Debutantes: In Love (17 page)

‘Now run along, Rose dear, and enjoy your vacation.’ The teacher handed a health certificate to Daisy with an air of relief and returned to the other girls. They would be easier to handle without her sister’s presence, thought Daisy. Rose was already cheerfully telling Joan that the drains had gone wrong in the school and that was the real reason for the extended Easter holiday.

‘We suspect that Francesca made away with the maths teacher and shoved his body down the sewer pipe,’ she said gaily, to the startled amazement of a bowler-hatted gentleman waiting to board the boat train to Dover.

‘I say,’ said Joan admiringly. ‘That was jolly enterprising of your friend.’

‘Rose!’ Daisy felt that she should exclaim as the teacher was looking helplessly at her, but she found it hard to suppress a giggle.

‘Let’s all go and have an ice cream,’ suggested Morgan. ‘My treat,’ he added.

‘What a lovely man you are, my darling St Clair,’ said Joan when she heard of the offer. ‘St Clair is this dear man’s middle name, Rose. I bet you didn’t know that. It’s all too, too stuffy, this business of being formal and calling him by his last name, isn’t it?’

‘Too, too right it is,’ chimed Rose quickly, and Daisy did her best not to smile.

‘It’s lovely having you back again, Rosie,’ she said affectionately. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘Not the same me though. All has been utterly changed. I am now a deeply serious and studious young lady – I speak French like a native – like a native of somewhere, anyway – oh, and Morgan, St Clair, I mean – I’ve learned to play the piano properly. Elaine paid for me to have lessons.’

‘Just what we need; what a clever little thing you are, Rosie,’ said Poppy.

‘And what have you two girls been doing while my eye has not been on you?’ enquired Rose in a schoolmistressy manner.

‘Don’t ask?’ suggested Poppy, with a mischievous grin at Daisy.

‘Making a film – a film about India,’ said Daisy hastily. ‘It’s coming along really well. Violet is going to be the heroine.’

‘Sounds good – by the way, where is Violet?’ began Rose and then she gave a slight scream. ‘I say, look at that headline on
The Daily Express
over there: “SECRET SOCIETY SCANDAL. POLICE PROBE PARTY-LOVING PEER’S POSITION.” Oh, pray, pray someone buy that newspaper for this poverty-stricken child.’

‘
The Daily Express
– oh, what a splendiferous idea!’ said Joan with an elaborately casual air. ‘Let’s see if there is anything interesting in the gossip column.’ She produced a coin from her slim purse-sized handbag and dashed across to the newspaper boy. When she came back she handed the whole newspaper, except for one piece torn from an inside page, to Rose.

‘I say, that is jolly nice of you.’ Rose opened her suitcase and put in the newspaper. There were several others already in there, Daisy noticed, and guessed that her sister had managed to find them in railway carriages, from benches on railway stations and lying round on the boat during her journey back from Switzerland.

Once they were seated in the ice-cream parlour Joan produced the article from her handbag.

‘Now you might be a bit upset with this – being dear little country girls and all that, and not used to publicity, but . . .’ She placed the article on the table between Poppy and Daisy.

‘Pops knows what it says – she heard the newspaper Johnny telephoning it,’ said Baz.

‘You’re from the country too, Joan; only a couple of miles away from us,’ said Daisy coolly.

‘But far, far more sophisticated than us three
dear
little girls,’ said Rose demurely, looking up and down Joan’s exquisite and most fashionable clothes. ‘Let me read the article, since I seem to be the only one in the dark.’

‘And me,’ said Morgan. He had a slightly grim look about him. Daisy watched him anxiously as he read over Rose’s shoulder, but in the end he shrugged. ‘It could be worse,’ he said. ‘It’s a good advertisement for the jazz club – just a pity there is that bit about Baz and Poppy.’

‘Can’t think where he got that!’ Joan raised her elegantly plucked eyebrows.

‘Oh, but it’s wonderful,’ cried Rose. ‘At least, it gives me great hopes for my future. I know I can write better than that.’

