Debutantes

by Charlotte Bingham

  When asked, Lady Oughterard, now almost fully recovered, was finally only too pleased for Emily to ask Rory O’Connor to be among their guests for Christmas. Reminding Emily how much she had always liked the young man both for his intellect and for his wit she said that their ban on him a year ago had been foolish and short-sighted, and besides they were in no position now to talk well off, as she put it, so she would look forward greatly to their reunion.

  ‘What about Pappa?’ Emily wondered. ‘For if anyone was dead set against Mr O’Connor it was Pappa.’

  ‘I think you’ll find your father has reconsidered his position just as I have reconsidered mine,’ her mother replied. ‘He has been a guest at this house many times and I see no reason why we should not welcome him once more. Particularly since it is Christmas and the season of goodwill.’

  It was only to be a small party, just the family and five guests including Mr O’Connor, the other four being their great friends the Magglicuddies and the Slaneys all of whom had been more than kind during their time of strife.

  As it turned out the feast was a fine one, thanks to the contents of the anonymously donated hamper which Cook prepared and served to perfection, easily outdoing all her previous festive efforts as if in an attempt to try to anaesthetize the family against what was to come, namely the leaving of their family home. It seemed to work for a while too, for both the day itself and then the dinner passed off with everyone in good spirits, particularly Rory O’Connor who entertained the company splendidly with tales of his adventures in Amerikey.

  ‘It is a most extraordinary country,’ he said when asked for his general impression of it. ‘And I have to say I came to the same conclusion as Talleyrand did after he had spent some time in exile there after the French Revolution. He was quoted as saying that the country has thirty-two religions and only one sauce.’

  ‘And what was it poor dear Oscar had to say about it, do you remember, Mr O’Connor?’ Lady Oughterard asked. ‘I don’t, because I find I’m getting worse and worse at remembering things with each passing day.’

  ‘Of course I remember, Lady Oughterard,’ Rory replied. ‘An American was singing the praises of Christopher Columbus, and when Oscar Wilde asked him why so, the man replied because he discovered America. Oh no, said Oscar with a shake of his head. No, it had often been discovered before but it had always been hushed up.’

  ‘What were you doing there precisely, Mr O’Connor?’ Emily asked him when the laughter had died down.

  ‘I was on business, Lady Emily,’ he replied. ‘Family business. My grandfather emigrated to America in the middle of the century and my father followed him out there six years ago.’

  ‘I see,’ Emily said. ‘And what do they do? Your family?’

  ‘They do very well, Lady Emily,’ Rory replied. ‘Now let us play some riddle-me-rees, because I learned some particularly good ones in Amerikey.’

  For the next quarter of an hour or so they all played word games at the table, asking each other riddles and then making up limericks, each person taking the next line. By the time the ladies had retired leaving the gentlemen to the port, the entire party was in a state of near exhaustion from laughing so much.

  Half an hour later when everyone had gathered again round the fire in the drawing room it was time to hand round the presents. In light of the family circumstances, the Persses had promised each other only token gifts and so everyone in the family gave each other something either written, drawn or made by hand. Lady Oughterard gave everyone a poem written specially for them, Lord Oughterard gave each guest a sporting engraving and each of his family a miniature of one of their ancestors from the cache of pictures and paintings he had hidden away, Emily gave everyone a pen and wash drawing of Blazer country with hounds in full cry, and Connie, Cecilia and Elisabeth had embroidered both family and friends a silk handkerchief each.

  Rory brought only one gift, which was in a narrow oblong box and intended for his host. He waited until everyone else had exchanged gifts before presenting it to Lord Oughterard.

  ‘This is very decent of you, sir,’ Lord Oughterard said. ‘But you’d better give it to somebody else, someone who can see. They can tell me what it is. Yes?’

  ‘Of course, Lord Oughterard,’ Rory said. ‘But I wanted to put it in your hands so that you knew it was for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lord Oughterard replied. ‘Give it to my wife, will you? She’ll tell me what it is.’

  ‘Of course.’ Rory handed the box to Lady Oughterard, who first undid the bow which Rory had tied around the long thin box and then opened it. Whatever was in it was wrapped in tissue paper which was plain for everyone to see when it was removed.

