Debutantes Read online

  ‘Then allow me to make amends, Lady Lanford,’ Herbert said, sitting at the desk. ‘If you would be kind enough to tell me exactly how deep these waters are—’

  ‘Firty fousand would see us clear, you dear man. Vare is all vis wretched interest to pay, you see. Aren’t banks ve very last fing in sheer greed, don’t you fink?’

  ‘No, I don’t, as it happens,’ Herbert replied, sitting down and writing the cheque. ‘They’re not top of my list, not by a long chalk.’

  Tempted though she was to come back at him for that, Daisy held her famous tongue, knowing that one more ill-thought-out remark might scupper her chances. She remained silent until Herbert had finished writing by the light of the small desk lamp he had turned on, blown the ink dry and actually put the cheque in her hand. Then she looked up at him once more, catching his eyes.

  ‘No, don’t say nowt, you don’t have to,’ he said before she could speak. ‘You’re a very lucky woman to have been born with such looks. You’re also a very singular one.’

  ‘Why – fank you, Herbert Forrester.’ Daisy smiled. ‘And I must say you are ve perfect gentleman.’

  ‘No, Daisy.’ It was Herbert’s turn to smile. ‘I meant that you are a very singular woman, because you really must be first woman in history to be paid so handsomely for favours not received. Good day.’

  She waited fully five minutes after she heard him leave before moving. Part of her half expected to wake up and find herself having fallen asleep on her chaise-longue while awaiting the dreadful Lumpkin’s arrival, while the other part wanted to run back out into the street and throw his money back in his insulting face.

  Finally, as the library clock struck four o’clock and she knew she wasn’t dreaming, sense triumphed as she reopened her eyes and looked at the slip of paper in her hand which spelt an end to her troubles. Pay to the order of Lady George Lanford the sum of thirty thousand pounds, it read. Thank you kindly, Mr Lumpkin, she thought as she tucked the cheque into the top of her black corsage. That was more than generous to be sure, particularly since her debts amounted to no more than eighteen thousand, perhaps twenty at most. The nice fat profit of the extra ten thousand should more than ensure that given fair weather Daisy Lanford would sail through the coming Season in her rightful place at the head of the fleet.

  She ought to be grateful of course, but she wasn’t. She was still seething. She must get back at him for his last remark, for his gross impertinence, for his being so high-handed and ludicrous and embarrassing all at one and the same time.

  Thoughts ran into each other, each more vengeful and less subtle than the last, until she herself was half laughing at some of the dire things she would like to do to Mr Forrester. Eventually her ideas settled themselves into an exact pattern. She would avenge herself on Mr Bumpkin Lumpkin and she would do it soon, just as soon as the cheque was paid into her Coutts account, and then she would act. He would regret what she had done for ever and ever. No-one but no-one treated Prince Tum-Tum’s little darling like that.

  CONSEQUENCES

  The arrangements for Mr and Mrs Herbert Forrester to receive their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales for an evening at Wynyates were impeccable.

  Jane Forrester followed each and every one of Daisy Lanford’s pre-ordained instructions to the letter and rehearsed everything over and over again with her own staff and the army of extra servants she had to recruit to attend upon the three hundred and ten guests. There were liveried footmen and flunkeys, the tables were set with gold and silver plate, there wasn’t one rose arch of a thousand roses but three, there were another thousand roses to make up arrangements for the dining tables, there were arum lilies and orchids in the hall and main reception rooms, there was an orchestra to play before and during dinner and a totally different one to play afterwards for dancing, there were chamber groups, pianists and singers, there were black pageboys and an illuminated theatre with a famous cast standing ready in the grounds to perform their specially prepared entertainment, and finally every one of the hundred-odd white doves which graced the grounds of the house had been dyed a delicate pink.

  Above all there was Jane Forrester in the dress designed especially for her by Charles Worth, a phenomenal costume made of deepest red silk and embroidered with rubies. She also wore rubies in her hair and at her throat, and over her long doeskin gloves she wore two rows of ruby bracelets.

