Debutantes: In Love (10 page)

‘Here comes Morgan,’ interrupted Sir John. ‘Come on, girls. Can’t offer you a lift, Charles, I’m afraid. We’ll be crowded out.’

‘Oh, Mother will be here in a few minutes. She is always late. And if she doesn’t turn up, I’ll get a cab. I’ll call tomorrow, if I may.’ Despite the talk about films, his eyes still went back to Poppy with that expression of admiration. However, Daisy was hopeful. Poppy was only interested in men who played jazz – film-star good looks were of no importance to her. In any case, her whole mind was focused on Baz. No other boy had ever meant anything to Poppy, and Daisy had the feeling that none ever would. Once Charles saw Poppy with Baz he would realize that he had no chance with her.

‘Yes, let’s go before the car gets blocked in,’ said Daisy hurriedly. She seized one of the packages that Elaine was fumbling with, tucked it under her arm and urged them all forward. It had occurred to her that it would be better to be out of the way before Lady Cynthia arrived on the scene.

‘Aren’t you surprised to see us?’ she asked as she settled into the back seat of the Humber, between Elaine and Poppy. She gave her mother’s hand a little squeeze. She had never admitted to Elaine that Poppy knew their secret so any gestures of affection had to be those of an affectionate niece to an indulgent and loving aunt. Elaine was so desperately ashamed of having had an illegitimate baby that she would hate to know that anyone other than her aunt and her brother-in-law knew of her secret, thought Daisy.

‘Yes, we are. Though very pleased, of course,’ Sir John was saying from the front seat. ‘Especially Morgan. I was all ready to share a cab with Charles de Montfort. Apparently his mother has taken a house in Grosvenor Square also.’

‘Well, according to your butler you sent a telegram to Beech Grove, but we didn’t get it,’ said Daisy, trying to sound as though it were a trivial matter. ‘Don’t say anything to Father, will you, Elaine?’ she added. ‘He’s not well at the moment; his nerves are not in a good state and he’d have a fit if he thought that we had stayed up in London without you two – but as a matter of fact we managed fine. We went to see Violet and Justin.’

‘No, of course we won’t say anything to Michael; I know how he worries. I’m glad that you were so sensible. And of course you had Morgan here to drive you over to Violet’s place and take you home again; I know that he would look after you well.’ Elaine gave Daisy’s hand a little pat and cast a look at Morgan, who nodded his head and raised his hand to his cap in thanks at her praise.

‘Telegrams have been flying.’ Daisy decided to get all the confessions over during the drive while the noise of engines revving and horns blowing distracted attention from her words. ‘There’s an outbreak of scarlet fever in Rose’s school and the girls have been sent home a week early. They are arriving from Dover into London on Tuesday. I sent a telegram to Father saying that she can stay here. Phone’s out of order at Beech Grove – as usual! Was that all right?’ Elaine, she guessed, would not mind that she had opened a telegram addressed to the Nelboroughs.

‘Perfectly.’ Elaine looked genuinely pleased. ‘But that will be wonderful. Dear little Rose! Tell me, how is she getting on in Switzerland? I must say that I loved that school.’

‘Very well, I think, but she’ll be able to tell you herself.’ Daisy made a private note to bribe Rose to give very good accounts of the school to Elaine. After all, Elaine was the one paying the bills, so that all this stuff about ‘
a lonely prisoner in a foreign land
’ would be a bit disappointing for her. And certainly Sir John would immediately want to investigate stories about white slave traders buying photographs of boarding-school girls.

‘You don’t mind, dearest, if Morgan takes a detour around by Westminster? I have something that I need to drop off at the office of a member of parliament.’ Sir John addressed Elaine over the back seat of the car.

‘Not at all, Jack. We’re quite cosy here.’ Elaine was the perfect wife for a successful man, thought Daisy. She obviously adored him. All of the time that he was in the House of Commons – and to give him his due he was not long – she poured out a hymn of praise about him. Poppy grew bored and yawned, but Daisy was glad for her mother. From time to time she had felt a little guilty about refusing the invitation to go to India to live with them, but now she could see that her presence was not at all necessary and that she might even have been in the way.

