‘Never let a man know you’re on a diet,’ she ordered, sipping tepid Lapsang Souchong from a chipped Minton cup. ‘Men like to see a girl eat heartily, they think it shows animal appetites. Of course you don’t eat a thing when you’re at home, not a scrap! But he must never know that.’
There was a muffled gurgle, like distant plumbing, from below the quilt. The dowager’s persecuted bowels, accustomed for decades to a diet rich only in liquids and laxatives, evidently had their own views on her philosophy.
‘Never talk to a man about business, money, politics or religion. If he wants to talk about those things, of course you listen. Listen properly. Make notes afterwards of what he’s said,’ her pointed, red tongue flickered over her dry lips. ‘But never put forward your own opinions. Leave men’s things to men – heaven knows why they find them so fascinating. If you must talk, talk about charming topics of no consequence.’
‘Ask who he hunts with, you mean?’ said Caroline.
Lady Davina snorted. ‘Of course not!’
‘What sort of things, then?’ Monty picked at a crushed satin rosette on the quilt, trying not to sound as sarcastic as she felt. Lady Davina rallied her quavering voice.
‘Gossip!’ she exclaimed, ‘Talk about people you know, tell little stories, amuse him! Think of yourself as Scheherazade, soothing your weary Sultan with tales of 1001 Nights! And flatter him, always flatter him. A woman should be able to make a man worship her.’
Cathy, who absorbed these lessons with considerable misgiving since she always had difficulty inhibiting herself from saying what she thought, silently racked her brains for spellbinding anecdotes of typing classes at St John’s.
‘I hate flattery – it’s insincere,’ she protested, as she admired her new Sassoon haircut in one of Lady Davina’s cherub-infested mirrors.
‘Nonsense! In courtship one must always be accommodating – you do not need to be sincere.’
Yet more embarrassing than these morning lectures were the evening excursions on which Lady Davina occasionally took them. They would go to the Mirabelle or the Caprice, gilt-encrusted old-fashioned restaurants to which diners still wore evening dress, whose head waiters took pleasure in barring a man with long hair or without a tie. In stiff cocktail dresses, with velvet bands in their hair, Cathy, Caroline and Monty sat beside their overexcited chaperone as she instructed them in the ladylike arts of seeming to eat, seeming to drink and seeming to be merry when in fact you ate no food, drank only water and had a raging migraine.
Worst of all were the occasions when one of Lady Davina’s few surviving admirers creakily lowered his shrivelled body into a chair beside her. Her animation became more vivid, her voice louder as she whooped and shrieked flirtatiously, heaping ridiculous flattery on the withered specimens of manhood temporarily within her grasp. ‘Johnnie!’ she would simper fortissimo, ‘you wicked, divine man! How I long for those wonderful weekends we used to have! You were such a naughty boy, you know!’ and Johnnie, or Gervase, or Ralphie, would twinkle a bleary eye and mumble some chivalrous rejoinder.
‘They must be dumb to fall for it – she’s as subtle as a brick,’ Monty disapproved.
‘They do fall for it, though.’ Cathy thoughtfully stroked her hair. ‘I know it’s nauseating, but it works.’
They went to one or two London balls in preparation for the Season to come in the New Year, but the real social business of the autumn months were the tea parties, at which the rising debs practised social skills and sought pledges of support for their planned cocktail parties and dances.
Caroline’s strategy was unsubtle bribery. ‘Do come to Bourton,’ she virtually ordered her new acquaintances. ‘The hunting’s first-class, everyone says so, and Daddy’s promised he’ll turn the heating on for the swimming pool.’
‘I’d wish you’d find out who they are first,’ Cathy complained in the taxi back to Trevor Square. ‘We don’t want a room full of dowdy lumps who haven’t got any brothers.’
‘The girls are only a way to get at the men,’ Lady Davina had advised them, and Cathy, with single-minded tact, sifted every room for relatives of the three young earls.
Anthea Downcliffe, plump, mousey-haired and totally at sea in London after the enclosed Ayrshire set, was easy to befriend and pathetically grateful for the patronage. Lady Davina, on hearing that Sholto Mayleigh Shillingworth went two or three times a year to a shady health farm for colonic irrigation, removed him from the guest-list and refused to explain why. ‘A dead loss, my darlings. Trust me,’ she trilled.
