She was the exact opposite of the Radletts who always ‘told’ everything. Polly ‘told’ nothing and if there were anything to tell it was all bottled up inside her. When Lord Montdore once read us the story of the Snow Queen (I could hardly listen, he put in so much expression) I remember thinking that it must be about Polly and that she surely had a glass splinter in her heart. What did she love? That was the great puzzle to me. My cousins and I poured out love on each other, on the grown-ups, on a variety of animals, and above all on the characters (often historical or even fictional) with whom we were IN love. There was no reticence and we all knew everything there was to know about each other’s feelings for every other creature, whether real or imaginary. Then there were the shrieks. Shrieks of laughter and happiness and high spirits which always resounded through Alconleigh, except on the rare occasions when there were floods. It was shrieks or floods in that house, usually shrieks. But Polly did not pour or shriek, and I never saw her in tears. She was always the same, always charming, sweet and docile, polite, interested in what one said, rather amused by one’s jokes, but all without exuberance, without superlatives, and certainly without any confidences.
Nearly a month then to this visit about which my feelings were so uncertain. All of a sudden, not only not nearly a month but now, today, now this minute, and I found myself being whirled through the suburbs of Oxford in a large black Daimler. One mercy, I was alone, and there was a long drive, some twenty miles, in front of me. I knew the road well from my hunting days in that neighbourhood. Perhaps it would go on nearly for ever. Lady Montdore’s writing-paper was headed Hampton Place, Oxford, station Twyfold. But Twyfold, with the change and hour’s wait at Oxford which it involved, was only inflicted upon such people as were never likely to be in a position to get their own back on Lady Montdore, anybody for whom she had the slightest regard being met at Oxford. ‘Always be civil to the girls, you never know whom they may marry’ is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.
So I fidgeted in my corner, looking out at the deep intense blue dusk of autumn, profoundly wishing that I could be safe back at home or going to Alconleigh or indeed anywhere rather than to Hampton. Well-known landmarks kept looming up, it got darker and darker, but I could just see the Merlinford road with its big signpost. Then in a moment, or so it seemed, we were turning in at lodge gates. Horrors! I had arrived.
CHAPTER THREE
A SCRUNCH of gravel; the motor car gently stopped, and exactly as it did so the front door opened, casting a panel of light at my feet. Once inside, the butler took charge of me, removed my nutria coat (a coming-out present from Davey), led me through the hall, under the great steep Gothic double staircase up which rushed a hundred steps, half-way to heaven, meeting at a marble group which represented the sorrows of Niobe, through the octagonal antechamber, through the green drawing-room and the red drawing-room into the Long Gallery where, without asking it, he pronounced my name very loud and clear and then abandoned me.
The Long Gallery was, as I always remember it being, full of people. On this occasion there were perhaps twenty or thirty; some sat round a tea table by the fire while others, with glasses instead of cups in their hands, stood watching a game of backgammon. This group was composed, no doubt, of the ‘young married’ people to whom Lady Montdore had referred in her letter. In my eyes, however, they seemed far from young, being about the age of my own mother. They were chattering like starlings in a tree, did not break off their chatter when I came in, and when Lady Montdore introduced me to them, merely stopped it for a moment, gave me a glance and went straight on with it again. When she pronounced my name, however, one of them said:
‘Not by any chance the Bolter’s daughter?’
Lady Montdore paused at this, rather annoyed, but I, quite used to hearing my mother referred to as the Bolter – indeed nobody, not even her own sisters, ever called her anything else – piped up ‘Yes’.
It then seemed as though all the starlings rose in the air and settled on a different tree, and that tree was me.
‘The Bolter’s girl?’
‘Don’t be funny – how could the Bolter have a grown-up daughter?’
‘Veronica – do come here a minute – do you know who this is? She’s the Bolter’s child, that’s all –!’
‘Come and have your tea, Fanny,’ said Lady Montdore. She led me to the table and the starlings went on with their chatter about my mother in ‘eggy-peggy’, a language I happened to know quite well.
‘Egg-is shegg-ee reggealleggy, pwegg-oor swegg-eet? I couldn’t be more interested, considering that the very first person the Bolter ever bolted with was Chad, wasn’t it, darling? Lucky me got him next, but only after she had bolted away from him again.’
‘I still don’t see how it can be true. The Bolter can’t be more than thirty-six, I know she can’t. Roly, you know the Bolter’s age, we all used to go to Miss Vacani’s together, you in your tiny kilt, poker and tongs on the floor, for the sword dance. Can she be more than thirty-six?’
‘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 Folly.
‘Playing billiards with Boy, I think,’ and poured me out a cup of tea.
‘And here,’ she said, to the company in general, ‘is Mont-dore.’
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.
‘Hal’ 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 fiance 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,’ 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 afiairs 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 debutantes 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.’