The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Then, of course, another thought occurred as he lit his first cigar for many weeks. It was no good living in the past, because the past did not, and could not, give back. But, what was much worse, you could not give back to the past. By moving on, somehow, some way, he could and would keep his Jane for ever locked into his heart; by trying to keep going he would be giving back to her memory.

  After all, when all was said and done, his darling Jane would not want to look down at her Herbert from the next world and see him in the state into which he had allowed himself to slip.

  He stood in front of the hall mirror and stared at himself. The truth was that if Jane were here she would give a little cry of horror at the sight of him. Her hand would fly up to her mouth at the sight of his sunken eyes, his pale skin, his unkempt clothes, and then she would give a little scream. He could just see her doing it. After which she would start running about, and amid a torrent of words she would ring the bell to the side of the hall fireplace and shout for the maids, and tell someone to take Mr Forrester’s bath and put it in his room at once. She would call for hot broth, and a nice glass of red wine. She would do all those things, and more. Now, if he were to keep her memory alive, and be as she would have him be, he must act as he would if she were here.

  In other words he must restore himself, and then he must move on. It was the only way. To do anything else would be to desecrate her memory, and their shared memories. To behave otherwise would be to let their happiness together slide off as if it had never been, and that would never do. Not in a million years would that ever, ever do.

  Within the week, Herbert promised himself, now quite determined, he would make sure to have shut up the house, left instructions for flowers to be placed weekly upon Jane’s beloved grave, and himself made his way to London. But first he would have some hot broth sent to the library, and then some red wine. And then he would take a bath, and have himself shaved, and his hair cut, and a new shirt put out, and a clean set of clothes, not this black suit and black tie, which, he realised in a second of horror, despite the pleadings of his manservant he just might not have changed out of since the funeral, or only shortly after. It certainly looked like it.

  Hours later he regarded himself, fairly transformed from the wreck he had been when his son-in-law called, and he could hear Jane’s voice saying Oh, Herbert, that white shirt with that stiff collar – I do so love to see that cut of collar on you, really I do.

  As he raised his eyes to heaven before falling asleep late that night Herbert knew that it had not been Louisa who had sent his son-in-law round to him, but Jane. He blew her a kiss high above the clouds and fell asleep with her name on his lips, but this time, instead of crying himself to sleep, he found he was smiling, for he knew that his wife, as always, was looking after him, making sure that he was going to make a good fist of it.

  That was what she always used to say when they were young. Don’t matter, our Herbert, if you don’t make a success of something, just so long as you’ve made a good fist of it.

  Comings and Goings

  How she came by the clothes that she wore that afternoon Emily would never remember, but come by them she did. And of course, as always happens, whether one is dressing in costume for a play or a ball, being transformed into a different woman, a woman who, when she turned towards the cheval mirror in her hotel room, looked like no-one she had ever seen or met, increased Emily’s excitement a hundredfold.

  She had chosen black, and to offset the black silk of the high-necked jacket and belted skirt, itself discreetly swathed in such an old-fashioned way towards a cage at the back, she wore a large hat with a white veil, and white lace gloves. Half mourning, whole mourning – but the real morning outside her hotel room was bright with sunshine, and as she stepped out into it, leaning lightly on her white-laced black silk parasol, Emily’s green eyes were bright with the excitement of the moment.

  It was heaven to walk along, slowly, staring into unknown shop windows, the displays within shielded from the sun by blinds outside and inside by lace curtains looped and swathed, which gave the interiors a weird dark look that made the stuffs for sale seem eminently undesirable, whereas those same goods in other hands, displayed perhaps in some shop near Piccadilly, would have looked infinitely alluring.

  And yet as she walked, in her disguise, Emily found that the years had fled and she was now more than ever the outrageous Lady Emily. She half wished that Portia was with her and that she too was disguised, and both of them laughing. This thought, though, led to another more salutary and at the same time more day-to-day one – namely that Portia was a widow, and she would never want now to climb back into black clothes. She would not find it amusing in the least. Emily sighed. Conscience did indeed make cowards of them all, and really, now she came to think of it, she should turn back, and hurry off in another direction rather than meet Barrymore here, he too disguised, he had promised her – both of them laughing – in clothes that would not be the dress of a gentleman.

  Seconds after becoming quite sure that she would indeed now hurry back to the hotel, change, and go home, Emily caught sight of what could only be a bookmaker – or a person selling comestibles from door to door, something of that nature – and he was coming straight up to her, undeceived by her heavy disguise, and kissing her hand.

  And of course as soon as she saw the dark sparkling eyes, Emily knew straight away that it was Barrymore and that she could no more go back to the hotel and home to Medlar House than she could give up riding fast to hounds.

  ‘Madam, may I make myself known to you? I am your husband, Mr Smith Barrymore!’

  It would be out of character to start to laugh straight away at the handsome rogue standing in front of her, and so Emily knew that she had to resist, and that despite the white veiling, and the black clothes, to even smile would be to somehow give the game away, for both of them.

  ‘Good morning, husband dear! I am surprised you knew me, since I am dressed in clothes that you have not, to my certain knowledge, ever seen before.’