  ‘What is it?’ Connie asked. ‘It looks like a map.’

  ‘Yes, what is it, Mamma?’ Cecilia echoed. ‘It does – it looks just like a map.’

  ‘I don’t know what on earth it can be,’ Lady Oughterard said, beginning to remove the tissue paper. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  ‘Well?’ Lord Oughterard demanded impatiently, tapping his stick on the floor. ‘Tell your mother to hurry up, someone, will you?’

  ‘Hurry up, Mamma,’ Elisabeth said. ‘We’re all dying of the suspense.’

  In her hand Lady Oughterard now held what seemed to be a scroll done up with a thick dark red ribbon which she carefully undid. She then unrolled approximately a foot of the scroll and stared at it. As she did, her eyes seemed suddenly to fill with tears.

  ‘Here,’ she said, closing her eyes tightly and handing the scroll to Emily. ‘I have mislaid my lorgnettes. You read what it says, Emmie.’

  ‘It says . . . It says it’s the deeds of the house,’ Emily said slowly once she had read the first sentences. ‘These are the deeds to Glendarven.’

  Everyone fell to silence.

  ‘Can’t be,’ Lord Oughterard said. ‘I understood the place had been sold.’

  ‘It has, Lord Oughterard,’ Rory said. ‘I have bought it. My grandfather died earlier this year and made me a sizeable bequest. So on my return when I heard the estate was up for sale I bought it at once.’

  ‘So what is the meaning of giving me the deeds, sir?’

  ‘I am giving you the deeds, Lord Oughterard, because when I bought the house I bought it for you. So that you might not lose a place which I know you love so much and which all your family love so much, and which all your friends love you having. So now you may meet your obligations yet not lose your family home.’

  ‘This is magic,’ Elisabeth whispered to Emily. ‘You said he was magic and you were right.’

  ‘Never heard of such a thing,’ Lord Oughterard said gruffly. ‘Never heard of such a thing in me life.’

  ‘I am afraid there is a condition,’ Rory said.

  ‘Quite right too,’ Lady Oughterard said. ‘If you are really serious—’

  ‘I am perfectly serious, Lady Oughterard.’

  ‘Then for a gift such as this you surely may make whatever condition you choose.’

  ‘There are two conditions, in fact.’

  ‘Make it two hundred,’ Lord Oughterard said. ‘Make it as many as you please.’

  ‘I would like to have the Dower House, sir. You are to keep the entire house and estate, but I would like to have the Dower House and some ground. About ten acres will be ample.’

  ‘You wish to live here?’ Lord Oughterard asked. ‘But if you wish to do that then surely you should put us in the Dower House and you, sir, should have the main house.’

  ‘That is not what I want, Lord Oughterard. What I want is the Dower House and I want it for my wife and me to live in.’

  ‘Very well. Then you shall have it. You are to be married, then?’

  ‘If you will permit it, sir.’

  ‘If I will permit it?’

  ‘I need your permission, Lord Oughterard,’ Rory said, losing his composure for the first time and all at once looking like a small boy facing his schoolmaster. ‘I need your permission for you see I wis
h to marry Emily.’

  Now Emily knew what the momentous event was which she had felt was coming, that growing feeling of strange excitement she had experienced ever since she had arrived back in the land of magic and enchantment, in a place where the fairies took on human form and where wild men on even wilder horses flew out from the dark sides of the mountains at night to steal themselves a bride. The moment she had set foot back in Galway she had been claimed, the moment she stepped off the train he had made her his, even though at that time he was an ocean and four months away from her. Yet he had known and she had known and now he was here, asking for her hand.

  ‘What does Emily say?’ her father wanted to know. ‘Have you proposed to her, Mr O’Connor? She has said nothing of the matter to us. Not to my knowledge anyway.’

  ‘No, nor mine either,’ Lady Oughterard replied. ‘This is not why you bought Glendarven, surely?’

  Rory laughed, his shyness suddenly gone. ‘No, Lady Oughterard. That was not my reason for buying Glendarven, I promise you. If Emily were to refuse me, you should still keep your home.’

