The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I have collared two or three young men, but really, Jenkins, they are all about as suitable as a footman. All of them younger sons, and some of them younger sons of younger sons, and you know what that means – tea thrice brewed and no title, my old nanny used to say!’

  Jenkins smiled, coldly, all the while concentrating on the next and most elaborate of her tasks, taking what the Countess called the Family Fender from its great coroneted leather box, and lowering it onto her ladyship’s head. It had to be placed just so, with a cushion of hair to prevent it from hurting my lady’s head.

  As it was she never returned from a ball, or an opening of Parliament, without moaning that it was too heavy and really she had no idea why people so coveted them. At the Coronation, my lady, as was her right, had worn not only her usual regalia, along with all the other peeresses, but also her tiara, which Jenkins had thought excessive, but then hers was not to reason why.

  If all the ladies of consequence wanted to look as mad as hatters, that was their business. It was certainly not for their maids to comment, although that did not stop them thinking their thoughts, some of them less than reverent, Jenkins was glad to say.

  ‘You see, Jenkins,’ Daisy continued, watching eagle-eyed through the looking glass as the tiara was fixed in place by the maid’s still nimble fingers, ‘I have to find someone suitable for Miss Sarah, or this will be our last Season, and neither of us would want that, would we?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ Jenkins agreed, although even as she said the words it seemed to her that, in her mind’s eye, she could see her sister’s cottage nestling in the little Devon village.

  She could see the brass kettle on the hob, and the fire in the chintz-covered sitting room. She could see the horse brasses around that same fire, some of which Jenkins had bought as presents for her sister in return for being looked after on her week off once a year. She could see the walk down to the beach which would be so nice before tea, she could feel the rumble of her stomach as she turned from the beach with her sister and they went back to home-cooked stew and dumplings in the alcove of the cottage kitchen.

  Her sister had written of all these things, as well as her desire to see her sister retired with her.

  We will be known as ‘the two Misses Jenkins’ in the village, I dare say, but you will not mind that.

  Of a sudden, to be known as anything at all in a village seemed to Jenkins only too appealing. She would no longer be a maid, but a person. Perhaps the vicar on Sundays would know her name? Perhaps she would walk through the village and people would nod and wave to her? It was almost unimaginable to Jenkins, so long had she been in service, it was almost, but not quite, unimaginable.

  ‘Ow! Jenkins! Ow! Really! You are losing your touch, really you are! Be careful. I shall be going to ve Wokingham Ball without a head if vis goes on for very much longer!’

  ‘Most appropriate since you are dressed as Marie Antoinette, my lady.’

  Daisy’s expression in the looking glass turned momentarily sour and Jenkins turned away, wishing for the first time in her life that her sister had not written to her of all the jollities that retirement could offer, and all the benefits too.

  Their father had left them both enough to buy that cottage together, and really she should do as her sister was asking her, before she grew too old to be able to enjoy her freedom, before she forgot that once upon a time she had actually answered to her given name, not just her surname. She had actually answered to Betsy. People had called Betsy! and she had come running.

  Daisy must have sensed something of her maid’s thoughts, they were after all an old partnership, for she turned to Jenkins a moment or two later and said, ‘I am sorry, Jenkins, really I am. I should not take it out on you because I have lost my touch. But the truth is, Jenkins, I have, and I have been thinking I should retire from Society now, you know, before people start to notice. I do not want to be one of those old countesses who are the laughing stock of Society, Jenkins. You remember ve Countess of Bradstock when we were both young? Oh dear me, Jenkins, if her tiara fell off once it must have fallen off her poor old head fifty times, and at ve most embarrassing moments. And then she would fall fast asleep during the entrée, or start to get up to go during the hors d’oeuvres. I really do not want vat to happen to me, Jenkins. It would let us both down, would it not? It would make us both appear ridiculous to be trying to carry on in ve face of – well, we know what!’

