‘Even if you had means, you would be no suitable wife for my son. I have been making enquiries about you and I’ve found out everything. It’s a small world, my dear, and there are enough people around that remember Elaine Carruthers and how she vanished from the London social scene in the middle of her season. My youngest sister was being presented that year and all the girls were talking about it. There were plenty of rumours around that she was pregnant and plenty of talk when her sister Mary came back from India the following spring with two babies looking quite unalike. There is nothing in this that is my business, you will say, but it becomes my business when you propose to marry my son and bring your disgrace into my family. I warn you that if you persist with this ridiculous engagement to Charles I will not hesitate to drag your name and the name of Elaine Carruthers through the mud. Don’t think that you will be presented at court – an illegitimate girl like you! I have plenty of acquaintances who will drop a word into the Lord Chamberlain’s ear. You will be rejected as unsuitable. London will seethe with gossip. And Elaine will be utterly disgraced. I don’t think for a minute that my cousin Sir John will permit this, and if you do not agree to my terms, I shall see him instantly. He will want to protect his wife, such as she is, and he will not stand for any nonsense from a girl not yet eighteen years old.’
Daisy sat rigid. She forced herself to be cool, to speak in an indifferent tone.
‘You must, indeed, be very against my marrying your son to have come up with that silly rumour,’ she said, and watched carefully for a flutter of uncertainty in the woman’s eyes.
But there was none. Lady Cynthia had the facts at her fingertips. She knew all about Clifford Pennington, Justin’s unfortunate uncle; all about his sudden death on the hunting field; all about the relationship between Elaine and Clifford – she had the whole history, dates and all, off pat, and without pity she told it all to Daisy, who had to pretend to listen in indifferent disbelief.
For a long moment Daisy sat very still, wrestling with her feelings, with her conscience. ‘It’s not fair’ – everything within her screamed the words.
She steeled herself. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’ With more confidence she went on. ‘You might as well call Charles back in and tell him that silly, spiteful story. And make all the threats that you want to. He won’t take any notice of them. He’s over twenty-one; he can do what he wants to do. We love each other. We don’t plan to get married straight away, but after about a year I think that we can afford to rent a house and feed ourselves.’
That’s if I can go on producing the sort of short films that the cinemas want to buy, she thought. And of course Charles will get a job, she tried to tell herself. He is well educated, handsome. Firms will queue up to employ him. But can I expose Elaine to all the old cats of London?
Elaine can go back to India, she told herself, but she was not comfortable. Elaine, she knew, would mind desperately about her reputation. After all, she gave up her own child to preserve her good name.
And what about Great-Aunt Lizzie? A scandal like that might kill the old lady – it was not impossible for gossip columnists to get hold of it; she could just imagine how they would do it with a sly innuendo, could just visualize the paragraphs where Elaine and her parentage would be pilloried and she, Daisy, ruined so far as polite society was concerned.
Still, it should be feasible to keep these sorts of newspapers out of Beech Grove.
But a strange question kept coming into her mind. Did they love each other enough to face all of these terrible problems?
‘I must talk to Charles,’ she said aloud, but she was conscious of a weakness in her voice.
‘Very well.’ Lady Cynthia had agreed almost before Daisy’s thoughts had ceased to stream through her head. She went to the door and called, ‘Come in, Charles.’
When he came in he looked very uncomfortable. It was obvious that he did not expect good news. Daisy’s heart ached a little for him, but she wished that he were more of a fighter. He glanced uneasily at her, but then returned his eyes immediately to the stern face of his mother.
‘Sit down,’ she said coldly, pointing to a low chair beside the table. He sat instantly and obediently – just like a guilty small boy, and Daisy defiantly got up from the sofa and went and stood beside him. Lady Cynthia was standing in front of them; her back was to the window, her face shadowed, but the expression of unyielding severity was unmistakable.
