True, all this had applied to Davey when he had first appeared upon the scene, engaged to Aunt Emily, but Uncle Matthew had taken an unreasoning fancy to Davey from the very beginning, and it was not to be hoped that such a miracle could repeat itself. My fears, however, were not entirely realized. I think Aunt Sadie had probably read the riot act before our arrival; meanwhile I had been doing my best with Alfred. I made him have his hair cropped like a guardsman, explained to him that if he must open a book he should do so only in the privacy of his bedroom, and specially urged great punctuality at meal times. Uncle Matthew, as I told him, liked to get us all into the dining-room at least five minutes before the meal was ready. ‘Come on,’ he would say, ‘we’ll go and sit in.’ And in the family would sit, clasping hot plates to their bosoms (Aunt Sadie had once done this, absent-mindedly, with a plate of artichoke soup), all eyes upon the pantry door.
I tried to explain these things to Alfred, who listened patiently though uncomprehendingly. I also tried to prepare him for the tremendous impact of my uncle’s rages, so that I got the poor man, quite unnecessarily, into a panic.
‘Do let’s go to the Mitre,’ he kept saying.
‘It may not be too bad,’ I replied, doubtfully.
And it was not, in the end, too bad at all. The fact is that Uncle Matthew’s tremendous and classical hatred for me, which had begun when I was an infant and which had cast a shadow of fear over all my childhood, had now become more legend than actuality. I was such an habitual member of his household, and he such a Conservative, that this hatred, in common with chat which he used to nurture against Josh, the groom, and various other old intimates, had not only lost its force but I think had, with the passage of years, actually turned into love; such a lukewarm sentiment as ordinary avuncular affection being of course foreign to his experience. Be that as it may, he evidently had no wish to poison the beginning of my married life, and made quite touching efforts to bottle up whatever irritation he felt at Alfred’s shortcomings, his unmanly incompetence with his motor car, vagueness over time and fatal disposition to spill marmalade at breakfast. The fact that Alfred left for Oxford at nine o’clock, only returning in time for dinner, and that we spent Saturday to Monday of every week in Kent with Aunt Emily, made our visit just endurable to Uncle Matthew, and, incidentally to Alfred himself, who did not share my unquestioning adoration for all members of the Radlett family.
The Radlett boys had gone back to their schools, and my cousin Linda, whom I loved best in the world after Alfred, was now living in London, expecting a baby, but, though Alconleigh was never quite the same without her, Jassy and Victoria were at home (none of the Radlett girls went to school) so the house resounded as usual with jingles and jangles and idiotic shrieks. There was always some joke being run to death at Alconleigh and just now it was headlines from the Daily Express which the children had made into a chant and intoned to each other all day.
Jassy: ‘Man’s long agony in a lift-shaft.’
Victoria: ‘Slowly crushed to death in a lift.’
Aunt Sadie became very cross about this, said they were really too old to be so heartless, that it wasn’t a bit funny, only dull and disgusting, and absolutely forbade them to sing it any more. After this they tapped it out to each other, on doors, under the dining-room table, clicking with their tongues or blinking with their eyelids, and all the time in fits of naughty giggles. I could see that Alfred thought them terribly silly, and he could hardly contain his indignation when he found out that they did no lessons of any sort.
‘Thank heaven for your Aunt Emily,’ he said. ‘I really could not have married somebody quite illiterate.’
Of course, I too thanked heaven more than ever for dear Aunt Emily, but at the same time Jassy and Victoria made me laugh so much, and I loved them so much, that it was impossible for me to wish them very different from what they were. Hardly had I arrived in the house than I was lugged off to their secret meeting-place, the Hon’s cupboard, to be asked what IT was like.
‘Linda says it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ said Jassy, ‘and we don’t wonder when we think of Tony.’
‘But Louisa says, once you get used to it, it’s utter utter utter blissikins,’ said Victoria, ‘and we do wonder, when we think of John.’
‘What’s wrong with poor Tony and John?’
‘Dull and old. Come on then Fanny – tell.’
I said I agreed with Louisa, but refused to enter into details.
‘It is unfair, nobody ever tells. Sadie doesn’t even know, that’s quite obvious, and Louisa is an old prig, but we did think we could count on Linda and you. Very well then, we shall go to out marriage beds in ignorance, like Victorian ladles, and in the morning we shall be found stark staring mad with horror and live sixty more years in an expensive bin, and then perhaps you’ll wish you had been more helpful.’
‘Weighted down with jewels and Valenciennes costing thousands,’ said Victoria. ‘The Lecturer was here last week and he was telling Sadie some very nice sexy stories about that kind of thing – of course, we weren’t meant to hear but you can just guess what happened, Sadie didn’t listen and we did.’
‘I should ask the Lecturer for information,’ I said. ‘He’d tell.’
‘He’d show. No thank you very much.’
Polly came over to see me. She was pale and thinner, had rings under her eyes and seemed quite shut up in herself, though this may have been in contrast with the exuberant Radletts. When she was with Jassy and Victoria she looked like a swan, swimming in the company of two funny little tumbling ducks. She was very fond of them. She had never got on very well with Linda, for some reason, but she loved everybody else at Alconleigh, especially Aunt Sadie, and was more at her ease with Uncle Matthew than anybody I ever knew, outside his own family circle. He, for his part, bestowed on her some of the deference he felt for Lord Montdore, called her Lady Polly, and smiled every time his eyes fell on her beautiful face.
