Debutantes

by Charlotte Bingham

  Whereupon Herbert warned him that he might not find the next part of his proposal quite so appealing initially, but as long as the good captain would be patient and hear him out he was convinced by the end of his exposition any fears he might be nursing would have been allayed. Captain Danby did as requested, listening to his host attentively throughout and not interrupting once. Occasionally something Herbert said caused him to frown and ponder the implications, but rather than ask for clarification or raise any objections at this stage, Captain Danby just continued to sip his port and smoke his cigar.

  ‘So there you are,’ Herbert said finally. ‘There you have it in all its glory. And I should quite understand were you to refuse, Captain, because it is no small undertaking. But I just want you to know one thing before I leave it in your hands, and that is that if you find you cannot go through with the second half of my proposal, for whatever reason, it shall not affect my original proposition. You may still choose to adopt the young lady and if so, if the adoption goes through, then the first sum of money I mentioned to you, her bequest if you like – that offer still stands.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, for I mean no disrespect,’ Captain Danby replied, ‘but much as I consider your offer to be a more than generous one, accepting it without agreeing to execute the second half of your proposal would make me feel obliged.’

  ‘You have my word, sir, that you would be entirely free of any obligation,’ Herbert returned. ‘I am the only person with an obligation and that is to fulfil a promise I made to May’s mother, and my feeling on the matter is that were the girl to find a home in the bosom of your family then I would have honoured my word better than ever a man could have hoped.’

  ‘Then if you will permit me, Mr Forrester, I shall discuss your most generous suggestions and proposals with my wife and speak with you again on the matter in the morning.’

  ‘I shall look forward to it, Captain Danby. Just one word of caution, mind, although I’m quite sure you’ll not forget. I would rather nothing of this arrangement is made known to May herself, not yet at least. If you and your wife go along with this proposal then I suggest, if the question ever arises as to where the money comes from, the tale you tell is that one of your wife’s noble relatives died and left her a sizeable bequest.’

  ‘A most excellent notion, Mr Forrester,’ Captain Danby said, following his host’s example and rising from the table. ‘I must say the thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘Good,’ Herbert concluded. ‘And now you have the answer to it.’

  * * *

  The following afternoon Jane left May alone with Alice Danby as instructed. She used Louisa’s indisposition with a heavy head cold as her excuse, saying that she had promised to help administer an inhalation to the patient, although as Jane well knew there was nothing whatsoever medically wrong with Louisa. Her daughter had simply taken to her bed because she could not abide the presence of the beautiful and vocal May Robertson which as Jane well knew could be a much more serious indisposition than a heavy cold. In other words she had to spend the afternoon with her daughter to show that she still loved her as much as she had always loved her.

  For herself May knew or suspected nothing about any stratagem. She sensed a feeling of excitement between her chaperones but she attributed this to their reunion after Captain Danby’s long absence and their visit to the lovely city of York. As for the fact that nothing so far had been said regarding her own immediate future, she took this to be a matter of etiquette, assuming that at an opportune moment Mr Forrester would summon her into the morning room to discuss her decision in front of his wife and Mrs Danby.

  So the bolt when it came was completely out of the blue. Never for one moment had she ever imagined that anyone would wish to adopt her as their own, not even in her wildest imaginings, let alone the two people for whom she had the most affection in the whole world, Captain and Mrs Danby.

  ‘I think I must be dreaming,’ she said, laughing. ‘Only I hope if that is the case I do not remember the dream when I wake up.’

  ‘You’ll only be dreaming if I’m dreaming as well, May dear,’ Alice Danby replied. ‘And if you don’t agree then I shall hope that this is a dream, so that when I wake up I may come and ask you again.’

  Impulsively May seized both Mrs Danby’s hands and held them tightly.

  ‘Why should you think I wouldn’t agree, Mrs Danby? I told you before that I would willingly come and work for you, do anything for you, just so that I could be with you and your family, so why should I not agree when you say that you wish to adopt me! I promise you, if you change your mind and decide against it, because of the problems it may cause you, or because it was perhaps just a whim which you no longer wish to abide by, then I would still come and work for you for nothing! That’s how little I want to refuse your offer!’

