Coronet Among the Weeds

by Charlotte Bingham

  Then he got run over. I never found out how it happened. I just noticed he wasn’t there. I asked someone after a couple of weeks, and they said he’d been run over. It gave me a bit of a shock actually. No one knew if he’d got buried or anything. He didn’t know anyone but beats so he probably got put any old where. You wouldn’t catch a beat paying for a funeral. No one minded except me. They didn’t even pretend to be sad. That girl at college said, why should she be sad, she hadn’t slept with him? I didn’t have coffee with her after that. In fact I don’t think I spoke to her again. I was sorry I stood her that cheese-cake.

  I gave up being a beatnik after Herb got run over. I wasn’t in love with him. Nothing like that. He was just nice. Very simple. And I liked talking to him. Beatniks were too conventional anyway. I mean they thought they were getting away from it, which is pretty corny. You never do. You just change one thing for another. I was too fat to make a good beatnik anyway. You have to be thin. No really. You’ve got to look really skinny or it’s no good. Not only your face, all over. Still, it was quite interesting being a beatnik.

  6

  After I’d been a beatnik I thought I’d have a real change. So I became a deb. I don’t know why I became one actually, because I always swore I wouldn’t. But you know how you become things, you sort of drift into them. No one really says anything; you just suddenly find yourself doing them.

  I started off with one advantage, because of my father being a lord. If you’re a deb you’ve got to be rich or have a title. One or the other. Of course, if you’ve got both, you’re in clover. You can’t fail. If you’ve neither, you might get about a bit. But nothing much to speak of. My mother was quite keen on me being a deb, because she thought it would help me forget that old actor. My father didn’t say much. He never does. Except ‘how much will it cost?’ My brother was keen too because it meant a lot of free parties. People ask him out a lot because they’ve got this idea he’s eligible. No honestly, they really think he’s eligible because of him going to be a lord when you-know-who dies.

  Actually I don’t think I’ve told you about my brother. He’s the only one I’ve got. I haven’t got any sisters, just my cousin who’s as good as. I’ll tell you something about my brother. Everyone says he knows where he’s going, he’s got his head on the right way, and all that. But at heart he’s a beatnik. He doesn’t look like one because of being in the cavalry, but he is. One day he’s going to stun everyone and elope with a jazz singer of forty. I hope he does. I would if I was him. He doesn’t say much. He’s like my father: not a great talker. But I should think he gets fed up with people saying that all the time. Mind you, I don’t know but I should think so. I would. Drive me barmy. Mind you, people once they start thinking one thing about you, they never stop. If they say you’re just like a great-aunt, they’ll go on saying you’re like this great-aunt till you’re a hundred. It doesn’t matter if you change and become completely different, they still go on saying it.

  To begin with when I started being a deb we were a bit in dickey’s meadow, because my mother’s not a flitty Society type. So she didn’t really know any debs or their mothers. But I knew one or two girls from school who were doing the season, and some from college. So they soon mounted up. The tea parties I mean. That’s how it works. You get asked to someone’s tea party and meet all these girls. They take down your name and address and ask you to their tea party, and you do the same to them and ask them to yours. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. It’s quite a good system really. A lot of mothers won’t let their daughters go to someone’s tea if they don’t know them. But that’s pretty drippy really, because knowing people’s got nothing to do with it. It might have been in their day, but not anymore.

  Your mother is a very important bit of being a deb. She has to go to all these lunch parties and chat to other mothers. My mother found luncheon chitchat an awful strain. She’s very intelligent so that kind of conversation got her down. I used to cheer her up beforehand, and she borrowed my grandmother’s diamonds and things. But it was still hard work. She was quite amusing about them afterwards though. She said the frightfully rich ones kept their minks on all through lunch. She said they’d rather melt than take them off. And everyone cheered up when they heard I had a brother. The point of being a deb is to get married I suppose, though not many of them do. But that’s the object really. So a brother is good news.

