Lettice & Victoria

by Susanna Johnston

  The others came in, superficially chastened by the church service.

  Lettice, barely hiding disapproval at the sight of knitting and leaning backwards to avoid cigarette smoke, dug her fingers into Victoria’s arm.

  ‘Now, darling. I want you to meet one of our oldest friends. Archibald Thorne. I can see that you and Harold have already made friends. Whatever you do, don’t let Archie bully you. He can be an absolute beast.’

  Archie saw humour in the girl’s face, which surprised him. He went forward to charm her.

  ‘Is that a jumper for Edgar? Aren’t you girls wonderful! Not only do you pledge yourselves to these young men for life but you knit jumpers for them as well. Lettice. Did you ever knit a jumper for Roland?’

  Victoria laughed. She said that she was having a hippy phase and was knitting herself a poncho-cum-trouser suit, but planned to make a jumper for Edgar as soon the present task was finished. He advanced further towards her, scowling and wagging a meaty hand. ‘A poncho-cum-trouser suit! I suppose that you approve of the adolescent of today. The shock-headed and dishevelled, with hair that seems to have run to seed hiding neck and ears in whiskery overgrowth, make me sick. I’ve seen them. Believe me. They’re everywhere, clad in patched jeans and dirty anoraks, padding hand in hand, sometimes with bare feet, along the city pavements. Horrible specimens of humanity.’

  Victoria began to laugh. She liked him very much. He was amused by her laughter and held up his hand in mock fear of her disapproval.

  Then he advanced even closer wearing a slightly dragging, floppy suit. His shoes were rather bulgy but expensive looking. ‘Have you ever heard of a pop group called the Rolling Stones?’ The word ‘pop’ exploded as a Chinese firework. ‘The leader of this repulsive group – I forget his name – referred to the Mona Lisa as a load of crap! A load of crap. There.’ His eyes glittered above bifocals. Lettice trembled and feigned amused collusion with his whims, her face clouded by a desperate effort to appear affectionate and understanding. Archie continued to address Victoria.

  ‘My dear. You don’t take me seriously, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know how to take you. You attack in areas where I hold no views.’

  ‘No views! Do you mean to tell me that you hold no views on the hirsute and the hispid?’ Onlookers were silent.

  Edgar took Victoria’s hand as if to protect her from further harassment.

  Archie’s chuckle and Victoria’s obvious enjoyment made Lettice shudder but she ran for her camera and held her hand up in an urgent fashion. ‘Never allow a golden moment to go unrecorded. Flashing smiles, please. Where’s Orpheus? Doggy’s included. Say it after me. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms. Say the words and your mouths will be set fair for the photograph.’

  Harold strove to do her bidding but got no further than ‘potatoes’.

  In the afternoon, Archie and Harold left in the Daimler. Harold was too nervous to have learned to drive. He manoeuvred his long legs into the space in front of the passenger seat.

  Edgar and Victoria left too and, once back in London, he assured her that they would not return to The Old Keep until she was quite well.

  ‘But you must understand Mother. She has a deadly time in the country with Father painting and listening to birdcalls on the gramophone. You resist the idea of giving in to her whims. It would be easier if you could accept her absurdities.’

  ‘Does Archie Thorne really like her? How can he go there if he doesn’t have to? Do you think it’s to please Harold? Harold is too susceptible to wounds himself to censure others. I daresay he doesn’t know many people to compare her with.’

  ‘Archie started coming years ago. Somebody once told me that it was because of us when we were young. Archie’s imagination has always been aroused by children – particularly boys. Not much interested in my sisters, if I remember right. When my brother and I were small he used to worry Papa by grunting and following us about on all fours. We didn’t much mind but Papa once accused him of slavering and ordered him to stand up. Created a bit of an atmosphere at the time. Mama always insisted that it filled her with delight to see the generations interact. He’s a bit of a rascal. Not quite a rogue. A rascal. He weighs in heavily on all the wrong sides. My parents have never known if he does it for effect or from conviction. I find it very tedious.’ Edgar told her all this, clearing his throat, as though unmoved and uninterested.