  ‘May dear – calm yourself, please!’ Mrs Danby smiled at May who in her usual fashion had gone from laughter to tears in two seconds flat. ‘Please don’t go upsetting yourself. I want to see you happy, not sad.’

  But May assured her she was happy and that she wasn’t going to cry. ‘That’s one thing I learned to my advantage in the convent,’ she said. ‘Not to cry or let your feelings show, but to laugh and smile and pretend all the time, for it seems that once people know the power they have over you they will purposefully go out of their way to spoil your happiness.’

  ‘So that’s settled then? We are to be a family?’

  ‘On one condition, Mrs Danby. That you pinch me, and pinch me hard. Just to show me that I truly am not dreaming.’

  Alice Danby did quite otherwise, taking May in her arms instead and embracing her. Outside a hansom trotted smartly by and on the chimneypiece a carriage clock struck four o’clock.

  ‘I shall always remember this moment exactly,’ May said with a sigh. ‘For as long as I live I shall remember every single thing about it. Your blue dress, the smell of your scent, the sound of the horse on the cobblestones, the very note of the chiming clock. I shall remember it always and count myself luckier than anyone who has ever lived, for who else can remember every single detail about the moment they were truly born?’

  Before they all met for dinner that evening, Herbert called in to his wife’s boudoir once her maid had finished dressing her and been dismissed. He explained that obviously there were things that still needed to be said which they as a couple could not say in front of May, but which Jane could say privately to Alice Danby.

  ‘Such as, Herbert?’ Jane said, turning in front of her glass in an attempt to examine her new dinner dress from every angle. It was the first gown she had commissioned to be made for her since their return to York, and she was delighted with it. Made of a heavy French silk, it was aquamarine in colour with the emphasis fashionably no longer on the skirt but on the bodice where the width and height of the sleeves, which finished well above the elbow, were stressed by the use of a contrasting green, and by epaulets and beautifully applied trimming. There was only the trace of pleating at the back and the skirt fitted smoothly over her hips.

  ‘Such as what?’ Herbert echoed absently, entranced by his wife’s recovered elegance. This was his Jane of old, albeit a slimmer version, but certainly looking better than he had seen her for nearly a year.

  ‘You were saying there were still things to be said which only I could say,’ Jane replied, catching Herbert’s eye in the looking glass.

  ‘Yes, yes I was, wasn’t I?’ Herbert cleared his throat and pretended to adjust his bow tie while privately planning what the two of them might do later that night when they had retired. ‘I made a list.’ He rifled for it in his pockets.

  ‘You and your lists,’ Jane teased. ‘But I have to say you are looking particularly handsome this evening, Mr Forrester.’

  ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ he replied, finding the piece of paper.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll see exactly what handsome does later, shall we?’ Jane smiled and half closed her eyes at him, taking the list
from his hand. ‘So don’t drink too much after dinner, Herbert dear, will you?’

  ‘I doubt if I shall be able to last out through dinner, Mrs Forrester. But if I do, I shall take a drink to celebrate the fact.’

  ‘Well, as long as it’s only one, mind,’ Jane replied, looking up from the list. ‘And as for this list, I think May has most of these accomplishments. I understand she certainly speaks passable French and very prettily, can play the piano well, dances as beautifully as she looks—’

  ‘She surely didn’t learn that at the convent,’ Herbert said gruffly.

  ‘No, she learned that at the Danbys’ with Charmion.’

  ‘And much good that’s going to do Charmion now.’

  ‘There’s only one thing here I’m not altogether sure about, Herbert,’ Jane said, folding the list and placing it in a silver notebox on her dressing table. ‘I’m not altogether sure she can ride. Or if she can, how well.’

