Debutantes: In Love (23 page)

‘When that ghastly Lady Cynthia brought out the story about Elaine,’ she continued, ‘about her being pregnant, I mean, and me being her illegitimate daughter, she thought that was enough to blackmail me into silence, that the threat of disgrace would make me give up the idea of marrying her son.’ She gave a little laugh – to her own ears it sounded unforced and not bitter, and she was pleased about that. ‘But of course she need not have bothered. The mere threat that she wouldn’t pay his tailor’s bills was enough for Charles – he backed off instantly. But, you see, Morgan, I don’t ever want to be in that position again. I want to be open and honest. I want to say to the world, “I’m not an earl’s daughter; I’m a talented film director.” And if someone asks me to marry him, then I’ll tell him the truth immediately, if he doesn’t know it already of course . . .’

‘Good for you!’ Now the smile was back on Morgan’s face – for a moment she thought that he might be going to hug her, but he just put his left arm around her shoulders in a brotherly fashion and squeezed them in the way that he used to do when she was twelve years old. Does he still think of me as just a child? she wondered.

‘Did you feel very bad when he rejected you?’ The words were blunt, but the expression on his face was tender. His right hand touched her cheek gently but he withdrew it immediately.

‘I thought I did,’ she said, ‘but I’ve realized that he wasn’t in love with me, not really. And what’s good is that now I realize that I wasn’t in love with him either. I was in love with the idea of
being in love
, if that makes sense. My pride has been crushed and I feel very foolish, but now, a few hours later, I find that I don’t really mind as much as I thought I would.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Perhaps now I’m ready to
really
fall in love,’ she said, and raised her eyes, watching his face. There was a sudden flush on his cheekbones that enhanced the tanned skin that stayed with him through winter and summer alike. His dark eyes glowed and then he looked away.

‘As long as you remember that you’re too old for fairy tales,’ he said abruptly, and then turned away and started to look around the narrow streets.

‘Do you know,’ he said suddenly, ‘I remember that gasworks the woman mentioned. It was enormous – like a giant drum, a tall and enormous drum; I can remember looking up at it.’

‘Let’s go and see the place where you were living when you were little – I know that it will be different, but you never know – some other memories might come back to you,’ said Daisy. Somehow she wanted to prolong the morning. Perhaps it was the interest of finding out about Morgan’s past, or whether it was his undemanding company, but the bitter humiliation of the interview with Lady Cynthia had been soothed and she was conscious of feeling genuinely happy.

‘Come on,’ she said turning back towards the car. ‘Let’s go to Albert Row.’

Albert Row had never really recovered from the explosion. There were still rows of ruined tiny terraced houses, back to back with each other, with only narrow, weed-filled yards separating them from each other. Here and there a couple of houses had been rebuilt, but the place was filthy and derelict. They both got out of the car and walked around.

‘Mustn’t have been much fun living here,’ commented Morgan.

‘Do you remember anything?’ asked Daisy. ‘See that place up there . . .’ She went a bit nearer to a big building and made out the words ‘LABOUR EXCHANGE’ beneath the burned-out roof.

‘Nothing; it doesn’t seem a bit familiar.’ Morgan looked around him. ‘It’s funny, but I thought we had a garden. I seem to remember a garden. Yes, I do!’ He stopped suddenly and thumped a fist against a letter box. ‘We did have a garden. I remember having my birthday in the garden. And the sun was out. I was born in June, like she used to sing to me, not in December! They’ve got the wrong boy! I’m sure of it now. This wasn’t the place where I lived.’

Daisy looked at him with excitement. ‘Let’s have a look around – just walk around and see if anything comes back to you. This is like a detective story – like one of those books by Agatha Christie where Tommy and Tuppence were going around London picking up clues.’ To while away the time as they walked, she chatted about the film that she was editing with the Bright Young Things pouring out of the taxi and dancing in the jazz club. ‘I need a good name,’ she finished. ‘Can you think of anything?’

‘Perhaps just call it
Jazz
or
Jazzy
– it’s the most fashionable music at the moment,’ he suggested, but he wasn’t giving her his full attention. ‘There!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s where the gasworks used to be – see, it’s a coal yard now, but you can still see the remains of it.’

