The Proposal (20 page)

‘I was rather distracted by the waiters.’

‘Judy says her mum hand-picked the most handsome boys from the village and paid them three shillings each to tend to us all night long.’

‘Go easy, Sal. It’s a marathon, not a sprint,’ said Georgia, watching her friend tip brandy from a hip flask into her glass.

‘Dutch courage,’ she grinned. ‘See the tall guy over there? Broad shoulders? He winked at me as soon as he got off the bus.’

‘It could have been a twitch rather than an invitation.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Sally, adjusting her cleavage.

Georgia watched her friend introduce herself to the strapping Cirencester student, remembering that her cousin Clarissa had warned her to avoid them. As Sally giggled and flirted, Georgia wanted to go over and tell her to stop. On the train she had confided that she had cut the neckline of her colbalt-blue couture gown into a daring scoop with a pair of scissors, and now her breasts were barely contained in her dress. There were several girls on the circuit who were getting a reputation for being a little ‘fast’, and Georgia did not want her friend to be one of them.

Before she could take action, she was shunted into the timber-framed barn, which smelt of hay and a lingering scent of horse manure, and introduced to Judy’s aunt Betty, who had come all the way from Cumberland for the party. For the next hour she was stuck with Aunt Betty, discussing the merits of John Donne over William Wordsworth until the finger buffet was served.

In London, the dances didn’t usually start until 8 p.m., but people here appeared to have been drinking punch or Pimm’s since late afternoon, and most of the guests seemed intoxicated. Judy’s parents and the more elderly guests had long since retired to the drawing room to drink gin, whilst several couples had left the barn, no doubt to go snogging in the bushes.

‘Fancy it?’ asked one of the heavy-thighed Cirencester students, sidling up to her with a canapé.

‘Fancy what?’ she replied, guessing that he was not referring to his cheese and pineapple nibble. Her best withering expression was enough to drive him away, and she decided that she definitely needed a cigarette.

She’d tried, she really had tried this evening. The problem was that other than Sally, she had no real friends at the party. Besides which, everyone had already paired off, and even if there were some single men still available, she knew she couldn’t flirt to save her life.

Feeling like a complete gooseberry, she went outside to have a smoke. In the bushes she saw a familiar flash of cobalt blue, and for a moment she wondered if she should go and fish out Sally from her al fresco assignation.

She looked up at the house, which was lit up and glowing in the dark. It seemed to be laughing at her.

Bugger this
, she thought, stamping out her cigarette. She was so tired, even the thought of her attic camp bed had considerable appeal. She kicked off her shoes and ran across the lawn, enjoying the feel of the cool grass under her feet, then upstairs to the attic, slipping past a couple who were kissing on the staircase on the way. The door was closed. She pushed it open and saw a deb lying on one of the camp beds with her skirt hoicked up above her waist, her white panties on full show. A young man dressed in black tie turned round and growled that the room was taken.

‘But this is my bedroom,’ argued Georgia before being told to clear off.

She grabbed her suitcase, which she had thankfully not properly unpacked, and slammed the door behind her.

It was the same story in the room next door and the one next to that. She had no idea what the adults downstairs were doing, but they were clearly not paying any attention to the ‘socialising’ going on upstairs.

‘No wonder it’s called the Season,’ she muttered to herself as she found another bedroom occupied. ‘Everyone’s on bloody heat.’

She sat down on the threadbare carpet on the staircase until she was moved along by the housekeeper, who told her to hurry back outside. The sober realisation that she had no desire to go back into the barn and nowhere to go in the house made her feel excluded and miserable.

Then it struck her that she did not have to stay here.

She was invisible, but there was an upside to that.

If she was invisible, then no one would know she was gone. She glanced at her watch. It was only a few miles into Oxford, and it was just past nine o’clock. She could get the train back to London and be home before midnight. And even if the trains had finished for the night, she could check into a hotel. Certainly if her mother had moved to Provence at seventeen, then Georgia could find her way home from a miserable party in Oxfordshire.

Her mind was made up. At finishing school, good manners and etiquette had been drilled into them, but Georgia no longer cared what people like the Fortescues thought of her. And whilst she felt a pang of guilt for leaving Sally, her friend was otherwise occupied by Cirencester farmers and alcohol, and wouldn’t notice she was gone until breakfast.

She crept into Sally’s room, where there was a carafe of water and three sheets of crested writing paper and a pencil on the bedside table. She scribbled a few words of goodbye and apology, asking Sally to cover for her absence and suggesting that she have a banana and a glass of still ginger beer – Estella’s recommended hangover cure for the morning after. She left the note on Sally’s pillow and picked up her suitcase.

She heard footsteps in the distance – the quick, efficient steps of the housekeeper against the house’s stone floors – but they were going in the opposite direction, so she took her chance.

The front door was closed but unlocked and she slipped outside. As she ran down the gravel path, the sound of the jazz band playing ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ soared up into the evening air. She loved that song, but it was not enough to keep her there.

The journey from Oxford train station to the Fortescues’ house hadn’t seemed very long in the taxi – just a few minutes, although as she and Sally had been gossiping the whole way, it was hard to tell. It was certainly too far to walk, so when a bus came that apparently stopped in the city centre, she flagged it down. ‘Night’s drawing in, young lady,’ said the conductor with a note of disapproval.

‘Can you let me know when it’s the stop for Oxford station?’ she asked as politely as she could.

She took a seat and leant her head against the window, enjoying the cool sensation of the glass against her cheek, glad that she had escaped the party. She was lost in her thoughts when she realised that the conductor was shouting at her that it was her stop. She jumped out of her seat with a start, grabbed her suitcase and leapt off the bus.

