Sail Upon the Land (23 page)

‘Shall we go back in?’

‘Nah,’ said Miranda, heading for the cubicles, rummaging in her bag as she went.

Damson rejoined the dance. The pink walls of the huge hotel’s largest ballroom were decorated with real branches dotted all over with flowers flown from South Africa. It was the coming-out ball for Bellissima Connaught, the cosseted only child of South African diamond magnate Biggins Connaught and his wife, former Miss South Africa Tristesse. If any deb looked as if she felt more out of place than Damson it was Bellissima. She was a blank shapeless girl who projected an air of panic. Her dress was a cruelly frilled confection of mauve crystal organza, her hair bubble permed and teased, her make up professionally laid on with a trowel. She looked like a sad child playing dressing up and never had a girl been more unfortunately christened. She sat with a large dull young deb’s delight beside her, talking to no one, while her glamorous mother danced and danced with all the most handsome and eligible men in the room.

Damson returned to her table and sat down, as usual hoping someone would ask her to dance. The damask tablecloth was heavy against her knees. There was an arrangement of pink roses in the centre of the table. She might try to filch one at the end and take it home to her grandmother on Friday evening.

Damson sat in front of the glass-topped, kidney-shaped dressing table. She was always irritated by its fussy ruffled skirt, made to match the curtains by Granny for her mother. Her legs tangled in its folds, but she’d long ago discovered that you could pull the skirt aside and there were drawers underneath. In the drawers she had found a set of Carmen rollers that still worked, and a cache of her mother’s make-up. It had been the first time she had ever found anything that belonged to Melissa.

It was the evening of the Castle Hey dance, and her sash window, with its Gothick arched top, was opened as far down as it could go on to the warm June air. She’d had her bath, and was rubbing faintly sparkly golden body cream into her shoulders and over her breasts, when there was a knock on the door. Her hands snatched at her towel and she huddled in it, calling out, ‘Come in?’

It was Margaret, dressed and ready, her hair done. Damson was startled to notice that she was wearing a tiara. She didn’t dare ask where it came from, just as she had skirted around any mention of the bounty that appeared on all sides, glowing from room to room, transforming her tatty childhood home into something out of, and indeed in,
World of Interiors
. All the gorgeousness felt wrong and as if she needed to deserve it, which she was failing to do. Margaret’s dress was bright sapphire satin, tight-waisted with black chiffon half sleeves and an organza fichu around the shoulders, pinned at the front with a large diamond brooch. A strong whiff of Estée Lauder Private Collection accompanied her.

‘Hello, Damson. I just came to see how you were getting on.’

‘I’m fine, thank you, Margaret.’

‘Do you need anything? Some help with your hair? Lionel will be finished with Noonie soon.’

‘It’s OK, I’ve got Carmens. I’ll just curl it a bit.’

Damson’s hair fell way down her back. It was quite fair, bleached by many summers of sun, but it was what she called ‘hair-coloured hair’, mousy pale brown when left to its own devices. It could look quite pretty when tamed by the heated rollers. She picked up her dryer and began to run the warm air over its length, lifting it with her fingers.

Margaret said something else, but she couldn’t hear her over the whirr of the little motor.

‘Sorry?’

Margaret left the room, closing the door with a decisive sound, and Damson realised she had been rude and wondered to herself whether it was on purpose. She just couldn’t embrace the Margaret thing, where her stepmother barged into her room – and her life – and tried to do things for her and then snapped at her when she didn’t accept.

She knew the deb business was for the benefit of the twins, and not for her. She had Cambridge in her future. They had futures mapped out that depended far more on making a success of hair and make-up and dresses. None of those thoughts stopped her being happy now though, in this moment.

She glanced at the bed where her golden taffeta dress was lying on top of the duvet, underwear arranged in the appropriate places. Maybe she would meet someone nice tonight. So far she hadn’t met anyone who seemed to like her as much as Daniel. They had written to each other for a bit but, with the Atlantic between them, the romance had fizzled out. All she’d had of male company recently had been a few dances, the odd kiss in the rhododendrons, but not a sniff of a proper boyfriend.