  ‘Do you think I might be having a baby?’ Victoria asked.

  ‘Of course you could be. Please, though, don’t hope for it to be a boy in order to captivate Archie Thorne.

  Archie Thorne was in Piccadilly carrying a bowler hat and a trim umbrella when he saw Victoria. Wary in traffic, he looked about him before stepping across the road.

  ‘Have you finished the poncho-cum-trouser suit?’

  His trousers were short, stopping an inch above his laced shoes.

  ‘I did finish it but it wasn’t a huge success. It didn’t fit properly. When I’d finished it I knitted a jumper for Edgar.’

  ‘And he wears it all the time?’

  ‘Not really. I think it’s disappeared.’

  ‘How perfectly frightful. Should we go into the Ritz and take a drink?’

  On a curved sofa on the elevated area of the hall of the Ritz Hotel, they drank champagne. Archie asked her if she had recovered her strength.

  ‘Both Harold and I were disappointed to have seen so little of you. I shall insist that we are all invited together another time.’

  ‘Do you go there often?’

  ‘Do we go there often? The answer is yes. I think I can say that we go regularly. Harold loves it. Lettice has been very kind to him.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that it would be difficult to be kind to Harold.’

  ‘How about you? I can imagine that it might be difficult to marry a member of such a large and united family. Perhaps overpowering to start with?’

  Again his spectacles were lowered and he looked at her with amusement. The lowering of spectacles reminded her of Laurence and she realised that it was time she wrote to him.

  Victoria said, ‘Lettice finds it more challenging to be nice to me than she does to Harold. It’s difficult to fit into her picture. My clothes are no good. Perhaps it will come right.’

  She touched his hand. ‘I’m going to have a baby. Not for months and months, of course. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it.’

  ‘Mind! There are a great many things that I do mind and this is not one of them. My dearest child. If we were not at the Ritz, which we are, I would put my arms round you and hug you. I should hug you.’

  ‘I haven’t told Lettice yet.’

  ‘You must. You must let her know at once. Shall we send her a joint postcard?’

  The exhibition was only two weeks away. Roland never returned to the subject of postponing it and spent nearly all his time in the garden. The guest list was taking shape. The problems had become more complicated since Lettice had decided to give a small dinner party for intimate friends at the Ritz Hotel after the show.

  She was not sure what to say to Victoria about this.

  She rehearsed. ‘Darling, I refuse to let you tire yourself just for a silly dinner. It would be different if Edgar could have been there to look after you.’ Edgar had to be abroad on his printing-ink round. Victoria was certain to smoke between courses. Also, there had been that puzzling moment with Archie Thorne; something conspiratorial that spooked her. A complicity. He was expected to come to the dinner party and she did not wish to hear a repeat of their shared laughter.

  A timid neighbour called to her from the window. Belinda, shrinking as she always did from self-assertion, had left her car on the road outside the garden boundary. She was the pretty daughter of an East Anglian rural dean and had been trained to believe in humility – a training from which she sometimes reared to relieve herself. That afternoon she wanted to take a cutting from one of Lettice’s roses. Lettice, much pleased, said, ‘How lovely for me to pictu
re a bloom from my canary bird in your ravishing little garden. Nowhere could it fall on happier ground. To me canary bird is the symbol of summer and sunshine.’

  When the cutting had been taken, although neither woman had the faintest idea if the time of year was right, Lettice invited Belinda to come indoors. She needed advice about the London dinner party.

  Picking up a preliminary list, roughly written (bold italics kept for best), she waved at an armchair.

  ‘I really don’t know if I’m coming or going. The whole thing is a complete nightmare. So many people will be hurt. What can one do? I know that you and Jack will understand perfectly. We see so much of you down here that there’s hardly any point in meeting in the beastly hurly-burly of London. Are our less sophisticated neighbours going to see it in the same sensible way? You can help me here. If we don’t ask you (and you are known to be our closest country friends) then the others will be sure to accept it. What do you think?’

