Daisy (18 page)

She opened her mouth to reply, but Ann Gore-Brookes rushed in and dragged a chair up to the table with much scraping and scratching. She was obviously bursting with news for her long nose was quite pink with excitement. “You’ll never guess what,” she began.

The married couple stared at her with disdain. She hesitated and then rushed on. “Bertie Burke is quite
bouleversé
with love over that Daisy-girl. Fact, darlings, the second footman, George, was returning along the shore road late last night when we were all at the dance and Bertie dashes past him with tears running down his face and sobbing like the Mock Turtle and saying he’s going to end it all and nobody loves him.”

“And the second footman no doubt rushed to your arms to tell you,” said Angela coldly.

Ann Gore-Brookes bridled. “Of course not. He told my maid and my maid told me.”

The Earl rang a small handbell on the table. “Ah, Curzon,” he said to the butler. “Would you please ascertain whether Mr. Burke has committed suicide or not.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Curzon went off and left the three to sit in silence. Ann was insulted, Angela shocked over her husband’s threat, and the Earl was burning with a slow, smoldering anger.

In a few minutes Curzon was back. “Mr. Burke is still very much of this world, my lord,” he said. “He asked me if we had kippers and said he would like two large ones served with strawberry jam.”

“There you are,” said Angela with forced jollity. “He’s going to kill himself a bit at a time, starting with his stomach. What do you think Bertie’s stomach is like anyway? I imagine it as being slightly flabby and covered with a thin film of sweat and…”

“
Go to your room
,” roared the Earl.

Angela stared at her husband. Ann Gore-Brookes let out a nervous tee-hee and Curzon withdrew behind a wisteria-draped column.

The Duke of Oxenden strolled languidly into the scene. Angela stretched out an appealing hand toward him. “Oh, Toby. Davy has just ordered me to my room. Just as if I were a naughty child or something. He…”

“Then why don’t you go?” remarked the Duke with bored indifference.

Angela gave a choking sob and fled.

Daisy stayed hiding in her room, breakfast-less and luncheon-less until, by the time the tea gong rang, she could bear it no longer. Amy had assured her that Bertie had recovered, but she still felt ashamed and guilty.

Her entrance onto the lawn where everyone was assembled around a table under the willows was something of an anticlimax. No one-not even Bertie-looked around at her. All attention was focused on Angela, Countess of Nottenstone. She was dressed in a cheap cotton-print gown with a high frill at the neck and long, tight sleeves. Her hair was scraped painfully from her forehead and screwed in a bun at the back. She had hung several crucifixes around her neck and placed the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer conspicuously beside the Queen Anne silver teapot.

“Now don’t you think I look the part?” teased Angela, grinning at the Duke. The Earl seemed to be almost immobilized with fury.

His Grace looked at her thoughtfully from under drooping lids. “My dear Angela,” he said finally. “Members of the Church of England are not always as unworldly as you seem to think. Your own vicar is quite the sophisticate.”

“Dear Percy,” sighed Angela. “That’s why we chose him. But
Brinton
, my dear Toby. They’ll be terribly Low Church.”

To add to her dowdy appearance, she had covered her face with a layer of gray powder. As soon as the vicar, the Reverend Peter Blessop, and Mrs. Blessop were announced, she cast down her eyes and folded her hands in her lap.

The vicar turned out to be a mild and courtly gentleman in his forties, wearing a shabby but respectable New College blazer and white flannels. His pale blue, myopic eyes looked around the guests like a pleased child and he actually clapped his hands when he saw the tea table. “Plum cake!” he cried with a high, fluting voice. “What a treat. I cannot remember when we last had plum cake. Now let me see…was it at little Johnny Spencer’s christening or was it when Jean Barrington-French got married to that captain in the Lifeguards…?”

He rambled on but no one was paying him the least attention. All eyes were fixed on his wife. Mrs. Blessop was in her early twenties and with all the startling beauty of a Dresden figurine. Her golden curls rioted over her small head in artless profusion, her complexion was a miracle of peaches and cream, and her tea gown was in the latest fashion.

Angela looked as if she had suddenly discovered an extra slice of lemon in her tea, the Honorable Clive was fingering his mustache, the Earl was leaping about to procure a chair for the beauty, and even Bertie Burke looked as if the sun had just risen over a particularly gloomy horizon.

