The only blight came from Alicia’s father and brothers, who brushed aside her attempts to enlist their help with a brusque impatience hitherto unknown.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Alicia, go away!” snapped her father, more passion in his voice than she certainly could ever remember. “Have your wretched bridal party, by all means, but leave us out of it! There are times when women’s affairs are a flaming nuisance, and this is one of them!”
“Well!” huffed Alicia, staylaces creaking dangerously, and went to complain to her mother.
“I’m afraid we must tread very carefully at the moment, dear,” said Aurelia, looking worried.
“What on earth’s the matter?”
“I don’t really know, except that it’s something to do with shares in the Byron Bottle Company. I gather they’ve been disappearing.”
“Nonsense!” said Alicia. “Shares don’t disappear.”
“Out of the family? Is that what I mean?” amended Aurelia vaguely. “Oh, it’s quite beyond me, I have no head for business.”
“Willie hasn’t mentioned it to me.”
“Willie mightn’t know yet, dear. He hasn’t had much to do with the company yet, has he? After all, he’s just finished at university.”
Alicia dismissed the whole tiresome business with a snort, and went off to instruct the butler to the effect that only female servants would be allowed in the front of the house, as it was a party purely for ladies.
Of course Drusilla came, and brought Missy with her; poor Octavia, dying to go, was obliged at the last moment to remain behind in all her best clothes, as Aurelia had forgotten to arrange the promised conveyance for the ladies of Missalonghi. Drusilla wore her brown grosgrain, happy in the knowledge that to do so would not be exposing this tried-and-true outfit to an early encore at the wedding itself. And Missy wore her brown linen, on her head the old sailor hat she had been forced to don on every occasion demanding a hat for the last fifteen years, including church each Sunday. New hats would be forthcoming for the wedding, though not, alas, from Chez Chapeau Alicia; the basics were already bought from Uncle Herbert’s emporium, and the final furbishings would be done at Missalonghi.
Alicia was looking stunning in a delicate apricot crêpe dress trimmed with lavender-blue embroidery and bearing a huge bunch of lavender-blue silk flowers on one shoulder. Oh, thought Missy, just this once I would love to be able to wear a dress like that! Now I could survive that apricot colour, I am positive I could! And I could survive that shade of blue too, it’s halfway to pale purple.
Over a hundred women had been invited to the party. They wandered about the house in little clutches, catching sight of faces and catching up on gossip. Then at four o’clock they settled like roosting hens in the ballroom, where they partook of a magnificent tea of scones with jam and cream, petits fours, cucumber sandwiches, asparagus cornucopias, éclairs, cream buns and deliriously gooey Napoleons. There was even a choice between Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong and Jasmine tea!
Hurlingford women were traditionally fair, and traditionally tall, and traditionally incapable of frank speech. Looking around the gathering and listening to its chatter, Missy saw for herself the truth of these observations. This was the first occasion of its kind she had ever been invited to, probably because it would have been impolite not to invite her when so many women less closely related were coming. Somehow in church on Sunday the awesome presence of Hurlίngford women en masse was watered down by the presence of a roughly equal number of Hurlingford men. But here in Aunt Aurelia’s ballroom the breed was undiluted and overwhelming.
The air was thick with participles properly tucked away and exquisitely spliced infinitives and a great many other verbal delicacies largely gone out of fashion fifty years before. Under the splendour and graciousness of Aurelia’s roof, no one dared to say “can’t” or “won’t” or “didn’t”. And, noted Missy, she herself was literally the only dark-haired woman there. Oh, a few borderline mouses glimmered (the greys and whites did not stand out at all), but her own jet-black hair was like a lump of coal in a field of snow; she quite understood why her mother had instructed her to keep her hat on throughout. Obviously, even when a Hurlingford man or woman married out of the family, he or she chose a blond partner. Indeed, Missy’s own father had been very fair, but his grandfather, according to Drusilla, had been as dark as a dago, this term then being conventional and acceptable.
“Dearest Augusta and Antonia, it is the Saxon in us,” fluted Drusilla to the sisters she saw least of.
Aurelia was devoting herself almost exclusively to Lady Billy, who had been amputated from her horse for the afternoon, not without bitter protest. And Lady Billy was sitting looking encephalitically expressionless, for she had no daughters of her own and no interest whatsoever in women. En masse they both frightened and upset her, and the greatest grief of her life had been the acquisition of Alicia Marshall as a prospective daughter-in-law. Undeterred by the fact that she fought a lone battle, Lady Billy had loudly opposed Little Willie’s betrothal to his second cousin Alicia, declaring that they would never run together as a team, and would breed very poor stock. However, Sir William (called Billy) rode roughshod over her, as indeed he did over everybody; he had always had an eye for Alicia himself, and was delighted at the prospect of looking down his dining table every night to see Alicia’s shining flaxen head and lovely face. For it had been arranged that the newlywed couple would reside at Hurlingford Lodge with Sir William and his lady for some months at least; Sir William’s wedding present was prime land, ten acres of it, but the house built upon it was nowhere near finished.
Left very much to her own devices, Missy looked around for Una. She found Aunt Livilla, but no Una. How odd!
“I don’t see Una here today,” said Missy to Alicia when that ravishing creature drifted by with a bright and wonderfully condescending smile.
“Who?” asked Alicia, stopping.
“Una – Aunt Livilla’s cousin – she works in the library.”
“Silly girl, there’s no Hurlingford by that name in Byron,” said Alicia, who had never been known to read a book. And off she went to spread her glorious presence as thinly across the surface of the gathering as the layer of jam on a boarding school pudding.
At which point the penny dropped. Of course! Una was divorced! An unheard-of sin! Stirred to the extent of providing a roof over her cousin’s head Aunt Livilla might have been, but her humanitarian instincts would never extend to allowing that cousin – that divorced cousin – to enter Byron society. So it seemed Aunt Livilla had decided to keep quiet about Una altogether. Come to think of it, Una herself had been the sole source of Missy’s information; on the rare occasions since Una’s advent that Missy had found Aunt Livilla in the library, Aunt Livilla had never mentioned Una’s name, and Missy, who was afraid of Aunt Livilla, had not mentioned Una either.
Drusilla bustled up, her sister Cornelia in tow. “Oh, is this not splendid?” she asked, speech patterns perfect.
“Very splendid,” said Missy, shifting up on the sofa she had found behind a large potted Kentia palm cluster.
Drusilla and Cornelia sat down, replete with at least one specimen from every kind of delicacy offered at the buffet.
“So kind! So considerate! Dear Alicia!” waffled Cornelia, who regarded it as a great privilege to be permitted to work for a pittance as Alicia’s sales dame, and had no idea how cynically Alicia traded on her gratitude and devotion. Until Chez Chapeau Alicia had opened its doors, Cornelia had worked for her brother Herbert in his alteration room, so there were grounds for her illusions; Herbert was so stingy he made Alicia look like a lady bountiful. In the same way as Octavia, and with the same result, Cornelia had sold her house and five acres to Herbert, only in her case it was to help her sister Julia pay her tea room off when Julia bought it from Herbert.
