Dorothy Eden (27 page)

“Life isn’t like that, Daisy,” Miss Sloane pointed out in her flat voice. “But I can see you will never believe me. You will only find out to your sorrow by living it, and being unprepared for trouble.”

Soon, there was the great excitement of the victory celebrations after the final defeat of the Boers by the British army.

Papa was quietly triumphant about that old Boer Kruger’s humiliation, and said that if the same thing could happen to the Emperor of Germany the world should be free from war, and Britain and its vast Empire safe, for generations to come.

With the party-loving King Edward on the throne business boomed. Bonnington’s Mantles Department became inundated with orders for morning gowns, tea gowns, ball gowns, gowns for Ascot and Henley, for Badminton and Eton, the Derby and Goodwood, and the parties that followed these events, not to mention the entire trousseaux ladies required for country house weekends. The flood overwhelmed Miss Brown. She tottered about, her thin old body looking about to crack in half. Against her will Florence found herself getting drawn more into the running of the department. She had to admit it was strangely hypnotic, the chaotic rush that went on in the workrooms contrasting sharply with the soft-carpeted hush of the showrooms. There, the more affluent customers sat on couches and sipped a glass of sherry or champagne, while saleswomen, trained in a reverential manner, showed the latest models.

If Florence, like her mother, found herself concerned with the chilblains and the head colds and the sometimes severe cases of undernourishment of the girls in the workroom, cutting, hemming, basting, ironing, working on expensive materials that must not be ruined by the blood from a pricked finger, or an unwary drop from a clogged-up nose, she also got a thrill of satisfaction from making an important sale. Even more so from guiding a floundering customer (one of the many of the
nouveaux riches,
frequently accompanied by a portly husband) into good taste. So she must have inherited some talent for trade. However, she was only filling in time, as everyone knew.

Captain Fielding was due back in England any day. Actually any day!

She was twenty-three and Desmond had been away a little more than five years. He would be twenty-five and eager to marry. Would he still admire her? She would be humbly content with admiration at first. It would grow into love, with time. She herself could hardly wait to pour out her love on him. After all those letters she felt she knew him absolutely, his integrity, his sense of duty, his courage (although he frankly admitted to moments of fear), his ideals which included faithfulness to one woman. What was more, he had not minded her occupying herself in the shop. It kept her out of mischief, ha ha, while he was away. But such a thing was not to be taken seriously, of course. She was naturally destined for marriage to some lucky fellow.

Of course he meant that he hoped to be the lucky fellow. Didn’t he? Florence, with her diffidence, and her lack of confidence, had to overcome some anxiety. She did this by never being still, never allowing herself time to brood. She flew about like an animated broomstick, Papa said. But the tension suited her. Her eyes shone and for the first time in her life she had an attractive stain of colour in her cheeks.

And one afternoon, without any announcement at all, Captain Fielding walked into Overton House, admitted by a flustered Hilda, who later said, below stairs, that he was so tall and handsome, and when he had heard that Miss Florence was at the shop and only Miss Daisy at home, practising on the piano, he had said that he would enjoy whiling away an hour with Miss Daisy until Miss Florence came home. So what could Hilda do but announce him to Miss Daisy in the music room.

Miss Daisy had been singing one of her French songs. She was ever so clever with her French. But when the young gentleman had spoken she had stopped on mid-note, jumped up, and in her impulsive way, almost flung herself into his arms.

A little later she rang for tea.

“We’ll have it in here, Hilda,” she said. She was sitting in one of the basket chairs near the french windows, and Captain Fielding was sitting opposite her. The sun shone through the overhanging creepers, making a curious green light, so that the two of them, the tall soldier in his smart uniform, and Miss Daisy with her skirts spread about her and her thick hair with its rich reddish tints hanging over her shoulders, looked like something out of a painting. Ever so romantic, Hilda said.

Tea and plum cake and hot scones and strawberry jam. The Captain, just home from India, must have an English tea, Miss Daisy said. She had such a way of putting her heart into everything, she made you feel that you were the one person she had most wanted to see. No doubt she was doing exactly that to Captain Fielding at this moment. It was a great gift. Though how she would manage all the followers she would be bound to have in two or three years was another matter. She would be thought a terrible flirt, no doubt, but anyone who knew her realised her friendliness came simply from a warm heart. All the same, the sooner Miss Florence got home, the better, Hilda thought.

