‘I wonder to myself— do I actually care? Come on, we’ll get a cab back to Kensington Court.’
Phoebe, marginally more unfriendly than the last time we had met, showed Charlotte and me into Aunt Clare’s study where Harry was reading the paper. He jumped up when we walked in.
‘Your birds have arrived,’ said Charlotte sardonically, balancing the cage precariously on top of a book called Wild Animals I Have Known on Aunt Clare’s desk. One of them squawked incredibly loudly and I jumped.
‘Penelope. You look princessish,’ said Harry, yawning.
‘I haven’t dressed yet.’
‘Didn’t say you had. Would you like a drink? I’ve asked Phoebe to open some champagne for us before we leave.’
‘Where’s Aunt Clare?’
‘Upstairs on the telephone,’ said Harry. ‘She’s delighted with herself for refusing to come tonight. I think it’s the first invitation she hasn’t accepted all year.’
‘I’m surprised she’s not coming, if only for the free drink,’ said Charlotte. ‘Apparently, they’re making real American cocktails. There have been so many rumours circulating about this party, it can’t fail to be anything other than the most enormous disappointment.’
‘Nothing Marina does is ever a disappointment, unfortunately.’ Harry peered at the birds. ‘They need a drink.’
‘So do we,’ said Charlotte. ‘Phoebe gets more and more hopeless.’
On cue, Phoebe clattered into the room with a bottle and some dusty-looking glasses. She was the most joyless girl I had ever seen, even succeeding in making the pop of the champagne cork sound melancholy. I took an enormous gulp, and my eyes watered.
‘It’s warm,’ shuddered Charlotte in disgust. ‘Nothing worse. I think I shall save myself for the daiquiris tonight.’
‘The Daiquiris? Aren’t they that terribly nice couple who breed Norwich terriers?’ came a voice from the doorway. Aunt Clare bustled into the room. ‘Penelope dear, how delightful.’ She kissed me on both cheeks. ‘How are your cricketing skills?’
‘Oh — the cap. Gosh, I still feel bad about that.’
She gave me a wink. ‘Don’t, darling. Don’t ever feel guilty about anything — such a waste of time. Now, I’ll have some champagne please, Phoebe. Mercy! What on earth are those poor birds doing on my desk?’ She clasped a hand to her chest.
‘They’re off to the party with us, Aunt. They’re part of the Marina Don’t Do It campaign.’
‘No wonder they’re green.
‘Sick as parakeets.’ Charlotte giggled.
Phoebe took me to my room to change. It was a nice room —clean and plain with a fire dancing in the grate, and someone had arranged some flowers on the dresser. I washed my face and changed quickly into my green velvet Selfridges number. Up and down, up and down, went my spaniel’s ears, as I struggled to make sense of my hair. Why. oh why couldn’t I be one of those naturally stylish women, like Charlotte or Mama? After twenty minutes, I knocked on Charlotte’s door to ask her what to do.
‘Mama says I should put it up.’
‘Which, of course, you should. Here.’ Charlotte grabbed my hairbrush and some pins. She looked beautiful in the most understated way possible. All she had done was brush her hair and change into a blue silk dress, but her natural style meant that she could have worn anything and looked right. Her height was a great relief to me too, for I had spent most of my school days slouching next to girls of five foot, embarrassed by my conspicuousness. Charlotte stood just an inch smaller than me, and she carried herself utterly without self-consciousness.
‘I like your dress,’ she said.
‘It’s a bit tight,’ I admitted. ‘Mama refused to buy me the bigger size. I feel a bit nervous, Charlotte.’
Are you?’ she asked in surprise. ‘Lucky you. Nervous is exactly the right approach to any party.’
‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to act,’ I admitted humbly.
‘Don’t do anything except smile and look as though you’re having a good time,’ she instructed.
‘I hardly know Harry. The whole thing feels jolly awkward.’
‘You know his name and he knows there’s a van Ruisdael hanging outside your bedroom at Magna. I should think that fact alone would be enough to send Marina into orbit.’
‘The van Ruisdael or the fact that Harry knows it’s there?’
