The Proposal

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Mum, tell me what’s going on,’ she said, twisting back and glaring at Estella.

  ‘Aunt Sybil thought you should have a dinner date. Apparently it’s the done thing,’ Estella said in a low, urgent voice.

  ‘And that’s him? In the taxi?’

  Estella grabbed her arm and led her firmly to the door.

  ‘He’s a nice boy, a good family.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Georgia, trying to twist away from her.

  ‘You are,’ instructed Estella, shutting the front door behind them and herding Georgia down the steps and out on to the street.

  He had already got out of the taxi and was holding the door open for her. He was a couple of inches shorter than she was, with sandy blond hair and a pinkie ring on his little finger.

  ‘Frederick McDonald. How do you do,’ he said with an obviously anxious smile. ‘It’s wonderful to finally meet. I’ve been hearing all about you.’

  Georgia couldn’t bring herself to lie that the feeling was mutual.

  Queen Charlotte’s Ball, one of the highlights of the entire Season, was being held in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House hotel. Cocktails were to precede dinner, which was to be served at 8.30. It was supposed to be a magnificent night and tickets for the event cost four pounds and four shillings each, not that Georgia’s family had had to pay for them – Donald Daly, Sally’s father, had announced that he had bought an entire table of ten and insisted that the Hamiltons should join them.

  ‘George, here you are,’ squealed Sally as soon as she had deposited her wrap in the cloakroom.

  Georgia was glad to see her best friend in London. The two girls had become close ever since they had met at Emily Nightingale’s cocktail party. Although they hadn’t traded contact details then, they had started to see one another everywhere and soon had made plans to meet up away from the Season events. Although Sally was taking the Season very seriously indeed, she was an easy-going girl with a sense of fun and generosity of spirit that Georgia had warmed to immediately.

  Georgia was still in a bad mood from her confrontation with her mother but gasped in delight when she saw her friend’s gown – a floor-length confection in the palest vanilla made of duchess silk and tulle.

  ‘So, what’s your date like?’ asked Sally, hooking her arm through her friend’s conspiratorially.

  ‘Even you know I had Frederick McDonald lined up for me this evening?’

  ‘Well, my mother was doing a table plan and needed to call Sybil, so we got all the gossip.’

  ‘Thanks again for the tickets. It was so kind of you.’

  ‘I could lie and tell you that Dad’s splashed the cash because you’re the nicest, most fun deb on the circuit,’ Sally whispered dramatically. ‘But it was when I told Mum that your aunt was an aristocrat’s daughter that my parents insisted we should share a table tonight. Such are their frightening levels of social climbing, they’ve even brought my brother Keith along, and I think Mum has seated him next to Clarissa. I hope she’s not frightfully cross. Look, there they are being introduced now.’

  Georgia glanced across the room and saw her cousin chatting to a rotund young gentlemen with a ruddy complexion and an ill-fitting dinner suit. Sally had taken after her attractive mother in the looks department; Keith was a dead ringer for their more aesthetically challenged father. Clarissa wasn’t going to be cross. She was going to be furious.

  ‘Frederick’s cute,’ observed Sally as they weaved through the tables, stopping every few feet to say hello to a fellow deb. Georgia surprised herself with how many people she knew here, having served lots of them in the Swiss Chalet coffee shop, which had proved to be quite a popular place for debutantes to meet their latest paramours. Fledgling romances developed over apple strudel and hot chocolate before her very eyes, and she had even heard whispers that a couple of her acquaintances hoped to be engaged before the end of the summer. Others she knew from her own cocktail party a couple of weeks earlier, an event that had gone surprisingly well. Uncle Peter had secured a room at the Chelsea Arts Club, which they had decorated with fairy lights. It had been a meagre finger buffet – Estella’s attempts at aspic had been disastrous, her hoped-for gelatinous centrepiece little more than a bowlful of cold meats floating in a pond of thin pale pink fluid after the thing had failed to set. However, their provision of cocktails had been excellent. Georgia had been in sporadic communication with Edward Carlyle – a handful of letters had bounced between them following that night in Putney, after which she had sent him an invitation to her party. He hadn’t been able to attend – apparently revision for Finals was getting a little bit hairy – but instead had sent a recipe book of cocktails, which she had plundered for ideas.

