The Daisy Club Page 5

  Freddie put her hand up.

  ‘Yes, many times for Aunt Jessica at the Court—’

  Guy lowered his gaze and stared at Freddie. It was the look he always gave terrified actors at auditions.

  ‘Recipe, please?’

  ‘For twelve? Let me see, three pints of milk, twelve ounces of white breadcrumbs, one and a half of butter, six of sugar, six eggs—’

  ‘“The Mole could only hold up both fore-paws and gasp, ‘Oh my! Oh my! Oh my!’”’ Guy raised both his hands in delight. ‘To the kitchen, my girl, and a bonus is yours tonight if you can deliver the goods. The very moment when the last dessert spoon is lowered, the pumpkin in the vegetable basket will turn into a coach, and the rats in the larder into high-stepping ponies, and you will go to the ball – although not here! Off you go to your tasks. I know you will defeat the evil caterers and send all home singing!’

  They all turned and fled after Freddie, and Guy watched them for a moment, feeling both amused and grateful.

  Once in the kitchen Freddie hurried out to the cold larder, followed by Laura and Daisy, leaving Aurelia standing wordlessly in the kitchen, which was where they found her as they all turned back to fetch forgotten trays to carry the necessary dinner ingredients.

  ‘Come on, Relia, come on, we are in a bit of a tight squeeze, you know. White sauce with prawns for the fish, but clean the asparagus first.’ Freddie stared at the still-frozen Aurelia. ‘You are up to helping Laura here do that course, aren’t you? You do remember Aunt Jessica’s rudimentary cooking lessons at the Court, don’t you?’

  Aurelia nodded silently at Freddie. Daisy shoved a tray at Aurelia. Aurelia took it, and followed her friend to the cold larder, where she obediently loaded up with the necessary ingredients for the fish course.

  ‘Something wrong, Relia?’ Daisy demanded. ‘You’re looking more than a little grey about the gills. In fact, now I come to look at you, you seem to have taken on the same colour as the fish.’

  Aurelia remained silent, hurrying back to the kitchen. She could say nothing, she would say nothing, she would tell no one. It was only too lucky that she had not made a fool of herself already, and passed out. She half-closed her eyes at the thought of how terrible that would be, even more terrible than what had just happened to her.

  She started to shave the asparagus stalks, and to curl up the tender pieces of fish, whose skin, thankfully, had already been removed, before buttering a large dish and placing the fish and the asparagus in it. White sauce made with stock boiled from fish bones and skin, prawns to scatter in the white sauce. If anything went wrong with her course she was quite, quite sure she would commit suicide.

  ‘I wonder who is coming to the dinner. Did you manage to have a peek at the placement – see who is next to whom?’

  Daisy looked up from chopping vegetables, and raised her eyebrows in anticipation of hearing some famous names. As far as she was concerned it had been heady enough meeting the famous Guy Athlone, and now it seemed she would be placing food in front of people who had their names up in footlights outside theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue, whose names appeared regularly in the gossip columns of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, people who were friends of the most famous English playwright of the time – Guy Athlone.

  She waited for Freddie, who had popped out of the dining room to give them all the exciting news, eyes wide.

  ‘Well?’

  It seemed that everyone was looking at Freddie, even as they could all hear the guests arriving and being let in by Mr Athlone’s secretary, who they understood was posing as a stand-in butler for the evening.

  Freddie made a little moue with her mouth, before twisting it into a silly shape.

  ‘Well, dears,’ she said, acting up like mad. ‘If I said George Arletti and that well-known entertainer Azure La Monte, not to mention Miss Gloria Martine herself, would you be satisfied that you are about to serve the crème de la crème, not to mention the Vere de Veres, and many another? Of course the under-secretary to the foreign secretary, too, will be here, and other such members of His Majesty’s government, but they will not be of the least interest to all of you Tatler readers and theatre snobs, I know. Nevertheless try very hard not to drop asparagus and roast beef in their laps, because, with the coming emergency, we might well all find ourselves behind bars.’

  This last was greeted with nervous laughter, because, as they all knew, there was a dreadful truth behind the jokes. A state of emergency meant that anything could happen, and might.

  As it transpired, nothing untoward, at least as far as the dinner and the serving of its courses went, did occur that evening, at least nothing of which the girls could have, or would have, been aware.

  The dinner party went swiftly through all the usual motions that, Daisy noted, dinner parties held at English country houses always do. People drank wine, they ate, they turned first to the right, and then to the left, they conversed, they aired their opinions, they agreed with each other, and after dinner they strolled in the evening air in their host’s garden, before coming back in and listening to him playing some of his frightfully amusing songs.

  ‘That all went like clockwork, then,’ Guy’s secretary, Clive Montfort, murmured, as the last of the guests’ motor cars drove away into the darkness.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Guy agreed, lighting up a cigarette as he watched the tail lights of the cars disappearing, and a strange silence fell in the Big Room, broken only by the distant sound of the young waitresses and old Bob in the dining room and kitchen clearing up, their murmured conversations rising in a late-night chorus of sporadic chatter above the sound of boiling kettles and doors banging as water was brought in from the well in the yard. ‘Yes, it all went just like rusty old clockwork, all right. And not one guest trustworthy, all appeasers to their lily-white cowardly gills.’ Guy drew more strongly on his cigarette. ‘All still clinging to the idea that Mr Hitler will back down this side of Christmas, that the poor Czechs could not have been saved whatever we did, and that now Herr Hitler has what he wanted all along, he will be a good little boy and toddle along when he is told.’

