Sail Upon the Land (10 page)

‘Lisa has no use for trinkets at home,’ he said. ‘In the unlikely event of a coronation they’ll be here waiting for us when we come over.’

Sarah had taken Melissa and her brothers to see the house where she had been brought up, Abbots Bourne. It had been sold after the war and was now the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company, so they couldn’t go inside.

‘Always freezing cold as the enormous boiler cost a fortune to run. And hideous. Fun for hide and seek though. And of course I nursed there during the war.’

Melissa caught a wistful look on her mother’s face as they walked in the grounds, where top-heavy trees were turning to gold, and great oblong brown cattle like chests of drawers grazed in the park beyond the ha ha. But it was fleeting, and soon they were eating cheese and home-made chutney rolls on a rug spread under the trees.

So far her first ball had been a bit of a let-down. The dinner started with stemmed glass dishes crammed with shredded lettuce, pink salad cream, and a few prawns like fat baby’s legs dangling over the edge. This was followed by warm flat islands of meat in a sea of gravy, with tasteless potatoes carved into zeppelins and strangely sweet peas. The pudding was Poire Belle Hélène – tinned pears with vanilla ice cream and chocolate custard. School pudding. Such a contrast to her mother's wonderful tasting food.

The Reeves family, minus the younger brothers as they were still at boarding school, shared a table with other couples and their daughters. The other debs’ mothers were just like hers, from outside London, taking part for the fun of it, to give their girls a bit of social life after boarding school and before they got on with the serious business of being grown up.

As Court Presentation had been abolished when the young Queen started to find it all too ridiculously uncomfortable in 1958, the Queen Charlotte was the defining moment of the debutantes’ launch. Before the war, her mother muttered, the Queen Charlotte was for girls whose parents had been divorced to get some kind of a royal blessing, however obscure and European, as the poor things were banned from Court.

After dinner, Melissa had watched debs, trained in the art of the old-fashioned court curtsey by the dancing teacher Madame Vacani, processing four abreast down the sweeping staircase in Grosvenor House’s main ballroom. Their object was a giant, two-tiered cake. This, which Melissa suspected was mostly made of cardboard, was presented on a wheeled table that had been towed by a different group of debs with silken ropes. She could see it was in fact being pushed from behind by two chefs. It looked like a giant wedding cake and Melissa was struck by the symbolism of all these girls clad in virgin white paying homage to a giant, fruit-crammed symbol of fertility. She kept her ideas to herself.

There was a visual same-but-different enjoyment to studying all the interpretations of the white dress. Some looked unfashionable, with wide skirts and tight bodices, others like hers were A-line with a high waist and straight skirt. The style suited the very slender only, on anyone plump it looked like a lampshade. Some dresses were very plain, others embroidered or beaded, even fringed. Hair was teased up on top, and all the mothers had begged, borrowed or stolen a tiara. Everyone wore full-length white gloves. The luckier girls had cream kid, probably pre-war and inherited, while she and her mother both wore cotton. Little pearly buttons did up the placket over the blue veins of her inner wrist.

An ancient Romanov princess, leaning on a silver-topped cane and draped in yellowing lace and large, very dirty diamonds, was the true object of all the curtseys. Not the cake at all. But curtseying to the cake was an immemorial debs’ joke. The princess was being a kind of substitute royal person, now the Queen had better things to do. A princess without a kingdom, whose close relations had been shot dead in a basement in Russia. How odd the world was. Melissa wondered if the old princess was sad, if she had known the Tsar, his wife and all the doomed children. She certainly looked old enough. No sign of the communists here of course, the debs were trapped in an arcane ritual safe from revolution.

Outside the glittering ballroom crammed with lily-white virgins, the warming streets foamed with young girls in psychedelic short skirts, men with long hair and coloured clothes, sex and pop music. Her parents claimed not to be able to stand it, but she had seen her mother very slightly moving her hips to ‘Love Me Do’ on the radio while she did the ironing. Such a short time ago men had worn uniforms, or suits, nothing else, and their hair had been regulation short back and sides. There’d been no such thing as a teenager and nearly every man had killed someone. But not Daddy. One of the things that singled him out for her mother.

