The Daisy Club (2 page)

‘Because they take themselves so lightly!'

Quotations from the works of great men such as G. K. Chesterton were learned not from a dusty book, but while striding through the woods around the house, before setting up their easels and starting to try and paint the sun coming through the trees. History was learned from walking around houses and castles, villages and towns, no blackboard or chalk needed.

‘You will understand Henry VIII and the Reformation much better when you stand in an old village church, and see the desecration done in the name of the deity, dear.'

By the time she was sixteen, Freddie's aunt, Jessica Valentyne, and Miss Warmington finally managed to obtain Daisy's release from what seemed to her to be the tomb of Aunt Maude's unbending way of life, and set her free to go to the Court, to get to know girls of her own age and generation. Which was probably why Aunt Maude still disapproved of Jessica Valentyne, her servants, her gas lectures, and possibly even the Air Raid Precautions. Quite apart from anything else Aunt Maude did not think a war
was
coming. She still thought it could be prevented, which meant that, in her opinion, people like Jessica Valentyne were actually warmongers.

‘I suppose it is quite necessary for you to go to the Court today?'

‘Oh yes, I am afraid so. I am quite promised to help out, and, besides, Aurelia Smith-Jones and Laura Hambleton are arriving, and they want to see me.'

Aunt Maude sighed, and looked around for another cup of tea, which was always a device of hers when she wanted to delay Daisy escaping from her sight. To Daisy's delight the maids had cleared all the breakfast dishes into the food lift, and it was even now hurtling down to the sculleries below the dining room.

‘
Hu-blooming-ray!
'

Daisy exhaled quietly, waiting for Aunt Maude to give another sigh and rise to her feet, her upright stance, stiff back and proud head-carriage a warning to all that, unmarried though Miss Maude might be, nevertheless the sole chatelaine of Twistleton Hall was someone whom everyone was forced to respect.

‘You are staying the night at the Court, I understand?'

Daisy, who had shot to her feet and was now feeling like a horse who sees the field gate opening, and the bliss of endless meadows in front, said ‘yes', and then promptly felt guilty as she realised that this meant that her aunt would be on her own at both luncheon and dinner.

‘I can come back to the Hall for dinner, if that is what you would like?' she asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be in the negative, which it thankfully was.

‘As it happens I have various people coming to dinner. We will be talking agricultural matters, so it is quite convenient if you stay with Jessica Valentyne for the night.'

Daisy walked slowly behind Aunt Maude across the great hall, and then up the shallow wooden staircase to the first floor, and then just as slowly down the corridor, where they both parted at their different bedroom doors.

Once inside the bedroom, with its mix of eighteenth-century and later, heavier, Victorian furniture, its flower paintings and narrow four-poster bed hung with faded silk hangings, Daisy flung her few night things, a couple of changes of clothes, and some highly frowned-upon (at the Hall, particularly) lipstick and a small powder bowl into a knapsack, and herself into a pair of dungarees, and without more ado, bolted back down the corridor, shoes in hand, to the hall once more, where, shoes back on, she ran out into the drive, and from there across to her trusty ladies' bicycle with its more than useful basket on the front. She jumped on board and started to cycle ferociously out of the back entrance, and down on to the open road that led in splendidly zigzag fashion past the old farms still belonging to the estate, to Twistleton Court, which did not belong, and never had, to any but the Valentynes since that same English Reformation upon which her old teacher, Miss Warmington, had frowned so particularly.

‘Heigh ho for the open road,' Daisy sang as she bicycled. ‘Heigh ho for the jolly times! Heigh ho for the Valentynes!'

So childish, but she had been singing that since she was sixteen, and now she was eighteen, she still liked to sing it. And oh, the bliss of getting away from the funereal atmosphere with which Aunt Maude seemed to surround herself, away from the servants of whom Aunt Maude silently disapproved, however devoted or efficient – because they were females. Before the Great War, only males – footmen and butlers, under-footmen and under-butlers – had worked at the Hall, whereas now, apart from Pattern and Bowles, the old place was forced to depend on goodly ladies who came in from the surrounding villages to help out, before hurrying thankfully back to their families.

