‘Nonsense. And don’t you go marrying just anybody, fox love,’ she said. ‘Remember that love cannot last, it never never does, but if you marry all this it’s for your life. One day, don’t forget, you’ll be middle-aged and think what that must be like for a woman who can’t have, say, a pair of diamond earrings. A woman of my age needs diamonds near her face, to give a sparkle. Then at meal times, sitting with all the unimportant people for ever and ever. And no motor. Not a very nice prospect, you know. Of course,’ she added as an afterthought, ‘I was lucky, I had love as well as all this, but it doesn’t often happen, and when the moment comes for you to choose, just remember what I say. I suppose Fanny ought to go now and catch her train – and when you’ve seen her off, will you find Boy please and send him up here to me, Polly? I want to think over the dinner party for next week with him. Good-bye, then, Fanny – let’s see a lot of you now we’re back.’
On the way down we ran into Boy.
‘Mummy wants to see you,’ said Polly, gravely posing, her blue look upon him. He put his hand to her shoulder and massaged it with his thumb.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘about this dinner party, I suppose. Are you coming to it, old girl?’
‘Oh, I expect so,’ she said. ‘I’m out now, you know.’
‘I can’t say I look forward to it very much. Your mother’s ideas on placement get vaguer and vaguer. The table last night was totally mad, the duchesse is still in a temper about it! Sonia really shouldn’t have people at all if she doesn’t intend to treat them properly.’
A phrase I had often heard on the lips of my Aunt Emily, with reference to animals.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BACK at home I was naturally unable to talk of anything but my visit. Davey was much amused and said he had never known me so chatty.
‘But my dear child,’ he said, ‘weren’t you petrified? Sauve-terre and the Chaddesley Corbetts –! Far worse even than I had expected.’
‘Well yes, at first I thought I’d die. But nobody took any notice of me really except Mrs Chaddesley Corbett and Lady Montdore –’
‘Oh! And what notice did they take, may I ask?’
‘Well, Mrs Chaddesley Corbett said Mummy bolted first of all with Mr Chaddesley Corbett.’
‘So she did,’ said Davey, ‘that boring old Chad, I’d quite forgotten. But you don’t mean to say Veronica told you so? I wouldn’t have thought it possible, even of her.’
‘No, I heard her tell, in eggy-peggy.’
‘I see. Well then, what about Sonia?’
‘Oh, she was sweet to me.’
‘She was, was she? This is indeed sinister news.’
‘What is sinister news?’ said Aunt Emily, coming in with her dogs. ‘It’s simply glorious out, I can’t imagine why you two are stuffing in here on such a heavenly day.’
‘We’re gossiping about this party you so unwisely allowed Fanny to go to. And I was saying that if Sonia has really taken a fancy to our little one, which it seems she has, we must look out for trouble, that’s all.’
‘What trouble?’I said.
‘Sonia’s terribly fond of juggling with people’s lives. I never shall forget when she made me go to her doctor. I can only say he very nearly killed me; it’s not her fault if I’m here today. She’s entirely unscrupulous, she gets a hold over people much too easily with her charm and her prestige and then forces her own values on them.’
‘Not on Fanny,’ Aunt Emily said, with confidence, ‘look at that chin.’
‘You always say look at Fanny’s chin but I never can see any other signs of her being strong-minded. Those Radletts make her do whatever they like.’
‘You’ll see,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘Siegfried is quite all right again by the way, he’s had a lovely walkies.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Davey. ‘Olive oil’s the thing.’
They both looked affectionately at the Pekingese, Siegfried.
But I wanted to get some more interesting gossip out of Davey about the Hamptons. I said coaxingly,
‘Go on Dave, do go on telling about Lady Montdore. What was she like when she was young?’
‘Exactly the same as she is now.’
I sighed. ‘No, but I mean what did she look like?’
‘I tell you, just the same,’ said Davey. ‘I’ve known her ever since I was a little tiny boy and she hasn’t changed one scrap.’
