The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘That’s right, bird-brain, just do the sum. She married at eighteen, eighteen plus eighteen equals thirty-six, correct? No?’

  ‘Yes. Steady on though, what about the nine months?’

  ‘Not nine, darling, nothing like nine, don’t you remember how bogus it all was and how shamingly huge her bouquet had to be, poor sweet? It was the whole point.’

  ‘Veronica’s gone too far as usual – come on, let’s finish the game.’

  I had half an ear on this riveting conversation and half on what Lady Montdore was saying. Having given me a characteristic and well-remembered look, up and down, a look which told me what I knew already, that my tweed skirt bulged behind and why had I no gloves (why, indeed, left them in the motor no doubt, and how would I ever have the courage to ask for them?), she remarked in a most friendly way that I had changed more in five years than Polly had, but that Polly was now much taller than me. How was Aunt Emily? And Davey?

  That was where her charm lay. She would suddenly be nice just when it seemed that she was about to go for you tooth and nail, it was the charm of a purring puma. She now sent one of the men off to look for Polly.

  ‘Playing billiards with Boy, I think,’ and poured me out a cup of tea.

  ‘And here,’ she said, to the company in general, ‘is Montdore.’

  She always called her husband Montdore to those she regarded as her equals, but to border-line cases such as the estate agent or Dr Simpson he was Lord Montdore, if not His Lordship. I never heard her refer to him as ‘my husband’, it was all part of the attitude to life that made her so generally unbeloved, a determination to show people what she considered to be their proper place and keep them in it.

  The chatter did not continue while Lord Montdore, radiating wonderful oldness, came into the room. It stopped dead, and those who were not already standing up, respectfully did so. He shook hands all round, a suitable word for each in turn.

  ‘And this is my friend Fanny? Quite grown-up now, and do you remember that last time I saw you we were weeping together over the Little Match Girl?’

  Perfectly untrue, I thought. Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child. Black Beauty now –!

  He turned to the fire, holding his large, thin white hands to the blaze, while Lady Montdore poured out his tea. There was a long silence in the room. Presently he took a scone, buttered it, put it in his saucer, and turning to another old man said, ‘I’ve been wanting to ask you –’

  They sat down together, talking in low voices, and by degrees the starling chatter broke loose again.

  I was beginning to see that there was no occasion to feel alarmed in this company, because as far as my fellow guests were concerned, I was clearly endowed with protective colouring; their momentary initial interest in me having subsided I might just as well not have been there at all, and could keep happily to myself and observe their antics. The various house parties for people of my age that I had been to during the past year had really been much more unnerving, because there I knew that I was expected to play a part, to sing for my supper by being, if possible, amusing. But here, a child once more among all these old people, it was my place to be seen and not heard. Looking round the room I wondered vaguely which were the young men Lady Montdore had mentioned as being specially invited for Polly and me. They could not yet have arrived as certainly none of these were the least bit young, all well over thirty I should have said and probably all married, though it was impossible to guess which of the couples were husbands and wives, because they all spoke to each other as if they all were, in voices and with endearments which, in the case of my aunts, could only have meant that it was their own husbands they were addressing.

  ‘Have the Sauveterres not arrived yet, Sonia?’ said Lord Montdore coming up for another cup of tea.

  There was a movement among the women. They turned their heads like dogs who think they hear somebody unwrapping a piece of chocolate.

  ‘Sauveterres? Do you mean Fabrice? Don’t tell me Fabrice is married? I couldn’t be more amazed.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. He’s bringing his mother to stay, she’s an old flame of Montdore’s – I’ve never seen her, and Montdore hasn’t for quite forty years. Of course, we’ve always known Fabrice, and he came to us in India. He’s such fun, a delightful creature. He was very much taken up with the little Ranee of Rawalpur, in fact they do say her last baby –’

  ‘Sonia –!’ said Lord Montdore, quite sharply for him. She took absolutely no notice.

