Debutantes: In Love (30 page)

And then her father’s arm went around her, and his voice, husky and broken: ‘You look lovely, Poppy, my darling.’ He moved across to Daisy once she was safely on the hall floor and said the very same words to her. Poppy hugged Baz’s arm for a moment and then released him and said, ‘Let’s go, Morgan. Let’s get this stuffy affair over and done with.’ She was glad to see her father so much more cheerful. They had spent hours practising jazz tunes today, her father thumping out the beat on the piano and she playing the clarinet. It seemed that he would never tire of playing and his fingers had regained all of their old agility. Perhaps, after all, he would agree to go to court next Monday and all their problems could be sorted out.

Poppy was the only one in the house who was not astonished at the change music could make in him. She knew how jazz played as loudly as possible drowned out all thought, all anxieties and all fears. When she reached the door she turned and looked back at him and smiled. He returned the smile and she was reassured. Baz, she saw, had moved over next to him. He had promised that when they were gone he would try to persuade the Earl to go to Belgravia to try out the schoolroom piano, now safely installed in the jazz club.

‘We must wait for Joan when we get there,’ said Daisy when she slid into the back seat beside Elaine and Poppy. ‘She says that we must be either the first or last, and that it’s better to be last as they will speed things up after the first dozen or so.’

‘I’ll have to drop you off at the Buckingham Palace railing; I can’t wait, my lady,’ said Morgan over his shoulder to Elaine. ‘I walked around last night and had a word with one of the taxi drivers nearby; they said the Mall is murder, so I am taking a short cut, but once we’re there I’ll have to drop you off.’

They had to wait for some time before Joan arrived. She looked unexpectedly demure in a long full skirt that swept the ground, but her face was full of mischief.

‘Wait till we get rid of the chaperones,’ she whispered to Poppy. ‘Then we’ll have some fun.’

‘Dearest child, how lovely you look.’ Lady Dorothy kissed Poppy, admired their dresses and then started to call greetings to her numerous friends. Poppy giggled at the helpless expression on Elaine’s face as Baz’s mother introduced her to everyone as ‘my new little daughter’. Jack had decreed that there was to be no talk of an engagement in the household at Grosvenor Square until the Earl returned to full health and could deal with his daughter’s absurd notions. But it was beyond Jack’s well-known diplomatic gifts to rein in Lady Dorothy.

‘Oh, so you are the Derrington girls,’ said a jolly-looking woman, mother of one of Joan’s friends. ‘I remember your Uncle Robert, my dears. When I was about eighteen I was madly in love with him – I cried my eyes out when I heard of how he died in the Boer War.’

‘Tell us about him.’ Poppy was surprised to find Daisy so eager for details about Robert, Michael Derrington’s younger brother and uncle to Violet, Poppy and Rose – though not to Daisy, she thought suddenly. Why was she so interested? Still, they had to occupy themselves in some way, standing in a queue under the scrutiny of the palace officials.

‘He was such a charming boy,’ said the woman fondly. ‘I remember one party at Beech Grove Manor where he set up this toy rabbit with one ear on the top chair of the table and we all had to come and bow to him and shake his little paw.’

Funny the things that amuse older people, thought Poppy, and stopped listening, though Daisy went on talking to the woman and asking questions about Robert.

Joan, in the meantime, amused herself by spreading salacious rumours about a liaison between the prime minister and Princess Mary, warning her unlucky victims that she would be consigned to the deepest dungeon in the Tower of London if the story got out.

‘But I know I can trust you as we have been friends for the last twenty years or so,’ Poppy overheard her say to one prim-looking girl.

‘You’re only just nineteen,’ pointed out Poppy in a whisper. ‘Who is she anyway?’

‘Never saw her before in my life,’ said Joan nonchalantly, and moved on to tease one of the bodyguards, asking him if he had to keep his chin pointing to the ceiling in order stop his helmet sliding off.

