The Daisy Club

by Charlotte Bingham

‘No, no, Freddie, no, Laura, no, Aurelia, no, Daisy, waitresses wear their caps at the front, not the back. At the front, to disguise and cover the hair.’

  ‘We don’t look very pretty with them at the front, though.’

  ‘That,’ said Jessica, ‘is, I think, the point. If you look too pretty no one will pay attention to the food and drink, or their fellow guests. As it is, I would advise reinforcement to your derrières: men often see waitresses as fair game – the black stockings, you know, reminds them of their mothers’ maids, I always think.’

  Daisy promptly tied her hat forward, low on her forehead, shortly followed, all too reluctantly, by the other three.

  Jessica gave Daisy an affectionate look. Out of the four of them, Daisy always had been the most amenable, the first to volunteer for everything, the first to put a log on the fire, or rush out into the winter weather and help dig up vegetables with Branscombe.

  ‘There, now off you all go, and be good enough to remember that you are waitresses, not debutantes. Keep your lips buttoned, and if anything untoward occurs, or you hear anything of interest, I beg you to report straight back to Mr Athlone, no one else.’

  A frisson of excitement ran through the four of them before they bolted through the hall doors and out to Freddie’s car, where they all squashed in.

  Jessica stared at them through the half-glassed doors. God help poor Guy with that lot in his house, but then, when it came to Guy Athlone, God did seem always to put in at least one oar to help him out of whatever corner he might have been backed into.

  She turned away, feeling glad that she was not going to the dinner, that she had been able to step aside from it, although sorry for Guy who had yet again been let down by caterers, alas, an all-too-frequent occurrence for bachelors who only spent Friday to Monday in the country.

  Jessica was so fond of Guy that if she had not been so busy in so many other directions she would have rolled up her sleeves and gone over to help him with his dinner party herself, but since the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Jessica, along with so many of her friends, had realised that the time had come to put into practice many of the contingency plans that they had only talked about up until then. ARP committee work took up all her free time.

  Besides, if she went over there to help out, or even as a guest, she knew that sure as eggs were eggs once the guests had gone, Guy would want to talk about a mutual friend of theirs. He would fulminate. He would be beside himself with pent-up fury over recent events, and who could blame him? Along with Guy, Jessica had known for some time now – and sometimes she wished to goodness that she had not known – that the friend, whom they naturally could not name, had reported back to the security services a conversation he had had with a leading member of Hitler’s government, a conversation which had made it quite clear that if Britain joined forces with Czechoslovakia, they could, together, defeat German ambitions. This, then, had been the time to act against Herr Hitler, but the benighted British government, in their infinite wisdom, had done nothing except bury their heads in their own weaselly ambitions, and pretend that the German threat would go away. And now, look! Shakespeare’s sceptered isle set in a silver sea was no longer a precious stone – more a blancmange wobbling on a plate. Why could not the few, the very few, who were not appeasers, why could they not have made their mark better? And why could only a few of them see what had to be done to prevent another war?

  She turned, sighing inwardly, enjoying a strange relief in going back to her lists, back to organising what to do in the event of an invasion. And then she sat down to write, personally, to each head of a household in Twistleton to ask, in the event of a declaration of war, how many evacuee families they thought they might be able to receive in their homes.

  Maude Beresford might once have had a secretary to open all her correspondence, but no longer. It was not just that taxes, the failure of farming, and many other monetary constrictions, had limited the number of servants that she could take on, but also that she was single, lived deep in the countryside, and hardly ever left home, all of which meant that she received very few letters, and no invitations, except occasionally to Scotland. The family still owned a lodge in the Scottish Highlands, where, sometimes, a distant relative, about to marry, would suddenly remember that Aunt Maude was their great-aunt, or their second cousin, or some such, and in the hopes of receiving a present by return, would send her an invitation.

  With Daisy gone for the evening, Maude felt quite able to enjoy herself in her own special way, taking on her lap the old photograph albums, all that she had left of her innocent youth, of the days before the Great War, when the eldest of her brothers was such a very keen photographer, and they were all made to dress up in fancy clothes, so that he could pose them in all sorts of amusing ways.