Melissa had not been chosen to curtsey – her mother had not applied. It was probably because, even now that her foot was so much restored, Mummy was worried that the effort of balancing on one leg in public might be too much for her. She didn’t like having decisions like this made for her and resented it.

The men in her party were not debs’ delights at all, but brothers, nephews and other dancing partners that the mothers had dug up from desperate corners of old address books. All very decorous and dull. Melissa could not help stealing glances at the table next to theirs, presided over by a plump and red-faced gentleman whose frequent roars of laughter drowned conversation on the Reeves table. There were three champagne buckets – Melissa counted them covertly. The girls were all dressed correctly in white, but just that bit more stylishly, with low-cut bodices. Their hair was professionally done, their jewellery not confined to a string of pearls like Melissa’s. Their make-up was brighter too, with trendy pale lipstick and black eyeliner, and she detected false eyelashes as well. She was fascinated.

The men were quite obviously proper debs’ delights. Older, good looking and smart in their dinner jackets. They had lit cigars, and the indefinably delicious smell wafted over to Melissa’s table, speaking of tropical richness to her romantic mind. The conversation was lively and the girls kept swapping places to sit with the men they liked.

Melissa was having to bear the earnest conversation of her neighbour, a trainee accountant called Colin.

Colin explained to Melissa exactly what his training consisted of, and where he hoped his career would take him when he was qualified. Melissa was so bored it hurt, but had found her neighbour on the other side equally tedious and clumsy. She longed to flirt as the girls next door were doing, to wave a long cigarette holder around and flutter unnatural eyelashes. She toyed with the stem of her glass, wishing one of the fathers would buy some more wine. She noticed that there was no older woman at all on the exciting, racy table next door to keep the girls in check.

At one end of the ballroom the Lester Lanin orchestra, flown over from New York for the occasion, was just beginning to beguile the company with one of its long smooth medleys. No one was dancing yet, although people picked up their little cups of disgustingly bitter weak coffee and circulated into other parties. Melissa knew no one to circulate to and so was forced to continue listening to Colin, unable to help herself fixing her gaze on the angry mountain range sprouting from his forehead. Her eyes wandered once more to the other table. A red-headed girl was now sitting on the lap of one of the men, her arm round his neck, sipping from a shallow champagne glass and smoking through a long holder. Her dress looked like something out of Georgette Heyer, high-waisted and cut to show the tops of her bosoms. Colin turned at last to his neighbour on the other side, and she was free to drink in her surroundings.

At that moment, one of the men sitting on her side of the table next door turned outward and glanced around. His eyes appeared to skim over her and she had a moment of flinching invisibility, but then he glanced back, caught her eye and smiled. He was slim and fair, his blue eyes stuck out a bit and he didn’t have a lot of chin, but his smile was warm.

‘Hello,’ he said.

Melissa said, ‘Hello.’

‘Isn’t she a shocker?’ he said, inclining his head in the direction of the girl on the man’s lap.

‘I didn’t realise you were allowed to sit on men’s laps at things like this,’ she said, trying to sound sophisticated.

‘You’re not. But that’s Lydia for you, she doesn’t care. I’m just waiting to see if her father notices and says something.’

‘Is that her father?’ Now she had finished eating, Melissa untucked her gloves from the plackets and pulled them back over her fingers.

‘Yes, that’s Lord Dale. I think he’s not quite sober enough to realise what Lydia is up to. I also fully expect one of the other girls to go over and perch on his knee any minute.’

‘Oh, where is Lady Dale?’

‘She’s not well. She invited me and I only came because Lydia was so keen that her mother should see me here. And now it’s all for nothing.’

He paused, looking at Melissa. ‘What did you think of the cake?’

‘The cake?’ She was surprised by the question, but then said the first thing that came into her head: ‘I expected a girl in a sparkly bathing suit and ostrich feathers to pop out of the top.’

She looked back at him, trying to gauge his reaction. He was smiling encouragingly. She tried again.

‘I think it’s so funny that all these girls in white are curtseying to an enormous fertility symbol. It’s like something out of ancient Greece.’

She saw that he liked that too and added, ‘What about those girls dragging it in on ropes?’

