The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Edith too smiled, quite spontaneously and possibly for the first time in the last twenty-four hours. The whole world seemed to have put its weight on her back these last days, but of a sudden, seated alone with this delightful little woman with her beautiful blond china doll looks, and her mischievous ways, Edith felt that now only half the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

  ‘You are so kind to see me. You must have so much else to occupy you. But, you see, in all honesty I did not know whom to talk to about – about – my mama. And then I suddenly thought of you. I have been used, you see, in Ireland, to having my papa, but he is not here, and there was no-one else to whom I could think of turning.’

  May found her heart sinking. She had known as soon as she saw this dear young thing that something terrible was bothering her, and then she had sensed that just the mere mention of Emily was too much. Now, here she was, saying exactly what May had most feared, that there was something wrong with Emily.

  ‘Of course, of course, you do quite right to come to me. Most especially if your mama is – not at all the thing?’

  ‘No, Duchess, she is not at all the thing. She is not herself. Not at all herself. And I am too young, and altogether too much of a disappointment to her, too like my papa in fact, to ever be likely to have any influence with her. I had thought to approach my friend’s mother, Lady Childhays, but I understand from Phyllis, from Miss de Nugent, that her mama is – not exactly herself nowadays either.’

  May had straightened herself and the expression in her eyes had gone from one of settled seriousness to one of deep gravity. Everyone who loved May, and there were a great many of them, knew that except at funerals May’s eyes rarely looked grave, but they did now, for if there was anything sadder than the sight of the young with the burden of their parents upon their shoulders, she did not know of it.

  ‘Tell me, my dear. You can trust me, I promise you. Your mama and I have known each other for so long. Is she ill? And Portia – Lady Childhays – is she, too? We are none of us getting any younger, it has to be said, although of course we all still think of ourselves, as the middle-aged are apt to do, as little spring lambs.’

  ‘They are both suffering, Lady Childhays and Lady Emily, from the same malady,’ said Edith, and even to her own ears she sounded just like her father. She could hear him saying just such a thing, describing the state of the two mothers in just such a way, only his voice would have the lilt of the Irish, and his eyes would be serious but not desperate as Edith knew the expression in her own must surely be.

  May’s hand crept up to the lace at her throat, but it was the only outward sign of her anxiety. ‘Namely, my dear?’

  ‘They are both suffering’ – Edith dropped her voice – ‘from – love!’

  ‘Never say so!’

  ‘Lady Childhays it seems has fallen in love with an old friend – Vice Admiral Ward, whom she rescued from a terrible situation, and they now have an understanding, as I believe it is called, but this is not be talked about, except by Phyllis – Miss de Nugent. She knows, and their maid, Evie, and now of course I know, but no-one else but us, and you now, of course, Duchess. That is all.’

  ‘Well, quite.’ May could not help seeing the fun of the situation, for all that the poor gel seated opposite her was sporting an expression that would do service for an undertaker. ‘So, let us see – the maid knows, and yourself, and myself, and Lady Childhays’ daughter, and obviously her aunt, and all their servants, for once the maid knows everyone below stairs knows – so, really, that means the news is quite out, and all London knows! No need to post it in any of the “future intended” columns!’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Well, I do see.’ Edith nodded, still smiling. ‘To continue, however. It is really very understandable, and not at all out of the way, that they should have feelings for each other, two old friends, et cetera, et cetera. And, since Lady Childhays is a widow, that is perfectly proper too, I would assume. After all, one cannot mourn one’s husband for ever, can one, Duchess?’

  ‘I do not suppose you can.’ May waved her handkerchief in front of her face for a second, thinking quickly. This was not after all quite as terrible as she had dreaded to hear, surely?

  ‘Well.’ Edith paused, frowning, considering this. ‘Well, I think one could mourn someone for ever, but I am not sure that it would be quite right, not finally, although completely understandable. For some people there is only one person, would you not say?’

