The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  At this they both laughed, their eyes quite serious, because it was true. Daisy was beyond help. And anyway, they were both too honest not to admit to themselves that the very last person whom Augustine would want to help, even if she could, was Daisy. Looked at from a different vantage point, in some ways it was even possible that Daisy could help Augustine rather more effectively than Augustine could ever help Daisy.

  The truth was that Daisy was vastly more popular in Court circles, and infinitely more admired. She had always had more allure, and of course was a beauty, which Augustine had never been. Augustine’s face was too haughty, too cold, too altogether dominating, her lips suggesting not a pretty if pouting desire to be pleased by life, as Daisy’s pretty mouth still did, but a sneering desire to put down the world, and naturally his wife, if she should so wish to do.

  ‘The Duchess of Wokingham, Augustine. Is she to come to London for ve Season?’ Daisy continued, after a small pause to allow for their mutual if somewhat humourless laughter.

  Augustine’s eyebrows, thin, still black, and very arched, did not now raise themselves gently, but shot up in surprise.

  ‘I am really rather amazed that you of all people should enquire after the Duchess of Wokingham, my dear. You of all people asking after the Duchess! It is truly amazing.’

  This time Augustine laughed on her own, her famously cold, dry laugh, a laugh that, it seemed of a sudden to her listener, was growing dangerously close to a witch’s cackle, which, given that they were precisely the same age, was really rather worrying. For, despite the fact that Daisy did not like Augustine in the least, and probably never would, nevertheless they were of the same generation and Daisy did not enjoy seeing anyone of her own generation succumbing to age or infirmity, or even, by their behaviour, hinting at it.

  ‘In vat case you amaze easily, Augustine, if I may say so,’ Daisy retorted sharply. ‘Ve Duchess has a son who is of a presentable age. She will be looking for a suitable gel for him, I imagine, although the Duchess’s former life as a Gaiety Girl may of course mean vat she neglects her duties as a mother and stays, as she has so often been known to do in other years, on her country estates with the Duke and their six dogs. An occupation which, I may say, has never been known to bring about a good match for a boy, or a gel for vat matter. In our young day, Augustine, it would have been called neglecting our duty.’

  At this Augustine Medlar smiled, if a slight baring of her teeth could be said to pass for a smile, Daisy thought petulantly. She hated to ask Augustine anything, even the time of day, let alone – least of all, dash it – a favour, but the fact of the matter was that there were very few ducal catches that Season, alas.

  What there was, in grim reality, in the way of ‘catches’ was really very, very little. There were one or two hereditary knights, who were interesting, always providing of course that they had the money to keep up their estates, but not, alas, many marquesses or earls who could be said to be eligible or indeed remotely suitable. Some of the older boys had been killed in South Africa, and that too had had its effect on the depleted annual list. And others of course were known to have no interest in the opposite sex due, it was thought, to too much marrying of cousins in the first degree.

  There was one elderly earl who always cropped up every year, and made Daisy sigh whenever some naive mama of some even more naive debutante mentioned him. He, it had to be said, did at least turn up for the Season, but since he had never been known to do more than dance with a girl, and since he was also known to have been a great favourite with a certain Royal personage, mamas everywhere had to be discreetly warned against him in the extraordinarily unlikely event of his having so far forgotten himself as to seek their daughter’s hand in marriage.

  The problem for the Countess was that in order to go forward at all, in order to send Mrs Hartley Lambert back to the United States with enthusiasm and, please the Lord, all-important recommendations to her fellow countrywomen to use Daisy’s services, she had to find the most glittering match possible for the over-tall, although undoubtedly charming, young Sarah Hartley Lambert. And for once Daisy simply did not know where to begin. Which was why she was now standing like some common little petitioner at the foot of Augustine Medlar’s wretched gilded and canopied throne asking for her help. A situation which that cold-hearted woman was quite evidently enjoying, but which Daisy was equally evidently loathing.