‘Now children,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘leave Fanny and Polly to have a little chat, they don’t want you all the time, you know.’
‘It is unfair – I suppose Fanny’s going to tell Polly now. Well, back to the medical dictionary and the Bible. I only wish these things didn’t look quite so sordid in cold print. What we need is some clean-minded married woman, to explain, but where are we to find her?’
Polly and I had a very desultory little chat, however. I showed her photographs of Alfred and me in the South of France, where we had been so that he could meet my poor mother the Bolter, who was living there now with a nasty new husband. Polly said the Dougdales were off there next week as Lady Patricia was feeling the cold so dreadfully that winter. She told me also that there had been a huge Christmas patty at Hampton and that Joyce Fleetwood was in disgrace with her mother for not paying his bridge debts.
‘So that’s one comfort. We’ve still got the Grand Duchess, poor old thing. Goodness she’s dull – not that Mummy seems to think so. Veronica Chaddesley Corbett calls her and Mummy Ma’am and Super-Ma’am.’
I did not like to ask if Polly and her mother were getting on any better, and Polly volunteered nothing on that subject, but she looked, I thought, very miserable. Presently she said she must go.
‘Come over soon and bring Alfred.’
But I dreaded the impact of Lady Montdore upon Alfred even more than that of Uncle Matthew, and said he was too busy but I would come alone sometime.
‘I hear that she and Sonia are on very bad terms again,’ Aunt Sadie said when Polly had driven off.
‘The hell-hag,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘drown her if I were Montdore.’
‘Or he might cut her to pieces with nail scissors like that French duke the Lecherous Lecturer was telling you all about, Sadie, when you weren’t listening and we were.’
‘Don’t call me Sadie, children, and don’t call Mr Dougdale the Lecherous Lecturer.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, we always do behind your backs so you see it’s bound to slip out
sometimes.’
Davey arrived. He had come to stay for a week or so for treatment at the Radcliffe Infirmary. Aunt Emily was becoming more and more attached to all her animals and could seldom now be persuaded to leave them, for which, on this occasion, I was thankful, since our Sundays in Kent really were an indispensable refuge to Alfred and me.
‘I met Polly in the drive,’ Davey said, ‘we stopped and had a word. I think she looks most dreadfully unwell.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Aunt Sadie, who believed in no illness except appendicitis. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Polly, she needs a husband, that’s all.’
‘Oh! How like a woman!’ said Davey. ‘Sex, my dear Sadie, is not a sovereign cure for everything, you know. I only wish it were.’
‘I didn’t mean sex at all,’ said my aunt, very much put out by this interpretation. Indeed, she was what the children called ‘against’ sex, that is to say it never entered into her calculations. ‘What I said, and what I meant, was she needs a husband. Girls of her age, living at home, are hardly ever happy and Polly is a specially bad case because she has nothing whatever to do, she doesn’t care for hunting, or parties, or anything much that I can see, and she doesn’t get on with her mother. It’s true that Sonia teases and lectures her and sets about it all the wrong way, she’s a tactless person, but she is perfectly right, you know. Polly needs a life of her own, babies, occupations, and interests – an establishment, in fact – and for all that she must have a husband.’
‘Or a lady of Llangollen,’ said Victoria.
‘Time you went to bed, miss, now off you go both of you.’
‘Not me, it’s not nearly my bedtime yet.’
‘I said both of you, now begone.’
They dragged themselves out of the room as slowly as they dared and went upstairs, stamping out ‘Man’s long agony’ on the bare boards of the nursery passage so that nobody in the whole house could fail to hear them.
‘Those children read too much,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘But I can’t stop them. I honestly believe they’d rather read the label on a medicine bottle than nothing at all.’
‘Oh, but I love reading the labels of medicine bottles,’ said Davey, ‘they’re madly enjoyable, you know.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE next morning when I came down to breakfast I found everybody, even the children, looking grave. It seemed that by some mysterious local tom-tom Aunt Sadie had learnt that Lady Patricia Dougdale had died in the night. She had suddenly collapsed, Lord Montdore was sent for, but by the time he could arrive she had become unconscious, and an hour later was dead.
‘Oh, poor Patricia,’ Aunt Sadie kept saying, very much upset, while Uncle Matthew, who cried easily, was mopping his eyes as he bent over the hot plate, taking a sausage, or in bis parlance, a ‘banger’, with less than his usual enthusiasm.
‘I saw her only last week,’ he said, ‘at the Clarendon Yard.’
‘Yes,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘I remember you told me. Poor Patricia, I always liked her so much, though of course, all that about being delicate was tiresome.’
‘Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate,’ said Davey triumphantly. ‘She’s dead. It killed her. Doesn’t that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet.’
The children began to giggle at this, and even Aunt Sadie smiled because they all knew that so far from it being a bother to Davey it was his all-absorbing occupation, and one which he enjoyed beyond words.
