Debutantes

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Because I hadn’t been asked, Hubert,’ Portia replied. ‘And anyway I wasn’t properly dressed for such an occasion.’

  ‘No.’ Hubert laughed in all innocence, with no intention of malice. ‘You’re in what Mamma calls your HMS Pinafore.’

  ‘That was one of the reasons I didn’t want to be seen, Hubert.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. My sisters may look awfully sweet, but they’re forever laughing at everybody up their sleeves. At least that’s what Nanny says.’

  ‘And they laugh at me, do they? Up their sleeves?’

  Hubert thought about this for a moment, pausing mid-stroke with the ends of the oars under his chin. ‘I wouldn’t say laugh at, Porsher. More laugh about really. Marie-Louise says you should have been called Portos, not Porsher. You know, like one of the Three Musketeers.’

  ‘What does Richard say?’

  ‘Bro? He thinks you’re splendid. He says you’re like another brother.’

  Ahead of them on a sandbank a heron stood, its body almost hidden in the reeds. For a moment Portia wasn’t sure that it was actually a heron because so still was it standing with its head sunk on its shoulders that its thin, wedge-shaped head looked more like a piece of bleached branch, until suddenly it stood up to its full height, like the truth that was slowly emerging in the conversation between Portia and young Hubert, and with a couple of languid and for a bird its size oddly slow beats of its great wings took to the air and off for a fresh hunting ground.

  ‘Is that how you see me, Hubert?’ Portia asked. ‘As another brother?’

  ‘Gosh no.’ Hubert blushed and looked away after the heron. ‘No, when I’m grown up actually I’d quite like to marry you.’

  ‘Thank you, Hubert,’ Portia replied, also watching the great and beautiful bird.

  ‘Just like everyone says Richard’s going to marry Miss Cecil,’ Hubert concluded.

  * * *

  Portia was not to be persuaded otherwise, not by her uncle’s heartfelt warnings about the frightful young men who preyed on girls such as her when they were sent to the capital to make their debut in Society, nor by her beloved aunt’s assurances that a girl of her character and accomplishment would encounter little difficulty in finding a suitable partner with whom she could share her life without ever moving from the comforts of Bannerwick.

  ‘Besides, missy,’ her uncle grumbled at dinner one night when the matter was being discussed yet again. ‘What happened to all those brave ideas of circumnavigating the globe, yes? That’s what I want to know. What happened to all those famous ideas of setting sail to places where no white foot ever trod, yes, yes?’

  ‘They were just childish pipe dreams, Uncle Lampard,’ Portia replied. ‘Fantastical notions that belong in the nursery. What you have always maintained is right, and now I’m certain of it.’

  ‘Hmmm. Not everything I say’s gospel, y’know, missy,’ Uncle Lampard replied after a stern look from his sister. ‘What’s the particular to which you refer, eh?’

  ‘What you have always said about girls, Uncle. That girls simply do not count.’

  ‘Oh!’ Aunt Tattie gasped, so loudly that both Portia and Uncle Lampard were concerned she might faint. But Aunt Tattie was fat from swooning. In fact she was in the very opposite physical state, that of utter outrage. ‘That is no longer true, Lampard, and well you know it! This is the age of the New Woman, and don’t you forget it! Give us a few more years and see what we shall do! We shall yet have the vote!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sir Lampard sighed. ‘And one of our cattle just flew by the window.’

  ‘You may both of you argue till the rest of our cows come home,’ Portia interposed, ‘but my mind is made up. I shall go to London at Aunt Augustine’s invitation and I shall be presented at Court. Since I am not the most beautiful of young women perhaps I will not become betrothed to the most dashing catch there is, or even a lesser one. None the less I shall make every effort to find myself a suitable husband, because that is all that is left to me.’

  ‘You will do no such thing!’ her aunt replied. ‘You will not go to London and throw your life away on some miserable lazy Society good for nothing leech! I will not allow it!’