Long before she cycled up the short carriage drive that led to the Court, Daisy imagined that she could see all her friends, already in their dungarees, spades over their shoulders, possibly singing some silly, childish song, as she had just been doing, or something from a musical they had just seen. Oh, the bliss of it all, compared to sharing the home life of Maude Augusta Katherine Anne Victoria Beresford, known to Daisy alone as
Aunt Maude
.

Branscombe adjusted his eyepatch and frowned. He was not in the best of moods, but when he rounded the corner and saw Miss Freddie and her recently arrived guests at Twistleton Court digging enthusiastically at piles of sand, filling the bags with childish enthusiasm, he could not help smiling. The three young women, all wearing dungarees, their long hair tied back into ribbons and combs, were carrying on more as if they were on the beach making a sandcastle, rather than preparing for the war everyone knew was coming.

‘Miss Freddie, Miss Laura, Miss Daisy, it is time for luncheon, and if you do not come soon there won't be any, and that is for certain, for Miss Blossom's dogs will have been sure to have eaten it all in your absence.'

‘The dogs' digestions are much better suited to Blossom's cooking,' Freddie muttered, pulling a face as Branscombe turned away, making once more for the house.

‘I heard that, Miss Freddie, and that was not you at your best, if I may say so, for even should it be true, it is not something that should be said in front of guests. Fill them with dread, that will, and what will that do for their digestions then, may I ask?'

Branscombe continued on his way, while the girls simultaneously threw down their spades and made for their lodgings in the old stables.

‘I remember this old place as if it was my own family home,' Laura Hambleton stated, as they passed under the archway into the great square cobbled yard that had once housed as many as fifty horses.

A small section of the yard, with the grooms' quarters above it, had long ago been converted into smart little cottage-type flats for the use of Aunt Jessica's finishing-school pupils, but with the closing of the school some few months before, they were now only used for occasional guests. Each flat that the girls had been given had its own stamp of originality, not least the one that Daisy had used.

Over her cottage-type door with its up-and-down black enamel latch was a notice that she had painted what now seemed to be aeons ago: ‘
THE DAISY CLUB – MEMBERS ONLY!
'

Daisy stared up at it, remembering the excitement of those early days, kitting out the flat with rugs and lamps, and things brought from the Hall. Putting, tongue in cheek, a visitors' book with ‘
The Daisy Club
–
please sign in
', at the door, and how everyone, even Branscombe, had done as directed. She smiled and pushed open the door, somehow knowing that the innocence of those days had already gone, the magic-carpet moments that bridge childhood into adulthood, the excitement, most of all the freshness, they were there, locked in her memory, too dear to think about too much, but also, gone.

The girls quickly changed into the cotton dresses and cardigans, and white peep-toed sandals that for some reason were the required uniform at Jessica's country lunches, and having brushed out their hair and powdered their noses, they crossed to the main house, all of them filled with a pleasant feeling that they had done their patriotic duty by their country by filling so many sandbags.

‘Oh, Laura, sorry!' Freddie stopped suddenly, and taking out a handkerchief from her sleeve she pushed it at her friend. ‘No lipstick to be worn in the country.'

‘For heaven's sakes, I'm not still at school here!' Laura protested, but she wiped her lips clean nevertheless.

‘Have you forgotten that Miss Valentyne thinks it looks tarty to wear lipstick in the country?' Daisy asked, surprised. ‘The unwritten rule, my deah.'

‘Well now, there's a thing!' Laura laughed. ‘I do believe, my dear, that I had forgot.'

‘Even so, Aunt Jessica would have excused you, because you are one of her favourite old pupils,' Freddie murmured.

‘Oh my, people who live in the country seem to have rules for everything. Is there a rule for breathing?'

‘As a matter of fact there is,' Freddie told her old friend cheerfully. ‘It must be done quietly, or not at all.'

