The Season Page 7

  Jane leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes and flapped her linen napkin, not coroneted as she knew that May’s would be, but quite plainly embroidered with the initial F. It was too appalling, what happened to folk in this life. And yet at the same time a warm and quite delicious feeling of enjoyment in the distress of others started to steal over her, for, being the mother of a daughter herself, it was, after all, just a little fascinating to hear that May, who had married so well, must be worse off, in every respect, than her own dear Louisa who had married a young gentleman of a much lower station in life.

  ‘My dear, you have not heard me correctly. May has all too big a roof over her head. Recall, my love, just how immense is Cordrey Castle, and just how many servants there are, and how many bedrooms, and how many saloons, or reception rooms, as we poorer folk call them. How many the stables can house, just how vast is the roof – why, I hear there is three miles of roofing. Recall all this, and you can see that our dear, dear May is not without housing, nor indeed likely to be. No, what May is without is a home.’

  Jane opened her mouth to say something and stopped just as suddenly. Seconds later the thought arrived, slowly, bit by bit, as to how it must be for May Cordrey living in that vast palace that was Cordrey Castle. It must be dreadfully lonely.

  ‘Oh, I see, love, I see.’ Jane was nothing if not tender-hearted, as Herbert well knew. ‘Oh, I do see. Of course, poor May, it must be like living – well, like living abroad. Among foreigners. Always hoping to understand but not quite being able to. Catching a word here or there, and then – nothing.’

  ‘That is exactly what it is like, Jane. The aristocracy, let us face it, are not like other people. The aristocracy are like foreigners to the rest of us. And they do have their own private language, as I understand it. And if you don’t do as they do, but do as normal folk do, well, then they go out of their way not to speak to you, which they do not do anyway – speak, that is – not even in their own homes. They are people of few words, and I know that to be true, for, as you know, I had an aunt who was a housekeeper to a Lady Southwold.’

  Herbert stood up, pushing his finished breakfast aside and leaving his chair out, which always rather annoyed Jane, despite the fact that they did have four indoor maids, because her late mother had always said, at least twice a week, ‘A gentleman always pushes his chair in and closes the toilet seat.’

  ‘I knew you would see how the land lay, Jane. I knew straight away. So, let’s do as we can and as we should, and try to find young May a nice little home to which she and her husband can come and enjoy themselves, quite away from anyone else, the way young people always have, and please God, always will.’

  The house they were going to see was in that part of York where the housing was cheaper, and some of it dated back so far that the origins of the sites were said to date from Viking days. Not that Jane Forrester would have liked to have thought of that; she had no great interest in history beyond the previous twenty years and looked at houses with the same eye she brought to clothes for her wardrobe – was it something she truly wanted?

  Besides, as soon as you delved into the history of a place, it always seemed to her that it became sinister. There was always some nosy historian happy to point out that there had been a plague pit nearby, or a hospital for contagious diseases, or some poor woman had been found dreadfully strangled in the back garden in Elizabethan times. No, Jane was not for history. Comfort, yes, but not history.

  ‘Oh, look, Herbert, do!’ Jane pushed open the front door. ‘Look how marvellous it all is. So bijou and so neat, dear. Really, it is too marvellous for words. I would quite like to live here myself, it is so delightful.’

  Herbert turned and looked at his wife. He really did not know what to say. After all this time, all the effort he had expended becoming a successful man, here was Jane declaring that she would be just as happy as any other woman living in a four-bedroomed house in the lower part of York, and on the unfashionable side too. What a thing! There was no understanding women, of that he was quite, quite sure.

  ‘Well, if all goes well, dear, we could move here after May and her husband have benefited from the loan of it. I can see to it, if that is what you wish?’ he teased.

  Jane turned at that. ‘Every woman delights in such things, Herbert, you know that. Playing at housekeeping again, and you with your feet on the fender in front of the flickering flames, knocking out your pipe in the hearth and ash down your waistcoat, and no maids to offend.’

  Jane sighed suddenly. It was always delightful to look back to the early days, but would it be so delightful, in truth, to go back to them? Perhaps not. At all events they would soon see if young May benefited from such an experience, coming from a castle and footmen and heaven only knew what. She would soon see all right.

  But first must come the test.

  ‘Herbert. What is it you want me to do, my love? I mean, what is the purpose of our coming here?’

  Jane’s eyes drifted out towards their new carriage which was waiting outside with its team of four matching greys. Herbert dearly loved luxury and ostentation, which well he should, considering that he came from poverty.

  ‘The purpose of our coming here, Jane love, is for you to assess just what is needed to furnish this place and bring it up to muster for a future duke and his wife to use as a love nest.’

  Just at first Jane felt that lovely warm rush of emotion that comes when a person realises that they are to be given a free hand to decorate an empty place. Her mind’s eye travelled quickly over the chintzes and the furnishings, the cretonne and the fittings, the oak furniture – oak was always so nice and welcoming in small places – and she could see just how she could make number two Stilley Street quite perfect for a young couple, and, it has to be said, not entirely different from her own dear little first marital home.