On hearing the unbelievable news when she did arrive home an hour later, Florence rushed to the music room, bursting in with an impulsiveness unusual to her.

By this time tea was finished and Captain Fielding was leaning back comfortably in his chair relating some incident to Daisy who was listening with her air of entranced attention. When she saw Florence, however, she sprang up with an exclamation of pleasure.

“Flo dear, we’ve been waiting for you. Captain Fielding thought you would never come.”

Florence held out her hand and had it gripped by Captain Fielding. A sudden paralysing shyness made her almost unable to look at him. She only noted that he was taller than she remembered and that his luxuriant moustache seemed white against his brick-red skin. His high-bridged nose was arrogant, his eyes a gentle blue.

“In black?” he said, looking at her in surprise. “Are you wearing mourning for somebody?”

She was able to laugh.

“Oh, no. This is my working dress. I’ve been at the shop.”

“The shop?”

“I told you in my letters. I got so bored doing nothing.”

“Oh, of course. You’ve been selling buttons and pins and needles all day. How amusin’.” Could he have been a good soldier if he were this vague? Or was it Daisy who had addled his wits?

“You didn’t let us know you were coming.”

“No. Our ship got in a couple of days early. Thought I’d give you a surprise, Miss Overton.”

“Florence,” she corrected. All those letters ‘
My dear Florence…
’ and now he was talking to her as if she were a stranger. Perhaps he was as shy as she was. She always forgot that other people could be shy.

“Florence, of course. But would I be shockingly rude if I told you I don’t care for you in black? Whatever you say, it looks like mourning.”

“I’m going to change immediately. You can stay to dinner, can’t you?”

“I hadn’t intended that. I just dropped in—”

“Oh, you must, please. Mamma and Papa will never forgive you if you don’t.”

“And what about you?”

Florence was about to answer that neither would she when she realised he was speaking to Daisy.

“Of course, Captain Fielding. We all expect you.” Daisy had contrived to shoot Florence the briefest glance, one eyebrow raised, one eyelid falling in the ghost of a wink. Florence knew that cry for rescue well enough. The foolish girl bent her ardent gaze on all and sundry, and then wondered why she couldn’t escape them.

“Captain Fielding has been telling me fascinating stories about India, Flo. He’ll want to tell them to you.”

“I must say Miss Daisy is a capital audience,” Captain Fielding said enthusiastically. “If I stay to dinner, Miss Daisy, will you promise to sing to me again?”

“You’re so kind,” Daisy murmured, with her grown-up air. “May I tell Mamma and Papa we have a guest for dinner, Florence?”

She had whisked out of the room before Florence could answer, and Desmond was saying admiringly, “I say, I couldn’t believe how grown up she is.”

“She isn’t out of the schoolroom,” Florence said, with a trace of stiffness.

“Well, you could have deceived me.”

“She’s not sixteen yet.”

“She’s going to be a beauty. She is already.”

“Yes, she has all the looks in our family.”

Captain Fielding tugged at his moustache, realising his clumsiness.

“Forgive me, that wasn’t very gallant. I’ve been out of society for too long. You have charming looks yourself. Except for that depressing dress, mind you. Do go and change it. I’ll be quite content here. I’ll wander in the garden. Smell some English air. God, it’s good to be home.”

“Is it?” Florence asked eagerly. He had said she had charming looks…

“It certainly is. And I’m not expecting to be posted abroad again. Unless there’s a war, of course. So I’ve the chance to settle down.”

In spite of her impatience to be downstairs, Florence took a whole hour to dress for dinner. She borrowed Hawkins from Mamma, to do her hair and to button the twenty or so buttons down the back of her new oyster-coloured lace, made especially for Desmond’s homecoming. Of course she had looked depressing in black. She would never wear it again in his presence.

“A simple hair style suits you best, Miss Florence,” Hawkins said.

“But I don’t want a simple style. I want an elaborate one. I should think Captain Fielding is tired of simple old-fashioned styles. The ladies in Delhi wouldn’t have had a Hawkins to do their hair.”

Hawkins compressed her lips. “Being a flatterer doesn’t suit you, Miss Florence.”