  ‘Dreadful old man the Rajah, I only hope it was. Poor creatures, it’s one baby after another, you can’t help feeling sorry for them, like little birds you know. I used to go and visit the ones who were kept in purdah and of course they simply worshipped me, it was really touching.’

  Lady Patricia Dougdale was announced. I had seen the Dougdales from time to time while the Montdores were abroad because they were neighbours at Alconleigh and although my Uncle Matthew by no means encouraged neighbours, it was beyond even his powers to suppress them altogether and prevent them from turning up at the meets, the local point-to-points, on Oxford platform for the 9.10 and Paddington for the 4.45, or at the Merlinford market. Besides, the Dougdales had brought house parties to Alconleigh for Aunt Sadie’s dances when Louisa and Linda came out and had given Louisa, for a wedding present, an antique pin cushion, curiously heavy because full of lead. The romantic Louisa, making sure it was curiously heavy because full of gold, ‘somebody’s savings don’t you see?’ had ripped it open with her nail scissors, only to find the lead, with the result that none of her wedding presents could be shown for fear of hurting Lady Patricia’s feelings.

  Lady Patricia was a perfect example of beauty that is but skin deep. She had once had the same face as Polly, but the fair hair had now gone white and the white skin yellow, so that she looked like a classical statue that has been out in the weather, with a layer of snow on its head, the features smudged and smeared by damp. Aunt Sadie said that she and Boy had been considered the handsomest couple in London, but of course that must have been years ago, they were old now, fifty or something, and life would soon be over for them. Lady Patricia’s life had been full of sadness and suffering, sadness in her marriage and suffering in her liver. (Of course, I am now quoting Davey.) She had been passionately in love with Boy, who was younger than she, for some years before he had married her, which it was supposed that he had done because he could not resist the relationship with his esteemed Hampton family. The great sorrow of his life was childlessness, since he had set his heart on a quiverful of little half-Hamptons, and people said that the disappointment had almost unhinged him for a while, but that his niece Polly was now beginning to take the place of a daughter, he was so extremely devoted to her.

  ‘Where is Boy?’ Lady Patricia said when she had greeted, in the usual English way of greeting, the people who were near the fire, sending a wave of her gloves or half a smile to the ones who were further off. She wore a felt hat, sensible tweeds, silk stockings and beautifully polished calf shoes.

  ‘I do wish they’d come,’ said Lady Montdore, ‘I want him to help me with the table. He’s playing billiards with Polly – I’ve sent word once, by Rory – oh, here they are.’

  Polly kissed her aunt and kissed me. She looked round the room to see if anybody else had arrived to whom she had not yet said ‘How do you do?’ (she and her parents, as a result, no doubt, of the various official positions Lord Montdore had held, were rather formal in their manners) and then turned back again to me.

  ‘Fanny,’ she said, ‘have you been here long? Nobody told me.’

  She stood there, rather taller now than me, embodied once more, instead of a mere nebulous memory of my childhood, and all the complicated feelings that we have for the human beings who matter in our lives came rushing back to me. My feelings for the Lecturer came rushing back too, uncomplicated.

  ‘Ha!’
he was saying, ‘here, at last, is my lady wife.’ He gave me the creeps, with his curly black hair going grey now, and his perky, jaunty little figure. He was shorter than the Hampton women, about an inch shorter than Lady Patricia, and tried to make up for this by having very thick soles to his shoes. He always looked horribly pleased with himself, the corners of his mouth turned up when his face was in repose, and if he was at all put out they turned up even more in a profoundly irritating smile.

  Polly’s blue look was now upon me, I suppose she also was rediscovering a person only half remembered, quite the same person really, a curly little black girl, Aunt Sadie used to say, like a little pony which at any moment might toss its shaggy mane and gallop off. Half an hour ago I would gladly have galloped, but now I felt happily inclined to stay where I was.

  As we went upstairs together Polly put her arm round my waist saying, with obvious sincerity, ‘It’s too lovely to see you again. The things I’ve got to ask you! When I was in India I used to think and think about you – do you remember how we both had black velvet dresses with red sashes for coming down after tea and how Linda had worms? It does seem another life, so long ago. What is Linda’s fiancé like?’