‘Oh, of course, I know you all think it’s a great great joke, and no doubt Jassy and Victoria will scream with laughter when I finally do conk out, but it’s not a joke to me, let me tell you, and a liver in that state can’t have been much of a joke to poor Patricia, what’s more.’
‘Poor Patricia, and I fear she had a sad life with that boring old Lecturer.’
This was so like Aunt Sadie. Having protested for years against the name Lecturer for Boy Dougdale she was now using it herself, it always happened; very soon no doubt we should hear her chanting ‘Man’s long agony’.
‘For some reason that I could never understand, she really loved him.’
‘Until lately,’ said Davey. ‘I think for the past year or two it has been the other way round, and he had begun to depend on her, and then it was too late, she had stopped bothering about him.’
‘Possibly. Anyway, there it is, all very sad. We must send a wreath, darling, at once. What a time of year – it will have to come from Oxford, I suppose – oh, the waste of money.’
‘Send a wreath of frog spawn frog spawn frog spawn, lovely lovely frog spawn it is my favourite thing,’ sang Jassy.
‘If you go on being so silly, children,’ said Aunt Sadie, who had caught a look of great disapproval on Alfred’s face, ‘I shall be obliged to send you to school, you know.’
‘But can you afford to?’ said Victoria. ‘You’d have to buy us plimsolls and gym tunics, underclothes in a decent state and some good strong luggage. I’ve seen girls going off to school, they are covered with expensive things. Of course, we long for it, pashes for the prefects and rags in the dorm. School has a very sexy side you know, Sadie – why, the very word ‘mistress’?, Sadie, you know –’
But Aunt Sadie was not really listening; she was away in her cloud and merely said,
‘Mm, very naughty and silly, and don’t call me Sadie.’
Aunt Sadie and Davey went off to the funeral together. Uncle Matthew had his Bench that day, and particularly wanted to attend in order to make quite sure that a certain ruffian, who was to come up before it, should be committed to the Assizes, where, it was very much to be hoped, he would get several years and the cat. One or two of Uncle Matthew’s fellow beaks had curious, modern ideas about justice and he was obliged to carry on a strenuous war against them, in which he was greatly assisted by a retired Admiral of the neighbourhood.
So they had to go to the funeral without him, and came back in low spirits.
It’s the dropping off the perches,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘I’ve always dreaded when that begins. Soon we shall all have gone – oh well, never mind.’
‘Nonsense,’ Davey said, briskly. ‘Modern science will keep us alive, and young, too, for many a long day yet. Patricia’s insides were a terrible mess – I had a word with Dr Simpson while you were with Sonia and it’s quite obviously a miracle she didn’t die years ago. When the children have gone to bed I’ll tell you.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Aunt Sadie, while the children implored him to go then and there with them to the Hon’s cupboard and tell.
‘It is unfair, Sadie doesn’t want to hear the least bit, and we die to.’
‘How old was Patricia?’ said Aunt Sadie.
‘Older than we are,’ said Davey. ‘I remember when they married she was supposed to be quite a bit older than Boy.’
‘And he was looking a hundred in that bitter wind.’
‘I thought he seemed awfully cut up, poor Boy.’
Aunt Sadie, during a little graveside chat with Lady Montdore, had gathered that the death had come as a shock and surprise to all of them, that, although they had known Lady Patricia to be far from well, they had no idea that she was in immediate danger; in fact, she had been greatly looking forward to her trip abroad the following week. Lady Montdore, who resented death, clearly thought it most inconsiderate of her sister-in-law to break up their little circle so suddenly, and Lord Montdore, devoted to his sister, was dreadfully shaken by the midnight drive with a death-bed at the end of it. But surprisingly enough, the one who had taken it hardest was Polly. It seemed that she had been violently sick on hearing the news, completely prostrated for two days, and was still looking so unwell that her mother had refused to take her to the funeral.
‘It seems rather funny,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘in a way. I’d n
o idea she was so particularly devoted to Patricia, had you, Fanny?’
‘Nervous shock,’ said Davey. ‘I don’t suppose she’s ever had a death so near to her before.’
‘Oh, yes she has,’ said Jassy. ‘Ranger.’
‘Dogs aren’t exactly the same as human beings, my dear Jassy.’
But to the Radletts they were exactly the same, except that to them dogs on the whole had more reality than people.
‘Do tell about the grave,’ said Victoria.
‘Not very much to tell, really,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘Just a grave, you know, lots of flowers and mud.’
‘They’d lined it with heather,’ said Davey, ‘from Craigside. Poor Patricia, she did love Scotland.’
‘And where was it?’
‘In the graveyard, of course, at Silkin – between the Well-ingtonia and the Blood Arms, if you see where I mean. In full view of Boy’s bedroom window, incidentally.’
Jassy began to talk fast and earnestly.
‘You will promise to bury me here, whatever happens, won’t you, won’t you, there’s one exact place I want, I note it every time I go to church, it’s next door to that old lady who was nearly a hundred.’
‘That’s not our part of the churchyard – miles away from grandfather.’
‘No, but it’s the bit I want. I once saw a dear little dead baby vole there. Please please please don’t forget.’
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