“So pleased to meet you, my lady,” said Mrs. Blessop in a soft, babyish voice. “I have heard so much of your beauty that…” her voice trailed away and she stared at her teacup. It was beautifully done. It was only long afterward that Daisy discovered that Mrs. Blessop had been a promising young actress at the Haymarket Theater. Angela glared and remarked, “I think of higher things than clothes, my dear Mrs. Blessop. I may not be in my customary looks today, but I think that one should occasionally devote one’s time to more spiritual things.”

“Oh, indeed,” sighed Mrs. Blessop, pouting prettily. “I am afraid you will find me a very shallow creature, my lady. I do so love pretty clothes and parties and—and—you don’t mind if I say this, do you Peter, darling—the company of all these
handsome
gentlemen.”

The handsome gentlemen beamed upon her with the exception of the Duke who merely looked quietly amused.

“Now, of course, there is my sister Edna. She’s terribly plain and has a wart on the end of her nose. It’s so easy for her to keep to the straight and narrow path because, you see, no one ever wants to lead her from it. And she wears these terrible gowns, print cottons, my dears, and—” She looked at the Countess’s gown, blushed prettily, and stared in confusion at her hands. That Angela was seething was quite obvious to everyone and most were delighted. There is nothing more delicious than to sit on a beautiful lawn on an English summer’s day and comfortably survey the mortification of one of your best friends. But Daisy felt that someone ought to go to Angela’s defense.

She gathered her courage and gave a little cough to catch everyone’s attention. Daisy knew that her own tea gown was a miracle of sophistication straight from Paris, so she said, “I am extremely lucky. I do not have much dress sense myself, so I have to rely on her ladyship’s impeccable taste. I follow her advice in everything. This Paris gown was entirely her inspiration.”

Mrs. Blessop surveyed Daisy’s gown for a few seconds. A flicker of something not quite holy flashed briefly in her eyes and then she said in her soft, carrying voice, “Oh, my dear, you are
so
lucky to be able to afford Paris gowns. Now I, I am only a poor vicar’s wife and I made this poor little rag all by myself.”

The Earl, Bertie, and the Honorable Clive immediately exclaimed in surprise, “though,” as Clive Fraser put it, “you look so enchanting, my dear, that I believe you could wear a sack and still look divine.”

“There you are, Angela,” said her husband heartily. “Instead of costing me a fortune in gowns, you could be running them up yourself, what!”

Daisy found herself looking to Ann Gore-Brookes for help. As the only other lady of the party, it was surely her turn to say
something.

Ann Gore-Brookes had no wit, so she fell back on that last bastion of the English upper classes. “What school did you go to?” she asked in a loud voice, pointing her long pink nose in Mrs. Blessop’s direction.

“I didn’t go to school,” said Mrs. Blessop. “I was educated at home.”

“Hah!” said Ann, moving in for the kill. “I think I’ve seen you somewhere before. What’s your maiden name?”

“Higgins,” said Mrs. Blessop softly.

“Higgins? Higgins? Never heard of them. Which county?”

Mrs. Blessop’s blue eyes filled slowly with tears. “The Higginses of nowhere,” she said sadly. “My mother and father were not anybody special, you see. That was why I was so amazed when a gentleman like Peter fell in love with me. ‘You should not be ashamed of your background,’ he told me. ‘And if anyone tries to tease you about it, why then, they must be very insecure about their own.’”

Ann Gore-Brookes flushed an ugly color and retired defeated while the gentlemen made soothing noises. Ann’s grandfather had been a Yorkshire button manufacturer and she immediately assumed that the horrid Mrs. Blessop had divined all. In fact, the shrewd Mrs. Blessop had discovered that almost all families had some sort of skeleton in their closet, after a short lifetime of parrying social snubs.

Her perfect performance—and by now Daisy was convinced that Mrs. Blessop was a consummate actress as well as a bitch on wheels—made Daisy think of the theater. To change the subject she asked if anyone would be going to see the performance of
Romeo and Juliet
in Brinton during the coming week. She had heard that Mr. Bertram Dufresne was a superb actor. The Earl, who was now giving Mrs. Blessop the benefit of his chiseled profile, said with a laugh that he didn’t go in for all that “slushy nonsense.”

