by Wendy Holden
‘Oh really. Princess who do you think?.’ Lady Annabel’s tone was scornful. ‘Just a mo, I’ve got it here . . . yes . . . ahem . . .’ Lady Annabel cleared her throat as if preparing to address the nation. ‘Lady Florrie Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe . . . seen dancing cheek to cheek with HRH – and we’re not talking faces . . .’
‘Oh God!’ groaned Beatrice, clasping her forehead with an icy hand.
It was too cruel. After what seemed like years of working on him, Ned Dymchurch was finally going to take her up the aisle. But now Florrie looked set to steal her wedding thunder, as she had always stolen everything else. Shoes, earrings, attention most particularly.
‘Awfully funny, don’t you think?’ Lady Annabel gurgled. ‘Cheek to cheek and we don’t mean faces!’
‘What else does the article say?’ Beatrice asked miserably.
‘Now where was I, oh yes . . . Lady Florrie, blah blah . . . deep in intense conversation . . .’
Beatrice relieved some of her feelings in a hot, savage snort. ‘Intense conversation! Florrie!’
‘Don’t underestimate her,’ Lady Annabel ordered. ‘Florrie is full of surprises.’
Beatrice didn’t disagree. The latest, provoked by the arrival of a clutch of bills, had been the discovery – unbelievable with anyone but her sister – that Florrie had no idea one paid for utilities and thought electricity came out free from the wall.
She took a deep breath and made a determined effort to return the subject to herself. ‘Er, Mummy, now the wedding’s definitely on, we need to think about the venue.’
‘Yes! St Paul’s or Westminster Abbey?’ Lady Annabel sighed happily. ‘I prefer the Abbey myself, so romantic, although of course we need to remember it’s a royal wedding and you can get more people in the Cathedral . . .’
Beatrice did not reply. Her smouldering sense of resentment had become an angry blaze. It was so unfair.
‘And of course Florrie would look fabulous in a tiara,’ Lady Annabel wittered on. ‘But no doubt Her Majesty will want to lend a crown from her collection, she usually does on these occasions . . .’
She was, Beatrice realised, going to be entirely eclipsed. A sickening sense of hopelessness swept through her. Back rammed against the Chinese floral wallpaper, she sank slowly down to the thick-pile beige hall carpet.
‘It will be so lovely to see the dear Prince of Wales again,’ Lady Annabel carried on. ‘Perhaps at Highgrove . . .’
One of the few addresses, Beatrice knew, that the socially rocket-fuelled Lady Annabel had not wedged her foot in the door of over the years.
Her mother finally rang off, but immediately the telephone shrilled again. Beatrice hesitated before answering it. A journalist, wanting the inside track on her possibly soon-to-be-royal sister?
But no, it was her father. He had not yet spoken to her about her engagement. Beatrice’s heart leapt with the hope that he, at least, was calling to congratulate her.
‘Beatrice?’ Lord Whyske barked in his testy baritone, as usual dispensing with time-wasting expressions of affection.
‘Hello, Papa! You’ve heard about . . .?’
‘Florrie, yes. Is she there?’
‘No, Papa. Isn’t it great news about Ned, though?’
He was speaking over her, however. ‘Busy being measured for her crown, eh?’ Self-satisfaction softened the hard edges of Lord Whyske’s voice.
‘But you have heard?’ Beatrice persisted. ‘About me getting married to Ned . . .’
‘Must go. Spot of trouble on the Cornish estate to sort out.’ The phone went abruptly dead at her father’s end.
Beatrice stared miserably at the receiver. If Florrie became royal, what about the consequences for her? Had her parents even stopped to consider them?
The whole point of going up the aisle with Ned Dymchurch was to show the world – and especially her parents – that she, Beatrice Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe was not as hopeless as everyone had always thought. She might have grown up in the shadow of her beautiful and beguiling sister, but she was the first to marry, and marry spectacularly well. Marry a mansion, an ancient title and, most of all, money. But who was going to care now?
Nor was this all. Apart from the disaster it would be for her own nuptials, the idea that her sister could join the royal family was absurd. For all her gentle birth and patrician upbringing, anyone less suited than Florrie to the rule-bound rigour of court life was impossible to imagine. The royals had, after all, only just recovered from the last havoc-wreaking blonde.
