A weight was lifted from her mind when she realised that this was doubtless what Childie would have said, but then she was faced with the shutting of the inevitable door on the past. Did she have to shut it? Did she have to say goodbye to everything that had happened before?
She asked this of May the following day, after everything was settled. May, in her usual down-to-earth way, considered the question and then, putting her head on one side, said, quite decisively, ‘No, absolutely not. To live the past in the present is wrong, of course, but to go forward with the past as part of the present is perfectly proper. It should not weigh one down; rather it should lift one up. Remembering past happy times, when one has laughed and the sun has shone, and all is not bleak, should be good not just for one, but for everyone else too.’
There was a pause as Portia reflected on this, and then she said quietly, ‘Dear May, how I wish I was as good as you.’
‘Come, come, now, Lady Childhays, you go too far!’
They both laughed.
‘Emily used to say that. No, she used to say, “How I wish that I was as good and as beautiful as May,” which is to say, she would have liked to be you, if she had not been Emily.’
‘Poor dearest Emily, what a drama she has lived through these last weeks, one way or another.’
They both paused, thinking back, knowing how near their friend had come to losing everything.
‘She will grow stronger. She is good-hearted, she is spirited, she is not utterly selfish. She was rather driven, I felt. By events in Ireland, but never more than now, I would say.’
Both nodded at this, and then spoke together. ‘So good about the announcement to come’ – ‘that Edith and your boy,’ Portia finished. ‘You must be pleased. And it will hearten Emily so much to have Edith married, and to your son. We did wonder, at the beginning of the Season, who would catch George’s eye, as a matter of fact. We thought it might be an American heiress, but never really one or other of our daughters. It seemed too good to be true.’
They laughed, and May shook her head.
‘No, George is not the kind of person to be attracted to an American girl such as Miss Hartley Lambert. Not that she would have been attracted to him in any case, I am sure. George needed to choose someone like himself, someone who will be more than happy to go to the country and stay there. Who will live for country life, love their dogs and their horses and generally be a country bumpkin, I am afraid. American gels languish in the English countryside! It is too much for any of them, coming from their bright interiors to our gloomy climate, to tolerate the damp and the cold, not to mention the dogs!’
‘We are mighty uncivilised to outsiders.’
‘Yes, but with all that, Englishness still stands for something. Englishness still stands for being and doing and coping in a particular way, and that all stands for something too. When all is said and done, the whole world knows what we mean by being “very English”. But we are being far too serious on such a happy day. Where will Phyllis marry?’
‘She has chosen London. St James’s I think, and all that. And afterwards they are to live in Scotland, which will be good for Phyllis because it means that she will come and see me and appreciate everything, most of all the difference in the climate. And George and Edith will marry in September, I hear from my maid.’
‘One does always hear from one’s maid. I have no idea why one needs a telephone. Yes, George and Edith are to marry at Westminster, honeymoon in Italy, we have a house there, and then come back – to Stilley Street.’
‘Where?’ Portia frowned. ‘Is that in London?’
‘Not in London, no,’ said May, gravely. ‘It is in York, and they will be there for quite a few months. As a matter of fact they will be there until they do not wish to be there any more.’
‘Is it large?’
‘Oh, no, it is tiny. No room for a maid. Edith will have to cook for George, and George will have to light fires and wash dishes and so on.’
Portia stared. Even coming from an Arts and Crafts background, the eccentric relatives and the odd customs of Bannerwick, she could not imagine a duke’s son lighting fires and washing up.
‘Does, er, George know about this, May dearest?’
‘George, no, not yet. But when he does, he will be thrilled. Believe me, there is nothing that a bridegroom likes better than his feet up on a fender and the smell of his young wife burning crumpets in the kitchen. It satisfies something natural in them.’
‘Not too natural, I hope,’ Portia asked, just a little fearfully.
‘No, not too natural,’ May agreed, and then she burst into laughter. ‘Oh, Portia, your face! You should see your expression – such shock! Stilley Street is the family bridal suite. I shall not go into it, it would not be proper, but believe me, it is a place that makes everyone young and in love completely happy. They are all alone, they can quarrel without being heard, they can – well, you know, they can be quite alone. It is truly a little paradise, and everything they want is delivered. And they do not have to wear evening dress in the evening.’
‘Do not tell my Uncle Lampard,’ said Portia, with some feeling. ‘He is even now recovering from the shock of hearing that people at home in London do not wear tail coats.’
‘Will Uncle Lampard take Phyllis up the aisle, do you think?’
‘Oh, I dare say, that is if Aunt Tattie can keep him on a straight path. He actually managed to stay sober for the whole of his London visit. Aunt Tattie was impressed.’
‘And how long was that?’
‘Two whole days! Imagine! It must have been a most horrible strain for the old gentleman.’
A footman came into the room to replenish the fire that burned winter and summer. Swiftly taking advantage of this, May said to him, ‘Bring us some refreshments, would you, please? Champagne. I think it has to be champagne. After all, Portia dearest, we have so much to drink to, have we not?’