  ‘Then you mean you haven’t yet asked her?’ Lady Oughterard continued.

  ‘He asked me a year ago, Mamma,’ Emily said. ‘Or rather he began to. And perhaps if he’d given me a bit more time to think he might have had his answer then.’

  ‘Then in that case I suggest you ask her now, Mr O’Connor,’ her father said to Rory, ‘and put yourself out of your misery.’

  ‘I have no real need to ask her, Lord Oughterard,’ Rory said, putting out a hand towards Emily. ‘For I can see the answer there in her eyes.’

  Emily took his hand and stood up to him, face to face.

  ‘Of course you can,’ Emily said. ‘And I would have said yes to you a year ago if only you’d been more patient.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t have been fair then, Emily,’ Rory replied. ‘For at that time I had no money, nor any prospects. I had no idea my grandfather would favour me, nor did I think your own family to be anything but very rich and hardly disposed towards having an amateur poet as a son-in-law.’

  ‘So tell us, Mr O’Connor, because you know full well what a curious woman I am and I must know everything there is to be known and at once too,’ Lady Oughterard said. ‘May we know exactly what business it is your family set up in America and which has provided for you so handsomely?’

  ‘Of course,’ Rory agreed. ‘My grandfather established a publishing house in New York which my father now runs.’

  ‘Ah,’ Lady Oughterard sighed. ‘I knew it had to be something artistic and creative. Of course it would just have to be so. And tell me now, what exactly does the house publish? Poetry and plays, I’ll be bound. Yes?’

  ‘No, Lady Oughterard,’ Rory replied, making his face as serious as he could. ‘It publishes text books.’

  ‘Text books?’ Lady Oughterard wondered in amazement.

  ‘Text books?’ Emily laughed in delight. ‘Why, if your family publishes text books, Mr O’Connor, then you will never ever be poor!’

  ‘Good point, young lady,’ Lord Oughterard said. ‘Most sensibly said. Consider it, my dear,’ he called in the general direction of his wife. ‘No point in poetry, d’you see, if there’s no-one able to read it!’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Lady Oughterard agreed with a laugh. ‘No point at all! Let alone write it!’

  ‘Good,’ Lord Oughterard said. ‘That’s all fixed, then. Except didn’t you say there were two conditions, sir? I believe you did.’

  ‘Yes I did, Lord Oughterard,’ Rory replied with a humorous look. ‘And the second one is even more binding. Now you are once again the Master of Glendarven, I would like you to use your influence to make sure I am never again sent home from the hunting field.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Lord Oughterard pondered. ‘I shall certainly do that. In return for your acting as me eyes. You must be some horseman to have done what you did, so you can act as me pilot. Yes? Yes?’

  ‘I should be most honoured,’ Rory replied. ‘We’ll have a few rare old days out.’

  * * *

  The engagement of May Danby was not so happy. While her presence in the touring company of The Shop Girl was an undoubted asset as far as the box office receipts went, the Guv’nor very cleverly giving her special billing apart from the ‘Big Eight’, announcing on the posters that his famous chorus of beauties now included This Year’s Society Queen, May Danby the Belle of the Ball, and while she proved to be a popular member of the troupe once she had surmounted the initial petty jealousies her introduction brought in its wake, May was finding the reality of performing a lot more difficult than she had imagined it to be. The initial excitement of being the other side of the footlights soon wore off and she began to find the life tougher than she had supposed she would. Not that May was a shirker, far from it. Nor did she expect to be feather-bedded. Having been brought up all her life in a convent she was well used to austerity as well as repetitive labour so there were no surprises in store for her as far as the living conditions she was expected to endure backstage in some of the provincial theatres and offstage in some of the lodging houses went, nor in the often monotonous ritual of rehearsals. What May found difficult was trying to make the transition from the not very demanding role of an ingénue who was required only to walk beautifully, sing simple lyrics in tune and eye the men in the audience without ogling them to ingénue proper, someone who could sing, dance and say lines by herself without falling over or bumping into the set or into her fellow performers.

