“I prefer to dress and undress myself now that Yardley is leaving. But this you must never tell a soul or I shall be damned as middle-class. The lady’s maid I had before Yardley left a notebook. I shall find it for you. In it she has written all the recipes for cleaning clothes, hats and shoes. The wash for my hair is quite simple. One pennyworth of borax, half a pint of olive oil and a pint of boiling water.”
She studied Daisy for a moment and then asked, “Do you not find your life here dull?”
“Oh, no, my lady. I like dull. I can’t get enough of dull. And three good meals a day!”
“Very well, Daisy. There is one thing more. I have over-prided myself on my intelligence but I lack common sense. I made a bad mistake with Blandon.”
“I’ll tip you off if there’s another masher,” said Daisy eagerly. “Can tell ‘em a mile off.”
? Snobbery with Violence ?
Five
– G.K. CHESTERTON,
Rose began to feel apprehensive as her father’s coach bowled along the country roads towards Telby Castle, home of the Marquess of Hedley. Would the other guests shun her? If they do, she thought fiercely, then Daisy and I will simply pack up and go home. There had been no need to buy new clothes for the visit. Lady Polly had pointed out to her daughter that a fortune had already been spent on dresses for the season.
The sky was a clear hard blue and there was a chill in the air. The leaves on the trees were blazing with autumn colours.
A new beginning, thought Rose. Perhaps this is a new beginning. And if not, well, there were jobs in London for women who knew how to type. There were lodging houses for businesswomen at reasonable rates. Whatever happened, she was resolved not to rot in the country for the rest of her life.
She was wearing one of the new corselets which had very slight boning, and had left off the usual padding. She had covered her gown with a heavy cloak before making her goodbyes to her mother, knowing that Lady Polly would have been appalled to learn that her daughter was not steel-corseted into the fashionable hourglass figure and leaning-forward look.
Under her tailored travelling dress she was wearing a silk petticoat with a frou-frou of ruffles from the knee to the hem. Rose, who had considered her mind above fripperies, nonetheless enjoyed the swishing rustling sound the petticoat made when she moved.
Daisy was learning to be a lady’s maid very quickly, but Rose often sensed a naughtiness in her little maid and often wondered how long Daisy would be content to be a servant.
Telby Castle had been built in the latter years of the old queen’s reign. It was a sort of folly with towers and battlements, arrow slits and stained-glass windows. It even had a drawbridge and a moat.
The new building had replaced a Georgian gem of a house with furniture and rooms designed by Robert Adam.
“Not a good master,” volunteered Daisy, who had been told she was allowed to speak freely when she was alone with her mistress.
“Why do you say that?” asked Rose.
“Didn’t you notice? When we came through Telby Village, it was ever so poor.”
Rose had been brought up like everyone else in England to believe that God put one in one’s appointed position, but surely not to abuse that position, she thought, wondering if she might find the courage to tell the marquess he ought to do something about his tenants. Then she sighed. Such a remark would be considered the height of unfeminine insolence.
She was shown to an apartment in one of the four towers. To her relief, Daisy was allocated a small room off her own bedchamber. When the housekeeper left, Rose said, “When you go down to the servants’ hall, you will need to find out which is my bell. Oh, there’s the dressing gong. I wonder who else is of the house party.”
Daisy was rapidly unpacking the trunks. “What dress, my lady?”
“White, I suppose. The moire with the lace inserts. My pearls, I think. White gloves. The kid shoes with the little bows and those new sequinned evening stockings.”
Daisy helped Rose put her hair up over the pads and fixed it in place after she had dressed. “You look really beautiful, my lady. Maybe there’s a handsome gentleman in the party.”
“After my recent experience, I have no interest in men.”
“Garn!”
“No, I mean it. Now pick up my stole and fan and follow me to the drawing-room. The second gong has just been sounded. You’d better ring the bell first and get a guide.”
A liveried footmen escorted them down from the tower into an enormous fake baronial hall where fake suits of armour glistened under fake tattered medieval flags.
A butler took over and led them across the hall, opened a heavy carved door and sonorously announced, “Lady Rose Summer.”
It seemed to Rose at first that she had entered a room full of staring eyes. Red light from a large fire flickered on monocles and lorgnettes. Then the marchioness came forward. “Nice to see you, dear. Pleasant journey?”
“Yes. I –”
“Good. Let me see. Take you round. Introductions. No, I won’t. You’ll get to know everybody in good time. Ah, dinner.”
“Got the honour,” said a young man with patent-leather hair, holding out his arm. “I’m Freddy Pomfret. Deuced fine place this, what?”
“Very fine, yes,” said Rose politely and was led into dinner. She wondered briefly whether the marquess would serve roast ox to chime with the surroundings, but the dinner was the usual extravagant fare. A large silver epergne in the centre of the table depicting General Wolfe’s army scaling the heights of Quebec restricted her view of the guests opposite her. Freddy was on her right and his friend, Tristram Baker-Willis, was on her left.
The words of Miss Tremp came back to Rose. “Ninety men out of every hundred,” the governess had said, “offer a remark upon the weather, but unless there has been something very extraordinary going on in the meteorological line, it is better to avoid the subject if possible.”
Fortunately for Rose, the bomb explosions near her home fascinated her two dinner companions so much that she was obliged to say little. Freddy ranted about the Bolsheviks and when she eventually turned away to Tristram, he ranted in much the same vein.
At last the marchioness rose as a signal that the ladies were to follow her to the drawing-room.
Rose had counted nine men and nine women in the house party, the number not including their hosts.
The marchioness introduced Rose and she tried to remember all the names. There were two American sisters, Harriet and Deborah Peterson, buxom and healthy-looking but disappointing Rose because they did not have American accents but the clipped, staccato speech of the others.
Then there was a thin, waspish girl called Mary Gore-Desmond who said little but kept flashing angry little resentful glances all around her. A Scottish beauty, Frederica Sutherland, was telling them all about the joys of hunting in a voice which could have been heard across two six-acre fields and three spinneys.
Mrs. Jerry Trumpington, ensconced in an armchair by the fire, was a toad of a woman with a fat lascivious face and very thick lips. She was talking about food to a dark, elegant woman, Margaret Bryce-Cuddlestone.
Standing together in a corner:mousy Maisie Chatterton, and a tall, pseudo-theatrical lady called Lady Sarah Trenton.
After the introductions, it looked as if Rose was going to be ignored, but Margaret Bryce-Cuddlestone approached her and said with a smile, “Are you getting over your terrible treatment at the hands of that cad, Blandon?”
“I’m getting over it,” said Rose ruefully, “but I don’t think anyone else is.”