She needed a drink, Beatrice decided. She opened one of the many bottles of vodka that stood on the kitchen shelf, presents from the Pole who did the ironing. She reached into the freezer and flung some ice cubes into a tumbler. As an idea started to bloom in her mind, Beatrice stopped gulping the spirit and sipped thoughtfully.
Twenty minutes later, she lifted up the phone to call the diary page of a leading tabloid newspaper.
‘Er, I’m calling with a story about Florrie – um, sorry, Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe. Yes. The one who was dancing cheek to cheek with HRH. Er, who am I? I’m an, er, friend. Yes, that’s it. A close friend. And I just happened to hear her saying something rather amusing and terribly personal. It seems she’s not quite so keen on him as everyone imagines . . .’
The journalist was fascinated, delighted, grateful and awfully nice. After a few minutes, Beatrice put the phone down feeling a mixture of guilt and relief. But mostly, it had to be said, the latter.
Chapter 8
‘Is my darling Florrie there?’ gasped a hysterical Lady Annabel over the telephone the following day.
‘She’s out,’ Beatrice said flatly. Hello, Mother. Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I’m very excited about my wedding. I’m so glad you are too. Yes, absolutely we need to get together about the guest list. When are you free?
‘Out with . . .?’ Her mother’s voice was plangent with enormous hope. ‘With . . . the Prince?’
Beatrice bit her lip. Her mother’s obvious anguish was unexpectedly affecting. ‘Well, sort of yes and no,’ she muttered.
‘Yes and no?’ shrieked Lady Annabel, as if someone had come up behind her and inserted a cattle prod in her rectum. ‘Yes and no?’
‘I mean, she’s having lunch with a prince. Only,’ Beatrice pressed on as her mother threatened excitably to interrupt, ‘not that one.’
‘Which one, then?’ screamed their mother, who probably, Beatrice felt, didn’t need a telephone to make herself heard at the moment.
‘Erm, a German one she met in a nightclub. Prince Von Something Zu Something Else. Erm, Mummy,’ Beatrice added swiftly as Lady Annabel tried to butt in again, ‘you know, um, with the other prince . . . That’s . . . actually . . . over. It was in the paper this morning,’ Beatrice added in a tone perfectly poised between innocence and surprise.
There was a silence, then the other end burst into cataclysmic, eardrum-busting grief. ‘Yes, I know! I’ve just read it!’
Beatrice hastily reminded herself that it was the best thing for everyone. She had to keep strong and concentrate on that. That and her mother’s utter lack of interest in her own nuptials.
‘How could she have said that?’ heaved out Lady Annabel between racking sobs. ‘How could she have been so . . . stupid?’
‘I’ve no idea, Mother,’ said Beatrice, as if nothing could be more astounding than Florrie’s being stupid.
‘And who is this . . . this friend . . . anyway?’ spat the Belgrave Square end.
‘Can’t help you there, either.’ Beatrice crossed the fingers of her free hand and looked guiltily upwards.
‘I’ve a good mind to ring the editor,’ Lady Annabel thundered, her mood changing from abject to belligerent in an instant. ‘Challenge them to name this . . . friend or face legal action. Does the blasted newspaper realise what’s at stake here? I’ve already ordered my hat! Lots of little crowns entwined with the Prince of Wales’s feathers . . .’
‘I
wouldn’t,’ Beatrice said quickly.
‘Wouldn’t what?’ Lady Annabel demanded. ‘It’s fabulous. Monarchist with a twist and very stylish . . .’
‘I’m not talking about your hat. I mean, don’t ring the paper.
You’ll only make things worse.’
‘I don’t see how they could be worse.’ All the air had gone from Lady Annabel’s voice. She sounded flat and crumpled, like a burst paper bag.
‘It won’t make any difference,’ Beatrice advised gently. ‘The Palace say the relationship’s over. I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept it, Mother.’
Hysterical, heartbroken sobbing greeted this advice. ‘My poor princess! My poor princess!’ lamented Lady Annabel, in the manner of a Greek tragedian.
‘My life is over. Everything I worked for, everything I believed in, is over.’