‘Oh, Davey –’ I began. But I left it at that. It’s no good, I thought, you always come up against this blank wall with old people, they always say about each other that they have never looked any different, and how can it be true? Anyway, if it is true, they must have been a horrid generation, all withered or blowsy, and grey at the age of eighteen, knobbly hands, bags under the chin, eyes set in a little map of wrinkles, I thought crossly, adding up all these things on the faces of Davey and Aunt Emily as they sat there, smugly thinking that they had always looked exactly the same. Quite useless to discuss questions of age with old people, they have such peculiar ideas on the subject. ‘Not really old at all, only seventy,’ you hear them saying, or ‘quite young, younger than me, not much more than forty’. At eighteen this seems great nonsense, though now, at the more advanced age which I have reached, I am beginning to understand what it all meant because Davey and Aunt Emily in their turn seem to me to look as they have looked ever since I knew them first, when I was a little child.
‘Who else was there,’ asked Davey, ‘the Dougdales?’
‘Oh, yes. Isn’t the Lecturer stchoopid?’
Davey laughed. ‘And lecherous?’ he said.
‘No, I must say not actually lecherous, not with me.’
‘Well, of course, he couldn’t be with Sonia there, he wouldn’t dare. He’s been her young man for years, you know.’
‘Don’t tell me!’ I said, fascinated. That was the heaven of Davey, he knew everything about everybody, quite unlike my aunts, who, though they had no special objection to our knowing gossip, now that we were grown-up, had always forgotten it themselves, being totally uninterested in the doings of people outside their own family. ‘Davey! How could she?’
‘Well, Boy is very good-looking,’ said Davey, ‘I should say tather, how could he? But as a matter of fact, I think it’s a love-affair of pure convenience, it suits them both perfectly. Boy knows the Gotha by heart and all that kind of thing, he’s like a wonderful extra butler, and Sonia on her side gives him an interest in life. I quite see it.’
One comfort, I thought, such elderly folk couldn’t do anything, but again I kept it to myself because I knew that nothing makes people crosser than being considered too old for love, and Davey and the Lecturer were exactly the same age, they had been at school together. Lady Montdore, of course, was even older.
‘Let’s hear about Polly,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘and then I really must insist on you going out of doors before tea. Is she a real beauty, just as we were always being told, by Sonia, that she would be?’
‘Of course she is,’ said Davey, ‘doesn’t Sonia always get her own way?’
‘So beautiful you can’t imagine,’ I said. ‘And so nice, the nicest person I ever met.’
‘Fanny is such a hero-worshipper,’ said Aunt Emily, amused.
‘I expect it’s true though, anyway, about the beauty,’ said Davey, ‘because, quite apart from Sonia always getting what she wants, Hamptons do have such marvellous looks, and after all, the old girl herself is very handsome. In fact, I see that she would improve the strain by giving a little solidity – Montdore looks too much like a collie dog.’
‘And who is this wonderful girl to marry?’ said Aunt Emily. ‘That will be the next problem for Sonia. I can’t see who will ever be good enough for her.’
‘Merely a question of strawberry leaves,’ said Davey, ‘as I imagine she’s probably too big for the Prince of Wales, he likes such tiny little women. You know, I can’t help thinking that now Montdore is getting older he must feel it dreadfully that he can’t leave Hampton to her. I had a long
talk about it the other day with Boy in the London Library. Of course, Polly will be very rich – enormously rich, because he can leave her everything else, but they all love Hampton so much, I think it’s very sad for them.’
‘Can he leave Polly the pictures at Montdore House? Surely they must be entailed on the heir?’ said Aunt Emily.
‘There are wonderful pictures at Hampton,’ I butted in. ‘A Raphael and a Caravaggio in my bedroom alone.’
They both laughed at me, hurting my feelings rather.
‘Oh, my darling child, country-house bedroom pictures! But the ones in London are a world-famous collection, and I believe they can all go to Polly. The young man from Nova Scotia simply gets Hampton and everything in it, but that is an Aladdin’s Cave, you know, the furniture, the silver, the library-treasures beyond value. Boy was saying they really ought to get him over and show him something of civilization before he becomes too transatlantic.’