  She glanced around the room to see if Edward was here tonight. He hadn’t mentioned in their last correspondence that he was coming, but she was hoping to see a friendly face in this sea of stiff, white-gloved formality.

  They took their seats at the round table. Georgia had been placed between Frederick and Keith – clearly Mrs Daly was hedging her bets, a thought Georgia didn’t like to dwell on too long.

  ‘Save me,’ whispered Clarissa into her ear, before taking her place on Keith’s other side. Georgia grinned back at her supportively.

  The menus were written in French, but her command of the language was good enough to translate it. Soup. Fillet of sole. Chicken and potatoes. All of which she felt sounded much more exotic and delicious left in the original French.

  ‘I love your crown. Where did you buy it?’ asked Sally’s mother Shirley, eyeing Sybil’s tiara with desire.

  ‘I was given it by my uncle when I married Peter,’ replied Sybil politely.

  ‘Don, maybe we can get one next time we go to Bond Street.’

  Georgia hoped her aunt wouldn’t point out that it had been in the family for generations, but Sybil maintained a discreet silence.

  ‘So tell me about business, Mr Daly,’ she asked instead.

  ‘Doing well,’ he smiled, tucking his napkin into the front of his shirt and summoning the wine waiter to bring over three bottles of champagne. ‘It’s going through the roof, in fact. Not bad considering I started off with a couple of old bicycles on the back of a horse and cart.’

  ‘You were a rag-and-bone man?’ said Clarissa, her eyes wide.

  ‘Not too far off, love,’ grinned Don Daly. ‘But there’s a big future in metal recycling. You seen those aluminium cans for soda pop? The lot will be recyclable.’

  ‘Money for old rubbish.’ Sybil laughed at her own joke.

  ‘Sally says you work for Vogue, Clarissa,’ put in Shirley, her eyes twinkling.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you go on fashion shoots?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m only in the secretary pool.’

  ‘She plans to move out of it any time now,’ said Sybil with barely disguised disapproval. ‘I must phone Audrey Withers and talk about your prospects, now you’ve decided to become a career woman.’

  Georgia glanced over towards Clarissa, who was looking down in quiet shame. It was no secret in the Hamilton family that they just wanted to get her married off.

  ‘And Sally tells me you work in a coffee shop, Georgia,’ smiled Shirley, who had perhaps picked up on the tense atmosphere at the table.

  ‘It’s great.’ Georgia grinned back. ‘All the cake I can eat. And I even get paid for my break time, which is brilliant because that’s when I work on my book, so it feels like I’m finally getting paid for writing.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Peter, taking a long sip of champagne. ‘I was out for dinner with an interesting chap the other day. Quite a successful author, apparently. I should introduce you. I’m sure he can give you some tips on getting published.’

  Peter’s offer lifted Georgia’s mood, so much so that the meal passed uneventfully and was even quite pleasant. The biggest surprise of the evening was Frederick McDonald, who was exceedingly good company. Georgia hoped that, while she didn’t
fancy him in the slightest, they could be friends.

  The ritual of the ball occurred after dinner, when over a hundred of the attendant debutantes assembled upstairs before descending the sweeping staircase to the cavernous ballroom, where a giant twinkling white cake was to be cut in front of the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland. Georgia thought it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever seen, and it was not because of any sour grapes.

  ‘You’re not going with her?’ said Don Daly as Sally left to join the ‘cake’ debs.

  ‘I wasn’t chosen,’ said Georgia in a dramatic whisper.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Mrs Daly, not unkindly. ‘Sally’s having a few more sessions at Lucie Clayton. You should come along next time.’

  ‘I think attitude rather than deportment is the problem,’ said Sybil more tartly.

  ‘Let them eat cake,’ whispered Frederick McDonald, which would normally have made Georgia laugh, but she was too angry with her aunt’s rudeness.