  ‘So, my dear …’

  Every time Augustine said ‘my dear’ to Daisy like that it seemed to her that it was like receiving a kick in her elegant ankle from one of Augustine’s hand-made shoes.

  ‘You have your eyes on George, the Wokinghams’ eldest boy, the Marquis of Cordrey, for your ’Merican heiress, have you, Daisy? As well you might. Yet you did so well – was it two years ago? Yes. It must have been two years ago. You did so very well marrying off that plain little gel from Pittsburgh to the Earl of Rustington that I should have thought that would surely have been success enough for you? Your triumph in bringing off that match was the talk of London for some weeks, as I remember. I mean to say, the poor gel, she was so plain and so dull, but there. I understand that the union is a great success because they both enjoy sitting in swamps shooting duck in America.’

  Daisy stared at Augustine as she rambled on with something close to hatred.

  Oh the agony of it all! Having to bear Augustine’s sadistic enjoyment, knowing that the catch of the Season, if he duly appeared that is, was some sort of cousin to Lady Medlar’s husband, so that Augustine would doubtless be quite determined to have the say so over the Marquis of Cordrey, if she could.

  Asking for Augustine’s help, in however oblique a fashion, was such an agony that Daisy, in those few seconds that she stood before the Medlar throne, found herself feeling that she could have almost regretted that she had done as she had, and spent too much money too fast and too furiously throughout her giddy youth, and on into her middle years.

  And yet not to continue in Society would mean that, now that she was more than middle-aged, no-one would even call on Daisy. She could see herself, and it was a hideous picture, atrophying.

  Sitting perhaps by a window in some rented house in Mayfair – her own house having to be rented out to someone with more wealth. Watching helplessly as other, more fashionable personages walked past to At Homes which she herself could not afford to attend, on account of not having the clothes, the horses, or nowadays the motor cars, to trick out the once most celebrated beauty in London. It was an almost too bitter thought, even for Daisy, to remember how she had been, a famous beauty and the mistress and queen of the Prince of Wales’s heart.

  Almost, because to indulge in such thoughts could only end in that ghastliness of all ghastlinesses – lines down the side of the mouth. Deep etching down the side of the face such as she had noted in older women when she was young and giddy. For the moment Daisy was determined that ‘lines’ were something that your governess set you when you had been naughty and set fire to the footmen’s coat tails on account of its having been a stormy day with nothing else much for a girl of any spirit to do.

  No, Daisy knew, all too well, there was no alternative to the bitterness of having to place herself within Augustine’s power, and although it was just a little like something in a nasty Greek fable, anything else was unthinkable. Daisy would rather die by her own hand than give up Society, of that she was quite, quite sure.

  Unfortunately not only did Augustine know this fact, she also knew, and only too well, as all Society knew, that Daisy and the Duke and Duchess of Wokingham were, indeed had to be, implacable enemies. Although the Duchess was, it seemed, incapable of unkindness, nevertheless no-one could forget the history of the relationship between young May, before her marriage, and the Countess.

  Of course Augustine would be the first to remember, as everyone would remember, the previous history of their relationship. How Herbert Forrester, a rich Yorkshireman with more money than most, had sponsored the future Duchess of Wokingh
am through the Season, for, it later transpired, the sole purpose of revenging themselves on Daisy who had quite purposefully failed to bring King Edward to their ball. As a consequence of this debacle the Forresters had lost any possible credibility in the eyes of London Society.

  Daisy had humiliated Herbert and Jane Forrester, and Herbert Forrester in particular, being a Yorkshireman, had not forgiven her and in his turn had exacted a long-awaited revenge on the Countess.

  Of course that was all years ago now, but the public scandal it had caused was still fresh in Society’s all too long memory, that elephantine ability of the Court and other circles to remember and relish the thorough public trouncing that Daisy had eventually received at the hands of Herbert Forrester.

