The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  May scrubbed herself vigorously, watched by the far from estimable Perkins who now stood right down the other end of the room holding out a towel, as if she expected Her Grace to leap out of the bath like a gazelle and run down the room to snatch it from her trembling hands.

  Having rinsed herself, May stood up, climbed out of the bath, and held out her arms, her lips now chattering from the cold.

  ‘It is quite safe to bring the towel now, Perkins, if you would.’ Perkins hesitated. Finally, closing her eyes and giving vent to her frustration May barked, ‘Now!’

  Perkins ran to her, towel at the ready.

  ‘Good. Now, Perkins, run to the curling tongs and start to heat them. Cropper will be here any minute and she will be wondering what on earth I am doing still in my birthday suit.’

  As soon as Cropper arrived and saw Her Grace still in her underpinnings, Perkins behind her lacing her so slowly that Cropper could tell at once from Her Grace’s face that she was about to explode, she said, ‘Very well, Perkins, thank you, you may go.’

  Perkins went to the door, her feet trailing. Cropper gave the tweeny’s back the briefest of looks, and then she too barked, ‘Now!’

  Cropper looked at Her Grace. Cropper’s nimble fingers had Her Grace tightly laced by the time the door was shut, and they both started to laugh.

  ‘I had to pretend to be you, Cropper,’ May confided. ‘It was the only way. I had to fairly bark at Perkins finally, and then she did manage to hurry up, just a little.’

  ‘Lordy, Your Grace, Perkins is about as much use to herself, or anyone else for that matter, as a piece of burned suet. Dear oh dear. I only took her on here for the sake of her poor mother who was near to killing her with a carving knife, and that is the truth.’

  ‘Perhaps we should take her back to the country with us?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace, and perhaps not. Perkins is the sort that would faint at the sight of a cow.’

  ‘Oh, well. Now tell me – how is Miss Edith?’

  There was a pause as Cropper held the curling tongs up to her face to feel the temperature, and then put them away from her, and then took them up again, and then away again, until finally her upper lip told her what she wanted to know, that they were quite ready for her ladyship’s hair.

  ‘I think Your Grace will be satisfied. I have sat her on a travelling rug in the middle of her room and told her not to move until I come back. She is to stay as still as a dead leaf until you have seen her.’

  ‘Of course, in that gown, it is truly difficult to sit, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Your Grace, I arranged her dress all around her. It is magnificent. What a bit of luck, Your Grace, to find that, just when you wanted something so quick. That is luck when you need it, it truly is.’

  Finally, in half the time that it had taken Perkins to break the strings on the health corset and fill the bath with tepid water, not to mention rip a button off one of May’s kid walking boots, Cropper had the Duchess ready for her ball.

  The dress was heavily draped at the top, swathed with lace, the sleeves covering the upper arms draped and caught at intervals so that they looked like part of the top. Caught up under the bust and falling from it was a long silken cord ending with a tassel, and under the high bust the dress was very fitted, in contrast to the sleeves and top. From there it fell in silken folds over the hips, becoming elaborate – a swirling skirt which when the wearer was walking could also be seen to have a train at the back.

  All in all, and in pale yellow, it was both feminine and dramatic.

  ‘The tiara is so heavy, I always forget,’ May murmured, ‘just how heavy diamonds can be.’

  ‘Your Grace has never looked lovelier.’

  Cropper always said that. It was part of a ritual, and it was most kind, but it was a little like madame est servi! coming from a French housekeeper; it was customary, and had nothing to do with how May was actually looking. Even so, it was nice.

  ‘Lead the way to the debutante, Cropper,’ May commanded, very much the duchess. ‘She is meant to be the Empress Eugénie, and I am meant to be the Empress Josephine, so we shall surely be quite a powerful duo!’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. I will walk ahead of you, if you don’t mind. Make sure she’s not been up to mischief in my absence.’

  Cropper hurried on ahead to Edith’s suite, so that by the time May arrived she had her charge standing up beautifully straight, the diamond stars in her hair showing up the auburn lights, and her dress spread out behind her. Her gloved hands held a fan, naturally, and Cropper had tied her dance card to her wrist, ready for the ball.