  ‘Then you must find out,’ Herbert replied, going to open the door. ‘Above all things Miss May Danby, the daughter of Captain and the Honourable Mrs Charles Danby, must be the very best of horsewomen. The first time she rides in Rotten Row she is to be dressed in the finest habit and mounted on the finest horse, so that the very moment they first set their eyes on her every eligible man in England will be prepared to lay down their lives for her.’

  He opened the door of the boudoir and after they had exchanged one last secret smile Herbert escorted his wife down the elegant cantilevered staircase of Abbey Close and into the drawing room to await their guests.

  PORTIA

  AUNTS

  ‘Por-what?’ Nanny would be asked time and time again when she was pushing Edward out in the old-fashioned Tradescant vis-à-vis, with his elder sister Portia walking sedately beside them.

  ‘Por-shiah,’ Nanny would reply, with a variation of afterthoughts, but always along the same lines, namely that children should be given names that were pronounced as they were spelt, rather than ones requiring special definitions. ‘So tiring always having to say how Porshiah is pronounced. It’s from Shakespeare, I gather,’ she would add, suspicion hovering in her voice. ‘Her late mother was very fond of some William Shakespeare play or other and so that is how the poor child came to be named.’

  Not that peculiar names were unusual in the Tradescant family. Most of Portia’s relatives had odd-sounding names.

  ‘What is wrong with nice simple names I’m always wanting to know?’ Nanny would enquire of anyone who would listen. ‘Names you can spell and which are pronounced as they are spelt, what is wrong with them may I ask? What is wrong with John or Mary, or even Victoria like our own dear Queen? Fortunately Nanny’s boy is blessed with a nice sensible name. Nothing fancy or affected about my Edward.’

  At which point Nanny would nod significantly at Portia, as if she herself was answerable for not only being a girl but being called something unpronounceable, before bending over and patting the top of Edward’s curly head. Nanny had always had sole charge of Edward, for it seemed that their mother had barely given birth to him when she had been forced to rejoin their father in India. ‘For the last time, sadly, because of course shortly after that she dee eye ee deed.’

  Portia thought it silly that Nanny should always think she had to spell out something which Portia had always known. Her Aunt Tattie had told Portia that their mother had died in India from malaria just after she had returned there following Edward’s birth, so there was hardly any reason for spelling it out. According to Aunt Tattie their mother had had ‘ambitions’ for their father. Portia didn’t understand exactly what that meant but she did understand that their mother wasn’t coming back, and so eventually did Edward even though he was much younger.

  ‘Of course your mother had no intention of leaving you with us for the duration of your childhood, my baby darlings, heaven forbid,’ was how Aunt Tattie had put it, wrapping her long string of amber beads around her neck rather too tightly as was her habit and raising her eyes to heaven as if she could personally see where her sister-in-law was presently strolling in pastures green. ‘No indeed, no, she always intended to come and fetch you when the time was right, but alas it was not to be. And now the dear sweet spirit has been gathered we will all just have to make the best of it, my dearests, as we are indeed doing, are we not? Just as your papa, my dear younger brother, wishes.’

  Making the best of it unfortunately was not something upon which Nanny Tradescant was as determined on doing as was ‘Miss Tattie’ as she still called her former charge.

  For as long as Portia could remember Nanny and Aunt Tattie had been at loggerheads, the cause of the contention being that Aunt Tattie was determined to bring up her nephew and niece in line with the Arts and Crafts movement to which she was so supremely devoted, appropriately dressing herself in billowing grey velvet gowns and arranging her long hair in medieval Anglo-Saxon styles which she bunched in round plaits around her ears.

  Aunt Tattie was a beauty lover, and so was Uncle Lampard. Portia knew that Aunt Tattie was a beauty lover because she breathed in very deeply a great many times a day and held her breath as if in ecstasy, such was the fineness of her feelings, such was the tenderness of her heart, and such was her inability to cope with life’s little uglinesses.

  Her worst confrontations with Nanny were over Portia and Edward’s clothes, Aunt Tattie wishing them to be dressed in the new pastel-coloured shepherd and shepherdess smocks of the Aesthetic movement with their hair worn loose and long and in Portia’s case with legs free from constraints and undergarments, while Nanny Tradescant wished them to be dressed in the way she considered properly brought up children had always been dressed, in proper clothes made up in nice cheerful colours and not the sludgy, leafy shades that Aunt Tattie was always cooing over.

