Laurie Graham - Gone With the Windsors

Wally’s back. Shopping on Monday. Her friend with the castle, Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof, is coming to stay, so she’s splashing out on a new rug for the guest bedroom.

Heal’s had a selection of perfectly adequate rugs, but Wally insisted on going to a little Persian in Sackville Street, and once those people have you in their clutches, they won’t let go until you’ve seen their entire stock. Wally, of course, went to his most expensive item like a homing pigeon. “Oh,” he said, “a most discerning choice. A most unique rug made in a mountain village to a pattern known only to one old man.” They always say that, but Wally’s impossible to turn once she’s decided on a thing. She’s promised to get a check sent round to me first thing tomorrow. Another jolt to Ernest’s careful budget.

She said, “Ernest will be fine about it. He’d rather stretch himself to buy something good than settle for mediocrity. We’re of one mind on that. And I won’t have Lily stepping out of bed onto the kind of thing a grocer’s wife might buy. Lily’s a landgravine, you know?”

A landgravine! Further complications. No doubt there will be the expense of special dietary requirements in addition to outlay on hand-knotted rugs.

I’ve engaged a butler, a cook, and two housemaids, but still no driver and no satisfactory lady’s maid. Penelope Blythe says there may be servants becoming available at the Orr-Tweedies’ since Mrs. O-T passed away. She’s going to inquire.

Ructions in the nursery. It’s Melhuish’s birthday on Thursday, and Flora had the idea of giving him a party. She said, “We can make a gake and Daddy can blow out the gandles.”

Violet said it was a sweet idea but out of the question, because he’s speaking on the Pheasant Bill that afternoon and then going on to a January Club dinner.

Doopie said, “Bedvus dime?”

Violet said, “No, Doopie. Mornings are far too hectic, especially when he’s working on a speech. Don’t pout, Flora. You can have a little party without him. I’ll ask Smith to find you something special. Now off you skip. Mummy has to look for some papers for Lady Strathnaver.”

Doopie looked at me, but there was really nothing I could do. The poor child was clearly disappointed, and I’d have taken her out to Harrold’s and bought her a new dolly, but I was already committed to lunch with Pips and then a manicure. By the time I got back, it was too late to save Flora from herself. She’d gone into the writing room and created a snowstorm of papers, from Violet’s desk and from Melhuish’s, scrambling them up with her grubby little hands and tossing them in the air. The floor was still covered when I looked in, Fishermen’s Orphans mixed up with Unmarried Mothers and the Hedgerows Bill. Trotman had hauled her upstairs, and she’d been sent to bed without any tea.

This must surely strengthen the case for sending her to school.

Penelope Blythe has come up trumps. I’ve taken on Padmore, formerly lady’s maid to Mrs. Orr-Tweedie, and also Kettle, who was her driver for nineteen years.

He drove me along Piccadilly and the Haymarket and then back by Pall Mall to Carlton Gardens, and he has a pleasingly smooth technique. He also carries a kind of Boy Scout emergency box, which he showed me before he stowed it in the trunk: flashlight, bandages, medicinal brandy, magnesia tablets, and a miniature sewing kit. He said, “In case of a loose button, madam, or laddered hosiery.”

There’ll be no need for that. If I ladder my stocking, I shall just have him drive me home so I can change it. Still, it does show he has the right attitude.

Wilton Place is ready for me. On Saturday, I shall sleep my first night there. A fresh start, and how fitting. It will be a year to the day since I lost Brumby.

George Lightfoot was in the nursery when I returned from Monsieur Jules, helping Doopie and Flora fete the absent Melhuish with a rather dry marble cake.

“Ah,” he said, “the very girl I was hoping to see. Come with me Monday next to Philip Sassoon’s. He’s asked me to Park Lane to see his new majolica urns.”

Over drinks, I heard Melhuish say he didn’t think Sir Philip was “quite the thing.”

Lightfoot said, “What can you mean?”

Melhuish said, “I don’t know. He strikes me as a bit of a Johnny-come-lately. Belchester told me he has a footman serve tea. Can you imagine!”

Violet said, “But dearest, he does raise a great deal of money for hospitals. And we’re very fond of Sybil.”

Melhuish said, “Oh, quite so. Sybil’s one hundred percent. I used to play polo with her husband. Never see him nowadays, of course. Seems to spend most of his time in the south of France.”

All I said was, “Like Thelma Furness’s husband.”

Violet said, “No, Maybell. Not at all like that. Rock plays in tennis tournaments.”

That, of course, would be Rock Chumley, spelled Cholmondeley , nota bene.

Well, tennis, tootsies, whatever the excuse, it sounds to me as though the south of France is teeming with restless English husbands.

To the Café de Paris with Pips and Freddie, the Erlangers, and the Simpsons for steak Diane and a Dixieland band. Wally and Ernest brought along Lily Drax-Pfaffenhof, who turns out to be much more fun than she sounds. Her first husband was in Manchester cotton and left her stony broke but fortunately, she made a good second marriage to a landgrave called Willi, which makes her a landgravine. Somewhere between a countess and a duchess, according to Ernest. Anyhow, she wears it very lightly. I think we shall become friends.

Wally believes she may know the Sassoons. When she was in Hong Kong, there was a family of that name, and she’s almost certain she went to a party at their house, but Hattie Erlanger says it must be a different lot, because Philip and Sybil are Jews from Baghdad.

Freddie said, “Yes, Hattie, but not recently. Sassoon’s been in the Commons twenty years at least.”

According to Freddie, he’s something important at the Air Ministry, entertains lavishly, and has a reputation as a firecracker, always sparkling and fizzing and dashing between his various wonderful homes. Sir Philip Firecracker Sassoon! I can’t wait.

My first year without Brumby. It seems longer, so much has happened. Well, I think I’ve conducted my period of mourning in a decorous manner. Violet may make her disparaging remarks about niteries, but even widows have to while away their evenings somehow, and I’m sure Danforth Brumby would prefer me looking radiant in claret rather than haggard in black.

I’ve suggested to Padmore that we dispense with the customary black dress for her, too. We can get her something more modern. Dark blue, perhaps, or dove gray, with a little white apron. “Whatever you think, madam,” she said. That’s the kind of attitude I like!

I am in love! Philip Sassoon is delicious. He’s the same age as Melhuish, but you’d never think it, he’s so svelte and so vibrant. Also, he has exquisite taste. Blood-red roses arranged against a panel of black glass. Twinned pewter buckets filled with white oxeye daisies.

He dashed around, showing us everything. The drawing room— one of the drawing rooms—all pink and gilt and tapestries. The dining room azure and silver. Everything done with a very sure touch. Only the ballroom was too hectic for my taste, no surface left unpainted. Camel trains, palm trees, sheikhs of Araby.