  But with the tall, elegant although not particularly pretty Sarah Hartley Lambert under her wing, Daisy could see that she now had an opportunity to revenge herself in her turn on those self-same Forresters by smartly marrying off their protégée’s ducal son to her protégée, the American heiress.

  What a to-do that would be! How satisfactory if they could bring the Duke of Wokingham’s son to the altar and marry him off to someone of Daisy’s choosing! In terms of Society, in terms of the ways of the world, it would be the human equivalent of winning the Ascot Gold Cup with a horse that you had bred yourself.

  Few dukedoms could continue nowadays without the influx of American money. Everyone from the Marlboroughs to the – well – well – everyone who was anyone in the English aristocracy had gone after American money in the hope of gaining some kind of stay against the bailiffs battering down the doors of their ancestral homes. It was just a fact.

  Happily, this was again something that both Augustine and Daisy well knew, the Wokinghams, although land rich, and still living in considerable style, had no holdings in American railways, or stocks and bonds. There had been no coal found underneath their land, no rich northern manufacturing empires backed their great houses and estates. Added to which, increasingly, was the concern that servants were no longer grateful to be in service to the nobility, as in former times. The rot had, everyone thought, started with such people as the Alderneys, who had begun a Society for the Rehabilitation of Old Retainers, which had shocked even the King. The very idea of helping old servants rather than old dogs was utterly alien to the English complex. And yet, shocking or not, the problem of a diminishing supply of servants would not go away.

  And it was a vast problem for the aristocracy, for it meant that the ownership of houses as large as small townships had increasingly become a worry rather than a comfort. Kill as many cows, breed as many pigs, grow corn, and store hay, as they might on their estates, families like the Wokinghams were facing insuperable problems, unless – and given the propensity of the young to be so wilful and determined it was a big unless – they could marry off their sons to wealthy girls. It was the only thing that was left to them, and both Augustine and Daisy knew it. They also knew that Daisy’s protégée was not the only heiress in town. There were others, and some of them were English, a fact which would endear them to someone such as the Duke of Wokingham more than a girl from Newport, however charming and well brought up.

  ‘I will help you, Daisy, my dear.’

  Again the ‘my dear’ from Augustine’s thin lips was like a kick in Daisy’s elegant shins, and it was all she could do to refrain from wincing. Useless to remember what an appalling figure Augustine had cut on a horse, in contrast to Daisy’s famous elegance. Pointless to reflect on how few names were scribbled in Augustine’s dance cards when they were both young and in their salad days. Worthless too to think back to how desperate Augustine had been until she had duped Lord Medlar into marrying her. Such memories could not be relished when they both knew that Daisy had fallen into mountainous debt, and, if she was to carry on in the same vein as she had always carried on, must make a success of the Season and marry her American debutante to at the very least an Honourable.

  ‘Now, my dear, my dear, dear Daisy …’

  How many more ‘my dears’ would she get through before she came to the point? Daisy could feel the acid inside her burning and then rising to the point where she thought she might either scream or faint. It was too horrible to have to stand there with Augustine toying with her – yes, positively toying with her – in her sadistic and cruel way, but it had to be borne. Her problems with Messrs Coutts and Co. having once more arisen, and only too recently, it just had to be borne.

  ‘Do you remember ve way you used to love to drown kittens when you came to stay wiv my parents at Wynyates, Augustine?’ Daisy demanded suddenly, and with, for her, an almost unnatural ferocity.

  This did, as least temporarily, put Augustine off her stroke.

  ‘No – Daisy, did I? I can’t believe that.’

  Daisy smiled, kitten-like herself in her enjoyment. It was as if she had suddenly found a ball of wool to play with. Ha! She had succeeded in knocking the ‘my dears’ out of Augustine at last!

  ‘Oh, yes, Augustine, my dear. Ve fact is that you so enjoyed drowning ve little day-old kittens vat the head gardener used to take pity on the cats and hide them from you. And what is more you were so famous for vis pastime that my father nicknamed you “Kitty Killer”, which made darling Tum Tum, who was still Prince of Wales then, laugh a great deal, as I remember it. But of course we were all frightfully young then, were we not? Very young, and quite too, too tiresome, possibly, as well.’

