The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Royalty had been present and led off the ball, which had been a triumph of jewels and costumes. The papers had written of the thousands spent on jewelled designs from the past, but most important of all, more important than anything else in the whole world, George had fallen in love. And Edith had fallen in love, and their second dance together might have been an assignation in the conservatory so apparent had been their attraction.

  Cropper had done really very well by the young gel. Not even May, who was used to Cropper’s genius at transformation, would have recognised in Edith, with her shining hair, her tiny waist, above all her glowing look, the really rather sad creature that had first come to see May to talk about her mother. Gone was the awkwardness that so often characterised those that had been told they were not beautiful, gone the feeling that she was an ‘also ran’, a ‘no hoper’ someone who was just marking time until she could return to Ireland and her horses and dogs, and in their place had arrived an undoubted beauty. Very well, her profile would never be classical, but frankly May thought a tip-tilted nose was really very appealing, and of course her eyes were quite magnificent, and they, more than the nose, would always be a woman’s centrepiece.

  Thinking on all this May made a note to make sure some of the flowers that were arriving found their way not to hospitals but to Cropper’s room. Not that she would appreciate them, Cropper did not appreciate flowers in bedrooms, but she would enjoy the compliment.

  ‘Harper!’ May called for her travelling maid. ‘Harper! Lay out my new blue coat and skirt with the matching hat and ostrich plumes, would you, please?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘We are going to Kensington this morning, Harper. That will be an adventure for you, will it not?’

  ‘Kensington?’ Harper’s jaw dropped down to her lace-up black shoes. ‘Whatever for? Why should we be going to Kensington, Your Grace?’

  ‘I have to see an old friend, Harper. He is alas now a widower, and it is very sad indeed, so I have to go and see him. He is my godfather, of sorts.’

  ‘But Kensington, Your Grace! I mean to say, I have a cousin who lives in Kensington!’

  ‘I dare say, Harper. That does not mean that persons such as myself cannot visit, does it?’

  ‘Well, no, Your Grace, of course not. She is a very nice lady, now you ask, which you did not, but – does Cropper know of this?’

  ‘Cropper? No, Harper, Cropper does not know of this, and nor should she. It would not do to shock Cropper too much, after the success of the ball. And she will no doubt be having her hands full, very soon.’

  May smiled to herself as she waited for Harper to lay out her clothes. Very soon, she imagined, Cropper would be dancing attendance on young Edith, dressing her hair for a Westminster wedding.

  ‘I should imagine that Your Grace will not be wanting to take the carriage to Kensington? Make too much display, would it not, Your Grace?’

  May thought for a second. ‘No, we will take a hansom cab. I say, Harps, what an adventure!’ May gave a girlish laugh. ‘I have not taken a hansom cab for such a while.’

  ‘And no more have I,’ said Harper, with some feeling. ‘I hope I like it.’

  May sighed. There was Harper, at it again, me, me, me, and nothing else but me.

  ‘I was sick once in a hansom, Your Grace.’

  Quite honestly, May thought to herself, if Harper had not been a dresser in the theatre, if she had not been her personal maid at the Gaiety and all that, she could never have tolerated her. As it was she had to, and as it was, Harper would have to tolerate May, hansom and all.

  ‘You dare be sick in the hansom, Harper, and I will drop the curtain on you for ever.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  Looking down from his sparsely furnished first floor drawing room Herbert was delighted to spot a hansom cab drawing up. This would be his May all over, no clattering out to Kensington in a blooming great family coach with four horses drawing it, but a discreet hansom drawing up outside his house. She would have known, May would, that it would draw too much attention to Herbert’s new house if a great coach with the family coat of arms drew up outside, and he hardly moved in except for a few sticks of furniture that had been in store on the other side of the river, and a bed of course.

  ‘Jepson!’ Herbert called down to his manservant, also newly arrived from York. ‘Jepson, to the front door, please. The Duchess is here.’

