‘Come up to your bedroom,’ she said, tugging at his arm as they went into the house. ‘Bateman will say that you’re having tea upstairs. Here’s Father. Great-Aunt Lizzie says that he can’t take the dogs through the woods in case the Duchess arrives early. She’s fussing terribly about the party.’
‘Am I the first? Hallo, Michael!’ said Sir Guy, delving into his pocket and handing a small, flat, wrapped box to Daisy. ‘What’s this about a duchess?’
‘Some of this nonsense about Violet being presented,’ grunted the Earl. ‘How are you, Guy? Looking forward to a chinwag with you – got a drag hunt coming up in a few days if you care to stay on for that.’ He was always in a good humour when Sir Guy arrived and a drag hunt was his favourite form of amusement.
‘Excuse me, my lord.’ Bateman approached. ‘Morgan wishes to know if you need the car at the moment, or if he may –’ Bateman coughed – ‘attend to his duties upstairs until we hear about the Duchess’s train.’
Daisy smothered a giggle. Bateman sounded as though playing the drums was some obscure form of chauffeuring.
‘No, tell him to carry on,’ said the Earl, sounding a little more cheerful. ‘What do you think about that, Guy? My chauffeur has a jazz band. Sign of the times, eh? Jolly good they are too.’ He liked Morgan and was amused at the idea that his chauffeur had formed a jazz band from the neighbouring young people and one of his daughters. ‘They’ve been practising for most of the afternoon,’ he added. ‘You should hear Poppy play that clarinet. You’d think she was a professional.’ Poppy, in her father’s eyes, could do no wrong.
Daisy unpeeled the wrapping from the box – probably sweets, she thought. Although Sir Guy showered her with presents, he generally treated her as though she was about eight years old.
But there was an inner wrapping. And this time it was an expensive-looking embossed paper with a silver sheen. Daisy took that off more carefully and then opened the lid of the box and there, coiled on a bed of pale pink velvet, was a rope of shimmering pearls.
‘Your father said that you were all getting dressed up for Violet’s party,’ grunted Sir Guy.
For a moment Daisy said nothing. The pearls were exquisite – and the string was very, very long. They would be just perfect with her short pink silk dress. There was a picture of someone wearing a rope of pearls just like that in one of Violet’s magazines. She flung her arms around Sir Guy and kissed his wrinkled old cheek.
‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’
‘Very generous of you, Guy, old man,’ said the Earl. He had a look of regret on his face and Daisy guessed that he was thinking of Violet. She should have been the first to have pearls. If only he had not put so much of his money in that unlucky diamond mine in India. Daisy could see from the way his face darkened and the lines around his mouth tightened that he was thinking of that unlucky investment.
‘Better get back in the library,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Aunt Lizzie is like a cat on hot bricks. We’ve had a telegram from Violet’s godmother, the Duchess of Denton. She’s on her way to France, but she will stop off to give Violet her birthday present. Lizzie, of course, has got it into her head that if everything goes well the Duchess will take up Violet and present her at court or something like that. Stupid idea – can’t stand the woman.’
‘Excuse me, my lord.’ Bateman had appeared again. ‘That was the stationmaster on the phone. He says that the London train left on time and we should expect Her Grace to be at the village station in just over an hour.’
‘Better have a quick brandy before she descends on us.’ The Earl shot back into the library and Daisy grabbed Sir Guy’s sleeve.
‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and hide, or else Great-Aunt Lizzie will think that you should be standing around ready to be polite to the Duchess a good hour before she arrives.’
She took him upstairs and into the blue bedroom. She had been in and out of this room during the afternoon and everything was ready. The fire was burning well, she noticed and on a small table beside the comfortable old armchair she had placed a decanter with some of her father’s favourite brandy in it. She took her godfather’s coat from him and hung it up in the wardrobe and watched solicitously as he sank into the chair. He was looking quite tired, she thought, as he gave a sigh of relief. Her father had been talking about how ridiculous it was for a wealthy man like Sir Guy to be working so hard at the film industry, but Daisy understood that fascination. It wasn’t just a matter of making money, she guessed. He was part of a new and fascinating world – the world of the cinema – and she envied him.
