Debutantes: In Love (2 page)

‘Baz!’ cried Poppy, kissing him passionately for a moment before breaking off with a sob. ‘I wish I could!’

‘Why not?’ said Baz, smoothing her long hair away from her flushed cheeks.

‘Because you’re eighteen and I’m still only seventeen,’ said Poppy. ‘The law of the land says that we can’t marry without our parents’ consent until we are twenty-one. And you know that your mother wants you to marry money and I have none. And Great-Aunt Lizzie will have a fit if neither Daisy nor I makes a good match this season. And Father . . .’ she trailed off, overcome with tears. Baz didn’t, she thought, quite understand how bad things were at home. Great-Aunt Lizzie had fallen for his boyish good looks and charming manners and was always in her best humour when he visited. Even her father made an effort to be normal when the youngest son of his old friend was around. Baz’s home was cheerful, noisy and fun, whereas hers was tense and unhappy. If it were not for Daisy, she would go mad.

‘Well, who cares about being married then?’ Baz chuckled softly, drying her tears with soft kisses. ‘Let’s just live together. After all, this is 1924. We’re not back in the Victorian age. The old queen has been dead for more than twenty years – that’s half a lifetime, remember.’

Poppy lifted her head to look at him in shock. Could they really just go off together to live in
sin
, as Great-Aunt Lizzie would put it? She tried to imagine being like her elder sister, Violet, and her husband, Justin. Although Great-Aunt Lizzie had been very disappointed that Violet, the beauty of the family, had not made what she would call, a
good
match, nevertheless she had to admit that Justin had a steady job working as a lawyer in London and was able to maintain a wife and family. Her sisters knew that Violet was very happy and had never regretted her choice.

Once again all her thoughts were forgotten as Baz lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed her lovingly.

With a creak of ancient hinges, the door to the kitchen suddenly swung open.

‘Oh, Morgan,’ said Baz nervously, jumping up, ‘we’ve been waiting for you. Glad you’ve come.’

Morgan did not look pleased.

‘How did you two get in here?’ he asked.

Poppy gazed at him, surprise widening her unusual amber-coloured eyes. ‘We took the key from under the flowerpot. What’s wrong, Morgan? You never normally mind us coming in.’

Morgan frowned. ‘I don’t mind when it’s the whole lot of you, when George, Edwin and Simon are here, but I don’t want you two slipping in here by yourselves and using it as a place to kiss and cuddle, which is what you were doing when I came in, so don’t deny it.’

‘We weren’t doing anything – not really; you don’t need to worry,’ said Poppy, blushing furiously. She had little fear that Morgan would say anything – after all he was only a few years older than they were – but she added pleadingly, ‘Don’t mention this to Father, will you? He would be furious with me.’

‘Well, your father will give
me
the sack if he hears about it; that’s what worries me.’ Morgan bent down to put another chunk of wood into the range. ‘I don’t want to be forced out of my job because of you two,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Where else would I find a place for a chauffeur that allows me to play my drums and disturb nobody?’

‘You could come and live with us at my house in London,’ said Baz. ‘I have plenty of spare bedrooms. Edwin and Simon are thinking of coming too.’

‘He means to live with him and Tom,’ put in Poppy hastily. Even though Bob Morgan wasn’t much older than they were, he was sometimes a bit old-fashioned.

‘And you and your brother will pay me a good salary, I suppose.’ Morgan did not wait for Baz to answer, but began filling the kettle and glancing through the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ music. He tried out a few taps on the drums and Baz accompanied him with his bass and after a few minutes Poppy came in with her clarinet. By the time that they had played it through once, Simon with his saxophone, George with his trombone and Edwin with his trumpet had arrived, and the Beech Grove Jazz Band was in full swing. Morgan did not give them a moment to rest – only stopping once to say breathlessly, ‘I have to go at twelve, so let’s make this last one the best.’

‘Where are you going, Morgan?’ asked Simon when the chords died away and they all stretched and drank the cold tea from their mugs.