  Belinda, aghast at being excluded, was too baffled and furious to answer.

  Lettice’s words came breathlessly.

  ‘I can see that you, darling, agree with me entirely. I am going to give a cosy little dinner party here as soon as we get back from London. You and Jack will be guests of honour and I promise to remember every ridiculous detail of the evening to amuse you all.’

  Victoria opened her letters. One was from Laurence. It gave her a turn to see her new name and address written in squared-off letters on an envelope with Italian stamps on it and written in Mungo Craddock’s hand. Dictated by Laurence.

  ‘My dear Victoria. I was overjoyed to hear the news that you are to become a mother. Not something you will do twenty-four times, I imagine. You are much missed here but I am very well looked after by Mungo.’

  She pictured Mungo sitting, oiling up, prosy and pompous, beard twisted in watch chain.

  ‘He has promised to stay with me for ever. We would welcome a visit from you at any time. Elena has been giving trouble by regularly handing in her notice. She cries, poor dear, and nobody can get to the bottom of it. Perhaps you will drop her a line?’

  Victoria had never seen Archie Thorne’s writing but had no doubt as to who the second letter came from. Black ink swirled over a thick envelope. She saved it up – dealing first with Laurence’s and writing to Elena.

  ‘My dear Victoria,’ Archie started, ‘Harold and I are going to Roland’s exhibition. I write to say that I very much hope – and expect – to see you there. Lettice is giving a supper party afterwards at the Ritz – a place you are familiar with, no doubt. This is simply to say how much I hope to be placed next to you there. In great haste. Much love. Archie.’

  A third letter was from Lettice.

  ‘Darling. Oh! How beastly it must be for you. I remember it all so well. Do believe me when I tell you that it doesn’t last for ever. And oh! What a miracle to look forward to! Now. Prepare yourself! I am going to be rather bossy! After the exhibition Roland and I are giving a tiny duty dinner party at the Ritz Hotel. I am simply determined that you should go home beforehand – especially since dear Edgar has to be abroad. I know he would never forgive me if I allowed you to tire yourself just for that. Please don’t argue. I know that we try to please each other. This is why I speak bluntly. No nonsense now! All my love and thoughts go out to you at this exciting moment in your young life. Your devoted mother-in-law. Lettice.’

  Victoria forwarded Lettice’s letter to Archie. Then she wrote to Lettice saying that she would not dream of deserting her or Roland on this important occasion and that they could count on her presence at the Ritz.

  Before he left for his business trip, she spoke to Edgar of her meeting with Archie in Piccadilly.

  ‘You are lucky to have known him all your life. I wish he was my uncle or godfather or something with a label. I will never expect to be anything as exalted as his friend.’

  ‘Why not? We could ask him here any time. I suppose my mother might be disconcerted.’

  Lettice was certainly disconcerted when Victoria’s letter arrived. She now thoroughly mistrusted her. Sweeping through the dusty drawing room to a corner where the daffodil telephone lived surrounded by chaotic papers on her desk, she dialled Belinda’s number.

  ‘I long to know if you’ve heard how the Grants and the Woolies have taken it. I dread hurting their feelings and I’m counting on you and Jack to smooth it all over for me.’

  Belinda’s vexation had festered and, encouraged by her husband, she had done all in her power to incite the fury of the other slighted neighbours.

  ‘Another thing, Belinda, and I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, but I am in the most awful dilemma about Victoria. Being family, she assumes that she is included in the little dinner after the opening. I wrote to tell her that she must on no account come. I am worried that she might tire herself. Now she replies that she wouldn’t dream of missing it. What am I to do next?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m being silly but I don’t understand the problem.’

  ‘I can’t have explained it properly. Everything is so frantic with such a short time to go. The problem is simple. What can I do about preventing Victoria from coming to the dinner?’

  ‘Why do you want to prevent her?’

