The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  In the event it was not just Lady Inisheen, locked as always into her shaved-beaver coat and hat, despite the warmth of the weather, but also a gentleman in an old-fashioned coat and Homburg hat, and behind him in the road, a station taxi driving slowly away.

  ‘I’ve just met Lord Harry off the dirty old train, Minty, so I think we should take him straight to wash his hands in the gentleman’s downstairs cloakroom, don’t you?’

  Lady Inisheen darted a stern look at Alexandra, and Alexandra, understanding straight away from her tone what was needed, took Lord Harry’s coat and, smiling calmly, led his lordship to the downstairs cloakroom.

  By arrangement Mrs Smithers had now disappeared to a newly rearranged suite on one of the upper floors. This was to be her permanent refuge when her paying guests were entertaining their friends at her address. It had a new radio set, freshly cleaned curtains and nets, a group of easy chairs and a bookcase. When Alexandra left her shortly before Lady Inisheen’s arrival, she seemed to be enjoying it more than her grand first-floor drawing room.

  ‘What a perfectly charming reception room, Beulah,’ Lord Harry murmured as Alexandra with now practised ease offered him a choice of sherry or gin, before leaving the two of them to catch up on the considerable time they had been apart.

  Lady Inisheen turned in front of the large, gilt mirror over the mantelpiece and smiled fondly. What she could never tell Harry was that she had sold a ring to hire the rooms to help her friend, and, of course, herself.

  ‘Do you think so, Buffy?’

  ‘Charming, charming,’ Lord Harry murmured as, with equally practised ease, he turned and pinched Alexandra’s bottom as she went to leave the room.

  Alexandra gritted her teeth and half closed her eyes. When it came to men there was something about a maid’s uniform that was just not funny. A perfectly normal man like Lord Harry, a man who must be used to mixing in the highest circles, could be turned into the worst-behaved old monkey at the mere sight of a starched apron and hat. If it were not for the fact that both Mrs Smithers and Alexandra so wanted the newly widowed Lord Harry to marry Lady Inisheen and take her to London to enjoy the lifestyle she undoubtedly craved, Alexandra would have been tempted to step smartly back onto the old devil’s foot.

  ‘The luncheon was a ger-ger-great success, only for one ther-ther-thing, I just wer-wish that Lord Harry would keep his hands to himself,’ an exhausted but triumphant Alexandra later reported to Mrs Smithers.

  Mrs Smithers sipped her evening sherry and giggled.

  ‘Minty dear, as far as gentlemen are concerned, maids are like snacks on a hotel bar – there for the taking. But how do you think it really went?’

  ‘Like cer-cer-clockwork, actually. Lord Harry laughed and ter-ter-talked and ate every scrap of his lunch, and then they went off in a cab, and I der-der-dare say he will be back in a couple of weeks, and we will have to go through the whole ther-ther-thing once again.’

  ‘We must get him up to the point where he will propose marriage, Minty, if it is the last thing that we do. He has no wife now, and needs someone in London to run his house and to entertain for him. Lady Inisheen has no money and needs someone to keep her; it has the makings of a perfect marriage. Each of them needs the other for a practical reason and will settle for what the other has without too much fuss, if we have anything to do with it, Minty dear.’

  ‘I just pity the mer-mer-maids they employ, they will have to wear ger-ger-girdles reinforced with steel.’

  This time they both giggled.

  ‘Who else have we got this week? The Honourable Martita, naturally?’

  ‘Yes, the Honourable Mer-Mer-Mer-Martita.’ Alexandra reached for the appointments book. ‘No one on Wednesday, but on Thursday a lady called Mrs Atkins.’

  ‘Ah yes, Mrs Atkins, we don’t know her, do we? Still, I don’t suppose it matters, after all her cheque didn’t bounce, did it? As long as the boodle is banked we’re happy, aren’t we, Minty?’

  Alexandra left Mrs Smithers to read the evening paper in front of the fire and went down to prepare her supper on a tray for her. Unexpectedly, but delightfully, Mrs Smithers was becoming positively raffish in her new role as the sometime landlady who rented out her reception rooms for entertaining. She no longer seemed to mind at all about any mention of cheques bouncing or bottom-pinching, whereas before her change in luck, she would have minded terribly.