  ‘Oh, dear Herbert, no, I really must not take on the furnishing of this little house. That would be quite wrong, in every way, really it would. No, the person who should furnish this, if she is to think of it as home, is our dear May herself. There is nothing like furnishing your first home, as every married woman will tell you. It is a moment so personal and tender, Herbert, that no other woman should have a hand in it. And Herbert love, when all is said and done, if you think about it – she has so much to learn, and much better if she learns it for herself. No point in us teaching her our taste; the Lord knows that will not stand her in good stead when it comes to being a duchess. She must decorate this place for herself, and all alone. It’s only right.’

  At first Herbert thought this a pity, but after a few seconds he conceded that after all was said and done, Jane probably had a point. It was probably best to let the young get on with it, make their own mistakes.

  The subject of the Forresters’ earnest discussions was hanging about doing nothing very much after breakfast the following day, which was the fate of women who were neither sporting nor social. She had no liking for talking scandal or gossip in some upstairs sitting room, but neither did she wish to be outside, on such a rainy day, taking a picnic luncheon to some hut set out for the men shooting on the moors, so instead she was hanging about the morning room waiting for letters to arrive, and particularly a letter from York.

  As soon as May saw it she realised that it was the one letter for which she was really yearning. The longed-for letter from Herbert Forrester. She opened it as quickly as possible, almost snatching it from the silver salver that the footman was holding out to her, and hastily slitting the envelope with a small silver paper knife.

  The paper knife was much set about with coronets and crests, so much so that it seemed to May, before she had even opened the letter, that it was almost as if the letter itself did not belong to her, despite its being addressed to her. It was as if the very design of the paper knife was so extraordinarily anxious to remind May of the immense importance of the Wokingham dukedom, of its grandeur, it was as if the letter and its contents were already owned by the Cordr
eys.

  My dear May,

  I have found just the place for your intended assignations with your beloved. It is small, but pretty, and Mrs Forrester is quite willing to do it up to your taste. (She herself has very good taste nowadays.) And she will come and see you there, as I will. Let me know, as soon as you can, when you can visit?

  I remain, as always, your devoted foster father, Herbert Forrester

  May quickly replaced the letter and threw it on the fire. Unfortunately the footman, as they did at perfectly timed intervals at Cordrey Castle, opened the morning room door just as she had dropped Herbert’s missive upon the logs. But May had not appeared on the London stage for nothing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said calmly, and she took another log from the footman’s hands, and without a word deposited it on top of her half-burnt letter. ‘I do so love to handle wood, you know. My grandfather was a carpenter,’ she added suddenly and ingenuously, to the open astonishment of the young man in his country livery.

  It was not until he had left and she had checked that there was nothing left of the letter beyond a few cinders that May sat down at the gold-inlaid French writing desk and started to pen a reply.

  ‘May I take that t’ post for you, my lady?’

  One of the servants had stepped forward and curtsied deeply as May left the morning room.

  ‘No, thank you. I dearly love a morning walk, even in the rain. So refreshing, so good for the complexion.’

  She started to cross the vast hallway to the main outer doors, tucking her reply to Herbert Forrester inside her fur muff, because the Yorkshire weather, although it was still only autumn, was not just wet, it was already cold too. Determinedly opening up her umbrella for herself, but followed by her maid, May set off on the four-mile walk to the post box that was situated beyond the outer wall of the estate.

  The doors having been shut behind her ladyship, two of the footmen swung down to the lower part of the house, chatting as they went.

  ‘Where did thou learn to open a letter like that, eh?’ the taller one asked in some admiration of the other.

  ‘Used to be assistant to a magician. It’s like Father says about women, it’s easy when thou knowst how!’

  ‘I never would have known thou’d had it open and put it back, not when I handed it to her.’

  ‘Ah, it’s easy. A little piece of wire, a few fine wiggles and hey presto!’

  ‘Thou must teach me.’

  They both laughed, preparing to join the rest of the servants in the hall for their midday meal.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to ’appen when t’cat gets out of t’bag and they finds out what’s goin’ on?’

  ‘Blooming mayhem I should think.’

  More laughter from the two young men, until at last they fairly sprang into the large, light-filled room which served as a dining room to all the servants. Everything below stairs at Cordrey was conducted in imitation of their masters, down to the upper servants’ retiring to their own private dining room for the final half-hour of the meal.

  ‘Roast mutton for dinner. Ee, but the smell of it would fair melt t’tongue in t’mouth, wouldn’t it?’

  May had agreed to meet the Forresters at Stilley Street, and when she saw how sweet and charming the house was, how small and delightfully old, eighteenth-century and engagingly pretty, all in all, just how a house should be, she was more than pleased, she was delighted.

  ‘You will help me with the furnishings, though, won’t you, Mrs Forrester? I have no taste to speak of, and I really do need help.’

  Jane Forrester opened her mouth to say ‘Very kind of you, May, love, but no, it’s something you should really do for yourself’, but seeing the look in her husband’s eyes she closed her mouth again, and nodded.

  It was always difficult to deny young people anything, and particularly young May, who had, when all was said and done, been abandoned in a convent by her mother, and left to get on with life as best she might. Jane shuddered to think of what might have happened to her had not Herbert come along and rescued her. She might have become a nun!