Boys danced with her because they wanted to meet the twins. She tried not to let the feeling gain entrance, but she couldn’t kill the green tendrils that proliferated when she saw their effortless ability to attract suitable men. She didn’t care much what she wore, unless she was going to a party, and Granny made most of the decisions for her. The twins on the other hand bought everything in Beauchamp Place or down the King’s Road, they wore bright silk dresses and huge hats for Ascot, and suits with big shoulders, and immaculate white Levis with pastel-coloured cashmere jerseys.

They were invited to model for
Society
magazine, taken to Stayle Hall and styled by the fashion editor for a decadent country house weekend story called
Come Out at Night
. This included lingerie shots embracing each other in the grand bedrooms, which Damson could see that Margaret was being brave about. It wasn’t the kind of exposure she had envisaged. Damson laughed when she thought of the remarks that
wouldn’t
be made at St Anthony the Great during coffee.

Damson was baffled by their fixation on Princess Diana, what she wore, what she said. As far as she was concerned Diana was a silly girl who’d failed all her O levels twice. The twins had no interest in the princess’s academic record but avidly copied her every reported outfit. They had Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, Gucci scarves tied around their necks, cocktail dresses by Thierry Mugler, hats by Stephen Jones for society weddings, and everything they needed to attract the attention of exceedingly rich ‘suitable’ husband material. As the beautiful – and rich – Hayes Twins were seen and photographed everywhere, designers fell over themselves to dress them. No mention of Mullins now.

She began to roll the hot Carmens into her wispy fair hair. The rollers, stained tea brown by time, stood in two rows in an oblong black plastic box. Damson sat assiduously rolling and pinning them up until all her hair was dangling around her cheeks, heavy with curlers. Then she paid attention to her face, peering into the mirror and assessing herself through half-closed eyes. She wished her cheeks were not so round, craning and twisting her neck to try and locate some cheekbones under the plump smooth surface.

Failing this, she flipped open a copy of
Look Now
and tried to work out how to copy the information about shading and defining, using a Rimmel palette she had bought for the purpose. She had a go at painting on
trompe
-
l’œil
cheekbones by brushing the darker brown halfway up her cheeks, frowning with concentration. When she had finished she had another look and burst out laughing. She looked like nothing so much as Adam Ant, with dark ridiculous stripes slanting from her nose up to her ears. She read the instructions again, tried toning it down and then gave up. She rubbed it all off furiously with cotton wool and Anne French, leaving her skin red and shiny.

It was getting late. She quickly dusted her face all over with pale loose powder she’d found in the dressing table. It said Coty on the box and smelt faintly of roses. There was a white velvet pad inside, stained flesh-colour on one surface. She held it to her lips for a moment, closing her eyes. Her bare shoulders tingled with desire for loving hands. She knew she was indulging herself, trying to conjure a concerned presence that was missing from the empty room like a cold anomaly in the warmth. She put a hand behind her back, scrabbling at the air, trying to tear away the pernicious membrane between her and the past that had contained her mother in this very room. Why was time so different from space? She wrapped her own arms around her upper body and squeezed, shuddering, breathing out.

Also in the dressing-table drawer was a little black Rimmel box with a sliding lid and a tiny toothbrush-type brush. She opened it now and looked. There wasn’t much of the hard black cake left, it was worn down to the silver metal in the middle. It must be some old-fashioned sort of mascara that you needed to spit on. The warm stink of spitting into the electric bar heater came back to her from bored nursery evenings huddled in her towel in this room. Her mother should have been there, then as well as now, rubbing her hair dry, cuddling her in her towel, warming her nightie in front of the fire, reading her a story. Not Pauline, who’d never read to her. Her grandmother had, but not in here, in her bedroom at the house in Dorking.

She poked out her tongue and touched the little black cake with its tip. No taste, not a ghost of Melissa’s spit. She glanced in the mirror. Her tongue had a black smudge on the end. She rubbed the brush across and tried it on her lashes. Nothing much happened. She spat into the box and rubbed more vigorously, thinking you definitely could not cry when wearing this kind of mascara. At least now her spit was mingled with her mother’s.

She pulled open the drawer and chucked the little box back. Then she groped around for her mother’s scent: Fidji, just a brown stain in the bottom of a square glass bottle. She pulled out the stopper and sniffed at a faint carnation ghost, trying to conjure some memory but without the faintest stirring. She preferred her Yves St Laurent Rive Gauche, and sprayed herself with it.

