The Proposal

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Sybil more sharply. ‘You do know that the debs have been here since January, and some of the mothers since before Christmas. There have been lunches, dinner parties, all sorts of little getting-to-know-one-another soirées. Invitations to the best events of the Season have been secured before you even arrived.’

  ‘I’ve had things to do,’ said Estella, looking unconcerned at her ticking-off. ‘A very important commission to finish, for one. The Earl of Dartington wanted a life-sized portrait of his wife, and she just wouldn’t stay still, so it took for ever. Besides, Georgia didn’t get back from Paris until a week ago.’

  ‘I thought Madame Didiot’s school finished in February.’

  ‘It did,’ said Georgia sulkily.

  ‘So why have you only just returned to England now?’

  You’re lucky I came back at all, thought Georgia, knocking back the squash in one gulp.

  ‘Well, we can make up for lost time now,’ said Estella cheerfully.

  ‘Not if no one knows who are you. I heard that you did not submit a coming-out portrait for either Queen or Tatler magazine.’

  ‘Mum was going to paint me,’ said Georgia, sticking up for her mother.

  Estella stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘I thought she’d look sensational in oils. But time ran away from us a bit, didn’t it. Surely it’s not important, though?’

  ‘It’s extremely important. The portraits mark out the girls to look out for.’ Sybil had begun to shake her head. ‘You are completely unprepared for this. The pair of you. The presentations at the Palace are in a week’s time and you have met no one. This is no joke. If I am to present Georgia at court then we have to take it seriously.’ She had a sternness that not even the most scary nuns at Georgia’s old convent school had possessed.

  ‘Actually, I have planned a fork luncheon for the day before the presentations,’ replied Estella in her defence.

  ‘Well, that’s a start. Who is coming?’

  Georgia rattled off the names of five girls who were attending. Four of them had been at finishing school with her. Only one of them she had actually liked. The fifth girl was someone through her mother’s art world connections, the daughter of a City trader that Estella had done work for.

  ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of any of them,’ sniffed Sybil coolly. ‘How about I ask around a few friends? Drum up support? Now, I assume you’ve got your wardrobe ready.’

  They heard a click at the front door, followed by footsteps and voices, and Aunt Sybil’s face softened.

  ‘Ah, here’s Clarissa. Just in time to talk fashion.’

  Georgia stood up and gave her cousin a hug.

  ‘How are you, George? You’ve cut your hair. Very Paris-chic.’

  ‘And you look fantastic.’ Georgia grinned, admiring her cousin’s navy pencil skirt and soft turquoise jumper.

  ‘Well, I work at Vogue now. Secretary pool, but still, I have to keep up appearances.’

  ‘Clarissa, did you ever find that checklist we used for your season?’

  ‘Yes. I sent Estella a copy a few weeks ago.’

  Georgia turned to her mother, who looked blank.

  ‘The post is very unreliable where we are.’

  ‘I don’t think I threw it away,’ said Clarissa helpfully. ‘Let me go and find it.’

  She returned after a few minutes and handed a sheet of pale blue paper to Sybil, who read out loud from it.

  ‘“Cocktail dresses – four. Evening frocks – six. Three dark, two pale, one white for Queen Charlotte’s Ball. Palace dress – pale blue silk. Ascot frocks – two. Shoes – seven pairs. Gloves – assorted. Nylons – two dozen. Evening wraps – two. Preferably cashmere. Suits – one. Handbags – six. Hats – four.” I notice we haven’t put lingerie, girdles and perfume. I know they are not going to be seen, but I always think a girl’s under-dressing is so important to make her feel special.’

  She looked up and glared at Georgia.

  ‘I assume you’ve got all these things covered.’

  Georgia smiled weakly, thinking about the contents of her trunk. It was half filled with her Paris clothes – jeans, Breton tops and black polo-neck jumpers. There was a pair of jodhpurs and a few old cashmere sweaters that had belonged to her father and which had survived the moths. She also recalled some harem pants, a peasant smock her mother had saved from her time in Provence and a couple of house dresses they had found in the Salvation Army shop in Totnes, one of which had come with a matching oven glove. But nothing as fancy-sounding as an Ascot frock or a cocktail dress.