  Of course doing the season is expensive. It was expensive even for me and I did it on the cheap. I had all my clothes made and bought remnants. We had a jolly funny time actually. You can’t help giggling when you go round buying things with ‘shop soiled’ on them when everyone else is flying to Paris to buy theirs. It was things like tea parties and stockings that cost the most. It was all right if the tea party was near the secretarial college or your house, but if it was miles it cost a fortune. Migo and I used to take the Underground and then get a taxi and arrive looking frightfully respectable. It wasn’t so easy going back, but sometimes we’d get a lift. Stockings and shoes were pretty boring though. The thing to do was to put your ladder on the inside of your leg and stick your shoes with Sellotape. It had to be expensive Sellotape because the cheap stuff doesn’t last.

  Most of the girls were pretty rich. Or if they weren’t rich they had godmothers who left them money to do the season with. Or their parents were separated. If your parents are separated you usually have a pretty good time of it because if they marry again it’s practically always someone rolling, and even if they don’t they spend the time competing with each other giving you presents. Anyway, even if these girls didn’t notice the ladders or the Sellotape, you thought they did. You’d chat away to them and hope for the best, but they’d be quite unmoved by jokes or anything. Just stare through you. It’s quite daunting having someone stare through you if your shoes are stuck with Sellotape. Most of the time I think they didn’t notice actually, I think they were just rather dumb and couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Even if you had new shoes, tea parties were pretty sinister. You spent the whole time sitting on the floor eating sandwiches and swopping addresses. Most of the girls were nice-looking. I mean looking at them was okay. It was just talking to them that was awful. They spent the whole time asking you if you were going somewhere. And if you weren’t they’d stop talking to you. If Janey-Lulu hadn’t asked you to her luncheon you’d had it. I’m not joking. They wouldn’t talk to you for days. If you mentioned anything else they thought you were potty. No really. Nuts. You couldn’t blame them really, they didn’t know any better. They didn’t even know how to begin to talk about anything else. Nor did their mothers. It wasn’t their fault.

  Tea parties went on for practically ever. Everyone went on and on giving them. If they liked you they didn’t only ask you to one, they asked you to about half a dozen. And if there was some bit about you in the newspapers they’d all swoon.

  Even girls who you knew hated you. There was this girl at college like that. She really loathed me. I couldn’t stand her. Do you know she hated me so much she wouldn’t even let me cheat in a shorthand test. Nobody gets through shorthand without cheating. It’s never been known. Anyway, when she sat next to me during one of these tests she made me put the book away. Everyone else had theirs out. But no, she didn’t, so I had to put mine away. Then when there was a piece in some newspaper with my face on it she practically killed herself being nice to me. She really thought I’d fall for that. For heaven’s sake.

  Most people give cocktail parties after they’ve given a whole lot of teas and lunches. Cocktail parties are worse than tea parties. They’re worse than dances too, come to think of it. In fact they’re the worst thing you could possibly do. Except shorthand. It’s all the weeds you have to talk to. They’re much worse than the girls. Millions of times worse. If you find the girls chilling you wait and see what you’ll find the men. You really get fond of the girls after you’ve met the men. I thought I knew how weedy a weed could get. But I didn’t.
I didn’t know even half how weedy a weed could get.

  When you start going to these cocktail parties the first mistake you make is to think they want to talk to you. So you go up and start talking. You know, I chit-chat about things. If a weed thinks you look all right he’ll talk a bit. Then he’ll start asking you where you live and how many houses you’ve got and whether you’re giving a dance. If you’ve only got one house you’re lucky if he stays two minutes. They don’t believe in wasting time, weeds. Gosh no. They’re off like a streak of lightning. I don’t blame them. I don’t really. If you only want to know heiresses and stuff it’s no good talking to people like Migo and me. It’s a simple outlook really.