  ‘But you are not my trustee, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia replied. ‘And I am not yet come of age. So if this is what my trustee demands of me, then I must obey her. Since I have no wealth of my own and cannot turn my dreams into reality, I really have no other choice but to go to London. I would prefer that than to remain here most probably to end up as a spinster.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Sir Lampard said, draining his wine glass and holding it up at once for Louis to refill it. ‘Now now, fair dos, missy. Fair dos.’

  ‘No, Portia,’ Aunt Tattie replied. ‘You are not to go. London is no place for someone as sensitive as you, and I will not see you thrown to the wolves as it were. So there it is. I forbid it.’

  ‘But you cannot, Aunt Tattie, because you are not my trustee,’ Portia returned. ‘Perhaps the real reason why I feel I must go is because I no longer want to be in this neighbourhood, you see. I am not at ease with myself here any more – so please. Do not upset yourself, because there is no point. Aunt Augustine will take me away with her at gunpoint rather than have you defy her, you know that. So let us all try to make the very best of it, and turn any misfortune this may appear to be to our advantage.’

  Aunt Tattie said nothing at first, instead clasping both her lace-mittened hands in front of her and bowing her head so that they rested on them, as if she was in prayer.

  ‘Very well,’ she finally announced. ‘On one condition. That I come with you to London.’

  Portia thought about this and then smiled. ‘I would love that,’ she replied. ‘But Aunt Augustine would never allow it.’

  ‘Let her just try to stop me,’ Aunt Tattie said, rising from the table like Aphrodite from the waves. ‘Let her just try to stop me.’

  ‘Good show. Now that really is fair dos,’ Sir Lampard agreed, examining his recharged wine glass. ‘Better than that, why don’t we all go to London? Eh? Now that really would be the ticket.’

  EMILY

  THE LARK

  So fine was the morning that Emily larked most of the way to the meet, jumping at least four good stone walls and just as many ditches.

  ‘Jack’ll be half dead be the time ye get there!’ old Mikey warned her sternly when he finally caught her at it, but his caution lacked any conviction for he was well used to his young mistress’s high spirits. Besides, even though he had her second horse on a leading rein beside him, he knew the horse he’d been getting ready since first light was fit and strong enough to run all day and that the odd pop on the way would do the big bay no harm at all.

  ‘Isn’t it enough, Lady Emmie, that you will yet again be the only lady out today? As it is they’ll all be starin’ atcher, and talkin’ aboutcher with enough heat to keep Glendarven House warm for the rest of the year.’

  ‘There will be other ladies present, Mikey,’ Emily replied with a sigh. ‘I know there will, because didn’t my sister Elisabeth say Lady Newton was coming with her two daughters? And shouldn’t she know that because did they not all take tea with each other only yesterday?’

  ‘They’ll come for the meet all right,’ Mikey agreed with a snort. ‘And they’ll take the eye all right with the fine cut of their riding habits and the shine on their blood horses, ah but the moment the field moves off then where will they be? I’ll tell yous. The young ladies will be back in the carriage with their mammies and their horses trotting home with the groom without a speck of mud on them. It’s no good, Lady Emmie, whatever you say. A proper huntin’ lady’s still a novelty, especially if she spends most of the day without a pilot and trying to slip her groom,’ he added, his eyes narrowing at her young ladyship’s back.

  ‘Yes, yes, Mikey, so I know because aren’t you forever telling me?’ Emily called back over her shoulder as she trotted ahead.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother sure I don’t. I re
ally don’t. For hasn’t it always been the same wit’ Masters’ daughters since the dawn of time? So I really don’t knows why I bother at all.’

  ‘Oh, Mikey, you do go on so,’ Emily grumbled, but she nevertheless slowed her horse to a walk, because now she thought about it she really didn’t want Jack shown up in front of the Newton ladies’ mounts. She wanted her horse to look his very best if not the pick of the bunch.

  ‘’Tis lucky you are, you been sent the new side-saddle by your great-aunt, Lady Emmie,’ old Mikey added. ‘For wasn’t poor Mrs Hylton killed only last week in North Tipperary and her still ridin’ one of dem old ones?’