‘How near were you to it?’ Daisy found herself getting excited.

‘Not very, I don’t think. I remember going for a walk and smelling it before I got close. I don’t think that we could see it from our garden. But of course I was only three.’

‘Look over there – something that wasn’t burned down.’ Daisy pointed to a church. ‘I’d say that’s a few hundred years old. Great-Aunt Lizzie used to teach us about different styles of church building.’ Suddenly an idea came to her and she said quickly, ‘You can’t find your birth certificate if you don’t know your real name or your real date of birth, but we could look at the records of children baptized in the parish in June . . . what year was it?’

‘1900,’ he said, and then grinned. ‘I lied about my age to get into the army and then had to lie to your father when I went for this job. I’m twenty-three, nearly twenty-four now though – a nice respectable age if they want to start another war.’

‘Let’s go to the vicarage,’ said Daisy.

The vicarage was a newly built house surrounded by a moss-infested lawn with the stump of some ancient tree in the middle of it. They rang the bell twice before it was answered by a maidservant in a dirty apron.

‘Yes,’ she said snappily.

‘We’d like to see the vicar.’ Daisy took charge. She sensed that Morgan was almost reluctant to uncover the past any further. Perhaps, she thought, he feared the destruction of his memories of a happy and pretty young mother singing songs to him and holding a party tea for him in a garden full of June flowers.

‘What about?’ The maid sounded most unfriendly and Daisy saw Morgan take a backwards step.

‘We’d like to look at the baptismal entries for June 1900,’ she said, trying to sound a little like Great-Aunt Lizzie. The girl’s eyebrows shot up and she gave Daisy a wondering look. Daisy stared back haughtily.
None of your business
, she said to herself.

‘Well, you can’t. Vicar’s away on his holidays – won’t be back until the second of June. Mr Hardiman from the next parish comes to take the Sunday service, but he won’t have no time for looking at registers.’

‘Well, we’ll make an appointment for the first week in June, perhaps the fourth?’ said Daisy firmly. ‘Three o’clock. Perhaps you would be good enough to write it down.’

‘What name?’ asked the maid reluctantly, taking a large, leather-bound diary from the hall table.

‘Carruthers,’ said Daisy. ‘Miss Carruthers.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Friday 9 May 1924

‘Oh, my dear children,’ said Lady Dorothy. ‘Oh, Basil, how could you? Poppy, you naughty, naughty girl. People keep phoning me! Now what are we going to do? Your brother is going to be so, so furious with you, Baz.’

‘Sorry,’ said Poppy demurely.

‘Oh, Mama,’ said Baz, ‘you don’t mind really. You’re just worrying about what Ambrose will say.’

‘Oh, goody,’ said Rose. ‘You’ve got the papers.’

‘Yes, indeed. Joan was up early and she bought them.’

‘Dearest Mama, I cannot tell a lie,’ said Joan, yawning. ‘In truth I was out so late that the morning papers were already on the streets when we were coming home. Some of my crowd went on to Mary’s party after yours finished,’ she explained to Poppy. ‘It’s just too sick-making to go home early.’

‘Oh, pray, look at this!’ said Rose, enraptured. ‘
Earl’s Daughter Drops Bombshell
– and a great picture of Elaine and Jack with their jaws dropping – pity you’re not a duke’s daughter, Poppy. It would have sounded so much better –
Duke’s Daughter Drops
. . . now what can I use instead of “bombshell”? I know – this is better.
Shock Disclosure from Duke’s Daughter – Dashing Debutante Dares All in Her Desperation. This Is the Man I Love,
Sa
ys Lady Poppy Derrington
.’

Poppy smothered a giggle and turned a bland face to Lady Dorothy, who was shaking her head and repeating the words ‘my dear children’ over and over again.

‘Don’t fuss, Mama,’ said Baz, dropping a kiss on top of his mother’s fashionably cropped hair. ‘We’ll be all right.’

‘It’s what your brother will say,’ mourned Lady Dorothy. It was amazing, thought Poppy, how elderly relations continually repeated themselves.