  Herbert had questioned the multitude of rubies but his wife had reassured him that this was what was called en parure. A lady always wore rubies with red, diamonds with blue, and pearls with black. As Daisy Lanford had explained to her it was a formal convention and the reason for it was because it brought out the best in one’s jewels.

  ‘If one has vem!’

  As they awaited the arrival of their first guests Jane confessed to Herbert that she thought she was going to faint from the terror of it all, but Herbert, full of the bonhomie of the moment, not to mention two or three glasses of vintage champagne, would not hear of his wife fainting.

  ‘They’re all the same as us underneath, all just folk, Jane love,’ he whispered to her as he held her arm and they walked down the great staircase. ‘That is all you have to remember – they’re the same as us, and we’re no different from the footmen, they’re just folk and we’re just folk.’

  Reassured by the return of some colour to his wife’s cheeks, he smiled lovingly at her.

  ‘You look magnificent, dear,’ he said before they took up their positions to greet their guests. ‘Looking at you I would take you for a duchess, and at the same time I can’t help remembering that underneath all that you’re still my little Jane Anderson, and I’m just Herbert Forrester, the lad that your father thought would never make good! And now enough of that, we must greet the guests.’

  Among the very first was Daisy Lanford, looking if it were possible even more ravishing than ever. She too wore a dress built by Worth but made of the finest blue silk, with diamonds that Herbert thought would never be worn by a commoner at her neck, on her wrist and in her hair. Against this glorious picture of Lady Lanford in her ballgown Herbert was able to juxtapose one of a lady on a chaise-longue in a red embroidered teagown, her little white feet stretched out, her hair down, her eyes languorous. He, Herbert Forrester, was actually able to share the same image with the Prince of Wales he thought dreamily as the orchestra played from another room and the cries from coachmen to horses and the noise of carriage wheels outside crept up from beneath the music to the dais upon which he was standing.

  ‘Lady Lanford.’

  ‘Mr Forrester, Mrs Forrester.’

  His Jane looked as creditable as her ladyship in her own way, Herbert thought, watching their greeting of each other, and thankful that Jane had now regained her colour.

  ‘Everyfing just as you wished it I hope, Mr Forrester,’ Lady Lanford cooed. ‘His Royal Highness will love it vat you remembered his favourite rose for him. He always does love vat, if someone takes ve trouble to remember his favourites of anyfing at all.’

  ‘Quite so, Lady Lanford, we always like to lay on his favourites for the Prince of Wales,’ Herbert said and the vintage champagne having taken its effect he went too far and winked.

  Daisy smiled her glassiest smile while inwardly purring and thinking that the wretched man looked just like a butcher, not that she knew many butchers, but there was no doubt that with his red face and that wink Herbert Forrester, despite his fine-cut evening clothes and her fine house as backdrop behind him, was an extraordinary sight. He might as well be standing in a striped apron outside a shop with pheasants and hares strung behind him.

  ‘I am so glad vat you could come,’ Daisy murmured as she helped greet the guests, smiling her brilliant smile as she moved from group to group.

  ‘George always says never trust Daisy when she’s smiling,’ one of his friends remarked casually.

  For the first half hour no-one really noticed that his Royal Highness was late, and indeed why should they,
there was so much to see, from the little theatre built in the grounds to the rose arches, the other guests and the refurbishments in the house, but as the orchestra played in the background Herbert sensed for no reason that he could put his finger on that something was wrong. Lady Lanford was too much the cock-of-the-walk for his money. He watched her swanning in and out of the rooms as if they were still her own, and he felt uneasy. Even he knew that when royalty was expected the most seasoned social campaigners became nervous, and Lady Lanford was showing no sign whatsoever of nerves.

