The Daisy Club (7 page)

Daisy, too, had fallen in love, but not with Guy Athlone. She had fallen in love with the heady aura of danger that he seemed to have about him. The fact that he was so different from anyone else she had ever met was hardly surprising – since she had rarely been allowed out of Twistleton, and even being allowed to stay at the Court with Freddie and the rest had been, from Aunt Maude's point of view, a huge concession. Daisy perfectly understood this, and indeed, if Aunt Maude felt over-protective of her niece, Daisy felt quite the same about her aunt.

Even leaving the old darling for twenty-four hours was a wrench, in the sense that she knew that Aunt Maude would be alone, and lonely, with only the pugs to keep her distracted from her state of being a single woman in a vast house filled with unused rooms, the rooms themselves for the most part filled with furniture covered in dust sheets. Indeed, so much of the Hall was protected by dust sheets, it would not have surprised Daisy to return and find Aunt Maude in the same state as most of the furniture.

By the time Daisy and the others rolled into their beds above the stables at the Court, she was filled with a sense of excitement. She had heard Gloria Martine talking about flying with a friend to Deauville, and what fun they had had. If Daisy could fly, as her father had done in the Great War, she would get away from everything that tied her to Twistleton.

She shut her eyes, imagining just what it would be like to be flying high above Twistleton. From hundreds of feet up Twistleton would be only a small dot, just one of many small dots. By flying above it, she would have left behind its sad history, which clung to her like a great lumbering monster, every hour of every day. The only trouble was – how could she actually do it? That was not just
a
question that needed answering, it was
the
only question that needed answering. Aunt Maude would not even hear of her going to London! She would need help. The others were already fast asleep when she realised, as always, just whose help she could call on.

Chapter Three

Well, there it was, the dinner was over.

Guy lit a cigarette before walking, still in his embroidered silk dressing gown and plain silk pyjamas, around his garden, normally a delight, even on an autumn morning, but, alas, not today. Today he was smoking furiously, and thinking even faster.

He was thinking about the bunch of fellow-travellers, Fascists and, God help him, appeasers, that he had had to entertain the previous night. Very well, it was his patriotic duty to listen to their twaddle, silently note the names of their friends, their foreign friends in particular – perhaps fiends would be a better word for some of them – and report back to George at ‘the office', as George's headquarters were currently, and really very euphemistically, known. But the truth of the matter was that it was a beastly feeling, afterwards, knowing that you were in the company of people who were gaily delivering innocent men, women, and children into the hands of the Nazis. Handing them over without a thought or a care, as if they were stuffed toys in a shop window, not human beings. He threw his cigarette into a flower bed, and watched its tiny light burning until it was finally extinguished, although a small spiral of smoke still rose from it for a few seconds.

Guy turned, ready to go back into the house, but not before having a last look round at everything that he normally so loved to appreciate. The sunshine on the lawn left uneven shadows; above him the September sky had assumed that particular pale blue that autumn brings even on its sunniest days. He reluctantly turned to go in, sighing, realising that without his even being aware of it, the beauty of his English garden had had a calming effect.

As he was about to reach out a hand to open the French windows that led into the Big Room, he heard a voice coming behind him making the silliest sound.

‘Psst!'

He turned, frowning lightly. What a perfectly ridiculous sound! No one surely said ‘psst' except on stage, or in a movie?

‘Psst to you, too!' he said, walking back to the centre of the lawn, while at the same time looking around him, still seeing no one.

‘Psst!' the sound came again, this time more insistently.

Guy stood stock still, knowing that in his silk Sulka dressing gown, plain dark-blue silk pyjamas, and hand-stitched slippers with G.A. embroidered on them, perhaps because it was already ten o'clock of an autumn morning, he must look every inch the decadent West End playwright.

‘Look, whoever you are, wherever you are, I am not going to ruin my new hand-stitched slippers tramping through the undergrowth to find you, so psst or not, I suggest you come out and, one way or another, face the music.'

