Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  They’re packing up the ornaments now. Nobody will admit to being at the end of their list today, and they’re not, for the tasks are backing up: the snuffboxes, the china dishes, the photographs, all the silver. Even what’s in those glass cabinets. It’s for the pilfering, Grace is told, and she’s shocked by this. What sorts is Lady Masters inviting? You’d’ve thought that with all they’ve got … ‘Oh, they never have enough,’ says James, ‘and not when they see these pretty little things.’ As Grace goes on wrapping, turning each piece as she lifts it, a flickering of relief, after all these weeks, begins to creep up on her. They’re not going to wrap all the books, are they? And if they don’t, then how’re they to know when the book went, if they think one of the guests might take something. Grace is in the clear, isn’t she, if they’re expecting a room full of light fingers. But when, ten minutes later, Mrs Wainwright asks Grace to follow her into the library, the fear comes straight back at her in a big salty wave.

  But she doesn’t point anything out, Mrs Wainwright doesn’t, and Grace doesn’t dare look at that shelf. Then she asks Grace to run a duster along every bookshelf, again, and it’s Grace’s turn to feel tight in her belly; it’ll be her running to the back of the house next like Mary. She reaches her fingers out to steady herself on the shelves, and Mrs Wainwright’s eyes follow them, shaking her head. Then she glances upwards. ‘This is your room, Grace, isn’t it?’ When Grace nods her head so as you can barely see it, it feels as though it’ll wobble off.

  She starts at A. She can glide the ladder with barely a sound, and it’s easier than the steps. And she’s quick. The books are as tight as a miser and none slips out of place as Grace runs the duster along. She’s still sick with fear, eyes in a blur and head behind bars, so she doesn’t see where she’s at until the books fall to the side as she brushes along them. It’s E. Top row. That row. But she’s only taken one book. There’s more gone from here.

  Lord have mercy, thinks Grace. Then it occurs to her that whoever took the books might think that the gap is all theirs.

  There’s a clattering outside. It’s Rumpelmayer’s men coming in with the tables. They’re putting the trestles around the room in pairs. They’ve done this so many times that they don’t need to put the boards on top to know the space between each. When they reach the sofa and chairs they start to push them again. Grace hears the feet of the furniture squeak across the boards and watches dark lines appear on the floor. She hasn’t spoken out since she’s been in the house; she’s held back every urge to throw a brush down on to the floor and say What Do You Take Me For, and that’s been often. Or was; it’s grown easier, the urges fewer recently, but now she’s feeling sharp and the dark lines are spreading further and further across the floor she’s polished clean not half an hour ago. Rumpelmayer’s men look left, look right, up, down – down! They see the lines, but still go on, and at this, she cracks.

  ‘You should lift that.’ The two men stop, but don’t turn. And then they continue.

  ‘Excuse me!’ They must think she’s talking to herself. Now she’s spoken she just wants to make them listen. The cheek of it, ignoring her. She walks around in front of the men and the sofa they’re about to slide, and blocks their way.

  ‘You need to lift it.’ She points to the trails on the floor. ‘Marks the boards.’

  ‘It would need four of us.’

  Grace doesn’t move. Who’s going to do the work? These men or Grace, when she’s on her hands and knees, polishing the floor later.

  ‘If I leave, it’s to find Lady Masters.’

  The three of them hold still, like the statues in the room at the back of the ballroom. She wants to get out of this library as soon as possible. Not to spend all afternoon here, scrubbing the floor. She’s other rooms to do today. She turns to face them head on, moves her feet apart and folds her arms. The men look back at her, at each other, and then one leaves the room. And as she’s still standing there, arms folded but glowing with victory, the florists come in with bushes of flowers, leaving a trail of leaves and petals across the boards.

  ‘You can pick those up, too,’ she says.

  As they do so, Grace senses somebody behind her, standing very still. She looks round. There is Joseph, pinkening. He quickly turns away from her and leaves the room.