‘Like in that Keats poem we all did for O level,’ he said, ‘“Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest.” Some kind of virgin sacrifice maybe? Who conjured all this crazy stuff up in the first place?’

‘Perhaps Queen Charlotte liked birthday cake,’ Melissa suggested. ‘She was quite odd, not letting her own daughters or her ladies-in-waiting marry, and insisting everyone wore white dresses and wreaths of fresh flowers like a lot of superannuated bridesmaids. Must have been a bunch of Miss Havishams when they got older. She was a great fat Queen Bee, popping out endless little royal maggots and not letting anyone else have a go.’ It was such a relief to say what she bloody well liked for a change, without being stared at.

He was laughing. ‘I love history,’ he said.

She smiled at him with a sudden sense of triumph.

He hesitated and then said, ‘Would you like to dance?’

‘But we haven’t been properly introduced.’

‘I don’t think it matters. I’m Munty by the way, and you are?’

‘I’m Melissa Reeves. I’d better introduce you to Mummy though.’

‘Melissa, this is 1966, not 1866. You don’t need to ask your chaperone if you can dance with me. Come on.’

She let him lead her to where Lanin and his orchestra were murdering the Rolling Stones via a medley of their hits.

‘I was just going to slip away,’ he continued. ‘Lydia’s taking everyone off to the Ad Lib for a bit of proper dancing. Lester Lanin doesn’t cut it for this crowd.’

‘Oh.’ Melissa was disappointed but then he was holding her hand and walking away from his party. She allowed herself to be led towards the now crowded dance floor.

‘I was going to go home,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.’

Everyone seemed to be dancing in the traditional manner, in a ballroom pose, which was a bit odd given the music. It was easier when Lanin stopped trying to be hip and played a waltz medley. Some people left the enormous dance floor, but Munty shifted his arm to take a firmer grip on her waist and start to swing her around. Before she knew what was happening, she was being waltzed right down one side of the dance floor, across the bottom and up the other side under the enormous crystal chandeliers. Munty’s hold was firm, and she was breathless and light on her feet with the swinging pleasure of it. Smiling faces turned towards them and blurred as they went faster. Just at the point she had no breath left, and her foot was beginning to niggle, the waltz came to an end. Munty stood back from her and inclined his head. She bobbed him a little curtsey, and they both laughed.

‘You’re good at that,’ she said.

‘My mother made me take lessons when I was sixteen. It was awful at the time, so embarrassing. I must say I’m grateful now.’

‘I must go and powder my nose,’ she said.

‘Don’t disappear,’ he said quickly.

When she came out of the Ladies, he was standing close to the top of the passage that led back into the ballroom. Delight welled up inside her.

He led her back to his party’s table to sit down, although everyone else had gone. Sarah came over to her daughter when she saw her return, and told her that they were leaving, and it had been lovely. Munty stood up, and Melissa introduced him.

‘Mummy, this is Munty. And Munty, this is my mother, Lady Sarah Reeves, and my father Dr Reeves.’

‘How do you do?’ they both said.

‘How do you do?’ replied Munty. ‘My name’s Mount-Hey, in fact, but everyone calls me Munty.’

Sarah smiled at him and turned to Melissa. ‘Now darling, we must fly. Come back whenever you like, but make sure you don’t get too tired.’

Melissa caught herself beginning to roll her eyes.

‘Oh, Mummy. I’m fine. I’ve got a key. See you in the morning.’

She turned back to Munty as they walked away arm in arm. ‘I have to confess something,’ he was saying. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you.’

‘You looked familiar, too, but I couldn’t think from where.’

‘I work in P&Q.’

‘I came in to buy some flowers for Mummy, to thank her for organising all this for me.’

‘I hope she liked them.’

‘She did. Being a deb wasn’t an obvious thing for me at all.’

She looked at him closely, trying to see whether it was the right thing to do, to tell him that she wasn’t grand or rich. He was bending slightly to hear what she was saying over the orchestra. Knowing he worked at P&Q was reassuring as well. It was very smart, but in the end P&Q was just a grocer.

‘Let’s go up on the balcony,’ he said. ‘It’s quieter, and I’ll get us a bottle of champagne on the way.’ He pulled out his wallet and went up to the bar as she trailed behind.