The nearest relative of the Coseley clan was the cousin of Charlie the dreamboat, a showy long-legged blonde who seemed dauntingly impeccable in her Courrèges shifts. Cathy was surprised, when, after three or four weeks of tea parties, this girl had come across a Pimlico drawing room, introduced herself as Venetia Mountford, and said vaguely, ‘I hope you’re coming to my dance, and your sister. I hear she’s terrific fun.’
‘I’m coming out with my cousin. Weren’t you at school together?’ Cathy generously indicated Caroline towering over a stockbroker’s daughter with teeth like a beaver, who, Cathy recalled with relief, did have a brother.
‘Oh, Caroline.’ Venetia peered across the room and added with ill grace, ‘Her, too, of course. I’ll ask Mummy to invite all three of you.’ This she did, but her dance was almost at the end of the summer and Cathy knew she had to meet Charlie earlier than that to be in with a chance.
The real significance of Venetia’s approach, as Lady Davina at once knew, was that Cathy and Monty were acquiring a little mystique in the new Season’s coterie. The mothers liked Cathy’s beautiful manners which secured a gratifying array of engraved invitations tucked into the gilt looking-glass at Trevor Square by Lady Davina. The society photographers liked her face, which was of the small-featured kind that photographed exquisitely. She was taller than average, slim, long-legged and well-groomed. Tim Studd, the top society photographer, singled her out at once and spent an afternoon taking pictures which he sent out to glossy magazines.
The debutantes’ brothers, however, were attracted by Monty’s air of rebellious sensuality, and Lady Davina watched complacently as a knot of red-faced suitors gathered. At the few dances they had attended, Monty was invariably swept on to the floor at once, where she danced the Frug or the Twist with increasing abandon. By 10:30 she would be necking, tousle-haired and conspicuous, with her last partner. Strictly chaperoned as they were, there was no opportunity for more than kissing, but Monty was the picture of erotic invitation and it took only a few weeks for the word to get round that the younger Bourton girl was ‘likely’. ‘I hear she’s terrific fun’in fact meant ‘my brother wants to lay her’.
Monty was one of the handful of mildly notorious girls coming out in 1964 who was straightforwardly seeking sexual experience. She knew, with the instinct of a child, that anything so fervently forbidden by adults must be of crucial importance and she yearned with the emotions of a woman to begin what she thought was the real business of a woman’s life – the business of love. Most of the debs were less impetuous in moving into the sexual arena – some were scared, some were ignorant, a few were frigid, and most had been taught to preserve their virginity at all costs, because it was the most valuable inducement they could offer a prospective husband.
‘Remember, my dear, beauty is only sin deep!’ Roguishly Lady Davina advised them as they set out for their first dates. ‘No one wants something that’s simply given away.’
Even Caroline could see, however, that whatever Monty looked as if she might be prepared to give away was a very popular commodity.
However abandoned she appeared, Monty was in no hurry to explore the mystery of love with any of her overexcited, sweaty-handed dancing partners. Much as she sneered at Cathy’s romantic chastity and made jokes about the dream lover who looked like Brian Jones, she too was waiting for the one man she could name as the great love. She made more and more daring experiments with her body, while still lookin
g for a man to whom she could commit all of herself, heart, mind and excitable flesh. She felt somehow incomplete, and reasoned that sexual initiation would supply what she lacked.
In the meantime, all her doubts and worries focused in complete terror of pregnancy. Such was the level of sexual sophistication among her peer group that many of them shared her nightmares when they had engaged in nothing more serious than a kiss. Pregnancy seemed like awful retribution for sex, a punishment for doing what parents forbade. It meant the end of everything – fun, good looks, pretty clothes, parties, romance, possibilities and, of course, marriage. Life after pregnancy was never envisaged in detail, only as a black expanse of failure.