  ‘I would indeed,’ May agreed warmly. ‘And so this is the situation of Lady Childhays, and you say that your mama is also suffering from the same condition—’ She stopped suddenly, realising, but not adding, but she is married still, and your papa alive. Instead her gaze flew to the large eyes opposite hers, and she shifted her position. ‘My dear, but how terrible for you. I mean to say, you know this for a fact, obviously, or you would not have come to me in this way?’

  ‘It seems that the whole of London knows it for a fact, Duchess, and that is precisely why I have come to you. Lady Childhays, you see, what with the engagement of Phyllis, of Miss de Nugent, and herself so delightfully placed, is feeling happier than she has done for years. I could not go to her. It would not seem quite right, do you see? Despite her being my mama’s friend. Besides, I do not think I have the best reputation with Lady Childhays, having larked about so dreadfully when staying with Lady Devenish.’

  ‘I dare say everyone larks about when staying with Lady Devenish. I dare say there is not a debutante of any spirit who does not lark about when being made to laugh to the sound of a piano and I know not what. But to return to this other matter. How do you know that the whole of London is privy to this matter, my dear?’

  ‘My maid.’ Edith knew that she need say little more. They both knew that those two words said everything. Minnie had come to Edith with the news, which she herself, it seemed, had garnered from the servants’ hall of all places. That alone had been a searing pain, the knowledge that her mother was the object of common gossip and ridicule below stairs.

  ‘Your maid.’ May’s voice dropped once again, and she half turned as if suspecting that other ears would now be pressed to the keyhole of the door.

  ‘Not the dear old lady who is outside in the hall, but Minnie – our old faithful from Ireland. She was told on the best authority, it seems.’

  ‘Well, there indeed is the worst of it, is it not? For once one’s maid is coming to one with news then one is only too amazed not to read it next in the Personal Column of The Times.’ May laughed shortly, but this time without humour. ‘Who is the other person involved? A married person, I trust?’

  ‘No, alas, Duchess, not a married person, that is the worst of it. It is a very handsome young officer, a Captain Barrymore Fortescue.’

  ‘But this is madness!’ May’s voice now was hardly above a whisper. After all, it was at her own At Home that the couple had met. ‘One simply cannot risk one’s reputation in this way, and one certainly should not – not with an unmarried daughter.’ May made a small sound between a sigh and a gasp, and then she went on just a little more hurriedly, ‘Not that you will remain unengaged for long, my dear. You are not the sort to remain on any shelf for very long, I do assure you.’

  Edith looked at the Duchess with her candid gaze, but evidently she was undeceived by the older woman’s optimism for she said in an even tone, ‘You are very kind, Duchess, but you and I both know that having a mother with, let us say, a certain reputation, making something of a scandal, will not be exactly enticing to any young man. Add to that the uncertain future of Ireland, and I am Irish, and my undoubtedly plain looks, and I will certainly not represent a bargain to any nice young man.’ She smiled before continuing. ‘Not that I am asking for sympathy for myself, for I am not. I know that I have done nothing at all to help myself. Although I will say I had no wish to do the London Season, and I begged Mama not to indulge in it for my sake. Dublin would have been quite enough – I am afraid the London Seas
on is of no interest to me. I am far too like my father. I came here practically dragged by my hair, and now here I am, halfway through the wretched caper and having made a bad-tempered display at practically every ball only the victim of my own folly, for whatever happens now I have no hope at all of making a match, least of all with my mama seeming to have lost her head over a younger man, and an unmarried one at that.’

  ‘It is not your fault that you have not enjoyed the Season, my dear. I dare say many a gel of spirit has not enjoyed her first London Season. But, and this is always to be remembered, very often a second Season, or even a third, does the trick, and she can then become quite comfortably engaged. I know it happened to Lady Curzon – her success was not until later, as I remember it, while I myself – why, I was on the London stage! And the Duke the other side of the footlights. Always in the same seat! Can you imagine any less likely way to become a duchess? But there, it is all a long time ago, and we older ladies can become dull company by always looking back instead of forward.’