  Three of her four brothers had died in the Great War, and with the mix-ups that war brings, none of them were brought home to be buried in the family churchyard at Twistleton, the war memorial by the village crossroads being the only place where their names were recorded, together with their decorations. The last, poor Daisy’s father, had been killed in an aeroplane crash in 1920.

  She’d been the eldest in the family, and her favourite brother had inevitably been the youngest, Roderick.

  Ah, yes, there he was.

  So bonny always, so good, and so sweet-mannered, never a cross word, never a bad temper, he had been special to everyone. No one had wanted him to go to war, the last of the four boys. With two sons already dead, and one still fighting, their mother had done everything to prevent it, but he had gone, if only to prove to everyone that he, too, was a man. And he was killed on his first day – in the last week of the war.

  Of course it was no exaggeration to say that receiving that final telegram had effectively killed their mother.

  She had become like a walking graven image, until finally, in the winter of 1919, she had succumbed to pneumonia. And it had seemed to her only daughter that she had passed away with a sigh of something like contentment, to be buried alongside her husband in the grounds of the Hall.

  So it was that Maude – who had once been the merriest of children, only too willing to dash between one brother and the next, loving to be teased, the first to fall off her pony, or out of a tree, the first to start a bonfire, the first to learn to bicycle, to lead the way with buckets of water and hoses, jostling happily with the firemen, when a wing of the laundry house caught fire – had been left with one surviving brother, Raymond, who had married Daisy’s mother, only for both of them to be killed, not in a motor accident, but in an aeroplane flying to Deauville for the Friday to Monday, details of which she had carefully kept hidden from their surviving daughter, her only niece, Daisy.

  Between the two houses, Twistleton Hall and Twistleton Court, two single women had been left to bring up two little girls. With so much in common, it might have been expected that Maude Beresford and Jessica Valentyne would have had every reason to become firm friends, and yet they had barely been known to speak. It was as if, under the weight of such mutual sorrow, the two of them had been unable to face each other, dreading not the sharing of their burdens, but the doubling of them.

  Maude had a recurring dream of before the Great War. It was always the same. She was in a white dress, ribbons in her long, curly waist-length hair, and she was dashing round a corner, trying to get away from being chased by her brothers. She was always laughing, running ahead of them, before stopping and looking around her, whereupon she would see the landscape devoid of everything, of trees and shrubs, of flowers and fields, and then, turning to remark on it to her brothers, she would find no one there, and only the sound of the wind from the sea, that sea that was always so close, murmuring, threatening, howling, eventually drowning out the sound of the sobs that would finally wake her up.

  She set aside the photograph album, and looked around at her drawing room, with its faded Knole sofas, its large oil paintings, and its rugs of a hue that could barely now be made out. Her chair w
as always placed at a certain angle to the fire, which burnt winter and summer, for such was the height of the ceilings, there was much need of warmth. Once upon a time the room would have been filled with chatter, and laughter, and someone would have been playing the piano very softly, while someone else turned the pages. After dinner there would have been a recital of classical music, some talented guest, usually a girl, sitting down and playing; while at other times there would have been singing, too, and old eyes would have filled with discreet tears as a delicate young soprano voice sang about the last rose of summer fading away.

  When she was alone, it seemed to Maude that what had gone – everything – could come back again. She could fill the rooms with her family and friends, and have them back at her side, imagine what they were saying, hear their voices just as they had been – and just as they would still be now if they were alive – mellifluous and kind, sometimes anxious, but only for someone else, never for themselves. It was simply not done to think of oneself, which was why one said ‘one’ and not ‘I’. In those days the ego was so frowned upon, any form of boasting so shocking, that she honestly couldn’t remember any of her brothers even touching lightly on such facts as that they had just achieved a First at Oxford, or been picked for a rowing eight, or some such.