  May, having been all too flustered by her own preparations, was half dreading what she should see. After all, it was quite possible that the dress she had found for Edith to wear was unsuitable, or unflattering, so she was far from expecting what she was presented with when she rounded the corner of the double doors leading into her house guest’s rooms.

  It would have been difficult for a more phlegmatic character than May not to have smiled with delight when she saw Miss Edith O’Connor that night. Possibly Mr Sargent’s skill with brushes and paint on canvas could do justice to the glow of her dark hair, to the creamy skin set off by the beautiful materials. The diamonds in her hair looked so thoroughly at home that had she not possessed such fine eyes the onlooker might have gazed at the stars in her hair rather than those in her eyes. She looked beautiful, and she knew it.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ May told her. ‘Follow me down to the drawing room where the gentlemen are waiting for us.’

  Edith, although well schooled by now in the art of entering a drawing room in evening dress, found her heart beating excitedly. She had never felt so pretty, or so warmed. She had never received such attentions, such generosity. Her mama was kind enough, and Minnie the same, but they had never taken such trouble over her, or encouraged her to think of herself as in any way a beauty, in fact far from it. Her mama had encouraged her to make the best of herself, but the underlying message was always that she would never be the beauty her mother was and so making the best of herself was all she could do.

  And yet here she was now, following the Duchess of Wokingham down the grand marble staircase of Wokingham House and through the series of great double doors to be greeted by the Duke and his son.

  In the drawing room, George was feeling more relaxed than he had ever done in London. Frear had made him understand, once and for all, just how important London and the Season really were; how one could make a cracking ass of oneself if one did not listen to one’s mother. One did not have to go round saying “too, too” or anything of that nature, but one did have to come up for the Season. It was just one of those things. Never mind the Park was dull and full of the kinds of girls that either bored him or frightened him to death, it had to be done. Never mind that he was going to have to lead out this ugly duckling from Ireland, he would do it. From now on, thanks to Frear, he would do it, and do his best to do it properly.

  ‘Ah, George. John, dearest. I do not think either of you have met Miss Edith O’Connor, have you?’

  The Duke and his son turned polite eyes towards the Duchess and her young house guest. George’s jaw dropped when he saw the ugly duckling from Ireland. In fact, May was only too happy to see, not only did his jaw drop at the sight of Miss Edith O’Connor in her sumptuous dress with diamond stars in her hair, but his eyes took on the stare of someone who has just been struck by lightning.

  With proper humour May introduced them.

  ‘Oberon, King of the Fairies, meet the Empress Eugénie.’

  Edith dropped into a full and beautiful curtsy, a curtsy of which poor Lady Devenish would have been immensely proud and approving. The two men bowed. They all stared for a second or two, not Edith of course, but May at the men and the men at Edith.

  ‘I say, George, you had better put your name in Miss O’Connor’s card while you can. There will not be a space anywhere as soon as the other guests arrive,’ his father mur
mured, smiling approvingly. He did not like coming to London either, but when he saw his wife in her tiara and young gels like Miss Edith looking as fresh and beautiful as a bunch of flowers, well, there was no doubt about it, the journey did seem worthwhile.

  ‘Miss O’Connor – or rather I should say Empress – would you mind leading off the dance with me, after the King and Queen and the parents, that is? Would you mind awfully?’

  Edith smiled and George saw with gratitude that she had really pretty small white teeth.

  ‘Would you like to write your name, Your Majesty?’

  George bent his dark head. She had such a pretty voice! Just a little Irish lilt to it, and nothing wrong with that. He wrote CORDREY and then in brackets Oberon beside the first dance, and then quickly, a few numbers later, he wrote CORDREY again. Only two dances allowed, and to ask for that was, they both knew, just a little shocking!

  If anyone had told George this morning, when he was down in the dumps and thinking that only Misty was going to give him any pleasure while in wretched London, that he would have been walking on air by dinner time, he would not have believed them.

  ‘May I take you in to dinner, too, Miss O’Connor? Please say I may?’

  ‘No, George, you may not,’ his mother instructed him, overhearing. ‘I am sorry to tell you but you are to take the Countess of Evesham in to dinner.’