‘He was just making it up as he went along; I heard him when I was in the lav,’ explained Poppy. She took the piece of newspaper from Rose and recited it with all the commas, full stops and spellings as she remembered them, and Daisy found it hard to stop laughing as she saw Rose’s eyes grow enormous with envy. Her ambition to be a journalist was evidently still alive.

‘So you’ve got on well with the piano, Rosie,’ she said affectionately.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Rose, ‘that I have to admit that I have got on brilliantly. Never was such a talented child known within the portals of that school, or so a little bird tells me,’ she added with a glance down at the newspaper article. She looked across at Morgan. ‘Do say that I can join the jazz band.’

‘We’ll start saving for a piano straight away,’ he said gently.

‘We need your advice, Rosie,’ said Daisy hurriedly, guessing that Morgan wanted to divert Rose from the idea of playing in a nightclub. ‘We’re planning our coming-out ball and Joan says that we must make it different. She says that everyone is bored with ordinary balls.’

‘Have jazz played at it,’ said Baz.

‘Poppy can’t be playing in the band during her own coming-out dance!’ Joan was so outraged that she almost shrieked the words.

‘What date is it?’ asked Morgan, and nodded slowly when he heard that it was on the eighth of May.

‘Now don’t get too excited, but around that time King Oliver and his jazz band, including Louis Armstrong, will be coming to London. I’ve got a few contacts and we might be able to get them to play.’ He looked across at Daisy. ‘You’d have to talk to your uncle about it – they wouldn’t come too cheap. I heard the Savoy Hotel was negotiating with him, but it would make your party something special, wouldn’t it?’

‘Unique,’ confirmed Joan. ‘Oh, my dears, I’m getting all excited for you. Well, a famous jazz band for Poppy – what about you, Daisy? Would you like something different in the music line?’

‘I’m not very musical,’ said Daisy slowly. ‘I’m happy with a jazz band, if that’s what you want, Poppy. And it would be different.’ What did she want from her coming-out dance? Charles, she thought. How can I put him at the centre of things?

‘Didn’t you say that you were making a film about India?’ said Rose. ‘Why don’t you make it an Indian dance – saris and all that sort of thing?’

‘That’s it,’ said Daisy enthusiastically. ‘Rose – you are a genius.’

‘A theme!’ Joan’s voice rose to an excited squeak. ‘My dears, that is quite the latest fashion, dressing up as Indians – a friend of mine went to a party last week dressed as a rani – the trouble was that there was a real rajah there and he was not amused to see someone who looked like his wife come up and ask him to dance and then to find out that it was a man after all – too, too embarrassing. We all laughed ourselves silly!’

‘Let’s have the men in ordinary clothes,’ said Baz, flushing slightly. ‘I hate fancy dress. Feel such a fool.’

‘Men look great in ordinary evening dress,’ agreed Daisy, thinking of filming. The men in black and white looked so good in her films.

‘Girls can dress up,’ said Joan firmly. ‘My dears, I’d so love a sari.’

‘What about having a theme of the nine jewels of India: diamond, ruby, emerald, coral, pearl, sapphire, garnet, topaz and cat’s eye – you know that greeny-goldy stuff . . . chrysoberyl,’ said Daisy, remembering the glorious necklace Fred had made for her film from bits of coloured glass and wire painted gold. ‘That would mean that people who liked veils and saris could wear those and others could just come in jewel colours. We could put that on the invitation cards.’ Thinking of Fred and his clever fingers and inventiveness gave her another idea. ‘What would you think of using the backdrop boards from my film – Fred has done some magnificent ones – the Taj Mahal and everything.’

‘Potted palms,’ said Joan, as one inspired.

‘Spotted leopards,’ said Rose, not to be outdone, and then added dreamily, ‘Could I be part of the background, heavily veiled, of course?’ She gazed up at Daisy with pleading eyes.

‘Why not?’ said Daisy, making a note that she would be firm with Elaine and Jack about this. She wanted her little sister at this special ball. After all, the Duchess of Denton had a ‘nursery party’ at her eldest daughter’s coming-out dance. Rose was tall for her age and no one would question her presence.