‘I’ve explained to this young lady that it is utterly impossible for any talk of marriage or even an engagement to take place between you both. Daisy understands me perfectly, don’t you, dear? You know your position, Charles. You have nothing except what I bestow upon you, so I want your word that there will be no more talk of marriage and that you will cease to spend time in Daisy’s company. Now give me your word, Charles, and no more will be said. You can enjoy the rest of the season and have fun going to parties and meeting other suitable young people.’ And Lady Cynthia picked up the tailor’s bill and fluttered it in her son’s direction.
Charles did not look at Daisy. He almost, she thought, looking at him with dry eyes, shrugged his shoulders. ‘As you wish, Mama,’ he said, and left the room without a glance at Daisy.
A minute later she heard the front door open. The sound of the London traffic rushed in and then the door clicked closed. She sat for a moment. It was like the time she fell out of a tree when she was eleven years old, she thought. Wild panic, incredulity, and then nothing; just a feeling of confusion and a dull ache in her head.
He gave me up without a word of protest – asked for no reasons – just said, ‘Yes, Mama,’ like a small child.
She rose to her feet. ‘I’d better be going,’ she said. And she went out into the hall with no more words spoken.
Did he ever even care about her at all? Or was he indifferent?
Had he only been interested in her because he thought she could offer him the chance to be a film star?
She didn’t know the answer to these questions, but she had her suspicions.
Is that all I am worth? wondered Daisy, humiliation chilling her to the bone as she walked away from the house.
I’ve been such a terrible fool.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Friday 9 May 1924
There was no one in Daisy’s room. Poppy yawned, stretched, tucked her pyjama jacket back inside the waistband of the trousers, stretched her arms again and opened her eyes as wide as she could to try to unglue them.
I’m engaged to be married!
That sentence had been running through her head since she had surfaced from a deep sleep. She said it aloud to hear what it sounded like and examined herself in the mirror.
And then she noticed a note on Daisy’s pillow addressed to her. She opened the envelope and her eyes widened.
‘Gone to see Lady Cynthia with Charles – perhaps you won’t be the only engaged twin when I come back, and what will Jack say to that!’
Poppy grinned sleepily, and wondered. She had not realized Charles and Daisy were so in love. They had been keeping rather quiet about it, she thought, and then jumped as Maud’s voice came from behind her.
‘Sir John sends his compliments, my lady. He hopes that you have slept well and would like to see you as soon as possible in the breakfast room.’
‘Oh, Maud!’ Poppy threw her arms around the girl. ‘Guess what! I’m engaged to be married. Look at my ring. I’ll never take it off for the rest of my life!’ She had been so tired the night before that she had just tumbled into bed while Maud had been attending to Daisy. Now she wanted to share her happiness with the world.
‘Oh, my lady!’ Maud’s very green eyes shone with excitement. ‘That’s beautiful,’ she said enviously. ‘Oh, this is exciting! Did you have a wonderful time last night?’
‘Wonderful!’ Poppy hummed a bar from ‘Sweet Lovin’ Man’ and danced around the room with the stool from Daisy’s dressing table held stiffly in front of her. Maud grinned.
&nb
sp; ‘I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life,’ said Poppy after a minute as she replaced the stool. ‘I wish you could have come, Maud. You would have loved it.’
‘You’d better have your bath, my lady,’ said Maud, looking amused. ‘Sir John was walking up and down and looking a bit impatient.’
‘Oh, he can wait. Maud, will you do my hair for me? It’s such a mess. I was thinking that I could have it like Lil Hardin’s – she was the pianist last night; her hair was fantastic. I’ll show you just how she did it.’
Sir John was, indeed, walking up and down the breakfast room when she arrived and he glared at her. Poppy smiled sweetly at him and twirled to show Elaine and Rose her new hairstyle.
‘I’d like to have a word with you, Poppy, about that ridiculous business last night,’ he said as she sipped some orange juice and refused, with a shudder, the butler’s offer of scrambled eggs. ‘Thank you, Tellford, that will do,’ he said abruptly.