  Of course when it came to the horses it was something quite other, as it should be. Pride in one’s horses and their achievements was perfectly permissible, as was pride in breeding a winner, or a spanking pair of matching greys for going around the countryside. Dogs too, bred at the Hall, were a source of constant delight, and although nominally barred from nursery and bedroom, the sound of dogs’ paws scrabbling up the back stairs was a constant of every evening, and blind eyes were turned to lumps under eiderdowns, or the sound of pugs snoring less than discreetly beneath the blankets on the children’s beds.

  ‘I suppose it is wrong of one to think back in this way?’ Maude asked silently, as she stroked the head of her oldest pug, and stared into the still hot fire, her face turning a delicate pink.

  ‘I suppose it is, Trump?’ she asked yet another of her pugs, despite the fact that he was fast asleep. ‘But somehow I doubt it. After all I have no one else with whom to share memories, no one else to think about, no one else who would not be bored by such meanderings and reminiscences. No one would be interested, least of all our poor Daisy. She feels it terribly, living here, all alone with me. She does her best, but really, she is as absent when she is here, as she is absent tonight when she is not here at all.’

  Maude picked up another album. Quite her most precious and favourite of them all. A beautiful leather volume containing photographs of a certain young man whom she had loved with all her heart. Dearest Harry, how handsome he had been!

  Long before Aunt Maude had opened the first of her beloved photograph albums, Freddie and her guests had duly arrived, correctly attired as waitresses, at Longbridge Farm, the country home of Guy Athlone.

  Freddie, knowing the form, for she had once before had to stand in for a missing waitress at one of Mr Athlone’s dinner parties, went straight to the tradesmen’s entrance, and walked in, smartly followed by Daisy and Laura, with Aurelia tagging along last, because she had a horrid feeling that it was all going to be a bit what her mother always called infra dig, and she was terrified that one of her parents’ friends might be at the dinner, and recognise her, and it would get back to her parents that she was spending Friday to Monday, not, as she had told them, at a country ball, but dressed up as a waitress.

  The farmhouse kitchen was dauntingly empty, occupied only by a desultory-looking kitchen maid, and an old man who was flapping a tea towel at the smoke coming from the open fire, upon which was a spit turning, roasting what looked like half a cow. Freddie, who was used to just such primitive conditions at the Court, where she had helped out Aunt Jessica since she was tiny, and where the water was still drawn from a well, did not turn a hair, but went straight up to the old chap in his leather apron.

  ‘Hallo, Bob. I hear you’re in a bit of trouble, so we have come across to help out. Is Mr Athlone here, do you think?’

  ‘He’s through there,’ the old man told her, pushing a large carving fork into the side of the beef to see the colour of the juices that ran out, for despite the fact that the vast joint looked blackened to a cinder, it smelt wonderful. ‘In the Big Room, as they call it. You can have a gander at the placings in the dining room on your way. Twelve tonight, and eight tomorrow night, and Cook passed out in the wing from doing too little during the week, Mr Athlone says, and the caterers gone to help the Duchess of Who Knows Where, so it’s all ends to the middle, and no mistake.’

  Freddie paused, looking back at the others, eyebrows raised. Laura looked past her, interested only in seeing more of the house, which seemed to be long and rambling and made up of many previous buildings, not quite a proper house the way the Court, or the Hall, were, but nevertheless atmospheric, intriguing, with meandering corridors and uneven floors, the whole painted in warm colours. They passed, as instructed, through the dining room, which was beautifully laid with glass and silver, linen and lace, all placed upon long lace-edged cloths, in the French style. No formal portraits, though, only large silver-framed mirrors, perhaps to increase its proportions? Or perhaps, Laura suddenly thought, for some other reason? She frowned. Why would she think that?

  She did not have time to question herself before she was following Freddie down three or four steps into the largest, whitest room she had ever been in, filled with the largest whitest furniture she had ever seen – it must surely have been specially made for the room? At the farthest end, dominating the whole, on a raised platform, stood two very, very large shining pianos, placed back to back.

  All in all it was a room befitting a famous playwright, songwriter, and actor, and undoubtedly a room that would be greatly enhanced by other brilliant people, or even people who might find that they rapidly changed once they were in it, their conversation becoming faster and wittier, as befitted the place they were in – just as those who walk in hallowed places, churches and museums, find their voices dropping along with their eyes, taking on an awed demeanour in keeping with their surroundings.