‘There’s always my wedding . . .’ Beatrice began eagerly, but the line had gone dead.
Almost immediately, the door of the flat opened and the woman at the centre of the drama appeared. Florrie looked absurdly young, fresh and pretty in a white dress and black ballerina flats, which, Beatrice recognised crossly, were once again her own. Her bag’s mine too, Beatrice thought indignantly, recognising the seventies plum patchwork suede tote she had bought in a junk shop in a moment of madness. Florrie, somehow, made it look like new-season Bottega Veneta.
‘I didn’t expect you back so early,’ Beatrice said cautiously.
Florrie smiled, shook her blond hair, tossed the bag to the carpet and sank down on the sofa. ‘I started to feel a bit rotten,’ she announced cheerfully.
‘Was it the food?’ Beatrice had no idea what one ate at lunches with party-going German princes. Perhaps piles of sauerkraut to keep the strength up.
‘No, it was him,’ Florrie declared. ‘He said my legs were like a foal’s and my eyes were pools and my hands were like a dancer’s and my neck like the stem of a flower . . .’ She yawned. ‘It was ghastly. I felt that he was trying to chop me up and bury all the pieces.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Beatrice, reflecting sardonically that it must be nice to be complimented so routinely that you literally got sick of it.
‘Oh deer, you mean.’ Florrie giggled. ‘Because he compared me to a beautiful doe as well, starting shyly at the approach of the huntsman or some such crap. It makes me rather long for Igor. He never said anything nice to me, the poppet. I’m rather wondering if we should get back together.’ She pushed herself up off the sofa.
It was, Beatrice thought, difficult not to admire the way Florrie shrugged off trouble like a duck did water. To watch her tripping about the flat like Tinkerbell, one would never suspect that her fledgling romance with a prince of the blood had died a brutal and public death in the newspapers that very day. On the other hand, she reflected, it proved she had been right to assume that Florrie did not care two hoots about her royal relationship.
The telephone rang.
‘Will you get it for me, darling?’ Florrie sang. ‘It might be one of those horrid papers and I don’t want to talk to them. I’ll only say something silly and get myself into even worse trouble.’ She giggled, gathered up Beatrice’s bag and flounced out of the room.
As she passed, Beatrice’s nostrils caught a delicious floral scent. This, too, had the ring of familiarity. The bottle of Joy Ned had given her for her last birthday, possibly?
Annoyed, Beatrice picked up the receiver.
‘Florrie?’ boomed the voice on the other end. ‘What the devil . . .?’
‘It’s Beatrice, Papa,’ Beatrice said hastily.
‘Give me Florrie!’ The lord roared painfully into the tender inside of her ear. He was as angry as she had ever heard him, and that was saying something. Beatrice had heard him angry a lot.
‘Hang on, Papa. Florrie! Flor-ree!’ Beatrice laid the receiver on the thick carpet and rushed down the corridor to her sister’s room. ‘Florrie! Papa wants you.’
‘Tell him I’m out,’ Florrie pleaded, looking what was for her that most unusual of all things – scared. Of all the people in the world, their father held the distinction of having some small impact on his daughter; not least because he was the conduit through which her money flowed.
Beatrice returned reluctantly to the phone. ‘Sorry, Papa. Thought it was her, but it was Maria, the cleaner.’
‘Is it true?’ Sir George demanded.
‘About Maria?’
‘Grrrr! Is it true what I read in the papers? Florrie’s buggered it up with HRH?’
Beatrice confirmed that it was.
‘It’s a bloody disaster,’ Lord Whyske ranted.
Beatrice, for whom it was just the opposite, bit her lip.
‘I’ve had enough!’ His Lordship boomed. ‘It’s time that girl was taught a lesson. I’m cutting off her allowance, tell her. She’ll have to get a job.’
Chapter 9
Max had arrived to pick her up in a Land Rover almost unrecognisable because it was so sparkling clean. Polly, watching for him out of the kitchen window, sprang up in excitement. Could he possibly have washed it just for her? She watched him jump out, his white shirt spotless and his jeans old-looking but clean. His dark hair shone in the sun and the sight of his brown forearms, finely muscled and corded, made her heart thump.
