The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Even so, his calling her Portia was strangely thrilling. Phyllis had always envied her mother her ease of manner, her quiet determination, her way of handling everyone from the maids to the yachts with tact and discretion. So, what with one thing and another, she put off the moment of telling him that she was not her mother, reminding herself that since his mind had obviously been so dreadfully affected by the loss of his wife and daughter it was most likely that it had somehow returned to the past, and perhaps to that part of the past in particular where there would be no memory of his loss, but only the happy days of his youth with Portia.

  Phyllis had chosen to read to him from a book that would amuse them both, and so had selected The Pickwick Papers from the tightly stocked room of books made available for guests at Tradescant House. She had already read it three or four times, and she was confident that she was quite able to read it well, simply because, as her father used to say, ‘When you know a story the characters come towards you in all their colours, just like old friends.’

  But alas, the secret Vice, being more used, perhaps, to sea shanties, or tales about ships and spice islands, or hostile natives, was not, Phyllis noticed, quite as fascinated by Mr Pickwick and his friends as she and her father had always been. Much as he complimented her on her style of reading at the start, it was not long before Richard Ward fell fast asleep.

  Seeing this Phyllis left him, locking his door once more, and found herself dismally wandering the house for the rest of the morning, waiting for the moment when she would be changed by Evie into her riding habit and go to Hyde Park for her first public promenade on a beautiful chestnut hireling.

  Fashionable promenades were still made in Hyde Park during the morning and afternoon. It was at this time that everyone, whatever their status, who prided themselves on being in the swim either rode or drove by, each leaning towards the others, each noting the other’s turn-out, their horses, their carriages, their pairs, their fours, their riding habits, their companions, their hats, their plumes, their horses’ bridles, their saddles, the paint on their coachwork. Despite the advent of the motor car, despite the King now going about in his fleet of motor cars, the fashionable still clung to the customof riding and driving carriages through and around Hyde Park of a morning and afternoon. It was too good a spectacle, too good a venue for showing off one’s horses and clothes, one’s mistresses and one’s carriages, to abandon in favour of a motor car, however increasingly fashionable.

  For the demi-monde of the day, the mistresses of the rich, it was especially important. The morning or afternoon ride was the moment when they could show off not just their horses and their riding, but their own silhouettes. It was a moment for searching out their rivals and noting them, each knowing that they were out to make an impression on the other’s patron, no matter who. Most of all, everyone wanting to know who was who, especially if they were new to the fashionable cavalcade. Gentlemen could be seen greeting each other while staring from under their hats at approaching beauties, doubtless wondering if the time had come to swap their current chère amie for a more spectacular model.

  Naturally enough, and even Phyllis knew this, no nice young woman would ever, ever notice a member of the demi-monde when out riding. It was not just that they were expected to ignore them, they were expected not to see them. As far as the unmarried young lady was concerned, the women from St John’s Wood, or other similar environs, did not exist. Even if, like the famous ‘Skittles’, the former mistress of the Duke of Devonshire, they drove fast and furiously past in a gleaming phaeton with a pair of coal-black heifers following, Phyllis knew that she must not notice them. Least of all must she comment. The mistresses of the aristocracy might ride past without their clothes, or they might have flame-red hair and wear a riding habit with gold epaulettes, or ride a great black horse with a red bridle and saddle to match, but, as far as nice young ladies were concerned, they were not there. They did not exist.

  Of course this did not stop those same innocent young ladies from seeing them from under their eyelashes. They might not turn their heads, or raise their eyebrows, but from under their eyelashes, as those other young women who had already chosen a rather different path in life rode past, whatever the embargoes laid down by their chaperons the young girls in question would make sure that they saw them. It was natural. Besides, some of them were too good to miss.

  One in particular fascinated Phyllis. A tall blonde, as tall as a man, with wide shoulders, and invariably dressed in a replica of an officer’s uniform. She was truly fascinating. More than that, it was rumoured that she was not exactly the same sex as Phyllis, although that was somewhat difficult to tell, since she wore gloves, covering that part of a person’s anatomy impossible to disguise – the hands.