  Grace’s eyes are beginning to blur. Even though it’s seven in the evening, she’s again grinding the Ewbank sweeper across the carpet in the red drawing room, for according to Mrs Wainwright the day’s traffic of men, flowers, caterers, even a team to arrange the candles, has left or may have left, a further, invisible layer of dirt. But there’s the boot boy, running up to her, he’s panting, speaking quickly. She’s wanted, he says, by Miss Beatrice, and right away. Susan was to do it. She laid out the clothes earlier, but she couldn’t help but imagine herself one of them ladies in the ballroom and she went right over. It’s her ankle. Poor Susan, says Grace, and she might even mean it, but what she’s thinking is why am I so pleased that I’ve been asked to help another woman dress?

  Miss Beatrice’s dress, tunic and sash are laid out on the bed and the pale satin and sky-blue chiffon leap out from the dark colours of the room. Miss Beatrice is sitting at her dressing table in a pale pink negligée. She stands up when Grace comes in, and it floats around her. Silk, Grace thinks it is. Like the sails on the Round Pond.

  ‘Thank you for coming. How is Susan?’

  Grace bobs. ‘She’s sprained her ankle, miss. Happy birthday, miss.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Can you help me get into all this without destroying my hair. Though it’s so damn tight that I’m not sure I’d be distraught.’

  ‘Would you like me to have a look at it?’ Grace surprises herself. She wasn’t asked to speak. It had just come out. But Miss Beatrice chats back.

  ‘Oh God, yes,’ she replies, and asks whether Grace can make any sense of it – it’s a new French Twist. Lady Masters sent Miss Suthers down to do it and Miss Beatrice felt as though she was being scalped as it was done. She’s been in it since five this afternoon and it’s killing her. Will Grace have a go at loosening it a little?

  ‘But you want to look your best, miss.’ Grace looks down at Beatrice’s dressing table. Half a dozen silver-topped pots of powders and creams have been opened. A little rouge has been spilled to one side.

  ‘I suppose so,’ replies Miss Beatrice. ‘But I’m not sure who for.’

  ‘It’s hard to choose, I imagine.’ As Grace says this, she wonders whether it is as hard for Miss Beatrice to choose between what might lie ahead of her as it is for Grace.

  14

  BEA IS HOOKED, LACED AND PINNED, WITH A SATIN puddle train trailing behind her. As she twists to look in the glass, the beaded tassels on the long end of her tunic knock against her ankles. She pins on the diamond lace brooch Mother has given her for her unmentionable twenty-first birthday today. At tea there was a cake with only a vague half a dozen candles allowed, and barely enough time to blow them out before everyone dashed upstairs to start changing.

  I look all right, she thinks, the pale blue is a little cool, but pretty enough. She doesn’t mind looking coolish tonight. Rather fits the mood she wants to display, even if she is already in knots over what she is to do tomorrow. She tries to focus on the evening immediately ahead of her rather than the day that will follow it, but her head simply fills with the worry of how many conversations she will have to have without letting on that there is anything the slightest bit interesting in her life. Thank God nobody would dream of asking her what she is up to. In their eyes it is a pointless question. Unmarried girls are looking for husbands.

  And no doubt they’ve heard about John. Mrs Vinnicks has probably taken out a half-page notice in the papers.

  The dinner before the dance is at eight sharp. Officially a cosy, close family meal, the table is bending with silver and numbers have stretched to eighteen. Bea looks down the length of the table. Seated alongside each side, the party is a chequerboar
d of monochrome men and silk dresses that deepen in colour with the age of the wearer. Clemmie is in a green just darker than pastel, and Mother in a near-blinding mauve. It is not, however, the deepest colour there as, for the most part, the guests are not young. Bea is next to a member of the Cabinet so heavily moustachioed that she wonders whether its tips will leap the gap between them during the meal. On the other side she has a florid newspaper baron overflowing his seat. She has a friend, she tells him, writing this extraordinary essay, captures a political mood we cannot ignore. Food still in his mouth, he invites her to tea to discuss it further, with a look that makes her feel more than a little uncomfortable. Bea automatically smiles and nods in that way of saying yes to an invitation one has no intention of ever taking up, but as she does so she realises that maybe she should go, if she is serious about helping Mr Campbell. And of course she is: the idea of not doing so, not throwing herself behind someone who was speaking with such passion, that’s the word, passion, is surely absurd.