She picked up a black kohl pencil and ran it all around the inside of her eyelids, which tickled. She brushed golden-green eye shadow on to her lids, hoping it would enhance her indeterminate eye colour, a sort of greenish grey with gold streaks. Unpinning the curlers one by one, she slid them back on their spindles. She pulled some of the curls into a half ponytail on the back of her head with a slide. She put dangly earrings made of sequins in her ears. They matched her golden yellow taffeta ball dress and sandals.

Wandering over to the bed, she dropped her towel to the floor and wriggled into her sensible cotton knickers. She wished she had lacy ones but it couldn’t be helped. She discarded the straps from the new firm and complicated bra that Granny had bought for her when she realised the boned strapless bodice was squashing Damson’s bosoms flat. There was another knock on the door while she was stepping into the dress.

‘Thank goodness, Granny, I was just wondering what to do. I thought you were downstairs with the parents, and I couldn’t come running down with my dress flapping off. That’s the trouble with strapless, there’s nothing to hang the bodice on while you do up the back.’

Come here then,’ said Granny, taking a tight grip on the back of the dress’s waist, pulling up the zip and fastening the hook at the top. ‘There you are.’

Her warm hands on Damson’s shoulders, she turned her round and stepped back to look at her. The dress had a little gather in the centre of the bodice giving it a sweetheart neckline and a full skirt with a tulle petticoat sewn inside to make it stand out. Damson slipped her feet into the sandals, admiring the gold nail polish on her toes and doing up the slender ankle straps that crossed at the back over her Achilles tendons.

‘What do you think?’

Her grandmother’s eyes were suspiciously shiny. ‘I think you look beautiful,’ she said. Damson swirled her skirt around her ankles, dancing at Sarah, flinging her arms round her and laughing and kissing the older woman.

‘You look lovely too.’ Her grandmother was wearing the Elbourne tiara in her silvery curls and a V-necked black lace dress with long sleeves and a scarlet satin sash.

‘I first met you in this room. Tiny thing in a crib. Your mother.’ Sarah stopped. Damson went quiet and still. ‘Yes?’

‘Your mother would have been so proud of you,’ Sarah said, pulling Damson against her bosom. They stood together for a minute before Sarah let her go and backed away. ‘Mustn’t let our mascara run.’

‘Darling Gran, was she anything like me?’

‘She wasn’t shapely like you, darling. She was very slender, which was just as well given the Sixties fashion for boyish figures. You’re more like me.’

‘No, I mean like me in character.’

Her grandmother sat down on the bed. ‘I have to say, no, again. She wasn’t like you. I’ve never worried about you. And I did worry about her.’

‘In what way?’ Damson sat down beside her.

‘Well, you worked hard at school and you knew what you wanted to do. She took a couple of A levels, but the grades weren’t good. I know you aren’t taking all this deb stuff seriously but that doesn’t bother me. We went to a lot of trouble for her but she refused to carry on after a while.’

Damson thought it would be nice to be worried about for a change. Everyone just expected her to get on with it. She didn’t always feel wonderful, sometimes she was sad and lonely. She would love to find a boyfriend but hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

‘She never knew what she wanted to do,’ Granny continued. She looked down at her strong-looking hands and twisted her wedding ring.

‘Wasn’t she a nurse?’

‘Yes, but not for long, she dropped out and came home. I think you know she had a mild case of talipes and all the standing was too much for her. Our mistake, but she seemed so determined to begin with.’

‘Yes, I remember you telling me. Then she met Munty, didn’t she?’

‘Well, you know the story about her meeting your father at the Queen Charlotte the summer before. When she was at home, we were very worried about her. These days I suppose people would think it was normal for teenagers, but she used to stay up late and sleep late in the morning. She did go back to work, but it was just part time at a ridiculous shop in Dorking called Lord Groove. Anyway, Munty turned up at the shop one day when she was there. Said he was passing which we doubt. He was always a conventional young man and Lord Groove’s tie-dyed T-shirts weren’t his style. Anyway, he seemed to cheer her up and they were married that autumn.’