‘I have to take the Earl into Maidstone,’ said Morgan briefly, his eyes on Poppy. ‘Your sister says that she’s coming too.’

The court case, thought Poppy, and for a moment felt ashamed of herself. She had woken with the thought of it in her head, but somehow it had gone, swamped by her rush of feelings for Baz. This court case was being brought against her father by the heir to the Beech Grove estate – Denis Derrington, or Dastardly Denis as her youngest sister, Rose, called him. He was suing the Earl for cutting down woodlands without his agreement. It could be very serious if the judge could not be brought to see that her father had no other choice in these bad times. Optimistically, the family hoped that the judge might order Dastardly Denis to give permission for a few farms to be sold. Other families had done this, but other families had sons to inherit their estates – and these sons had been willing to oblige their fathers. Michael Derrington only had four daughters so his heir was a distant cousin. Now everything depended on whether the judge was sympathetic to her father’s situation.

‘Do you want to come as well?’ Morgan asked her, and Poppy shook her head decisively.

‘No, he’ll be better with Daisy; she calms him down. I seem to put him in a bad mood these days.’ She avoided the chauffeur’s eyes. Deep down, she knew that she was her father’s favourite of his four daughters, but it was true that she agitated him. Although they shared a great love and talent for music, he felt guilty about not being able to afford lessons for her any more and was irritable about her wasting her talents on jazz. Also, since she was the image of her dead mother, she reminded him of how he had squandered the fortune of Mary Derrington on an ill-advised mine in India. With Daisy he was at ease, viewing her film-making with amusement and even allowing her to advise him on estate matters from time to time.

‘We’ll stay and practise,’ said Simon, his voice breaking into her thoughts. ‘We’ll manage without you, Morgan. The rest of us don’t know this piece as well as you do.’

‘I’ll have to go soon too,’ said Poppy. ‘Great-Aunt Lizzie will be expecting me.’

I need to be careful, she thought as she packed away her clarinet. Her feelings for Baz and his for her
must
remain hidden, or Father and Great-Aunt Lizzie might stop her from going to London for the season – should the invitation ever arrive. Worse still, they might even forbid her from playing in the jazz band. To miss out on having a season would be terrible, but to lose Baz and the jazz band would be unendurable.

Poppy made her way back along the well-trodden path between the cottage and the house, pushed open the door into the hallway and was struck, as usual, by the icy chill of the place. Without bothering to change she strode into the dining room, where Great-Aunt Lizzie had already taken her place.

Great-Aunt Lizzie had brought up the orphan sisters Mary and Elaine Carruthers, had looked after the considerable fortune that the sisters had shared and had come to live at Beech Grove Manor House when Mary Carruthers had married Michael Derrington, eldest son and heir to the old Earl. She had remained there with the younger sister, Elaine, when Mary and Michael had gone out to India, and apart from a brief visit there herself to see Elaine safely married to a wealthy Anglo-Indian gentleman, she had stayed at Beech Grove Manor ever since. She was there when the news came that Michael’s younger brother, Robert, had been killed in the Boer War, and had been there when the old Earl, Poppy’s grandfather, had died and Michael had come back to his inheritance in England. And then when Mary Derrington in turn died, leaving four daughters ranging from twelve-year-old Violet, through the two ten-year-olds, Poppy and Daisy, down to five-year-old Rose, Great-Aunt Lizzie took over the care and education of the four motherless girls.

And yet . . . thought Poppy. None of them loved her very much – all wanted to escape her rule. She eyed the stately old lady with apprehension. She knew what was coming as soon as she saw the look of incredulous fury on the lined face.

‘Poppy! How dare you come into lunch looking like that! Go straight to your bedroom!’

‘Very well.’ Poppy turned on her heel and went out through the door, almost knocking down the elderly butler.

‘Sorry, Bateman,’ she said remorsefully as she saw his worried old face. She waited until he had gone into the dining room. Once the door closed behind him, she moved fast. Not up to her bedroom to change into some shabby and darned frock, deemed suitable for lunch by Great-Aunt Lizzie; where she would be expected to comb and brush her unruly hair and bind it into two braids, and then to reappear meek and full of apologies and sit through a long lecture on her untidiness and bad manners.

