Hothouse Flower (16 page)

‘Please, Elsie,’ Adrienne indicated the chair opposite her, ‘sit down. So,’ she smiled, ‘I have been hearing from Mrs Combe that you have a talent for styling the hair.’

Elsie blushed. ‘Oh no, your Ladyship, not really. I like the modern styles and I just enjoy copying them.’

‘
C’est parfait!
’ She clasped her hands together. ‘You have heard, no doubt, about the dance we will host for my niece next month?’

‘I have, your Ladyship, yes,’ nodded Elsie.

‘There will be many young ladies here, sophisticated girls who will be used to having the best in London, where everything is on their doorstep, including hairdressers. Some will be bringing their own maids, others will not. Would you be willing to offer your services as a hair stylist that night?’

‘Oh, your Ladyship!’ Elsie was overwhelmed. ‘As you said, they’re used to the best, I’m just an amateur. But I’ll try my hardest.’

‘
Voilà!
Then that is settled. I will say we have a young lady in our employ who is able to help the debutantes with their hair before the dance.’

‘Oh yes, your Ladyship, thank you. I’ll do my best not to let you down.’

‘I know you will, Elsie,’ Adrienne smiled. She stood up slowly and walked to the window. Then let out a large sigh. ‘I want this party to be very special.’ She turned back to Elsie. ‘It may be the last one this house sees for a very long time, if war comes.’ She nodded at her. ‘You may go.’

‘Thank you, your Ladyship.’

Adrienne watched her as she left the room. Elsie was a good girl and she was very fond of her. And she approved of her relationship with Bill, the gardener’s son. She also wondered if either of them, at the start of their young lives, had any idea of the severity of the storm clouds gathering over them. Christopher said it wouldn’t be long now. Hitler’s power and support were growing daily. It was only a matter of time, and then …

Adrienne had lost her brother in the last Great War. She had been lucky to keep her husband. Now, she was looking at the possibility of losing her son. It was a thought she couldn’t bear. She knew to her cost how rank and privilege meant nothing on the battlefield in the lottery of who lived and who died. Both her son and the gardener’s boy, Bill, would sooner or later be sent off to fight. Then God alone would choose.

And there was nothing she could do.

It was the British way not to show emotion. Adrienne had tried hard, and sadly failed, to perfect the technique. She was French and had been taught that emotions were better displayed than kept inside. But perhaps, at times like these, it was easier to distance oneself from what one truly felt. And the wish to protect her son was currently overwhelming. She knew Harry was not a natural soldier and was forced to lead a life unsuited to his personality and ability. And now he might die for it.

Adrienne checked herself, knowing she must force maudlin thoughts from her mind before they consumed her. Harry must not see her fear. Her energy must be directed at making her niece’s Coming Out dance the event of the Season. She decided to take a walk through the park, down to the hothouse, and discuss with Jack and Bill the flowers they would need for the many floral arrangements she had planned.

14

Back in London, Olivia eyed the invitation to Penelope Crawford’s Coming Out dance with far less excitement than she would have felt a few weeks earlier. In the beginning, she had thought of Harry Crawford non-stop, but recently, as the Season got into full swing, Olivia had been swept along on the wave of the hectic social circuit, or ‘circus’ as Venetia and her other chums aptly termed it.

She wandered, bleary-eyed, through to the dining room to join her grandmother for breakfast, the invitation to Wharton Park clutched in her hand. Lady Vare was on her habitual post-food cup of coffee, wearing her
cache-misère
turban and reading the
Telegraph.
She eyed Olivia’s entrance with displeasure.

‘Olivia, I do realise your schedule is busy, but it is not acceptable to be late for meals. When I was in your shoes, any tardiness with time-keeping would render me hungry until luncheon.’

‘Sorry, Grandmother,’ Olivia said as the maid set some dried-up eggs and bacon in front of her. ‘I was out last night at the Henderson dance. We went on for late-night supper at Quaglino’s.’ Olivia eyed the food on the plate in front of her and wished she had not had that last Gin and It. Small hammers were knocking nails into her temples and she looked away from the congealing cold bacon.

