The Daisy Club Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Dedication

  The Daisy Club

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  www.rbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2009 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Charlotte Bingham 2009

  Charlotte Bingham has asserted her right under the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact,

  any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9780593061480

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Also by the Author

  CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS

  LUCINDA

  CORONET AMONG THE GRASS

  THE BUSINESS

  IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW

  STARDUST

  NANNY

  CHANGE OF HEART

  GRAND AFFAIR

  LOVE SONG

  THE KISSING GARDEN

  THE BLUE NOTE

  SUMMERTIME

  DISTANT MUSIC

  THE MAGIC HOUR

  FRIDAY'S GIRL

  OUT OF THE BLUE

  IN DISTANT FIELDS

  THE WHITE MARRIAGE

  GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART

  THE ENCHANTED

  THE LAND OF SUMMER

  THE DAISY CLUB

  The Belgravia series

  BELGRAVIA

  COUNTRY LIFE

  AT HOME

  BY INVITATION

  The Nightingale series

  TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE

  THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS

  The Debutantes series

  DEBUTANTES

  THE SEASON

  The Eden series

  DAUGHTERS OF EDEN

  THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS

  The Bexham trilogy

  THE CHESTNUT TREE

  THE WIND OFF THE SEA

  THE MOON AT MIDNIGHT

  Novels with Terence Brady

  VICTORIA

  VICTORIA AND COMPANY

  ROSE'S STORY

  YES HONESTLY

  Television Drama Series with Terence Brady

  TAKE THREE GIRLS

  UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

  THOMAS AND SARAH

  NANNY

  FOREVER GREEN

  Television Comedy Series with Terence Brady

  NO HONESTLY

  YES HONESTLY

  PIG IN THE MIDDLE

  OH MADELINE! (USA)

  FATHER MATTHEW'S DAUGHTER

  Television Plays with Terence Brady

  MAKING THE PLAY

  SUCH A SMALL WORLD

  ONE OF THE FAMILY

  Films with Terence Brady

  LOVE WITH A PERFECT STRANGER

  MAGIC MOMENT

  Stage Plays with Terence Brady

  I WISH I WISH

  THE SHELL SEEKERS

  (adaptation from the novel by Rosamunde Pilcher)

  BELOW STAIRS

  For more information on Charlotte Bingham and her books,

  see her website at www.charlottebingham.com

  This book is dedicated to those joyous, life-enhancing beings who value friendship and loyalty. May their shadows never grow less and flowers grow beneath their feet.

  Charlotte Bingham

  THE DAISY CLUB

  BANTAM PRESS

  LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG

  THIS NOVEL BEGINS IN ENGLAND

  IN THE AUTUMN OF 1938

  Prologue

  The sea can still be heard in the distance, and the wind of course, howling; sometimes in despair at what had happened in that much loved place, sometimes murmuring quietly, perhaps whispering about the past, stories and secrets that only those who had been there would know. Occasionally a door can be heard banging, not noisily so much as a little hopelessly, an intermittent sound, as if it is calling to someone to come and shut it, as a child might call in the dark of the night: ‘Is anyone there?’

  There is no one there. There are no eyes looking or ears listening behind their brave stone walls, although there is some flowered material at one window, and one still has a faded blue front door, and another some broken flower pots beside the back door, and further along there are the heads of flowers among the swaying grass, perhaps sown there long ago, in the hope of better times to come.

  Now it seems that with the warmer weather that optimism might not be misplaced, that the wind from the sea, having moved to a soft warming zephyr, is at last welcoming; and the wild flowers in the meadows, having overtaken the last signs of spring, are bending their heads towards the calm of the barely moving blue sea that lies between the two cliffs ahead.

  Someone appears at the foot of the meadows, standing at first quite still, seemingly immovable, framed by the view, perhaps watching intently, then all of a sudden he waves and beckons to the figures he can begin to see arriving above him, figures which appear at first only as dots of colour among the long grass, until at last they become people, laughing and talking, the men in jerseys and jackets struggling with rugs and picnic baskets, the women walking ahead of them, their headscarves fluttering in the warm breeze.

