The Season Read online

  ‘I cannot bring myself to blame her, really I cannot,’ Daisy told Jenkins’s back as the maid poured water into the brass bath in front of the inevitable fire, always lit in Daisy’s bedroom wherever she was, at whatever time of year. ‘After all, the poor woman is laying out thousands and thousands of pounds – or is it dollars? – on the Season. Anyway, whether it is dollars or pounds, the fact is vat she is, and let us face it, Jenkins, and it does have to be faced, vat is not nothing, even in this age of endless extravagance.’

  ‘No, my lady,’ Jenkins agreed, turning towards the great bed on which Daisy was still lying, and clearing her throat pointedly. ‘My lady’s bath is now ready for her, if my lady will walk towards it.’

  ‘And, Jenkins, that is another thing to which I should draw both our attentions,’ Daisy continued, still gazing past her maid and the waiting bath, and frowning. ‘Why is she putting out thousands and thousands for poor Miss Hartley Lambert? Because, Jenkins, because she has a positive bee in her bonnet vat the poor girl must marry better than her Hartley Lambert cousins in ’Merica. And what is more she is positively determined that she must return with her to the United States and parade her under their noses as the wife of some pasha-type from England, don’tcher know!’

  ‘Yes, my lady, so you have said, my lady.’

  Daisy determinedly ignored Jenkins’s hearty sigh, as she always did when she was using her maid as a butt for her thoughts.

  ‘But I mean to say, Jenkins! One cannot guarantee such fings, however much money is laid out, one cannot guarantee it, can one? One can only do one’s very best, and hope for the same, Jenkins, for uvver people to do ver best, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, Jenkins.’

  Jenkins nodded sagely. She knew only too well what was at the centre of this heart-rending speech of her ladyship’s and that was the fact that only yesterday Mrs Hartley Lambert had called on them, in full fig, on a dozy, sunny afternoon when my lady was just about to change into her tea gown and take a nap.

  It had not been a good time for anyone, let alone Daisy, who, at that particular hour, was used to looking forward to a glass of madeira and a piece of fortifying fruit cake rather than an indignant American mama who complained loudly and vociferously that her Sarah, to her certain knowledge, had not yet been danced with by any man under the age of fifty-five.

  ‘Titled they may be, my lady, but young and suitable they are not!’ Mrs Hartley Lambert had thundered at Daisy.

  It had all been most unseemly, if not indecorous, besides being not at all the sort of thing to which the Countess of Evesham was used.

  ‘Last year’s gel, Miss Springfield Digby, and Mrs Springfield Digby had no complaints, Mrs Hartley Lambert. And they, if you remember, recommended me to you, for my fine services and my connections at Court. Indeed as I remember it Miss Springfield Digby finally managed a very nice little marquis, and is now a very sweet little marchioness herself, and they fish together quite happily. As I recall, she did not complain at all, but then she was not as—’

  ‘As what, Countess? She was not as – what?’

  Daisy had dabbed at her forehead with a small, lace-edged lawn handkerchief, from behind which she then allowed one terrible, tired word to escape. ‘Tall!’

  There had been a short pause after that.

  They both knew that Sarah was disastrously handicapped in this way. That her prospects were not to be judged alongside those of the former Miss Springfield Digby, who had been, if anything, petite in the extreme, and therefore plucked off the bough of that year’s debutantes as soon as she was able to be fitted with a diamond engagement ring.

  Mrs Hartley Lambert had paled, but had recovered herself. She had continued, a little more calmly, ‘I am not interested in any girl except my own. My Sarah is being made to look unwanted by the young gentlemen of this town, and I will not have that. See to it, Countess, or I shall personally want to know the reason why. I do not want to see her circling the ballrooms of any more London houses in the arms of some white-whiskered old gentleman, not now, not tonight, not at any time. It is starting to make her look ridiculous in the extreme, and I will not have that. Why even in Paris she managed to dance with two or three younger gentlemen, and since their revolution French men have become really quite small. If smaller French people could dance with my Sarah, so can smaller English people, Countess. See to it. I have paid you enough to line your pockets for at least another dozen London Seasons.’