‘Both.’ Charlotte grimaced as she concentrated on my hair. ‘To be quite frank, I’m bored witless by the whole Marina Hamilton saga,’ she said through a mouthful of hairpins. ‘Still, events that take months to develop in the cold light of day can be whizzed through in just a few hours at the right party. I’m hoping that Harry will go through the lot: anger, despair, humiliation — followed by revelation, hope and finally triumph. It’s the mix of drink and cigarette smoke that does it. There you go, just as your mother requested.’ She swung me round to look in the mirror.
‘Oooh, gosh, it’s lovely!’ For it really was. Charlotte dabbed a powder puff over my nose, swished a soft brush of rouge over my cheeks and stood back to admire her handiwork.
‘Pretty good, if I may say so. Not that you needed much. I’d do anything for your freckles.’ She frowned into the mirror at her creamy pale face. ‘When I was little, I used to paint them onto my nose with brown ink swiped from Mummy’s best pen.
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘She thought I was quite mad, comme d’habitude, poor old Mummy. Aunt Clare thought it was funny which annoyed her even more.
But I had something now, something that Charlotte had given me when she had put up my hair and made me look just how I always imagined I could look. For the first time in my life, I was going out with a quality that had hitherto dodged me. I had caught a large dose of confidence.
‘Idiots!’ said Charlotte under her breath, as a bank of camera lenses opened fire on us. ‘Do you think any of them realise that the building behind them is far more fascinating than any of the fools inside it?’
Despite the rain, the crowds had gathered behind the railings of Dorset House to watch the guests arriving for the party, hoping for a glimpse of ‘Princess Margaret, I supposed. As we stepped out of our taxi, one or two of the photographers had shouted out Charlotte’s name and asked her what she was carrying.
‘Parakeets,’ she said solemnly. A moment later, an efficient looking man had swept up and taken the cage from Charlotte.
‘Oh! They’re a present!’ she cried.
‘For Miss Marina? Will she know who they’re from?’
‘I doubt it.
The man took ‘out a pen and card and handed them to Charlotte who handed them to Harry. From me, he wrote, and the rain smudged the ink.
‘How on earth will she know who “me” is?’ I asked him, slightly irritated.
‘Because no one else will give her anything that can’t be worn, sprayed, eaten, drunk or sat on.
It was entrancing to view Dorset House again with adult eyes. I noticed with a surge of surprise that it looked Italian to me now, like a Roman villa with its three storeys of long arched windows, pale stone and long, level low-pitched roof. The portico was ablaze with torchlight, and a string quartet played bravely under its shelter.
‘Doesn’t it look romantic in the rain?’ I sighed.
‘Everything looks romantic in the rain,’ observed Charlotte. ‘Except cricket pitches and occupied taxis,’ said Harry.
When I was little, Mama used to take me to Dorset House for tea with Theodore FitzWilliam who was two years my junior and a very wet blanket. Tonight there was nothing of the chilly atmosphere of those miserable childhood visits. The first thing that I noticed was the warmth in the place — every room had been properly heated (something that would surely have killed old Lord FitzWilliam stone dead had he walked in), and the faded, pinched nobility of the war years had vanished, replaced by an all-consuming, glittery American glamour.
‘Get me a drink,’ demanded Charlotte.
Like everyone else, we had arrived fashionably l
ate. All around us people surged forward into the glorious hall, shaking off their coats and hats and filling the house with a deafening roar of chatter, while in front of us, a gay throng crowded the grand staircase in all its newly restored, white-marbled glory. As a child, I recalled the vast columns that stretched up to the first-floor gallery looking frightening and ghostly. as though they might collapse at any moment. Now they gave the impression of having been dipped in Californian sunlight. My ears were full of fascinating conversation.
Well how are you? You look soaked to the skin, poor thing. Of course, this weather’s been a terrible shock for Vernon, he’s grown so used to the temperatures in LA… I don’t believe I’ve seen you since the Governor’s Ball!…. Borrowed the earrings, but not the necklace. Aspreys, such kind people… Oh I received flowers from Marilyn last week with a note that simply read ‘Joy’… I found her such a sweet thing, such a talented actress, my dear, and so very vulnerable.