  Alexandra removed her white apron and hat before retiring to her basement. Mrs Atkins was the first lady to book who wanted to give a dinner party for six. It would be an exciting change.

  As Tom emerged from Deanford churchyard where his mother had just been buried, he noticed a large Bentley Continental parked in the quiet street outside. It was already attracting interest, and that was before its driver stepped out on to the pavement. As the long legs and elegantly shod feet of Florazel emerged from the car, more passersby stopped and stared. Deanford might once have been a rich resort, once peopled by the wealthy and the powerful, but since the war it had fallen down on its luck, and so the sight of such elegance and wealth was astonishing. Old men and young boys, envious girls and their mothers, once the car had finally driven off, would be sure to hurry back to their families and discuss what they had seen over their tea and sandwiches. A Bentley Continental with a great grand lady stepping in and out of it wearing London clothes and covered in gold.

  ‘Tom.’ Florazel crossed the road and went up to him, making sure that she spoke with sympathy and evident sensitivity. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother, Tom.’ Tom stared at her. ‘Mrs Posnet, your landlady, she told me what had happened, so I came at once.’

  Tom frowned, bewildered.

  ‘Lady Florazel—’ he began.

  ‘No, no, please call me Florazel,’ she begged. ‘After all, we are more than we know to each other already, aren’t we, Tom?’

  Tom stared at her, even more bewildered. Lady Florazel was the Duke of Somerton’s sister. What was she doing in a back street in Deanford, standing outside a run-down churchyard where he had only minutes before buried his mother? What was she doing waiting for him, asking him to call her by her first name?

  ‘Lady Florazel, I have just buried my mother,’ he stated. ‘I am sorry if I seem rude, but I really can’t say more than that. She was all I had. My whole family, and she is dead. It is not a good time to come here and tease me, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh Tom, I would never tease you. I am dressed in mourning, out of respect for you and your mother. I came here to bring you back to my house, to look after you, to make sure you do have someone in your life now, to make sure you won’t be alone.’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘But that is just it, I do want to be alone, just for the moment.’

  ‘You think you do, Tom, but believe me, I know, you don’t really. Why not come with me, and we can have a drink together somewhere, and make a plan. Please?’

  She guided him across the empty road, and opened the door of her beautiful motor car. Tom stepped in and sat back, dazed; as he did so, and despite his state of shock, he knew at once that he would never forget that first taste of real luxury. The quality of the leather seating, the wooden fascia of the dashboard, the sense of calm that pervaded the luxury of such a car; and all that before it started to weave its way through the streets of Deanford towards the seafront, towards the elegant squares and the white-fronted hotels.

  ‘We could go to the Palace, couldn’t we? We could go there for a drink, which I am sure you must badly need, and we could make a plan. I have told my brother that you will not be back for a while, and he has told Mr Blakemore, so you must not worry.’

  Mr Blakemore? Tom thought dazedly of the head gardener. He seemed so far away now, so far away that he might as well have been one of the boats bobbing about on the distant horizon, or one of the fishermen on the end of the pier; or he could have been someone that he, Tom, had once worked for. Tom found himself trying to remember how Mr Blakemore had looked: his large ea
rs sticking out from either side of his faded tweed cap; his large nose that used to disappear into a red and white spotted handkerchief when pollen brought on a sneezing fit; his large hands that seemed to make the handle of even the largest spade shrink into insignificance.

  ‘Mr Blakemore said I was to have nothing more to do with you, Lady Florazel. You are the Duke’s sister. It is not – suitable.’ Tom realised that he had found himself using a word that his mother sometimes used.

  ‘It’s not suitable for people in our position, Tom. We are servants now.’

  ‘Oh, dear old Blakie, he would. I can just hear him. Not suitable, that would be Blakie all right.’ Florazel’s voice oozed tolerance.

  She parked the car outside the Palace Hotel.

  ‘Let’s go inside, shall we? Let’s go and have a drink. You must need one so much, you poor – you poor, poor boy.’

  Tom looked down at his suit, checking to see if it was clean, checking to see if it was suitable. Florazel obviously appreciated this, because she touched him on the arm.