‘It was three o’clock when I heard you come in,’ Lady Vare reprimanded sternly. ‘I hope, Olivia, you are heeding what I said to you at the beginning of the Season, and not being tempted to join the wrong crowd.’

‘Oh no, Grandmother,’ Olivia lied. ‘I’m sure you’d approve of the people I was with last night. John Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, was there, with his younger brother, Andrew.’ Olivia knew this would impress her grandmother as John Cavendish was the heir to the Devonshire Estate, which included Chatsworth House. She did not, however, add how they had been so raucous that the Maitre d’ had asked them to leave or how, walking away from the restaurant giggling like naughty school children, they had continued the party at someone’s house in Mayfair.

‘And is there any young beau so far who has shown particular interest in you?’ Lady Vare asked.

The truth was, there had been a succession of what her grandmother would term ‘eligible’ squires, all eager to dance with Olivia, to invite her to dine in their party, and ask her to accompany them to whichever nightclub everyone was going to that evening after the dance. Yet, as her grandmother had suggested, things were different now. Her new-found circle included many young men, but she knew them as friends, not prospective husbands. What with the spectre of war looming, many of them recognised that if and when the day came, their lives as they knew them would be over. And before they were packed off to possible death, they wanted to live every day as if it were their last.

This was not, however, the answer to give to her grandmother.

‘Yes, there are a couple of young men who seem to be … interested,’ Olivia said as she waved away her untouched plate. The maid cleared it and provided her with some much-needed coffee.

‘And may I enquire who?’

‘Oh,’ replied Olivia airily, ‘Angus MacGeorge – he owns half of Scotland and is awfully good fun – and Richard Ingatestone, whose father is something huge in the Navy and –’

‘Well,’ Lady Vare interjected, ‘perhaps it would be nice if you brought one of these young men to tea here, Olivia, so that I could meet them.’

‘I’ll ask them, Grandmother, but everything is so busy just now and people are literally booked up weeks in advance.’ She raised her invitation and said, ‘There’s a dance next month at Wharton Park for Penelope Crawford. They have offered me a room for the night at the house.’

‘I used to find country dances such a bore, myself. Are you sure it’s worth the trouble, Olivia, dear? Penelope Crawford is, after all, only borrowing her uncle’s house for the occasion,’ Lady Vare commented. ‘Her own family doesn’t have tuppence to rub together. Charles, her father, was killed in a trench during the Great War. I doubt it will be well attended.’

Olivia sipped her coffee. ‘As a matter of fact, Grandmother, I went with Mummy and Daddy to Wharton Park just after Christmas. I rather liked it, so may I say yes?’

‘As long as it interferes with nothing in town and you provide the guest list for me to peruse, then yes, you may go.’ Lady Vare stood up from the table, unhooked her walking stick from the edge of it, then asked, ‘Are you in for luncheon?’

‘No, I have an engagement at the Berkeley and then I must stop off afterwards to collect the gown I tore last week. The dressmaker hopes to have it mended by this afternoon and I’d like to wear it tonight.’

Her grandmother nodded, pacified. ‘Then I will see you at breakfast tomorrow morning,’ she said as she left the room. ‘On time, if you please.’

‘Yes, Grandmother, of course,’ Olivia called after her. Relieved, she sank her head into her hands and massaged her temples, trying to stem her headache.

At first she had thought that not having her mother with her to take her through the Season was a disadvantage. But the fact that her grandmother was too old and too tired to chaperone her had turned out to be an absolute blessing. It meant she’d had complete freedom to do as she wished, and with whom she wished. Although the set she was mixing with would have been seen as unsuitable by her grandmother, Olivia was having the time of her life.

Venetia had taken Olivia under her wing. They had become firm friends and Venetia had introduced her to the more interesting element of that year’s Season. Despite having a reputation for being ‘fast’, the girls and young men she knew were cultured, intelligent and politically aware. Most of them, like her, were making their way through the Season because they had to. But rather than spending their luncheons and late-night suppers discussing the colours of their gowns for the following night’s dance, the girls often mused on what they wanted to do with their lives. Which didn’t necessarily involve immediate marriage or children, but perhaps university or, if the war interfered, playing an active role in that.