  Portia loved the clothes her aunt would have her wear. She liked being different. She enjoyed wearing shepherdess smocks and muslin-sashed dresses in smoky grey-green and saffron, and she didn’t mind one bit going to neighbourhood parties in her Liberty’s ivory wool dress with its smocked yoke and cuffs, lace trimmings and gold bows.

  ‘Most aesthetic. Most aesthetic indeed, do you not agree, Lampard?’ Aunt Tattie would sigh happily as she presented her nephew and niece for inspection, tapping her bachelor eldest brother on the top of his balding head to get his attention. ‘Lampard dearest, I was wondering whether or not you agree that our dearests look most aesthetic?’

  At such moments Sir Lampard Tradescant would wake with a start from what his sister always referred to as one of his ‘brown studies’ with a muffled cry of What? before staring at his nephew and niece in such a baffled way as to convince Portia that he had quite forgotten who they were, or perhaps even what they were.

  All the time Portia and Edward were growing up he rarely ever remembered their names, and certainly not both their names at once, referring to them either as Porty and whatsisname or Eddy and whatevershescalled, or simply – and usually when startled out of a ‘brown study’ – by the third person plural pronoun, as in They look all right to me or Can’t see anything wrong with them now that you ask.

  ‘You mean Edward is looking very much the thing today,’ Aunt Tattie would correct him in a valiant but vain effort to remind her brother of his nephew’s name. Or ‘Yes, I agree, Portia looks perfect today, Lampard duckie. I do so think it’s the greeny yellowy colours that are always so flattering, do you not?’

  ‘Entirely so. Truly bohemic,’ her brother would agree before promptly falling asleep again.

  According to Nanny Tradescant her former charge Sir Lampard suffered from some sort of indisposition which made him fall asleep all the time, although as Portia grew older she couldn’t help noticing that the affliction affected her uncle more after lunch and dinner than at any other times. He certainly had no interest in the running battle which continued between his sister and his old nanny as to how they should look or what they should be wearing, not even when Portia and her brother were going
out to visit friends or attend some other child’s birthday.

  Happily Aunt Tattie won the battle for the Aesthetic movement more often than Nanny Tradescant, with the result that the outgoing journey to a tea party would be conducted in an uncomfortable silence broken only by the odd but significant sniff from Nanny perched between them, until their carriage arrived outside their destination when she would quite obviously brace herself for the stares from the other nannies accompanying their more conventionally dressed children.

  But Nanny Tradescant was not the only member of the family who disapproved of the way the Tradescant children were customarily dressed. Lady Medlar, Portia and Edward’s maternal aunt, found their appearance a constant irritation.

  ‘I cannot conceive one good enough reason why these poor children have to be made to look so very peculiar, Tatiana,’ she would remark over and over again, whenever she visited Bannerwick.

  ‘What is considered peculiar by you, Augustine dear, is considered perfectly lovely by me,’ Aunt Tattie would patiently reply over and over again, usually pausing only to look up from her latest piece of weaving at her nineteenth-century copy of a much earlier French loom. ‘There’s really no more to be said on the matter, I am afraid,’ she would add in vain, knowing very well that something would indeed be said again on the matter when Augustine Medlar next visited Bannerwick, and again on the visit subsequent to that.

  Aunt Augustine’s visits were not generally appreciated, particularly by Aunt Tattie who did not like their mother’s sister one bit. Portia knew this because the nostrils of their paternal aunt’s elegantly retroussé nose would flare at the mere mention of Aunt Augustine’s name, a person to whom she would often ironically refer as ‘your sainted aunt’ and for whose opinions she had very little time, particularly since they were usually critical of her own, and most particularly concerning what Aunt Augustine referred disparagingly to as this ridiculous bohemic Artsy-Craftsy movement.