  May had rattled on a bit, going by the conversational highways and byways as she had, for a good reason, because it gave her time to think, and to think as she could while she talked. This again was a habit of the stage where the acting or dancing went on inexorably, and it had to be faced very often quite mechanically, while one’s eyes took in such matters as the number of persons in the audience that night, or the fashionable crowd in the boxes, or one’s fellow members of the cast, in case they should be in a mind to trip one up or make one laugh just as one was meant to be beginning one’s number.

  ‘This has the makings of a disaster, but it has to be a disaster that can be averted, my dear. I saw your mama fleetingly last night, as a matter of fact, and she did seem in perfect high spirits.’

  Edith looked so sombre at this that May stood up and went to sit beside her.

  ‘I have a plan, my dear. I shall ask your mama for permission for you to come and stay here, with me, tomorrow night, for the ball. We will have dinner and then go down to the ballroom. At dinner I will make sure to place Captain Barrymore Fortescue next to a certain lady who, I am sure, will prove to be most attractive to him. I have often found that men, when thinking they are furiously in love with one person, turn out to be just as furiously in love with another the very next minute. This lady is older, as is your mama, but she can break a young man’s heart as soon as look at him, as they say.’

  ‘But what of Mama?’

  ‘I think you will find that your mama will have returned to Ireland, that she will discover, of a sudden, on the receipt of a telegram, that she is badly needed. That is why I will gain her permission for you to stay here, for the rest of the Season if need be. It will be a whole lot jollier for you, and since my son and husband will have turned tail and left again for the country the night after our ball, a whole lot jollier for me too. Bless you, I only wish I had a daughter as lovely as you, really I do. Now you must leave me, but rest assured that this whole matter will be at an end within a very few days. Older women often feel neglected, and sometimes they have been. It is all very understandable, and love is a great seducer!’

  They both laughed, almost too heartily, with relief at this lighthearted remark.

  ‘But also a deceiver.’ May’s head was once more on one side. ‘Sometimes it is not only difficult for a woman not to be flattered, it is impossible. But the moment passes, and life resumes its usual rhythms. One gets up, one goes to bed, one worries about one’s son, or one’s horses, or the harvest, and the moment passes.’

  ‘Have – have you …’ Edith stopped. For a minute she had thought she was back in the library at Glendarvan with her father and they were having the kind of conversation that fathers did not normally have with their daughters, but he was always happy, for some reason, to have with Edith.

  ‘No, my dear, never! I know myself to be far too fortunate in every way to ever look to either side of my marriage. My upbringing was loveless, and so when the Duke came to me and asked me to marry him I knew that not only was I the happiest girl in the world, I was also the luckiest. And having been, for a short time, on the stage, I knew that luck is to be treasured, and one should take nothing for granted, not a happy day, not a morning of sunshine, least of all a good audience! So will you come to stay with us, here? Or would it be too dull for you?’

  ‘I should love to, but will you really ask Mama for me?’

  ‘At once.’

  May gave Edith a quick, bright smile, and as they walked to the door she found herself saying, ‘My dear, if you will, take your maid and go to luncheon somewhere out, and do a little shopping. I have accounts at all the pretty places, and you may charge all manner of things to me. Buy yourself a new parasol, or a fetching hat, anything you care to, and forget about going back to Medlar House until four o’clock, by which time I think you will find that your mama will have left for Ireland.’

  It was not that May felt indignant, or indeed morally outraged, she had seen too much of life to entertain those feelings, but as she called for Harper to follow her, and for the Duchess’s London carriage to be brought round to the front steps, and arranged all the other little details that leaving one’s London house incurred, she certainly felt – well, flustered.