  For astonishingly enough – to May anyway – given her gift for mimicry and remembering her triumphant performance as May Danby the Ingénue Debutante, when the moment came to test her talent professionally she found herself wanting. George Edwardes was not nearly as perturbed as May was, because he knew how long and hard the road to stardom was, while May was still naive enough to believe that if one might entertain successfully as an amateur offstage then the transition to full-blooded professional should not be as difficult as she was finding it. Fortunately she had a determined ally in the Guv’nor who was fully resolved to make her into a star not for altruistic reasons but because he knew full well what the financial returns would be if he was able to cast a young woman of such phenomenal beauty and grace in one of his increasingly famous shows. The Society Johnnies would be queuing round the block for every performance. If it hadn’t been for George Edwardes, when the time came to begin the next part of her theatrical education and the realization dawned on her that she might not make the required grade May might well have thrown in the towel there and then, not because she wasn’t resolute but because she prided herself on her honesty, and she honestly considered she had made a mistake in her self-assessment.

  The Guv’nor had seen all this before, naturally. He had seen almost everything there was to see in show business before but even so he reckoned he would count it as one of his major disappointments, not to say failures, if he lost this lovely girl from his company. George Edwardes had become very fond of May in a very short space of time, not in a sexual way – which was surprising given his reputation as a ladies’ man – but in a genuinely paternal way, loving the young woman for her sweetness of character and her shining sincerity. However, as each rehearsal with her ground to yet another unsuccessful halt even the Guv’nor began to wonder whether or not his highly skilled team of coaches would actually be able to bring May up to the required standard.

  ‘It isn’t that you lack talent, sweetheart, it’s your blooming modesty,’ he’d say in his famously petulant way. ‘You’re altogether too bashful, May love. You won’t believe how lovely you are, let alone how talented, because all your life you’ve been taught to hide your light under a bushel. Those blooming nuns of yours. What – they made you think that being beautiful’s some form of sin, did they? Gor blimey, my girl, I don’t know, I really don’t. There’s nothing wrong with being lovely long as you don’t do anything wrong with it. Right? The Lord God made you beautiful and the reas
on he made you beautiful was because he wanted people to see how wonderful his work was, so don’t you go on thinking there’s something sinful about it because there isn’t. Hmm? That’s all your trouble is, my dear. As soon as you’re left alone to be yourself on stage you go into hiding!’

  The Guv’nor was a great encouragement to May, but however hard she worked as a result of his unflagging support May still believed she might finally lack that vital ingredient that made one actor or actress stand out from the crowd. The realization did not come easy because May had always set her heart on a life in the theatre, from her early days at the convent right through until her success in Society, but more and more she doubted whether she really had that special quality which illuminates the great performers from within so that the moment they step on stage it is as if a special light has been switched on somewhere to pick them out. She had seen it with Marie Tempest and Letty Lind. She’d seen it with Connie Ediss, a big fat jolly cockney comedienne who sang and danced quite beautifully and whom audiences adored the moment she appeared from the wings, and she saw it nightly on tour with the likes of Ellaline Terris and Katie Seymour. But despite all the special lessons in elocution, singing, dancing and fencing which the Guv’nor insisted on her taking, May’s doubts grew deeper and as they did her promise seemed to grow less.

  ‘It’s a gift, Mr Edwardes, and I really think I might not possess it,’ May said. ‘Kind of you as it is to pay me so much attention, might it not be foolish for me to go on merely to end up disappointing you?’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ the Guv’nor said. ‘One day, you mark my words, it will all suddenly happen. It will all fall into place, and when it does you will be the biggest star in George Edwardes’ firmament, you mark my words. All I say is that we have been rushing you, that is all, and that rather than leapfrog you from the Big Eight into a big speaking role we should take much smaller steps, starting you off with a walk-on by yourself, then giving you just one or two lines to say, and maybe the verse of a song. We ought to be breaking you in a little more easily, that’s all. I’ve seen this before, you know, my dear, like I’ve seen everything. Everything that is except a girl with quite your beauty, but the other will come, the star quality if you like, or whatever you want to call it. It’ll come. Leave it to the Guv’nor. He will bring it out, you trust old George.’