‘Joan, leave the poor man alone,’ said Lady Dorothy, breaking off the animated conversation about Robert Derrington. Her tone was resigned rather than angry, but Joan got bored easily and soon moved on to other debutantes, picking out, with an unerring eye, those who were newly up from the country, or those who looked shy and anxious, and proceeding to drop bits of scurrilous gossip in their ears and laugh loudly at the shy gasps of horror.

‘How do you like my gown?’ she asked Poppy, and she twirled around in a small space, causing everyone around them to take one step backwards.

‘Very nice,’ said Poppy. It was, she thought, rather old-fashioned for Joan’s taste. Still, perhaps it belonged to her sister or something.

‘I got it made to my own design,’ said Joan demurely. ‘Oh good, we’re separating from the oldies. Come on; I know what happens now – all us little girls are put into one room on our own and the chaperones get to eat cake in the white drawing room and exchange scandalous hearsay without little ears overhearing the stories of their mothers’ and fathers’ affairs of the past.’

Joan was up to something, thought Poppy as she followed her future sister-in-law into the antechamber, the supper room for the ball. While the other girls
ooh
ed and
aah
ed over the magnificent ceiling or rushed to secure one of the small, spindly-legged gilt chairs, Joan went straight to the middle of the room and twirled so that the wide loose skirt of her dress flew out around her, displaying her white stockings and prominent knees.

Then, to Poppy’s amusement, she unfastened a string on the waist of her skirt and showed that she was really wearing a white silk shift-like dress with a dropped waist and a skirt so short it barely touched her knees. It didn’t, like Daisy and Poppy’s dresses, have an underskirt to hide its deficiency in length; it was almost indecently short.

And then, ignoring the gasps of horror, she took her place on one of the gilt chairs and arranged the detached long skirt across her knees, just like a rug.

At that moment the major-domo came into the room and looked frowningly around at the helplessly giggling girls. However, by the time that he had finished making a pompous speech about what a great honour it was to be presented to their majesties and that he understood how nervous they all were, everyone had managed to control themselves – although all eyes were pointed towards Joan.

Joan herself was now deep in conversation with a friend of hers called Eve, a very beautiful girl with high cheekbones and enormous blue eyes, who was wearing a gorgeous silk dress with a dropped waist – very short, but disguised with a long lace fringe that fell below the knees. She, the Derrington girls and Joan were the only four in the room with short dresses – all the others had stuck nervously to pre-war fashion, which was daring if it showed a glimpse of an ankle, or, at most, the very bottom of someone’s calf.

Every time the major-domo went out of the room, Eve and Joan did a little shimmy together, humming in low voices, ‘
I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate . . .
’ and every time that the door opened again they were back on their chairs with their legs tucked out of the way.

What a farce, thought Poppy, and then she shook herself. There were a hundred girls around her and at least half of them could be potential customers for the latest and most up-to-date club in London.

‘Have you been to the Very Heaven jazz club yet?’ she enquired of a chatty girl who seemed to be the centre of attention.

‘My dear, of course . . . my favourite place in town . . .’ drawled the debutante, and Poppy smiled her wide, charming smile and remarked mysteriously, ‘I thought you would have; you look the type that knows all the latest places!’

And then she moved on to another group.

By the time that they were called into the Throne Room, the words ‘Very Heaven’ were buzzing through the debutantes like the murmur of bees on a summer eve.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Monday 26 May 1924

‘I’m not going; I’m not well.’ The Earl stared angrily at Jack and then pushed his chair back, leaving his breakfast untouched. In the silence that followed his exit from the room, they heard his heavy footsteps stomping up the stairs and then the slam of a door overhead.

‘It might be just as well to go without him,’ said Daisy quietly. Everyone in turn had tried to explain to him the importance of going to court today, but it had not worked. Daisy tried to console herself with the thought that the Earl was not very good at dealing with people like judges, and that his presence would probably only serve to make things worse rather than better. He might have been successful at the court in Maidstone if he had been able to be a bit conciliatory instead of treating the judge as though he were a servant on the estate.