  ‘It’s all right, we’re only going to the foyer bar, you look perfectly fine.’

  Tom wanted to say, And after that? And after that? What will happen after we have been in the bar? But he was too numb from the funeral, too much still the servant to tell Florazel that the last thing he wished was for her to take him for a drink, that all he really wanted to do was to go for a walk on the seafront and watch the white tops of the waves making asses of themselves, dancing and flirting with each other before finally sinking into the newly blue water – for just at that moment the sun had come out and the sky turned cloudless. More than that he wanted to allow the sound of the seagulls’ cries to drown the leaden sorrow in his heart.

  None of this could he tell Lady Florazel, as he still thought of her, because, when all was said and done, it was a truth never to be forgotten that if you came from below stairs, you were like a good child, you were seen and not heard, you were obedient, you kept your eyes down, and your mouth shut, no matter what had happened in the early mornings at the Duke of Somerton’s estate.

  Reluctantly he followed Florazel into the Palace Hotel and as he did so he thought he could smell a new and extraordinary life, a life of expense-account living, rich food and plentiful alcohol. And like the drumming sound behind a good band it beckoned to him, if not to dance, at least to tread carefully across the thick carpet towards the bar, but not before Florazel had discreetly slipped a five-pound note into his suit pocket.

  ‘Mine’s a gin and tonic.’

  Tom went up to the bar.

  ‘Two gin and tonics, please.’

  The mirror behind the bar was pink, thirties-style, and flattering. As he waited to be served Tom stared at his reflection. He was tall, tanned and perhaps because of the solemnity of his clothes he suddenly looked older, even to himself, but not so old that he would not have been surprised if the barman had refused to serve him, for all sorts of reasons, so when he leaned forward and spoke to him, it was not unexpected.

  ‘I’ll bring the drinks over to you, sir.’

  He nodded at Tom and, perhaps because he had observed Tom’s black tie and armband, and the discreetly dark clothes of his beautiful companion, the look in his eyes was one of sympathy.

  Tom backed away from the bar. He was going to be served. Someone was going to serve him. Of course, that was what happened when you were not a servant. He sat down opposite Florazel.

  ‘Florazel,’ he began, but she stopped him.

  ‘Don’t speak until you’ve had your drink. You’ve had a terrible shock, what you need now is a stiff drink. After that we will talk.’

  Tom stared into Florazel’s startlingly blue eyes and sighed. It was true. The shock of finding his mother dead. The shock of finding the deposit box, knowing that there must be some secret which she had kept from him all those years. Yes, it had all been very shocking.

  The menu for Mrs Atkins’s dinner party at number thirty-two was considered so important by Mrs Atkins, Mrs Smithers and Alexandra that Mrs Smithers decided to write out the card in French.

  She wrote with her best Parker pen:

  Consommé en gelée

  Couronne d’agneau avec les petits pois en beurre

  et les pommes de terre en chemise

  ‘What does “en chemise” mer-mer-mean?’

  Mrs Smithers looked up from her careful writing on the card, and smiled.

  ‘I have no idea, Minty dear, but I always think “en chemise” looks so cosy, like bedsocks and camisoles, so when in doubt put it. Besides, I don’t think anyone else has the least idea, certainly not anyone in Deanford, so we will be quite safe.’

  Alexandra considered this for a few seconds.

  ‘Mrs Atkins does seem rather er-er-er-educated. I think she was once a headmistress of a ger-ger-ger-girls’ school.’

  Mrs Smithers looked up sharply at this, and promptly tore up the card.

  ‘In that case I will do another card, and put … as a matter of fact how is it you are doing the potatoes exactly, dear?’

  ‘Mer-mer-mer-mashed potatoes piped into little mer-mer-mer-mounds and painted with egg ber-ber-ber-before being put into the oven and cooked at a medium temperature.’

  ‘How delicious, but what are they called?’

  ‘How about pom-pom potatoes?’

  They both laughed, but finally Mrs Smithers wrote in her special menu writing, ‘pommes de terre duchesse’, which was the correct name, and then ‘Tartes tatin’ and ‘Les Fromages’, even though they were only going to serve one cheese. After which Mrs Smithers disappeared up to her suite, and Alexandra put the elegantly written card at the top of the dining table.