  ‘She’s called “the Colonel” because apparently she insists on wearing a uniform with the same pips as a colonel of a cavalry regiment,’ Phyllis told Edith, as the blonde passed them that particular afternoon. ‘My maid, Evie, told me that a few years ago the previous Prince of Wales noticed that whereas before when riding out in Rotten Row she always wore the uniform of a common soldier, which was permissible, she had changed her regular riding habit to that of a colonel. The Prince, being a stickler, felt that she had gone too far and the next time he caught sight of her he sent his equerry over to reprimand her. But apparently the equerry came back with the reply that His Royal Highness must not fret, because after all she was only a peacetime colonel, and would certainly resign her commission at the end of the Season if His Royal Highness so wished.

  ‘What was the outcome of that, then?’

  ‘Naturally enough, since she had provided him with an amusing moment, His Royal Highness did nothing about it, and so she carried on as she has to this day, an honorary colonel of a regiment of her own invention!’

  ‘Oh my – Phyllis, no, please do look. Little Miss Hartley Lambert riding towards us and wearing a riding habit that would put even Skittles to shame!’

  At that point, seeing a small party approaching, both girls reined in their horses, for in the party were two young officers accompanying the Duke of Connerton, and since all of them had met the night before at the opening ball at Medlar House, not to acknowledge them would have been discourteous in the extreme.

  It seemed that they had also met Miss Hartley Lambert, because she too reined in her horse, and greeted them in her open way with ‘Gentlemen! How good to meet you.’

  This in itself was a breach of etiquette, for, as Phyllis and Edith knew only too well, it was not considered correct for young men to be addressed by a young lady first. The greeting was always meant to come from the men, who raised their hats courteously while the ladies merely nodded in return. It was also incorrect to say ‘how good to meet you’. ‘See you’ was correct. No lady ever said ‘meet’. A ‘meet’ was for hunting, not riding in Rotten Row. All this made it difficult for Phyllis not to titter, rather to the embarrassment of Edith, who could not help feeling a little sorry for Miss Hartley Lambert, even though she was not as proper as she should be – so tall and so gauche, and wearing such a terrible hat.

  Sarah of course knew, as soon as she saw Phyllis tittering, that she had said something risible, although she had no idea what it could be. It was not just that she could see her former fellow-pupil suppressing a smile; she could also feel the just-wait-till-behind-your-back-we-tell-everyone-what-you-have-just-said feeling. It was palpable. It was like a ripple in the water, it was like circles on a pond: she knew it would get wider and wider the moment she rode on. And, because she had lost the battle with her mother over a certain little matter, she could feel them carefully and wilfully not looking at – the hat.

  ‘I don’t think you know Miss Ha—’ Phyllis began. ‘I don’t think you know Miss Ha—’ She paused as everyone looked at her, waiting. ‘Miss Hatley Lambert!’ Phyllis finally finished, her face all innocence.

  There was a great burst of laughter at this, the kind of laughter which the victim is forced
to join in but, ultimately, is so wounding that they will probably, no matter where, no matter when, remember it for the rest of their lives.

  ‘Hartley, actually, Hartley Lambert.’ Sarah smiled, bravely, and went on smiling, bravely.

  But it was too late, for thanks to Phyllis all their suppressed smiles had turned into unsuppressed laughter, and Phyllis, although she murmured an apology, was looking very pleased with herself.

  ‘Hartley Lambert! Oh dear, of course, I am sorry! But you must admit, your hat does prompt such a mistake, Miss Hartley!’

  That was not all that Sarah must admit. She must also admit openly that as of that moment her hat and Phyllis’s joke were going to be laughed at in the mess, in the ballroom, in the clubs, everywhere.

  She knew, only too well, that from now on she would be known as Sarah Hatley Lambert, and she knew they knew it, and it was all so shaming, and so embarrassing, that Sarah could have taken whatever armament was nearest to her and willingly killed herself at that moment.

  But she did not. Instead she sat her horse, and she straightened herself to her full height, and she bowed her head to the young officers who were laughing so heartily and said, ‘Touché, sirs, ladies. It is, I know, a perfectly beastly hat, and you may be glad to know that I am about to return home and burn it. You have done well to make a joke of it, Miss de Nugent. For if this hat is not a bad joke, in line with your own, well, then the world is not round and the United States of America was not lost by a former King of England, and instead of being American, I would be rude and English, and mannerless, like yourselves.’