No, Poppy slipped out through the front door, ran down the steps and across the weed-filled gravel to the stables. Quickly she saddled her pony and within a few minutes was galloping through the beech woods along the pathway that led to the boundary between Beech Grove Manor and the Pattenden estates.

She knew a place where she would be welcome to lunch.

Chapter Two

Friday 1 February 1924

Baz had only just arrived and was still in his riding breeches and tweed jacket when Poppy galloped down the avenue that led to the Pattenden house. He had just joined his mother and an elderly gentleman in formal black clothes on the lawn in front of the stately building. Poppy checked her pony, slid from its back and handed the reins to a groom who had appeared at her side.

‘Darling Poppy, how lovely to see you. Have you come to lunch? Come and advise me, dear child.’ Lady Dorothy was a vague, well-meaning woman who did not have very strong views on anything, but floated through life in a happy dream, allowing her numerous offspring to do whatsoever they wanted. She made an elegant figure, a tall, fashionably dressed lady who did not look like the mother of eight children. In fact, thought Poppy affectionately, she always seemed to act, speak and dress as though she were the same age as her two youngest children: Baz and his sister Joan, just a year his elder. Today Lady Dorothy was wearing a short skirt with an elegant cashmere twinset and a string of the finest pearls that hung down to waist level. Her hair was shingled close to her head and dyed an improbable shade of gold.

‘You know this dear man, don’t you, darling?’ she said, addressing the air between Poppy and the black-suited man, who bowed and muttered something about being his lordship’s solicitor.

‘Mother is thinking about building a wing on to the old house.’ Baz grinned at Poppy.

The solicitor cleared his throat. ‘No doubt his lordship will be interested to listen to any suggestions that your ladyship might like to make to him regarding any improvements,’ he said diplomatically.

‘His lordship,’ said Lady Dorothy with a puzzled frown. ‘Oh, you mean Ambrose. It’s too, too amusing, darling girl –’ she addressed herself to Poppy – ‘but my Ambrose has got himself engaged to be married. It seems only the other day when the dear boy was in his pram. And now he has been snapped up. I don’t know what possessed him – one of the Berkeleys, my dear! I’m very easy-going, as you know, but I can’t live with a Berkeley and he is planning on moving down here to Kent, so I am going to have to build my own wing.’

The solicitor cleared his throat again. He had a harassed look, Poppy noted with amusement. Ambrose had inherited the estate from his father who had died the previous year, but it was apparent that Lady Dorothy reckoned she was still in charge and could direct any alterations to the estate or the house.

‘I have come for lunch,’ said Poppy with one of her most charming smiles. ‘Will I be in the way? Shall I go away again?’

Lady Dorothy shrieked with dismay. ‘No, no, I’m relying on you to help me; you’re such a sensible little thing. I really need your advice about this building.’

Only Lady Dorothy, thought Poppy, unable to suppress a giggle, would refer to her as ‘sensible’ – or, given that she was the tallest of the family, as ‘little’. However, she did her best and surveyed the handsome house with interest.

‘You could build your wing on the front and then Ambrose and the Berkeley girl would have to use the servants’ entrance at the back,’ she suggested.

‘Oh, you naughty little puss,’ trilled Lady Dorothy, giving her an impulsive kiss. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that. I am determined to be the most wonderful mother-in-law in the world.’

‘Just so, just so,’ said the solicitor, looking uncomfortable. He turned with an air of relief to Baz and told him that his grandfather’s will had been proved and the house in Belgravia was ready whenever he wanted to look over it and decide what he wanted to do with it – ‘No doubt, his lordship your brother will advise you,’ he concluded.

‘So sweet of Papa to have left the little house to Baz, wasn’t it?’ said Lady Dorothy to Poppy. ‘You know, I used to worry about this boy; his father wanted him to be a lawyer or something. All the other boys have had estates, but there was nothing left by the time that Baz turned up. You should have been another girl, darling,’ she said to Baz.