  After an hour had elapsed and there was still no sign of the royal party even Daisy confessed herself to be perturbed. The later it grew the greater the silence which had begun to fall upon the vast assembly of guests until it seemed to Herbert that no-one was talking to anyone else at all but everyone was staring from one to the other, and then sideways not very subtly to the entrance doors through which their Royal Highnesses could be expected to emerge. And then suddenly they were no longer looking and looking back to each other, they were completely still and silent and all that could be heard were the sounds of the orchestra still playing what appeared to him to be the same damn waltz over and over again.

  Herbert took hold of Jane’s arm and steered her out of most people’s sight behind a pillar.

  ‘Do some’at,’ he whispered to her. ‘Serve them champagne, get them dancing, but do some’at.’

  ‘It’s impossible, Herbert,’ Jane replied. ‘Lady Lanford told me, no-one can dance until after the arrival of royalty. It’s called protocol. It’s the rule.’

  ‘It’s called making fools of your hosts more like.’

  ‘I’m sure their Royal Highnesses will be here soon, Herbert. But in the meanwhile all we may do is wait. That is all we can do.’

  So they waited, much to the apparent and growing amusement of their more sophisticated guests who long before another thirty minutes had elapsed had realized exactly what was happening.

  Their hosts’ illustrious guests were not going to arrive. The arrivistes were for some reason being snubbed.

  As the realization came to Jane she found she could say nothing at all, remaining motionless at her station as she waited for what she knew would now have to be a miracle, while her husband found himself wondering over and over again how the whole nightmare had come about and at the same time knowing exactly why.

  Then it began, slowly and distantly at first although neither Herbert nor Jane had any doubt as to what it was. It was the sound of laughter and it was coming from somewhere at the back of the Great Saloon, a sound which slowly but inevitably grew in volume as the rumour began quickly to circulate until like a great wave it suddenly swept to the forefront and it seemed that all those who had been waiting in what had become silent impatience began to talk and laugh, and stare at the couple who for some reason which was unknown at present but would doubtless soon be common knowledge had been selected for this public and most awful of humiliations.

  ‘Snub!’ Both the Forresters heard it at once, turning vainly in the direction from where they thought it had come. But all they could see was an ocean of unknown faces, some laughing, some smiling, some just staring at them in contempt. Then the whole room took it up as a chant. ‘Snub! Snub! Snub!’ they laughed and called. ‘Snub! Snub! Snub!’ – a chant which began then to be accompanied by that most contemptuous sound of all, a slow handclap.

  Jane turned to Herbert to say something but whatever she had wanted to tell him was drowned out in the ever-increasing din of the catcalls and the handclapping. A second later they were separated from each other as a sea of people suddenly surged for the doors as all at once the party realized there was no point in staying a moment longer. Herbert looked for Jane, but she had disappeared from his view, swept unceremoniously away by a throng of those people who only an hour earlier had been singing her praises and expressing their gratitude for their invitations.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Herbert stood and raised his arms, trying vainly to stop the exodus. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please!’

  But no-one paid him any attention as they swept by him, laughing and as he could quite clearly make out openly discussing their hosts’ humiliation, so in desperation Herbert looked around for Lady Lanford, thinking that with all her great social experience she might be able to come to the rescue by advising him what to do in such dreadful circumstances. She might even have somehow heard what had happened to the royal party and, if so, together they might still be able to redeem matters if only they could attract the attention of those who now seemed determined only on leaving. But Daisy Lanford and her party were not to be seen anywhere among the throng of strangers now piling through the great panelled eighteenth-century doors, some of them as they went even helping themselves to a glass of champagne from the trays held by the flunkeys who were still standing resolutely at their stations as if nothing untoward was happening around them. Finally, carried along in the crowd, Herbert found himself face to face with his manservant Williams who was doing his best in the hall to marshal his staff into the dispersal of everyone’s rightful cloaks and hats.

  ‘Have you seen Lady Lanford, Williams?’ Herbert asked him, drawing his butler to one side. ‘If anyone knows what’s going on, she should, I imagine.’

