The Season Read online

  There was however someone to whom May knew that she could talk. A man of the world, of common stock like herself, someone who would understand her sense of isolation, her sense of being adrift and quite unable to cope with her new circumstances. For, despite the jewels, the evening clothes – the silk and satin and lace dinner gowns, the sometimes as many as seven changes of clothes a day – the curtsying and the bowing, despite all the sophistication and the comfort, the reality of her life was that, at that precise moment, May was deeply unhappy. And the only person to whom she could talk about her sense of unease was her dear former patron, Herbert Forrester.

  After both the disasters and the final triumphs of their social adventuring in London, the Forresters had returned to York in a spirit of great thankfulness. Their daughter, Louisa, had recovered her speech, May, their protégée had married a marquis, and they had effectively avenged an early social humiliation brought about by the ever mischievous Daisy.

  ‘I reckon we’ve ’ad enough adventuring in the wild seas of the social Season to last us until the next century,’ was how Jane Forrester had put it, as she settled down to a seat in front of the fire in their beautiful house on the outskirts of York.

  Jane would not add much more, knowing as she did that their ‘adventuring’ had all been due to her desire to improve their social position. But now she had no wish to continue to do so, any more than she wanted to see May, who was now safely married to a future duke.

  Having learned the hard way that achieving social success was not as easy as just having the money to buy the trappings of the upper classes, Jane had decided that she would look no further than Yorkshire for a husband for their daughter. As far as she was concerned York, with its ancient history and its beautiful buildings, was the height, width and breadth of all that a person should ever wish for in this world. And quite enough for folk such as herself and Herbert, or Louisa, for that matter.

  Furthermore, now that Louisa was married, and already in a happy condition, the future had indeed brightened, and her mother was certain that the miseries of the past could be put firmly behind them. She herself had no wish ever again to go through all the social sufferings that she had endured before, nor had she any wish to see her Louisa again in such an emotional state as to lose all power of speech, or Herbert humiliated by so-called fashionable folk who were, in reality, no better than themselves.

  Unsurprising, therefore, that when Herbert announced at breakfast one dark, cold and rainy northern day that May, now the Marchioness of Cordrey, was coming to see them, Jane nodded to the maids to go out of the room, and then took him to task for even contemplating such an idea.

  ‘Just think what it will do to Louisa, apart from anything else, Herbert – and in her condition too – if she sees our May, albeit she is now Lady Cordrey. Gracious, it might bring on bad memories, after all that happened to us in London, and in her delicate state. And as for myself, for all that you had your revenge on the Countess of Evesham, I have no desire to see the poor girl ever again.’

  ‘Now, Jane, that is not like you.’

  ‘No, I will have my say, Herbert. It was nice to see May married, I admit that, and watching all the famous and fashionable folk at the wedding was fascinating, to a certain extent. And I might add that for a daughter of a woman like May’s poor mother – for the daughter of that poor Ruby – it has to also be said that May has done well for herself. She has done more than haul herself up by her boot straps, she has positively leaped the social barriers. But even so, it would be quite uncalled for for her to come here. She may be going to be a duchess one day, but she is still the daughter of poor Ruby who was’ – Jane leaned forward and lowered her voice even further – ‘who was a floozy, Herbert, for all that she was a childhood friend of yours.’

  ‘Ruby was a lady to all of us who knew her, and when Ruby was dying, Jane, she left her beautiful young daughter to my care. I hope that, one way and another, I have done my duty by our May, because as you know – well, you know, Ruby was Ruby.’

  But his wife paid no attention to Herbert’s burst of sentimentality. Her eyes were already running anxiously round the room, and she was trying to imagine how lacklustre the future Duchess of Wokingham might now find their simple dining room with its mahogany furniture and mock Gobelin tapestries. Everything in their house would, she thought, seem paltry and impoverished after the grandeurs of Cordrey Castle.

  ‘Anyway, Herbert. I have no idea why she would want to come here. It’s not as if we became particularly close to her, and she and Louisa, for instance, were not friends. And now never likely to be, such is the social divide between them. I mean, a future duchess, what would she want with coming here?’

  ‘She wants to come here because she is still Ruby’s daughter. Ruby, my oldest friend, whose life I saved as a boy, remember? And May, my Ruby’s daughter, can come here or anywhere else as far as I am concerned, Jane. Not because she is a marchioness or likely to be a duchess, but because she is Ruby’s daughter.’

  ‘Herbert.’ Jane eyed her husband as severely as she could. ‘Herbert. I do not wish to entertain the Marchioness of Cordrey, or any other member of the aristocracy, here, or at any other place where we might be living. I do not like the aristocracy, and frankly, Herbert, they do not like us. We are best kept apart, now and for ever.’

  Inwardly Herbert sighed.

  Jane had never really recovered from the social slights that they had both suffered after leaving York for London with the sole intention of launching Louise into Society, and probably never would.

  It was obvious to him now that Jane was going to be extraordinarily stubborn about this issue of May’s coming to see them. And although he would like to stand up to her, for all sorts of reasons, he was not, in view of Louisa’s interesting condition, prepared to do so. Besides, in some ways Jane was right. In some ways it might be a bad thing if Jane saw May, and bad memories came flooding back. He had no wish for that. He only wished the status quo of their lives to be maintained, their domestic contentment to continue as it had been.