  He threw his half-finished cigarette into the fire, went over to the piano and closed the lid – then to his own and his secretary’s surprise, he locked it – before going to the sister piano, and locking that too. ‘Mark my words, by this time next year, Clive, this will all be in storage, and you and I God knows where. Write that down, Mr Secretary: I said it here, at one o’clock in the morning of a September night in 1938.’

  Freddie drove the girls home at a much slower pace than earlier in the evening, first of all because it was dark, and second because they had all been given a glass of sherry by old Bob, who, being well-pleased with their work, had toasted their health in front of the great kitchen fire.

  It was early in the morning, and dark, but the stars above them had never seemed brighter to them all, most of all Aurelia. She knew now that she had met the love of her life; that she had seen and fallen in love with someone who could and would never love her did not seem to matter. She knew she had to do something to get close to Mr Athlone.

  Daisy, too, had fallen in love, but not with Guy Athlone. She had fallen in love with the heady aura of danger that he seemed to have about him. The fact that he was so different from anyone else she had ever met was hardly surprising – since she had rarely been allowed out of Twistleton, and even being allowed to stay at the Court with Freddie and the rest had been, from Aunt Maude’s point of view, a huge concession. Daisy perfectly understood this, and indeed, if Aunt Maude felt over-protective of her niece, Daisy felt quite the same about her aunt.

  Even leaving the old darling for twenty-four hours was a wrench, in the sense that she knew that Aunt Maude would be alone, and lonely, with only the pugs to keep her distracted from her state of being a single woman in a vast house filled with unused rooms, the rooms themselves for the most part filled with furniture covered in dust sheets. Indeed, so much of the Hall was protected by
dust sheets, it would not have surprised Daisy to return and find Aunt Maude in the same state as most of the furniture.

  By the time Daisy and the others rolled into their beds above the stables at the Court, she was filled with a sense of excitement. She had heard Gloria Martine talking about flying with a friend to Deauville, and what fun they had had. If Daisy could fly, as her father had done in the Great War, she would get away from everything that tied her to Twistleton.

  She shut her eyes, imagining just what it would be like to be flying high above Twistleton. From hundreds of feet up Twistleton would be only a small dot, just one of many small dots. By flying above it, she would have left behind its sad history, which clung to her like a great lumbering monster, every hour of every day. The only trouble was – how could she actually do it? That was not just a question that needed answering, it was the only question that needed answering. Aunt Maude would not even hear of her going to London! She would need help. The others were already fast asleep when she realised, as always, just whose help she could call on.

  Chapter Three

  Well, there it was, the dinner was over.

  Guy lit a cigarette before walking, still in his embroidered silk dressing gown and plain silk pyjamas, around his garden, normally a delight, even on an autumn morning, but, alas, not today. Today he was smoking furiously, and thinking even faster.

  He was thinking about the bunch of fellow-travellers, Fascists and, God help him, appeasers, that he had had to entertain the previous night. Very well, it was his patriotic duty to listen to their twaddle, silently note the names of their friends, their foreign friends in particular – perhaps fiends would be a better word for some of them – and report back to George at ‘the office’, as George’s headquarters were currently, and really very euphemistically, known. But the truth of the matter was that it was a beastly feeling, afterwards, knowing that you were in the company of people who were gaily delivering innocent men, women, and children into the hands of the Nazis. Handing them over without a thought or a care, as if they were stuffed toys in a shop window, not human beings. He threw his cigarette into a flower bed, and watched its tiny light burning until it was finally extinguished, although a small spiral of smoke still rose from it for a few seconds.

  Guy turned, ready to go back into the house, but not before having a last look round at everything that he normally so loved to appreciate. The sunshine on the lawn left uneven shadows; above him the September sky had assumed that particular pale blue that autumn brings even on its sunniest days. He reluctantly turned to go in, sighing, realising that without his even being aware of it, the beauty of his English garden had had a calming effect.

  As he was about to reach out a hand to open the French windows that led into the Big Room, he heard a voice coming behind him making the silliest sound.

  ‘Psst!’

  He turned, frowning lightly. What a perfectly ridiculous sound! No one surely said ‘psst’ except on stage, or in a movie?

  ‘Psst to you, too!’ he said, walking back to the centre of the lawn, while at the same time looking around him, still seeing no one.

  ‘Psst!’ the sound came again, this time more insistently.

  Guy stood stock still, knowing that in his silk Sulka dressing gown, plain dark-blue silk pyjamas, and hand-stitched slippers with G.A. embroidered on them, perhaps because it was already ten o’clock of an autumn morning, he must look every inch the decadent West End playwright.

  ‘Look, whoever you are, wherever you are, I am not going to ruin my new hand-stitched slippers tramping through the undergrowth to find you, so psst or not, I suggest you come out and, one way or another, face the music.’