  ‘Mikey – I have never known you yet to tell me something without being reminded of some death or other!’ Emily teased the old man. Yet as she remembered her old side-saddle, and how up until the arrival of the new one she had been obliged to hold on to the back of her saddle in just the way most of the ladies who hunted still did whenever they jumped an obstacle, she silently thanked her great-aunt for her opportune gift.

  As they clattered down the hill which led to the small market town of Ardroon Emily rejoined the road and settled her horse back to a walk a few yards ahead of her groom. There was a good crowd gathered outside Flanagan’s General Stores where the Blazers were meeting, at least three dozen foot and probably half a hundred mounted followers, and because of these numbers and the fact that due to her larking she had almost missed the start, Emily had no time to greet her friends before the hunt moved off. All she had was a moment to wish her father the Master good morning, a greeting which he totally ignored since she had cut it so fine.

  But with the day so fair the sport was good and the slight forgotten soon enough.

  The first point run was a good five miles as the crow flies and by the time the hounds checked Emily as usual was the first of the followers there to pull her horse up for a breather.

  ‘You’ll need to hold a lot harder today, Lady Emmie,’ an elderly man with a damson-coloured face advised as he pulled up beside her. ‘Your father’s in no condition to have his heels clipped this morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Anthony,’ Emily returned, reining Jack to one side while her neighbour carefully relit the small briar pipe he’d been smoking throughout the entire chase. ‘In that case perhaps I’d best take my own line.’

  ‘He’s already sent the two FitzMaurice boys home for barging, so you’d be well advised,’ came the reply through a swathe of smoke. ‘Least till there’s something to talk well off about.’

  There proved to be more than enough for that purpose, because by the time they stopped to take second horses the Blazers had galloped a good twenty miles, accounted for three foxes and given best to another two.

  ‘That ’twas as fine a point as I’ve seen all season, and be that I means the last one,’ Mikey announced, as he transferred Emily’s splendid new side-saddle to her fresh horse. ‘Didn’t it even knock some of the wind out of young Jack here’s sails?’

  ‘Ah but you didn’t see how he jumped the water, Mikey, below the auld broken bridge, you know?’ Emily was busy straightening her hat. ‘Christmas roses, we must have cleared it be eight foot or more. Now would you ever leg us up again, please?’

  Having done as asked, the old groom stood back to admire one of his favourite sights, the eldest of the daughters of Glendarven mounted on one of their best hunters. Her second horse was a dappled grey, not thoroughbred like Jack but a typical Irish horse, deep chested, thick necked and strong legged, just the animal for Blazer country. Aboard the seventeen hands of horse, looking as she always did as if she’d been born and raised there, sat Mikey Nolan’s vision of Diana, the tall slender figure of the Lady Emily Persse at seventeen years of age, her light auburn hair caught up under her topper, her hunting skirt arranged over the pommel of her saddle, her horse moving off after her father the third Earl of Oughterard and Master of the Galway Blazers, a man renowned not only for his legendary hunting skills but also as an unparalleled breeder of foxhounds.

  ‘Isn’t there a keep undone on yer bridle, Lady Emmie,’ Mikey muttered, checking the tack as Emily removed some briars from her coat. ‘Isn’t it old I’m gettin’ now, missin’ a thing like that. ’Tis as well the Master had no sight of it. Now will ye watch them two gents on your right now, the pair of ’em on them two bright chestnuts. Aren’t they a right happy-go-lucky couple of thrusters the pair of them, and haven’t you taken their fancy?’

  Emily watched them briefly once the field was off and running again, with the long brindled ribbon of hounds streaming ahead of them over the grey stone walls and across the winter countryside. She saw the two riders threading their way through the field in her direction, but although they were well horsed they were no match for Emily Persse. This was Emily’s country, the country where she had been born and over which she had ridden practically every day of her life since the day when she’d been first put up aged three in a basket saddle on an eleven hand pony. She knew every wall, drop and ditch, every short cut and back double, every rock, hole and bog. Which was probably why before they had galloped on hardly another mile one of the thrusters had been catapulted over a wall at the foot of a wicked slope and the other had been deposited full face down in a bog, whereas Emily remained just where she wanted to be, ahead of the rest.