Charlotte and I giggled and I worried for half a minute that I should have worn better shoes, then realised that everyone else was far too concerned with their own appearance to bother about mine. We followed the crowd up the staircase and into the saloon, and I thought how odd it was that usually when one returns to a place one has known as a child it seems to have shrunk, yet Dorset House felt ten times larger than it ever had before. Automatically. Harry gravitated towards the long line of windows.
‘Typical,’ said Charlotte. ‘Here we are, in one of the most spectacular rooms in the whole country, and all he wants to do is stare outside. Oh, yes, I’ll have one of those, thank you!’ she added, stealing a cocktail sausage from a passing waiter.
‘You’re welcome, miss,’ he said, bowing his head, his face as serious as a surgeon.
The saloon had not been ruined by the Hamiltons, I realised, rather it had been revived with extreme consideration. They had drawn attention to things that I had never noticed before — the nymphs and unicorns that frolicked along the curve of the ceiling and the five candelabras that lit the room with the sort of soft glow that makes everyone look twenty times more seductive than they really are. Charlotte read my mind.
‘Beware of good lighting,’ she warned, as full of wise advise as I expected her to be. ‘It’s almost as dangerous as alcohol.’
Harry returned from the window and stuck close by to give the impression of being with us, but he seemed to know an awful lot of people, and they all seemed very pleased to see him. Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation, he would look my way and grin, though I supposed this was all part of the act — for the benefit of Marina, were she ever to appear. Charlotte knew plenty of people too, including the infamous Wentworth twins, Kate and Helena, who struck me as too beautiful and scary by half. They smoked thin cigars and were never out of the gossip pages. Kate was the cover girl of this month’s Tatler.
‘How are you, Charlotte?’ demanded Helena.
‘More to the point, how’s your darling aunt?’ asked Kate.
At that moment, Hope Allen, the least fashionable girl from my Italian class, with the skin of a rhinoceros, spotted me and hurried across the room to say hello. She was dressed in an unflattering off-white crinoline, a heat rash creeping over her plump shoulders, and I would have felt sorry for her were it not for two things that made her unbearable to me. First, she had borrowed my best Italian dictionary last year, dropped it in the bath and returned it to me with crinkled pages and minus the whole of the letter Z. Second, she had an awful habit of sniffing during lectures. She never carried a handkerchief.
‘Penelope! What are you doing here?’ she yelled, speaking aloud what I had been wondering about her. ‘You look different. It’s your hair, isn’t it?’
I nodded, my heart sinking with shame. Why should the only person I knew at this gathering be Hope Allen? She glanced around and her eyes lit upon Charlotte, deep in chatter with the Wentworth twins.
‘Heavens! Don’t look now, but that’s Charlotte Ferris and the Wentworth girls over there,’ she hissed, swinging her back to them, ‘I read something about Charlotte in the Standard last month. They said she was the only girl in London who can wear Dior, identify a great claret and talk to the Teds,’ she added in one of those whispers that comes out louder than a normal voice. I wanted the polished floors of the saloon to ‘swallow me whole.
And I had my doubts about the Standard. The only thing I had ever heard Charlotte say when consuming wine was ‘Yum’.
‘She’s a friend of mine,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster.
‘No! How long have you known each other?’ gasped Hope, virtually winding me with the insult of her astonishment.
‘A couple of weeks. We came to the party together.’
‘Ahhhh!’ said Hope slowly. ‘Now the hair makes sense—’ She stopped and clutched my arm. ‘Oh how divine, Harry Delancy’s here too. I’ve always thought him frightfully attractive in that smouldering sort of way that short men can be.’
‘Smouldering?’ I repeated blankly, trying to edge away from Charlotte.
‘Yes. They have to try that much harder, you know, short men. They make terrific husbands as a result. It’s worth remembering, you know.’
‘Right.’
By a stroke of good luck, this painful exchange was terminated by frantic signalling from a huge hairdo on the other side of the room.
‘Oh, I’ll have to whizz off,’ sighed Hope. ‘That’s my mother over there, you see? Talking to the woman in gold?’
‘I see.’
‘Oh, you must introduce me to Charlotte later,’ went on Hope. ‘I’ve met her before, with my cousin George. She won’t remember me, of course. That type never do.’