From out of one of the far bushes a figure emerged. With the expertise of a man who was used to summing up everyone, instantly, whether at auditions or interviews, Guy turned a critical eye on the newcomer.

What he saw emerging from behind his really rather beautiful shrubs was the figure of a slender young girl, a young girl possessed of unruly long blonde hair, more than a little Pre-Raphaelite in style, with a figure that was thin, almost too thin, a heart-shaped face, blue-grey eyes, or were they grey-blue eyes? At any rate, pale eyes – not brilliant brown, as his were. He stared at her as she trod across the lawn.

‘You do realise you are trespassing?' he asked her in a lightly sarcastic voice.

She nodded.

‘Yes, and I am very sorry, but I was here last night, so it is more of a revisit, rather than an actual trespass, if you understand what I mean?'

Guy leaned forward, frowning.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I might.' He moved closer. ‘Ah yes, of course, of course, you were one of the debutante waitresses. I remember you now.'

‘No, I was
not
a debutante waitress,' Aurelia told him, suddenly indignant. ‘No, I was a
fake
waitress, not a debutante. I'm not in the least bit that kind of social person. As a matter of fact, I am so far from being like that, I am actually quite common,' she told him, pride in her voice.

Guy managed to keep a straight face.

‘Well, that makes two of us,' he said, changing the tone of his voice to chatty and interested, instead of vague and suspicious. ‘How common are you, though? I myself am dreadfully proud of being common, wouldn't want to be anything else. My mother worked in a laundry, and my father was a no-good layabout sometime-brush-salesman, so beat that, Gunga Din!'

‘Oh, I'm not quite as common as that. I am afraid you win, really you do,' Aurelia told him in a grave voice, and she gave a small sigh of admiration. ‘Just one generation into the middle of the upper-middle-classes, that's all I am. But that is not why I am here. I am not here because I am common.'

Guy sat down on a nearby bench and crossed his silk-clad legs, for given the really rather
Alice in Wonderland
conversation he was having, it seemed to be a good idea. He patted the seat beside him.

‘Why don't you sit down and tell me why you
are
here, dear?'

‘I don't think I'd better sit down, really not.'

‘Why not?'

‘It doesn't seem quite right, seeing that I was only asked here as a waitress. I think I'd better stand.'

‘How about a compromise? Pull up a chair?'

Aurelia sat down opposite Guy, determined not to show how nervous she was, and in many ways, over the next few minutes of their conversation – she thought afterwards, with some accuracy – she actually succeeded.

‘Let us begin again, now that we understand we are both common, although not vulgar, I trust. Why
are
you here?' Guy asked her.

The expression on Aurelia's face was solemn to the point of being almost tragic, her eyes unblinking.

‘Because I want to be near you.'

‘Ah.'

Guy was all too used to people wanting to be near him. He had always had star quality, and what was more, and this had been vital to his success, he had always known it. Nevertheless, seeing that the young girl seated on the garden chair opposite him was totally uninvited, and he knew nothing about her at all, he found himself having the sense quickly to look her over, making sure that she had nothing about her that was suspicious, or strange, nothing on her slender young person of which he should be wary.

He was reassured at once: her cotton dress was thin enough to reveal anything untoward that she might be concealing, and she did not seem to have brought with her any kind of handbag wherein she might have hidden an unfriendly knife, or a ladies' pistol.

‘You want to be near me?' he repeated. ‘Well – Miss?'

‘Smith-Jones.'

‘Well, that is very flattering, I am sure, but although I don't wish to disillusion you, my country house, as you doubtless found out last night, is not nearly big enough to accommodate all the people who feel as you do, and nor, I am sorry to tell you, is my London house. I have rather too many admirers, and a great deal too many fans, and although I am delighted to include you in their number, I am quite unable to accommodate you. So how about if I gave you a signed photograph, and promised to let you know the date of my next country dinner party, so that you could come and make another grand fist of being a waitress?'

