The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Cropper gave a great amused laugh as Edith felt the warm water from one of several metal jugs tipping over her head, followed by a cold lotion that Cropper told her was her special mix, and then a rinse of camomile tea, another rinse of a flower water, and finally boiled rain water, which Cropper said was perfect for fine hair.

  ‘I do so like your hair, Miss Edith. Now bend down in front of that fire while I comb it through and dry it for you. My goodness, but it is good and thick, and squeaky – can you hear it squeak.’

  Minnie was no trained maid like Cropper, and now, as Edith submitted to the professional maid’s attentions, she started to appreciate the difference between being looked after by a proper lady’s maid and a maid who could iron and wash and lay out clothes, but do little else of any consequence. Cropper dried Edith’s hair and brushed it, strand by little strand so that it turned from being vaguely frizzy to a shining mass of dark, catching the light and showing off its suddenly apparent auburn tints.

  Then came the dressing and the undressing.

  First Cropper must dress her in new underwear, bundling up Edith’s old corset in some newspaper and throwing it into the wastebin, which made them both laugh, Edith almost shocked, Cropper highly satisfied. Then Edith lay down on the bed and Cropper dressed her in the new underclothes, lacing her into a new corset before slipping the hoop, the petticoats and finally the fabulous dress over her head. Next she promptly and properly threw a protective cape over her charge.

  ‘Have to try dressing your hair for a few minutes to suit the style of dress.’

  She murmured and muttered and pulled Edith’s hair up, pinning a ‘mouse’ as she called it under the back to make the whole effect grander, then combing the hair over it and trying various ornaments.

  ‘The Duchess sent up some diamond stars for you, but I don’t know so much, they might – no. Maybe if we position two just here at the back it will complement your short train. Mmm, and this little nonsense I have made could be quite effective at the front. Mmm, maybe not. Just the stars, but not at the back, to the side. No, to the front.’

  During all this Edith stood quite, quite still and her face was a study in docility. She had never had anyone make such a fuss over her before, and she found it perfectly delicious.

  ‘Cropper, you are too kind, really you are.’

  Cropper was not listening.

  ‘Now, what I am going to do now must not make you cross. It’s one of those things that I find always bring luck. I am going to ask you to face outward, away from the mirror, and not look at yourself at all until I have finished. When I have finished I shall put on your shoes, and you shut your eyes and I walk you to that cheval mirror over there, see? But first we are going to take everything off and you are going to lie down on that bed again and compose yourself once more, for if you don’t I think you will find that you might become too flushed, and I don’t want that, and nor do you. Makes a young lady look as if she has been at the sherry wine! It’s only natural to feel nervous before the Duchess’s ball. After all, it is one of the great events of the Season.’

  Wonderingly Edith sank back once more onto the vast bed and stared up at the ceiling, her feelings a mixture of awe at Cropper’s professionalism and fascination at how persons such as the Duchess were looked after. Was this what happened every evening when the Duchess was prepared for a ball, or even a dinner? She supposed it must be.

  No wonder therefore that the Duchess looked so composed always, so on top of things, with such a spring in her step, for to be looked after and treasured in this way must be to become the person that you were meant to be, to become the person Society meant you to be. Long before you left your apartment, or put a foot on the top step of the stairs leading down to the public rooms, you had already been transformed.

  How important it must be to be groomed in this way if you were from a great family, or held in esteem. It meant that you were like a horse, all shiny and tricked out in your best before you were pulled out of the stable. No matter if you finally reached home mud bespattered, you started out spring-heeled with life and exuberance.

  And that was just how Edith felt at that moment, and she was not even dressed yet. She felt exuberant, ready to tackle any situation, just because Cropper had given her confidence in herself. No wonder Cropper loved her work. She must see the change she could make, not just in people’s clothes, but in their personalities. Edith could feel that she herself had changed already. She felt more rounded, unlike anything she had yet felt, nearer to heaven; and she was still not fully dressed.