  ‘I think we had better go shopping,’ said Estella decisively.

  ‘We can’t afford all that,’ replied Georgia, aghast.

  ‘We can improvise,’ said Estella, as her eyes darted down to the smart moss-green patterned fabric that covered the table.

  It was Sybil’s turn to look shocked.

  ‘Georgia can’t turn up to Ascot in a tablecloth, Estella, however handy you are with a needle and thread.’

  Peter Hamilton walked in smoking a pipe. He was still wearing his overcoat and had a copy of the Racing Post tucked under his arm. He was touching fifty but was still a very good-looking man indeed, and if Georgia squinted there was a touch of her father she knew from the photographs.

  ‘Hello, hello. My favourite niece. How are you, pumpkin?’ he said, ruffling her hair. ‘What’s all this about tablecloths and Ascot? Can I join in the conversation or am I excluded on account of my sex?’

  ‘Georgia hasn’t got the appropriate wardrobe for the Season,’ said Sybil witheringly.

  ‘Clarissa, don’t you have anything that she could borrow?’ said Peter, turning to his daughter. ‘There’s a closet stuffed with taffeta and all you seem to wear these days are those tight skirts.’

  ‘Peter, those are special dresses,’ protested Sybil.

  ‘Nonsense. I spent five hundred pounds and I haven’t seen her wear them once since. They can’t be that special. Clarissa, take Georgia upstairs and see if she would like to borrow anything.’

  ‘Peter . . .’

  Georgia watched a look of panic pass between mother and daughter.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Clarissa with more grace than her mother. ‘Come with me, George, and you can tell me all about Paris.’

  Clarissa’s bedroom was at the top of the house. Her brother Richard was still at Eton, so she had the entire floor to herself.

  ‘Fancy a ciggie?’ she asked, opening the window and pulling a packet of Sobranie from her bag.

  ‘So Daddy says you’re not staying with us,’ she said, sitting down on the bed.

  Georgia shook her head. ‘No. Your dad’s found us a flat in Chelsea. Apparently it belongs to some journalist friend of his who is in Cairo. I think he realised that Estella and Sybil wouldn’t last a week in each other’s company.’

  ‘Chelsea. What fun,’ grinned her cousin. ‘There’s a great coffee shop down there I should introduce you to. Lots of cute Guardsmen from the barracks, too.’

  ‘So how is Vogue?’

  The two girls used to be close. At Peter’s insistence, Clarissa and Richard would spend every summer in Devon, but that had stopped the year before Clarissa’s own season, two years earlier. Despite the odd letter, Georgia was out of the loop with her cousin’s life.

  ‘I love it. Gives me an excuse to buy lots of clothes without my dad complaining.’

  ‘Show me what you’ve got, then. Your mum nearly gave me a heart attack when she read out that list. A house dress and a pair of Turkish slippers aren’t going to cut it at Buckingham Palace.’

  Clarissa laughed, and lit her cigarette. ‘What a shame you couldn’t buy anything in Paris. I’m desperate to go shopping on the Rue Saint-Honoré. Dior is a genius. I wept when he died.’

  ‘How could I afford Dior, Issa? I could barely afford a cup of coffee while I was at Madame Didiot’s.’

  Clarissa nodded in the direction of the large wardrobes that occupied both alcov
es of the room.

  ‘Go on then. Have a rummage. Anything but my presentation dress.’

  ‘Why? Saving it for your wedding day?’

  ‘Fat chance,’ she said, taking a deep inhalation of smoke.

  Georgia opened the wardrobe and gasped. It was fit to burst with shoes, coats and gowns. She opened a huge hatbox and pulled out sheaves of white paper that showed the first signs of colouring with age.

  ‘Are you sure you want these, George? They’re a bit fuddy-duddy, you know. It’s all about the oval silhouette these days.’

  ‘Stuff that – these are gorgeous.’ Georgia trailed her hand across the satin and tulle. ‘Look at this,’ she said, pulling out a deep jade dress with a full skirt. ‘It’s the colour of a mermaid’s tail.’

