Royal Purple (5 page)

They went straight to a department where an assistant was detailed to show them everything they wanted to see in the way of dresses and suits for a young woman of Lucy’s slender build. Even in an age that was democratic, the Countess—in spite, or perhaps because, of her absurd feathered hat and her mincing shoes—seemed capable of commanding a good deal of respect, and when she declared that she didn’t like something, and flung it away in distaste, something else was produced so hurriedly that Lucy began to feel bewildered by the quantity of garments brought out for her approval.

She was taken into a
c
hanging-room and tried on dress after dress, and suit after suit, and the Countess followed her and stood in the doorway and uttered so many criticisms that she began to despair of their ever being suited. So far as she herself was concerned Lucy was delighted with nearly everything she tried on—when you have been patching and making do since your schooldays anything new is a refreshing change—but her employer was concerned with her colouring, and with something essentially simple in her appearance that demanded the utmost simplicity to set it off, and she knew exactly what she wanted for the girl, even before Lucy had a chance to try it on.

“Hard colours are bad for you,” she declared, “and blue is ordinary. We must have a lot of semitones, ice-blue, clear green, pastel pink, lavender. I like that little lavender suit with the dark fur on the collar, and that cream one with the huge buttons. We’ll take both of
those,
and a top-coat to go with them.”

The assistant suggested a rough woollen one, and when it was finally selected that too was cream, with a kind of faint golden thread in the weave that Lucy particularly liked. Then a couple of dresses were selected, a pale rose-coloured Terylene with an enchantingly slim line, and a pearly grey severely tailored dress which appealed to Lucy because she thought it was more suitable for a paid companion than one or two of the others which the Countess favoured. The Countess let her have her way because her mind was on other matters, and she asked to be shown evening gowns—particularly frothy, exceptionally feminine evening gowns.

Lucy found herself the possessor of a very, very pale pink chiffon, with a short balloon skirt and a swathed bodice. Never in her life had she imagined that she would possess anything like it, and as she gazed at herself in the tall cheval mirror she could hardly keep back a gasp of astonishment at her own appearance.

Her golden hair was swinging gently on her bare shoulders, her eyes for some reason were a sort of misty mauve. She decided that she had eyes like a chameleon, and it depended entirely on what she was wearing whether they were grey, blue, or even green.

Even the assistant remarked on the phenomenon. “You are lucky,” she observed a trifle enviously. “With clever make-up you can work miracles with a face like yours.”

“The face is very satisfactory as it is,” the Countess rebuked her with a tinge of tartness. Then she added: “Make-up will come later. First we have a lot of other things to buy
...
underwear, shoes, stockings.”

Where she found all the energy required for such a morning’s shopping Lucy couldn’t think, but she refused to depart from the store until everything she had mentally listed as essential was procured and paid for. Even such items as a handbag, a chunky woollen sweater, the odd skirt to wear with the sweater, were not forgotten, and when they finally returned to Alison Gardens—long after the usual hour for lunch—Augustine was thinking of contacting the local police station to find out what had happened to them.

Surrounded by parcels—everything had had to be put into the taxi, for the Countess would leave nothing behind—flushed with unusual excitement, the old lady sank down on to a settee in the sitting-room and demanded that a glass of sherry be brought to her. And while they waited for the sherry to be brought she ordered Lucy to open some of the parcels and examine the purchases.

Bemused and delighted with a whole range of cosmetics that she was going to find bewildering at first, Lucy protested that the Countess had spent much too much money on her.

“
You must have spent nearly two hundred pounds,
”
she said.

“Slightly over two hundred pounds,” the Countess corrected her complacently. “But it was worth it, for I haven’t enjoyed myself s
o
much for years. And I said if you got two thousand guineas for the brooch you should have everything you needed
...
” Suddenly she broke off. “You didn’t forget to ring the Splendide this morning, did you? And book a table for tonight?”

Lucy admitted that she had reserved a table, but
she wasn’t very happy about it.

“What—what will you wear,
madame
?” she asked afraid that the Countess had every intention of presenting such a figure of fun to the eyes of innumerable waiters that she wondered how she herself would survive the ordeal. If only they had thought to buy the Countess an evening dress
!
“
Tonight, I mean?”

The Countess smiled even more complacently. “Oh, I shall find something to wear. There are a lot of things I used to wear packed away in trunks up in the attic. We must get them down.”

Augustine came in with the sherry. She nearly dropped the tray that supported the bottle and glass when she caught sight of sheer filmy underwear draped across a chair.

“If
mademoislle
is intending to wear
that
,”
she said, with round eyes fixed on a gossamer nightdress, “she’ll have double pneumonia before the week’s out!”

CHAPTER V

LUCY had never dined in a large hotel, and she had never even entered an hotel like the Splendide until she did so in the wake of the Countess several hours later. The Countess was magnificent in violet velvet and a rakish little tiara which rested gently on her unnaturally red curls. Even Lucy recognised that she was regal
...
her bearing superb, her confidence the confidence that is the prerogative of princes—and princesses.

Augustine had worked wonders with the violet velvet dress. It had been badly crumpled when it came out of the trunk that was brought down from the attic, but she devoted old retainer had steamed it and pressed it and mended one or two rents in the drifting lace stole that went with it, and by the time the Countess was ready to put it on it was a completely rejuvenated dress.

Augustine had seen to it that the Countess didn’t smother herself with rouge and powder, and she had limited the number of rings she wore on her fingers. Nevertheless, there were enough of them to create quite a blaze when she waved a hand imperiously on entering the hotel.