  You develop a technique after a bit. Cocktail party technique. First of all you don’t care. Then when you go in and see rows and rows of enemy backs facing you with no gaps to break through, you don’t just stand and hope. You dive through their legs and start talking non-stop at whatever you come up face to face with. You talk so fast they don’t have time to ask you how many houses you’ve got. And you will them not to walk away. You’ve got to will jolly hard. Sometimes it doesn’t work and they walk off. But you just spring on someone else, and if they walk away too you take a taxi to the next cocktail party. And start all over again.

  Of course you meet the same weeds at dances, but it’s not nearly so bad. Because they have to talk to you at dinner. And when you get to the dance you don’t have to talk to them because you’re dancing and you can pretend to be concentrating. It’s a funny thing about debby weeds actually. None of them are rich or eligible or anything. In fact most of them are absolutely broke, and not a title between them. You’d think they would be because of all these heiresses swooning over them. But they’re not. One man I knew quite well was a complete rotter. He didn’t pretend not to be. I mean he told you that he was, which I think was quite fair. These girls’ mothers paid him to take their daughters out to dinner. He said it brought in quite a steady income. And he never had to pay for anything. Tax-free too. Which isn’t to be sneezed at. He had this double-barrelled name he’d made up, and he used to tell them he’d made it up and no one believed him. They thought he was joking. There’s a book printed for these debby weeds listing all the girls coming out and their hobbies and how many everything they’ve got. So really it’s a pretty good sideline. And dead simple. You’ve only got to have a dinner jacket, reference books, and a tennis racket for weekends and you’re in business.

  Loos are very important during the season. I should think they’re practically the most important bit of the season for some girls. I know one girl who did her whole season in the loo. She used to take this small edition of War and Peace about with her in her evening bag. She got through it seven times in one season. She was quite a slow reader. Migo had a copy of Gone with the Wind she hid in the loo at the Dorchester, so she just curled up with it till it was time to go home. They couldn’t go home straight after dinner because their mothers would be furious and say they were failures. It’s one thing to be a failure. But it’s a hell if your mother keeps telling you. And some of them could go on for hours.

  My brother was quite keen on all these parties to begin with. But he soon got bored. Pretty soon I can tell you. He’s quite intelligent. Very intelligent actually, so debs rather got him down after a bit, after the novelty wore off. He found it was impossible to remember their names, because they were so long. And he said, even when he did remember their names, they all looked the same. So he gave up going after a bit. Except if it was a relation or something.

  Country dances could be fun though. Honestly, get a weed among green foliage and pastures, and he wasn’t nearly so bad. Some of them even became quite human. Made jokes and things. You usually stay the weekend with someone for dances in the country. The people who give the dance fix you up with someone who lives near. You really had a nice time if the people you were staying with were fun. It didn’t even matter if the dance was bad, you could still enjoy yourself, because you had all these trees and things to look at. Even if you were bored you could enjoy the view.

  It was nerve-racking if you got taken to the dance alone in a car, especially if it was a long drive. The thing is you nearly always got told who you were going with and there was nothing you could do about it. You can’t tell some po old hostess you don’t want to go with someone because he’s a sex maniac, and being raped by a weed would be no joke. I’m not exaggerating: some of those weeds, there was nothing they wouldn’t stop at. Mostly because they’re so stupid. No intelligence at all. So they get bored. They really live with boredom all the time. That’s the reason they’re so nasty most of them. They’re just so bored. Nothing to think about or anything. Just dance after dance. Anyone would get nasty being bored all the time. Honestly, even a saint.

  My mother used to get very cross. About these types asking if they could rape you all the time. She said they didn’t go on like that in her day. She said they always brought you chocolates and flowers and you went to football matches, but they didn’t rape you. I don’t think she knew the same types actually. I mean, the summit of her season was the Cuckfield Hockey Dance. She was a simple country girl, so I asked her what I should do about these rapey sort of weeds. She couldn’t decide whether I should learn driving or have a police whistle. In the end she settled for a pepper-pot. She made me keep this pepper-pot in my evening bag. So if a weed really leaped on me with a low growl all I had to do was open my evening bag, get out the pepper-pot, unscrew the lid and chuck the pepper in his eyes, in one easy movement. Migo and I practised once and it was impossible. It would be all right if you knew when they were going to leap. Then you could start undoing your bag and unscrewing the pot beforehand. But you don’t. And when it was damp weather you couldn’t even unscrew the top because it got all clogged up. You were really in dickey’s meadow.

