The Snow Globe (22 page)

Stephen stood on the train platform with his suitcase by his feet. The character, a letter of reference from Mrs. Forbes, along with the check from her—a very generous check, which Stephen would add to his savings—were safely tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Earlier, standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus to take him to the station, Stephen had seen the car heading back to the house, Mr. Forbes at the wheel, and he'd stepped away from the roadside and hidden behind a tree. He didn't want to be seen, didn't want the vehicle to stop and Mr. Forbes to get out and talk to him, try to persuade him to stay. And perhaps it was wrong, he thought, not to say good-bye and extend some thanks to the person who'd employed him for all of his life, who'd played a role in his adoption, in bringing him to that place. But he had lost respect for the man who'd embroiled him in his deceit and caused Daisy so much pain; a man who, as far as Stephen was concerned, had everything, and pissed on it.

This was the beginning of a new life, one away from Eden Hall, away from the woman who had been his mother for longer than not, away from the war-damaged man he loved and had called
Father, and away from every reminder of Daisy. His twenty-one years could be measured in those three people, he thought; and perhaps his auntie Nellie, though he hadn't seen much of her of late.

His mother—whenever Stephen thought of her, he couldn't help but smile—had been understandably upset, but she'd known it was coming, his departure. And he would not return there, to her, he decided then and there, until he had bought her something luxurious and expensive, and perhaps even a little decadent, he mused, smiling a little more and raising his eyebrows. And how could he not love her? She was, and would forever more be, his
mother
. And his father . . . Whenever Stephen contemplated his father, his heart ached. It ached for the pain he would never be able to erase, for the words his father would never be able to speak, and for the horror that gentle soul had witnessed. And yet, damaged, silent, without prejudice or judgment, Old Jessop had been better than many a father.

And Daisy?

Daisy . . .
Stephen raised his eyes to the milky white sky. What was the alternative? he thought, steadying himself, reinforcing his resolve. To stay on there, idle, counting the days until her next visit, looking on from the sidelines as she became engaged to another, married another; to be the one to drive her and her new husband from the church? There was no alternative.

There could never be another Daisy, but there would, he hoped, be another love. And as the train slowly approached the platform, he reached down and picked up his suitcase.

PART TWO

Summer
1927

No slanting hand addressed a Miss Daisy Forbes. No letter arrived from New Zealand. But there had been postcards from Paris, from Lyon, from Koblenz; from Switzerland and Italy; and then, in May, one from the Lake District, where Ben Gifford was on a walking holiday. “I look forward to our rendezvous on June 24th,” it ended.

Daisy hid the card. Ben Gifford—and, more specifically, his yet-to-be-answered proposal of marriage—was not something she wished to discuss with Iris. She would make her own decision; she
would
be her own person, as her mother had told her to be when she'd left for the continent.

The week before he'd gone on holiday, Ben had taken Daisy to a tea dance at the Savoy. They'd twirled about the floor in a few old-fashioned waltzes and then attempted a tango. It was a world away from the sort of dancing that went on in the clubs Daisy had been to with Iris.

“Two years ago, George Gershwin gave the British premier of his ‘Rhapsody in Blue' right here in this room,” Ben had said, signaling to the waiter as they sat down.

“Were you there—here?”

“Yes, as a guest of your father's.”

It had been the first time they had seen each other since Christmas, when, on his departure from Eden Hall, he had told Daisy he would give her time to settle in London, time to think about
their
future. As they took tea, he asked Daisy how she had been filling her time: had she been to any galleries or exhibitions or to the theater? Daisy smiled as she watched others glide sedately across the floor. She shook her head. “I've been too busy.”

“Not with Iris, I hope . . . I don't mean to be disrespectful to your sister,” he said, smoothing the sides of his newly grown mustache with a finger, “but I'm afraid I don't approve of her lifestyle,
or
her friends. You see, I know all about
that
set,” he went on, unsmiling, staring at Daisy. “I've read about them in the newspaper. I'm afraid it's all drinking and drugs and nude cabarets, from what I can make out . . . Have you . . . have you been to any of those sorts of
dos
with her?”