  They both froze suddenly, Jenkins in the middle of warming the curling tongs and Daisy in the act of holding up one of her rings to make sure it had no fluff at the back.

  It was as they both hesitated that a small truth started to appear, at first quite a long way away on the far horizon of time, but then it came nearer and nearer until both mistress and maid found themselves staring at it, unable to avoid its startlingly bright presence. They had grown older, and suddenly they both knew it.

  ‘Shall vis be our last Season together, Jenkins, do you think?’

  ‘Never say never, my lady, and never say die, but it could or could not be. We shall see what we shall see, my lady.’

  There was a small pause as they both now stared at Daisy’s reflection. She looked impossibly beautiful. Older of course, but still very elegant and quite, quite lovely, the features still even, the figure more rounded but still heartbreakingly fragile somehow. And of course the blue and silver eighteenth-century costume, the powdering of her hair that Jenkins was about to effect, it was all so unspeakably glamorous.

  ‘I heard that one of the Howards has spent literally thousands of pounds on his costume for this evening, Jenkins. It is covered in amethysts and pearls, in the Elizabethan manner. And at least three of the ladies we know are coming as Madame de Pompadour. So awfully strange, do you not think, vat we are all so fascinated by costume balls these last years? As if we are not content to be ourselves any more, as if we have to dress up as someone else to make ourselves more interesting. Ever since King Edward died, I fink, do you not, Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘And did you hear that the Duke of Balniel has insisted on tiny diamonds sewn all over his jacket of beaten gold? And there are tiny sapphires on his sleeves. But he has not the legs for hosiery, did you know that, Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Jenkins had started powdering Daisy’s hair, carefully and beautifully with small dabs of a small but effective powder puff. Now swathed in protective capes, Daisy watched her a little mistily in the mirror, for however careful Jenkins was the powder still escaped into the air, giving the whole scene a feel of yesterday. This was the first time for an age that Daisy had seen herself white-haired, and she realised that the whole effect could be really rather flattering.

  ‘No tiara, Jenkins. I have decided I shall not wear the Family Fender.’ Daisy started to remove it from her head. ‘It looks old-fashioned. Instead I will wear the sapphire piece from India. Why not?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. The Fender might be a little too modern for Marie Antoinette, I do agree. If it is the old-fashioned effect that my lady is going for, we will have to put aside the Family Fender.’

  Having coiffed my lady to suit the Fender, Jenkins sighed inwardly and once more applied herself to combing and fitting the sapphire piece.

  Really, that cottage, its fire, the kettle on the hob, all the sounds of the sea outside, was beckoning to her in such a fashion that of a sudden she knew she had grown too old to dance attendance on the Countess any more.

  ‘Mmm.’ Daisy turned at last from her reflection. ‘Vat is what I have always loved about you, Jenkins, do you know? Your ability to sum up in a few words what we are both thinking and leave us both none ve wiser!’

  Daisy laughed suddenly, but Jenkins, having effected a complete change of hairstyle in under twenty minutes, feigned deafness, too busy trying to find her mistress’s jewel-encrusted evening reticule to really care to add anything. Even if she had, Daisy thought, staring at her own still elegant arms in their eve
ning gloves with their row upon row of diamond bracelets, it would be about as reasonable as the Evesham family motto: What Has Been Has Often Been Before.

  Trust the Eveshams to come up with a tangle of words that had nothing to do with anything that Daisy could see. Such nonsense, like so many family mottos, when you really thought about them. And, like so much, it only really looked good in Latin.

  ‘By the way, my lady, the letter that came from the Duchess of Wokingham, I believe it was. Came round by hand a short while ago. Shall I put it in the safe with your tiara?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Jenkins.’

  They both knew that it had not been a letter from the Duchess but a small parcel of large, unused, quite new, five-pound notes. The letter was Jenkins’s polite way of putting things.