‘About that friend of yours from the Foreign Office who got drunk and kept eyeing down the front of my dress?’ asked Poppy, before the door had closed on the butler. She helped herself to another glass of juice.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ snapped Sir John. ‘What was the meaning of that announcement last night? How can you be engaged? You’re not yet eighteen.’
‘That doesn’t stop people. Look at Violet’s friend Marjorie. She was married before she was eighteen, and now she’s expecting a baby,’ Poppy pointed out.
‘That was different, dear,’ said Elaine nervously. ‘Marjorie made a very good match.’
‘What’s that to do with it? And Baz and I must start a family soon as we plan to have at least five children and train them up to be a jazz band.’
‘I say, do you mind if I have that?’ said Rose, who was helping herself to a spoonful of the rejected scrambled eggs. She went back to the table and opened her notebook.
‘A little bird tells me,’ she murmured as she wrote, ‘that the popular young couple the Honourable Basil Pattenden and Lady Poppy Derrington have ambitious plans for the future . . .’
‘I’ll give you an exclusive news break about it,’ said Poppy gaily.
‘You are being absurd,’ snapped Sir John angrily. ‘If this is the way you choose to behave, then I must ring your father and tell him what happened. I can’t take responsibility for you any longer. Rose, haven’t you some study to do to make up for missing school? You remember that we promised you would do some of your school work every day.’ He left the room, his lips tight with annoyance, and shouted to Tellford to get Morgan to take a parcel to the Foreign Office for him.
‘Tell him to let Sir George know that I will be tied up with urgent family business this morning,’ he called down the back stairway. ‘Also that I won’t need his services this morning, but I may need him to drive to the station this afternoon to meet the Kent train.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Elaine with a sigh.
‘What are you doing, Rose?’ asked Poppy cheerfully.
‘Writing press releases,’ said Rose.
‘Oh dear,’ repeated Elaine. ‘I wonder what Michael is saying to Jack?’
‘Aggrieved Father Sends Out Challenge to Careless Chaperone: I’ll Have You Horsewhipped for This, Sir.’ Rose had turned over a new page of her notebook and was printing her headline in large block letters.
‘Let’s change the subject; you’re upsetting Elaine.’ Poppy examined her ring lovingly.
‘Yes, let’s,’ agreed Rose obediently. ‘I’ll probably work better later on in the solemn silence of my cloistered bedroom. In the meantime, Elaine, let me distract you by telling you that I know all about a terrible secret from your dim and distant past. I heard about it from a girl in my dormitory in Switzerland. ’
Poppy looked up in time to see Elaine’s face turn completely white. Her aunt’s hand was stretched out appealingly towards Rose, who was finishing off her headline in her notebook by drawing an ornamental border around it.
‘Why don’t you read us something from your own writings instead, Rose?’ Poppy suggested quickly. It was all that she could think of to say in this emergency. Rose normally could never resist reading out her latest story whenever she could persuade her sisters to listen.
‘I think you should hear this story first,’ said Rose reprovingly. ‘Nell’s mother told it to her. It’s like something from one of the Brontë novels. It’s the tale of a poor young governess who lost her heart to the son of the house and was expelled into the snow by her angry employer.’
‘Oh, poor Miss St Clair,’ said Elaine. To Poppy’s ear the relief in the woman’s voice was unmistakable, but Rose didn’t seem to notice anything.
‘Nell’s mother was in school with you and she said that was why you were sent there – to get away from the scandal.’
‘It was hardly a scandal for me,’ pointed out Elaine. ‘I was only eleven years old at the time. Robert, your father’s younger brother – he was only about twenty years old – he fell in love with my governess. They used to write to each other and my governess used to hide the letters under a loose board in the schoolroom. Little wretch that I was, I used to take them out on her afternoon off and read them to myself. They were very romantic. One afternoon – it wasn’t snowing, Rose, but it was very cold so I was sitting by the fire with the floorboard prised up, indulging myself with reading the letters from the first to the last, when Aunt Lizzie suddenly popped in.’
