Debutantes: In Love by Cora Harrison

knew so much about love and that she knew so very little. She had fallen in love with Charles the moment she set her eyes on him, but what about him? Had he shown anything other than a polite interest? Daisy now didn’t think so, and had resolved not to mention his name to Elaine, but to be full of plans for their coming-out ball and their court presentation. Lady Cynthia, she had decided, was the type to be impressed by a magnificent debut. Soon, she hoped, Charles would be as openly in love with her as Baz was with Poppy. You only had to see the look in Baz’s eyes to know that there was only one girl in the world for him.
    To her shame she spent half the rest of the night trying to devise ways to persuade Poppy not to join her on her visit to the neighbours across the road. After all, she told herself, Poppy had Baz. Let them go off together, out on the London streets and enjoy each other’s company, and let Charles not fall in love with Poppy and overlook the more ordinary Daisy.
    But as it happened, Baz came with them.
    He turned up at half past ten in the morning, wearing a large flower in his buttonhole, a sleeked-back, man-about-town hairdo, copied from his elder brother, and carrying a large and very limp bunch of daffodils, which he insisted on presenting in person to Elaine.
    ‘Welcome to England, what,’ he said nervously. He had obviously been schooled well by Poppy, who was regarding him adoringly. ‘Thought you’d like these, Lady Elaine; hard to get flowers in the city,’ he ploughed on, the words jerking out with a rapidity that implied that he had been memorizing them on the way. He took a quick look at the exquisitely arranged vases full of exotic blooms that decorated the morning room and seemed to feel that some explanation was necessary.
    ‘From Kent,’ he explained. ‘Real country flowers.’ He whipped the daffodils from under Elaine’s nose and rushed forward to shake hands with Sir John. Daisy suppressed a giggle. The flowers received another few mortal wounds as they swept a small cigarette box from a low table.
    ‘Rushed down to Kent in order to pick them first thing this morning while the dew was still on them, did you?’ enquired Sir John.
    Baz looked a little confused. ‘No, no,’ he was saying now. ‘It’s about fifty miles,’ he explained patiently. ‘No motor. My brother won’t let me borrow his.’
    ‘Ever since you drove it backwards around Tunbridge Wells,’ put in Poppy.
    ‘So how did you get those . . . those daffodils from Kent?’ Sir John was someone who did not like to let go of a point until it had been answered to his satisfaction.
    ‘Covent Garden market; but they were picked this morning in Kent,’ said Baz with simple pride. ‘That’s what the woman told me anyway.’ He gave a slightly worried glance at the wilting bunch.
    ‘They’re lovely,’ said Elaine, but her voice did lack conviction. She now had the bedraggled bunch in her hand and did not appear to know what to do with them. A trail of slime oozed out from the sheet of newspaper that was wrapped around the stems.
    ‘I’m sure they were,’ said Sir John. ‘Daisy, do you think . . . ?’
    Daisy took the flowers from Elaine’s limp grasp. Baz was looking a bit abashed – he had understood the significance of Sir John’s use of ‘ were ’ – so she made a bit of a show of burying her nose in them and exclaiming what a real smell of the country they had and how she would find a good vase that would show off their beauty.
    ‘Let’s go, Poppy; we’re due next door,’ she said when she returned. She had not bothered the efficient housekeeper but had found a tall, slender vase that supported the limp stems and only allowed the bright yellow trumpet heads to be seen. ‘Baz will like to meet Charles de Montfort. He’s just back from India, Baz, and he’s about our age or a few years older.’ It would be cruel, she thought, to leave poor innocent Baz to be a butt for Sir John’s