It was Jenkins’s turn to be surprised. After their return to the house, Daisy retired to her morning room to think. She often did this when she was making up her mind. Seated at the window she would stare ahead of her and let her thoughts run, just as she used to watch the trout running in the streams when she was a little girl. They had looked so dappled and golden and the gardeners on the estate had a way of bending down and tickling them, their heads practically touching the water, which made Daisy laugh, and then long for them not to catch them.
She had caught enough trout in her time, social trout that is, to fill a fishing basket, and now, as she had realised on the cab drive home, it was time to hang up her chaperon’s shoes.
She would retire to somewhere immensely respectable and learn to be a respectable person. Heavily veiled, she imagined, she would step out every now and then and be driven around the park. She would read, and patronise the arts. She would see old friends, but only occasionally. She would not sew, she hated sewing, but she would improve her mind. Goodness only knew it must need improving. It had thought of nothing but the social life, and marriages, all its poor old life.
‘I wonder, should I read Tennyson, when I retire?’ she asked Jenkins later that day.
‘You are retiring, my lady?’
‘Oh, yes, Jenkins, did I not tell you? I am retiring. After all, Jenkins,’ she turned to the maid, ‘the Season would not be ve same without you, would it?’
Jenkins looked away.
Silly old woman, Daisy thought spitefully, she thinks I cannot do without her. She thinks I am retiring because she is retiring when in fact I am retiring because I am just so – tired.
‘I have just had a thought, a tremendous thought, Jenkins. Do you not think instead of saying “I am retiring” people should say “I am tired-ing”?’
Jenkins looked at Daisy blankly. ‘If you say so, my lady.’
‘Oh, I do not say, I do, Jenkins. No, as a matter of fact, I am not at all sure what I do say any more at all, which may surprise you.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
> ‘As a matter of fact, Jenkins, I am thinking of retiring next week. And I thought you should too, as a matter of fact. We should both retire, immediately, with effect from next week.’
‘Retire next week, my lady? But I have not yet informed my sister.’
‘Do so, Jenkins, at once. You can use my new telephone.’
‘My sister does not have a telephone, my lady.’
‘In that case write to her, Jenkins, and tell you what, you can have one of my stamps. Here. Take a stamp. Oh, no, vat’s not a stamp, is it? It is a piece of paper.’
‘The stamps are downstairs, my lady. In the hall.’
‘Well, wherever they are, you can have one. There. Never say I was not generous with you, will you, Jenkins? When you retire to your sister’s house, never say I was not generous to a fault.’
Jenkins shook her head, suddenly miserable. She had hoped to at least finish this last Season.
‘I don’t know what has got into you, my lady,’ she said, murmuring half to herself and half to Daisy, and certainly not caring in the least if my lady heard or did not hear her.
‘What has got into me, as you put it, is vat I have become very, very tired, and when a person is very, very tired, do you know something? They want to give up! And vat is what I am doing. Miss Hartley Lambert has found someone, everyone has found someone by this time of the Season, or should have done, and vat quite frankly is enough for me, for ever.’ Daisy stamped her small elegant foot on the old polished wooden floor. ‘I find I do not want to hear about another wedding, or engagement. I had rather read a book. There! I have really shocked you now, have I not, Jenkins? I have shocked the boots off you. I had rather read the poems of Mr Wordsworth, all of them, than ever, ever hear about a person getting married, or becoming engaged, or not getting married or not becoming engaged, again. I would rather ride backwards round the Park on my old mare, facing her poor old tail, than arrange another marriage, or another ball, or sit on a gilt chair watching a bunch of graceless gels trying not to trip over their feet! I would! So next week, Jenkins. Next week we shall pull down the blinds. We shall make it known vat we are leaving town, and I shall retire. Officially! Now, good morning. You can go down to the servants’ hall until further notice. And do not, please, forget to write your letter to vat sister of yours. It is most important, as you will doubtless have gathered.’
Daisy stood up and swirled, there was no other word for it, she positively swirled with joy, and as she did so a dreadful thought came to Jenkins, a truly awful thought, the kind of thought that she never imagined she might ever have to entertain.
Was it possible that her mistress had never really enjoyed the social life? Had she truly only done what she imagined was her social duty? While Jenkins was imagining herself as a downtrodden person, overworked and unappreciated, had her mistress, all that time, imagined herself in just the same way? Hard worked and in many ways downtrodden too, doing things all day that she had really rather not? Because if this was true, why then there was no such thing as the ‘better off’. There was just – life.
Jenkins turned away from the thought. It was almost godless in its implications. She had resented my lady for more years than she cared to remember, and she was not going to stop now. She was being sent away to Devon six weeks earlier than she wished. That at least was something to think about with resentment. By the time she reached the corridor outside the world was back to normal. They were back on either side of whatever it was that divided them, mistress and maid, as they should be, not, as Jenkins had suddenly seen them both for a few dizzying seconds, just ordinary human beings.
May had taken Portia to visit Herbert Forrester’s two houses in Kensington.
‘Very handsome houses, do you not think?’ May asked after their sporty little journey in a hansom cab, a journey that made them both feel like girls again, let off the hook, out for a canter.
‘They are handsome,’ Portia agreed. ‘But will he be happy to be so far out?’