  There was no denying, though, that after their humiliation they had wanted to revenge themselves on the Countess, and May had been something of a pawn in their elaborate plans, now that Jane came to think about it. So really she should continue to help May, for if it had not been for Herbert’s paying for the girl to have a London Season, May would never have met a future duke, and therefore, in a way, she would never have been as unhappy as she undoubtedly was now. In other words some people might say it was the Forresters’ fault the poor young girl was so miserable.

  ‘Of course I will help you, May love. How delightful it will be, I am sure, to work on this little house together.’

  And it was delightful, and May’s taste – hardly formed as whose is who has only been married a few months – was developed by Jane, who had nothing more in mind than to make the place as homely and as comfortable as possible.

  ‘We won’t be wanting no gold leaf and fol de rol here, our May,’ she kept saying as they went from cheap shopping to cheap shopping, both of them being as penny-conscious as curates when it came to what they must both have known might turn out to be both an extravagance and a failure.

  The house set on four floors would have appealed as being exceedingly commodious to anyone but a future duchess. However, to May – although only at Cordrey Castle for what could not have been more than seven or eight months – number two Stilley Street now seemed to be a positive doll’s house after the great echoing rooms of the castle. So tiny and so neat that her heart quite turned over in the excitement of thinking about it when her thoughts dwelt on it at night. And of course it was all the better for being a secret, so that she was able to hug its reality to her before reluctantly turning down the gaslight and waiting for her husband to join her in their vast, cold, gold-decorated four poster bed with all its old red eighteenth-century silk furnishings which could be closed quite cosily, but in reality never were.

  May dreamed well into the night, long after her husband had made love to her in the dark. She dreamed of the wallpaper patterns – the Chinese patterns that she did so love most particularly – of the oak chairs and table that she and Jane Forrester had found for the tiny dining room. Of the deal table in the first of the two kitchens, and the flight of steps that led down to the cellars beneath the pavement, and to the rooms set aside, now, for the maid of all work.

  Even that phrase ‘maid of all work’ seemed personal and exciting to May after so many months of not being allowed to so much as put a log on the fire for herself. Putting on her old convent school apron and getting down on her hands and knees to lay some worn old carpet that she and Jane Forrester had found in the attics seemed more wonderful than anything of which she could dream. And hammering it all down with the aid of tacks and heavy old hammers – not to mention the help of the old coachman from the Forrester stables, whose feelings, it seemed, had been considerably ruffled by Herbert’s driving the team to Stilley Street himself.

  ‘He still can’t get used to Herbert’s wanting to take the reins, you know, and I for one don’t blame him. But, as Herbert says, if the motor car comes to be a reality, which friends at his club swear it will, there will be no more coachmen driving him or anybody else – the men will all want to take the wheel themselves.’

  May looked out of the newly washed windows onto the street outside. She did not count the time passing now that she was at Stilley Street, the way she counted it when she was seated with her tapestry at the castle, but thinking of the old Forrester coachman it fairly caught at her heart to imagine him washing down rubbery black tyres instead of glistening horse’s legs.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, turning back to Jane. ‘Let’s hope the motor car does not catch on. After all, horses are so much more beautiful, aren’t they?’

  Jane sighed. ‘I only hope you’re right, our May,’ she agreed. ‘I really do not want my Herbert buying one, but you know men. Well, you pr
obably don’t, as yet, you’re too young. But when you are older you’ll find that they are inclined to go for what is newest, in every way. I must say I sometimes find myself praying that the wretched combustion engine will go away, I do really.’

  ‘I suppose at least motor cars, as John says, can’t suddenly bolt—’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, May love. Motor cars if they come into being will set about killing folk left, right and centre, really they will.’

  May’s eyes widened. It did not seem possible, but she also felt a twinge of fear, for she knew that John would be the first to want a motor car, even though the Duke, old as he was, would not like change of any sort. The clocks in his bedroom still stayed unwound at five o’clock for some reason she could not remember, but she thought that it had something to do with the battle of Waterloo, or was it the charge of the Light Brigade?

  ‘Well, May love, we’re right finished now, so the rest is up to you.’

  Jane looked around at the cheerful little sitting room, at the many bright touches, and the fire ready to have a taper put to it, or one of the spills they had made for the lighting of it. It was indeed a love nest, but would it, she suddenly wondered, suit a future duke?

  The Duchess looked at her maid. She trusted her more than most, but not so much that she would trust her with her life, or any of that nonsense.

  ‘I have heard what you said, Brimpton, and I have understood your intentions, which I must presume to be good. Now, if you will, please send Lady Cordrey to me, here, in my sitting room, but without her maid – without Watt.’

  Half an hour later, May, who had no idea why she had been sent for, followed the grim-faced Brimpton down the old faded strip of carpet until, eventually, they reached the Duchess’s private quarters. As she followed the maid into the sitting room, with its cheerful fire and its feminine fittings, ornaments of shepherdesses, blue velvet chairs, and many other features reminiscent of the era of Madame de Pompadour, May realised that her heart was beating so fast that it might well have been a speeding motor car of the kind of which the duke would so definitely disapprove.