Until, that was, Dad, who had opened the door to Max, cast a suspicious look over him and expressed, in a voice heavy with warning, the hope that he wouldn’t ‘mess her about like the last one had’.
Polly wanted to sink through the floor. ‘Oh Dad!’ she hissed through gritted teeth, squeezing past him in the doorway.
They had driven to the pub in awkward silence, Polly racking her brains for something light and amusing to say, something to dissolve the tension.
‘Where’s Napoleon?’ was all she managed in the end.
‘He’s not mine,’ Max said, frowning through the windscreen.
‘He belongs to the people I’m staying with.’
‘Who are they again?’ Polly asked; Max had never really explained. His hands tightened on the steering wheel and he did not explain now.
‘Here we are,’ he said, drawing up in front of the pub. Like its sister pub the Shropshire, the Oakeshott Arms had recently received a makeover at the delicate hands of the duchess.
‘They do champagne by the glass,’ he told her, waving the wine list. ‘No thanks,’ Polly replied in alarm, remembering Alexa. She wanted this evening to be as different as possible.
But then she saw how surprised he looked and realised she had been too vehement. Possibly she had sounded ungrateful. Rude, even. A great start. Even greater than the one Dad had given the evening. Oh why had he said that? He was trying to protect her, Polly knew, but surely there were subtler ways? She had no idea what Max had made of it; he had said nothing. But it was unlikely he was impressed.
And so, while Max approached the bar, Polly hung her head and stared at the pub’s rustic flagged stone floor. He returned, handed her a glass of rosé and straightaway an embarrassed silence fell, made worse by the fact that the Oakeshott Arms, previously thumping with landlord-sponsored heavy metal was now a muzak-free zone.
‘Shall we go outside?’ Max suggested eventually.
‘That would be lovely,’ Polly replied politely. Their exchanges,
she felt gloomily, had every bit of the excitement of those between the vicar and local spinster in a bonnets-and-shawls BBC drama.
They took their drinks outside to where several wooden tables and benches nestled against the pub’s rough, sun-warmed stone wall.
They smiled at each other, self-consciously, then looked awkwardly away at the same moment. ‘It’s very pretty here,’ Max said rather stiffly.
‘Yes,’ Polly agreed, feeling more Cranford-like than ever. Judi Dench was going to walk past in a crinoline at any moment.
She would have fitted in; Oakeshott village was a Victorian ducal fantasy dating from the days when the owners of the big house determined the entire
surrounding landscape. Every cottage bordering the green reflected a different architectural style. One was half-timbered Tudor, with red herringbone brickwork filling in the spaces between the black oak beams. A miniature Italianate villa stood next door, and beyond that a tiny medieval castle and a Swiss chateau. The gardens were as picturesque as the houses; the hollyhocks mighty and magnificent, and with vegetable patches neater even than Mr McGregor’s in Peter Rabbit. The apple trees along the old brick back walls were bent double with the weight of the fruit. Around the cottage doors, roses foamed in pink profusion.
A more charming setting, particularly on a soft summer evening, full of scent, sunshine, the calls of sheep and swooping birds, was difficult to imagine. And yet Polly was suppressing a rising sense of panic.
Self-doubt had set in. Polly was increasingly sure that Max was desperately regretting inviting her out and only asking questions to be polite. Nervously, in a monotone, her eyes not quite lifting to his, she answered his questions about the excavation.
Gradually, however, things warmed up. It was impossible for Polly to talk about her subject without enthusiasm, and even to her self-critical eye and ear Max’s interest began to seem less feigned. He seemed particularly intrigued by the children, snorting at some of Kyle’s more choice remarks.
‘He’s completely fascinated with the fact that they’re toilets.’ Polly chuckled. ‘None of the children can get over the idea that we’re working on an ancient loo. But loos are fascinating.’
‘Why?’ Max asked, his expression hovering somewhere between incredulous and amused.
‘Because they show that people haven’t changed over the centuries.’
Max laughed. ‘I suppose so. There’s not much variation in what happens after all.’
‘Quite,’ Polly said, about to expand on the point. Then, realising it perhaps wasn’t the ideal subject for a romantic first date, she blushed and twiddled with her glass stem.
His expression, as he looked at her, was serious. ‘What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever discovered?’ he asked her.