  The door opened before she could ring the bell. May smiled. ‘Good morning, Jepson. Good to see you in London, I am sure. Stay here, Harper.’ May nodded at a small hall chair. ‘Stay here and keep an eye on’ – with a look around the bare hall and a laugh – ‘on nothing at all!’

  They all laughed at this.

  Jepson, who had been Herbert’s manservant since he was knee high to a grasshopper, had known May since she was far from being a duchess. Now they looked at each other afresh, taking in the changes in hair and faces since last seen.

  ‘Lead the way, Jepson,’ the Duchess told him. ‘Lead the way to dear Mr Forrester.’

  Up the stairs she fairly sprang after Jepson, in as good and happy a mood as she had ever been, and only just remembering in time, as she reached the turn of the stairs, that poor Herbert Forrester was in mourning, and any unseemly display of joy and merriment would be quite out of place.

  ‘May.’ Herbert bent over her hand. ‘Thank you for your condolence letter. Brief and to the point, and not bringing in your own losses, whatever they may have been, which so many condolence letters see fit to do. I well remember the day my poor mother was taken from us … Oh, dear, as if a person in mourning wants to hear about someone else’s loss! Why, to look at a pile of condolence letters you would honestly think that the whole world was dead.’

  They both laughed, and May was relieved that Herbert could be so very honest, for she could not help also feeling inwardly shocked at the sad and much aged appearance of her dear old friend.

  Not wanting to dwell on the changes in him, May turned quickly on her heel and walked off down the room, exclaiming at the pretty proportions and wondering what Herbert might make of it, for, as she well knew from Jane, Herbert had always left ‘that sort of thing’ to his much loved wife.

  ‘My, but what a pretty room this is.’

  ‘I know, May. As a matter of fact, as I expect you appreciate, this is a very pretty house. They are both pretty houses, but, May, what am I, a poor widower, with only money and no taste, to do with them? If I call in someone to help me whom I do not know, it will be murder. And after I thought about it last night I realised I will be sure to choose the wrong person, someone with no taste, who will want to put Japanese prints and peacock feathers everywhere. Which is why I called you in, young May. To help out your poor old Herbert Forrester …’

  May smiled at that. Herbert was a wise old thing; he knew that duchess though she was May still loved being called ‘young May’. It took them both back to that wonderful day when Mr Herbert Forrester arrived up in the convent and May was brought into the nuns’ parlour and everyone could see that this young and beautiful girl – thank heavens that she had been beautiful – was going to be rescued by the rich and affable Mr Forrester.

  ‘I thought you wrote to me because you wanted to see your old friend.’

  ‘I wanted you to help your old friend. I have the cheque book and you have the taste, I should have thought. Oh, May, I have gone too far, haven’t I? Why did I buy two houses?’

  ‘For a very good reason.’ May put her head to one side.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Something that will make itself known to us in due course, I dare say. So, one is to sell, and one is to keep. Needs must make them very different then, dear old friend.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I should like to sell the one next door, as you may imagine, to someone convivial, someone who will enjoy proximity, but not prove to be inquisitive and a nuisance. And while I am on this subject, May, now I am a widower I find I am fed to the teeth, if you will
forgive the expression, with nosey young maids staring at my plate to see if I have “finished up”, or creeping down the corridors in front of me waving feather dusters the moment I appear, or frowning at the smell of my cigars. So, I have been thinking I will only have male servants.’

  ‘Very sensible. They will not have ambitions, which is always good. And you, what are you going to do?’

  May turned and faced Herbert, sensing immediately that he had the look of a traveller in his eye.

  ‘I am going to go abroad, to that German spa that is so fashionable, and then on to the South of France, and then back here. I shall be gone only a short time.’

  ‘That is a perfectly splendid idea,’ May told him, nodding, although in reality her mind was already far away, as women’s minds are liable to be, trotting off towards damasks and cool linens, beautiful mahogany furniture and fine ornaments; everything, in fact, that had to do with the house.