At that moment there was a flash of white light and a popping sound – a sound very familiar to Daisy. Someone had taken a photograph. She turned around quickly to see a man in a belted raincoat, with a trilby soft hat pulled down over his eyebrows, just escaping from the icecream parlour. He held a large camera. Poppy and Baz were blinking in from the explosion of light.

‘The beast!’ said Joan. ‘He just took the back of my head. How too, too sick-making . . . But I am pleased for you two, my dears.’

Chapter Eighteen

Thursday 1 May 1924

‘I do so love your study, Jack,’ said Rose with a very serious face. ‘It reminds me of that chapter in
Kim
when they are getting ready to put down the Indian rising. All those lists of tasks and telephone numbers and names of useful people. And the countdown calendar! A Military Manoeuvres Board, that’s what it is. It’s absolutely wonderful!’

‘Now then, young lady,’ said Jack. He said it with a grin though. Poppy annoyed him with her intensity and her stubbornness, thought Daisy, but Rose’s quick wits brought a reluctant smile to his face. An intelligent man, he would have been bored by this holiday in London if he had not had The Ball to organize. He had got a carpenter to cover the whole of one wall of his study with a soft board and by now it was completely filled with sheets of paper, large and small, with tradesmen’s cards, lists of names and hand-coloured postcards of India. He had been hugely enthusiastic about the Indian theme and had come up with lots of good ideas of his own. Clear and succinct instructions about dress and the significance of the ‘Nine Jewels of India’ had been sent out with every invitation. He had personally checked every one of Fred’s backdrops and allocated each an appropriate place in the Ritz ballroom.

Now he looked appraisingly at the plan of the ballroom, added a series of small oblongs, marked them as ‘Champagne Tables’ and then stood back and gazed at his board, full of thought.

‘You know, Rose,’ he said, ‘Napoleon had small models of all the notables at his court and he used to get the court dressmakers to make outfits for them; then when he saw how they looked in groups, he used to inform them what colours they were to wear to his next party. I’m beginning to feel a little like him.’ He laughed, quick to see the ridiculous side of his obsession, but yet determined to make a huge success of this ball.

‘Did he really, how wonderful! I must tell my history teacher about that. So much more fun than learning about the Battle of Salamanca. I shall have to get two little dolls and call them Poppy and Daisy. And there was I feeling sad that I had passed the age to play with dolls.’

‘I like the countdown calendar,’ said Daisy, looking up at the impressive sheet that took up a large portion of the board. The months of April and May had been ruled out into boxes – each day had its own box where tasks could be inserted and two dates had huge stars – one for their presentation on the twentieth of May and the other one, coming excitingly close, for their ball on the eighth. Jack was consulting his notebook and putting a neat tick before each task that had already been done.

‘Why do you have those six capital
T
s in a row beside the plan of the ballroom, Jack?’ Daisy didn’t care much, but she knew that he was pleased at her interest and it was, she thought, kind of him to go to so much trouble.

‘They’re for the telephones in the press room.’ His face lit up with pleasure at her question. ‘You see, the one thing these reporter Johnnies hate is having to queue for a telephone box. Puts them right off what they want to say. I’ve made sure that there will be plenty of phones available – each with their own table – and they’re all in the press room – a tray of drinks in there too. The manager of the Ritz,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘was very struck by the idea. I’d take a bet that he will do it in the future for all the top balls and events.’

‘A press room!’ Rose’s voice was reverential. ‘Oh, I say, how wonderful.’

‘Yes, and the manager promised me that he would make sure that there will be plenty of jotters and sheets of paper, pencils, rubbers on each of the tables – all that sort of thing.’

‘Dickens himself could not have asked for more,’ Rose assured him. ‘I remember reading about his desk – ah, me, if ever I could aspire to such a thing . . .’

‘And the tray of drinks will put them all in a great mood,’ said Daisy.

‘I thought that was a good idea,’ said Jack with a pleased smile. He seized a pair of library steps, clambered up them and added a label that said ‘Press Room’ beside the row of telephones. Then, looking from his pocketbook to the board, he began to tick off completed tasks.