Our Lady of Pain Read online

  Holding a thin, fragile china cup and surveying the company with amused eyes, the duchess said, “We shall leave in two days’ time. It would be best if we travel to Claridge’s and then go on from there.” Claridge’s Hotel in London was called the home of the motorocracy, the travelling aristocrats, and also used by society ladies who were tired of the strain of catering for a household of guests and preferred to let the famous hotel cater for them.

  “Once we get to Paris,” said the duchess, raising her lorgnette and surveying Rose’s outfit of blouse and skirt, “we must get you some fashionable clothes.”

  “I would not like to burden you with the expense,” said Rose. “We were only allowed to wear our plainest clothes at the convent. We do have plenty of fashionable items in our luggage.”

  “Nothing is more fashionable than a Paris gown,” retorted the duchess. “Besides, I shall charge anything we buy to your father. My dear Captain Cathcart, do say something. You have been sitting scowling and brooding ever since the ladies arrived. Are you in love with Lady Rose?”

  “We are no longer engaged,” said Harry.

  “That was not the question. Never mind. I must retire for a nap. Come, Lady Rose, you must be chaperoned at all times.”

  Rose and Daisy retired to Rose’s sitting room. “Did you see Becket!” demanded Daisy. “He wouldn’t even look at me!”

  “You will see plenty of him when we go to Paris,” said Rose, “but it is all very uncomfortable, I must admit. The captain went on as if he barely knew me.”

  “Let’s go outside for a walk,” urged Daisy. “I want to enjoy this feeling of freedom.”

  They put on their coats and gloves and pinned hats on their heads and made their way out to the front of the house. “Nothing but trees, lawn and drive,” said Rose. “There’s probably some sort of garden at the back.”

  “You know what I think?” asked Daisy.

  “No, how can I?”

  “I think it’s a bit shocking that this here grand house is merely a hunting box. It could house a whole street of people from the East End of London.”

  “True. But keep such views to yourself or our hostess will think you a Bolshevik. Ah, here are the gardens in front of the terrace.”

  “And there’s the captain,” whispered Daisy, “sitting on that bench down by the sundial.”

  “We should go back,” said Rose, suddenly nervous.

  As if aware of them, Harry turned round, saw them, and stood up. Rose walked towards him, feeling her heart beginning to thud.

  “Lady Rose,” he said, “pray join me.”

  Rose looked over her shoulder but Daisy had disappeared.

  Rose and Harry sat down together on the bench. “We are supposed to be chaperoned, Captain Cathcart,” said Rose.

  “We are in full view of the house and in the open air. The conventions do not apply to the gardens, society obviously never having heard of love in the bushes. Please sit down.”

  They both sat down on the bench. Rose was wearing one of the huge cartwheel hats which were so fashionable. The crown was decorated with curled grouse feathers. She had her head bent forwards and Harry could not read her expression. He wondered if his remark about love in the bushes had been too crude. What did she think? Was there any passion there, or when he had kissed her, had he been mistaken in what he had considered her enthusiastic response?

  At last Rose began to speak. “Captain Harry …”

  “I think you should just call me Harry. We have known each other for some time.”

  “Well, Harry, then. I am deeply grateful to you for having rescued us from that convent. How did you manage to persuade the duchess?”

  “I had done some work for her. A precious diamond brooch was missing and her household was in an uproar, with one servant accusing the other. I eventually found it caught inside a corset.”

  “How did you know where to look?”

  “I thought it might have fallen down inside her clothes, and the corset, which is not as regularly washed as the other garments, seemed like a good idea. After the convent would not let me see you, Becket informed me that he had read in the local newspaper while he was waiting for me that the duchess was resident at this hunting box. Was life at the convent really so bad?”

  “I suppose it would have been all right if I had really wanted to become a nun. The nuns were in the main very pleasant. Sister Agnes was another matter.”

  “I wish you would not come with me to Paris,” said Harry.

  “Why?”