  Now mistress and maid prepared to descend to the hall where the other servants would be waiting to applaud the Countess when she appeared, never more so than tonight when she was intent on appearing so regal. It was always such a lovely moment, this business of descending the staircase and hearing the maids in particular making the old house ring out with the sound of their enthusiastic clapping. Tonight, however, both mistress and maid were aware that such moments might be going to become rarer and rarer for them, until eventually they were gone for ever, the two of them leaving the Season without a trace. For who would remember Jenkins, or perhaps even the Countess, in years to come? Who would remember the way my lady wore her clothes, her elegance, her way of walking? The turn of her head, her sparkling eyes, her delightful laugh?

  To Daisy the sudden sound of the servants’ applause was deliciously soothing, and it lifted her like the sound of the sea outside one’s bedroom at Broadstairs. As she started to descend the stairs, head erect, her eyes never looking down, not once – the true test of the Great Beauty – Daisy allowed herself to enjoy this lovely moment with a new intensity, in the knowledge that it might indeed, after all, be her last. As a great actress should, Daisy realised, as the applause grew in volume (mostly nowadays directed towards her jewellery rather than her beauty, she always thought) she must at last contemplate leaving the stage before her meteor dropped to earth.

  From now on, it had to be faced, old age beckoned. She was no fool; she knew, all too well, how cruelly old women could be treated by the fashionable and the clever. Not for her the snide remarks, the whispers behind the fans, the ah but you should have seen her when she was young. She was not yet old, but she was not young either. She must leave with grace, with dignity, above all at a moment when she would be missed. She owed that to herself. She owed it to her two deceased husbands, to her son whom she hardly ever saw, to her servants, but above all to Jenkins whose work of art she had been for so long.

  Terrible for Jenkins to be pinning on her tiara when perhaps she would be in need not just of the fashionable ‘mouse’ but of a wig too! Dreadful for Jenkins if she had to go on pretending that my lady was still young. Such a strain. As she stepped past her loyal servants, Daisy determined not to take her thoughts any further. The point was that after so many years in loyal service, she must not ask too much more of the redoubtable Jenkins.

  They did not like each other at all, they never had, but they relied upon each other. Above all, Daisy knew she must free herself, before it was too late. She must learn to be not Daisy, the Countess, but someone gentler, quieter, without a ‘name’.

  She stepped into her carriage. Very well, it was an old-fashioned carriage, and her coachman’s legs were really rather bent, but goodness it was splendid, and she still had it drawn by four horses, despising anything less. And not for her the tawdriness of a motorised vehicle and all those silly veils. She was Daisy, she was famous for going about in her own splendid carriage drawn by a team of matching grey horses. That at least she would see to it would remain unchanged.

  She sat back against the plush interior, and in the growing light of the street lamps, only recently abandoned by the lamp-lighters, she looked with love on her London, and the London which had always loved her. Perhaps she had not been as popular with the people as Nell Gwynn, say, but goodness she had been, and was still, loved! Even now people cheered and waved when they saw her arriving.

  Hansom cab drivers still tipped their hats and whips at her carriage. They knew style when they saw it, and they knew that the Countess was not just the epitome of the old style, she was that best of all possible bests, the famous great beauty.

  Ahead of her lay the Wokingham Ball.

  She would arrive decorously, towards the last, doubtless placed beside that dratted old bore the Duke of Connerton, or some such, but, her reputation still intact, she would naturally command as much attention as any royal. And why should she not? She had been loved by Royalty, she had made Royalty laugh, she had cheered Royalty through many a dull hour. She deserved to be thought of as royal, because, when all was said and done, she had been.

  But now as the horses dropped their pace to a walk and the lights and flares around Wokingham House lit the now darkening evening, and flunkies ran to open carriage doors, their white stockings somehow staying as bright as the lights, Daisy sighed with contentment. It was all still there. Style, grandeur, aplomb, a sense of how to be, a sense of reaching out to something better – it was all still there, waiting for her.

