Chapter 6
As a child Arabella had not really had much of a relationship with either of her parents. She had been raised first by a nurse, and then later by a governess. Until her first Season when she had been presented at court she had spent very little time either of them, even her mother.
Presentation at court traditionally marked the beginning of a young lady's formal entry in to society and allowed them to join the marriage market which enabled young aristocrats to select a suitable spouse from within their own narrow social circle. It was vital that a girl's first Season went well if she hoped to make a good marriage. Unfortunately for Arabella in the last years before the war money had been in relatively short supply and there had been little to spare on her court uniform of veil, train, and white gown, nor for the three curled ostrich feathers for her headdress all of which were required to be worn when a young lady was presented to the Sovereign.
Shamefully Arabella had therefore had to be presented in a reworked dress of her mother's which was monstrously out of fashion and which had needed the addition of copious amounts of machine made lace to hide the alterations which had been necessary for it to fit her. Since there had been no money available to send her abroad for 'finishing' she had also seemed a trifle coarse and uneducated in comparison to some of the other girls presented that year– particularly given her unfeminine height and her tendency to stride about as if she was still wearing her brothers' cast offs.
The whole humiliating experience of her presentation was seared in to Arabella's memory. A hundred or so young women and their chaperones had been crammed like cattle in to a small, overly warm room to await the arrival of Mary, the Queen Consort. They had stood around for hours without anything to eat or drink and with precious few chairs to take their ease in. The only nod to their personal comfort had been a single chamber pot behind a small screen in the corner of the room. Arabella had been too resilient to faint as some of the more delicate girls had done but, much worse, when the time had finally come for her to be presented she tripped during her curtsey and torn a huge hole in her train. By such a small error was a woman's prospects ruined. No sniff of a marriage proposal had been forthcoming during the Season and eventually what money they had set aside was exhausted and she had been obliged to retire from society. The horrific loss of life during the war had made bridegrooms an even rarer commodity and until Tommy's proposal she had assumed that she would become an old maid devoted to good works.
There were no such financial constraints in relation to the preparations for her trousseau. Polly and Arabella had taken the train to London and gone to stay with Thomas' sister Ada. The three women had then visited Selfridges and Harrods where it became apparent that there were few difficulties in relation to time and availability which could not be overcome with the judicious application of fistfuls of cash.
Ada and Arabella made an odd couple, Polly reflected. An ardent communist from the working classes and a member of the aristocracy should not have found much common ground but over the years Ada had come to terms with the knowledge that having a great deal of money made it easier to have principles. In return Arabella lacked most of the airs and graces that might have been expected of a young woman of her background and class and they both knew what it was like to be the only female child in a family full of boys. All told the trip to London was a great success and the three women had begun to put down the roots of a workable friendship.
A month later, Tommy and Arabella were married. As she was Church of England and he was nominally Catholic they opted for a simple registry office ceremony. The only representative of the Fairfax family to stand with Arabella was her father. However, the riotous Shelby clan more than made up for this lack. A party of biblical proportions then followed at Arrow House.