  Emily and she had always been close, and she simply could not understand, after all the innocence of her friend’s behaviour in their youth, the dreadful come-uppance she had suffered at the hands of Daisy, Countess of Evesham, and her banishment back to Ireland under a quite false cloud, how Emily, of all people, could behave in this way, and her poor daughter be made to suffer for it! All in all, it was flustering, there was no other word for it.

  May could have jumped from the top step outside the double front doors into the carriage when it eventually drew up, so great was her sense of fluster and urgency, and once the carriage drew away from the house it was quite claustrophobic inside the blue satin-lined coach, for she had no-one to whom she could talk about this horrid state of affairs.

  Even had she wanted to talk to her travelling maid about Lady Emily – which she certainly did not – Harper being Harper would not have shown the slightest interest. Harper took no interest in anyone’s affairs except her own. May had long ago resigned herself to only talking either at Harper – giving her instructions and so forth – or to Harper, which meant that they had ten minutes on Harper’s favourite subject, namely Harper.

  What made matters worse, of course, was the fact that Emily was staying at Medlar House. It would be very difficult for May to brush past Augustine Medlar without being required to say three bags full nine times over, and May did so hate that, no matter what. She had never felt able to be at all close to the ladies who ran political salons, any more than she thought she could feel close to people who were able to break their poor children’s hearts by bringing disgrace to their family names.

  Once arrived at Medlar House, all these emotions brought May up to Emily’s suite of rooms on the second floor at something close to a gallop. Somehow she had avoided Augustine Medlar, but now she realised that she was about to become lost in the corridor of guests’ rooms. She turned to Harper, and Harper, with her maid’s sixth sense of the where and how of the layout of houses, which came, May supposed, from having to accompany her mistress to strange houses all over Europe, wheeled round at once and, fairly charging off, somehow found Minnie.

  Looking into the Duchess of Wokingham’s eyes Minnie found that it was no good pretending, any more than it was any good the Duchess pretending to Minnie. May’s upbringing and stage experience was far too deeply rooted in reality for her not to know when someone else was on to a scandal, and Minnie did not have the guile to even want to pretend anything more than she felt – namely undisguised panic at the disintegration of her mistress’s reputation.

  Reputations were everything, and everyone knew it.

  ‘Your young mistress, Miss Edith O’Connor, is coming to stay with the Duke and myself at Wokingham House. As to Lady E
mily, I think you will find she is going to go back to Ireland.’

  Minnie swallowed hard, and then slowly bowed her greying head of thick curly hair with the starched hat set upon its top, once, twice, three times, as if she was praying at Mass.

  ‘I knows that, Your Grace. I am very well aware of that, and myself too. Why, did Lady Emily not receive the communication only this morning, and terrible news it is too. I have only just finished her packing.’

  May stared at the small Irish maid with her freckled face and honest, tear-filled eyes. It was simply not possible. May had wanted to send a telegram to Emily, she had planned to send a telegram to Emily, but she had not yet sent the telegram saying COME BACK TO IRELAND AT ONCE STOP O’CONNOR.

  So how had it happened that Emily had received news and was now packed up and ready?

  She took several steps back from the small Irishwoman, and then said, thinking quickly, ‘Oh, I am confused, to say the least. Well. Then it is fortunate that Harper is here to take Miss Edith’s portmanteaux back to Wokingham House, would you not say, Minnie?’

  ‘Oh, I would, ma’am, for it would be a terrible thing, in my opinion, for Miss Edith to have to drop the curtains on her dancin’ for the sakes of the terrible news from home. It is not as if there is not another way, for of course there is, and Miss Edith has had enough in her youth, what with the nursing of Miss Valencia, and the good and the bad that comes from that. Always worrying about her little sister so much that she never wanted even to go hunting in case she should come back and find her taken. And then not wanting to come to England for fear of the same, and always misbehaving in the hope that she could go back to Miss Valencia. Well, is not that enough? I would say, begging your pardon, Your Grace, that is quite enough to be going along with, and there are many others that would agree with me.’