Sail Upon the Land (9 page)

The debs’ delights who worked there dressed down after work, changing into suits or jeans. On the shop floor, they were required to wear full morning dress with a high black stock around their necks in perpetual mourning for George III. The traditions of deference might be slipping away elsewhere, but in the richly scented halls of P&Q things went on as a rigid reproduction of life at the very top end as it had been lived for more than a hundred years.

Outside in the streets there was another scene altogether. Debs these days slipped out of the staff entrance in ever shorter skirts, winked at by the owners, who were still members of the Penrose family. Gossip photographers hung around during the Season, covertly encouraged by the press relations department.

Starting off at P&Q as a floorwalker, Munty rose to ground floor manager. Tall, slim and fair, with prominent blue eyes, he looked distinguished in his tailcoat. The great shop was happy to let customers know discreetly that they had a real grown-up peer of the realm on the staff. They were poised to allow him time off to vote in the House of Lords, although he had not taken advantage of that privilege yet. The thought of it terrified him and he had nothing to say.

He was always deployed when anyone aristocratic came in, and particularly royalty, for whom he became a kind of unofficial epicurean equerry. His experience with his grandparents’ business stood him in very good stead, and he was able to support himself on his salary, while beginning to explore what London had to offer. He dipped into the Season half-heartedly, taking a few girls out, but none of them stirred his interest. Indeed he found them intimidating. They soon moved on to richer, more straightforward marriage material.

The fate of Castle Hey was not real enough to him to persuade him to marry a giggling colonial uranium heiress or rich sharp American on the lookout for a title. He wasn’t attached to the house as he would have been if he had been brought up there. In his mind’s eye, it was shrouded in mist and overgrown, like the Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Secretly it frightened him. The War Department had relinquished it only the year before but he had no urge to go and take possession. He wondered sometimes what it would take to drag him from his intertia and down to Sussex to do something about Castle Hey.

What was real to Munty was working and drifting in a London that was shrugging off the past as fast as it could. Not that he was comfortable with the speed of change. But the busyness made it easier not to think about Castle Hey, to let the trustees deal with the roof and the caretaker. So far they hadn’t put any pressure on him to take responsibility.

One Friday afternoon in May, standing with his hands clasped behind his back on the English Racing Green carpet that covered the entire ground floor, Munty watched the ebb and flow of customers. He was adept at distinguishing those who needed help from those who were simply browsing for fun. Everyone had lived through rationing and to see such abundance, luxury and variety on display was still a source of entertainment. The uniformed doormen, burly war veterans under their old-fashioned footmen’s livery and powdered wigs, kept out any real undesirables.

He remembered after the war when there was only one kind of cheese in his grandparents’ shop, and that was yellow and square and didn’t appear to have a name other than Government cheese. The P&Q cheese counter was famous for its glorious range, imported from France daily as there were no interesting cheeses left in England. They even had a French
affineur
on the staff. To his left was the grocery department, with displays of all kinds of teas, coffees and tinned goods, from
petits pois
to
foie gras
. To his right, the vast and varied display of flowers and, in front of him, confectionery and chocolates laid out on glass shelves. Behind the sweet counter, the not-so-sweet Honourable Lydia Adair wore black cotton gloves and a white muslin apron over her mid-calf black uniform dress with its old-fashioned full skirt. On her head was a white mob cap, reduced to a ridiculous puff of muslin teetering on top of her shiny red hairdo.

She winked at him, and he pretended to ignore her, a blush starting behind his collar. The revolving doors moved in the corner of his vision, and a girl stepped into the shop. She was very slight, wearing a short cotton dress of pale yellow with a white belt, no sleeves and little white gloves. Her fair hair looked freshly done, curling up at the tips, and she was wearing low-heeled pale tan slingbacks. She stopped and looked around and he approached her as you might a small deer.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

She smiled up at him. ‘Yes, I’m looking for flowers.’