  From out of one of the far bushes a figure emerged. With the expertise of a man who was used to summing up everyone, instantly, whether at auditions or interviews, Guy turned a critical eye on the newcomer.

  What he saw emerging from behind his really rather beautiful shrubs was the figure of a slender young girl, a young girl possessed of unruly long blonde hair, more than a little Pre-Raphaelite in style, with a figure that was thin, almost too thin, a heart-shaped face, blue-grey eyes, or were they grey-blue eyes? At any rate, pale eyes – not brilliant brown, as his were. He stared at her as she trod across the lawn.

  ‘You do realise you are trespassing?’ he asked her in a lightly sarcastic voice.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes, and I am very sorry, but I was here last night, so it is more of a revisit, rather than an actual trespass, if you understand what I mean?’

  Guy leaned forward, frowning.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I might.’ He moved closer. ‘Ah yes, of course, of course, you were one of the debutante waitresses. I remember you now.’

  ‘No, I was not a debutante waitress,’ Aurelia told him, suddenly indignant. ‘No, I was a fake waitress, not a debutante. I’m not in the least bit that kind of social person. As a matter of fact, I am so far from being like that, I am actually quite common,’ she told him, pride in her voice.

  Guy managed to keep a straight face.

  ‘Well, that makes two of us,’ he said, changing the tone of his voice to chatty and interested, instead of vague and suspicious. ‘How common are you, though? I myself am dreadfully proud of being common, wouldn’t want to be anything else. My mother worked in a laundry, and my father was a no-good layabout sometime-brush-salesman, so beat that, Gunga Din!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not quite as common as that. I am afraid you win, really you do,’ Aurelia told him in a grave voice, and she gave a small sigh of admiration. ‘Just one generation into the middle of the upper-middle-classes, that’s all I am. But that is not why I am here. I am not here because I am common.’

  Guy sat down on a nearby bench and crossed his silk-clad legs, for given the really rather Alice in Wonderland conversation he was having, it seemed to be a good idea. He patted the seat beside him.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me why you are here, dear?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d better sit down, really not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem quite right, seeing that I was only asked here as a waitress. I think I’d better stand.’

  ‘How about a compromise? Pull up a chair?’

  Aurelia sat down opposite Guy, determined not to show how nervous she was, and in many ways, over the next few minutes of their conversation – she thought afterwards, with some accuracy – she actually succeeded.

  ‘Let us begin again, now that we understand we are both common, although not vulgar, I trust. Why are you here?’ Guy asked her.

  The expression on Aurelia’s face was solemn to the point of being almost tragic, her eyes unblinking.

  ‘Because I want to be near you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Guy was all too used to people wanting to be near him. He had always had star quality, and what was more, and this had been vital to his success, he had always known it. Nevertheless, seeing that the young girl seated on the garden chair opposite him was totally uninvited, and he knew nothing about her at all, he found himself having the sense quickly to look her over, making sure that she had nothing about her that was suspicious, or strange, nothing on her slender young person of which he should be wary.

  He was reassured at once: her cotton dress was thin enough to reveal anything untoward that she might be concealing, and she did not seem to have brought with her any kind of handbag wherein she might have hidden an unfriendly knife, or a ladies’ pistol.

  ‘You want to be near me?’ he repeated. ‘Well – Miss?’

  ‘Smith-Jones.’

  ‘Well, that is very flattering, I am sure, but although I don’t wish to disillusion you, my country house, as you doubtless found out last night, is not nearly big enough to accommodate all the people who feel as you do, and nor, I am sorry to tell you, is my London house. I have rather too many admirers, and a great deal too many fans, and although I am delighted to include you in their number, I am quite unable
to accommodate you. So how about if I gave you a signed photograph, and promised to let you know the date of my next country dinner party, so that you could come and make another grand fist of being a waitress?’

  Aurelia stared at him. He did not realise, could not realise, and she must not let him know, that she was in love with him. She must act casual, but determined. He must be made to realise that she would do anything, but anything, for him – now, or in the future – but at the same time she had to be very, very careful not to appear ordinary.

  ‘I could not possibly take a signed photograph from you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ she hesitated, and then came up with what she imagined was a trump card, ‘because it is such an everyday-ish, common thing to do.’

  Yet again Guy found himself struggling not to laugh.

  ‘Well, I must admit it might be just a little, particularly given that you know me already,’ he agreed. ‘Signed photographs are really for fans, and for royal personages to put on their pianos. So you are right, it might be the wrong thing for you to accept a photograph, now I come to think of it—’ he laughed in a lightly amused way.

  ‘But I will come and waitress at any of your dinner parties, from now until the earth closes over me.’

  Guy looked at her, startled.

  ‘I don’t give that many dinner parties, I truly do not,’ he protested. ‘My publicity may have given you to understand that I endlessly socialise, but actually, if the truth be known, my favourite day is spent working, having a good lunch, going for a walk or a swim, and then early to bed with supper on a tray! Hardly the imagined day of a successful West End playwright and actor, you must agree. In fact I never give dinner parties unless I can help it, although you might not believe that.’