Dorothy Eden (35 page)

“But with Desmond it was my fault. At least you said so.”

“And my own. For letting him go when he was hot.”

“Hot?”

“Men go off the boil, if you’ll excuse the vulgarity.”

“Sergei—”

“Oh, he will, too, even with, or especially with, his Tartar blood. There’ll be other girls close at hand. Tempting him. I advise you to catch the train to Paris tomorrow.”

Daisy sat bolt upright, unable to believe her ears.

“You just want to get rid of me!”

“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I was thinking you could blackmail Papa. He’ll be over to Paris to see you safely married quickly enough. If he finds he can’t keep you here he won’t have his pure little Daisy besmirched.”

“Flo!”

“Is your Sergei to be relied on?”

“Oh,
yes.
”

“Then what’s stopping you? I never thought you’d be lacking in spirit.”

B
EATRICE TORE OPEN THE
yellow telegram.

DAISY AND SERGEI MARRIED THIS MORNING AT ST CLOUD. ARRIVING HOME TOMORROW AFTERNOON SEND BATES TO MEET THREE THIRTY AT VICTORIA WILLIAM.

Send Bates, indeed! When had she not met William, if it were humanly possible? This time it would be doubly important, for he would be heartbroken.

He had rushed off to Paris full of confidence that he could prevent this desperately foolish runaway marriage, and persuade Daisy to come home. Why would she have left that note telling her intentions and her whereabouts if she did not secretly want to be rescued?

Her flight was only a dramatic gesture, the sort of highly-coloured romantic episode that any high-spirited young girl might like to indulge in, simply so that she could boast of it for the rest of her life.

Daisy had not climbed out of her window by the aid of knotted sheets, she had gone quite boldly at midday with no luggage at all (except her small diamond tiara which William had been prevailed on to buy for her coming-out) and thus none of the servants had particularly commented on, or noticed, her departure.

She had written in the note left on William’s desk in the library, “The Crown Jewel is my dowry. You wouldn’t want me to go to Sergei empty-handed, would you?”

The impertinence of the girl! Beatrice had wanted to leave her to her fate. She had wanted this much more strongly than she dared to say. But William had been in such a state of sorrow and loss that she had not been able to protest at his pursuit of that spoiled scatter-brained child.

She was afraid that he would hold it against her forever if she did so. So she had even offered to accompany him, but he had said he could manage perfectly well on his own. When had he not been able to sway Daisy to his wishes? She adored her Papa. She would never break his heart by some foolish escapade.

He had been wrong, Beatrice reflected, crumpling the yellow envelope.

She was sorry, as she was sorry for anything that hurt him. But she was also glad in the most fierce secret way. She had the sensation that only now had Mary Medway finally left the house.

All the same, she showed every solicitude to William, for he arrived home looking so old, tired and desolate that immediately his pain became hers. She couldn’t bear his red-rimmed eyes, his drawn face, his silence.

She called Doctor Lovegrove to give him a sedative, and then lay all night listening to the heavy breathing of his drugged sleep. If only she could have wept for Daisy she thought that he would have taken her in his arms and they could have comforted one another. But her old awkward failing of honesty could not be overcome. She simply was not sorry that Daisy had gone. The little cuckoo had flown the nest. Their home was their own again.

The next day William gave the bare facts.

Daisy had worn a simple white dress that one of the ballerinas, Karsavina he believed, had given her. She carried a posy of pink and white daisies, apparently at Sergei’s request, and looked like a simple village girl in an opera or a ballet. Utterly charming but not his daughter.

“Happy?” asked Beatrice.

“Oh, radiant,” William said reluctantly. “She’s living on a cloud. She looks bewitched, as if this young man is some kind of god. He just looks like a complete foreigner to me, with those high cheekbones and slanting eyes.”

“But they’re in love,” Beatrice murmured.

“Oh, they’re a complete Romeo and Juliet. I did my best, Bea, but I couldn’t make Daisy see reason. She said that if I didn’t give my consent to their marriage she would simply live in sin. And I believe she meant it!”

Of course she would mean it, being her mother’s daughter…

Long practised in discretion, Beatrice didn’t say those words. She took William’s arm and said in her soothing voice, “Then let’s wish them happiness. I know you will when you’ve got over missing Daisy.”