“No,” Daisy said quickly. “Not to anything like that. But I have been out dancing with her once or twice.”

“To nightclubs?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he said, and sighed. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, then turned his chair and moved it nearer to the table, covered with starched white linen and glinting silver. “I'd rather you didn't
go to nightclubs, Daisy,” he said, peering at the tall stand piled high with scones and tiny cakes and sandwiches.

“I don't . . . not anymore. I've given them up.”

“Good. I don't want you being corrupted by your sister. And these parties . . . Well, I may as well tell you, the police know what goes on at them; they know all the addresses, the names of everyone involved . . . They have a list, and I have no doubt more arrests will be made in time,” he said, pushing a cake into his mouth.

He had gone on for some twenty minutes or more about what he had
heard
. How the police had raided some of London's most fashionable addresses and found people half-naked, drunk, drugged and dancing, sometimes in the most compromising circumstances. He mentioned names, including that of Valentine Vincent. These parties, he said, started at midnight and went on until four or five in the morning.

Daisy did not tell him that it was actually six or seven, sometimes later. Just as she did not tell him about Iris's new tattoo—the small butterfly that now graced her ankle. And she thought better than to tell him about Iris's cocaine tonic wine, her pick-me-up in a bottle at the flat. But she did tell him that Iris no longer went to
those
sorts of parties, because that's what Iris had told her. She had told Daisy that there were too many seedy characters, and old men and tarts, and people who'd got rich quick during the war. And the debauchery Ben spoke of was not entirely an accurate description of what Daisy had seen. She had witnessed people throwing away caution and having a good time, and there were risqué cabarets, and certainly alcohol and dancing, and perhaps
there were even drugs—secreted away in dark corners; she suspected as much.

“I only have your best interests at heart, you know,” Ben said. “After all, I want to marry you,” he added in a whisper.

Daisy smiled. It was true: he did have only her welfare and best interests at heart; she knew this. But when he said, “I think we need to set a date,” Daisy's hand began to shake and she put down her teacup.

“Don't worry, I don't mean for any wedding,” he added, and feigned a little laugh. “But I think we need to set a date for when you'll give me an answer. A chap can't be expected to wait forever, you know.”

“But you said you were happy to wait.”

“And I have been. As I've said to you before, I'm quite content to have a longer engagement, but I think it only fair that you give me your answer soon.” He reached to his inside pocket. “I thought perhaps June twenty-fourth,” he said, taking out a small diary and flicking pages. “That'll be six months to the day since I first asked you . . . Ah yes, it's a Friday, so I shall be reasonably free,” he added, pulling out a pencil from the side of the diary and scribbling something down. “I think six months is a long enough time to wait for a simple yes or no, don't you?” he asked, without raising his eyes.

It was all rather businesslike, Daisy had thought at the time, but that was Ben: practical, pragmatic, older and perhaps wiser. And by comparison to most others she had met, he was also reassuringly sane, and safe, for Daisy's life in London had got off to a dizzying start. The year had begun in a riotous blur of revelry, and the city, initially, had seemed frighteningly fast. But it hadn't been the
traffic or the noise; it had been the frantic energy of people hell-bent on having a good time; determined to be seen
and
heard. And fast, because time moved quickly. Days were untethered, nights adrift, and there were no bells for mealtimes. The rule book in London had been thrown away, or perhaps thrown on the floor to dance upon, because dancing was
the thing
. Dancing until you could dance no longer, or until the band stopped playing and the sun came up.

Iris had wasted no time in introducing Daisy to her world of cocktails and dancing and nightclubs. She had introduced Daisy to her many nocturnal friends, including Luigi, who presided over the Embassy; and Kate, who owned the Silver Slipper; and
Darling Johnnie
at the Kit-Kat Club. To Iris, these people were like an extended family. Proprietors, doormen, barmen and clientele, Iris knew them all, and everyone knew her. But Iris's voracious appetite for nightlife had quickly taken its toll on Daisy.

