Chapter 31
‘It’s not a formal ball,’ Clementine explained to Stella the following weekend. ‘More an excuse to dress up and have fun. Though all the men will be in white tie, of course. It just makes it easier.’
Stella smiled. Of course. Imagine living in a world where it was assumed you had white tie.
But then she reminded herself that’s exactly the world she was living in at the moment.
Not that Clementine or any of the Arbutus family rubbed it in.
They wore their privilege lightly, but it was still there, undeniably, a protective ring of gold flung around the house.
‘I remember Edwin talking about the Snow Ball, especially at Christmas,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he once collect the guests from the station in a white pony and trap?’
‘Did he?’ laughed Clementine. ‘I don’t know. This is my first one too. Elizabeth would know. They take it very seriously. There’s weeks of preparation, usually, but we’ve got a bit behind, what with one thing and another.’
‘What with long-lost children turning up on the doorstep.’ Stella gave a wry smile.
‘Nobody would have it any other way,’ said Clementine. ‘Do you know, everyone seems so much happier now you’re here. Ted’s brought light into the house.’
It was true. He brought energy, and momentum, and everyone loved being part of his life.
Michael had taken him up to the factory and given him a tour of the paintworks.
Alfie took him and Paddy around the grounds, showing him all the secret places where he and Edwin had made dens and forts.
And Elizabeth had the boys’ old train set brought down from the attic to put into his room, and some new rolling stock had been ordered from Hamley’s to arrive in time for Christmas.
Was he being spoilt? Stella worried. Perhaps not.
Perhaps it was making up for everything he hadn’t had so far.
She’d done her best to indulge him when she could, but money had been tight.
And he was always very grateful. How awful it would be if he started boasting at school, or lording it over the others, but she didn’t think he had it in him.
In the same way that neither Edwin nor Alfie were show-offs.
They knew exactly how to treat people. Edwin had always been charming to waiters when they went out, chatting to them as if they were friends.
‘It’s how you know a good egg from a bad egg, how they treat staff,’ Edwin told her.
Stella, Clementine and Daisy were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Elizabeth and Diana, for today they were making a definitive list of what needed doing.
‘Two weeks today!’ Daisy looked alarmed.
If anyone was going to crack under the pressure, it was her, although Elizabeth had been down to the Breverton Arms and was borrowing three of their waitresses to help with the food.
The family had insisted that Daisy should be a guest, although she wasn’t all that happy about it.
She didn’t trust anyone else to do the job properly.
Elizabeth swept in, carrying that day’s shopping.
‘Sorry to have kept you all waiting. The butcher is always so busy on a Saturday. They’ve run out of kidneys, Daisy, so we’ll have to find something else for breakfast tomorrow.
I thought a kedgeree? I got some smoked haddock instead.
Now.’ She settled down in the remaining chair with a sigh. ‘Where are we with it all?’
Clementine looked at her lists. ‘I suggest next weekend we borrow some muscle from the factory to move furniture around, put up the Christmas trees and help with lights. All the boring practical stuff. It does mean living in chaos for the following week, but perhaps we can eat in the kitchen, if Daisy doesn’t mind?
Then when everything is where it should be, we can do the decorating over the next week. ’
‘That sounds an excellent plan.’ Elizabeth looked at her daughter-in-law with admiration. ‘And can we find Diana something to do? I want her to feel part of it all. She’s supposed to be coming this morning.’ She looked at her watch.
Stella tensed slightly at the thought of Diana pitching up.
The two of them had reached an uneasy truce, but she still felt on edge when Diana was around.
This was so cosy, the four of them, plotting away together.
She thought how lucky she was to have these three women in her life.
Elizabeth had been so warm and welcoming and they talked a lot about Edwin, in quiet moments, sharing things about him that the other didn’t know, crying sometimes.
It had really helped Stella, to share her grief with someone who understood what she was missing, and she hoped it helped Elizabeth too.
Clementine was becoming a close friend too. Although she was younger than Stella, it didn’t matter. She was thoughtful and observant and headed off problems before they presented themselves, being acutely aware of people’s feelings.