“I’ll never get over that.”

“But, dearest, she would have married somebody. You couldn’t have kept her forever. She isn’t Florence. You wouldn’t want her to be, would you?”

William grimaced.

“I don’t want any more shopkeepers in my family, I grant you. But if only it weren’t Russia. Such an uncivilised country. How can a delicate sensitive girl like Daisy survive there?”

“I really think, my dear, that Daisy is a good deal tougher than you give her credit for. And talking of Russia, you’ve never travelled there, have you? Perhaps you could make a journey next summer. Florence could advise you on it. Then, if Daisy finds she has made a terrible mistake, you can rescue her, can’t you? I’m sure a divorce under those circumstances wouldn’t be too difficult or too scandalous. I know that Edwin has friends in the British Embassy who could help. Although, of course, this is just conjecture. I do sincerely hope she will be happy. Why don’t we open some of that
Veuve Clicquot
you got in. We can at least drink to Daisy’s and Sergei’s happiness.”

William took her arm in his. She felt the familiar pressure of his body against hers, his the frail tree, hers the rock. It was no use wishing that sometimes this position could be reversed. She had encouraged him to lean on her. He would always do so. At least he now did so willingly and gratefully.

Daisy’s letters, infrequent (because of those atrocious Russian posts, William said) were as gay as the song of a lark.

Sergei and I have two rooms above his parents. From our bedroom window we can see, believe it or not, a cherry tree! And I adore Sergei’s parents who are just like Chekhov characters. I am trying to learn Russian quickly so that I can talk to them. Just at present we have to make do with smiles and sign language. I am also learning to make Russian dishes. Do tell Cook. She knows that I couldn’t even beat an egg; which Mama Pavel thinks is disgraceful ignorance…

It has begun to snow and Sergei has promised me my first sleigh ride. He is the kindest most wonderful husband. How can I tell you what it is like lying under a warm quilt with my darling husband’s head on the pillow beside me, and watching the snow pattering on the window. Sergei says it makes a sound like a fashionable English audience applauding with gloved fingers, as they did when Nijinsky danced…

Yesterday I saw the Tsar and Tsarina and their four daughters driving by. When I curtsied they all bowed in return, most charmingly, but Sergei says they do not command the respect that the British Royal Family do. The peasants have been so badly treated for centuries and there are alarming undercurrents. Also, he says. Russia is beginning to fear Germany’s militarism. What does Edwin say about this? What is the news of Edwin? I very much fear he has cast me off because he thinks I have disgraced the family. He was always a fearful snob, with those Barons and Baronesses and the élite regiments and so on. If I have disgraced the family, Papa and Mamma, is it some comfort to you to know how blissfully happy I am?

Florence was non-committal about these undoubtedly light-hearted letters. She merely said that this odd marriage might be the making of Daisy, and returned to her argument with Beatrice on the future policy of Bonnington’s.

Florence, with her ally James Brush, who was to Beatrice’s mind a thought too clever, wanted modernisation. All that kow-towing to royalty was a bit out of date. Everyone said that with the death of Edward, the playboy king, and the retirement to the background of the still beautiful but stiff and invalidish Queen Alexandra, the grand days of monarchy were over. Oh, people were still loyal and waved flags, and the coronation of King George and Queen Mary had been an affair of superb pageantry, but the time had come when shops must appeal more to the masses than to the privileged few.

Bonnington’s would still maintain its air of luxury, it would still, for instance, offer glasses of champagne to weary and wealthy (titled, preferably) customers, but it would begin stocking a wider and cheaper range of merchandise, such as cosmetics and artificial jewellery that would attract the young, who would be tomorrow’s dowagers. Florence also wanted to open a design room and get away from all those dressmakers faithfully carrying out ‘madam’s’ wishes and producing well-made but uninspired clothes. She had found a clever young designer who was daringly lowering necklines and lifting skirts above the ankle. His fashions were aimed at the young.

Miss Florence and James Brush, with his foxy alert face.

It had used to be Miss Bea and Adam Cope. It still was, except that dear Adam, capable, solid and utterly loyal to Bonnington’s and to her, was unalterably opposed to new notions. Beatrice didn’t agree with all Florence’s ideas, by any means, but she knew that a closed mind meant a slow death, not only to business but to oneself.