Olivia’s favourite place in London was Venetia’s townhouse in Chester Square. It was always full of unusual people, culled from the bohemian intelligentsia set to which Venetia’s parents belonged.

Ferdinand Burroughs, Venetia’s father, was a well-known avant-garde painter, with whom Venetia’s mother, Christina, a ‘Lady’ by birth and from one of the grandest families in the land, had fallen in love and subsequently married under a cloud. Christina Burroughs was everything Olivia would have liked her
own
mother to be: she had jet-black hair to her waist – though Olivia thought it was almost certainly dyed – wore dramatic eye make-up and smoked cigarettes through a jade holder.

Venetia had told Olivia how, when her mother had told her family she was going to marry the penniless young artist, they had refused even to countenance it. So Christina had run away to London to be with Ferdinand and they had lived virtually penniless for years, until Ferdinand’s paintings started to sell. The townhouse in Chester Square had been left to Christina by a great-aunt, the one member of her family who seemed to have some sympathy for her plight. So at least, eventually, the young couple had had a roof over their heads. But there had been no money to spend on the interior, so the curtains were mouldering, the furniture gleaned from thrift shops and, due to the absence of staff, the whole place needed a jolly good clean with a vat-full of disinfectant.

‘Pup’s awfully rich now, you know. His paintings sell for hundreds and they could afford to buy whatever they wanted,’ Venetia had told her. ‘But they like the house just as it is. And so do I,’ she had added defensively.

Venetia was doing the Season specifically to upset her mother’s family, who were aghast that the daughter of a common painter could be presented at Court.

‘But because
I
was presented, there’s nothing they can do to stop me, darling,’ Christina had tittered one day over a Martini with the girls before they went out to a dance. ‘Letty, my sister, is horrified – of course, her daughter, the ghastly Deborah, is coming out this Season too. I shall never forget the look on Letty’s face when she saw me at Queen Charlotte’s ball. I thought she might faint in horror.’ Christina giggled, ruffling Venetia’s hair affectionately. ‘And, of course, to make matters worse, my daughter is beautiful, whereas hers is spotty, overweight and downright stupid.’

Olivia had often thought that Venetia was more mother to Christina than Christina was to her. Perhaps, coming from such an eccentric background, Venetia had been forced to develop a degree of wisdom and practicality that belied her years. She was an intriguing mix of bohemianism and common sense, and Olivia adored her.

Venetia would casually drop in the names of luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, who – accompanied by Vita Sackville-West, her lover – had often come by for tea when Venetia had been a child. The glamour of the Bloomsbury Set and the Burroughs’ attachment to it, fascinated Olivia. Even though it had mainly dispersed now, radical thoughts still held fast in the household and Venetia was passionate about Women’s Rights and the struggle for equality. She had already determined that she would not be taking her husband’s name when and if she married.

For Olivia, the Season so far had encompassed the best of both worlds: terrific fun, yet with a set of like-minded new friends. Olivia’s enquiring mind had been stimulated and opened and, ironically, she was now dreading the Season coming to an end, for then she had to make some decisions about her future.

Returning to her parents’ house in Surrey, then sitting and waiting to be plucked from the shelf by a suitable husband, was just not an option. She would start to receive a small income on her twenty-first birthday, but for the next two and a half years she was financially reliant on her parents.

Unless she found herself a job …

Olivia stood up from the dining-room table and made her way upstairs to her rooms. She needed to get dressed as she was going to Venetia’s house for lunch.

Ferdinand Burroughs, Venetia’s father, had returned home only yesterday from Germany, where he had been sketching images of the mounting power of the Third Reich for a series of paintings he wanted to complete. Having only heard about Ferdinand through the eyes of his adoring daughter, Olivia was eager to meet the man himself. And perhaps hear first-hand his experience of the threat posed by the Nazis. Pinning on her hat and donning her gloves, she gathered up her handbag and set off for Chester Square.