‘Have a drink while you’re waiting for your tea,’ she said, pouring the brandy carefully. ‘I’ll pop down and get it.’
The jazz band was playing loudly and vigorously, the music almost seeming to rock the old house, as Daisy ran down the back staircase. No chance of meeting the Duchess or Great-Aunt Lizzie on this uncarpeted realm of the servants. The tray had been prepared by her earlier on – all of Sir Guy’s favourites were on it, including Marmite sandwiches made from thinly cut bread: lots of butter and a faint skim of Marmite spread over the top.
‘I see you are all ready for me.’ Sir Guy was sipping his brandy when she returned. He had a grin on his face as he pointed to the screen that Morgan had made for her which now hung between the door and the wardrobe, and the projector standing on the bedside table.
‘It’s very short – only five minutes,’ said Daisy firmly. ‘It will give you something to do while you are drinking your tea and eating your sandwiches. I cut the bread myself so it’s just the way you like it.’
Quickly she drew the curtains and then turned off the overhead lamp, leaving just the small lamp behind his chair. That would give him light enough to eat by.
It was Violet who was the making of the film, she thought as she watched it critically. The story was sweet and the horses were great and the way that she had captured Justin, that day by the lake looking at Violet, made him appear quite handsome – though he was no actor and some of the subsequent film showed him a bit wooden. However, the leading lady was what everyone would remember. The story needed to be stronger the next time, she thought. A murder mystery perhaps, she thought as she waited for Sir Guy’s verdict.
‘Very, very promising,’ he said as soon as he had swallowed his tea. ‘I think I could sell that. It would make a very good little short before a main film about a horse or something like that. How much do you want for it?’
‘How much is it worth?’ asked Daisy. ‘Be honest, now,’ she added.
‘I’ll take a chance on it.’ He took out his pocketbook and handed her a crisp ten-pound note.
Daisy stared at it. She longed to take it. It was enough to buy a dress for Violet. However, she forced herself to shake her head. She had to be fair and she wanted to be considered a professional. ‘Sell it first,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll wait for the money.’
‘I’ll sell it,’ he said confidently. ‘It’s just the sort of thing that people want. Make them feel good. You have a clever eye for the right sort of thing, and a good, steady hand. I must bring you a tripod the next time I come. Go on, take it. Ten pounds is nothing. I paid a hundred pounds the other day for a film by someone I had never heard of. And he just took his story from a book. I tell you what, Daisy, you could do a lot of filming tonight. Young people having a party – that’s the sort of thing that cinema-goers like to see. You can always make up a story to go with it – nothing complicated. Complicated stories don’t work on film.’
‘I’d like to do something longer – something with more of a story in it,’ said Daisy. ‘Of course, Rose is complaining that I cut out a lot of hers – it was a sort of back story, all about the heroine having a jealous stepmother and about the stepbrother being favoured. It was very good, especially considering she is only twelve, but I didn’t think that all that sort of stuff could be shown in a film.’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Sir Guy. ‘What you want in a fi
lm is action – something that can be conveyed by the expressions on the faces and then just summarized in the storyboards. One of these days someone will invent a camera that can record sound at the same time as filming but until that happens, you have to work inside the limitations of your medium. Do you understand what I mean by that?’
Daisy nodded. ‘That’s the way I think,’ she said. ‘I find myself reading books like that these days – often you could do a chapter with just one shot and a caption. I was reading Wuthering Heights the other day and I was thinking of how I could film it. The trouble is that I have no actors! Violet looks good, but she can’t act.’
‘Use what you’ve got,’ advised Sir Guy. ‘If I were you I would film people doing what they do naturally, then pick out good shots and try to fit a story around them. Use the house, the lake, the woods – everything. This party now – if you film that, you will probably come up with a story to fit it. And remember, no one worries about having an original plot. Good heavens, the number of versions of “Anna the Adventuress” that I’ve seen during the last three years!’
