him. ‘That’s why you like sailing. You are alone with the sea and the seagulls and that is all. The wind and the sun, the waves and the sky, and the boat, are enough for you.’

  And it was true. They were enough, or at least they had been until Childie had been gathered, and then suddenly even they were as empty as a child’s hand trying to hold the sea in its palm.

  ‘I think I had better go and check on Richard again, Aunt Tattie. He might be more himself now. It is over twelve hours, after all, since we brought him home. It might be time to start giving him tea, or black treacle, or some such.’

  Aunt Tattie shook her head. ‘I should not do any such thing, if I were you, Portia.’ She gave her niece a sudden piercing look. ‘In my experience locked doors are better kept just as they are, locked.’

  But of course Portia would not believe her. Watching her sidling out of the room a few minutes later on some pretext or another, Aunt Tattie shook her head, and raised her eyes to heaven. No good would come of it, of that she was quite, quite sure. She twisted the amber rosary around her waist, tighter and tighter. It was immensely comforting, although she could not have said why.

  On with the Dance

  Now that she was fully prepared, her wardrobes bulging with the new Season’s costumes for every occasion, Daisy, Countess of Evesham, was once more as full of youthful energy as if it was her own coming out that she was engaged upon. Of course it was not her own coming out but the launch of yet another American debutante with an anxious mama somewhere in the vanguard, her eyes firmly set on her daughter’s acquiring a title.

  Daisy gazed at her best and oldest friend soulfully across the short piece of carpet that separated them. Unlike the rest of the world her friend had always been such a friend, always so complimentary, so anxious to please. But even her greatest friend, it seemed, was turning against her. Refusing to pay her compliments, not troubling to try to reflect Daisy’s beauty, only telling her over and over again, sometimes as much as twenty times a day, the terrible news that no amount of ear blocking or eye shutting would now delay, namely that Daisy was at last – to her own and her best friend Mrs Looking Glass’s astonishment – older.

  ‘Jenkins,’ Daisy demanded suddenly of her maid, ‘do you fink it is time we changed Mrs Looking Glass? She really does not seem quite as good as she used to be, somehow.’

  Jenkins stood behind her mistress and they both stared at Daisy’s best friend, her silver-backed cheval mirror tilted at just the angle to take in the whole of Daisy, down to her tiny elegant feet.

  ‘I’d say this mirror is as good as it always was, my lady, and that cannot be said of all of us, can it?’

  The maid walked off, and as she did so Daisy poked out a small, pink tongue at the older woman’s back. Jenkins always had been such a downright pill. Despite the extreme disparity in their circumstances, nowadays Daisy actually suspected her of being jealous of her mistress, which was preposterous of course, because jealousy should really be confined, in Daisy’s view, to equals. It was surely quite enough that Daisy had kept Jenkins in a fashion that would never have been available to her in any other sphere, but now, if you please, needs must be that Jenkins took ruthless advantage of Daisy’s increasing age and girth, refusing to pay her compliments however much they might be needed, which they most definitely were.

  Daisy lay down on her bed so that Jenkins could pull on her stockings. She stared at the heavy swirls of plasterwork that decorated her bedroom ceiling, which seemed miles above her bed, and thought about her plans for the Season.

  Of course, the one good thing about poor Sarah Hartley Lambert was that
she was no stunner, so Daisy would not be entirely eclipsed by this season’s protégée. Although admittedly Sarah Hartley Lambert’s face was really very pleasant, and she had magnificent eyes of a lovely blue, she was, happily for Daisy, far, far too tall to ever be described as a beauty. No-one would ever, Daisy guaranteed, stand on chairs to see Sarah Hartley Lambert when she passed by in a ballroom or at a soirée, as people had so often been known to do when Daisy had passed in years gone by longing to catch sight of her en plein beauté.

  And even now, of a late afternoon when the light was kindly and the fire lit, there were still people who became quite spellbound by Daisy’s presence, mesmerised by the brilliance of her looks, by her famous profile, by the delicacy of her features, by her voice, by her laugh that could, at will, climb up and down the scales as tunefully as an opera singer’s soprano. It was a strange fact, but it was a fact, that beauty in a human being was as fascinating as a famous building, most particularly, for some reason, in the female form. Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Daisy Lanford, were more famously fascinating to people in general than inventors or explorers.

  And of course Daisy knew that she was just such a beauty, and, happily for her, none of her protégées up to and including poor Sarah Hartley Lambert could ever be described as such. It was most reassuring for an older woman.

  Tonight they had all been asked to the opening ball of the Season, and it was to be a tiara affair. There would be so many diamonds winking and blinking that by the time supper was served they would start to look quite common, and the sight of an unadorned head to appear quite enticing. Of course Daisy had seen it all before. The gentlemen, at first drawn only to the great glittering heads of the older women, would nevertheless be forced by etiquette to step onto the ballroom floor with younger heads, heads that were supported by youthful necks that had no need of pearl or diamond chokers to cover them, as did their mothers’ or chaperones’.