In the beginning, Monty never intended her dream lover to be Simon Emanuel, who was not blond, or vaguely menacing, or provocatively thin like Brian Jones, but dark, robust and as sweet as a puppy when he tried to amuse her. The expensive coaching college where he was being crammed for his exams was not far from St John’s, so they met a few times in the Kensington coffee bars, then walked across the park, kicking up the dead leaves, to the Emanuels’apartment, where they played records for hours.
Over Christmas, everything changed. Cathy and Monty travelled to their home, which would be sold at auction in a few more weeks. There were already grimy squares on the walls where some of the paintings had been removed, and some of the furniture had been labelled. They were hardly inside the door when Cathy mentioned Rosanna’s name in conversation and their mother exploded with anger.
‘The Emanuels are the scum of the ghettos of Europe!’ Her watery blue eyes were livid with a fury of which the sisters had never dreamed her capable. She was in a mood of simmering resentment against her dead husband and, by extension, the two girls as well. Three months alone in the house, undertaking the enforced dismantling of her home and the comfortable life she had enjoyed there, had bred first fear then anger in her mind. She had drunk even more than usual, and even now the spirituous tang was distinct on her breath. ‘I can’t think what Davina is doing allowing you to associate with those people,’ she continued. ‘At school you meet all sorts, you can’t avoid it, you have to mix with them. But if this is her idea of bringing you out it certainly isn’t mine.’
‘But, Mummy, it would be awfully rude …’ Catherine began, astonished at the ease with which an adult would betray her own principles for the sake of prejudices.
‘I’m sure they’d quite understand. You don’t need to say anything. Just don’t go there again.’ Bettina pinched her lips viciously together, deepening the wrinkles which bitterness had deepened around her mouth.
‘Rosanna’s my friend and if I want to see her I will,’ Monty snapped, throwing her coat on to the oak table in the hall and running angrily upstairs. In front of her was a pale space against the pink wallpaper where her piano had been. There was an instant’s silence and then Monty shouted even more loudly, ‘And what have you done with my piano?’
Bettina stuck her nose in the air and walked into the drawing room without answering. Monty flung down the stairs in pursuit of her mother. ‘I said, what have you done with my piano?’
‘Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, Miranda.’
‘What have you done with my piano?’
Bettina rearranged the dried flowers in a silver rose bowl, still silent. It was difficult to believe that she wasn’t enjoying wounding her daughter, and Monty was inflamed with rage. Suddenly, she shoved her mother with violence and Bettina fell into the depths of the sofa.
‘Answer me, you bitch!’
‘Monty!’ Cathy was shocked.
‘I want to know what you’ve done with it!’ Monty kicked her mother’s feet in fury.
‘It is not your piano, Miranda.’ The older woman’s jaw juddered with anger as she spoke. ‘None of this is ours any more, don’t you understand?’ Her tone was pleading now; she was playing for Monty’s sympathy, but Monty was pitiless where her mother was concerned.
‘Oh I understand all right. You and Daddy have spent all our money so we’ve got nothing. That’s perfectly clear, thank you. Where is it?’ Monty’s face was becoming chalk white, her eyes wide. She already knew the answers; inside her anguished mind, she was searching for a course of action, but could find nothing. Rage and frustration seethed like corrosive acids in her head.
‘Your piano has been sold, Miranda. And we didn’t get very much for it, either. Everything in this house has been sold.’
‘But not everything has been taken away, has it?’ Monty’s tone was ugly. ‘Only my piano. This hasn’t gone for instance.’ She kicked the occasional table over, sending the rose bowl and dried flowers flying. ‘And this hasn’t gone yet, has it?’ She seized the chintz frill around the sofa and ripped it. ‘And we’ve still got bookcases, haven‘t we?’ She grabbed the poker and smashed the glass front of a bookcase. ‘Who are you trying to kid, Mummy? You got rid of the piano because you’d like to get rid of me, didn’t you? Well, you’ve succeeded. I’m going. And I’ll never speak to you again.’ She ran out of the drawing room, slamming the door loudly enough to rattle the windows, and bolted out of the house, leaving the front door open to the chill of the December air.