  George groaned under his breath, and Edith smiled at him.

  She was saying nothing more. She did not have to. For the first time in her life she knew that she was looking beautiful. She did not have to glance in the old silver-backed mirrors that were placed around the damask-walled room for confirmation, she had only to look into the Marquis of Cordrey’s blue eyes.

  May smiled at John and he smiled back at his wife, for they had both noticed the moment.

  ‘Well, well,’ said her husband. ‘You certainly have transformed your ugly duckling, my dearest heart.’

  ‘Had I told George that she was a beauty he would have gone quite the other way,’ May said, laughing and fanning herself as they went to the top of the room to prepare to greet their guests, whose carriages they could hear even now arriving as the flunkeys in the great hall below flung open the doors. ‘But telling him she was plain and unfortunate and making sure she was far from it when I brought her up to you, well, was it not better, after all?’

  ‘You are perfect,’ sighed John. ‘But then I always knew that. The first time I saw you, I said you were perfect, and that was from the other side of the footlights too. Good eye for a horse, good eye for a girl, it runs in the family, I always think.’

  May forbore to say that something must have gone sadly wrong with his father, in the light of the old duchess, but instead said, ‘I think that Stilley Street will be beckoning very soon, do you not, John? I have that feeling. And if it does, will they have your approval?’

  ‘If she is as good as she is beautiful, which I am sure, knowing you, that she is, why not? There is good blood there, on her mother’s side, and a bit of Celtic never did anyone any harm.’

  ‘Precisely my feelings, John … Good evening, good evening.’

  They began to greet each of their dinner guests, who were now queueing up the stairs, being announced, moving forward slowly and properly.

  ‘Ah, Stilley Street, our bridal suite …’

  For a second they glanced at each other, between greetings, and then they smiled. Just the sound of that address took them back to those wonderful afternoons of making love, and burning crumpets, and doing all those silly things that lovers rejoice to do, which stay in the mind for ever.

  ‘It’s all ahead of them …’

  The Duke was dressed as one of his ancestors, very handsome in a white wig and white stockings, and an old velvet gold-embroidered jacket with frothing lace under his chin and at his wrists. He felt very attractive until he sat down and his lace kept getting into the way of his eating.

  ‘Glad fashion has changed,’ he told the lady on his right, who happened to be the Queen. ‘Can’t keep the lace out of me hors d’oeuvres.’

  Lower down the table Daisy was having a fine time seated between George and young Captain Barrymore. She knew, regretfully, that it was her duty to charm Captain Barrymore, but no more, and that being so she charmed him most effectively, right through dinner, and into the ballroom. In fact Daisy charmed both young men until, despite her being of an age to have given birth to both of them, they finally parted from her in the ballroom with vague feelings of regret. When an older woman sets out to charm a younger man, he tends to stay charmed, but when Daisy set out to charm a younger man he tended to stay mesmerised.

  ‘I only wish that I could open the ball with you,’ George told her, not meaning it, since he was well aware that he was promised to Miss O’Connor, and yet meaning it too, because being with Daisy made him feel a hundred times more confident than being with someone his own age.

  ‘You do not at all,’ Daisy told him. ‘Besides, I am, as always, promised to the Duke of Connerton.’ The expression in her eyes was so grave and at the same time so falsely innocent that George began to laugh. ‘I know,’ Daisy agreed, and she fanned herself, smiling. ‘But there, someone has to take him on!’

  To Captain Barrymore Fortescue, whom she hardly knew of course, she said, ‘I know just the person who will not be embarrassed by your height, Captain Fortescue.’

  This was just a little squashing, but since the young man was so handsome as to be almost incredible, and she knew he was all too full of his own charms, and had a reputation with the ladies, Daisy felt quite safe.

  ‘I had no idea that my height was embarrassing,’ the young captain protested.

  ‘But of course you have. Most gels will get a crick in their necks just looking at you, or trying to look at you. You are far too tall, and that being so I will have to find you a gel who will not mind your being such a beanpole. Really, Captain, you are not so much a dancing partner as a liability, particularly now that you are dressed as the Prince Regent. In those tall heels I want to become a woodsman and cut you down.’ Daisy saw with satisfaction that, of a sudden, the young captain looked just that, very much a young captain, so she turned, and catching sight of her soon to be former protégée, Miss Sarah Hartley Lambert, she beckoned her over.