Aurelia stared at him. He did not realise, could not realise, and she must not let him know, that she was in love with him. She must act casual, but determined. He must be made to realise that she would do anything, but anything, for him – now, or in the future – but at the same time she had to be very, very careful not to appear ordinary.

‘I could not possibly take a signed photograph from you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because,' she hesitated, and then came up with what she imagined was a trump card, ‘because it is such an everyday-ish, common thing to do.'

Yet again Guy found himself struggling not to laugh.

‘Well, I must admit it might be just a little, particularly given that you know me already,' he agreed. ‘Signed photographs are really for fans, and for royal personages to put on their pianos. So you are right, it might be the wrong thing for you to accept a photograph, now I come to think of it—' he laughed in a lightly amused way.

‘But I will come and waitress at any of your dinner parties, from now until the earth closes over me.'

Guy looked at her, startled.

‘I don't give that many dinner parties, I truly do not,' he protested. ‘My publicity may have given you to understand that I endlessly socialise, but actually, if the truth be known, my favourite day is spent working, having a good lunch, going for a walk or a swim, and then early to bed with supper on a tray! Hardly the imagined day of a successful West End playwright and actor, you must agree. In fact I never give dinner parties unless I can help it, although you might not believe that.'

‘Even so, whenever you do, wherever you are, I will always come and help you out,' Aurelia stated, her expression solemn. ‘But that is how devoted I am to you. I will do whatever you want, until the earth closes over me.'

‘That sounds just a little too Emily Brontë,
Wuthering Heights
, for my taste, dear Miss Smith-Jones. Could you take it again? Perhaps think of re-phrasing, making it a tiny bit lighter?'

Aurelia frowned.

‘Well, I could, now I have made how I feel clear to you,' she agreed. ‘So, to put it another way.' She hesitated, before beginning again. ‘If I said I will always be loyal to you to the end of my days, would that be better?'

‘Yes, a great deal better, but not I hope, for your sake, true. Now it is time you went, and time I went in.'

Aurelia stood up, and held out a slim hand.

‘Thank you very much for seeing me—'

‘Don't you mean spotting you, as in – in the bushes?'

‘I daresay,' Aurelia agreed, turning and making her way across the lawn to the bushes once more.

‘No, no need to go back that way, dear girl. I will call Clive and he can run you back to Twistleton.'

‘I can walk. I walked here.'

‘It is the least I can do after such a declaration of faith, and I think we can both agree that it will not be at all
common
.'

He laughed lightly once more, before disappearing in a really rather magical manner through the French windows into the Big Room.

Aurelia sat back in the smart car that Guy's secretary Clive had brought round to the front, and stared ahead of her. She could not believe her own audacity, she could not believe what she had just done, and she certainly could not believe that Guy Athlone's secretary, Clive Montfort, was running her back to Twistleton Court.

‘Who was that?'

‘Mr Athlone's secretary. He just ran me back.'

Daisy stared at Aurelia in growing admiration.

‘Still waters run deep. Whatever was he running you back
from
?'

‘His house,' Aurelia said, waving to the retreating car.

‘He was running you back from his house, for the reason of?'

‘Getting rid of me, really, that was the reason. He just didn't want me around any more. He was in his dressing gown,' she added, absently. ‘So he had to go in to change, although I think he had had breakfast, because the dining room was cleared.'

Daisy sped after Aurelia, and turned her round.

‘No, you don't, young lady,' she murmured. ‘You tell all, or Daisy will give you a Chinese burn.'

They both laughed.

‘I went over to the farmhouse early this morning, and I told Guy Athlone – I found him in the garden smoking a cigarette – that I would devote my life to him.'

Daisy stared at Aurelia. She knew that Relia had always had a streak of hysteria in her, but really this was the kind of thing that you read about in newspapers, young girls with a ‘pash' on famous men breaking into their houses and swearing everlasting devotion to them – one of them even did it to Hitler, for heaven's sake.