  The whole thing thankfully didn’t take very long, and then the Bill Savill orchestra struck up, and Uncle Peter took Georgia’s hand for the traditional father-and-daughter dance. She felt a pang of sorrow that she was not here with her own father, and at that moment Peter gave her hand a squeeze, as if he had recognised her sadness.

  ‘Allow me to take this opportunity to tell you how proud I am of you. You have grown up into an intelligent and beautiful young woman,’ said her uncle, smiling gently.

  ‘Thank you,’ she grinned. ‘And thanks for thinking of me when you met that author.’

  ‘You have to ignore Sybil,’ he said after a moment. ‘You know she only wants the best for you and Clarissa.’

  Georgia snorted. She didn’t mean to be impolite after all her aunt and uncle had done for her, but Sybil’s constant and obvious disappointment was beginning to grind her down.

  ‘Why do you put up with it, Uncle?’ she wondered out loud.

  ‘Marriage is a compromise,’ replied Peter matter-of-factly.

  ‘It’s not a compromise. Marriage has to be just right; you have to be perfect for each other. Otherwise what’s the point?’

  From the sidelines she could see Estella watching them, and she thought about her own parents’ marriage.

  Georgia had not been a particularly romantic child, but growing up in their old, lonely farmhouse, she had loved hearing her mother telling how she and James Hamilton had met and fallen in love, and had asked for the story again and again as if it was some sort of fairy tale.

  How James had been in Paris on business and met Estella, who had been sketching on a table of a pavement café in the 14th arrondissement. They had started walking and talking, beginning in the little street in Montparnasse and ending up on the other side of the city in Montmartre, sitting on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur watching the sun rise over the Eiffel Tower. How by the time they had got to the banks of the Seine Estella had decided that she was going to marry James Hamilton, and how they had taken their honeymoon in the city just before the outbreak of war had put a stop to any further visits.

  In the back of her mind Georgia had always wondered if the real reason her mother had sent her to Paris was so that she might have that same sort of heady, romantic discovery. And yet, alas, here she was being set up with the likes of Frederick McDonald, who was sweet and funny but who had as much chance of setting Georgia’s heart racing as he had of setting foot on Mars. You could not force love, she decided, making a mental note to include that point in her memoirs.

  Uncle Peter was tapped on the shoulder and Frederick asked if he could cut in. Georgia took his hand and they started to waltz.

  ‘So what was all that curtseying to the cake thing about?’ he asked above the sound of a soaring clarinet.

  ‘Surely you’ve been to one of these things before?’

  ‘I haven’t, actually. I’m not quite sure if your aunt Sybil remembers trying to fix me up with Clarissa two years ago, but I couldn’t make it.’

  ‘You must be hot property,’ teased Georgia.

  ‘More like I’m twenty-four and my parents think it’s high time I found a wife.’

  Frederick danced as well as a Frenchman, which was a considerable compliment. She wasn’t sure if he held his breath the whole time, but she certainly couldn’t hear him panting in her ear, which was the usual hazard with her dance partners.

  ‘How about we waltz across to the far side of the room out of eyeshot of the grown-ups and just get drunk?’ said Frederick finally, and Georgia decided she liked him more by the minute.

  They took two cups of fruit punch, and Frederick pulled out a hip flask and poured a stiff measure of alcohol into each.

  ‘We’re going to have to get very drunk to get through this thing.’

  ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ laughed Georgia.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that . . .’

  ‘So you are going to be a diplomat?’ said Georgia, remembering what he had told her at dinner.

  ‘One day. Perhaps.’

  ‘You don’t sound very excited about it.’

  ‘I really want to be a journalist. Can you imagine going to the theatre or to the Summer Exhibition and getting paid to write about it?’

  ‘My mum says it’s wonderful when your job is your hobby. She says you never have to retire because what you do isn’t work.’

  ‘She’s an artist, isn’t she? I heard she did some rather fabulous pictures of the debs at your cocktail party.’

  ‘You heard about that?’ After the disaster of the aspic, Estella had had to improvise to give the party a little kick, and had decided to do a five-minute sketch of each guest as a going-home present.