  ‘You are as good as you are beautiful, May love, and I have always said so.’

  ‘Now you go too far,’ May murmured. And then, leaning forward, she said, ‘Now – I have such exciting news! I do believe that George has fallen in love with my dear friend Emily O’Connor’s daughter.’

  ‘Fancy!’ Herbert’s heart contracted a little. Everyone was in love. The whole world was in love, and he was still in love, but his love was not here, or there, but somewhere above him, looking down. Oh, Jane! How much he missed her.

  ‘It is good news, is it not, Mr Forrester?’

  ‘It is perfectly splendid news, perfectly splendid, and we shall all be very happy to dance at their wedding, I am sure. I only wish …’ He stopped, and looked away.

  ‘The start of the Little Season,’ May continued, pretending not to notice the tears in his eyes. ‘Yes, I think the Little Season, as some now call it, will be a good time for them to marry. George has not proposed yet, but from the look in his eye it will not be long before he does.’

  ‘Wait until I return from my travels, will you?’

  ‘Why, it would be impossible not to do so!’

  Herbert kissed May’s gloved hand once more, or at least he bent low over it. ‘Very well, Duchess love, so for Herbert it will be the spa and then France, and then back here for an autumn wedding.’

  ‘Exactly so.’ This time it was May who leaned forward and kissed her old guardian on the cheek. ‘Go tomorrow, but come back as soon as you wish. And do not forget that if you are not happy with my choices, well, we can change it all again.’

  Herbert paused. ‘I will tell you something, our May, something for which I have a hankering, in which my Jane would never indulge me. I do have a hankering for one of those cupboards from Liberty with the silver adornments, you know? Big square silver decorations on them, they have. I quite fancy one of those.’

  May hesitated. She knew precisely the sort of cupboard Herbert was describing; a writer friend of the Wokinghams had just such a one. She would not have chosen it for herself, not in a million years, but when all was said and done it was not her house, and seeing the look of longing in Herbert’s eyes, the pressed-against-the-window look of a small boy who is watching a train set in the display but knows that he will never be allowed the toy, she smiled.

  ‘I know just the one! We shall start with that, dear old friend. We shall start with your cupboard and work round it, shall we?’

  ‘Do you think, our May?’

  ‘Oh, I do. We will make a feature of your cupboard.’ She turned and looked round the room. ‘Here, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice.’

  May turned back to her dear Herbert Forrester and for a few satisfying seconds she was quite sure that he had colour in his cheeks, that he looked fuller, and taller, and that at the idea of the cupboard with the great silver squares on it, and the great silver buckles at its centre, his newly stooped shoulders had straightened a little again.

  Daisy had enjoyed the Wokingham ball perhaps more than she had enjoyed any ball for many a long Season. There was no doubt but that the Duchess had been very clever to seat her next to Captain Barrymore Fortescue. It was to make clear the fact, obviously, that he was now a reformed character. Indeed, he could talk of nothing but how wretched Lady Emily had made him feel. The fact that he felt safe to do so was, she supposed, really rather flattering, and yet it was annoying too, because really Daisy was never interested in other women, let alone another woman who had charmed this handsome young man.

  ‘Yes, but now you must stop feeling this pain, and open the doors of your heart to someone else,’ Daisy ordered him within a very few minutes.

  It was absurd, of course. All love affairs now, to Daisy, seemed just a little absurd, all involvements of the heart the same. Yet, staring into the deep, dark brown eyes of the incredibly handsome Captain Barrymore Fortescue, Daisy had started to feel just a trifle sympathetic towards Lady Emily, for all that she had never liked her, even when she was young.

  It would have been too easy to entrap him, Daisy realised, staring at the ceiling as Jenkins fussed around her with her hot chocolate – ever a favourite for the Countess in the morning – and murmured some nonsense about a disaster in Ireland, and Lady Emily’s house razed to the ground, and so on. (Nothing was truly so surprising when it came to Ireland, really.) Quickly dismissing any idea of pretending shock at the news, Daisy continued to stare up at the ceiling high above.