  It’s ten o’clock, and the more elderly of the dance guests start to arrive. Bea is in a receiving line at the top of the stairs, sandwiched between Edward and Clemmie, who has joined them – even though she is married and has in theory left home – on the grounds that she has invited ‘significant numbers’. ‘I hope,’ replies Mother, ‘that we have enough to feed and water them with.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother,’ says Edward, ‘Tom can keep an eye out for the wrong sort of chap.’

  ‘Is that a reference to my guests?’ bites Clemmie.

  ‘Well, quite honestly, none of you will have a clue whether he’s the Duke of Bavaria or a law clerk,’ he retorts. Bea flinches at this, and Edward turns towards her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘What’s up, Bea-Bea?’ Edward can read her like a book, and her mind is filling with images of Mr Campbell and his mackintosh in midwinter.

  ‘The wrong sort of chap,’ she blusters out to cover her tracks, ‘doesn’t have the clothes.’

  ‘Oh, Bea, they can be hired on Bond Street in half an hour. You know that. Look what happened at the Devonports’. The fellow danced with Lady D., and even the dowager, who’d hardly been off her chair for a decade.’

  ‘Quiet, please. I am almost tempted to call you children again. You behave as such whenever you are together …’

  ‘… with our mother, in our childhood home …’

  ‘Edward, you are beginning to annoy your mother, too.’

  ‘How did they find out he was a fraud?’ asks Bea.

  ‘What fraud?’

  ‘The man at the Devonports’.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Edward. ‘Everyone is always found out. There’s no escaping the eye of society. In this case, however, the dowager was so entranced that she asked him to dine the following evening. She’d had a spread set up in the small dining room with so much shiny stuff on the table you needed to squint. As he sat down he asked if he could take off his “jacket”, and she was so bemused both by the word and the taking off that she nodded. So he took off his coat and hung it over the back of one of those famous dining chairs that somebody had brought back from Italy a few generations ago. But it was the sleeve garters that gave him away. She says she hadn’t spotted an accent, but she is as deaf as a post. When I asked her how she was the other day she replied, ‘Princess Dorrie. A certainty for the Oaks.’

  ‘Anyhow, once she’d realised her mistake she felt dreadfully sorry for the chap, says she copied all his interesting table manners to make him feel at home. Then she decided it was a jolly good excuse to behave as though the house was a museum and, would you believe it, gave him a tour. He gave her his arm quite charmingly. Apparently it was the Rodin he liked best.’

  ‘You’ve made that up, Edward.’

  ‘No, I have not.’

  ‘All of it. In any case’ – for why should she hide her views? – ‘he sounds a perfectly good chap.’

  ‘At your peril, my dear Bea. Beware of handsome strangers with feet of clay. Or perhaps I mean, tonight, feet of a dancer. I’d have to disown you for mixing with the wrong type.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with knowing the wrong type, children. In case it has escaped your notice, I have been seeking to help the wrong type for some years. They are poorly paid, disenfranchised, and have little choice in any matter of their lives.’

  ‘I hope you have invited at least half a dozen, Mother.’

  ‘I certainly should have.’

  By eleven there is a swarm, and younger faces are beginning to appear. Edie, in tea-rose chiffon, loyally leads in an early bunch of their crowd.

  ‘You look radiant, darling,’ Edie declares as she reaches Bea in the line.

  ‘Edie, you’re making me sound like a bride.’

  ‘Well, I gather it is strictly verboten to mention your birthday.’

  ‘Then don’t mention anything.’

  ‘Bea! Be a little softer.’

  But Bea doesn’t want to be a little softer. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not until the day after that. Still, she replies, ‘Sorry, darling. It’s just not—’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know it’s a nightmare.’

  ‘What’s a nightmare?’ My God, she’s not talking about John now, is she?

  ‘Hosting a dance, Bea. Chin up.’ And Edie blows a kiss at Bea as she leads her merry band into the thickening throng.