  ‘My sister’s friend went. She’s quite proud of her caricature. Seemed to overlook the fact that she’d been given a nose the size and shape of a banana.’

  ‘Mother said she was experimenting in cubist cartooning.’

  ‘She should do a strip for the Evening Post.’

  ‘That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’ Georgia sighed.

  Glancing back at Estella, she saw that she was being asked to dance by a rather dishy-looking deb’s delight. She was not wearing white so Georgia felt sure the young man could not be confused. However, she did look pretty sensational. Not dissimilar to Lola Wigan, the ethereal debutante who had modelled the bride’s dress at the recent Berkeley Dress Show and who was the hot tip for winning Deb of the Year later that summer. Unlike Georgia, Estella was just impossible to resist.

  She excused herself from Frederick and went to the loo to freshen up. She found an empty cubicle, flipped down the lid and took a breather. Spurred on by Uncle Peter’s promise to introduce her to the author, she took out her small notebook from her silk bag and started writing some notes about her experiences of the night, including a few interesting turns of phrase that Frederick had used. She wasn’t entirely sure what use it would be, except that she had decided that the sequel to An English Girl in Paris should be about a country girl in London documenting her experience as a debutante in 1958. How strange it was that she was writing her second book even before she had finished her first, she thought as the words came swiftly.

  Her ears twitched when she heard her name.

  ‘I see the two most curious debutantes of the season are sharing a table,’ said a voice she only faintly recognised

  ‘And who might that be?’ said another.

  ‘The Birmingham girl with the enormous bosoms, and Georgia Hamilton.’

  She peered through a crack in the toilet door and saw three girls standing in front of the mirror reapplying their lipstick. It was Marina Ellis, her friend Melanie from the Eaton Square cocktail party and another debutante.

  ‘I think she’s quite pretty,’ said the unknown girl.

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘She wears beautiful dresses.’

  ‘I thought you meant Georgia!’ giggled Marina. ‘She looks as if she has fallen out of the Salvation Army half of the time.’

  ‘I w
as still surprised that Sally got to accompany the cake.’

  ‘Her father has bought his way into everything else; why should it stop with Queen Charlotte’s Ball? Probably slipped the Dowager Duchess a fistful of guineas to make it happen.’

  ‘He’s not the only one buying favours,’ said Melanie, lowering her voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Marina, smelling gossip.

  They huddled more closely around the basin. Georgia thought they looked like Macbeth’s witches around a bubbling pot.

  ‘I heard from a very good source that when Estella Hamilton paints a picture, it’s not just the canvas she gives a bit of slap and tickle.’

  Marina gasped.

  ‘She sleeps with her clients?’

  Melanie nodded.

  ‘That’s what I heard. Some friends of my mother’s, the Chases, commissioned her for something or other, and apparently she got far too friendly with Mr Chase. So much so that Mrs Chase ended up throwing the painting out of the window.’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me one bit that she’s promiscuous,’ said Marina with feeling. ‘She looks it. All that red lipstick and hair.’

  Georgia felt her hands quiver in anger. She was tempted to step out of the cubicle and confront them, but they had already changed the subject.

  ‘How is your date?’ Melanie asked Marina.

  ‘Dull as brass,’ she groaned. ‘I’ve got my eye on Charlie Edgerton. He’s already asked me to dance twice, so I need to ditch the date and take him up on his offer.’

  ‘What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go and find him . . .’

  Georgia shut her notebook and took a deep breath through her nose.

  ‘How dare they!’ she whispered out loud, determined that they were not going to get away with it.

  She left the Ladies’ and went back into the ballroom. Estella was talking to the father of one of the debs. Melanie’s words echoed in the back of her mind, but she blotted them out with force.

  She could see Marina flirting with a tall, dark-haired man with saturnine eyes. Unlike Sally, Georgia had not made a mental log of all the deb’s delights on the circuit; however, Charles Edgerton was a veritable jackpot of good looks and good family, too eligible not to be known – or at least recognised – by everyone.