The most obsequious of bows greeted them at the entrance to the dining-room. Their table was in a fairly prominent position near the centre of the room, so there was no hope of escaping the curious eyes that became fixed on them as they made their way to it, and the Countess flirted with such an absurd little fan, and was so unlike the majority of the diners present beneath the lights, that from the very moment that she was finally and carefully seated the curiosity mounted.

Lucy, in her pale pink chiffon, attracted a number of admiring glances, but it was the Countess who riveted attention. She was in such a high good humour, and it didn’t matter in the least to her that she was under observation, and she behaved exactly as she would have done at a dinner-party in her own home. She talked loudly and clearly to Lucy, calling upon her to admire the centrepiece of roses, the handsome columns that soared upwards to the roof of the dining-room, the dull gold carpet. She recalled that in her day—that is to say, at least thirty years before, when she had been in the habit of dining at the Splendide fairly often—it had been a deep burgundy red, and she rather thought the warmer colour was kinder to the ladies’ complexions. She levelled a lorgnette and examined everyone and everything in her immediate vi
c
inity very deliberately with its aid, and commented in a still louder voice that she thought women had deteriorated since her day, and the younger ones had very little to commend them. Their clothes she considered were far too ordinary for dining out, and the men were not nearly smart enough.

Lucy felt herself colouring even to the tips of her ears as she had to sit and listen to these comments, and she was glad when the waiter handed them each an enormous menu, and they had to make up their minds what they would eat.

Even then the Countess insisted on taking her time,
and having every dish carefully explained to her before she would commit herself. Her French was so fluent that she had none of Lucy’s difficulty in translating the items on the menu itself, but she did want to know what went into each dish, and whether the chef himself would be prepared to recommend it. At one stage Lucy was afraid that she was going to insist on having the chef himself brought to her—especially when she confided to the waiter that that had almost always been her practice in the old days—but a healthy appetite got the better of any inclination to waste time over choosing her meal, and the chef was left undisturbed in the vast kitchens of the hotel.

But the wine waiter was put through a positive grilling over the quality of
his
wines, and it was only after a lot of talk about vintages and vintage years that the Countess ordered a bottle of champagne, and merely insisted that it was to be the best. And when the oysters she had ordered for herself were brought to the table she had the waiter stand by in case the first one she consumed was not as fresh at it ought to be.

On ma
ki
ng the discovery that the oysters could not be fresher, she beamed expansively and turned her attention to the brown bread and butter, and assured Lucy that if only Augustine could slice brown bread with the same dexterity, and not allow it to become dried up, she would be worth her weight in gold.

Lucy had refused oysters and smoked salmon, but she had not refused soup, and w
hi
le the Countess swallowed her oysters at top speed she spooned soup slowly and tried not to feel utterly overwhelmed by the magnificence on all sides of her. She was well aware of the watc
hi
ng eyes, and she hoped there was nothing wrong with the way she had twisted her hair into a chignon—a
sm
ooth golden chignon that could hardly have looked more attractive had she been able to feel confidence abo
u
t it—and screwed a pair of small pearl studs into her ears.

They were not good pearls, but they were the only item of jewellery she possessed, and they emphasised her demure appearance as she looked downwards into her soup. The Countess studied her across the roses—having consumed the last of her oysters—and assured her that she was looking very well. In fact, she was looking so well that most people would agree that she had a rather unusual beauty, and if amongst the men in the room there was one man with a really observant pair of eyes
...

She swung the lorgnette so suddenly that she was satisfied almost immediately, and she said, “Ah yes, there are several pairs! How clever I was to insist on that delicate shade of pink for you
...
like the pink heart of a china rose!” And then she caught sight of their waiter doing things over a spirit stove with some slices of dark venison that had already been cooked in wine—one of Augustine’s most succulent memories of the early days of her servitude—and she watched eagerly. “This is a moment for concentration,” she declared. “A moment of truth! I do hope they understand how to cook venison here—that it must be neither over-cooked nor under-cooked! And the wine itself is important ... A good, full-bodied claret
...
Ah!”

She broke off as the dish was placed in front of her, and once more she insisted that the waiter stand by while she sampled it. To Lucy’s dismay a look of frustration overspread her employer’s face, and without mincing matters the Countess complained that the venison was either not venison at all, or it had been ruined. She ordered the waiter to take the dish away, and then called him back and said that she would see the head waiter. In her day it had been a man called Jules—or Julian, or something of the sort—but no doubt by this time he was either dead, or had disappeared. But she would see the man who had his job, the present
ma
i
tre d’hotel,
and if he knew anything at all about venison...

The waiter looked agitated, and explained that at the moment they were somewhat short-staffed, for the
maitre d’
h
otel
was on compassionate leave; but he would fetch the assistant head waiter.

“Please do,” the Countess requested, in her most ringing and haughty tones. “And see that we are not kept waiting, for this is a celebration dinner, and I do not want anything to spoil it. Already your venison has very nearly spoiled it.”

“I’m sorry,
madame
,”
the waiter muttered, and hurried away down the length of the room to fetch someone who could cope with this arrogant old woman.

When he returned, Lucy was wishing that the floor would open and swallow her, the Countess was holding forth on the subject of waiters in general and bad chefs in particular, and behind the waiter was a tall, dark, grave young man in sober but immaculate black and white, who bowed slightly in front of the Countess, and waited to be informed what it was that had upset her.