  Downstairs George was tickling Misty’s tum, and groaning inwardly to himself. He had gone, on his mother’s directions, to the livery stable, and he had dutifully ridden out in Rotten Row, and dull to the point of extinction it had been. How flat Hyde Park was after riding round the estate, and how over-dressed the girls and women. He had not wanted to look at any of them. They were all exotic birds of paradise, he was sure, but not to his taste. All waiting to be seen by someone and as a consequence, to his eyes, tawdry. Not that he did not have all the normal red-blooded reactions, but when he was in London he longed to find someone who would just be normal towards him. As soon as he was introduced as ‘the Marquis of Cordrey’ all the debutantes simpered and the demi-monde glittered. Future duke, future duke. It was almost like a drum roll so loud were their thoughts.

  Like most little boys George had dreams while he was growing up. His dream had been to be a knight in shining armour, and unknown to anyone, disguised as a tramp or some such, do great deeds. In this way he would meet a beautiful young girl who would not know who he was and would marry him just for himself. No more bowing and scraping, just two people at ease in a world which would be like a great park, full of birds and wild things.

  ‘But instead,’ he now told Misty, picking up the little Japanese dog and popping her into his silk dressing gown, ‘instead I have to lead out some plain Jane from Ireland who is going to wink and blink at me like candles on a Christmas tree, and I shall have to pretend that she is my fairy princess. Oh, what a dreadfully dull thing it is to be in London, and in the summer! It is about as much fun as waiting to be shaved, which I am.’

  His valet came into the room, bowl, hot water, brush and razor at the ready. He looked at George and knew at once that ‘we’, as he always referred to George, was ‘having a fit of the piques’.

  ‘Oh dear, my lord. Staring at your feet and talking to yourself. In a fret, I see.’

  ‘How very perceptive of you, Frear.’ George looked up and smiled, freeing Misty from the comforting warmth of his silk dressing gown.

  ‘Mind your lordship’s dog, this water isn’t half hot.’

  ‘Misty! Basket!’

  The little dog jumped into her basket on command as George stared at his valet in the looking glass before which they were both now positioned, one seated, one standing.

  ‘Is it too much to wish that one might enjoy one’s week in London, my lord?’

  ‘In short, Frear, much too much! Far too much! So much too much that I think you may well find my lordship standing outside in the courtyard waiting for a livery coach to take me back to the country.’

  Frear started to lather his young master’s face vigorously.

  ‘The trouble with you, if I may say so, my lord …’

  ‘You may.’ George swallowed some of the foaming shaving soap and quickly shut his mouth against the bitter taste.

  ‘… is that you never give town a chance. Country, country is all you allow for, and really, a week a year, just the ball and Ascot, is not much for Her Grace to ask of you, my lord, really it isn’t.’

  George was about to open his mouth to protest when he remembered the awfulness of the soapy taste in his mouth, and his lips remained firmly pressed together.

  ‘You see, my lord, London is just like everything. You have to give it a chance. And you, if I may say so, my lord, never give it a chance, and that will not make things any easier for you. You will n
ever find a bride in the country, my lord. It has never been known. What girl of spirit would want to languish in the country when she can come to London for the Season? There is no such person. Keep still, my lord. I have no wish to cut short your time in London by violent means.’

  ‘I suspect you of talking to my mother, Frear,’ George protested, when Frear had finally finished shaving him. ‘This is propaganda. Next thing we know you will be singing the praises of ugly girls from Ireland and so on and so forth. I shall never fall for a girl who is not a country lover. She must be much happier in the country than in town, as I am.’

  ‘But even this Diana of the chase will want to come to town sometimes.’

  ‘Why, Frear, why?’

  Frear looked up in the middle of putting away his shaving materials, each tool carefully cleaned and dried, and neatly replaced in its appropriate leather casing. ‘Your lordship was saying?’