‘You don’t know what you are talking about, Daisy,’ snapped Jack. ‘A man can’t just not turn up for no reason. It’s very likely that he will be jailed for contempt of court if he just doesn’t show up there.’

‘What if he had pneumonia?’ asked Daisy. The news about Great-Aunt Lizzie was not good. Daisy would have to go down to Beech Grove again – it was terrible that no relation of the poor old woman seemed to be showing concern; the housekeeper, Mrs Pearson, was her only visitor in the hospital. Still, thought Daisy, if only Michael Derrington had pneumonia, everyone would be full of sympathy for him.

‘But he doesn’t have pneumonia,’ pointed out Jack. ‘If he did, all would be simple. We would get a doctor to certify that he was too ill to attend and then the hearing would be postponed.’

‘We must get a doctor,’ said Daisy decisively. ‘Even if Father won’t see him,’ she went on, ‘he may be willing to give a certificate to say that he is suffering from shell-shock.’

Was shell-shock still considered to be a valid excuse? she wondered. She had read in one of Jack’s newspapers that there was no such thing – just nervous depression, the paper had said – and she had a suspicion that people like Jack – people like judges, perhaps – thought that men should be able to control their feelings and their emotions.

‘Very well then!’ Jack slapped down his knife and fork in the centre of his half-eaten fried egg. He glared across at Daisy. ‘I’ll go and see about it,’ he said irritably.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Elaine as the door clicked firmly closed after him, but she patted her daughter’s hand consolingly. ‘Jack will do his best,’ she said.

‘When we are in court, you must play jazz as loudly as you can. Don’t try to get him out of bed – that doesn’t work; if wants to get out, he’ll do it of his own accord, but don’t put any pressure on him,’ said Daisy, and Poppy nodded. She was being very understanding about her father’s plight – not at all like the usual Poppy, who seemed to be a bit closed off in her own world.

Armed with a few reluctant lines from the doctor, Jack and Daisy set off for the court, picking up Justin on the way. Jack had sent Morgan in to collect him from the little house and the chauffeur had obviously told him about the Earl’s refusal to come, because Justin said nothing, just patted Daisy’s hand when he got into the car.

‘Violet wanted to come but I thought it might be best not. It’s bound to be upsetting and . . .’ He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘She’s not very well at the moment. She’ll tell you all about it herself when she sees you, I’m sure.’

‘What’s the best thing to do, Justin?’ Daisy wondered whether Violet might be pregnant, but at the moment her father’s problem was paramount in her mind.

‘It’s not really my business,’ he said after a minute. ‘You have your own lawyer, but –’ here he looked across at Jack – ‘I would feel that it would be best to put a member of the family in the witness box – someone who will make a good impression on the judge – and who will be able to explain about the Earl’s . . .’ he hesitated a little at that, and then finished bravely, ‘would be able to explain his mental problems.’

Jack slightly preened himself. ‘Well, of course I would be happy to do anything to help.’

‘No, no, no, we couldn’t ask that from a man of your position.’ Justin’s voice was soothing and held a note of deference to an older man, and one in a higher position. ‘I was thinking of young Daisy here. She looks younger than she is and she will appeal to the judge’s paternal instincts. It won’t be difficult, Daisy, you just—’

‘Don’t tell me what to say,’ interrupted Daisy. ‘If you do, it might sound like I have learned it off by heart. I’ll just get up and I’ll do my best.’

There was something far more intimidating about this London court than the one at Maidstone, thought Daisy when they went in. The lawyer’s face grew even longer when he heard that the Earl wasn’t coming. He looked at the doctor’s certificate dubiously and sighed heavily.

‘He should have come,’ he muttered. ‘Does he realize that he can lose everything?’ He stopped and his eyes went to Daisy.

‘He doesn’t realize anything,’ said Daisy boldly. ‘He’s just not capable of coming here and . . .’