Mrs. Blessop turned her brilliant eyes on the Earl and fluttered her beautiful hands. Daisy stared spellbound. Somehow for a few seconds, Mrs. Blessop
was
Angela. Every flirtatious movement was correct to an inch. Daisy suddenly felt that somehow, somewhere, sometime, Mrs. Blessop had seen and studied the Countess and knew that Angela’s present dress and appearance were all part of an act.

“But you
must
go, your lordship. I will be there.”

“Then in that case,” grinned the Earl, “I’ll certainly be there, too. We’ll make up a party. What do you say, vicar?”

The vicar, who had been carrying on a low and intense conversation with Bertie, looked up and remarked vaguely, “Of course, of course. Anything you say,” and went back to his conversation.

“Do you by any chance disapprove of the theater, my lady?” asked Mrs. Blessop.

“I do not disapprove of playacting, provided it is confined to the theater,” said Angela waspishly. “It’s getting late. Curzon, clear these things. It has been charming to meet you, Mrs. Blessop.
So
educational. It is not every day that one meets someone with the courage not to be ashamed of their low beginnings and…”

“It’s too early to hurry away,” said the Earl. “I’ll take you on a tour of the gardens and Angela, you can show Mr. Blessop the library.”

Angela went quite pink with anger under her gray powder. She longed to go and change. But to do so would be to admit to this horrible vicar’s wife that she had been playing a game. Then she wondered whether Mrs. Blessop could be made jealous. “Perhaps,” she mused, “I
will
put on my prettiest gown, and to hell with what she thinks.”

By the time everyone gathered in the drawing room for sherry, the air was electric. Mrs. Blessop looked like a cream-fed kitten, the Earl was radiant, and Angela was exhausted. Nothing had gone right. No dress seemed suitable. She had screamed at her maid until the nervous woman had burned the Countess’s neck with the curling tongs. Angela had slapped her and had then tried to brand her with the tongs and the poor woman was only rescued by the arrival of Curzon who had firmly taken charge and directed operations, flattering Angela’s damaged ego and managing to get her to wear one of her hundreds of gowns and to present herself in the drawing room at the appointed time.

She was looking very beautiful, but there was an impervious aura of power emanating from Mrs. Blessop, and with one look at her husband, Angela knew exactly what had caused it. She was sure nothing further than an intense flirtation had taken place, but that was heady stuff indeed for the vicar’s wife. The vicar himself had refused Angela’s tour of the library. Mr. Burke had a problem he wished to discuss, he had said with surprising firmness.

“Have some sherry, vicar,” said the Earl. “I am sure you will find it excellent.” He turned to his wife with a forgiving smile. “Don’t you find it so, my dear?”

“It tastes,” said Angela, “as if it has been drunk already.”

The Duke of Oxenden gave a snort of laughter. Daisy realized suddenly that the Duke was perhaps too coolly amused by people. He never seemed to get involved, simply watching the action as if he were at a play.
That is why he never falls in love
, thought Daisy.
How can you fall in love if you remain a bystander the whole time?
She had an urge to tell him so and did when no one else was listening.

He looked down at her earnest face, a wicked yellow light dancing in his eyes. “Perhaps you should follow my example, my dear child. That way you would not drive young men to contemplating suicide.”

Daisy flushed. “I think you’re horrid.”

“No, you don’t, my dear goose. You are merely jealous of my lack of reaction.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a horrendous crash. The Countess had thrown the sherry decanter through the window.

The reason for her outburst, Mrs. Blessop, was crying and appealing to the gentlemen that she hadn’t meant anything nasty. Angela had said to Mrs. Blessop, “As you can see, I am restored to my natural beauty.”

“Oh, really,” Mrs. Blessop had replied. “I had not noticed any difference, I can assure you, my lady.”

For once, at a loss for a reply, Angela had resorted to violence. To Daisy’s amazement, the vicar was still talking earnestly to Bertie and did not bother to look up.

“Take me home, Peter,” wailed Mrs. Blessop.

The vicar did look up then and blinked myopically around the room at the shattered window and the furious Countess. “Really, my dear,” he said mildly. “I shall be ready in a few minutes. Dear me, another accident. You are a sort of jinx. I remember when we were at Mrs. Jean Barrington-French’s the other day, the teapot mysteriously flew from her hand, quite by accident, and nearly hit you and then Mr. Barrington-French slapped her. This young generation. You are all too impulsive, my children.”