  ‘I asked you,’ said George, standing up, ‘why on earth a country-loving woman would want to come to town.’

  There was a short pause, and then Frear, at last satisfied that his shaving paraphernalia was as beautiful as the day it was born, turned to the Marquis and with a small theatrical gesture, for which he was famed below stairs, said in a reverential tone, ‘Hats!’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Frear.’

  ‘Hats, my lord. A woman must always come to London for her hats. If she does not come to London for her hats she will fade away. A woman in the provinces can never look beautiful if she is not wearing that season’s hats.’

  George frowned, suddenly impressed. The first thing his mother did when she came to London was to invite the milliners round. And good God, they certainly did come round, in their droves, in their dozens. And the hours spent trying on the hats, Cropper fussing around her as if both their lives depended on it.

  ‘Do you know, Frear, I think you might have something there. And it is certainly true, when one goes to the races in the south the first thing one notices is the stylish set of the ladies’ hats, and quite the reverse in the provinces …’

  ‘Where they are always half a season, if not a whole season, behind the times, my lord.’

  George sat down in one of the armchairs scattered around his rooms as Frear started to lay out his evening clothes. ‘So that is why my mother is always so insistent on coming to town in the early summer. Not just the ball, and Ascot, but the hats. And the hats are not just for Ascot, but for all the year round, until the next Season.’

  ‘A woman,’ stated Frear, knowing that he was winning on all fronts, but all the same laying out his lordship’s silver costume with proper reverence, ‘can be out of fashion with her clothes, even two seasons behind, but not with her hats. Hats change quicker than any other item of clothing. Gentlemen’s hats too, if you notice. I have had to order you a whole new set, from the usual source. I mean, my lord, imagine if you, or your father, had not changed a few years back to the tighter, more curly brim? How would you have looked? Imagine if you had not changed from the curly brim to your present—’

  ‘I see what you mean, Frear,’ George interrupted staring ahead of him. ‘We would look cracking asses, as usual. I mean, really. It would be the talk of the clubs, would it not, to be going around in some fusty Chesterfield sort of outfit.’

  George found himself imagining the scene, his father and himself checking into their clubs wearing ghastly checked trousers with one of those straight coats and a topper. They would both look like his grandfather, or something. ‘Do you know,’ he went on, after a few minutes, ‘I am very grateful to you, Frear. You really have put me straight about a great deal.’ Frear made a deprecating sort of sound and breathed on the old-fashioned silvered evening pumps. ‘No, really, Frear. You have been most generous in your counsel, I see that. I understand London in quite a different way now. It keeps one up to the mark, stops one atrophying, and so on.’

  ‘No need to start indulging in any of the smart talk, though, my lord.’

  ‘You mean saying “too, too” every five seconds, Frear?’

  ‘Precisely, my lord. Smart talk, like hats, always dates one dreadfully. It is best avoided, really it is. From what I have seen, in the early days, looking after His Grace, clothes must be kept up to muster, but not language. Language must be a guiding rule, and it cannot be modish. It sticks, my lord. Smart talk sticks, and then it dates one. So. Now, are we ready for our bath?’

  George, who had taken Misty on his knee, a habit of his when he was much struck by a new and startling thought, put her down again and back in her basket.

  ‘Yes, Frear. Quite ready.’

  Somehow not even the thought of dancing with his mother’s lame duck, whatever her name was, the ugly little thing from Ireland, could now put him off London. In fact, by the time he climbed into his marble bath and lay back in the steam allowing Frear to wash his hair for him, George had quite made up his mind to stay in London after Ascot. That was how much Frear had impressed him with his little talk.

  ‘You are one in a million, Frear, really you are. One in a million.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, I know. Now is my lord aware that the Duchess wishes him to go to the ball dressed as Oberon, King of the Fairies?’

  George closed his eyes. Just when everything had seemed to be righting itself, too.

  ‘So that is what that silver stuff on the bed is meant to be?’