  ‘I know, dear,’ Barrymore agreed, his face quite straight. ‘But see here, I have sold at least six of those new typewriting machines to a number of luckless personages in remote and run-down businesses around these parts, and now I feel that it is high time to take my beloved little wife—’

  ‘Now, dear, here I must stop you, for little I ain’t, Mr Smith Barrymore – which is evidently why you spotted me, despite my discreet clothes.’

  Barrymore’s eyes glittered as he looked down at Emily, holding her white-gloved hand tightly in his crooked arm.

  ‘No, naturally. You are quite right, dear, you are not little. You are tall and slender and I would know your divine figure wherever I saw you. Whoever you were with, and whatever you were wearing, I would always know you.’

  His tone was one of light banter, but his eyes although they pretended to mock and tease her also said no clothes can disguise your body from me, which made Emily feel as if she was walking along beside him clad only in her underpinnings, her silk stockings and her suspenders, her elegant little tight laced button boots, and nothing else at all.

  It was her moment of surrender. Long before they reached the restaurant where they were to have luncheon together, long before she lifted the white veil of her secondhand hat, confident that no-one they knew would recognise them in this remote area of Chelsea, long before they started to eat their food, slowly and appreciatively, talking of everything but love, and drink their wine, slowly and sensuously, thinking only of it, Emily had made love with Barrymore.

  In her mind’s eye she saw herself walking back to that little hotel where she had booked and paid for their bedroom and sitting room, her veil dropped, her eyes looking only ahead. She saw herself nodding briefly to the hotel clerk, walking slowly up the stairs in front of Barrymore, inserting the key in the lock, and walking ahead of him into the sitting room, where, one by one, she drew first the blinds and then the curtains, and then, turning, stood
quite still.

  She would allow him to lift her veil and look at her, and then he would remove her hat, and next unbutton her tight little black silk top, and put his hands to her corseted breasts which would make her sigh just a little. Next would fall her long white hair, silken pale strands to her waist, and then she would put up her hands to his face and pull him to her.

  Now, still in heaven but looking at him dreamily over lunch, she could see how young and healthy his skin was, how dark his hair, and how brilliant, as always, his eyes. She could appreciate his mouth, lips that curved upwards always ready to smile or to laugh, white teeth, slim waist, long legs. He was a bouquet of a young man, and the look in his eyes told her that she was, as yet, not old.

  ‘Come, dear.’ He turned when they eventually left the restaurant, and held out his arm, and Emily slipped her white-gloved hand into it, now feeling as if they were really married, just a nice middle-class couple come to London for their wedding anniversary, celebrating in style, enjoying a lobster luncheon together and then sauntering back to their hotel to make love. That was how easy it had all become, and soon she would discover that because of that very easiness, that closeness in temperament, each revelling in the same sense of humour, each loving to ride hard and make love hard too, Emily was soon – too soon – to discover that giving up Barrymore was impossible. That making love with him was not just out of this world, it was shocking in its intensity. She was not seduced by him, or he by her, they were, in reality, drugged by each other.

  And as day after day passed, and she found herself making any excuse to meet him, somewhere, anywhere, as she slipped off early from some soirée, or left Edith in Portia’s charge, or May’s, or anyone’s – as Edith’s mother took hansom cabs, or rode out at ridiculous times to meet Barrymore in Rotten Row, little knowing that what seemed so private to her was in fact all too public to everyone else, her daughter was making plans to run back to Ireland.

  For May coming to London for the Season was always both a delight and a duty. The delight was in seeing pretty clothes, and beautiful people wearing them, for there was no doubt about it, London at the height of the Season was filled to the brim with more beautiful people than the vast arrangements of flowers at her London home could hold arum lilies or malmaisons.

  This particular morning May was looking at her best, and feeling at her worst. She could not get her son to join her in London – not even it would seem for their own ball. Well, yes, he would come up in the company of his equally leaden-footed father for the Wokingham ball, but only for their ball. He would not come for anything else, such was his loathing for London, and he would not stay more than a handful of nights before he must fly back to their estates with his father, on the pretext that what with the fall in land prices and heaven only knew what else, he must be seen to work the land alongside the men on the estate, or they would all, according to the naughty wretch, give up their tied cottages and flee to the city where work was far more plentiful, and better paid.

  The problem, of course – and the reason why not even May’s new primrose lace-trimmed morning dress with its splendidly cut skirt of peau de soie and its stiff tight belt of the same could stop her feeling out of sorts – was that May knew that her son was utterly right, which in itself was infuriating.

  The fact was that unless people did take up more what May would call Artsy Craftsy attitudes to their land, and while not exactly sitting down to get drunk with their labourers – or insisting on their eating with you in the dining room and other nonsenses that some over-liberal souls had already gone in for – unless they were seen to be getting their hands dirty, the families on the estates would up sticks and flee to the cities. After all, even a hansom cab driver was better paid than a farm hand.