  After which she wheeled her horse and headed back to the stables, her grooms, both of them, in hot pursuit, causing quite a flurry as they extended their trots to such a degree that they almost caused a party of newly arrived young ladies to take flight.

  Sarah returned home immediately in the family carriage. And the hat itself was of course duly burned. But as she knew, and they knew – those others in the Park – she could not, alas, burn the joke too. The joke would stay around, possibly as long as she was in England.

  She was, in some measure, she realised, as she watched the flames of the fire reaching up and slowly, far too slowly, nibbling and then eating at the wretched hat, in effect now ruined. Too late to curtsy beautifully at Court, to dance elegantly, or ride brilliantly. Too late for Worth gowns to detract from her height. Soon that greatest destroyer, that deflator of all that is possibly good, would be taking flight, setting alight everything that her mama and Lady Devenish had striven to create around her. Sarah was too intelligent not to know that no-one survived humour, ever. It had never been known.

  ‘My darlingest one! Here you are! I have been looking for you all over the house. I do so hope that you had as wild a success as I wanted, and that you were as happy with your French riding habit as we all felt you looked going off?’

  Sarah sprang up, half covering the fire with her outspread skirt, and doing a good imitation of chattering teeth, which must have looked really very strange since her mother kept their rented house at hothouse temperatures and her own rooms at only a few degrees under seventy-five, no matter what the weather outside, such was her horror of the cold, damp, English climate. A climate so inducive to melancholia, Sarah found, that had she not felt her recent humiliation at the hands of Phyllis de Nugent so keenly, she could almost have blamed the weather for her un-endurable discomfiture and feelings of despair.

  ‘Darlingest one!’ her mama repeated, her arms wide open as if to embrace what she felt must have been a huge success for Sarah. ‘The hat? Tell, oh do? The hat was a succès fou, n’est-ce pas?’

  Sarah nodded silently, her skirt still spread out to cover the soft felt riding hat behind her now burning so merrily. The hat had indeed been a mad success, but not with her. It had been a mad success with her enemies, the Honourable Phyllis de Nugent and Miss Edith O’Connor, although to give her some kind of due Miss O’Connor had finally looked more than a little embarrassed at the behaviour of the others.

  The hat had been considered so madly successful that it would doubtless continue to be a source of mirth for the rest of the Season.

  ‘I knew it would be a success,’ sighed Mrs Hartley Lambert. ‘I knew it. I have always thought that there is nothing more eye-catching than silver reflecting the light, especially when the grooms have a touch of it too in their cockades, so that there is a winking and a blinking on either side of the equestrian.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Sarah agreed, quietly, and found to her shame that she could wish, just for this one wretched moment in her life, although not for any other, that Lady Devenish had been her mother.

  Lady Devenish had that quiet demeanour, that gentle humour, that understanding sort of way of going on with which Sarah found herself all too sympathetic.

  Perhaps because she had grown so tall, which was considered such a handicap in a girl, even in America, Sarah had always wanted people not to notice her, had prayed not to be the centre of people’s interest. It was just how she was. Her mother was quite different, perhaps because she herself had always been so pretty and so much the ‘party piece’. Even when Sarah was young Mrs Hartley Lambert had been aware of her daughter’s being so different from herself, always enthusiastically pushing her forward to excel at everything from skating to dancing. And to please her Sarah had applied herself to everything. In fact, looking back she could honestly say that she thought she had not altogether failed her mother, except in this one matter, this matter of people noticing her. But now, thanks to the hat, she had been noticed, and would be pointed out to everyone – ‘Look, there goes Sarah Hatley Lambert!’ Her chances of escaping from that joke were negligible, and she knew it.

  Emily was experiencing that mild sense of dissatisfaction that all mothers of girls must feel from time to time. Now she came to think of it Edith was not, to her mother’s mind anyway, quite graceful enough. Neither was she, in her mother’s view, quite charming enough. Nor was she, as far as her mother’s taste went, quite distinctive enough. She would not stand out in a crowd. Indeed she had not, as far as Emily could ascertain, yet stood out in a drawing room, not to mention a ballroom. It was fair to say that up until now she had proved to be a disappointment to her mother.