  “If you remember, some man put those letters in your luggage to incriminate you in a murder. He may appear again.”

  “If you think he is the culprit, what has it to do with this Madame de Peurey?”

  “Miss Duval owned two houses in France. It is possible that Madame de Peurey may have hired someone to kill Dolores, but I will be able to tell better when I meet her.”

  “I must go with you,” said Rose firmly. “The duchess wants to go and I do not want to be returned to the convent.”

  “I am sure your parents will not approve.”

  “Is my company so repugnant to you that you will do anything and hope for anything to stop me going?”

  “I am only thinking of your safety.”

  Rose got to her feet. “It is a pity you were not thinking of my safety before you chose to consort with a French whore!” “I was merely working for her!”

  “Pah!”

  Rose strode off to the house.

  At breakfast the following morning, the butler handed the duchess a telegram. “What now?” she asked. “Oh, it’s from Polly. She says, ‘Do not approve. Stop. Convent respectable. Stop. Return my daughter immediately. Stop. How are you? Stop. Effie.’ ”

  “Oh, no!” wailed Daisy.

  The duchess turned her shrewd little eyes on Rose.

  “Is your father High?”

  “You mean, High Church?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, the church at our country home, Stacey Court, is Low.”

  “And does he know these Anglican convents were founded by Edward Bouverie Pusey?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Edward Pusey had founded the Anglican convents in the middle of the last century. He was under criticism for being too close to the Catholic Church.

  “Good. Kemp, a telegram.” She waited until the butler had fetched paper and pen and then she began. “ ‘Dear Polly. Did you know the sisters were a bunch of Puseyites, all bells and smells and don’t think you want Rose there so think it best she comes with me and what were you thinking of to turn her into scrubbing woman really not suitable I am well, Effie.’ ”

  “Do you wish me to insert punctuation, Your Grace?” asked Kemp.

  “Send it!”

  “My parents may still protest,” said Rose uneasily.

  “Oh, I think that’ll do the trick.”

  Rose waited uneasily all day. At afternoon tea, she found the duchess in high spirits. “Got a telegram from your ma,” she said gleefully. “She says, ‘Dear Effie, Had no idea. Stop. Grateful to you. Stop. Daughter unruly so keep tight rein. Stop. Yours Polly.’

  “Paris, here we come!”

  Alas! If women are going to motor, and motor seriously—that is to say,

  use it as a means of locomotion—they must relinquish the hope of keeping

  their peach-like bloom. The best remedy is cold water and a rough towel,

  and that not used sparingly, in the morning before they start. There is

  one other, the last, but perhaps the hardest concession a woman can make

  if she is going to motor, and that is she must wear glasses—not small

  dainty glasses, but veritable goggles. They are absolutely necessary both for

  comfort and for the preservation of the eyesight; they are not becoming,

  but then, as I have tried to point out, appearance must be sacrificed.

  —LADY JEUNE. MOTORS AND MOTOR DRIVING 1902

>   Daisy was overwhelmed by the grandeur of Claridge’s. Lord and Lady Hadshire’s homes in London and the country, magnificent as they were, did not have the same modern luxuries as the hotel, which boasted electric light, lifts and en suite bathrooms. At the Hadshires’, when she wanted a bath, footmen had to carry a coffin-shaped bath up the stairs and then fill it with water brought up from the kitchens.

  “It’s a world away from the convent,” she said. Daisy, brought up in poverty in the East End of London, could never get over marvelling at the vast gulf between rich and poor.

  Rose was at that moment allowing the duchess’s lady’s maid, Benton, to strap her into the long corset which was considered necessary to produce the fashionable S-figure. She was still upset with Harry. She felt sure he had enjoyed a liaison with Dolores Duval. “What would my lady like to wear tonight?” asked Benton.

  “You choose something,” said Rose.