‘I forget how old he is,’ said Aunt Emily.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘he’s six years older than me, about twenty-four now. And he’s called Cedric, like Lord Fauntleroy. Linda and I used to look him up when we were little to see if he would do for us.’
‘You would, how typical,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘But I should have thought he might really do for Polly – settle everything.’
‘It would be too much unlike life,’ said Davey. ‘Oh, bother, talking to Fanny has made me forget my three o’clock pill.’
‘Take it now,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘and then go out please, both of you.’
From this time on I saw a great deal of Polly. I went to Alconleigh, as I did every year, for some hunting, and from there I often went over to spend a night or two at Hampton. There were no more big house parties, but a continual flow of people, and in fact the Montdores and Polly never seemed to have a meal by themselves. Boy Dougdale came over nearly every day from his own house at Silkin, which was only about ten miles away. He quite often went home to dress for dinner and came back again to spend the evening, since Lady Patrick it seemed was not at all well, and liked to go to bed early.
Boy never seemed to me quite like a real human being and I think this is because he was always acting some part. Boy the Don Juan alternated with Boy the Old Etonian, squire of Silkin, and Boy the talented cosmopolitan. In none of these parts was he quite convincing. Don Juan only made headway with very unsophisticated women, except in the case of Lady Montdore, and she, whatever their relationship may have been in the past, had come to treat him more as a lady companion or private secretary than as a lover. The squire played cricket in a slightly arch manner with village youths, and lectured village women, but never seemed like a real squire, for all his efforts, and the talented cosmopolitan gave himself away whenever he put brush to canvas or pen to paper.
He and Lady Montdore were much occupied, when they were in the country, with what they called ‘their art’, producing enormous portraits, landscapes and still lifes by the dozen. In the summer they worked out of doors, and in the winter they installed a large stove in a north-facing bedroom and used it as a studio. They were such great admirers of their own and each other’s work that the opinion of the outside world meant but little to them. Their pictures were always framed and hung about their two houses, the best ones in rooms and the others in passages.
By the evening Lady Montdore was ready for some relaxation.
‘I like to work hard all day,’ she would say, ‘and then have agreeable company and perhaps a game of cards in the evening.’
There were always guests for dinner, an Oxford don or two with whom Lord Montdore could show off about Livy, Plotinus and the Claudian family, Lord Merlin, who was a great favourite of Lady Montdore and who published her sayings far and wide, and the more important county neighbours, strictly in turns. They seldom sat down fewer than ten people; it was very different from Alconleigh.
I enjoyed these visits to Hampton. Lady Montdore terrified me less and charmed me more, Lord Montdore remained perfectly agreeable and colourless, Boy continued to give me the creeps and Polly became my best-friend-next-to-Linda.
Presently Aunt Sadie suggested that I might like to bring Polly back with me to Alconleigh, which I duly did. It was not a very good time for a visit there since everybody’s nerves were upset by Linda’s engagement, but Polly did not seem to notice the atmosphere, and no doubt her presence restrained Uncle Matthew from giving vent to the full violence of his feelings while she was there. Indeed, she said to me, as we drove back to Hampton together after the visit, that she envied the Radlett children their upbringing in such a quiet, affectionate household, a remark which could only have been made by somebody who had inhabited the best spare room, out of range of Uncle Matthew’s early morning gramophone concerts, and who had never happened to see that violent man in one of his tempers. Even so, I thought it strange, coming from Polly, because if anybody had been surrounded by affection all her life it was she; I did not yet fully understand how difficult the relations were beginning to be between her and her mother.
CHAPTER EIGHT
POLLY and I were bridesmaids at Linda’s wedding in February, and when it was over I motored down to Hampton with Polly and Lady Montdore to spend a few days there. I was grateful to Polly for suggesting this, as I remembered too well the horrible feeling of anti-climax there had been after Louisa’s wedding, which would certainly be ten times multiplied after Linda’s. Indeed, with Linda married, the first stage of my life no less than of hers was finished, and I felt myself to be left in a horrid vacuum, with childhood over but married life not yet beginning.