  This last reminder of how Augustine was remembered at Wynyates was the sound of Daisy’s foot coming down good and hard. And it was a sharp reminder too that when all was said and done King Edward had been devoted to Daisy, and having had the King of England and Emperor of India on your side meant a great deal more than having the whole of the beastly Liberal Party together at the toe of your boot.

  ‘What is it exactly that you want, Daisy?’

  Daisy could see, and it was really very agreeable, that she had at last tired Augustine out. The great Lady Medlar was now ready to give in to whatever Daisy wanted in the way of a favour.

  Still, not trusting anyone but themselves (and goodness knows if she did not know that they were both completely untrustworthy no-one did) Daisy leaned forward and whispered in Augustine’s ear.

  What she whispered was fascinating and enlightening to Lady Medlar, but whether she would remain on Daisy’s side and do as she was being asked was quite another matter, and they both knew it.

  Secrets

  Phyllis lay in bed gazing up at her ceiling. It was early morning, too early even for the maid to come in and light her fire, too early too for the bath to be placed in front of the fire in the old-fashioned way, as it still was at Tradescant House. Too early indeed for her mother to come in and discuss with her the faults or virtues of the opening ball at Medlar House, but not too early for Phyllis to lie planning to go and visit my secret Vice, as she now called Richard Ward.

  So far she had visited him upwards of half a dozen times, in complete secret. She would wait until her mother left the house on some social round, or to buy feathers or ribbons or some such, Evie following at a respectful distance, and then, on the pretext of fetching a book from the small library room which was situated on the same floor, she would skip upstairs, scratch at the door, unlock it in answer to his ‘Come in’ and go in to see him.

  She had heard her mother saying, several times, that ‘Richard’, as she and Aunt Tattie called him, was ‘improving’. Certainly he seemed to have gone from fury and fits of trembling to a quietened, almost over-subdued state, and this gentle-seeming passivity was what had drawn Phyllis to him. Also his eyes, which were sweet and kind but so bored that Phyllis could only feel sorry for him and want to help him pass the time, time which she knew all too well could creep by dreadfully slowly when no-one was around to keep you company. She herself had found time as slow as anything she could ever have imagined after her father had died. She had thought that she would literally die of boredom, what with the family away for months,
sailing on the high seas, and only Evie and the dogs for company.

  ‘You are my secret friend, are you not?’ Richard Ward had asked, smiling at her sadly, the previous day. ‘My secret friend, my little saviour, and you read to me so beautifully, it quite takes me back to the old days, do you know that?’

  ‘The old days?’

  ‘Yes, sailing together in your little boat, old whatshisname with us, and Henry your pug – remember how he took to sailing? That was a delight, that sailing, both of us together, such a delight. And you were always such a much better sport than my poor darling Elizabeth, who really did not care for sailing in the least, always fearing that her skirts would get damp. But not you, Portia, you were always springing to and from the boat to the bank, Henry at your heels. Dear Portia. What a fine time we had together.’

  Phyllis had opened her mouth to say, ‘Oh goodness, please, I am not Portia. I am Phyllis, her daughter,’ but seeing the look of happy recollection on Richard Ward’s face, and knowing that he had been suffering so terribly, in every way, she could not somehow bring herself to deny that she was Portia.

  So, not wanting to disappoint him, she said nothing. Besides, she knew that she did look just like her mother, people had remarked on it many, many times. And, too, she was more than aware that, given the state of the family finances which always seemed to be spread precariously between house and stable, yacht and motor car, with very little left over for new clothing and what her mother called ‘fripperies’ – and the fact that many of the materials that made up Phyllis’s remodelled clothes were taken from dresses found in the attics at Bannerwick – it was hardly surprising that Richard Ward had indeed mistaken her for his old childhood friend.