  ‘Very good-looking,’ I said, ‘very hearty. They don’t care for him much at Alconleigh, any of them.’

  ‘Oh, how sad. Still, if Linda does – fancy, though, Louisa married and Linda engaged already! Of course, before India we were all babies really, and now we are of marriageable age, it makes a difference, doesn’t it.’

  She sighed deeply.

  ‘I suppose you came out in India?’ I said. Polly, I knew, was a little older than I was.

  ‘Well, yes I did, I’ve been out two years, actually. It was all very dull, this coming-out seems a great great bore – do you enjoy it, Fanny?’

  I had never thought about whether I enjoyed it or not, and found it difficult to answer her question. Girls had to come out, I knew. It is a stage in their existence just as the public school is for boys, which must be passed before life, real life, could begin. Dances are supposed to be delightful; they cost a lot of money and it is most good of the grown-ups to give them, most good, too, of Aunt Sadie to have taken me to so many. But at these dances, although I quite enjoyed going to them, I always had the uncomfortable feeling that I missed something, it was like going to a play in a foreign language. Each time I used to hope that I should see the point, but I never did, though the people round me were all so evidently seeing it. Linda, for instance, had seen it clearly but then she had been successfully pursuing love.

  ‘What I do enjoy,’ I said, truthfully, ‘is the dressing up.’

  ‘Oh, so do I! Do you think about dresses and hats all the time, even in church? I do too. Heavenly tweed, Fanny, I noticed it at once.’

  ‘Only it’s bagging,’ I said.

  ‘They always bag, except on very smart little thin women like Veronica. Are you pleased to be back in this room? It’s the one you used to have, do you remember?’

  Of course I remembered. It always had my name in full, ‘The Honble Frances Logan’, written in a careful copperplate on a card on the door, even when I was so small that I came with my nanny, and this had greatly impressed and pleased me as a child.

  ‘Is this what you’re going to wear tonight?’

  Polly went up to the huge red four-poster where my dress was laid out.

  ‘How lovely – green velvet and silver, I call that a dream, so soft and delicious, too.’ She rubbed a fold of the skirt against her cheek. ‘Mine’s silver lamé, it smells like a bird cage when it gets hot but I do love it. Aren’t you thankful evening skirts are long again? But I want to hear more about what coming-out is like in England.’

  ‘Dances,’ I said, ‘girls’ luncheon parties, tennis if you can, dinner parties to go to, plays, Ascot, being presented. Oh, I don’t know, I expect you can just about imagine.’

  ‘And all going on like the people downstairs?’

  ‘Chattering all the time? Well, but the downstairs people are old, Polly. Coming-out is with people of one’s own age, you see.’

  ‘They don’t think they’re old a bit,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Well –’ I said, ‘all the same, they are.’

  ‘I don’t see them as so old myself, but I expect that’s because they seem young beside Mummy and Daddy. Just think of it, Fanny, your mother wasn’t born when Mummy married, and Mrs Warbeck was only just old enough to be her bridesmaid. Mummy was saying so before you came. No, but what I really want to know about coming-out here is what about love? Are they all always having love affairs the whole time? Is it their one and only topic of conversation?’

  I was obliged to admit that this was the case.

  ‘Oh, bother. I felt sure, really, you would say that – it was so in India, of course, but I thought perhaps in a cold climate –! Anyway, don’t tell Mummy if she asks you, pretend that English débutantes don’t bother about love. She is in a perfect fit because I never fall in love with people; she teases me about it all the time. But it isn’t any good because if you don’t, you don’t. I should have thought, at my age, it’s natural not to.’

  I looked at her in surprise, it seemed to me highly unnatural, though I could well understand not wanting to talk about such things to the grown-ups, and specially not to Lady Montdore if she happened to be one’s mother. But a new idea struck me.

  ‘In India,’ I said, ‘could you have fallen in love?’ Polly laughed.