  It wasn’t only the weeds that could be nerve-racking. Some of these snobby old girls were pretty frightening. I mean girls’ mothers and things. The thing is, in theory you think, pooh I’m not frightened of some old bag. But it’s no good pretending because no matter what you do you still feel jolly nervous. I used to try anything. All the old gimmicks, like imagining them with nothing on and all that, but it didn’t help much. You weren’t always frightened of them because they were frightening, or you felt shy, or knew they were going to ask you something ghastly. Often they just frightened you because they were so horrible. Not frightening horrible. Just horrible. I’d never met people so heartless. Mind you, I hadn’t met a lot of people. Though even now those smug women give me the creeps, and I’m getting on. No chicken.

  I had a dance of course. And a cocktail party and everything. Rather good. I thought so anyway. I don’t think my father was amusing though. Most of the time he talked to the maid downstairs. Drips and stuff aren’t really in his line. He’d rather be in the kitchen with a bottle of whisky. When I said why didn’t he have a go at talking to some of them, he just said,

  ‘I’m damned if I want a whole lot of weeds in my hair.’

  He isn’t bad at talking to people once he gets down to it. He puts on this very pally expression and they tell him practically anything. Nearly every party there he is with this pally expression listening to some dope and them telling him the secrets of their hearts. I don’t think he wants to hear the secrets of their hearts. He’s just got this face people tell things to. Honestly, they just see his face and make straight for it. Poor old boy. I think he gets a bit bored sometimes.

  After I’d had this dance, being a deb tailed off really. I went on being one officially till the end of that year. But I didn’t feel like one much. I didn’t feel like anything much. I just felt like someone who has been a beatnik and a deb, and rather bad at both. I didn’t know what to be or anything. I didn’t want to go on being a deb because I wasn’t much good. And I didn’t want to be a secretary. So I just kept going to all these parties to stop thinking about anything at all. Honestly, if you don’t want to think you j
ust have to keep going to millions of parties and you don’t have to. I’ve never seen anyone thinking at a party. I’d have noticed if I had.

  My mother was thinking though. Mostly I think she was thinking what to do with me. After a bit she decided I ought to do this model course. To make me more dignified. And to learn to sit down properly. She’s very keen on me sitting down properly and my legs looking tidy and things. I don’t think they ever will be actually. I don’t think she thought they would either, but I suppose it was worth a try. Also I’ve got these thick eyebrows. I think they got her down.

  The first day I went I had to go and talk to a man. He saw what sort of shape I was, so I suppose he guessed I wasn’t going to be a model. He asked me if I was shy. I said, no, I wasn’t shy, but my legs were untidy. He said they could probably tidy them up. He said they tidied most people’s up after they’d been doing this course for a bit. He said he’d seen much worse than mine. Honestly, he said they were quite mild compared to some he’d seen. I was quite cheered I can tell you. You are cheered, you know. If someone’s seen legs worse than yours.

  All the other girls doing the course were very thin and tall. I was the only one who wasn’t. But they were nice. Thin but jokey. They were all going to be models except me.

  The first day we had to walk up and down. It sounds easy as anything. But try walking up and down with fourteen thin girls watching. Normally when you’re walking you don’t think much about it. It’s only when you start walking up and down in front of someone you feel loopy. Like when you start thinking about your ears. Day-to-day you don’t think much about your ears except to hear through them or something. But when you actually think about an ear, and its shape and what it looks like and the way it’s stuck on your head you feel a bit of a nit about it. It’s exactly the same when you start walking up and down in front of someone. You suddenly realise you’ve got two legs and feet on the end and knee-caps and things. It’s a bit much.