  Benton went to the tall wardrobe and selected a blue chiffon gown embroidered with tiny rosebuds. It was low-cut and the layered chiffon sleeves covered the tops of her arms. All Rose’s jewels had been brought over from the town house. “I think the rope of pearls, my lady,” said Benson, “Now, the hair.”

  Rose’s long brown hair was piled up on top of her head, pouffed out, and ornamented with little silk rosebuds.

  “You look like another girl,” said Daisy, who was already dressed and was watching the toilette. “Sister Agnes wouldn’t recognize you now.”

  Rose normally detested wearing a long corset, but for once she did not mind. She felt she needed to be armoured in fashion before she saw Harry again.

  “This is a very beautiful gown,” said Benton. “Is it one of Mr. Worth’s?”

  “No, my seamstress, Miss Friendly, designed it and made it for me.”

  “Then this lady is more than a seamstress!”

  Daisy scowled. She was still furious at Becket for having turned down her idea of setting up a salon with Miss Friendly.

  At last Rose was ready. She and Daisy descended to the dining room to join the others. Daisy thought it was a shame that Becket could not join them, but in the duchess’s eyes he was nothing more than a gentleman’s gentleman.

  The duchess, already seated at a dining table, flashed and glittered under the weight of diamonds. She had a large diamond tiara on her head, a collar of diamonds around her neck, and diamond brooches pinned haphazardly on her dark blue velvet gown.

  “My dear Rose,” she said, “how beautiful you look. Don’t you think so, Captain?”

  “Very fine,” said Harry.

  “We will have you married off to some dashing French comte, you’ll see. Can’t you just see our dear Rose on the arm of some handsome Frenchman, Captain?” The duchess’s eyes twinkled like her diamonds.

  “Alas,” said Harry, “I have no imagination.”

  Had it been left to Harry and Rose, it would have been a silent dinner, but various aristocrats kept interrupting their meal to chat to the duchess.

  At last, when the duchess was engaged in another animated conversation with an old friend, Harry whispered to Rose, “Truce.”

  “What truce?”

  “Between us. We cannot go to Paris glaring and staring silently at each other. If it makes you feel any better, I did not have an affair with Miss Duval.”

  “That means nothing to me!”

  “Oh, Rose, please.”

  Rose sat with her head bowed for a moment. Then she raised her blue eyes and looked into his black ones. “Very well,” she said with a little smile. “Truce.”

  “Thank God for that,” chirped Daisy. “All this heavy silence. It was like being back in the convent.”

  The duchess finished speaking to her friend and turned her attention on Daisy. “Do I detect a certain Cockney accent there, Miss Levine?”

  Daisy looked wildly at Rose. “Miss Levine,” said Rose repressively, “is a distant relative of mine from a branch of the family which fell on hard times. She has not had my advantages.”

  “Really?” said the duchess, unabashed. “I had such a business ages ago when Warnford fell for a chorus girl at Daley’s. He even had her invited to a house party where she pretended to be a lady. I saw through her little act and sent her packing.”

  “I do not see what your husband’s amours have to do with my companion,” said Rose angrily. “Pray talk of something else.”

  The duchess raised her lorgnette. “You know, animation suits you. You should cultivate it.”

  The duchess turned her attention to her dinner. She was a messy eater and the front of her gown was soon decorated with the detritus of her meal. Rose, who had been taught to eat ortolans by dissecting them with a sharp knife, wondered what her mother would make of the duchess’s table manners as the little duchess picked up the small bird and crammed it in her mouth and then began to pick out the bones.

  The pudding was a meringue confection and soon the duchess’s gown was liberally sparkling with meringue dust.

  “Where shall we stay in Paris?” asked Rose.

  “I have reserved a floor at the Crillon. We could have stayed with an old friend of mine, but I decided it would be as well to keep our mission discreet. Society does gossip so. We should retire now because we need to make an early start.”

  “How early?”

  “We catch the nine-o’clock to Dover. Ladies, wear your motoring gear when we set out.”