  ‘I wore it for Fiona Meadows’ cocktail party at Claridge’s,’ said Clarissa, balancing her cigarette on an ashtray she had pulled out from under the bed.

  ‘Put it on.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  With little more encouragement, Clarissa stripped to her bra and pants and slipped into the dress.

  ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it did me,’ Clarissa said, sinking to the floor, the yards of fabric spilling across the carpet like a pool of Caribbean water.

  ‘So how are things in the love department?’ said Georgia, sitting down next to her and grabbing a cigarette from the packet on the bed.

  ‘A very handsome Coldstream Guard asked me out the other day.’

  ‘Are you going to go?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  The two girls giggled.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it? The Season, that is.’

  ‘No. Did you enjoy it?’ Georgia turned away and blew a smoke ring.

  ‘I loved it. But don’t make the same mistakes I did.’

  ‘Which are what?’

  An expression of grave wisdom clouded Clarissa’s face.

  ‘The Season isn’t about having fun, George. This isn’t about parties or dresses or table manners. It’s a competition. Don’t ever forget that.’

  Georgia gave a loud snort.

  ‘A competition? So what’s the prize?’

  ‘The best man,’ Clarissa said bluntly. ‘The good ones get snapped up early. Apparently the Duke of Kent has already got a girlfriend, which is rather annoying. And avoid the Cirencester lot. You’ve got to jostle hard for position, for status,’ she continued, enjoying her role as experienced sage, even though her advice was falling on deaf ears. ‘I mean, do you think girls get chosen for the Queen Charlotte’s, the Berkeley Dress Show, Deb of the Year by accident? You’ve got to watch some of the mothers, too – they can be the worst. This isn’t polite society. It’s a jungle in tulle. And believe me, because the Queen is abolishing the curtseying, the competition is going to be especially tough this year. Did you see the portraits in Tatler? There are some very beautiful girls.’

  Georgia was laughing.

  ‘Clarissa, I don’t want to be Deb of the Year – I don’t even particularly want to be a deb.’

  ‘Well, you’re about to be presented in front of the Queen, so I would say it’s a little late for second thoughts. Have you been to see Madame Vacani?’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘An old lady based in Kensington. Former dancer – apparently she taught the Queen and Margaret how to foxtrot, plus she is the Curtsey King. Been doing it since before the Great War, and has taught it to anyone who’s anyone.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t taught me.’

  ‘Then how are you going to do it properly?’

  ‘You mean there’s a proper way to curtsey?’ Georgia was dimly aware of a curtseying lesson at Madame Didiot’s, but she clearly hadn’t being paying attention.

  ‘It’s getting a little bit late in the day to be asking those sorts of questions, George.’ Clarissa stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’m going to have to teach you. Stand up,’ she ordered.

  ‘There are two sorts of curtsey. One’s more informal than the other. You’ll need the deep court one for presentation day. One foot behind the other, weight on the right foot and down you go.’

  She demonstrated the move to perfection and Georgia copied her, her cigarette still hanging out of her mouth at right angles.

  ‘Not like that,’ Clarissa muttered. ‘Throw your chest out, as Madame Vacani used to say.’

  ‘This is silly,’ said Georgia, collapsing to the floor in laughter. ‘I’m going to ask Aunt Sybil for a drink. Under the circumstances, perhaps she’ll give me a stiff one.’

  Down in the kitchen, her mother was talking to Mrs Bryant about making aspic. Interrupting them for a moment, she asked the housekeeper if she could have two glasses of lemonade. Retreating back upstairs with the drinks, she heard Aunt Sybil and Uncle Peter in the living room, her ears straining even more when she heard her own name.

  ‘Then I will pay for a dance,’ Peter was saying, struggling to keep his voice low. ‘We can have it in the garden.’

  ‘I am not having fifty, sixty youths parading through the house just because you feel sorry for your brother’s child,’ said Sybil, her reply disappearing into a hiss. ‘No one is forcing them to do the Season and they shouldn’t be doing it if they can’t afford it. I mean, whatever is the world coming to? We’ve got Khrushchev in the Kremlin, and now Estella joining the aspirational classes.’

  ‘I have a duty to James. A duty to his memory. I have to do this. Every girl wants to be a deb, to be a princess, and I must do everything I can to support her.’