  But, on the other hand, his darling old Ruby, the true love of his life, was always somewhere in his heart, and the knowledge that her daughter might be needing help was enough for Herbert.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, I’ll send to tell May I’ll see her at my office.’

  ‘Not your London office—’

  ‘No, love, of course not. Now don’t fret. I expect she’s in trouble with her pin money and daren’t tell her husband, or some such. Was ever so with bored aristocratic ladies in large draughty castles, as far as I can gather. They have nothing else to do, except play at cards when their mothers-in-law aren’t looking, or follow the hunt in their carriages, or lose their pin money on betting.’

  Two days later the office boy, blushing to the roots of his already fiery red hair, announced, ‘The Marchioness of Cordrey, sir,’ and having stepped back to allow May into the grand office with its new plush rugs and its vast gilded pictures of religious reformers and rich industrialists, promptly backed out and away from the said Marchioness and into the secretary carrying a tray of tea.

  May closed the door diplomatically on the confusion, smiling and pulling a little face.

  ‘Poor lad, I should have said “Mrs Cordrey”, shouldn’t I?’

  Herbert took her small, gloved hands in his, and kissed her on both cheeks, as a father might do.

  ‘Look, love, no matter what you say to young Tom out there, he would still back into the tea tray. He never sees beautiful women here, only the secretaries, and you know my policy – no point in appointing a beautiful woman as your secretary if she’ll be gone down the aisle and married and left her job before you can say warp or weave. There are no beauties here. No, love, it’s your beauty that’s caused the confusion, not your title, believe me. And don’t you look beautiful.’

  He turned her round so that she walked away from him and back, knowing what her role at that moment must be. The afternoon dress undern
eath her fur-trimmed coat was made up of what must be a thousand pleats, and her hat and muff were of matching fur. She was the height of elegance and fashion. Her hat was vast, as fashion that year dictated, so that Herbert had been forced to duck underneath it to kiss her, which had made them both smile.

  ‘Oh, but you do look like your mother when you smile as you did just then. You looked just like my poor dear Ruby.’

  May sat down, and as she did so Herbert noted with approval her little button boots, and her dark parasol, but he also noticed how tightly her gloved hands were holding the top of the parasol, as if it were a railing to which she was clinging.

  Herbert retreated behind his desk, quite prepared for monetary disaster, and after lighting a cigar from his thermidor, to which – May having been an actress – he knew she would not object, he waited for her to speak.

  ‘My dear, dear patron, I have come to see you to beg for your help in a matter about which, in all honesty, I had hoped to speak to your wife. But I really have to talk to someone, and there is, in truth, no-one else. And it is not something about which one could possibly write to anyone. Besides, there are the servants, and we all know how letters can be intercepted, and the servants profit quite dreadfully from the information in them. In many ways, really, I feel myself to be a prisoner in my mother-in-law’s house. Yet I know it is probably asking too much to beg of you yet another favour?’

  ‘My dear, I am like a godfather to you. Your mother was the love of my life. I saved her from drowning when she was a little girl and she in return, in so many ways, saved mine. One time, May, I was wretched about so much, so wretched that I actually contemplated suicide – you didn’t know that, did you? But it’s true, and Ruby, your dear mother, she set me on the right road again. She had, in my view, that seldom found but often mentioned attribute – a heart of gold.’

  ‘I wish I had known her.’

  May had blushed on hearing such intimate details of Herbert Forrester’s life, which was ridiculous, she suddenly thought, considering that she had come to him, in this particular instance, to discuss just such intimate details of her own life with him.

  ‘You would have loved her. Now, tell me, May love, how may I help you?’

  ‘You can’t help me, but you could listen, and perhaps that would help me more than anything. You see, I should not have come to you if I had anyone else to whom I could turn, but the truth is I have no-one, and so, my dear patron, I am very much afraid that it has to be you.’

  Herbert leaned on his free hand and smiled, waiting to hear the story of some dreadful gambling debt, or some tale of being drawn into a game that had meant the hocking of her diamond ring, or the borrowing of some large sum from her maid until such time as she had been able to come and see Herbert.

  ‘I cannot become enceinte,’ she murmured, as discreetly as she knew how. ‘I am a disaster. I am a pure failure.’

  Herbert did not know exactly what ‘enceinte’ meant but he knew enough to know what it must mean, and he now blushed scarlet. Women in his social milieu would never discuss such things in front of a man. But May was desperate, and also now a member of the aristocracy, and they, he knew, having most of them grown up in the stables, discussed these things all the time, albeit they discussed them in French.

  Women, mares and whelping hounds, it was all the same to the aristocracy. The eternal search for the best breeding in everything preoccupied the patrician classes, as well it might considering what was usually involved: thousands of acres, jewels, titles, and not least positions in Society.

  ‘I cannot face yet another month of coming down to family meals and everyone staring at me as if I were an empty jewel case, or – or – or a barren thoroughbred mare of which they had high hopes. Oh, the silences at those meals, and those cold eyes pretending not to be fixing themselves on your barren waist! It is torture, and when I say torture, I mean it.’