‘He will be happy for a while, I think, anyway. It is the change, do you see, Portia, the change from York. Mr Forrester misses Mrs Forrester so dreadfully. It is too awful to think of being on one’s own like that—’ She stopped, turning. She had forgotten. ‘I am sorry. Of course, since you are newly engaged, I keep forgetting you have been widowed.’
‘No matter, May. I do too, if the truth be known. I never thought that the sorrow would leave me, but since Richard I feel young again. We know each other so well, d’you see? It is not like getting used to a whole new way of life; we already know each other as well as any two people can.’
She said no more, but May was aware that Portia possibly knew Richard Ward better than she had even known Lord Childhays. That was how deep youthful friendship ran, after all.
They turned now at the first landing of the first house, and went together into the drawing room.
Portia stopped and her mouth fell open, as May had been expecting that it might.
‘May! Goodness, May darling, that must be the first item to go, now you are here in charge. Thank heavens that you were called in to help Mr Forrester. Was it left behind by the previous owners? Well, it must have been, of course.’ Portia started to laugh. ‘You must have the removal men round straight away, and they must take it away and burn it.’
May was quite quiet before she turned to Portia and put her hand on her arm. ‘No, Portia, it is not to be removed. It is only newly purchased, and it will be the apple of dear Mr Forrester’s eye when he returns from his travels.’
‘You cannot! May tell me, please, you will not leave this here, in this room?’
‘Portia, shall I tell you something? It gives me great joy to do so. Mr Forrester set his poor old heart on a piece like this, and while it is not to my taste and not to yours, it will give him more joy than any of my taste imposed on the rest of the house.’
‘Anything, but not that,’ Portia said, shuddering lightly and dramatically, and then, seeing May’s most stubborn expression, she started to laugh. ‘Oh, very well, you are probably quite correct.’
May smiled. She knew, better than anyone, that her dear old friend needed a new beginning to his life, and somehow, she could not say why, this great silver-decorated cupboard was just that. From it, carrying as it would a vast amount of varying drinks and glasses, would come, she hoped, great rays of happiness and hope. She remembered when she was young and at the convent how she had set her heart upon a prayer book, how she had thought that prayer book would never materialise, and when it did, with its red leather and its gold, with its thin paper and its ribbons to place at special days, how it had seemed to her to be the most beautiful book in the world. Very well, the cupboard was not for church, but it was something upon which her old friend had set his heart, just as she had set her heart on her book of prayer. It was a symbol of a new beginning, and as such it could not be more important.
‘Come on, May, let us get started with the swatches of materials.’
Portia dug deep into her old Gladstone bag, hardly able to believe how happy she felt. Everyone was marrying someone, somewhere, it seemed to her suddenly. Outside the window London jogged by in its usual fashion, a positive cornucopia of people and transport, and yet, also, positively jolly. Cab drivers, omnibuses, people of all kinds, all busy, delightfully uncaring of each other, as people in London always seemed to be.
As they both went to the window holding up the scraps of material to the light, Portia glanced down to the street below. How strange! She thought she had just seen Daisy Lanford alighting from a hansom below. But that was just not possible. She glanced down again a second or two later, but the lady, whoever it was, had disappeared quickly into the house next door. She must have imagined her.
‘Is the house next door for sale too?’ she asked May, casually.
‘As a matter of fact, it is. Mr Forrester has no need of two houses, after all. Not for a widower, living alone and never likely to be any different now.’
�
��No, well, that is true.’
‘Mr Blundell, the builder, told me they were both built by the same man, for himself and his son, so once upon a time the gardens were linked, but not now, of course – this is pretty, do you not think?’ She held up a piece of crewel work.
‘Go beautifully with that cupboard.’
‘Portia.’ May’s look told her friend that she must stop being so facetious and start concentrating. ‘This house is not for us, it is for Mr Forrester. We must try to think of what he would like.’
Portia nodded, but found it difficult to remember Mr Forrester from the dim and distant past. She could only really think of what Richard would like. She thought of him suddenly now with longing. They would soon go sailing together. They would take dogs out. They would go for walks. They would hold hands in front of the fire. A new start for them both, at a time when she had truly never believed that could have been possible.
A little later, feeling herself to be in a bit of a muddle as to which particular piece of crewel work May was now fancying for Mr Forrester’s drawing room curtains, Portia glanced down to the street below once more. This time she was quite sure that the person coming out of the house next door was Daisy Lanford.
She turned to May to point her out, but May had gone, and so Portia shrugged her shoulders, and then smiled to herself. If she was right and the older lady below, so beautifully dressed in fashions of a few years ago, was indeed the famous Daisy Lanford, Herbert Forrester’s arch enemy, goodness – what a set-to there would be!
Interlude
Edith lay back on the pillows. Downstairs she could hear George whistling. If they had been in the Dower House on his father’s estate, goodness, he would not be whistling, in case the servants heard, and he would not be making tea either, because the servants would not allow him near the stove.
They had made love, and he had spread her hair out behind her on the pillow and left her with a rose beside her face, and now she had to lie there as he had arranged her until he reappeared with the tea.
The Season Page 37