The train station was almost deserted. It seemed to be colder than the rest of town, and smelt of smoke and soot.

‘Has the last train to London left yet?’ she asked the attendant anxiously.

He shook his head. ‘It goes in a couple of minutes.’

‘A single to Paddington then.’ She smiled with relief.

He told her the price and she reached to get her purse.

‘My purse, my handbag . . .’ she whispered with dawning horror. She felt sick as she realised that she had left her little black handbag on the bus.

‘That’s two shillings and sixpence,’ repeated the attendant.

‘I haven’t got any money,’ she croaked with panic.

The man shrugged apologetically.

Georgia ran into the street, but there was no sign of the bus. Sinking to the floor, her case wedged between her legs, she put her head in her hands as she heard a whistle blow and the last train leave for London.

She was stuck, stranded, she thought, feeling the cheese and pineapple nibbles curdle in her stomach.

Forcing herself to think, she realised that she had two options. There was a shilling in her pocket, left over from the taxi fare earlier, and she could use it either to get the bus back to the Fortescues’ or to make a phone call to Uncle Peter asking him to come and collect her. Neither option was appealing. Or was there a third way? she wondered, suddenly thinking about Edward Carlyle, who often popped into her head unbidden.

He lived in Oxford. Surely he wouldn’t be hard to find. Edward Carlyle. He would have to save her once again.

She found a small tobacconist’s shop that was still open and pleaded with the owner to show her a map that was for sale on the counter.

Remembering that Edward was at Christ Church, she located where she was now, and tried to find where the college was in relation to that. Then she left the shop and began to walk in the direction of Christ Church Meadow, down alleyways, past honey-coloured buildings and gated entrances through which she could glimpse quadrangles and gardens. It was almost dark and her suitcase was heavy, but although she wanted to get to Edward’s college as quickly as possible, there was something so bewitching about Oxford that she wanted to pause every few minutes to drink it in.

She took a left on to St Aldates, looking for the entrance to the college, realising with further panic that as it was Saturday night, he might not even be at home. Her heart pounding, she spotted a gateway marked Tom Tower, which from the map had looked as if it constituted part of the college.

‘Can I help you?’

An old man in a bowler hat by a porter’s lodge indicated that she should go no further.

‘I’m looking for Edward Carlyle,’ she said, putting down her suitcase. ‘He lives here.’

‘And you are?’

‘His cousin,’ she offered, not entirely convincingly. ‘I’ve been stranded in Oxford. I lost my bag in a taxi on my way to a debs’ ball . . .’

‘A debs’ ball?’ he said suspiciously.

She nodded more confidently, her little fiction gaining truth in her own head as she spoke it.

‘I need to speak to Cousin Edward and ask him to lend me some money to get to the venue. Otherwise I’ll be stranded and the host will be furious and the debutante whose party it is will be just devastated that I haven’t made it to probably the most important event of her life . . .’

She felt a little spike of guilt, remembering her escape from the festivities. She wondered if Sally had found the note and alerted anyone to her disappearance.

‘Stranded, you say?’ said the old man. ‘In which case, I had better enquire as to his whereabouts . . . Wait here, please, Miss . . .’

‘Hamilton. Georgia Hamilton. Related on my mother’s side,’ she added quickly.

The porter frowned and disappeared down a stone path across a quadrangle with a beautiful stone fountain in the centre sending feathers of water into the night sky.

It was a further five minutes before he came slowly back across the quad towards her, although it felt like a lot longer.

‘Sorry. Mr Carlyle is not in his room or in the JCR.’

‘Then what am I supposed to do?’ asked Georgia with a flood of panic.

The man didn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation.

‘I’m afraid we can’t let young ladies into the college at this time,’ he said in his slow, measured voice. ‘But perhaps you would like to use my telephone?’

And phone who? she wondered, knowing how worried – no, how
furious
everyone back in London would be.

‘The Eagle and Child and The Bear are both popular with the students. Perhaps you’ll find your cousin there,’ offered the porter. ‘But really, it is rather late, young lady.’

‘I’ll try there,’ she said quickly, picking up the suitcase.

She felt a chill on the breeze and shivered.

‘Pubs, pubs . . .’ she muttered as she walked, wondering if she should just use her shilling to buy a pint of beer.

She popped into one pub and then another, all crammed with confident, clever-looking students. Several times she thought she saw Edward, although the truth was, it was hard to even remember what he looked like.

She stood at the bus stop, letting fate decide her next turn. If a bus came headed in the direction of the Fortescues’ within the next ten minutes, she would take it. Otherwise . . .

Looking up, she saw a figure walking towards her, his hands stuffed in his pockets and a newspaper in the crook of his arm.

‘Edward!’ she shouted joyfully, running towards him.

She threw down her case and embraced him, and he stepped back in surprise.

‘Georgia. What on earth are you doing here? Running away?’ he asked, glancing down at her bag.

‘Yes! How did you know?’ she said. ‘I’ve run away from a party. I felt a complete gooseberry, and even though I tried really hard to enjoy it, it was quite ghastly.’

‘Was it in Oxford?’

‘Somewhere countrysidey,’ she said, waving her hand. ‘I thought I’d get the train back to London, but I left my purse on the bus and now I’m stranded and I didn’t know anyone and I went to your college and said I was your cousin and—’

‘Slow down a minute . . . So you’ve got no way of getting home?’

She shook her head and looked embarrassed.

‘Looks like you’ve got to rescue me again.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be the type to need a white knight once, let alone twice.’

‘It’s an emergency. I need to borrow some money, though I’ve missed the last train now.’

‘It’s a good job you saw me,’ he said cynically.