Chapter Seven
Poppy and Daisy shared one of the biggest bedrooms in the house. When they were babies, the yellow room, as it was called, had been turned into a night nursery with a bed for the nurse as well as cots for the two little girls. It was a lovely room with five big windows, three of them facing south and the other two catching the early morning sun from the east. The wallpaper was a design of soft yellow primroses and the curtains matched in colour. Both were now faded but the place was still pretty with a yellow-painted dressing room attached to the main room, attractive white-painted storage cupboards and wardrobes, and a white marble fireplace.
Normally the room was stone cold, but tonight the four sisters were determined to be warm and a huge fire of beech logs burned brightly. The luxury was so great that Daisy had earlier decided to spend part of each day picking up twigs and fallen branches from the woods around the house and saving them for a fire – at least for an hour or so in the evenings.
But now she could think of little other than the four dresses.
‘If ever this mysterious Elaine turns up there are plenty of bits of material from her dresses left over. Look – I’ve filled the sewing basket with them just in case we need any last-minute touches.’ Violet was in an excited, giggly mood. The relief of having the four dresses ready on time overwhelmed her. ‘I’ve just done the hems on the sewing machine,’ she added, holding up Rose’s dress. ‘Great-Aunt Lizzie will have a fit when she sees them – she thinks a hem should be invisibly slip-stitched, but I saw a dress in one of the fashion magazines where the hems were tiny and you could see the stitching on them.’
Poppy was already getting into her dress. She was the one who had shown the least interest during the making of them, but now her face was flushed with excitement.
‘Thank you, dear Elaine, for the stockings!’ She addressed the eastern windows and then pulled on the white silk stockings. None of the sisters had ever possessed a pair of silk stockings before. Rose had dabbed their sensible tan-coloured shoes with a tennis shoe whitening liquid so at least they would not look too bad early on in the evening.
Poppy’s dress was the simplest of all. It was very straight and short, with a high neckline in front and cut low at the back, right down to her shoulder blades, But the sheen and gloss of the white satin, coupled with Poppy’s extraordinarily beautiful flame-coloured hair, made her look like a society beauty. She stared at herself in the mirror and nodded her head firmly.
‘Daisy, you will just have to bob my hair. The dress is good, but with that hair streaming around my shoulders I look like one of the Victorian paintings by that fellow Burne-Jones.’ She removed the dress with a determined air and handed Daisy a comb and scissors.
‘Excuse me, your ladyships, I’ve brought more wood for the fire.’ Maud must have knocked while they were all exclaiming loudly over Poppy’s dress and now she stood there with the wood basket in her hands, looking intently at Poppy, surveying her with her head to one side.
‘I wouldn’t bob your hair, my lady, if I were you.’ Maud addressed Poppy in the rather forthright style she used to Rose when none of the adults were around. She dumped the basket of wood on the floor and then went over to Poppy. ‘There’s some good styles in those magazines . . . Excuse me, my lady,’ she said to Violet. ‘I can’t help noticing your magazines sometimes and I’ve seen a style that would suit you, Lady Poppy.’
‘Maud used to do hairstyles for all the girls in the orphanage when they were in their dormitory at night,’ Rose informed them.
‘What would you do with all of this, Maud?’ asked Poppy, clutching handfuls of her hair. Violet looked shocked at her sister talking to a scullery maid in such a friendly fashion, but Poppy never cared about things like that.
‘You need something for a headband, my lady.’ Maud picked a long strip of beaded sash out of Violet’s sewing basket. It was cut from the dress that had formed Poppy’s short jacket. Daisy guessed that the scullery maid had been looking through the pieces of material earlier on when the basket had been up in the schoolroom as she had selected the sash without hesitation. She watched with interest as Maud quickly swept back the heavy mass of red hair, brushed it carefully, tucked it behind Poppy’s ears, and then wound the beaded sash around her head, letting it sit like a crown over her sister’s eyebrows. Daisy held her breath.
‘Jazzy,’ said Poppy after a long moment.
And it was perfect. The effect was completely up-to-date and very flattering without spoiling the impact of Poppy’s beautiful hair. Daisy knew that it would break her father’s heart if she cut the hair that was so like his wife’s.