  May had enjoyed too much of a hard life when she was growing up – always at the beck and call of stern nuns, and not really knowing why she had been left to be brought up in a convent until her mysterious patron, Herbert Forrester, suddenly turned up and took over her life – not to sympathise with the predicament of the poorly paid estate workers. But Herbert Forrester had transformed her life, turning it into something of a fairy tale, a romance which had its ending, in essence, when she became Duchess of Wokingham. And although she did not go around in a glass coach, she did now own a golden one (only used by the family for coronations) and she did have footmen, quite a number, although none of them had enjoyed a former life, she imagined, as a rat.

  All this was occupying her mind in one way or another as she sat, her personal maid by her side, in the smaller of the two large drawing rooms which the family enjoyed at their London house.

  ‘My, my, my, but Miss O’Connor is about to be late, is she not?’

  Her maid looked up from her stitching and nodded slightly, as was her wont. ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  At that moment, a footman came in, bowed, and announced ‘Miss O’Connor’.

  May, still seated, turned to her maid. ‘You may go now, Cropper, and leave us alone. Tell the footman not to bother with the fire while I am with Miss O’Connor, but to bring us some lemonade, and some sort of sweet biscuit – almond, I think. Tell them to bring us some of Mrs Aylmer’s sweet almond biscuits.’

  Of course May knew all about Emily’s daughter Edith O’Connor, but nevertheless she could not but be disappointed when she saw her. She was not at all the beauty, as her mother had always been, and indeed still was. Far from it, in fact. Miss O’Connor was small, and dark, like her father May supposed, and with none of her mother’s splendid colouring. Rather pale, in fact, and the profile, far from being classical, was most uneven. Only her eyes were magnificent, a pair of almost startling hazel eyes that, May supposed because she was wearing blue, looked almost violet at one minute and strangely mosaic and alluring and hazel at another. Surrounded by thick black lashes, which were so long and thick that they seemed to cast a shadow when she looked down, the eyes were jewel-like, and more than made up for the rest of her face, as did her hair, which was thick and dark, and worn in a splendid chignon, a little old-fashioned, but noticeably styled under her fashionable forward-tilted hat.

  ‘My dear Miss O’Connor, how delightful to see you.’

  Edith curtsied deeply to the still young Duchess of Wokingham, at the same time thinking for perhaps the hundredth time that she would always be grateful, in the end, to Lady Devenish for dinning into her the importance of grace and deportment. Without dear Lady Devenish, Edith thought, she might have sunk without trace in London Society, whereas she had finally, in the last week, even managed to bob about a bit, and was heard to be mentioned by the Duke of Connerton as having a ‘very pretty way with her’, which certainly would not have been possible before her ‘say so and say not’ weeks with Lady Devenish.

  May rearranged her own skirts in a more satisfactory way, her small white elegant hands hardly able to bend themselves to the task, such were the size of the Wokingham rings – or rocks as she and John always jokingly called them.

  ‘How is your dear mama? I saw her briefly at the Albany ball last night, but we hardly had a second, I am afraid. She is looking magnificent, of course, but then she always has looked magnificent.’

  May stopped suddenly. She had not been an actress, for however short a time, for nothing. Indeed she had had to continue practising that same art as a duchess. The result was that she knew immediately, without being able to say why, that she was now walking, if not jumping, conversationally speaking, on eggshells, for as soon as she had mentioned Emily her daughter had looked as if May had taken up a gun from under the silk cushions beside her and pointed it at her.

  ‘My dear,’ May dropped her voice immediately, ‘first let us have some lemonade and almond biscuits and then you must tell me everything.’

  The thick black lashes now lowered themselves over the magnificent eyes and a sigh escaped the slender blue figure seated on the Knole sofa opposite her.

  May knew at once that she was right, and quickly going to the bell s
he pulled it to hasten the footman. She had little enough time this morning as it was, but if she was going to hear a confidence, or help this delightful young gel in some way, then the lemonade must arrive tout de suite!

  ‘Very well, now, lemonade.’

  The footman poured it, and while he was normally too quick and tripped over his large feet, now, May noticed, he seemed to take for ever, as if he sensed that by lingering he might gain some little piece of knowledge. First one glass, drip by little drip, and then the next. May found her foot tapping with impatience on the old wooden floor, but then her eyes suddenly met Miss O’Connor’s, and for no reason other than to cheer her May promptly crossed hers behind the footman’s back, which, she was glad to see, made Miss O’Connor bite her lip hard in her effort not to laugh. When the door had shut behind the footman at last, the girl could not but help explode with laughter.

  ‘Oh, but isn’t that servants all over, I find, do you not?’ May too was laughing, but at the same time she took care not to raise her voice above a whisper. Silently, she stood up, and on tiptoe, her small, perfectly clad feet making tiny, graceful steps, she went to the door, and wrenched it quickly open. Then she shut it again, walked back to her sofa and re-seated herself. ‘I always do that,’ she said, quite matter of factly, before giving a little sigh of satisfaction and starting to nibble an almond biscuit. ‘The servants always listen at doors. Our conversations are music to their ears, poor dears. I know that, but I like them to know that I know that they do it, d’you see?’ She smiled, and then putting her head on one side she said, ‘So? Shall we now continue? More soberly, more seriously, having gained a short moment of privacy, which is hard enough in these sorts of households, goodness knows!’