  Once they arrive by his side it rapidly becomes apparent that this is to be a joyous day of
laughter and chatter, as picnic rugs are spread out, and food and drink produced from a mix of old-fashioned leather picnic sets, and straw baskets made pale by time and use. A day full of gaiety, but gradually lessening in volume as the talk subsides, and finally only one voice is heard – and with it comes the certainty of victory.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  The silence in the dining room was such that a piece of thistledown falling on to the carpet would have created a stir. Finally, and at last, a maid moved away from the sideboard, her tight-laced walking shoes squeaking as she moved over the dark polished floorboards. Daisy waited for her to refill Aunt Maude’s elegant flowered breakfast teacup.

  ‘You’re going over to the Court this morning, did you say?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Maude, to help with the sandbagging.’

  Aunt Maude gave a small sigh, and frowned.

  ‘Sandbagging—’ She followed this word with yet another silence. ‘Sandbagging. It does not seem possible, after all we have already been through, that there is more to come.’

  Daisy tried not to look or sound excited.

  ‘And then a gas lecture, I think, or is it an ARP lecture, something like that,’ Daisy went on, still far too cheerfully, she realised, far too late.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Aunt Maude’s ‘hmm’ was any other human being’s ‘humph’, except in her case it had a more than adequate dose of bitterness added to it, not unlike the bitter aloes with which she had once insisted that Daisy’s fingers should be painted before she went to sleep at night.

  The front of Daisy’s knees started to hurt, as they always did at mealtimes at Twistleton Hall. She thought with envy of the jolly times she knew the rest of her friends would be having at breakfast at Twistleton Court, only a few miles away. It had always been the same, Daisy locked up in the grandeur of the Hall, surrounded by portraits of the family ancestors, suits of armour and, not least, the ghosts of Aunt Maude’s four brothers, three of whom had been lost in the Great War, while Freddie and the rest of them enjoyed jolly times with Freddie’s Aunt Jessica.

  ‘Does Jessica Valentyne still have those ridiculous servants of hers, do you know?’

  The front of Daisy’s knees stopped aching, and she started to cross and uncross her legs beneath the heavy linen breakfast cloth, twisting them into tortuous shapes, and untwisting them again. It just so happened that Freddie’s Aunt Jessica was one of Daisy’s heroines, and with good reason, for a certain Miss Warmington had persuaded Aunt Maude Beresford to let Jessica Valentyne take Daisy on when she opened the Court as a finishing school. Up until then it had been governesses, governesses, and more governesses.

  Being all alone with a governess had become Daisy’s nightmare, resenting, as she had, the slowness of their brains as they waded on through dull subject after dull subject. The whole week of solitary schooling would only be relieved by the arrival of Miss Warmington to take English and History, both of which she somehow managed to persuade Aunt Maude were better taken in the open air, or as Miss Warmington briskly called it, ‘on the hoof’.

  ‘Why do angels fly, Daisy?’

  ‘Because they take themselves so lightly!’

  Quotations from the works of great men such as G. K. Chesterton were learned not from a dusty book, but while striding through the woods around the house, before setting up their easels and starting to try and paint the sun coming through the trees. History was learned from walking around houses and castles, villages and towns, no blackboard or chalk needed.

  ‘You will understand Henry VIII and the Reformation much better when you stand in an old village church, and see the desecration done in the name of the deity, dear.’

  By the time she was sixteen, Freddie’s aunt, Jessica Valentyne, and Miss Warmington finally managed to obtain Daisy’s release from what seemed to her to be the tomb of Aunt Maude’s unbending way of life, and set her free to go to the Court, to get to know girls of her own age and generation. Which was probably why Aunt Maude still disapproved of Jessica Valentyne, her servants, her gas lectures, and possibly even the Air Raid Precautions. Quite apart from anything else Aunt Maude did not think a war was coming. She still thought it could be prevented, which meant that, in her opinion, people like Jessica Valentyne were actually warmongers.

  ‘I suppose it is quite necessary for you to go to the Court today?’

  ‘Oh yes, I am afraid so. I am quite promised to help out, and, besides, Aurelia Smith-Jones and Laura Hambleton are arriving, and they want to see me.’

  Aunt Maude sighed, and looked around for another cup of tea, which was always a device of hers when she wanted to delay Daisy escaping from her sight. To Daisy’s delight the maids had cleared all the breakfast dishes into the food lift, and it was even now hurtling down to the sculleries below the dining room.

  ‘Hu-blooming-ray!’

  Daisy exhaled quietly, waiting for Aunt Maude to give another sigh and rise to her feet, her upright stance, stiff back and proud head-carriage a warning to all that, unmarried though Miss Maude might be, nevertheless the sole chatelaine of Twistleton Hall was someone whom everyone was forced to respect.