  ‘Miss Hartley Lambert, allow me to introduce Captain Barrymore Fortescue to you. Thanks to his costume and his high-heeled shoes the poor fellow, as you can see, Miss Hartley Lambert, has quite outgrown himself, but I know you will allow him to put his name in your card for the first waltz.’

  Daisy gazed from one to the other of these two impossibly tall people with such a sense of relief that she felt quite faint, and she was suddenly glad that she was not to chaperon anyone ever again. It was really too much, and not worth the candle – worth nothing at all, finally, because even when you brought about a successful match, just as in Shakespeare, everyone thought it was really of their own volition, and no-one was grateful, and if you failed, well, everyone was set against you for the rest of their lives. So, no, she was all too thankful to be stopping.

  And when, a few minutes later, she was led on to the floor by the Duke of Connerton, she could not wait for her dancing days to be over too. But, and here was the joy, with her last Season in sight, with the door closing on her reign as a great personality of her day, with retirement from all giddy nonsense hovering on the horizon, she had at last, with one last and final flourish, found Miss Hartley Lambert someone who did not make her feel as if she were a lamp post.

  The King was leading the Duchess onto the floor, the Duke was leading out the Queen, and the orchestra was beginning a stately and beautiful waltz. Soon it would all be over for her, but not, she hoped, for all these beautiful young people. Not for George, now dancing with Edith O’Connor, not for Phyllis dancing with Edwin Vessey, not for any of these golden couples circling to what seemed to Daisy to be a heartbreakingly slow waltz, as if – well, as if it were not just her last wal
tz, but theirs too.

  Daisy turned away from the thought. She would have none of that, and besides, the Duke of Connerton was treading on her foot, and it was difficult to be sad when someone had just landed right in the middle of one of one’s best silver-embroidered shoes.

  She looked down at her foot as they both paused. She had last worn these slippers for just such a ball, and someone had done exactly the same thing, trodden right in the middle of one of them. She started to waltz again, and then she started to laugh.

  ‘My dear, I am so sorry.’

  ‘I know, Dukey, I know, but you need not be, I assure you.’ She continued to laugh. ‘You know how it is! I suddenly remembered that the last person who trod on one of these shoes was you – at a costume ball in 1899!’

  The Duke smiled. He never laughed, but he did love Daisy, always had.

  Meanwhile Sarah was saying to Captain Barrymore Fortescue, tongue in cheek, ‘I am so glad to only have one dance with you, Captain Fortescue.’

  He was shocked, she could see that, and stared down at her with mixed feelings while she laughed and waved her fan about her face, mocking his embarrassment, knowing him for what he was, a ladies’ man and a rogue.

  ‘Why would you be so glad, Miss Hartley Lambert? I must confess to being hurt at the very idea.’

  ‘I am glad because you have such a very bad reputation, Captain. Being American, I only like tall, upstanding young men, preferably with Puritan ancestors who sailed to the New World on the Mayflower.’

  Sarah was being partly ironical, and partly truthful. She had heard all about Captain Barrymore Fortescue from Corkie, her maid. She knew, as most people did apparently, all about his affair with Edith’s mother, and she wanted none of him, as a consequence of which, she could appreciate at once, he was instantaneously interested in her, as was always the way with a ladies’ man.

  ‘Miss Hartley Lambert, I know I am not what I should be, that I have not been as I should have been, but I do assure you that the events of the past weeks have brought me to my knees, as it were. I have been badly burned. My feelings for another, whom I imagined I loved, have been quite overturned, and I realise now what a cracking ass I made of myself, and how conceited and foolish I was to think that I could – well, suffice it to say that I have vowed to turn over a new leaf, and try to become the kind of person who, if not exactly the kind of Puritan to which you refer will be as near as dammit – sorry, as near as possible – a better person. I want to be good now, I know. For the first time I have had my heart broken, and I would hate that to ever happen again. I have come very near to causing terrible hurt. Too near.’