  Guy Athlone, tall, elegant, dark-haired, arose from behind one of the pianos, and walked with what Freddie observed was almost self-conscious precision towards the new arrivals, while for her part Daisy could not help noting that his shoes were made of fine, black suede, which was so soigné, and that they looked really rather perfect as they moved – almost floated – across the thick white carpet.

  As he advanced towards his improvised waitresses for the evening, Guy himself found he was having a pretty hard time of it not to burst out laughing. Happily both his good manners, and his stage training, prevented his being so unkind, and yet gracious though it had been of Jessica Valentyne to offer him help, to be quite truthful, a less authentic gaggle of young waitresses he had yet to see.

  First of all there was, necessarily, because of their backgrounds, a general air of innocent amazement about them, so they looked a little like a bunch of startled fawns staring out from under their awkwardly tied waitresses’ hats. And then there was their air of sophisticated appreciation as they looked from him to their surroundings, their quick surreptitious glances appreciating everything around them in a way that professional waitresses would not, professionals finding, as they always did, one rich man’s house really very little different from another, the only thing of interest being their pay cheques.

  ‘Is that a Boudin, sir?’ one of them asked, after he had introduced himself to them.

  ‘I believe it is,’ he agreed. ‘Very much so. Do you like it?’

  Laura smiled.

  ‘Oh yes, very much. We have one at home rather the same,’ she told him, and immediately coloured as she realised, too late, from his look of mild astonishment, that she must have stepped out of turn talking about a painting, that this was not what was expected of a waitress.

  �
��Now, let me see, I must remember you correctly. So I will start again. Freddie Valentyne, I know, of course.’ Guy nodded at Freddie, and she smiled. ‘But – but you are Laura Hambleton? And you, Daisy Beresford? And finally, Aurelia Smith-Jones. Please correct me if I am wrong.’ After they had affirmed that he had remembered their names correctly, he continued. ‘Freddie here can show you the ropes, of course, since she has served at dinner before, but tonight we have an added excitement, I am afraid, and no, it is not royalty. Cook has done a vanishing act, fallen into a bottle and disappeared, so we only have old Mr Bob in the kitchen, and Edie who is only partially here, and by that I mean on this planet, and from Friday to Monday even less. So who is good at knowing what sauces go with what, and what plates go where, and not to serve the meat before the fish? If we can find any, that is,’ he concluded gaily.

  ‘We all are, Mr Athlone,’ Freddie told him, raising her head a little. ‘And what is more, we felt jolly sorry for you when we heard that you had been so let down by the catering people, and that they had absconded to help out at the Duchess of Charlbury’s masked ball.’

  ‘How very charming of you, but I am happy to tell you that revenge is indeed a dish best eaten cold – I happen to know that the dear Duchess never pays her bills, so, little do they know it, but the benighted caterers will be working for her tonight, not for shillings, not for pennies, but for nothing. Ah me, it is just a little bit sad, but as I understand it, nowadays everyone is let down by caterers. Caterers, like hairdressers and couturiers, and, well, just about everyone in power, know when to flex their muscles. Life is only really tolerable if one does everything oneself. Unfortunately, giving a dinner for a dozen people, and being the terribly famous Guy Athlone at one and the same time, is impossible, so when Miss Valentyne’s aunt, Jessica Valentyne, heard of my misfortune and offered me your services, I could hardly believe my luck. The only trouble being that at that precise moment I did at least think I had a cook in residence, but no.’ He lit a cigarette, took out a small aide-memoire from his inside pocket, and started to flick through it before reading out. ‘First course was, rumour has it, to be quails’ eggs in pastry baskets, followed by fillet of sole and asparagus in a prawn-flavoured sauce. The entrée is beef, with all the usual ghastly over-cooked English vegetables, and then Queen of Puddings.’ He looked up. ‘Has anyone here by any utterly brilliant chance ever made the lovely Queen of Puddings?’