  Perhaps Mrs Atkins was aware of the trouble to which Mrs Smithers and Alexandra had gone for her dinner because at the appointed time she appeared looking bandbox fresh, and wearing a charming black dress with a gardenia pinned at the neck.

  ‘Do smell it,’ she said to Alexandra, but as she prided herself on knowing her place, Alexandra only pretended to do so, darting her head forward in a way that would not interfere with the set of her small, white starched cap, following which she picked up her service tray and offered Mrs Atkins a sherry.

  Mrs Atkins was so nervous she did not take the sherry from the tray, she grabbed it and drank it far too quickly, so that her cheeks quickly became flushed.

  ‘It’s the first time I have given a dinner party since before the war, and seeing that this is not home, I feel just a little anxious,’ she announced.

  ‘Mrs Atkins, mer-ma’am, you must not be ner-ner-nervous, really you must ner-ner-not. You ner-now know the house nearly as well as I do. Remember we rehearsed everything that I shall der-der-do, and everything that you will der-do.’

  ‘Yes, but supposing no one turns up?’

  ‘That is someone ner-now, even as we speak, that is someone ringing at the der-der-door.’

  ‘I do hope it’s my nephew, Bob. He always helps make things go whenever I visit his mother and stepfather. He’s quite a lad, really he is.’

  But it was not Mrs Atkins’s nephew Bob, it was her prospective beau, a Mr Albert Chamberlain.

  As Alexandra opened the door to him she immediately felt reassured. Mr Chamberlain was the proprietor of a number of gentlemen’s outfitters, so unsurprisingly his evening dress was everything that it should be.

  ‘May I take your coat, sir?’

  Mr Chamberlain’s coat was actually an evening cloak with a red satin lining, very new, and very snazzy. It reminded Alexandra of the smart clothes that her uncle always wore, although she instinctively knew that James Millington would never wear such a thing when out to dinner with friends, he would always only wear it to a ball, or the opera, or a theatrical first night.

  Nevertheless Mr Chamberlain looked most respectable, and his smile and manner were such that she felt sure that he must help make the evening go with a swing.

  ‘Please follow me, sir. Mrs Atkins is waiting upstairs for he
r guests.’

  Albert Chamberlain followed her upstairs and as he did so Alexandra had high hopes for the success of the dinner for the front doorbell was ringing and there was already a feeling of gaiety about the evening, as if everyone sensed that they were in safe hands, and that was all before Bob Atkins arrived.

  Last, and very much not least, Bob bounded through the front door, his bow tie crooked, his long blond hair flopping into his eyes, but only after leaving his car parked outside the front door with two wheels on the pavement.

  ‘I say, Aunt Aggie is going to be ever so cross, isn’t she?’

  He flung his coat down on a hall chair and galloped ahead of Alexandra before stopping halfway up the stairs.

  ‘Is it this way, by the way? I’ve never been to her house before …’

  ‘Quite right, s-s-sir. Straight up the s-s-stairs, and then ahead. If you would like to follow mer-me, sir.’

  ‘Oh, crikey. Bad habits die hard, don’t they? It comes of being dragged up not brought up in good old genteel Deanford.’

  He grinned at Alexandra as she carefully passed him to lead him up into the drawing room, which now echoed with the quiet conversational exchanges being made by the other four guests.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come and work for my stepfather and my mother, would you? They could do with someone as pretty as you,’ Bob Atkins murmured from behind Alexandra.

  Alexandra gave him a reproving look.

  ‘Only asking!’

  He winked and, finally passing her, went into the drawing room, Alexandra following him after first picking up her tray of drinks from the table by the door. Bob Atkins might be a bit of a character, but she had to say that he had won marks: he had at least kept his hands to himself.

  Putting on the Ritz

  ‘Sir would obviously now like to go on to our “brother” street, as we here call it.’

  Tom turned slowly in front of the full-length mirror, the tailor standing behind him. Within twenty-four hours of leaving Deanford for London and his new life with Florazel, she had bought Tom what seemed to him then to be enough clothing to last him a lifetime, and yet Florazel had made it perfectly plain that it was by no means enough.