Adam would eventually have to be retired, as Miss Brown had been. If it came to that, so would she, though as owner she was entitled to totter in and take her familiar seat in the cash desk until senility overcame her. Adam was not so fortunate and neither Florence nor James Brush were over-endowed with sentiment. Had they been told that Adam Cope, aged sixty, had loved Beatrice faithfully for nearly forty years, they would have giggled in mild hysteria.

It was not a laughing matter that love had so little value when it came from the wrong person. But one strove to be grateful for it.

The whole subject cut too near the bone, as far as Beatrice was concerned.

However, eventually Adam’s health would fail or he would retire voluntarily, and then she would be outvoted on matters of policy by the younger generation. It was the way of life, as William would say.

William had grown quietly thoughtful and philosophic since Daisy’s departure. He sought Beatrice’s company more in the evenings, but that may have been because he found the house lonely during the day. She contemplated spending less time at the shop after the spring and summer season. It was not because she was tired, she was full of vigour, but she had had the thought that now, in their late middle age, she and William might travel with real enjoyment in each other’s company. Daisy had recently written saying that she and Sergei were expecting a baby. Couldn’t she and William travel to St Petersburg to see their first grandchild?

It was an intriguing thought that grew on her after Edwin’s visit home for Christmas. He was in a strange distrait nervous mood that he said was due to his anxiety about the growing megalomania of the Kaiser. No one else seemed to take seriously the fact that Germany was trained and ready, not for some small-scale skirmish, but for a major trial of strength against one of the big powers.

“Russia?” said William uneasily.

“Perhaps. I think more likely Europe. A sort of Napoleonic conquest. Bismarck had always envisaged this and the Kaiser, after all, was his pupil. France, Belgium, the Netherlands.”

“Good God! England couldn’t stand by if that happened.”

“No, that’s my point. I don’t think anyone here realises the perfection of the German soldier. Particularly the officers.”

Edwin held his head at an uncomfortably high angle, as if he were wearing a stiff military collar, and talked staring over his father’s head. He added that in spite of all this he had no wish to leave Berlin. He found the city and the atmosphere fascinating, so virile and somehow fraught with destiny. He didn’t mention women. Beatrice seemed to remember his once talking about a beautiful baroness. But now he was no longer a little boy who could be questioned. He was handsome, mature, and completely unknowable. He didn’t even ask her for money nowadays. He must have grown more provident, though his dark grey flannel suit, his pigskin gloves, his handmade shoes, were all of fastidiously high quality. Could the pay in the foreign service run to clothes like that? She noticed that he was using a gold cigarette case, too. Had that been a present? From some woman? It was maddening not to be able to ask. But even if she had ever had his confidence, she could not pry into the affairs of a young man approaching thirty.

When Edwin said goodbye, however, he gripped Beatrice’s hand hard, almost, she fancied, with desperation.

“I am working hard, Mother, whatever you may hear about me.”

“Oh? What am I likely to hear?” Beatrice looked up at the tall young man with the strangely chilling blue eyes, and thought again that he was a stranger. “Are you having an affair with a woman?” she asked lightly.

He gave a quick smile.

“Of course. Many.” Even his voice had acquired a foreign tinge. “Goodbye, Mother. Wish me luck.”

He must have known then about the scandal that was likely to break. He certainly was well aware of the tightrope on which he was walking.

The year of 1913, however, was not all disaster. Daisy’s news arrived in mid-summer.

Our baby was born on June 1, and is a girl. You should just see Sergei, he is puffed up with pride like a bullfrog. I don’t know which he thinks the greatest miracle, the baby or me or himself. We have called her Anna because that is what Sergei wanted. He was thinking of his idol, Anna Pavlova. She is exactly like Sergei, with his tilted eyes. Although, he says, she has my feet and will undoubtedly be a ballet dancer.

Sergei has kissed me a thousand times, and bought me a new dress. Next year he will be a fully-fledged professor and we will have a house of our own. I have often wanted to sell my Crown Jewel to get a house, but Sergei says that must only be done in the event of dire disaster. And now, anyway, we want to keep it for our daughter.