‘Well?’ she stopped and queried, noticing Portia holding back. ‘Is something the matter, dearest? Do I have a mark on me somewhere? Do I need a clothes brush perhaps?’
Aunt Tattie positively contorted herself in her effort to see if anything was on the back of the baggy brown coat she was wearing over Mrs Shipman’s latest creation which as far as Portia could see looked not so much like her usual tent as like a full-scale marquee. The coat her aunt had pulled over it could barely contain the sheer volume of material which had been used in the construction of the dress, which to Portia’s mind left Aunt Tattie looking like a barely inflated hot air balloon.
‘Aunt Tattie?’ she said, having decided that perhaps it was not too late after all to say something. ‘Aunt Tattie, I was wondering whether perhaps—’
‘You have no time for any wondering now, dearest,’ her aunt interrupted, sweeping out of the house ahead of her. ‘Whatever you have to say, you may say it in the carriage. We really have delayed long enough already, I fear.’
Mr Plumb who had naturally accompanied the family to London as their driver held the door of the brougham open for the two ladies while at the same time staring up at the skies above him lest he should catch another sight of the apparition which was now climbing into the carriage. ‘Lucky we’re not sailing today, Miss Portia, or Miss Tradescant might have found herself blown out to sea,’ he whispered as Portia held back to allow her aunt to settle herself in.
‘You look very pretty, dearest,’ Aunt Tattie said as the carriage headed into Park Lane. ‘Is that one of the dresses Augustine sent round?’
‘You know it is, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia replied. ‘We tried it on yesterday, don’t you remember?’
‘Yes, of course I remember, dearest. I just wanted to make absolutely sure. Don’t you just love this material Mrs Shipman found?’ Aunt Tattie clutched a large handful of her dress to show Portia. ‘Apparently it’s some sort of curtaining, and so of course much cheaper than dress material, which is where Mrs Shipman scores, do you see? She has such a very good eye for things. Heavens – what a lot of carriages! They cannot surely all be going to Augustine’s wretched do?’
The more her aunt talked the more Portia got the distinct impression she was doing so to keep her niece from saying anything at all, because by the time their brougham pulled up in front of the Medlars’ large house on Piccadilly Portia had long since given up the idea she had been nursing, which was to suggest that perhaps her aunt might consider removing the fantastic creature which with the movement of the carriage was bobbing up and down fit to bust atop her hat, for all the world looking like some oddly bred chicken scavenging for food. Portia knew it was terrible to feel as she did, but she had hoped that for once her aunt might perhaps have paid a little more attention to what she chose to wear, given the fact that this was London, not Bannerwick, and the grand house they were about to enter would contain probably a selection of the most influential people in Society. The fact of the matter was that Portia felt embarrassed and greatly regretted this, although in her favour it must be said that the embarrassment she felt was not on her own account but on that of her aunt.
Outside the house there was a queue of carriages waiting to discharge their passengers. The line tailed back out of the cobbled driveway in front of the splendid Palladian building into Piccadilly itself, and during the short enforced wait Portia could observe the guests who were alighting from their transport to make their way inside. They were all dressed in the most beautiful clothes Portia had ever seen. In fact the picture they made was like a wonderful painting come to life.
Aunt Tattie was sitting up and taking noticing of the spectacle, too. For a while the two of them sat in their carriage without saying a word, until finally Aunt Tattie gave a large sigh of relief and sat back against the buttoned cushioning, ‘Thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Thank heavens. Do you know, Portia dearest? For one awful moment as we were driving here I thought I might be overdressed. But thank heavens I seem to have got it just right.’
Unfortunately judging from everyone else’s reactions Aunt Tattie was alone in this opinion, but thanks to the way Portia had been brought up she had sufficient resilience to ignore the superciliousness of the footmen and the barely concealed smirks and nudges which most of the departing guests gave as they passed Aunt Tattie on the way across the hall and up the grand staircase. Not that Portia could blame anyone for staring in wonder or smiling in amusement for the sight of Aunt Tattie in her fantastic hat and voluminous gown sailing down Lady Medlar’s great golden reception room past yet more flunkeys standing bolt upright with their shoulders pressed against the walls behind them, past the Imari vases on gold guéridons, the vast arrangements of hothouse flowers, and on towards the throne-like chair beneath a gold baldachin under which Lady Medlar was seated in state must have constituted an unforgettable sight, and would certainly become the talk of the Season so far.
Portia followed in her wake, doing her best to ignore the stir they were creating and to walk as gracefully as she could behind her billowing aunt through the small gatherings of elegant and beautifully dressed visitors who, standing in groups engaged in apparently idle conversation or seated in threesomes on duenna sofas or perched on spindly gilt chairs, were nevertheless all watching with private fascination the new arrivals making their way across the great room to be received by their hostess. But try as she did to concentrate solely on what was in effect her first entrance into this new world, Portia found it impossible to ignore the fact that the further they progressed towards her aunt the greater the silence that was falling all around them.