Cousin George. Hope was George Rogerson’s cousin. No wonder she was even more pleased with herself than usual tonight.
‘Who on earth was that unfortunate creature?’ demanded Charlotte as Hope waddled off.
‘Hope Allen. She says she’s met you before.’
‘Can’t have. I’d remember a pig-scarer like her.’
I giggled.
But I thought about what Hope had said about Charlotte and the Standard. As far as I was concerned, the description was as accurate as the press had ever been. And was she really that type, that rare type who had the luxury of picking and choosing exactly whom they remembered and forgot? I vowed that I would be one myself by the end of the evening.
Harry slid up to us with an empty glass. ‘You should try one of these,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve had three, stand over there in the corner of the room and look out at Hyde Park. It’s the closest I’ve ever got to the sensation of flying—’ His face stiffened and Charlotte and I followed his gaze.
‘There she blows!’ whispered Charlotte. ‘Harry’s dream mother-in-law.’
Resplendent in a pearl-festooned silver gown with a matching tiara, Tania Hamilton was greeting new guests with a presidential air. She was a pocket battleship of a woman, even wider and shorter than Mama had suggested, but she had the unapologetic air of a woman enjoying life to the full. She steamed up to us, holding her cocktail glass in front of her like a torch.
‘Well! Mr Delancy, how delightful!’ she exclaimed, and instantly my ears tuned in to the seductive American accent. ‘How brave of you to come — George will be so thrilled. And who are your friends? What a pity your mother couldn’t be here this evening.’ She beamed, her relief at Aunt Clare’s absence palpable. Harry was saved having to respond to this by Kate Wentworth who slunk up beside him and put her hands over his eyes.
‘Guess who?’ she growled.
‘Crown Princess Giselle of Spain?’ suggested Harry. Kate exploded into giggles.
‘What a wonderful party, Lady Hamilton,’ said Charlotte, ignoring her cousin. ‘I’m Charlotte Ferris, Mr Delaney’s cousin. This is my— Harry’s friend, Penelope Wallace.’
Lady Hamilton clasped Charlotte’s hand. ‘Of course! Charlotte! What a treat. I’ve heard so much about you!’
‘Oh dearie!
’ said Charlotte with an immodest smirk. I tried not to giggle.
‘I love your house,’ I said brightly. ‘My mother says I used to come here when I was little, when the FitzWilliams lived here.’
Curses! I thought the moment the words had left my mouth. She won’t like that information one bit.
‘I expect you think we’ve stripped the place of its old charm and made it all so grotesquely American.’ Lady Hamilton laughed, not in the least bit worried. ‘My husband tells me they were going to pull the place down if we hadn’t have bought it. So really. it’s a case of the Yanks stepping in and saving the place once again, ha ha ha! Have you three tried all the cocktails tonight? I have a passion for Brandy Alexander, so intoxicating. Oh, would you excuse me, girls? I believe the princess is arriving.’ She surfed off into the crowd.
‘I thought she was rather a poppet,’ said Charlotte. ‘I liked her sense of humour.’
‘She has no sense of humour,’ snapped Harry, who had disentangled himself from Kate Wentworth. ‘Here,’ he added, swiping two cream-coloured concoctions from another-phantom-faced waiter, ‘and don’t ask me what’s in it.’
All I could tell was that it was delicious, and sipped through a straw it tasted of coconut and sugar and countries with names I couldn’t spell. We drank one each, and then Charlotte suggested we try a different drink, and just as we were setting forth on our third, Harry’s face hardened, for standing talking on the opposite side of the room, exactly as he had described her to me, was Marina Hamilton. She was much shorter than I had expected (as the very glamorous always are), and thinner and ten times more alluring. Dressed in a hot-pink dress with a dazzling string of diamonds around her right wrist and a knockout cluster of rubies on the third finger of her left hand, she looked a million and one dollars. How on earth Harry expected her to feel concerned at my presence, I could not think. Laughing, drinking, smoking and sparkling — she moved as though she was someone. Even from as far away as we were, her famous cackle rang out above the music and the chatter. It was ten minutes before she spotted Harry, and even then she merely flicked her eyes in our direction and raised a glass. That’s that then, I thought.