  After she had left, still in a great huff, Jenkins, who had been listening at a side door as was her wont, had let herself back into the drawing room just in time to see her mistress pulling the drawing room bell so hard and long that the embroidered piece attached to it had come off in her hand. After which she had thrown it at Jenkins, and herself upon a nearby sofa.

  Being Daisy, of course, and, as Jenkins knew only too well, redoubtable in the extreme, she did not moan unnecessarily, or feel sorry for herself. She did not complain that she had never been so insulted in all her life, because, apart from anything else, both she and Jenkins knew that she had often been just as insulted, by bankers, by husbands, even by her son. Instead she went straight to the heart of the matter.

  ‘She is so tall,’ she had cried to the steadily burning log fire, to Jenkins, to the portrait of an ancestor placed over the chimneypiece. ‘She is as tall as ve lamp post outside vat window! I cannot cut off her legs, now can I? Besides. Most of this year’s young men are not tall, in fact a great many are really rather small, albeit not French, and what is worse they are quite likely to remain as small at the end of the Season as they were when they started out. And it has to be faced, Jenkins, when all is said and done, if I cannot cut off Miss Hartley Lambert’s legs, I cannot either stretch the eligible young men so vat they at least reach up to her chin.’

  There had been a short pause, during which Daisy tapped her foot upon the polished wooden floor as regularly as any young drummer in the band of the Household Cavalry.

  ‘The young men know that they look ridiculous alongside Miss Hartley Lambert. They know they look just like Shetland ponies beside a carthorse. Not vat Miss Hartley Lambert is a carthorse, but she is so tall! She is as tall as a carthorse might be, as I say, if put beside a Shetland pony.’

  Now, with the same problem besetting her, indeed making her mind crease with the burden of it, Daisy wandered almost aimlessly towards her bath. She stepped into it and sat down, allowing Jenkins to soap one of her feet while she lay back in the water and counted off on the fingers of one hand how many of the taller, younger men she could lure into dancing at least once with the luckless, hapless, Sarah Hartley Lambert.

  ‘Lord Severington’s son, John. Lord Morpeth’s son, John. The Marquis of Heveningham’s son, John – is there any member of our aristocracy, by the way, Jenkins, who is not called John?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ replied Jenkins mechanically, picking up Daisy’s other foot and soaping it almost too liberally with the great sponge from the South Seas that had been brought back for her ladyship many years before by someone very special, so special that Jenkins knew my lady would have long ago forgotten his name, as she had forgotten the names of so many of her admirers. However, she still appreciated the sponge.

  ‘I dare say I must not give up hope, Jenkins. I daresay I really must not, really I must not. I must put my best foot forward.’ As Jenkins replaced the second of these in the bath water and began to soap one of Daisy’s arms, she went on, almost desperately, ‘I must just think of something, Jenkins, or someone who could help me get the thing going for Miss Hartley Lambert before the Season is closed and everyone fled back to the country, and the whole thing is a complete and utter failure.’

  ‘The trouble is, my lady, Miss Hartley Lambert has a joke out against her,’ Jenkins remarked, replacing the first of her ladyship’s thoroughly washed arms back in the water, and going round to the other side of the bath to soap the second long, elegant, white arm.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Jenkins
? What is vat you just said?’

  ‘I said, my lady, the trouble is not that Miss Hartley Lambert is so tall, begging your pardon, my lady, but that she has a joke out against her. It is going the rounds, as they say, and even the servants here, even they make the joke now. And you know how it is, my lady. Once there is a joke out against you during the Season, there is little to be done. It is not the kind of thing a person can see coming on, a joke, but there it is, once it is there, there is nothing to be done, my lady.’

  Daisy sat up abruptly in the water, splashing it on the carpet around the bath, and smacked the surface with her hand.

  ‘What joke, Jenkins? What have you heard? And where did you hear it?’

  ‘I heard it first when my lady was at luncheon. I believe, now I recall it, it was from the Marchioness of Ovington’s maid who had it from a relative of mine who shall remain unnamed, for obvious reasons, but who is not given to telling pork pies – that is, lies, my lady. Really they are not.’

  Jenkins fell silent, too busy mopping up the spilt water to carry on, and too obstinate too, Daisy knew, to carry on unless Daisy begged her so to do.

  ‘Carry on, Jenkins, please.’