She could hardly have missed Penrose & Quinn’s famously enormous floral display, the sole part of the shop where the natural produce had not been regimented. Only the hothouse roses conformed like guardees on their long thornless stems in unnatural shades of red, yellow and orange. The rest was a riot of stargazer and green-tinged lilies, delphiniums, plumes of gypsophila, tight buds held in green cups, blousy full-blown peonies and gladioli spears. They still specialised in wreaths and nosegays, and no one smart went anywhere else for their bridesmaids’ headdresses and posies. He walked her across and said to Jacqueline, the resident florist, ‘Can you help this young lady?’

Jacqueline smiled, and put aside the tight little bunch of pink rosebuds she was arranging. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I’d like one of your nosegays, white and yellow, that we can just put in water, please? It’s for my mother,’ Munty could hear her say as he strolled back to his post.

The girl’s face stayed in his mind, and he glanced back at her as she watched the arrangement being made and then paid for it. As she walked out, she turned and thanked him. He knew that his friend Freddie would’ve asked for her telephone number or arranged a date then and there. It was against company regulations, but the others were clever at diving under the radar. For the first time he wanted to. He took a step after her and opened his mouth, but nothing came out and he went back to his station feeling foolish.

The girl in yellow attracted him, she looked hesitant, there was a hint of anxiety. He regretted not approaching her for the rest of the day.

The Queen Charlotte’s Ball was the following week, and Lydia, a deb that year, had invited him to join her party. ‘Daddy’s thrown money at a table and someone’s dropped out. Do come, Munty, Mummy’s always asking about you.’

‘Look, Lydia, I’m a bit old. Not debs’ delight material anymore.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Munty. You look good in black tie, nice and tall. Harry Bowles is much older than you and he’s still on the scene. And besides, you aren’t married yet. You know, people are beginning to talk. I heard someone suggest you were VVSITPQ the other day, and we can’t have that.’

‘What on earth does that mean?’

‘Oh, you know. Very very safe in taxis, probably queer,’ and she left the floor in a hurry, laughing, to change out of her black dress and into something short, shiny and tight for the evening. It was true, Lydia’s mother had sidled up to him on more than one occasion to ask him to keep an eye on her daughter. He blushed and muttered. He liked Lydia, but knew she had at least three boyfriends and wasn’t looking for a husband.

He began his tour of inspection before leaving for the evening, and Freddie said as he walked by, ‘Fancy a drink, Munty?’

He didn’t have anything much else to do, so they changed together, setting out to stretch their legs with a walk down to the Star Tavern, tucked away in Belgrave Mews.

Restless in the May warmth, Munty knew he wanted something to happen but had no idea what it was. The angled evening sun bounced off the pavements and heated the air. A blackbird sang its piercing song in Green Park. They walked along talking about the day, customers, new lines coming in from abroad. In the Star there were always slightly sinister groups of men in corners, in very good Savile Row suits and brown suede shoes. Outside a couple of Jags gleamed on the cobbles, their drivers lounging against the bonnets gossiping, engines gently ticking over hazing the mews with blue exhaust. Inside, cigar smoke predominated over cigarettes, and a slight frisson of the upper end of the underworld spiced the atmosphere. Munty and Freddie ate steak and kidney pie and drank pints of beer and then, as it was Friday, decided to go on to the Keyhole in St James’s.

Plunging down the steps into the smoky basement, they glanced around, seeing the usual mixed crowd of West End types, actors and low life. On the stage a plump naked lady graced a set built to resemble a raft. Flying from the stout mast, or rather flopping in the stale grey air, was a striped seaman’s jumper. The lady spent some time elaborately wrapping her legs around the mast and attempting to hoist her considerable person upwards. It was as sexy as watching a seal shinning up a lamp post. To his surprise, she did begin to progress, panting, heaving and gasping and positively gleaming with sweat under the arc light that stood in for the sun. The ratty little man beside him whispered behind his hand, ‘It’s all very symbolic, you see.’ Munty laughed. He was at that stage of boozing where everything and anything seems amusing.

Just as she had creaked and heaved far enough up to grasp the jumper, the lights went out and Munty would never know nor care why she so desperately wanted it, as it did not look ample enough to reclaim her modesty.

Turning back to the bar, he saw Lydia entwined around one of her more unsuitable boyfriends and greeted her with a wave. She disentangled herself and shimmied over on long white legs to talk to him.