Bettina gave a satisfied sigh, and patted her hair into shape as she got off the sofa. Catherine looked at her mother with astonishment realizing that Monty’s ridiculously dramatic words were perfectly accurate, and that the sale of the piano had indeed been a calculated stab at her sister’s only area of vulnerability. Cathy suddenly had an insight into the side of her sister she found difficult to understand; she realized that Monty’s pose of rebellion was not just self-dramatization. Her sister had simply decided to fight hate with hate.
Monty’s fleeing footsteps could be heard with diminishing volume as she ran coatless down the gravel drive.
‘Shouldn’t we do something?’ Cathy asked, feeling uncomfortable.
‘I think quite enough has been done for Miranda already,’ their mother replied. ‘You girls think you know everything, I’m sure, but you can’t begin to understand …’ she paused as if she had lost the thread of what she wanted to say, then started on a different tack. ‘I haven’t started on your rooms, so you’d better begin packing up directly.’
Miserably, Cathy went upstairs and began to take down from the picture rail the row of rosettes she had won with her ponies. Without her father, there seemed to be a horrible vacuum in the house. She felt desperately alone; but it was no good feeling sad. There was work to be done, the whole of her childhood to be packed up and stored away. Then she must get on with her grown-up life, which meant making the marvellous marriage that everyone expected of her.
She scraped her sleeve across her cheeks to wipe away the tears which refused to be held back, and reached for the framed photograph hanging below the rosettes; it showed her winning the first prize, in the novice class of the Pony Club gymkhana, which her father had presented. James stood smiling at the pony’s head, and Cathy was holding up the little silver cup in a gesture of innocent triumph. The pony stood square and still, its ears forward and eyes alert. It was a picture of perfection. Should I keep it or throw it away, Cathy wondered. She put it with the rosettes on the pile of things she intended to throw away. She had more important prizes to think of now.
Monty strolled down the lane, not caring that her shoes were letting in water. She felt peculiarly exhilarated, almost lightheaded. Without the burden of obligation to a parent she loathed she felt as weightless as the seagulls planing over the bare ploughed fields. She had no money, no coat and no idea what she was going to do, and it was thrilling. She stopped a delivery van which was going to Brighton, and at Brighton ran on to the station platform in time to jump on the London train. She hid from the ticket collector in the lavatory, told the man at the barrier she’d lost her coat and the ticket with it, and then walked to Trevor Square. The house was dark and shuttered; Lady Davina and the staff had gone to Bourton House. Still elated, but by now very cold, Monty walked on
, across the park to the Emanuels’apartment.
‘But she will worry, your poor mother.’ Mrs Emanuel looked like an anxious pullet uncertain where the fox was lurking. To get involved in the Bourton family squabbles, and on the wrong side, was no part of her social game plan. ‘You must telephone her at once.’
‘I’d much rather not, I’d only be rude to her.’ Monty felt her fingertips ache as they thawed in the heavy warmth of the apartment.
‘But what will you do? Where will you go? You can stay here, of course …’
‘I love the way my mother says you can stay here when what she means is you can’t.’ Simon slouched by the window, pretending to look at the gaslights reflected in the distant Serpentine.
‘Simon! Don’t put words in my mouth. That’s not what I said, of course Monty can stay. You’re very welcome, dear, of course.’ Mrs Emanuel was angry with herself for being outmanoeuvred, but disguised this by fussing, ‘You poor girl, you must be frozen to death.’ She pressed the brass bell-push and an immaculately uniformed maid appeared.
‘Please draw Miss Bourton a bath. And, Rosanna, go with her, see if you can find her something to wear.’ Given the extent of Rosanna’s wardrobe this was hardly a heavy imposition.
Mr Emanuel, as usual, said nothing, while his wife fretted. ‘It will all blow over in the morning, my dear,’ was all he contributed to soothe her distress.
The next day Monty phoned Cathy when she was sure that Bettina would be out playing bridge. Cathy was still shocked by the realization that her mother had deliberately provoked Monty’s rebellion, and felt she had to take control. She proposed calling Lady Davina and Mrs Emanuel, and negotiating a compromise.
‘Look, you can’t impose on Rosanna’s family. What do you want to do?’ she asked her sister.
‘I don’t know, Cathy.’ Monty’s voice was unusually quiet. ‘I’m not ever going back to the house, or ever living with that woman again.’
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