The library at Twistleton Court had a low ceiling in keeping with its ancient origins, and had been built long before the Valentynes acquired the estate as part of some heiress's dowry. Once upon a time the library's ancient walls had been lined with books, now they were merely lined with shelves, some of which bore family photographs, others of which were dotted with silver cups of all shapes and sizes, perhaps won at local agricultural shows.

‘Ah there you are, girls, good, good, good. Glass of sherry before luncheon? How many sandbags did you fill this morning?'

It was inevitable that Aunt Jessica should take a proprietary interest in the filling of the sandbags, for the very good reason that she was one of the founding members of the Air Raid Precautions committee, and as such, providing sandbags was one of the many items on her list of things to do, in the event of an all-too-inevitable aerial attack.

Laura gladly accepted a glass of sherry, lit a cigarette, blew a smoke ring, and watched its progress across the room with lazily appreciative eyes. It was all so dear, being back in the library with its low ceilings and its ancient, faded Persian rugs, watching Aunt Jessie pouring a glass of lunchtime sherry, and everyone lighting up cigarettes with accomplished grace, because smoking prettily from holders was what Freddie called ‘one of Aunt Jessie's
things
'.

Twistleton Court had been the scene of some of Laura's happiest days, a so-called finishing school for young ladies, started by Freddie's aunt, purely for the purpose of trying to make the old place pay for itself. Laura's father, Arthur Hambleton, was typical of so many parents. He had been in the diplomatic service, finally coming to live in England after his wife had died suddenly of a fever when they were in Singapore, and bringing with him his only daughter.

Not deeming it suitable to share his life with a lively young girl, he had sent Laura to be ‘finished' at Twistleton Court. Despite being still in mourning for her mother, the moment she had arrived outside its mellowed exterior, and started to climb its shallow stone steps, the old place had caught Laura up in its magic, and now, it was no surprise to find that hardly had she returned when it did so all over again. And now it seemed it needed her, but more than that, she knew she needed it. Twistleton could be her way out of the endlessly dreary social scene into which her father and godmother had insisted on plunging her for the last few months.

It was not only the fact that Laura was just not suited to becoming a leading society figure, or that she didn't enjoy endlessly repeating the same languid dialogue every night as she sat at dinner, turning first to her right and then to her left, or equally endlessly circling some dance floor – it was that a never-ending diet of socialising was beginning to make her feel as if she was losing her mind. Besides which, the sight of her father openly flirting with ladies of every age was, to say the least, nauseating.

The fact was that Laura's father had become a continuing embarrassment to his only child, which made it a positive pleasure to answer Freddie's invitation to go to Twistleton Court, and help prepare for the war. The moment she had read her old friend's letter Laura had known that doing whatever was needed would give her life a purpose, which just at that moment she was only too aware it sadly needed.

The glasses of sherry drained, they all filed behind Aunt Jessica to the dining room, which at Twistleton Court was so far away from the kitchen that food had to be sent up on an internal lift, clanking and heaving its way up to the ground floor from the basement, where Blossom Valentyne, Aunt Jessie's eccentric cousin, who acted as housekeeper in return for the use of a cottage on the small estate, would be standing ready to receive it.

She turned when she saw the luncheon guests coming into the room with Jessica.

‘Miss Laura, how very nice to see you. Miss Freddie, the same,' she bellowed, raising her voice above the sound of two dachshunds barking. ‘Algy and Bertie are pleased to see you, too,' she added, moving towards the table, but since both Algy and Bertie were attached to either side of her waist on pieces of string, her progress, it seemed to Laura, was distinctly reminiscent of a barge moving along a canal.

‘Don't you trouble yourself, Blossom, we can help ourselves, thank you,' Jessica called down the room.

Blossom hesitated, but seeing the logic of this, and since Algy and Bertie's well-being always came before everything, she turned back to the sideboard.

‘I'll just wait here, while you all help yourselves; as you said – better that way.'

She settled herself comfortably to the side of the serving table, the dogs doing the same by her stoutly shod feet.