  Daisy arose from her bath and summoned her towel by waving both her arms towards her body, which she always did and no doubt, Jenkins thought, possibly always would.

  ‘Carry on, Jenkins, tell me at once. What is it vat you are on about? What is this joke, please? About Miss Hartley Lambert? Tell me, at once.’

  She stepped out onto the white fluffy bath mat that Jenkins now laid before her and allowed Jenkins, as always, to wrap her in a large, monogrammed bath towel.

  ‘Tell me the joke, Jenkins, at once,’ Daisy repeated.

  ‘Well, my lady,’ Jenkins said, pursing her lips, knowing that she had all Daisy’s attention for the first time for many a long day. ‘It seems that Miss Hartley Lambert went riding in a very – dare I say it – common … well, no, in a very unsuitable hat.’

  ‘Yes? Well, vat is not so unusual. We all have had hats that have made us look ridiculous at some time or another, have we not, Jenkins? I well remember a plum-coloured beauty vat my late husband threw on the fire of a street vendor some Seasons ago, and there was vat ghastly monstrosity he brought me back from Paris when we were first married, all tulle bows and butterflies. Oh, no, Jenkins, we have all had nasty hats. Vat is not so very unusual I should have said, not at all.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, but this hat was particularly vulgar, my lady. It had silver in it, and her riding habit too. Apparently it is – at least so it was rumoured – apparently it was français!’

  She should have told me! I would have warned her, the French cannot make riding habits. Everything else, but not riding habits! They go too far. They are too romantic for the strict tailoring necessary for a riding habit. It is just a fact. Oh, my heavens, what a disaster. Disaster of all disasters. If only I had known. I had not stopped to think that she would be even tempted by such a habit!

  Daisy started to walk up and down, swathed in her bath towel, as she accused herself in her thoughts and suppressed a desire to swear out loud in a most unladylike way.

  Jenkins watched her ladyship carefully before continuing. It was always best to watch my lady until she calmed down a little, because, apart from anything else, she seldom heard even Jenkins when she was in one of her pets.

  ‘Apparently the hat was all too like that worn by a certain kind of lady to attract the attention of a certain kind of gentleman,’ Jenkins finally continued, just a little relentlessly, because part of her was rather enjoying, as it always did, this particular little piece of mild gossip. ‘And too, it seems, my lady, that the grooms wore silver cockades in their hats to match her riding habit, all chosen by Mrs Hartley Lambert in a fit of excitement in Paris, they tell me. At any rate, it seems that it was difficult for anyone to miss seeing all this silver everywhere, what with Miss Hartley Lambert being so tall, and her grooms too, apparently.’

  ‘Worse and worse!’

  ‘Oh yes, and it seems, my lady, that not only did no-one miss seeing poor Miss Hartley Lambert tricked out as if she was only newly housed in St John’s Wood, if not Tulse Hill, by some obliging gentleman – in other words not looking as a young innocent girl should look, my lady – but she bumped into a party of friends coming from the other direction. It was that Miss Phyllis de Nugent, Lady Childhays’ daughter, and that other young lady. Anyway, it seems that as soon as she saw the monstrosity on her head, Miss Phyllis introduced the young men with them to Miss Hartley Lambert not as Miss Hartley but as Miss Hatley Lambert.’

  Daisy sat down on the edge of her bed.

  ‘No, oh no, don’t tell me this,’ she groaned, wringing her hands at the thought of how much that was done could not now be undone.

  But her maid was still enjoying herself too much to stop.

  ‘So naturally, the hat being so very prominent on this very tall person, now known as Miss Hatley Lambert, they all burst into unkind laughter, my lady.’ Jenkins paused, and something close to a smile, or that could possibly pass as a smile, appeared, briefly, on her thin lips. ‘And as you know there is none so unkind as the fashionable, my lady. We know that, you and I, with our experience from the past. There is none so ready to laugh at others like what the fashionable will do, none at all, even though I say it who is only a maid. We know, my lady, do we not, just how the modish can laugh at one’s expense, and how one can only hope that their memories will pass, and with them the memory of one’s past.’