  Something else was waiting for her too, and it was not until she took her place at dinner that Daisy saw what it was.

  Of a sudden, as a pair of brilliant brown eyes smiled into hers, Daisy was not quite so sure that she was ready for retirement, at least not until the end of the Season, but quite, quite sure that one way or another she could help out her hostess, the Duchess, who had so obligingly sent her round a ‘little gift’ earlier in the day.

  As soon as she saw those brilliant brown eyes Daisy was quite determined to help out the Duchess in any way she could. For the wretched Augustine Medlar, despite all her smiles and promises, had been about as much help to Daisy as salmon in the wrong month.

  The Ball

  There were many other guests to account for, all making their way, by one means or another, to the Duchess of Wokingham’s Costume Ball. So many coming up from the country, or recently arrived, that the livery stables were filled to overcrowding with horses being washed down, or brushed off, or teams being changed. It was a busy, busy day for everyone in every trade, from jewels to dresses, from flowers to wine, with everyone happy that the weather was continuing fine, and all knowing that the Wokingham Ball was always one of the centrepieces of the Season, and nothing that happened there ever went unnoticed.

  George, Marquis of Cordrey, in common with most sons was the least enthusiastic participant in his mother’s ball. The fact was that he had not wanted to come up to London at all, even for a few days, and everyone who knew George knew it. His father knew it, his mother knew it, his valet knew it. He actually thought his dogs knew it. Of course, saying goodbye to them was the very worst of going to London. Long before he patted their heads and gave instructions to the grooms as to what they liked and when they liked it, and asked his valet to make sure that one of the hall boys kept an eye on them too, his dogs knew that George was leaving for London.

  Of course, he had his ‘sleeve dog’, as all good huntsmen must. A sleeve dog was a small dog, in his case a Japanese butterfly dog, that could, when necessary, be tucked into one’s coat when out riding, just its little head left sticking out while one cantered along the walls of the estate enjoying the early morning stretch, feeling oneself to be the luckiest devil alive, and knowing it too. One’s sleeve dog was the only one of one’s dogs allowed upstairs; that was why it was so necessary to one. And, more than that, without it one would have to face the unimaginable, hours inside a house (which was bad enough) without a dog.

  At least he could take Misty to London with him. That was his one and only consolation. She tucked nicely into his coat on the journey down, and once at Wokingham House he was able to jump up the steps with her and into his rooms without his mother se
eing, and then run her round the place to take the edge off his misery at being in London.

  He knew that he was not in his mother’s good books, so in order to be diplomatic he left little Misty shut in his bedroom and went straight down to the drawing room to see her.

  ‘Ah, George.’

  George loved his mother because she was beautiful and she was kind, and he knew that she would guess he would have brought Misty to London, that even now Misty was probably chewing a perfectly priceless leg of a perfectly priceless piece of furniture, but that neither of them really cared.

  However, despite loving his mother, George always wished that she would not sound quite so surprised when she saw him. It was as if she still could not get over the fact of him. As if she had suddenly come across him, like Moses, mewling among the reeds.

  He kissed her hand, and she smiled at him. George knew that smile. It made him wary.

  ‘How’s Misty?’ she asked, all innocence.

  ‘She’s very well, Mama, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, well, that is good. As long as you have not brought her up here – she does chew everything so, George, you know that. The gilt of one whole Louise Quinze chair, Cropper told me, last Season.’ May managed to make her eyes large and keep her face straight. ‘Dreading our ball again, are you, George? It is at least costume this year!’

  May’s head was cocked to one side, which her son knew was a further sign of mischief afoot. His mother only put her head on one side when she was planning something.

  ‘Of course not, Mama. You know how much I look forward to the ball.’

  George walked to the window. He knew that he should feel grateful for the view of London from Wokingham House, but the truth of it was that it always made him think, not of the loveliness of the architecture opposite, but of the greyness of it all compared to the green fields and blossoming trees in the country.