As for Daisy, who was a little older, Stella felt closer to her than any of them, for she was an ordinary person just like her, and had lost her fiancé. She never spoke about him much, but one day, when Stella was helping her with some baking, she opened her heart.
‘He never thought twice about joining up. The moment war was announced he was off. I was so proud of him. He joined the RAF at Charmy Down. But he died in a training exercise. He was in a Westland Whirlwind and it crashed into another one. He never got to actually fight, and that would have annoyed him.’
‘It doesn’t make him any less of a hero, Daisy.’
‘I know. That’s what I’d tell him if I could.’
She pressed her lips together and patted the pastry she was making into a round ball.
Stella put her arm around her shoulders.
There was no need to say any more. Daisy relaxed for a moment, melted into her and allowed herself the comfort of Stella’s warmth.
For a split second, the ghosts of the two men they loved were in the kitchen with them, and there was a glimmer of what might have been, four spirited young people with their future ahead of them, full of laughter and hope.
Then Daisy pulled away and took the pastry to the fridge. The moment had gone.
As they went through the final plans for the food, Daisy was wondering, inspired by Elizabeth’s change of breakfast menu, if kedgeree would be the thing to fill everyone up at midnight, when suddenly Diana appeared, red-faced and flustered.
‘I’m sorry. One of the horses lost a shoe so I had to put it in the stable to wait for the farrier. What have I missed? What’s my job? Just don’t ask me to cook. But I’ll do anything else.’
‘You could help me with the decorations?’ Stella suggested. She was going to cut giant snowflakes out of leftover wallpaper from the factory.
‘But I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.’
‘If I traced the shapes out carefully, anyone could cut them out. We just need sharp scissors.’
‘All right,’ said Diana, looking pleased. ‘That sounds easy enough.’
She was making an effort, thought Stella, and noticed the relief on Elizabeth’s face that her daughter was being co-operative.
The five of them spent a very jolly hour eating biscuits and batting ideas backwards and forwards, and actually Diana was quite funny when she relaxed, telling them stories of what she and Edwin had got up to when they were young, and only allowed to go to the Snow Ball for an hour before being escorted upstairs by the nanny.
Stella was starting to warm to her. Of course she’d been miffed about not being included the day she and Ted arrived.
It was horrid, feeling left out. But now she was in on the act, she was as happy as anything.
‘God knows what I’m going to wear,’ Diana said now.
‘I haven’t a clue either,’ said Daisy, looking anxious.
‘Nor me. I was going to make something. I could make you both something to wear,’ said Stella. ‘Is there a sewing machine?’
‘Yes. In the laundry.’ Daisy looked excited. ‘Oh, would you?’
‘I’ve always made my own clothes.’ Before the war, Stella had been expert at copying the latest fashions, plundering jumble sales for dresses to remodel and altering hand-me-downs by changing the buttons or taking up the hems or adding some lace to a collar.
‘Although there’s not much time, if I’ve got to make us all something. ’
‘Don’t panic,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’ve got years of dresses upstairs.
I always had something new, which seems an awful waste now.
’ The war had taught them all to be careful, and although she hadn’t quite got the hang of frugality, she was much less extravagant, much more inclined to see where a saving could be made.
‘You’re welcome to have a look through them all and see what fits.
In fact,’ Elizabeth jumped up, ‘why don’t you come upstairs now and try them on?
I’d love to see them used. There’s no point in them sitting there. ’
And so the five of them spent the next hour going through Elizabeth’s collection of ball dresses.
Swathes of velvet and silk, embellished with beads and feathers and lace.
Stella and Daisy and Diana tried them all while Clementine and Elizabeth looked on, offering their opinions.
As Stella ran around with a mouth full of pins – ‘Do whatever you need to. They were only bits of fun run up by a local dressmaker, not haute couture,’ said Elizabeth – a sense of anticipation for the ball started to fizz.
Daisy stood on a chair while Stella took up the hem of a 1920s-style flapper dress. Her eyes were shining with excitement.
‘I can’t remember the last time I danced,’ she said. ‘It would have been when Roy was still alive.’
‘Oh, Daisy,’ said Stella. ‘We must always remember to dance.’