  ‘Happily my lord has the figure for it!’

  ‘But not the taste for it, Frear.’

  And George sighed as more soap, this time from his hair, found its way into his mouth.

  While George was enjoying his talk with the best valet in London, and his father, due to May’s insistence that he ‘send Frear to the boy’, was having to make do with an underling who only just managed to shave His Grace without cutting him, May herself was struggling to bath and change with only the help of a tweeny.

  ‘Do not fret yourself, Perkins, I am perfectly able to dress myself, and coif myself too. Just try to handle the button hook without skinning me, and if you have difficulty with the corseting, a boot in the back, as my old dresser used to say, is as good as a kipper for breakfast on tour!’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ Perkins smiled, weakly.

  Perkins, thought May, sighing inwardly, had a very weak smile as well as a fear of doing anything well. Happily, having loaned the estimable, irreplaceable Cropper to Miss Edith, May knew, from her acting and dancing and singing days, how to costume herself.

  Of course she would not look as good at Perkins’s hands as she would when Cropper was in attendance, and certainly not as relaxed, for five minutes of Perkins was enough to bring on a fit of the laudanums. And she could handle herself, but not her hair. Her hair would have to be finally finished by Cropper, and only Cropper. Cropper would have to fix her headdress into place, and Cropper would have to brush the final strands covering over the ‘mouse’ and pin, and pin the fine blond hair again. That May could not, and moreover would not, attempt to do.

  Normally the whole procedure of getting bathed and dressed seemed to take only minutes, or at any rate not more than an hour or so, but this evening, with Perkins wibbling about, dropping the button hook, breaking one of the laces on May’s brand new health corset, holding up her silk stockings to the light for such an age that it seemed to May at any rate that they might well have faded by the time she laid them out on the ottoman, it seemed to take for ever.

  ‘Perkins.’ May stared hard at her hands in a very pointed way, so as not to take in the broken string on the brand new health corset, and instead moved one of her large diamond rings so that it caught the light, first this way and then that. You will find another health corset just where you found the first one, and no need to fret yourself, we still have plenty of time to spare.’

  Of course they had nothing of the sort, but it would not help the situation if May pointed this out. It would only make Perkins panic, and the idea of Perkins panicking was even worse than the reality of Perkins think
ing she was maintaining her standards as well as Cropper.

  Once more May sighed inwardly, a heartfelt sigh that was even heavier than the first. She felt really very virtuous, if not saintly, for to lend one’s maid on the night of one’s ball to a poor Irish girl who tomorrow would have to be told the most dreadful news was, when all was said and done, quite a bit of a sacrifice, even if May did know how to dress herself, which, it had to be faced, not many duchesses did. She only hoped that when she saw Miss Edith, fresh from Cropper’s expert hands, they would all consider her little act of unselfishness entirely worthwhile.

  ‘No, Perkins, I said the health corset. That is not a health corset, in fact it is not even a corset, it is a – it is one of my oldest – no, do not fuss yourself. Possibly better if I lay everything out for myself, and you just stand behind me when I dress and try hard not to break the strings on this new health corset this time. No. The button hook, it turns this way, do you see? If you turn it that way you will wrench off the button.’ As Perkins did so, May half closed her eyes.

  ‘Oh dear, Your Grace, I really am ever so sorry.’

  ‘Yes, well, never mind. No, never mind, no really, please. It does not matter, please do not cry, Perkins, really. It is only a button on a boot. I am not wearing boots under my ball gown, I do assure you.’ May held up her evening shoes. ‘See? And there is no need to button them. The hook was for— I tell you what, once I am in my underpinnings why do we not wait for Cropper, and she can finish me off? No, please, do not fret yourself. You have poured the water in the bath really very nicely, no really. No, the temperature is perfectly fine, really. I like it on the cold side before a ball. One does not want to open a ball flush-faced, does one? Gives one quite the wrong air, I always think.’