The Season
Page 39
Epilogue
Daisy was visiting Augustine Medlar, although only briefly, and then only to make quite sure that Augustine knew, once and for all, that she, Daisy, could not care less if the devil himself lived next door to her.
‘Enjoying life in the land of the governess, Daisy? Enjoying life in Kensington?’
‘Enjoyment is far too palid a word for it, Augustine. I am worshipping life in Kensington.’
Augustine looked as she felt, startled. She could never have imagined, not in a thousand years, that Daisy was capable of enjoying life in Kensington, although it had to be said that Daisy had never looked better. It was quite provoking, just as the fact that Daisy’s protégée had been successfully married off was torture. Following Daisy’s pleading with her to find a husband for Miss Hartley Lambert, Augustine had done her best to thwart any plans that Daisy might have been harbouring for her protégée. She had spread rumours that she was not as wealthy as had been thought, she had pointed up the mother’s vulgarity, she had done everything she could to make sure that Miss Hartley Lambert danced only with the oldest and most infirm of gentlemen, but now the Season had drawn to a close and it had to be said that all Augustine’s efforts had come to nothing. Daisy had once more triumphed. The girl was successfully paired off. So irrepressible was her old adversary, the seducer of other people’s husbands, the favourite of the Prince of Wales for so long, so undeniably imperturbable, that even Augustine had to feel a grudging admiration for her.
‘Why, Daisy, I never thought that you of all people could be happy with the quiet life.’
‘No, well, there it is, Augustine. One reads poetry, one walks one’s dogs, one studies the designs of Italian Gardens, one plays chatty bridge with one’s neighbours, all dear persons like oneself, intent on the quiet life.’
‘All of them?’
Augustine felt, of a sudden, as if she had seen several pigs flying past her large, floor length windows.
‘Oh yes, all of them. Without any doubt, Augustine, all, to a person, are dear, kind, sweet people. And we are all aware that at our time of life we can enjoy each other’s company completely at ease with each other, none of the hurly-burly of Mayfair and its environs. None of the clamour and stridency of the fashionable world. We are, in short, content. Why, Mr Herbert Forrester and I have even just shared a litter of puppies. Imagine!’
‘A what?’
Now the whole table seemed to swim before Augustine’s gaze. Was it possible that Augustine, in directing Daisy to Kensington, encouraging her to retire to a backwater, had actually helped her to achieve some kind of middle-aged content?
She peered down the long table at her old friend. ‘You certainly look very well,’ she said sadly. ‘You certainly look very well indeed.’
‘Oh, I am blooming, Augustine, perfectly blooming. And you should see ve puppies. Mr Forrester and I are in heaven.’
‘You arranged to have puppies together?’
Daisy gave her gay, rippling laugh and flapped her napkin at Augustine, feeling full of the joys of late summer.
‘Arranged? Good gracious no, Augustine. You are the person who arranges things, not me. After all, you arranged for me to live next door to dear Herbert Forrester. Gracious goodness, no – one would never arrange a marriage between a King Charles and a tousle-haired Griffon Bruxellois unless one had bats in the belfry.’
What had happened was that naughty Tippett had, at the appropriately inappropriate moment, burrowed under the hedge that surrounded one of the more decorative turns of the new Italian Garden and in a second, in a trice, married herself to Mr Forrester’s small, tufty-headed Griffon. It had been a hideous moment, and no throwing of water, or pulling of tails had made the slightest difference.
However, and this was where the story took a turn for the better, Herbert Forrester had been so remorseful about Mungo’s behaviour, and so concerned for Tippett, sending the best vets in the land to attend the birth, besieging Daisy with flowers, and she knew not what else, that Daisy had finally had to ask him to dinner, and to visit the puppies.
It was there, in Daisy’s kitchen, that they had discovered their mutual adoration of dogs. It would not be unfair to say that Herbert Forrester loved dogs as much as Queen Victoria herself. Daisy could see that straight away, and there and then she had forgiven her old enemy, just as he had seemed to forgive her.
All so long ago.
They had both agreed on that.
And now, of course, with so many dogs in common they were in and out of each other’s houses, and the gate that was shared by both their gardens, busy with all the comings and goings.
‘All my new neighbours are charming, but Herbert Forrester is more so than any of them. He and I are having such a pleasant time of it, Augustine. I knew you would be so happy to hear vat.’
Augustine Medlar was not happy to hear it at all, and she was too little the actress to be able to disguise it either.
Maintaining an innocent exterior Daisy smiled to herself, thinking of how Herbert would laugh when she gave a first-hand account of her luncheon with Augustine. Mimicking Augustine’s sad face at Daisy’s happy news would be hilarious.
She knew just how much Herbert would laugh, and then he would say, ‘Mind if I have a cigar, now?’
Which of course Daisy would not, because ever since the Prince of Wales she had always enjoyed a man who enjoyed a good cigar.
‘But you are both so different!’ Augustine looked provoked beyond endurance.
‘Quite so,’ Daisy replied. And then after a tiny second she raised her glass. ‘Here’s to everything, Augustine, vat makes us all so different, and to everyone who is different from us too. Here’s to life, always changing, and yet somehow remaining oddly the same. To life!’
Daisy smiled with such gaiety that even Augustine was forced to raise her glass and drink the toast.
‘To life!’
THE END
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