It had been on the last day of January that Daisy and Iris had seen off their mother and Dosia at Waterloo station, and Mabel had commented that Daisy looked “rather lackluster,” and Daisy had laughed and said, “The result of trying to keep up with Iris.”

Mabel had taken Daisy aside. “Don't
try
 . . . Don't emulate your sister,” she'd whispered, holding on to Daisy's hand. “Be your own person. You wanted to be independent . . . This is your opportunity. I don't want you to fail because you think you have to be like Iris. Make your own decisions—about what is right and wrong, what is best for
you
.”

It was perhaps predictable maternal advice, but Daisy knew those parting words were Mabel's gift to her, and as her mother held her, she'd been unable to stop the tears—and the fear. The fear that
she might not see her mother again; the fear that came with the sudden realization that for the very first time in her life her mother would not be there for her; the fear that came with a vague new understanding of what it meant to be alone in the world.

As Mabel stepped onto the train, she'd looked back at Daisy: “Don't forget. Remember what I said.”

Daisy and Iris had watched the train pull away, disappearing down the track, Dosia's arm hanging from a window, waving a large handkerchief. Iris had then lit two cigarettes and handed one to Daisy. “Thank God that's over,” she'd said. “I absolutely loathe good-byes.” It was only then that Daisy had noticed the two tiny streams of black flowing down each of Iris's rouged cheeks.

By March, Daisy had stopped emulating Iris's dancing feet and found her own: a steady pair of feet to carry her to and from her job at a local bookshop. Iris had been appalled. “A
bookshop
! But why—when you can work for me?” she'd asked.

“Because I want to be independent . . . and working for you
isn't
that.”

When Daisy had gone on, reading from the letter from Mr. Laverty, the bookshop's owner— “nine to five . . . Oh, and with an hour for lunch, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons off . . . and two pounds six shillings a week . . .”—Iris had lain down on the small sofa in the sitting room of their flat, feigning a turn.

“Don't tell me any more. Please, don't read any more,” she'd said, her hand to her brow. “It seems to me you're quite determined to become a tragic heroine yourself.”

Iris's dress shop was doing extremely well, and she had recently
moved the business to larger premises in Knightsbridge in order to have bigger parties and be able to invite more people. Iris maintained that fashion, like art and music and dance, was part of the New Freedom, as she called it. Fashion, she said, was not simply an expression of a woman's personality but a reflection of an ever-changing modern world.

“It should never stand still; it's like a dance,” she'd told Daisy.

Iris had originally intended for her shop to pioneer only new designers and new fashions, and not be confined by gender stereotypes. Her shop would, she had said, when it was still just an idea, not sell simply beautiful gowns, but three-piece pinstripe trouser suits for women, collared men's-style shirts in brilliant colors and vibrant silks, and knitwear, paste and faux-gem jewelry, trilby hats with large diamante brooches, top hats—in velvets and silk brocades.

Iris had taken much of her inspiration from Madame Chanel, whom she had been introduced to at a party and had recently met again, and whose designs she now showcased along with those of a new Italian designer named Elsa Schiaparelli. The shop—or boutique, as Iris preferred to call it now—was simply named “Iris.” A social hubbub, open only at certain hours and on certain days, never before midday or at the start of the week, it was a place where everything stopped for tea, or—and more usually—champagne. Iris threw by-invitation-only parties almost every week, with jazz music and cocktails served by the prettiest of her friends in the very latest fashions. At the beginning of last season she'd thrown her first “catwalk” party. Photographs of the event—Iris in top hat and tails
with dozens of strands of pearls about her neck—had appeared in the
Tatler
and
London
Life
, and she had lately been featured on the cover of
The London Magazine
.

But for all of this, Daisy had no desire to be Iris. She had realized during the course of the past six months that they were very different people. That while Iris craved—and seemed to need—hordes of people, and noise and laughter, Daisy simply yearned for one person with whom she could share her life.