Finally and at long last, and in what seemed to Portia anyway to be almost total silence, they reached the dais on which Lady Medlar sat in regal state under her embroidered canopy.
‘Tatiana, my dear.’ Augustine Medlar smiled formally and nodded her head once.
‘Augustine.’ Aunt Tattie nodded back as did the bird on her hat, while Portia executed a graceful if nervous curtsey, watched with reluctant interest by her maternal aunt.
‘What a mêlée,’ Lady Medlar remarked discontentedly, surveying the crowds in her salon with a polite smile. ‘One was hardly expecting the world and all their wives, but there you are. Such is the attraction of the social life.’
Portia glanced round at the throng behind them which seemed to be in slow but constant motion as people detached themselves from one group to join another, ostensibly to meet with and talk to someone new while all the time watching the entrance doors to see the new arrivals and the early departures. For a moment she fell to wondering what they were all talking about since none of them seemed to be listening, only nodding and smiling vaguely when a conversation seemed finished, before taking their leave of the newly joined group and moving on to yet another. Outwardly it all seemed purposeless yet of course it was no such thing as Portia would soon learn, for the aim of these gatherings was not to enjoy an exchange of views but merely to see and be seen.
‘Your niece is by no means the beauty her mother was, Tatiana, of that there is no doubt whatsoever,’ Augustine Medlar informed her guest. ‘But then that is so often the case with looks. They can miss out an entire generation. Except of course for Edward, who is fast becoming a most handsome young man, and by the way appears to be settling in at Eton quite splendidly.’
‘That is not what he wrote in his letter to us at Christmas,’ Aunt Tattie corrected her hostess, making no attempt at concealing her irritation. ‘He seemed to be finding it just a little daunting. And as for Portia’s looks, while she may not be the great beauty her mother was, Augustine, she is a good deal less worldly and considerably more generous in spirit, virtues which most thinking people have always considered far more important than mere good looks. Including many men. There are more gentlemen in this world than you would believe who would far prefer a well-tuned mind to a well-turned ankle.’
‘Not men of any account, Tatiana dear. Experience has led me to believe that there is act
ually very little else a well-born man requires from a woman other than that she be decorative,’ Lady Medlar said, turning her attention to her protégée. ‘And speaking of which I must say that Portia does at least give the appearance of being so. You must be congratulated, my dear – of all my gifts to you that particular coat and skirt is the one that I feel I would have indeed chosen for you to wear today. It is most becoming, and if we keep you up to this particular mark throughout the Season I have absolutely no doubt we shall find you an excellent husband. Besides, when you look around you before you leave which of course you will, since that is the very design of occasions such as this, you will see as I already have done that the competition is not that keen. Personally I have the feeling that this year’s gels are going to be a little short on looks so you should be in with every chance.’ Lady Medlar leaned forward to speak to Portia confidentially. ‘Particularly with my influence behind you.’
After twenty minutes of introductions and small talk Portia noticed that Aunt Tattie was becoming restless. While Portia continued to be introduced around the gathering by a young man especially assigned to the duty by Lady Medlar, Aunt Tattie soon bored of the small talk and went instead to squint up really rather blatantly at the various fine paintings which were hanging on the walls. This lapse in manners soon became so obvious that Portia realized that nice though the young man whose name she had hardly caught was, and assiduous as he also undoubtedly was, there was no alternative other than to go home. Aunt Tattie looked plainly thankful when Portia came up to her and suggested that they take their leave.
‘I think we should, Portia dearest,’ Aunt Tattie confessed to her sotto voce. ‘I do not wish to sound rude but most of these people to whom I have been introduced I have found to be worse than I remember them, dearest, I have found them to be shallow. Or to put it a little more accurately, they are far, far too worldly for my taste.’
‘I can understand that,’ Portia agreed, ‘but we really could not have gone just as soon as we arrived.’
‘Oh no, dearest, but twenty minutes is just about all anyone of any feeling could take.’
While Portia could only agree with Aunt Tattie that such gatherings in general were onerous, even so, perhaps because it was the first occasion of this kind which she had attended, she had found to her immense surprise that, shallow as the conversation might be, she was enjoying herself. It was refreshing to find herself attracting the immediate attentions of young men to whom she had only just been introduced. She had also been astonished by how, in contrast with the people she was used to seeing in the country, everyone present had pretensions to good looks. Having lived at Bannerwick since she was a small child it was impossible not to notice how much better looking people in London seemed to be. Living close to the soil might be healthy and it might help make for plain unvarnished virtue, although personally Portia doubted it, but it certainly did not make for an improvement in people’s looks. Uncle Lampard had seemed to spend most of Portia’s childhood remarking on it.
‘You would think would you not?’ he would ask neither Portia nor Aunt Tattie in particular. ‘You would think and you would be right in so doing that living surrounded by so much beauty as country people do this would be reflected in their looks, yes? Yes? And in the way they dress themselves and in the manner of their general disposition. But far from it, I’m afraid. The truth lies a far way from it, for as a whole it seems that the more beautiful the countryside, the plainer and more cumbersome the people who live in it.’