‘Does Jack want to stay on in India? Or would he think of coming back to England?’ she asked the question, knowing the answer.

‘India suits his talents,’ replied Elaine firmly. ‘He is so highly thought of there. Why, the Maharajah . . .’ and she embarked on another story about her wonderful husband.

Did Elaine ever have regrets about giving up her baby to another woman, even if that woman was her sister? Did she ever wish that she had had the courage to stand up to the world and keep her child? Daisy thought not, and she tried not to mind. She saw Poppy looking at her and remembered with a little warm feeling in her heart the words uttered by her – ‘
I’ve decided that we will always be twins
’.

‘Here’s Jack,’ said Elaine, and the look on her face told Daisy what a success this second marriage had been. Impulsively she kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘He can’t stay away from you for too long,’ she teased, and saw Morgan tighten his lips to keep the grin from his face.

‘Affairs of state, Jack?’ she queried when he got back into the car. It was important, she felt, to keep the tone light and not to wear the look of an abandoned child. Elaine was too prone to guilt about that. After all, what else could she have done? And it was Daisy’s own decision not to live with them in India.

‘Oh, much more important than that!’ said Jack in shocked tones. ‘Well, I did have a parcel to deliver, but the main purpose was to recruit a few young men for your coming-out ball. I have three under-secretaries, a promising young member of parliament and the three sons of an old friend who has retired from India. All handsome young men, I assure you, girls.’

‘Seven, and with Charles de Montfort that makes eight,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ve got all sorts of ideas about your ball – Jack and I have been talking them over during the voyage. I want it to be splendid for you both. Suitable young men are always the problem though – so eight for starters is wonderful.’

‘And there’s Baz, Simon, Edwin and George,’ said Poppy, for whom the members of the jazz band would be the most important people present. ‘That will make twelve – how many are we going to invite for this ball?’

‘We’d like it to be a big affair,’ said Elaine with a look at her husband. ‘It’s just a matter of getting enough young men – girls are always easy.’

‘I’ll get you so many young men that we’ll probably end up scurrying around London recruiting girls,’ prophesied Jack, but there was a laugh in his voice, and Daisy guessed that he was quite looking forward to putting his formidable organizing talents to this ball and was probably determined to make it, for the sake of his new wife, the event of the season.

‘By the way, we’ve already met Charles de Montfort’s mother, Lady Cynthia,’ said Daisy. She tried to sound casual, but she felt her heart bump uncomfortably at the mention of the Greek god’s name.

‘Bit of a—’ began Poppy, but Daisy interrupted her quickly, with, ‘A very pleasant woman, very friendly and hospitable to us. She even invited us to stay, but we told her that your housekeeper was looking after us very well.’ She risked a quick look at Morgan, but the chauffeur’s profile was rigid, his eyes, beneath the peaked cap, fixed on the road as he swung into Grosvenor Square.

‘Charles must have had quite a queue for a taxi,’ exclaimed Jack, looking out of his window. ‘Look, he’s only just arrived.’

‘And there she is,’ said Poppy, looking with disfavour at the charming picture of a mother embracing her son on the pavement at the bottom of the steps. ‘Right across the road from us,’ she added, and Daisy knew what her twin was thinking. All their comings and goings would have been noted. What if Lady Cynthia gave the game away?

They saw both the heads turn when the car drew up in front of number twelve. Lady Cynthia took her arms from around her son and they both came across the road towards them.

‘I’ll make sure that Morgan knows what to do about the luggage,’ said Poppy. As soon as the car stopped she was the first to jump out and she was around the back of the Humber before the two de Montforts were halfway to the stately old car.

Here goes, thought Daisy. She followed Elaine out of the car, smiling sweetly and hoping sincerely that the woman would not say anything bad about her and Poppy to Sir John or, worse still, to her son. How very good-looking he was, she thought again. He seemed to light up the dull square on the dull spring day.