  She was aware of the change that had taken place in her, Daisy, the great beauty, the person for whom people stood on chairs just to catch a glimpse of her beautiful face. The change that had come about in her had everything to do with a kind of growing fatigue, but also a strange contentment, as if, socially, she had fought the good fight, and had now finished her course.

  In the old days of course she would have given Captain Barrymore Fortescue to understand that it was perfectly in order for him to call on her for ‘tea in the library’. That was how it had always been termed. ‘Tea in the library.’ And then of course when the ardent young men did call, the servants would all be out, tout d’un coup. There would, of a sudden, be only a sleepy afternoon hall boy to let in one of these same ardent young men, and ‘tea’ would indeed be in the library, and my lady in her tea gown, draping herself, gracefully and discreetly, across a chaise-longue. After some very pleasant diversions between caller and hostess there would indeed be ‘tea’, but only after an interlude of passionate lovemaking.

  Young male visitors who called at teatime had to earn their eclairs, Daisy was glad to remember.

  It had been a perfectly beautiful way of going on, but it was only a way of going on, it was not a way of life, as Daisy would always have been the first to admit. Her generation had always understood that ‘love’ was a diversion, not a marital requirement. Once married a woman could choose her own way of going on, her own pleasures, and her husband, as discreet as herself if he were sensible, would do as she did, and never dream of being around their London house at teatime. It had not been known. Husbands went elsewhere during the Season, to St John’s Wood perhaps, or to another address, similar to his own, to have ‘tea’ with another married woman who needed to be diverted, just like his wife.

  In this way the status quo was observed and the boat never rocked. It was best; and of course it meant that the name continued, because the children were conceived with proper blood lines, and had parents who did not have silly ideas about ‘love’ but recognised that first they had to do their duty and have children, and only after that could they pleasure themselves, as much or as often as they wished, always providing they did not make a scandal.

  Oh, no, it was the best way, by far the best way. Daisy sighed, quite loudly, so that Jenkins looked round suddenly, obviously forgetting that she was meant to be too busy to listen to Daisy.

  Now, however, Daisy sensed that there was trouble afoot among the young. It was not just the tango clubs and the skating rinks and all those other shocking elements that had come into play, but that the young nowadays
seemed more ardent, much more sincere, less aware of the rules of how to go on, even to think that love and marriage went together, which, it had to be faced, it had never, ever done, at least not for long.

  ‘Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, my lady?’

  ‘I think I have found the answer to our problem with Miss Hartley Lambert.’

  ‘Yes, my lady. Well, there is often a way out of the knottiest maze if we think of it, my lady. A thin thread that will lead us to a new dawn, a guide from above—’

  ‘Yes, Jenkins,’ Daisy snapped, interrupting, for really she had been too late to bed to take too many more of Jenkins’s wretched bromides, or old saws, or whatever they were that she was forever spouting. ‘The thing is, Jenkins, Captain Barrymore Fortescue, a very handsome younger son of an earl, is going loose, as they say, and I really think he would be just ve thing for Miss Sarah.’

  ‘But Miss Hartley Lambert is about to return to the United States of America, I understand from the grapevine, my lady.’

  They both knew what the ‘grapevine’ was, and also that Jenkins was always the first to hear anything on it, for the simple reason that she had been around long enough to be known as both a source for the usual river of gossip that the Season generated, its sometime tributary and, on a bad day, the mouth that disgorges itself finally into the sea.

  ‘What!’

  Daisy sprang out of bed, throwing aside the monogrammed linen sheets with a force that threw up a strange powdery dust into the summer sunshine that was beaming in from under the raised holland blinds.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Daisy could swear that Jenkins was almost smiling. As a matter of fact, on their bad days Daisy could always imagine Jenkins almost smiling, particularly when Daisy had her head chopped off and held up to the delighted crowd, Jenkins, in Daisy’s imagination, would be in the centre of it all, smiling delightedly.