‘Could you do my hair like that?’ asked Rose.
‘There are plenty of sashes in the sewing basket,’ said Violet. She gazed at Poppy’s hair, a slight struggle showing in her face. Then she made up her mind. Violet rarely spent long trying to decide about anything – she just went with her first instinct. Immediately she began to get dressed.
Violet had made her own dress short, with a hemline that fell to above her knee on one side and dipped heavily on the other. Apart from this, the dress was simply made, cut fairly low in the front and back, sleeveless, but the gorgeous shade of shimmering green-blue silk sewn with thousands of tiny electric-blue beads needed no extra embellishments. She looked wonderful in it, the dress glittering and her violet-coloured eyes glowing. She gazed at her reflection in the looking glass and then turned to Maud.
‘What do you think, Maud?’ she asked, sitting down in front of the dressing table. ‘Would the same style as Poppy suit me?’
Maud didn’t answer, just picked up the silky hair and cupped it in her hand, looking at the glass over Violet’s shoulder. Then she dropped it and reached for a jar of enormous old-fashioned hairpins, presented to Poppy by Great-Aunt Lizzie with advice about keeping her hair tidy. Maud wove Violet’s long hair into one very loose plait, then tucked it under and pinned it at the nape of her neck, loosening the strands near her face. The effect was a sleek, bell-like bob that curved around Violet’s ears and below her chin. When Maud was satisfied she went across to the sewing box and took out the other half of the beaded sash and tired it round Violet’s head like an Alice band, knotting the ends at the nape of the neck to secure the plait in place, and then cutting off the spare material with a decisive snip of the scissors.
‘Perfect,’ breathed Violet, smiling at her reflection.
‘What about Daisy?’ asked Rose.
‘I think I’d like the same as Violet,’ said Daisy. ‘We won’t look like twins or anything because I have blonde curly hair and she has dark straight hair. Wait a minute, Maud; wait till you see my dress.’
She began to dress hurriedly. Violet had surpassed herself with this costume, she thought gratefully. The pale pink silk, though a colour that suited her very well, might have looked a little insipid, but Violet had an inspiration and decided to make
it with a stunning hemline, dipping down below the knees on both sides and swooping up above them in the centre. The curved line was enhanced with deep flounces of ruffled lace machine-sewn to the dress so that the stitching line did not show. To go with it was a pink stole, wound once around Daisy’s neck and then hanging down in front, looking very modern and the height of fashion.
‘Quite short hair for you, my lady,’ said Maud as decisively as if she were an experienced lady’s maid. She gazed intently at Daisy’s face, feeling the spring of the tight curls between finger and thumb. ‘No hairband, I think,’ she added, almost to herself.
Working rapidly, Maud pinned up Daisy’s curly hair, halving the length as she went, and by the time she had finished, even Daisy herself felt that she looked as though she had had it bobbed. Her hair was even shorter than Violet’s and somehow made her look years older – rather like a young lady about town. She gazed at herself for a moment with immense satisfaction. Yes, the effect was quite different from Violet’s and she was glad of that. She wanted to be herself, not a poor relation in loveliness to her two sisters. ‘Bang up-to-date,’ she murmured and then turned to her youngest sister.
‘Come on, Rosie, let’s get you dressed, and don’t ask to have your hair put up or Great-Aunt Lizzie will send you back to your bedroom. Hold up your arms. Now then, look at that! Isn’t she gorgeous, Maud?’
Rose’s soft crimson velvet dress was cleverly done – short enough to show off her long legs, cut on the bias and yet with quite a youthful swing to it. Short puffed sleeves covered the top of her childishly thin arms and there was a neat ruff around her neck. Yes, thought Daisy, Great-Aunt Lizzie will have to approve of this frock. Maud ignored the others and got Rose to sit at the dressing table. She spent a long time brushing the soft brown hair until it shone like silk and then picked out a strip of rose-coloured velvet from the sewing box, folded it expertly and bound it around Rose’s forehead, passing it behind the ears and lastly tying it at the nape of the neck under the curtain of hair. Suddenly Rose looked years older.
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