‘Munty, darling. I insist you come to Queen Charlotte’s next week. You get the opportunity to see me wearing a long white dress and looking virginal as my mother wants me to for a change, and curtseying to a cake. Come on, it’s surreal.’

‘Just not sure it’s me, but if you insist.’

‘Look, I do insist. OK? I’ll pout. I will.’

‘OK, Lydia. I’ll come. Are you organising dinners beforehand, or shall I just turn up at ten?’

‘Daddy’s bought dinner tickets for the ball itself of course, you know what he’s like. It all starts at eight o’clock. I’ll give you your ticket next week at work.’

Munty sighed. He tipped the last of his nightcap down his throat before setting off to walk home to bed. Behind him he heard the unmistakable sounds of a police raid. Those rolling thighs wrapped around that robust erection had probably been a bit more than the Lord Chancellor’s censors could tolerate.

Melissa was about five feet four inches tall, fair and slender with good legs and pale skin. She had a dreamy look as her blue eyes often seemed half closed, but this was deceptive, her mind was very busy. Her ‘little hoof’ had garnered her a great deal of attention from both parents, even though it was almost completely corrected by her treatment in America. The arrival of her twin brothers Julian and William when she was four had been a blow, but they vanished off to prep school quite soon, and she had Mummy and Daddy all to herself once again.

Besides, she could always get the attention she craved, even when the babies were crying, by going very quiet. This wasn’t deliberate. Sometimes she didn’t feel very well and only sitting on Mummy’s knee and having a long hug, even when she was quite big, helped. These episodes were called ‘Lissy’s glooms’ and, along with her giddy episodes – ‘Over-excited and silly’, her mother described them – were just part of family life. She loved the softness of her mother’s large bust and the sweetness of Ma Griffe, brought back by Daddy from duty free whenever he went away. It didn’t always work though. Sometimes she couldn’t face going to school.

She picked her feet up and put them down precisely when she walked, which made the nastier children look at her sideways. On bad days, she would creep home from school and up to her room without anyone noticing. She would lie on her bed to indulge in orgies of reading that left her dazed and blinking.

Now Melissa was going to be a debutante. She was eighteen and had left her day school with a couple of A levels that she had completed in one year. In the autumn, she was to start as a nurse probationer at St Saviour’s Hospital in London, so she had the summer to fill. The Season proper kicked off in May with the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, where the girls dressed in white and curtseyed to whichever spare, usually exiled, royal had been recruited by the ball committee.

All the preparation for ‘bringing her out’ was fun for Mummy too, meeting up with old schoolfriends who were bringing out their own daughters, and reconnecting with her past. Sarah hadn’t minded missing her own Season, as the war had broken out and she had been swept away into a new life. ‘And I would never have met your father, darling, if I’d been a deb,’ she would say. ‘Which is no reason why you shouldn’t be. Lots of new friends and fun, before you start your nursing training in September.’

Now it was a warm May evening, and Melissa got out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel to climb the stairs to the attic bedroom in her Uncle Stephen and Aunt Melinda’s house in Cheyne Place in Chelsea. She shivered with happiness as she looked at her slender white dress hanging on the back of the door. Her mother had made it using a designer pattern, with white damask fabric from Peter Jones. Melissa smoothed a new pair of American Tan stockings up her legs, and fixed them with suspenders hanging from her white cotton girdle. The square-toed, low-heeled satin pumps were on the floor by the bed. It was no good her trying to wear high heels – her ankle was not strong enough. Anyway the whole effect was Jane Austen to her eye.

She’d already glimpsed Daddy downstairs in the drawing room, looking unusually smart. He was wearing his father’s white tie and tails, glad to play his part in his daughter’s debut for one night only. He loved to see Mummy looking like a goddess crowned with light, in the silver and blue brocade dress she had made, with a full skirt and three-quarter length sleeves.

Sarah had visited her hairdresser earlier, with the family tiara lent by her brother Diggory – who was now Lord Elbourne – wrapped in a silk scarf in her handbag. Elbourne kept anything left of the family jewels in Lindell’s Bank in London, so that his sister and sisters-in-law could borrow them. He lived with his Australian wife Lisa and their five children on a sheep station in Queensland.