  But so busy was she leading her pursuers a dance that Emily quite failed to notice a rider who had slipped up on her outside, matched her stride for stride and now had the impudence to head her over the next formidable stone wall.

  ‘Christmas, Theo!’ Emily called to her horse in surprise and then kicking him on. ‘We’ve been sillied!’

  This time was different, this time Emily found she had a match on. Whoever it was who had ‘sillied’ her was riding a Connemara cross, a horse bred for the country, nimble, fast and neat, and whoever it was who was riding there was no doubt but that he was riding it well, with a good touch on the mouth and a great line into the jumps. As a result the little horse was confident and was jumping in a good rhythm, standing well off at the walls and getting away quickly as soon as it had landed.

  Within less than a quarter of a mile Emily was half a dozen lengths adrift of the tall stranger and still losing ground. But even if she hadn’t been caught unawares she knew that in a straight run cross country her second horse would be no match for the Connemara crossbred. She determined to win the race in another way, using her knowledge of the country against the sheer speed of her unknown opponent.

  ‘We’ll yassop him, Theo, so we will!’ Emily shouted in the big grey’s ear. ‘We’ll give him such a yassoping he’ll wish he’d stayed coffee-housing with all the yellows at the back!’

  Having taken good note of the line the field far to her right was taking Emily was certain they were running their quarry towards the foothills of the Maumturk mountains. It was a well-known run in that part of the country, affording the chance of a quick thing because it was good clean ground on the rise and therefore usually good and dry. The second reason was because if the pack was performing well the fox invariably ran into one of the many cul-de-sacs at the point where the hills quite suddenly turned to mountains.

  But a short cut taken from the south along the shore of Lough Inagh, past the strange little half-buried cottage with its marram grass roof and then over the line of walls partitioning a patchwork of green fields which ran practically down to the water’s edge, would bring the rider to the foothills even more quickly, always provided that the horseman knew every inch of the way.

  Emily knew it all right. She knew it so well she could have negotiated it blindfolded, as indeed could her horse, just as she knew that having switched her line to the north-east, should her opponent continue to take her on he would soon find himself with what appeared to be nothing but the icy waters of Lough Inagh between himself and the hunt. Indeed permitting herself a quick look back Emily saw her pursuer pulling his horse to a halt the moment he had a clear view of where exactly he was heading, but before h
e could turn to see the direction Emily herself might now be taking Emily had swung her own horse round to the right and kicked him on into a canter across the boulder-strewn ground that ran up behind the half-buried cottage.

  As she jumped the overgrown ditches and sidestepped the bogholes Emily could hear her pursuer dropping further and further behind, accompanied by a mixture of Gaelic oaths and full-blooded encouragements to his horse. Yet she did not look round again because she knew this ground too well. She knew that one lapse in concentration could spell disaster and that instead of picking their way safely through the treacherous terrain she and her horse could be fighting for their lives in the surrounding bog.

  Only once did she look behind, when she heard the man’s horse give a startled whinny followed by an equally startled shout from its rider. The stranger’s horse had lost its back legs in a patch of bog and although it had managed to extricate itself the animal was frightened and was fighting for its head. Emily laughed when she saw the rider struggling to regain control because she knew by now they were well out of any real danger and in a few strides more they would be back on terra firma. Ahead lay a good long pull uphill across dry turf, ending in a solid but easily negotiable stone wall.

  As soon as she felt the ground turning firm beneath her horse’s hooves, Emily kicked on.

  ‘Garn, Theo!’ she cried. ‘Garn, garn, garn!’

  She heard the noise of the other horse behind her as the stranger had indeed regained control and now began to chase them in earnest. She had a good half a dozen lengths’ start this time so for a while Emily and Theo held their own, galloping at full stretch up towards the mountains ahead, the stone wall getting nearer with each stride. She could hear him coming up on her left side again and had she looked Emily could easily have distinguished his determined face under the tilt of his black top hat. But all Emily had eyes for was the approaching wall, now only a matter of a dozen or so good strides away.