  ‘You are staying the night at the Court, I understand?’

  Daisy, who had shot to her feet and was now feeling like a horse who sees the field gate opening, and the bliss of endless meadows in front, said ‘yes’, and then promptly felt guilty as she realised that this meant that her aunt would be on her own at both luncheon and dinner.

  ‘I can come back to the Hall for dinner, if that is what you would like?’ she asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be in the negative, which it thankfully was.

  ‘As it happens I have various people coming to dinner. We will be talking agricultural matters, so it is quite convenient if you stay with Jessica Valentyne for the night.’

  Daisy walked slowly behind Aunt Maude across the great hall, and then up the shallow wooden staircase to the first floor, and then just as slowly down the corridor, where they both parted at their different bedroom doors.

  Once inside the bedroom, with its mix of eighteenth-century and later, heavier, Victorian furniture, its flower paintings and narrow four-poster bed hung with faded silk hangings, Daisy flung her few night things, a couple of changes of clothes, and some highly frowned-upon (at the Hall, particularly) lipstick and a small powder bowl into a knapsack, and herself into a pair of dungarees, and without more ado, bolted back down the corridor, shoes in hand, to the hall once more, where, shoes back on, she ran out into the drive, and from there across to her trusty ladies’ bicycle with its more than useful basket on the front. She jumped on board and started to cycle ferociously out of the back entrance, and down on to the open road that led in splendidly zigzag fashion past the old farms still belonging to the estate, to Twistleton Court, which did not belong, and never had, to any but the Valentynes since that same English Reformation upon which her old teacher, Miss Warmington, had frowned so particularly.

  ‘Heigh ho for the open road,’ Daisy sang as she bicycled. ‘Heigh ho for the jolly times! Heigh ho for the Valentynes!’

  So childish, but she had been singing that since she was sixteen, and now she was eighteen, she still liked to sing it. And oh, the bliss of getting away from the funereal atmosphere with which Aunt Maude seemed to surround herself, away from the servants of whom Aunt Maude silently disapproved, however devoted or efficient – because they were females. Before the Great War, only males – footmen and butlers, under-footmen and under-butlers – had worked at the Hall, whereas now, apart from Pattern and Bowles, the old place was forced to depend on goodly ladies who came in from the surrounding villages to help out, before hurrying thankfully back to their families.

  Long before she cycled up the short carriage drive that led to the Court, Daisy imagined that she could see all her friends, already in their dungarees, spades over their shoulders, possibly singing some silly, childish song, as she had just been doing, or something from a musical they had
just seen. Oh, the bliss of it all, compared to sharing the home life of Maude Augusta Katherine Anne Victoria Beresford, known to Daisy alone as Aunt Maude.

  Branscombe adjusted his eyepatch and frowned. He was not in the best of moods, but when he rounded the corner and saw Miss Freddie and her recently arrived guests at Twistleton Court digging enthusiastically at piles of sand, filling the bags with childish enthusiasm, he could not help smiling. The three young women, all wearing dungarees, their long hair tied back into ribbons and combs, were carrying on more as if they were on the beach making a sandcastle, rather than preparing for the war everyone knew was coming.

  ‘Miss Freddie, Miss Laura, Miss Daisy, it is time for luncheon, and if you do not come soon there won’t be any, and that is for certain, for Miss Blossom’s dogs will have been sure to have eaten it all in your absence.’

  ‘The dogs’ digestions are much better suited to Blossom’s cooking,’ Freddie muttered, pulling a face as Branscombe turned away, making once more for the house.

  ‘I heard that, Miss Freddie, and that was not you at your best, if I may say so, for even should it be true, it is not something that should be said in front of guests. Fill them with dread, that will, and what will that do for their digestions then, may I ask?’

  Branscombe continued on his way, while the girls simultaneously threw down their spades and made for their lodgings in the old stables.

  ‘I remember this old place as if it was my own family home,’ Laura Hambleton stated, as they passed under the archway into the great square cobbled yard that had once housed as many as fifty horses.

  A small section of the yard, with the grooms’ quarters above it, had long ago been converted into smart little cottage-type flats for the use of Aunt Jessica’s finishing-school pupils, but with the closing of the school some few months before, they were now only used for occasional guests. Each flat that the girls had been given had its own stamp of originality, not least the one that Daisy had used.