As soon as Linda and Anthony had gone away Lady Montdore sent for her motor car and we all three huddled on to the back seat. Polly and I were still in our bridesmaids’ dresses (sweet-pea tints, in chiffon) but well wrapped up in fur coats and each with a Shetland rug wound round our legs, like children going to a dancing class. The chauffeur spread a great bearskin over all of us and put a foot warmer under our silver kid shoes. It was not really cold, but shivery, pouring and pouring with rain as it had been all day, getting dark now. The inside of the motor was like a dry little box, and as we splashed down the long wet shiny roads, with the rain beating against the windows, there was a specially delicious cosiness about being in this little box and knowing that so much light and warmth and solid comfort lay ahead.
‘I love being so dry in here,’ as Lady Montdore put it, ‘and seeing all those poor people so wet.’
She had done the journey twice that day, having driven up from Hampton in the morning, whereas Polly had gone up the day before, with her father, for a last fitting of her bridesmaid’s dress and in order to go to a dinner-dance.
First of all we talked about the wedding. Lady Montdore was wonderful when it came to picking over an occasion of that sort, with her gimlet eye nothing escaped her, not did any charitable inhibitions tone down her comments on what she had observed.
‘How extraordinary Lady Kroesig looked, poor woman! I suppose somebody must have told her that the bridegroom’s mother should have a bit of everything in her hat – for luck perhaps. Fur, feathers, flowers and a scrap of lace – it was all there and a diamond brooch on top to finish it off nicely. Rose diamonds – I had a good look. It’s a funny thing that these people who are supposed to be so rich never seem to have a decent jewel to put on – I’ve often noticed it. And did you see what mingy little things they gave poor Linda? A cheque – yes, that’s all very well but for how much, I wonder? Cultured pearls, at least I imagine so, or they would have been worth quite £10,000, and a hideous little bracelet. No tiara, no necklace, what will the poor child wear at Court? Linen, which we didn’t see, all that modern silver and a horrible house in one of those squares by the Marble Arch. Hardly worth being called by that nasty German name, I should say. And Davey tells me there’s no proper settlement – really, Matthew Alcon-leigh isn’t fit to have children if that’s all he can do for them. Still, I’m bound to say he looked very handsome com
ing up the aisle, and Linda looked her very best too, really lovely.’
I think she was feeling quite affectionately towards Linda for having removed herself betimes from competition, for although not a great beauty like Polly she was certainly far more popular with young men.
‘Sadie, too, looked so nice, very young and handsome, and the little thing’s so puddy.’ She pronounced the word pretty like that.
‘Did you see our dessert service, Fanny? Oh, did she, I’m glad. She could change it, as it came from Goodes, but perhaps she won’t want to. I was quite amused, weren’t you, to see the difference between our side of the church and the Kroesig side. Bankers don’t seem to be much to look at – so extraordinarily unsuitable having to know them at all, poor things, let alone marry them. But these sort of people have got megalomania nowadays, one can’t get away from them. Did you notice the Kroesig sister? Oh, yes, of course, she was walking with you, Fanny. They’ll have a job to get her off!’
‘She’s training to be a yet,’ I said.
‘First sensible thing I’ve heard about any of them. No point in cluttering up the ballrooms with girls who look like that, it’s simply not fair on anybody. Now Polly, I want to hear exactly what you did yesterday.’
‘Oh – nothing very much.’
‘Don’t be so tiresome. You got to London at about twelve, I suppose?’
‘Yes, we did,’ said Polly, in a resigned voice. She would have to account for every minute of the day, she knew, quicker to tell of her own accord than to have it pumped out of her. She began to fidget with her bridesmaid’s wreath of silver leaves. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said, ‘I must take this off, it’s giving me a headache.’
It was twisted into her hair with wire. She tugged and pulled at it until finally she got it off and flung it down on the floor.
Love in a Cold Climate Page 7