“Am I so dull! That I must wear a simple hair style and have no feminine wiles, like flattery.”

“I’m only saying it’s always best to be yourself.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t. That’s a complete fallacy.”

Hawkins stood back, eyeing Florence’s thin, strange elegance in the new dress. She could be something, when she was thirty. All the same…

“You look as if you’re going to Buckingham Palace, Miss Florence. And if that’s suitable for a quiet dinner at home—”

“I’m not having Daisy upstaging me in a Worth gown this time, Hawkins. That’s what.”

But, although Daisy was wearing an unadorned muslin dress that was suitably young, she had chosen to put up her hair, without permission, naturally, and suddenly she was precipitated into maturity. She looked, Florence thought, shocked but helplessly admiring, exactly as Captain Fielding would have expected her to look in two years’ time. The glossy topknot allowed tendrils to escape over her ears and the nape of her narrow little neck. She looked ravishing.

It was scarcely surprising that Captain Fielding didn’t seem able to take his eyes off her, or to notice especially that Florence had taken a great deal of trouble to remove the image of herself in her black shop dress.

Mamma was angry with Daisy, that was obvious. Papa, however, as could be expected, gave his doting smile and said rather wistfully that his youngest daughter seemed in a hurry to grow up.

Edwin, back from his day’s work in Whitehall (he was now a very junior secretary waiting for a posting abroad) ignored both of his sisters. He wanted to talk to Captain Fielding about his favourite subject, the army, and war.

Had he been in many skirmishes? Had he had to put down any local rebellions? What guns did he think the most effective, Mausers or Lee Enfields? Was the day of the cavalry over, as some military experts seemed to think? Would he be interested, after dinner, in looking at his grandfather’s collection of model soldiers, to which he himself was now making additions?

“I picked up a dozen Meissen porcelain models at a saleroom today. They were ridiculously cheap.”

“What regiment?” asked Captain Fielding.

“What do you call cheap?” asked Mamma suspiciously.

“An obscure Prussian one, and I call a hundred pounds for a 1740 collection dirt cheap.”

Florence knew that Edwin had dropped this piece of information at the dinner table because Mamma couldn’t make a fuss in front of company. He was either shrewd or cowardly, probably a little of each. He had outgrown his spotty schoolboy look and was almost as good-looking as Daisy, with his thick fair hair, his rosy skin and his bright blue eyes. Except, of course, for the spectacles which he still considered humiliating and disfiguring.

Only half listening to the conversation, Florence was thinking vaguely about her family, how Papa looked distinguished and benign in his velvet jacket and white silk cravat, how Daisy was obviously due to be the debutante of the year when she came out, how Mamma was silently disapproving of Daisy’s precocious behaviour and Edwin’s extravagance although she was never upset when Papa bought a new picture or a piece of china to add to his collection. But then, she doted on Papa the way Papa doted on Daisy.

And I, thought Florence, blinking back sudden embarrassing tears, was only once in all my life doted on, for a very short time, by a governess called Miss Medway, who eventually came back to Overton House to steal Daisy. And now Daisy, whether she knows it or not, came the horrifying thought, is stealing Desmond. And succeeding very well for he can scarcely take his eyes off her. He isn’t listening to Edwin, or to me, not even to Papa and Mamma. He has lost his manners. He’s being made a nincompoop by my fifteen-year-old sister. And I am sitting here like a dummy in this silly dressed-up dress that I will never wear again.

At Captain Fielding’s special request Daisy sang again, after dinner. When she had stopped there was a little silence, then Captain Fielding, with a struggle to remember his manners, politely asked Florence if she also would sing.

“I have no voice,” she said. “I’m not in the least musical.”

“Florence has other gifts,” said Mamma.

“Of course. I know. Absolutely.”

“And it’s high time, Daisy, that you went upstairs,” Mamma said.

“Oh, Mamma—”

“Not a word, miss. Do as you’re told. And take all those pins out of your hair and brush it properly.

“Bea—” Papa began, instantly aware of Daisy’s quick distress. He frequently thought Mamma too harsh towards Daisy, but couldn’t he see now that in reducing her to her schoolroom status Mamma was merely trying to repair the damage done to Florence. If it were not too late…