‘Well, Ambrose wanted me to go to Oxford, the silly chump, and that would have cost him a packet – all those Oxford fellows get into debt all the time. Let him give me what he would have spent on my getting a BA from Oxford, and that will keep us going until the Jazz Club makes a fortune.’

‘Failing a BA, probably, dearest,’ said Poppy gently. ‘Oh, don’t do that, you beast. Lady Dorothy, rescue me!’

‘You are a silly pair.’ Lady Dorothy shook her head sadly and Poppy pulled herself away from Baz, threw a velvet cushion at him and began to think hard.

‘How much?’ she demanded. ‘How much was your brother going to give you?’

Baz shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to go.’

‘
Honourable Basil Pattenden Disdains Oxford Honours
.’ Rose had her notebook open and was busy scribbling, murmuring to herself as her pencil moved along the lines. ‘
Lady Poppy Is More Precious Than Academia, Says Son of Earl
.’

Poppy thought hard for a moment and then went across and sat on the sofa beside Lady Dorothy. It was important, she felt, that her future mother-in-law be swiftly reconciled to their engagement.

‘Dear Lady Dorothy,’ she said, stroking the woman’s hand, ‘you are so understanding. I do love you so much.’

‘It will have to be a very long engagement,’ said Lady Dorothy. Her tone was intended to be severe, but Poppy could hear that she was weakening.

‘We’ll do whatever you say,’ she murmured submissively. Baz, she thought, looking across at him lovingly, was adopting the pose of a man of the world, with his thumbs stuck into his waistcoat pockets, but his eyes had the faraway look which showed that he was thinking of a jazz tune.

‘Baz and I,’ she said appealingly to Lady Dorothy, ‘we love each other very much; we will just be so happy together.’

Lady Dorothy kissed her affectionately. ‘My dear, you two are like the little babes in the woods,’ she said, but there was a soft look in her eye and she looked helplessly across the room at her daughter.

‘We need Chomondley,’ said Joan firmly. She crossed the room, picked up the telephone and asked for Mayfair 3493. She waited.

‘I don’t care if you were asleep,’ she said when the speaker at the other end of the line had spluttered into action. She listened for a moment and then said firmly, ‘Dearest man, if you are going to take that line with me, then I shall just put this telephone down and you’ll have to do your own job, instead of me giving you the most wonderful piece of copy for the evening newspapers. Now stop talking nonsense about the pain in your head and complaining about the racket the birds are making. Just take your pencil and write this down and then you can phone it through and go back to sleep for the rest of the day. Ready?’

‘A little bird tells me . . .’ prompted Rose, and Joan nodded and repeated the words: ‘
A little bird tells that the owner of the latest and most fashionable jazz club
. . . its name? – I don’t know . . . wait a minute.’ Joan covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with one hand. ‘What’s the name of the club, Baz?’

‘Dunno,’ said Baz after a few seconds’ thought.

‘Very Heaven.’ Poppy had suddenly remembered the line of poetry: ‘To be young was very heaven’. It had come true, after all. She hugged herself, kicked off her shoes and began to shimmy across the floor, rotating her hands vigorously backwards and forwards, keeping her fingers spread open with the palms facing out and facing first to one side and then to the other while maintaining the rhythm with her pointed feet.

‘
To be young is very heaven!
’ she sang, fitting the words to a jazz rhythm and noting with pleasure that Lady Dorothy was now smiling.

‘
The owner of the latest and most fashionable jazz club, VERY HEAVEN
, SUTCHELEY STREET, BELGRAVIA – put all of that in capital letters, Chomondley, won’t you? Yes, yes, put the address. I don’t care if the Social Editor doesn’t like addresses; do as I tell you – we want people to come . . . Where was I?’

‘
Has presented his new fiancée to his mother
,’ whispered Rose.

‘Yes,’ continued Joan. ‘
The honourable Basil Pattenden has presented his new fiancée, Lady Poppy Derrington, to his mother. I have been reliably informed that Lady Dorothy is enchanted by the romantic match
.’