  Jenkins sniffed, but she also smiled again, remembering the moment of horrible disgrace years ago when a certain Mr Herbert Forrester had brought about the disgrace of that celebrated beauty, Daisy, Countess of Evesham. And how everyone had laughed, for several Seasons, and not just behind her back, in front of her face too, and in front of Jenkins – for servants suffered alongside their mistresses in these matters – although no-one seemed to realise it.

  There was a long silence, a long and terrible silence, and then, frowning and furious at the same time, not a pretty sight despite her undoubted elegance and still evident beauty, even to her devoted Jenkins, Daisy let out a screech of anger.

  ‘Vat is so terrible! Oh, poor Miss Hartley Lambert. What a terrible joke to be going the rounds at her expense. To be called Hatley. Oh, poor, poor Miss Hartley Lambert.’ There was another long and terrible silence, and then, ‘But it won’t go away now, will it, Jenkins? Not for a single tiny little minute, because jokes like vat do not go away, do they? They stay around for years and years and years, and no-one ever forgets them, sometimes for several generations. Sometimes they even get written up in books and newspapers. Oh, poor Miss Hartley Lambert. But nothing to be done now, Jenkins. We might as well call on Mrs Hartley Lambert and hand in the towel. I have never understood which towel, but hand it in I fear we must.’

  At this she handed Jenkins back her own towel and gratefully accepted a gown in its place. ‘I shall have to be honest with the poor woman. I shall have to tell all, Jenkins, really I will.’

  Jenkins allowed this remark to go unanswered for a good minute, and then again what passed for a smile for Jenkins played about her thin lips.

  ‘I was thinking, my lady, that there must be something that we could do in return to Miss Phyllis de Nugent, to pay her out. It should not be difficult, given that she has the reputation, even with her own maid, for running about wherever and whenever she should not, and spending time with persons what she should not, and so on, and so on. It should not be that difficult to pay this Miss de Nugent out, no, I should not think it should be at all difficult to land her in some warm, if not hot water.’

  ‘I hardly think so, Jenkins. Miss de Nugent is a clever little thing, if not very pleasant, as I understand it from Lady Devenish. She was most unkind to Miss Hartley Lambert when they were being taught their “say sos and say nots”, or so Lady Devenish hinted. It seems that the poor girl was so spoilt by her father, when he was alive that is, that
now they can do nothing with her.’

  Daisy sat down at her dressing table but avoided her reflection in the glass, because without any powder or paint and in one of her pets she knew that she would be looking like something the cat might bring in, and perhaps not even the cat. Possibly a decent sort of cat might avoid bringing in something that looked as raggedy as Daisy felt she must be looking.

  ‘No, I am very much afraid, Jenkins, vat we shall have to make our way to the Hartley Lamberts and give back the undoubtedly large amounts she has generously donated to me in the hope, the very forlorn hope, Jenkins, vat I should be able to snap up a titled gentleman for poor Miss Sarah.’

  ‘I am, myself, against handing in the towel,’ Jenkins announced, at the same time folding yet another of Daisy’s large, monogrammed items even as she pronounced her point of view. ‘We have never yet handed in the towel, no matter what the circumstances. No, I think we should gird up our loins,’ she held up one of Daisy’s silk stockings to the light to examine it for flaws, ‘and buckle on our swords—’

  ‘Vat is quite enough, Jenkins. Quite enough analogies or whatever ve wretched things are called for one unholy morning, thank you!’

  ‘Snap on our armour, get back on our steeds,’ Jenkins continued, ruthlessly ignoring her mistress while holding up another silk item to the light. ‘And we shall take fire to fight fire. Before it is too late, we shall have to think of something like a joke at Miss de Nugent’s expense, and that way we would perhaps save the situation for Miss Hartley Lambert. Either that or we shall plant something in her house to disgrace her. We shall not rest until we have revenged ourselves, my lady. After all, we are old hands, are we not? And Miss de Nugent, she is only young and stupid.’

  Daisy turned from studiously avoiding the sight of herself in the mirror.

  ‘Jenkins, you are a genius. Of course! Fight fire with fire! She has burned us, we shall scald her back. Of course! We shall do exactly vat and we shall do it at once. Except, Jenkins, I am not very good at jokes. As a matter of fact jokes have never been my forte, as you might have noticed, Jenkins. Could we not – perhaps we could find someone who was good at jokes?’