‘I have listened, my darling. I understand that you want to be a writer. I understand that you want to live in some charming little garret on the Rive Gauche. I understand it all. Because it’s me. I have felt it, I have done it.’
She shifted her position and looked her daughter directly in the eyes.
‘I know you are a little embarrassed by me sometimes. I know you think I can be away with the fairies. But I am a practical woman. I don’t want to live like this any more. You might not have the height or the neck to model, but you are a beautiful young girl. You can make a good marriage, and believe me, your dreams of becoming a writer are much more likely to be within your reach if you have the cushion of financial security.’
The train chugged to a halt at Paddington station with a long whistle and the ear-piercing screech of brakes against iron. Georgia knew there was no point in arguing any further. No point complaining that she felt like a fatted cow being sent off to market – or should that be a lamb sent to the slaughter? They were flat broke. Her fate was sealed: she was to go along with her mother’s plan to find her a suitable husband.
Estella treated them to a taxi from the station and Georgia pressed her nose up against the glass as it weaved through the streets of London. The journey from Devon had been over six hours long. It was almost dark now, and the city was retreating into a series of lights and shadows beyond the rain-speckled window of the cab. Despite her protestations on the train, Georgia had nothing against London. She did not consider it as beautiful or romantic as Paris, which had escaped the wartime bombing, but it was hard not to feel a thrill as she saw Hyde Park, and the Dorchester Hotel twinkling in the dusk.
Their destination was the home of her aunt Sybil and uncle Peter, who lived in a handsome white mews house behind Pimlico Road. As the taxi stopped outside and their trunks were unloaded, Georgia took a moment to admire its polished stone steps and shiny front door.
Sybil and Peter’s uniformed housekeeper welcomed them at the door as Sybil swept down the staircase behind her.
Georgia had not seen her aunt since the previous summer and thought she had aged considerably since then. She did not know Sybil’s precise age but she guessed it was around forty-five. Certainly in her formal dress, string of pearls around her neck and completely grey hair, she looked a decade older than Estella, who was wearing pink capri trousers, a turban hat and a long white jacket made of alpaca.
‘At last,’ said Sybil, kissing them both lightly on the cheek. ‘Come through,’ she added, spinning round so fast that the expensive-looking navy fabric of her dress made a swooshing sound.
‘Peter and Clarissa should be back any time. Mrs Bryant has prepared chicken for supper, but I suspect all you want now is a pot of tea.’
Mrs Bryant, the housekeeper, hovered at the door and offered to take their coats.
‘You’ve done the house,’ said Estella.
Georgia took a minute to glance around the room. If Sybil looked older since the last time she had been in London, then her house looked decidedly more modish. The stiff furniture and fusty antiques that seemed to belong in a Victorian parlour had all gone, and the new splashes of colour around the place appeared more suited to Estella’s style of decor.
‘I have just painted the chicken coop back at the farm this exact shade of fuchsia,’ said Estella, drifting a finger across a bright pink ottoman.
‘Really, how lovely,’ said Sybil, her expression at odds with her words. Georgia had often felt that her aunt and her mother had nothing in common whatsoever – Sybil’s background was as establishment as Estella’s was offbeat and bohemian. In fact it was Sybil’s position as the youngest daughter of the Honourable David Castlereagh that had afforded them such a comfortable home, not Uncle Peter’s Civil Service job in the Home Office.
‘I found a wonderful designer, David Hicks. He’s doing all the best people in London right now. So how was the journey?’ asked Sybil as a clock chimed five in the distance.
‘I can’t say I was sad to leave the farm,’ replied Estella, sitting down. ‘Winter has been brutal this year. Fifteen chickens died during a particularly cold snap. To avoid going the same way, I was eating dripping on toast just to get fat and insulate myself.’
‘I don’t know how you cope, living in the middle of nowhere,’ said Sybil with a dramatic sigh. ‘You should have moved back to
London years ago.’
Georgia had to stop herself from nodding in agreement. She had recognised as soon as she returned home from Paris that the little pocket of Devon where she had grown up was beginning to lose its allure.
‘Perhaps. But I am an artist, and I need space and light. The farm is twice the size of this place, and if we moved to London we wouldn’t be able to afford a garage, let alone something with a studio and potter’s wheel. Besides, James would have wanted us to stay there.’
‘James would have wanted you to be comfortable, not eating goose fat to protect yourselves from hypothermia.’
Georgia felt a wave of emotion at the mention of her father. He had died when she was only four years old, a victim of the war – a solicitor by trade, dispatched to the front line and killed in his foxhole in Normandy. Although she only had very vague recollections of him, Estella made sure that his presence was all around them at the farm. His fishing rods remained untouched in the hallway, photographs were displayed around the house, his books and papers were where he had left them in the study.
Mrs Bryant came into the room and put a white china teapot in the middle of the table.
‘Sybil, I just want to say again how grateful we are to you for sponsoring Georgia,’ said Estella.
Georgia almost snorted out loud. When Estella had first got it into her head that her daughter should do the Season, Georgia had been relieved to discover that not everyone was allowed to do it. You had to be presented at court by someone who had herself been a debutante, and traditionally this was supposed to be your mother. But Estella had learnt that there were ways around the system, and as Aunt Sybil had been a deb in the thirties – her debutante photograph sat for all to see on the new lacquered cabinet – it was decided that she should present Georgia, which had depressed Georgia for about a fortnight.
‘My pleasure,’ said Sybil, not entirely convincingly. ‘Although I have to say, Georgia, you are rather late arriving in London.’
‘I know. The train was very slow,’ she replied, sipping a glass of orange squash.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Sybil more sharply. ‘You do know that the debs have been here since January, and some of the mothers since before Christmas. There have been lunches, dinner parties, all sorts of little getting-to-know-one-another soirées. Invitations to the best events of the Season have been secured before you even arrived.’
‘I’ve had things to do,’ said Estella, looking unconcerned at her ticking-off. ‘A very important commission to finish, for one. The Earl of Dartington wanted a life-sized portrait of his wife, and she just wouldn’t stay still, so it took for ever. Besides, Georgia didn’t get back from Paris until a week ago.’