  A Daily Mail reporter lurked outside Claridge’s the next morning, hoping for some news about celebrities. He saw that someone very important was about to depart. There was the duchess’s Daimler and behind it, Harry’s Rolls, and behind that, a carriage for the servants. The duchess was travelling accompanied by her lady’s maid, two footmen and her butler. The reporter watched as those huge trunks called Noah’s Arks were loaded into the back of the motors and into the rumble of the servants’ carriage.

  He went up to the doorman. “Who’s leaving?”

  The doorman stared impassively ahead. The reporter pressed a guinea into his hand.

  “The Duchess of Warnford,” said the doorman. “Her Grace is going to Paris.”

  “Who goes with her?”

  Again that impassive stare. The reporter sighed and fished out another guinea.

  “Captain Cathcart, Lady Rose Summer, and Miss Levine.”

  The reporter grinned. Lady Summer was news. Nobody had heard of her since that murder. He retreated a little way down the street and waited for the party to emerge and began to make notes.

  It was an uncomfortable journey to the station. A gale tore at the ladies’ hats and plastered their thick veils against their faces.

  At the station, the footmen ran off and returned with porters. They followed their luggage to where it was being loaded onto a private carriage on the train. Daisy was enchanted by the duchess’s private carriage, which was like a drawing room on wheels, complete with comfortable armchairs, the latest magazines and vases of fresh flowers.

  The servants were told to make their way to a third-class carriage farther down the train, but as Benton, the lady’s maid, was to stay with them in the duchess’s carriage, Harry requested the company of Becket as well.

  Becket tentatively sat down next to Daisy. He felt he could not bear her coldness a moment longer.

  “Daisy,” he whispered.

  “Ye-es?” drawled Daisy in a good imitation of a haughty Mayfair hostess.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Becket. “I was too hasty in turning down your idea of setting up a dress salon.”

  “You mean it?” said Daisy.

  “I’ll do the business end, but I don’t want to have to serve ladies.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Daisy eagerly. “Oh, I’m so glad we’re friends again. Miss Friendly will be thrilled. We’ll have the most successful dress salon in London.”

  At that moment, Miss Friendly had just left a lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She stood on the pavement dazed. She had just been infor
med that her Aunt Harriet, her mother’s sister, who had vowed to have nothing to do with her father ever again because of his drinking and gambling, had died and had left her a house in Sussex, jewellery and ten thousand pounds.

  Miss Friendly felt bewildered and alone. She wished she could talk to Rose and Daisy. Then she remembered Phil Marshall, who worked for the captain. She had met him at a dinner the year before and he had seemed such an easy-going, sensible man.

  She hailed a hack and directed the cabbie to the captain’s Chelsea address. Phil stared down at the little figure of the seamstress on the doorstep. He was practising a haughty air for the day when he hoped to take over Becket’s duties.

  “It is I, Miss Friendly,” she said timidly.

  Phil suddenly smiled. “I didn’t recognize you at first. Come in. You look worried. Is everything all right?” He led the way into the front parlour.

  “Everything is very much all right,” said Miss Friendly, “but I need some advice.”

  “We’ll have a glass of sherry and you can tell me all about it,” said Phil. He poked the fire into a blaze and then fetched a sherry decanter and two glasses. “Sit by the fire,” he said. “What’s happened?”

  Miss Friendly took a nervous sip of sherry and told him about her inheritance.

  “You have no more worries,” said Phil. “You move into your aunt’s house and you’ll never have to work again.”

  “It’s just that I have this rather terrifying idea. Daisy—Miss Levine—once suggested that Becket, Miss Levine and myself should set up a dress salon. I have a talent for designing and making clothes. Then Becket said he did not like the idea and I am too timid to take on such an undertaking myself.”

  Phil sat deep in thought. He was a changed man from the poverty-stricken wreck the captain had rescued. He had thick white hair and a rosy face and kept his figure trim with frequent walks. He admired Miss Friendly. He thought she was all that a lady should be: genteel and shy.