Olivia came in one day excited because there was to be a ball at Lady Massingham’s. Everyone would be in fancy dress and masked. She liked the idea. “When my face is covered up I don’t feel so shy,” she said. “I think I rather like masked balls.”
“Very exciting not to know to whom you are talking,” I agreed.
“Yes, and they unmask at midnight and you sometimes get a shock.”
“I wish I were going.”
“I can’t think why … Moira Massingham was saying it was very odd that you don’t come out. She says you’re old enough and her mother was saying it was rather strange.”
“I expect it will happen soon,” I said.
“In the meantime you can’t go to the masked ball.”
“Oh, how I wish I could.”
“What as?”
“Cleopatra, I think. I rather fancy myself in the role with an asp curled around my neck.”
Olivia began to laugh.
The next day she said: “I was talking to Moira Massingham at the Dentons’ place and she said you ought to go. Why not? she said. No one would know and you could be like Cinderella and slip away before the stroke of midnight and the unmasking.”
The idea appealed to me.
“But I would be an uninvited guest,” I said.
“Not if Moira knew. After all it’s for her. Surely she can ask her friends.”
The prospect of going to the masked ball added zest to the days. Moira Massingham was thrilled by the idea. It had to be secret. She visited us for tea, which we were allowed to have together and alone—a tribute to Olivia’s maturity—and I was not sure whether I was expected to be present, but I managed to be.
“It’s a shame you’re not ‘out,’ ” said Moira to me when Olivia had gone out of the room to get something she wanted to show to Moira. “Perhaps they want to get Olivia married off first and think you might spoil her chances.”
“Why ever should I?”
“Because you’re more attractive.”
“That hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Never mind. You’re coming to the ball.”
Olivia returned and I could not stop thinking of what Moira had said. I wondered if Olivia believed the same. Poor Olivia, she already had a notion that nobody found her attractive.
Getting me to the ball would need a certain amount of manoeuvring. If it were discovered, the project would immediately be stopped. The fact that Moira wanted me to go eased my conscience about gate crashing. But how was I to get out of the house in my finery without being noticed?
When Rosie Rundall heard of it—and we could not resist telling her—she immediately took over command. “It’ll be tricky,” she admitted, “but we’ll manage. Leave it to me.”
She decided that Thomas, the coachman, would have to be a collaborator.
“He’ll do it for me,” she said with a laugh. “He’s the only one who would be ready to risk his job because he knows he couldn’t easily be replaced. They wouldn’t find the mews in such good order if Thomas wasn’t there. He’ll help us.”
So it was arranged that I should go to the back door through a corridor which was not used very much, and out across the garden to the mews where Thomas would be waiting with the carriage. Rosie would see that the coast was clear. I should get into the carriage, cower back so that I could not be seen while Thomas brought the carriage round to the front door to pick up Olivia.
“Do you think Aunt Imogen will be going with Olivia?” I asked.
There was a problem. If she did go the whole plot would fail.
“I’ll make them see that the whole idea of a masked ball is that nobody knows who is who,” said the forceful Moira. “I’ll impress on my mother that chaperones must be excluded on this occasion. I’ll say we’ll only ask the girls who can take care of themselves. None of the starters, the just-out-brigade.”
We were all giggling at the prospect and gave ourselves up to the fun of planning.
“What will you go as, Caroline?” asked Moira, who was going as Lady Jane Grey.
“Oh, we’ve discussed that,” said Olivia. “Caroline thinks of the maddest things.”
“I rather fancy Boadicea.”
“You’d have to have a chariot.”
“I should love to ride in scattering all before me.”
“Talk sense,” said Moira.
“Diana the Huntress. That would be fun. Helen of Troy. Mary Queen of Scots.”
“Think of the costume.”
“None of those is impossible.”
We went through Olivia’s wardrobe. She had a beaded jacket with beads which reminded me of hieroglyphics. I tried it on and shook out my dark hair. I had come back to my original idea. I would be Cleopatra.
Moira clapped her hands. “It’s perfect,” she said. “With a long black skirt. Here it is. Try it on.”
She looked at me critically, her head on one side, and said she had a necklace which looked like a snake. It had belonged to her great-grandmother. “There is your asp.”
Excitedly we planned.
I was sure Olivia was more interested in my costume than her own, which Aunt Imogen had helped to create. She was to be Nell Gwynn with a basket of oranges as her badge of identity.
Thomas was eager to help—perhaps mainly to please Rosie. I think quite a number of servants thought I was badly treated and were eager to perform little services for me.
We were all waiting with the utmost eagerness for the night of the ball. Moira brought our masks. It was imperative that they should all be the same, she said. They were large and black and covered our faces so well that it would be difficult for anyone to recognize us.
Rosie tried on our dresses and would not have needed much persuasion, I felt, to come herself; but when I mentioned this she said: “Oh no, ducks. It’s one of my nights off. I’ve got my own fish to fry.”
The arrangement was that when we returned she should let me in by way of the back door. Olivia would be dropped at the front door, which would be opened by Rosie in her capacity of parlourmaid—for she must return from her own night out by eleven o’clock—and she was in fact to sit up to perform this duty. Then Thomas would drive me round to the mews. I would then cross the garden to the back door where Rosie would be waiting to let me in, making sure that I was not seen.
The evening came. We were on the alert all the time while Olivia helped me to dress. She had taken the precaution of locking the door. Finally I was ready in my beaded hieroglyphics and my snake necklace. My hair, which had been dressed by Olivia, fell over my shoulders. I wore a headdress which we had contrived from stiff cardboard, painted red, blue and gold. It looked most effective, and I believe I did bear a resemblance—if a faint one—to the celebrated Queen of Egypt.
The dangerous moment had come, which was to get me out of the house undetected. We had eluded Aunt Imogen and Miss Bell; but the most perilous moments lay ahead, and I do not know what we should have done without Rosie. She it was who made sure that all was safe, and I crept out of the house to the mews where Thomas was waiting with the air of a conspirator. He bundled me into the carriage.
“Crouch down, Miss Caroline,” he said. “My, you’ll be the belle of the ball. What you supposed to be?”
“Cleopatra.”
“Who’s she when she’s out?” Thomas prided himself on his modernity and had all the catch-phrases of the day on his tongue.
“She was a Queen of Egypt.”
“Well, you’ll be queen of the ball, Miss Caroline, and that’s nearer than Egypt, eh?”
He laughed immoderately. Another of Thomas’s characteristics was to laugh heartily at what he considered his jokes. The trouble was that no one else saw them in that light.
“Now keep out of sight,” he warned. “Otherwise we’ll be in trouble, and Miss Rundall wouldn’t like that at all, would she? I’d be in the doghouse, I can tell you.”