  At half past eleven, Mother dismisses the line. ‘To work, children,’ she declares. ‘No hanging about with just one small group when you’ve so many guests here. Except if there is a special reason,’ and as she says this she looks at Edward. Edward! thinks Bea, and not me. Has Mother utterly given up on my ever finding a husband? No, Beatrice, she tells herself, you have far greater fish to fry now.

  Most of the guests seem as interested in the house as in each other and, as at least in your own house you’re allowed to make your way around the rooms alone without being accused of ‘hunting’, Beatrice starts to slip between the groups, skimming past conversations that dry up when she joins them.

  ‘… and the American money.’

  ‘My grandfather used to come here for the railway share tips. Only ones that weren’t rotten, he used to say.’

  ‘Quick. Talk about the Rokeby Venus, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Hullo, Beatrice, glad to see you haven’t been wielding a machete in the National Gallery like that suffragette woman.’

  ‘Oh, darling, she’s hardly likely to.’

  ‘Well, Eleanor must be one hell of an influence.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean it about your mother.’

  ‘Mother might not need the machete,’ replies Bea.

  ‘Cut to ribbons, the painting was. A protest, apparently, about how women are regarded.’

  ‘How they think they’re going to get the vote that way.’

  ‘Women might be banned, they’re saying today.’

  ‘Altogether?’

  ‘From the galleries. Can’t have the nation’s works of art being destroyed over some fashionable enthusiasm.’

  ‘Darling! You’ll have me throwing firebombs if you go on like that. Anybody would think you were stuck in the last century, or the one before. Now, Beatrice, introduce me to some of your friends. I do so love the young.’

  And still the rooms fill. The little groupings are pushed closer and closer to each other. Silk crushes against silk, puddle trains are stepped on, bare arms scratch against black wool evening coats. Those on the edges find themselves pushed against the walls. And the noise, even in these high-ceilinged rooms, is beginning to blur the conversations. Soon it will be a real crush and therefore a roaring success of a party. It will be hard to squeeze through the doorways, even to make it to the ballroom which is, Edward comes to whisper to her, still empty, much to Clemmie’s intense frustration.

  ‘Clemmie wants us to move people through.’

  ‘With a loudspeaker? Good God, how embarrassing.’

  ‘Better than starting the dancing.’

  ‘Who?’
/>   ‘You and me, sweet sister.’

  ‘Why can’t she do it herself?’

  Bea is saved by Mother, mauve apparition that she is, descending upon her.

  ‘Beatrice.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come with me. As you seem to be the only child of mine that agrees with me on this issue, you might learn something. We’re going to have a word with the Prime Minister before he’s squeezed out of the house. This way. Ah, Mr Asquith. What a treat to find my most distinguished guest.’

  Standing in front of Bea and Mother is a man with a high forehead and a softening square jaw. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself and is looking at Mother with a pair of deep-set and severe eyes. Nonetheless he takes Mother’s hand and kisses it, bowing as he does so.

  ‘You flatter me, Lady Masters.’

  ‘I flatter everyone.’

  Mother drops her chin, glancing up at him as she waves her fan in a short flutter. ‘It’s what my mother brought me up to do. You know my youngest daughter Beatrice?’

  ‘Even more dazzling than the last time I laid eyes upon her.’ Bea finds herself flushing. She has been preening to praise all evening but somehow such a compliment from the Prime Minister is a little different. Maybe he is not such an ogre after all.

  ‘It’s a little crowded in here, Mr Asquith, don’t you think?’

  ‘On the contrary, Lady Masters, your drawing room suits a crowd.’

  ‘What I meant, Mr Asquith, is that I should very much like it if you would take a walk with us.’

  ‘Lady Masters, I fully understand.’

  Mother turns towards a pair of open double doors and the crowd in front of her rustles back to create a pathway. Bea smiles to herself at the thought that this may be more in fear of Mother than the Prime Minister. The gallery outside is crowded, every foot of the balustrade has a figure leaning against it, but eventually they reach the ballroom at the back. When they walk in they find the band valiantly playing to at most half a dozen, including Clemmie and Tom. Clemmie, to Bea’s amusement, looks as if she is leading.