  As Georgia ran up the stairs with the lemonade, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Georgia didn’t feel any different now that she had come out. She hadn’t expected it to be momentous, of course – not in the way the whispers at the convent had suggested losing your virginity would be. But she had at least thought she might feel a little more grown-up, more sophisticated.

  Still, the day hadn’t been all bad. There had been lots of waiting around, of course – waiting in the cars as they all lined up along the Mall, waiting on the spindly little chairs for their turn to curtsey. But it had been secretly quite thrilling and oh so glamorous. Despite her resistance to the entire Season, the excitement of her fellow debutantes had been infectious. She had felt quite lovely in her pale blue silk dress, the colour of a Devon summer sky, bought as a gift by Uncle Peter. Prince Philip, who had been seated next to the Queen during the ceremony, had been heart-stoppingly handsome in the flesh – thank goodness she’d had to curtsey to him after the Queen, otherwise she feared she might have been too distracted to pull the move off successfully. Plus she had been fascinated to snoop inside the Palace – they had seen the drawing rooms, the corridor and the stairways lined with Yeomen, then the main event, the Throne Room, before retiring for tea and chocolate cake in one of the dining areas.

  But pulling up outside the large white house on the edge of Eaton Square, she felt a loss of whatever enthusiasm she had had for the Season. How could anyone live in a place like this? she thought, looking down at the white vellum invitation and back up towards the imposing house ahead.

  ‘Never knew there was a hotel here,’ said the cabbie, breaking into her thoughts.

  ‘It’s not a hotel,’ she said, fishing in her small handbag for a ten-shilling note, one of a hundred crisp notes that Uncle Peter had given her in an envelope to pay for the Season’s expenses.

  ‘Who lives here – relative of the Queen?’

  ‘They’re into refrigerators,’ explained Georgia; it was all Aunt Sybil had told her about the family. ‘That’s where the money comes from.’

  The cabbie was still shaking his head in disbelief as he pulled away, his tail lights disappearing into the darkness, leaving Georgia all alone on the pavement. She took a deep breath to compose herself.

  The volume of debutantes had necessitated three presentation days, the last of which had been two days earlier. But they represented not the end but the beginning of
the Season, and already Georgia could feel that London was buzzing with a party atmosphere that had definitely not been so palpable the week before.

  Music floated from the big house in front of her as a group of young men, all dressed in white tie, like a tiny colony of penguins, approached from the south-west corner of the square.

  Georgia felt intimidated. Grand houses and beautiful gowns like the one she was wearing – Estella had customised one of Clarissa’s linen dresses with her own artwork and a yard of silk – were things she was completely unused to. They felt too big for her, even if the dress had been altered to fit perfectly.

  With the exception of the infrequent trips to London to see Peter, Sybil and her cousins, Georgia was not well versed in the ways of the wealthy. Her convent school had been solid, academic – used to educating the daughters of farmers and local businessmen and solicitors; her finishing school, as Sybil had pointed out, was not considered particularly elite – nothing like the Institut Le Mesnil in Switzerland.

  Of course Madame Didiot had prepared her girls for being set loose on the Season and into society. She had taught them the dos and don’ts of going into the Stewards’ Enclosure at Henley or the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. And she had particularly impressed on them the art of confidence in any situation. Georgia could hear her heavily accented words now: ‘Confidence can make the ordinary beautiful. Stand tall, slow down, be interested, be interesting, and if you have nothing to say, ask a question.’

  But Madame’s words meant very little as she approached the house. She felt wretched and lost. It hadn’t been like this at her little fork luncheon – a surprising success once Mrs Bryant had stepped in and helped with the catering. But there she had been surrounded by people she knew: her mother and aunt, plus a smattering of friends from Madame Didiot’s.

  Taking a deep breath, she proceeded up the black and white tiled path and into the house.

  After the cold outside, the heat pressed against her. It was only a quarter past seven, and already the downstairs of the house was wall-to-wall with people. It had been the cocktail party that everyone was talking about – not only because it came so soon after the presentation ceremonies, but because Emily Nightingale’s family was so mind-bogglingly rich.