  ‘Fanny darling, what do you mean? Of course I could have, why not? I just didn’t happen to, you see.’

  ‘White people?’

  ‘White or black,’ she said, teasingly.

  ‘Fall in love with blacks?’ What would Uncle Matthew say?

  ‘People do, like anything. You don’t understand about Rajahs, I see, but some of them are awfully attractive. I had a friend there who nearly died of love for one. And I’ll tell you something, Fanny. I honestly believe Mamma would rather I fell in love with an Indian than not at all. Of course there would have been a fearful row, and I should have been sent straight home, but even so she would have thought it quite a good thing. What she minds so much is the not at all. I know she’s only asked this Frenchman to stay because she thinks no woman can resist him. They could think of nothing else in Delhi – I wasn’t there at the time, I was in the hills with Boy and Auntie Patsy, we did a heavenly, heavenly trip – I must tell you about it but not now.’

  ‘But would your mother like you to marry a Frenchman?’ I said. At this time love and marriage were inextricably knotted in my mind.

  ‘Oh, not marry, good gracious no. She’d just like me to have a little weakness for him, to show that I’m capable of it – she wants to see if I’m like other women. Well, she’ll see. There’s the dressing-bell – I’ll call for you when I’m ready, I don’t live up here any more, I’ve got a new room over the porch. Heaps of time, Fanny, quite an hour.’

  4

  My bedroom was in the tower, where Polly’s nurseries had been when she was small. Whereas all the other rooms at Hampton were classical in feeling the tower rooms were exaggeratedly Gothic, the Gothic of fairy-story illustrations; and in this one the bed, the cupboards and the fireplace had pinnacles, the wallpaper was a design of scrolls and the windows were casements. An extensive work of modernization had taken place all over the house while the family was in India, and looking round I saw that in one of the cupboards there was now a tiled bathroom.

  In the old days I used to sally forth, sponge in hand, to the nursery bathroom, which was down a terrifying twisting staircase, and I could still remember how cold it used to be outside in the passages, though there was always a blazing fire in my room. But now the central heating had been brought up to date and the temperature everywhere was that of a hothouse. The fire which flickered away beneath the spires and towers of the chimney piece was merely there for show, and no longer to be lighted at
7 a.m., before one was awake, by a little maid scuffling about like a mouse. The age of luxury was ended and that of comfort had begun. Being conservative by nature I was glad to see that the decoration of the room had not been changed at all, though the lighting was very much improved, there was a new quilt on the bed, the mahogany dressing-table had acquired a muslin petticoat and a triple looking-glass and the whole room and bathroom were close-carpeted. Otherwise everything was exactly as I remembered it, including two large yellow pictures which could be seen from the bed, Caravaggio’s ‘The Gamesters’ and ‘A Courtesan’ by Raphael.

  As I dressed for dinner I passionately wished that Polly and I could have spent the evening together upstairs, supping off a tray, as we used to do, in the schoolroom. I was dreading this grown-up dinner ahead of me because I knew that, once I found myself in the dining-room seated between two of the old gentlemen downstairs, it would no longer be possible to remain a silent spectator, I should be obliged to try and think of things to say. It had been drummed into me all my life, especially by Davey, that silence at meal times is anti-social.

  ‘So long as you chatter, Fanny, it’s of no consequence what you say, better recite out of the ABC than sit like a deaf mute. Think of your poor hostess, it simply isn’t fair on her.’

  In the dining-room, between the man called Rory and the man called Roly, I found things even worse than I had expected. The protective colouring, which had worked so well in the drawing-room, was now going on and off like a deficient electric light. I was visible. One of my neighbours would begin a conversation with me, and seem quite interested in what I was telling him when, without any warning at all, I would become invisible and Rory and Roly were both shouting across the table at the lady called Veronica, while I was left in mid-air with some sad little remark. It then became too obvious that they had not heard a single word I had been saying but had all along been entranced by the infinitely more fascinating conversation of this Veronica lady. All right then, invisible, which really I much preferred, able to eat happily away in silence. But no, not at all, unaccountably visible again.