  ‘Lady Lanford has left, sir,’ Williams said discreetly for his master’s benefit only. ‘She left well over a quarter of an hour ago, in the company of Lord and Lady Loughborough, I believe it was. Along with several others in her party whom I regret I do not know by name.’

  All around him the crowd pushed by, jostling Herbert out of the way and separating him from his manservant, no longer interested in either him or his hospitality, their aim now only to collect their belongings and to be on their way. Looking out of the open front doors and seeing that the drive was already a mass of carriages Herbert surmised that someone must have ridden to the nearby tavern to inform the coachmen of the collapse of the occasion, and judging from the number of carriages in the queue whoever carried the message must have done so well in advance of the stampede.

  And once he had arrived at that conclusion the puzzle fell into place. The whole thing had been contrived. Jane and he had been set up and all for the delight of a scheming woman who had not got what she wanted, not quite anyway, Herbert thought to himself as he turned and began to fight his way back through the throng in the hall. She might have got her money but she hadn’t got her way, which Herbert might have known was asking for trouble, for as the poet had truly said, hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

  So for that reason she had arranged for his humiliation. She had contrived to have him snubbed by royalty under the very nose of Society, and worst of all in his own home. But then – so what? he asked himself, pushing back at a large stout man who had all but shoved him to the floor. She might have managed to have him snubbed, but there was no crime in that, nor was there anything criminal in what he had done. Because he had not done anything. He had seen the devil down, he told himself. He had been delivered from temptation and he had even paid off the wretched woman’s debts. So why should he allow an act of such petty-mindedness to upset him? When the smoke cleared people would come to their senses and see reason, he assured himself. When the truth was known it wouldn’t be the Forresters Society would be laughing at, it would be Lady Daisy Lanford, of that there was no doubt.

  Having thus recovered his resolution Herbert continued to make his way back through the crowd of people heading for their carriages, towards the dining room and his thermidor of favourite cigars. In his mind the whole incident was already closed. He would take Jane on a sea cruise or a tour of foreign parts. He would spoil her a little, give her time to get over the whole silly business, and then they would return to York and forget all about it. Obviously the whole adventure had been misconceived, and in all probability they had bitten off more than they could socially chew, but that was that. That would be the end of it and he would have no more truck with such people. He had only gone
as far as he had for the sake of Jane and his beloved Louisa, but if these were the sort of people with whom they had thought they could mix, then all in all the outcome would be no bad thing if it meant they could all return to York and resume their former happy existence.

  Intending furthermore that nothing should go to waste, as he continued on his slow progress to the dining room he looked for one of his own footmen in order that he might instruct the man to make sure that the now superfluous musicians and the whole army of servants should help themselves to all the food and drink they could eat from the tables which had been so lovingly prepared for their future king and queen, tables laden with ptarmigan, hams, lobsters, salmon, and every kind of dead bird, cured meat, and special delicacy that could be imagined. And what they couldn’t eat there and then, he intended further to instruct the footman as soon as he could find one, they were to parcel up and take home to their families.

  Then, just as Herbert thought he had at last caught a footman’s eye, a party of half a dozen or so men pushed by him, some of them carrying whole bottles of champagne in hand and under their arms.

  ‘Ee bah goom,’ a thin parrot-faced man remarked loudly without humour, unmindful that the man he was elbowing out of his way had been his host. ‘Did they really think the Prince of Wales would bother with people like them? I mean, gentlemen, ee bah goom!’

  Within seconds all the others with him had picked up the accent and in braying voices and with derisive laughter they ee bah goomed their way out of Wynyates. As they did it seemed that those still waiting for their belongings as well as those drifting towards the front doors had all joined in the chorus so that finally the entire Great Hall rang with derisive laughter and echoed with a myriad ee bah gooms!

  Herbert stopped and stared at the braying mob, and when he looked back at the now almost deserted hall he saw that even his servants were grinning.