  Herbert, whose heart was less flinty than his business reputation, came round to May’s side of the desk and sat down on a chair opposite her.

  ‘You poor child,’ he said sympathetically. ‘You poor, poor child, it is most likely that you are getting yourself into such a state about this as to make it impossible for you to get into any other state, if you will see what I am saying? If you freeze up you cannot warm up, and if you cannot warm up there will be no truly excellent result.’

  ‘I should so love to go away, to be freed from all those silent family meals, from all the gossip among the servants as the weeks drag on and I am still not carrying a petit quelque chose. But I have married into the Duke of Wokingham’s family and they do not go away, it seems, ever, from their family estates. If they do up sticks and go somewhere else, it is always to another family estate, and again, we would all go together. John would never think of being separated from his family, or they from him.’

  Herbert frowned over his cigar smoke and stared for a good few seconds at May after this.

  ‘You know what your trouble is, May, my love? You’re living no better than poor people live. You’re living over the mother-in-law’s shop, and in the father-in-law’s house, no different from poor people. Gracious heavens, that always leads to trouble. The problems I have seen from just that around these parts is too terrible to want to remember. No matter how big the rooms, how many the servants, when families all live together in a heap you’re still in their house and no different from a poor person. Well, well, well. And after that grand wedding, and all the presents and the pomp, that’s how you end up, no better than my poor kitchen maid, and even she’s just moved out from under her mother-in-law’s feet, thanks to my obtaining a loan for her to buy a four up four down for herself and the man of her choice. You know what this is, May?’

  ‘No.’ May shook her head absently, still reeling from the idea that she might be living no better than Herbert Forrester’s maid of all work, still absorbing the idea that for all that she had married a duke’s son, she was as badly off as a skivvy.

  The problem was, it was true. She was living no better than some poor young couple who had to share their living with their in-laws. For all the gold decorations, for all the myriad servants, it was still her mother-in-law seated at the table eyeing her severely twice and sometimes three times a day.

  Of a sudden, which was unusual for May, she felt terribly sorry for herself. She very well might have burst into tears had she not known that it would embarrass Mr Forrester, and send any new thoughts he might have on what she could do about her unhappy position, her miserable state, flying out of the window.

  ‘Yes, May love, you’re no better off than a skivvy. Someone in your position should have their own house, be their own mistress, have some independence. No wonder that – well, no wonder that nothing’s been happening to you. How could it? Nothing worse than the feeling that something is not happening, and what’s more, that everyone knows it. I know, because Mrs Forrester suffered very much in that way, and although we have been blessed beyond our hopes with our darling daughter, she was a long time coming for just such reasons. They shouldn’t have lumped you under one roof, however big the roof, with your husband’s relations all swarming around you, and doubtless endless guests at the weekend, all being told the same thing: No news yet, you know. Oh dear, I see it all now.’

  ‘So what shall I do, do you think?’

  Herbert rose from his chair and started to walk about.

  ‘What should you do? Mmm, that is a very good question, now. What should you do?’

  Herbert took a turn about the room.

  ‘In my view you should do nothing until you hear from me. I will send for you as soon as possible when I have made a plan that will signal some kind of escape for you, and your husband, of course. I mean – you can be honest with me, May – you do still love him, I mean I take it you still love him I suppose?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  ‘In that case, there has to be a solution ready and available and even – nearby.’

 
Herbert smiled broadly. He did so love to help people.

  The next morning found Jane Forrester at breakfast as usual with her husband, but with some estate agent’s details on the plate in front of her instead of the usual bacon and eggs and fried bread, which she still so enjoyed.

  On seeing the details Jane paled, as well she might, for the last time they changed residences they had bought one of the Countess of Evesham’s houses, and the result had been not just unhappiness but calamity, of the kind where if the memory comes to you in the middle of the night, you pull the pillow over your head and groan loudly, as the agony of your ridiculousness comes back to you with a force that is all too real, and all too painful.

  ‘What is this, Herbert my love? Are we moving somewhere smaller and you have not thought to tell me? Or is it that your business has not prospered as it should, and so we are to be forced to go back to our roots and live in a far less grand manner? Because if this is so, then I think you should have apprised me of the situation before this, really I do, Herbert, love.’

  Herbert laughed, affably, but not so much as would set poor Jane’s already very fragile nerves jangling, and turn the look in her eyes to one of a woman at the end of her tether.

  ‘Why no, Jane, no. No, love, by no means – I say again, absolutely not. No, this is for you and me to look over for poor May Cordrey, our future Duchess of Wokingham. I have not confided in you until now, because I hate to worry you when it might not be necessary, but I need a woman’s eye on this. I must find May a house to live in.’

  ‘I don’t understand. May is to be the Duchess of Wokingham, and she has no house to live in, Herbert? I am amazed. No, I am bowled over, but not in a nice way. I am speechless, except I am not. Worst of all I am not shocked. That is the worst, for I know that the aristocracy can be the meanest folk of all. I have heard tell of it and now it seems I am proved all too correct. May, a future Duchess, has no roof over her head!’