‘Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel,’ put in Rose with a bland face. ‘What was your governess’s first name, Elaine?’
‘I think it was Lucinda,’ said Elaine after a moment’s thought.
‘Lucinda,’ said Rose rapturously. She wrote it carefully into her notebook. ‘How wonderful! Just like the doll in the Beatrice Potter book Two Bad Mice. A much better name for a romantic heroine than Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey or something like that. Go on, Elaine, I am riveted by your tale.’
‘Well, I can’t remember too much about it,’ said Elaine apologetically. ‘I must have been a very heartless child because I recollect feeling pleased that I had no lessons to do – and then it was Christmas. And after Christmas I was sent to boarding school in Switzerland. Aunt Lizzie knew the owner of the school. She took me herself, by boat and by train, and it was exciting because suddenly I had so many girls to make friends with – I had been quite lonely at Beech Grove Manor after Mary went out to India with your father, you know. I’m afraid that I don’t remember worrying about poor Lucinda, though I was sorry that Robert did not come for Christmas. He was always fun and very nice to me. The next I heard of him, he had been killed in the Boer War.’
‘And you buried your doll in the same place as the letters were hidden,’ said Rose suddenly. ‘We found her in the schoolroom.’
‘That’s right.’ Elaine smiled and then her face changed as her husband came back into the room. ‘What did Michael say, Jack?’ she asked anxiously.
Poppy didn’t think that she wanted to hear her father’s opinion on her announcement the previous night. He was bound to make a fuss in the beginning, but he would come around eventually. Anyway, Daisy said that he was spending hours every day preparing for the court case that was coming up later in the month. Let him concentrate on that and allow his daughters to get on with their lives.
‘I think I’ll just walk across to Lady Dorothy’s place and see what she’s thinking about the engagement,’ she interrupted. She got up quickly and raced out of the door before Jack could say a word.
‘Coming, Rose?’ she called over her shoulder, then grabbed her coat and hat from the hallstand and had the front door open in a second.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Friday 9 May 1924
‘Is anything the matter?’
Daisy blinked away the hot tears that had begun to well up in her eyes as the big Humber car slid to a halt beside her. Morgan had stuck his head out of the window.
Daisy blinked rapidly. ‘No, nothing, Morgan, just tired after las
t night.’
‘Fancy a spin?’ he suggested. ‘Your uncle says that he doesn’t need me this morning. What’s going on? I’ve been hearing rumours about a surprise announcement last night. Get in and tell me.’
Daisy got into the front seat beside him. Great-Aunt Lizzie would have a fit, but she didn’t care. There was something very comforting about Morgan’s steady gaze and his quiet, reassuring voice. He looked at her searchingly a couple of times after he had pulled out into the traffic, but it was only when they reached the comparative quietness of the Embankment and were driving beside the Thames that he spoke again.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again.
Daisy opened her mouth to tell him all about Baz and Poppy, but then shut it again. A sob was rising into her throat and she thought that she would not manage to keep a quiver out of her voice. She dug her nails into her hands and fought to recover herself.
‘Something to do with Mr Charles de Montfort? Or his mother?’ Morgan’s voice was harsh and Daisy realized that he did not like either Lady Cynthia or her son. He was always very wooden when Charles was in the car, although he treated their other friends with the casual friendliness that he showed to the jazz band and was, she thought, amused by Joan and, in fact, rather fond of her too.
The slight contempt in his voice steadied her. She wound down the window, thrust her face out into the cold, damp air, breathing it in deeply until the sobs subsided and her hot eyes had cooled.
Then she pulled her head back in and as steadily as she could manage gave him an account of the sensational announcement of the engagement between Baz and Poppy. He did not scrutinize her again – for which she was grateful – and he laughed when he heard of Poppy’s choice of music to celebrate her engagement. Daisy laughed too and was relieved to find that she felt a bit better.
Debutantes: In Love Page 15