  Emily paused before considering her own looks in the mirror in front of her. It had to be said that she had always stood out in a crowd, principally of course because she had such a strong hair colour. Auburn was very noticeable, and when dressed in pink or red, very, very noticeable; indeed, outstandingly so. Lady Devenish had guided Emily’s taste in that way, as later, did Daisy. Of course it was a long time ago, but they had undoubtedly guided Emily’s taste most beautifully, not wishing her always to be seen in green, as Emily’s mother would have wished. Much later her husband, Rory O’Connor, would always insist, one way or another, that she wore green.

  ‘Is there not enough green in all Ireland that I have to wear it too?’ Emily would groan whenever Rory returned from some expedition to Paris or London with green and more green materials for her delectation.

  But there, now that Rory had elected to stay in Ireland with his country house politicking friends, his bad back and his habit of keeping company with poets, she could once more wear every sort of colour except green. Which was probably why she was looking so very fetching in a hat of palest pink which showed off her now quite snowy white hair with a fine dash.

  White hair was so very flattering. Emily knew this, of course. It made her skin look so fine and pink and perfect, and despite four children she still had a tall, graceful figure, the figure of a woman who had ridden hard all her life and never given best to any man. She might not be any Empress Elizabeth of Austria, but Emily was more than a match for anyone once mounted. And that was what she and Rory had had in common, their riding. And now they shared it no longer, since his disastrous fall out hunting. Indeed, it was a wonder to all and sundry that he could even walk again, and the fact that he did so was, she knew, despite
the most terrible and constant pain.

  Although, in common with the rest of the world, Emily could not like her hostess for the Season, she could not help liking Medlar House. It would be a strange sort of woman who could do anything but enjoy a household which employed, it was rumoured, anything up to sixty indoor servants. And an even stranger sort of woman who could not enjoy the luxury of being waited on hand and foot. Even her maid, Minnie, had her own servant, on call to help her whenever she wished. And although, admittedly, Polly was only a scrap of a thing, nevertheless her services, and the services of all the other servants, were something which Minnie, and Emily herself, were quite able to enjoy, feeling that they were in reality enjoying the hospitality of a minor monarch.

  ‘Are you quite comfortable at Medlar House, Emily dearest?’ asked Portia, and she leaned over the luncheon table towards her old friend.

  ‘If by “comfortable” you mean am I enjoying feeling like the Vicereine of India every time I awake in the mornings, such is the luxury of our circumstances, then the answer is a decided yes, Portia, my dear. Yes, yes, and yes again.’

  Portia smiled. Emily was looking magnificent that morning. As soon as she had entered Aunt Tattie’s drawing room, Portia had known that she was in the presence of the old Emily. The old dashing sparkle had returned to her eyes, and she no longer had the slightly tired look that most mothers assume when around a daughter who is proving less than satisfactory.

  ‘I have decided to enjoy myself in a most un-chaperon-like manner!’ Emily’s green eyes narrowed slightly as she followed Portia into the dining room. They were to lunch alone, which was most satisfactory, for it meant that they could catch up on all the latest news and at the same time form new plans, plans that would, they both hoped, push Edith and Phyllis more to the fore as the pace of the London Season increased and their hopes for their daughters, should they remain unengaged, decreased with equal speed.

  ‘Pink is very becoming to you, Emily,’ Portia murmured approvingly, while Emily’s eyes rested on Portia’s tasteful grey. She knew, as friends do, that nothing would induce Portia to leave off her demi-mourning for her darling Childhays. ‘There will always be memories, will there not?’ Portia continued. She smiled down the table at Emily, and as Emily smiled back, thinking that her old friend was referring to her widowed state, she added to Emily’s surprise, ‘I will always remember you in pink at Ascot, I think, with the most marvellous pink cloques on the heels of your shoes, and tiny pink rosebuds tucked in a fall down the front of your dress. What sighs of envy you provoked in all of us!’