This was certainly not the case with those who called at Medlar House that afternoon, and for the short time she had been there Portia had not been able to help being intrigued by just the sight of them in their perfect tailoring, their manners too matching their tailoring in perfection, so much so that it would seem that nothing could make them uneasy except perhaps the sight of cheaply cut suiting. Equally riveting were the styles of the guests’ manners, from the gentlemen who upon arrival placed their walking sticks and their hats upon the floor in one corner to signify – as Aunt Tattie later explained – that they would not be staying long, to the chaperones of those young women designated to be presented at Court who were so expert at their given role that their measured and elegant progress around the salon put Portia in mind of deer picking their way delicately through woodland. Meanwhile the younger men present had hurried from group to group, observing each new arrival and attempting to effect an introduction to the most notable and the most beautiful while obviously making an open note of whom to look out for at the vast number of balls to be given throughout the spring and summer.
Naturally Portia had never seen so many handsome young men gathered in one place at one time, so it was hardly surprising that she was reluctant to leave, despite Aunt Tattie’s social misery. The point being that up until and including Dick Ward, of whom Portia still would not allow herself to think, and aside from her brother Edward who had always been exceptionally good-looking, Portia had rarely even set eyes on an attractive man.
To her the opposite sex had appeared to be either extraordinarily eccentric, such as her Uncle Lampard and Edward’s late and unlamented tutor Mr Swift, or rustic, such as the gardeners at Bannerwick, or just plain ordinary like most of the servants, including even Mr Louis who adorable as he was was most certainly no oil painting, with his over-large ears, heavily jowled face and permanently hangdog expression. Even the Bannerwick footmen were both as plain as pikestaffs and not even of the required height, Aunt Tattie having engaged them because she had known them both as boys when their mother ran off with a fisherman and their father took to the bottle. At Medlar House the footmen were dark, handsome men, chosen not only for their looks but because they must be at least six feet in height with the accompanying build required to show off the Medlar town livery of white wigs and frogged coats to its very best.
No sooner had Aunt Tattie finally persuaded Portia to take her leave and they were making their way back down the grand staircase past the less than impassive flunkeys whom the bird on Aunt Tattie’s hat seemed more than ever anxious to acknowledge, than a tall and extremely elegant gentleman entered the house almost at a run, as if, most unusually for such a man, he was used to dashing everywhere and from the expression on his lean and handsome face as if he enjoyed the unforced hurry.
‘Good day to you, ladies!’ he called from the bottom of the stairs where he had decided to wait until they descended, removing his hat and brushing his totally unruffled hair back with one hand. ‘You will observe I uphold the superstition of never passing on the stairs, even with ladies, though I have no fear of their wearing swords from whence the superstition springs as you well know, from the violent arguments arising from the clashing of our ancestors’ weapons.’
‘I quite agree with you, sir,’ Aunt Tattie replied, continuing her descent. ‘Likewise walking under ladders, and avoiding the number thirteen even though it was so very lucky for our Roman friends.’
Such a flurry of knowledge from everyone quite silenced Portia who continued to follow her aunt down the stairs, having amused herself by observing that the latest arrival was obviously well known to the servants at Medlar House for they had sprung to attention the moment he had appeared at the double doors. There was a way that servants who already knew a person greeted them, with an easy camaraderie, as if they had all been through some previous shared experience. Likewise she noted the way the steward had welcomed him, almost ‘hail fellow well met’, not familiar to but familiar with.
Portia had found that one of the many advantages of having grown up with servants as friends was that, without realizing it, she had learned how to read the slightest variation in their expressions.
‘If I may make so bold, madam,’ the gentleman said as Aunt Tattie and Portia reached the bottom of the stairs, ‘I should like you to know that I very much admire your hat.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Aunt Tattie said in reply to this remark which had been made as a genuine compliment. ‘I call this
my absurd hat, since I wear it only to absurd occasions.’
He laughed without any embarrassment. ‘What a grand pity you are both leaving, ladies, while I am only just arriving. But after that quip I imagine there is little point in my even trying to persuade you to return to the fold? No no, of course not because as you say, occasions such as these are indeed absurd. However, it may be that on this occasion the absurdity of the gathering would have been more than a little mitigated by the pleasure of your company. Let us hope we shall meet again, and in the meantime allow me to present you with my card. Ladies.’
Having extracted a card from the small silver card case he produced from his pocket and handed it over to Aunt Tattie, the man bowed his head in farewell and then made his way quickly up the stairs.
‘Lord Childhays,’ Aunt Tattie remarked, before pocketing the card. ‘Norman family. Would have once been de Heys though don’t ask me what that meant. And the Child prefix – that would either have been a pet name, or else it meant at least certainly from the thirteenth century or so onwards a young noble awaiting knighthood. Of course it could also be from the Old English celde. Meaning residence near a spring. Oh yes and of course de Heys meant brushwood. Someone who lived near brushwood.’
By now they had passed out of Medlar House and were waiting for Plumb to swing their carriage back into the driveway once he had spotted them on the steps.
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