  ‘Apart from her health – which is, of course, the main reason, I have to admit (but again to no one but you) that perhaps I am just a tiny bit protective about her in other ways. She is such a pet and I think it would be cruel to throw her in at the deep end quite so soon. I couldn’t bear to see her humiliated beside so many intellectuals – for Edgar’s sake as much as for her own.’

  Belinda offered no advice and her voice faded on a less humble note than was usual.

  Lettice wrote to Victoria again.

  ‘Darling. I cannot tell you how touched I was by your adorable letter. Families are such wonderful things. Nothing will ever replace them and Roland and I are so grateful to learn how strongly you want to become one of ours. I was determined from the start that you should not be overstrained by the exhibition and I made up my mind – long before your darling letter came. In fact, so determined was I that I had already made up a party of ten. You know the hatefulness of our financial position. Ten is the very maximum we can afford so there must be no more of your sweet selflessness. All my love and gratitude. I can’t wait for this dreadful business to be over so that I can concentrate on your darling babe.’

  In his college lodgings, Archie Thorne perused his mail. He put two letters to one side after reading those from the larger pile, sent for his secretary and asked her to deal with them.

  Victoria’s letter said, ‘It is now certain that I won’t be sitting next to you at the Ritz. Lettice is convinced that it would be bad for my health. It seems that it will do me no harm, however, to go to the crowded cocktail party beforehand so perhaps I’ll see you there? Much love. Victoria.’

  Lettice’s letter was short.

  ‘Dearest Archie. The great day draws near! It is sweet of you and Harold to say that you will come and support us at the Ritz dinner. The table is booked for eight thirty sharp so don’t dally at the party. How I wish it were all over! What one will do for art’s sake! Fondest love. Lettice.’

  Archie slid both letters across the mahogany table. Harold read them with an expression of pain.

  ‘Oh dear. It is certainly unfortunate. But, then, it is hard to put oneself into either position.’

  Victoria could not squeeze into anything suitable. A friend arrived with a choice of loose frocks. They picked out a mauve one with a low-cut neckline.

  The friend said, ‘Let’s buy mauve stockings and shoes. You’ll look terrific.’

  After locking her car, Victoria ran along the street towards the gallery. Her dread of the gathering was great and she was urged forward by nervous courage. Stopping for a while on the pavement, she peeped in through the window. Inside, at the foot of a staircase, there was a table covered by a white cloth. The staircase led to an upper level and a whit
e-coated man stood behind the table handing out glasses as a grim group walked past her and turned into the gallery. One after another they stopped at a small table just inside the door to sign their names in a visitor’s book. A record of the great event. Something for Lettice’s memoirs. Victoria followed them but didn’t add her name.

  Before she secured a drink, Lettice caught sight of her. They kissed. Two figures dressed in mauve.

  ‘Darling. It’s too extraordinary. It shows what a great affinity we must have. Robert. Come and meet my daughter-in-law.’

  The painter beamed. ‘But she’s one of my favourite girls. Jolly good at watercolours, too. Roland must be pleased about that.’

  Lettice knew nothing of Victoria and watercolours but managed a smile through taut lips.

  Robert Stratton had stayed once, and only for a night or two, with Laurence at the villa on his way to Rome. He had encouraged her as she sketched on the terrace.

  Happy to find a sympathiser there, Victoria asked him when he had arrived in London.

  Lettice, as exotically got up as she had planned to be, silenced her.

  ‘Now, dearest. I am going to talk to Robert. I haven’t seen him for months and living, as I do, under a curtain of moss and ivy, probably won’t see him for months to come.’

  There was a whirl in Victoria’s head. She stepped back and it came to her that she was not only obscuring a picture of a thrush but possibly damaging it as well. She turned round and examined it. It was an unusual example of Roland’s work since it included a human figure. On her first visit to The Keep he had asked her if she would sit for him. She had sat for many hours under a cedar tree. The thrush had flown away. He had been painted in advance. Now she remembered how peaceful it had been and how stirred she had been by the attention. Maybe she only liked old men. The painting did not seem, to her, to be a very good one. The hands were badly drawn and the eyelashes odd; straight rows of twigs.