Lady Cynthia obviously had more pressing things to discuss than the scandalous behaviour of Sir John’s nieces-in-law. She seemed very anxious to impress the great man himself and embarked on a long story as to why she had thought that the ship was going to arrive at the East India Docks at four o’clock, rather than at three.

‘A good thing that darling Charles is not as woolly-headed as his mama,’ she said, looking coyly up at Sir John. She was obviously expecting him to say how efficient Charles was, but he just gave her an inscrutable smile while Charles looked uncomfortable.

‘It doesn’t matter, Mother,’ he kept saying, but Lady Cynthia had to go through all the times in her life when the wrong hour had lodged itself in her head.

‘I saw a wonderful film about someone that this happened to. It meant that she escaped being murdered,’ said Daisy eventually, smiling encouragingly at Lady Cynthia, who was quite taken by that idea. While her son was helping Daisy to recount details of the film, Sir John managed to exchange a few words with his new butler and then steer his wife away from the de Montforts with the firm assurance that they would all being seeing lots of each other in the very near future.

‘You and I have to have lots of talks about films,’ said the handsome Charles, giving Daisy’s hand a very warm shake.

‘Yes, do come over tomorrow morning,’ said Daisy bravely.

‘I won’t disturb Sir John on his first morning in London,’ he said politely. ‘But you and your sister must pop around and see us. That will be all right, Mother, won’t it?’

And with that Daisy had to be content. There was, she thought, a look of calculation in Lady Cynthia’s eyes as she looked from Daisy across to Sir John. He was an important man, and women like Lady Cynthia respected men of power – especially when their sons worked for them. Of course, it would be well known by Charles and therefore his mother that Sir John had married a woman with a large fortune. All in all, Daisy thought, Lady Cynthia might overlook a little indiscretion, especially if the girls were now impeccably behaved.

Tomorrow, she thought. She would make sure that Poppy understood the full significance of the visit and that she would have to stay for the regulation time, or, better still, perhaps Poppy might concoct some prior arrangement with Baz and the jazz-band boys and would stay to entertain Elaine while her husband was busy with his affairs.

Chapter Eleven

Thursday 3 April 1924

Daisy had slept little the previous night. When Elaine had retired to bed, Poppy had come into her room and they had spent ages talking.

‘What did you think of Charles?’ Daisy had asked, after waiting for what felt like hours to see whether Poppy would bring up the subject, but all Poppy had wanted to talk about was the jazz club and the success of their opening night. As far as she was concerned, the day had been a wasted one as neither she nor Morgan had been able to join the boys in the little house in Belgravia for jazz practice.

‘I hope Jack isn’t going to keep Morgan too busy,’ she said darkly. ‘I could see that he liked having a car and a chauffeur.’

‘But what did you think of Charles?’ Daisy repeated.

Poppy looked at her. ‘Well . . . he’s a bit of a . . . You like him, don’t you?’ she said opening her eyes very widely with the air of someone who has just made a surprising discovery.

‘Why not?’ said Daisy. She could hear her voice sounding defensive. She picked up Poppy’s comb and fiddled with her hair in order to avoid meeting Poppy’s eyes.

‘I suppose he’s good-looking,’ said Poppy after a moment. ‘And of course he’s interested in films,’ she added when Daisy didn’t reply. Now she seemed more enthusiastic. ‘Yes, I can see what you mean. I do think that he is good-looking. Pity about his mother, but then people can’t help their relations, can they? Look at us with Great-Aunt Lizzie! And Baz even knows her well and he still loves me and wants to marry me! You wouldn’t think that possible, would you?’

‘I think Charles’s mother is all right,’ said Daisy defensively. ‘And Great-Aunt Lizzie is not too bad if you handle her the right way. The trouble is that you keep crashing head first into her.’

Poppy had said nothing for a minute, and when she did speak she sounded a little odd, as if she were searching for the right words. ‘You think that he might be interested in you . . .’ was what she said. It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t a statement either. It hung in the air as Daisy brushed and re-brushed her hair.