‘Really, darling, as we are between daughters, two married, and two not yet out, there’s no occasion whatever for us to go if you’d rather not. Sonia would understand perfectly – and be quite glad of our room, I daresay.’
But Uncle Matthew had gloomily replied, ‘If Montdore asks us to his ball it is because he wants to see us there. I think we ought to go.’
Accordingly, with many groans, he had squeezed himself into the knee-breeches of bis youth, now so perilously tight that he hardly dared sit down, but stood like a stork beside Aunt Sadie’s chair, and Aunt Sadie had got all her diamonds out of the bank and lent some to Linda and some to Aunt Emily and even so had quite a nice lot left for herself, and here they were chatting away happily enough with their relations and with various county figures who came and went, and even Uncle Matthew seemed quite amused by it all until a dreadful fate befell him, he was made to take the German Ambassadress to supper. It happened like this, Lord Montdore, at Uncle Matthew’s very elbow, suddenly exclaimed in horror,
‘Good heavens, the German Ambassadress is sitting there quite alone.’
‘Serve her right,’ said Uncle Matthew. It would have been more prudent to have held his tongue. Lord Montdore heard him speak, without taking in the meaning of his words, turned sharply round, saw who it was, seized him by the arm and said,
‘My dear Matthew, just the very man – Baroness von Ravensbriick, may I present my neighbour, Lord Alconleigh? Supper is quite ready in the music room – you know the way, Matthew.’
It was a measure of Lord Montdore’s influence over Uncle Matthew that my uncle did not then and there turn tail and bolt for home. No other living person could have persuaded him to stay and shake hands with a Hun, let alone take it on his arm and feed it. He went off, throwing a mournful backward glance at his wife.
Lady Patricia now came and sat by Aunt Sadie and they chatted, in rather a desultory way, about local affairs. Aunt Sadie, unlike her husband, really enjoyed going out so long as it was not too often, she did not have to stay up too late, and she was allowed to look on peacefully without feeling obliged to make any conversational effort. Strangers bored and fatigued her; she only liked the company of those people with whom she had day-to-day interests in common, such as country neighbours or members of her own family, and even with them she was generally rather absent-minded. But on this occasion it was Lady Patricia who seemed half in the clouds, saying yes and no to Aunt Sadie and what a monstrous thing it was to let the Skilton village idiot out again specially now it was known what a fast runner he was since he had won the asylum ioo yards.
‘And he’s always chasing people,’ Aunt Sadie said indignantly.
But Lady Patricia’s mind was not on the idiot. She was thinking, I am sure, of parties in those very rooms when she was young, and how much she had worshipped the Lecturer, and what agony it had been when he had danced and flirted, she knew, with other people, and how perhaps it was almost sadder for her that now she could care about nothing any more but the condition of her liver.
I knew from Davey (‘Oh, the luck’ as Linda used to say, ‘that Dave is such an old gossip, poor simple us if it weren’t for him!’) that Lady Patricia had loved Boy for several years before he had finally proposed to her, and had indeed quite lost hope. And then how short-lived was her happiness, barely six months before she had found him in bed with a kitchen maid.
‘Boy never went out for big stuff,’ I once heard Mrs Chaddesley Corbett say, ‘he only ever liked bowling over the rabbits, and now, of course, he’s a joke.’
It must be hateful, being married to a joke.
Presently she said to Aunt Sadie, ‘When was the first ball you ever came to, here?’
‘It must have been the year I came out, in 1906, I well remember the excitement of actually seeing King Edward in the flesh and hearing his loud foreign laugh.’
‘Twenty-four years ago, fancy,’ said Lady Patricia, ‘just before Boy and I were married. Do you remember how, in the war, people used to say we should never see this sort of thing again, and yet look! Only look at the jewels.’
Presently, as Lady Montdore came into sight, she said,
‘You know, Sonia really is phenomenal. I’m sure she’s better-looking and better-dressed now than she has ever been in her life.’
One of those middle-aged remarks I used to find incomprehensible. It did not seem to me that Lady Montdore could be described either as good-looking or as well-dressed; she was old and that was that. On the other hand nobody could deny that on occasions of this sort she was impressive, almost literally covered with great big diamonds, tiara, necklace, earrings, a huge Palatine cross on her bosom, bracelets from wrist to elbow over her suede gloves, and brooches wherever there was possible room for them. Dressed up in these tremendous jewels, surrounded by the exterior signs of ‘all this’, her whole demeanour irradiated by the superiority she so deeply felt in herself, she was, like a bull-fighter in his own ring, an idol in its own ark, the reason for and the very centre of the spectacle.
Uncle Matthew, having made his escape from the Ambassadress with a deep bow expressive of deep disgust, now came back to the family party.
‘Old cannibal,’ he said, ‘she kept asking for more fleisch. Can’t have swallowed her dinner more than an hour ago – I pretended not to hear, wouldn’t pander to the old ogress, after all, who won the war? And what for, I should like to know? Wonderful public-spirited of Montdore to put up with all this foreign trash in his house – I’m blowed if I would. I ask you to look at that sewer!’ He glared in the direction of a blue-chinned Sir who was heading for the supper-room with Polly on his arm.
‘Come now, Matthew,’ said Davey, ‘the Serbs were our allies you know.’
‘Allies!’ said Uncle Matthew, grinding his teeth. The word was as a red rag to a bull and naughty Davey knew this and was waving the rag for fun.
‘So that’s a Serb, is it? Well, just what one would expect, needs a shave. Hogs, one and all. Of course, Montdore only asks them for the sake of the country. I do admire that fella, he thinks of nothing but his duty – what an example to everybody!’
A gleam of amusement crossed Lady Patricia’s sad face. She was not without a sense of humour and was one of the few people Unde Matthew liked, though he could not bring himself to be polite to Boy, and gazed furiously into space every time he passed our little colony, which he did quite often, squiring royal old ladies to the supper-room. Of his many offences in the eyes of Uncle Matthew, the chief was that, having been A.D.C. to a general in the war, he was once discovered by my uncle sketching a chateau behind the lines. There must clearly be something wrong about a man who could waste his time sketching, or indeed, undertake the duties of an A.D.C. at all, when he might be slaughtering foreigners all day.
‘Nothing but a blasted lady’s maid,’ Uncle Matthew would say whenever Boy’s name was mentioned. ‘I can’t stick the sewer. Boy indeed I Dougdalel What does it all mean? There used to be some perfectly respectable people called Blood at Silkin in the Old Lord’s time. Major and Mrs Blood.’
The Old Lord was Lord Montdore’s father. Jassy once said, opening enormous eyes, ‘He must have been old’, upon which Aunt Sadie had remarked that people do not remain the same age all their lives, and he had no doubt been young in his time just as one day, though she might not expect it, Jassy herself would become old.
It was not very logical of Uncle Matthew so exaggeratedly to despise Boy’s military record, and was just another example of how those he liked could do no wrong and those he disliked no right, because Lord Montdore, his great hero, had never in his life heard the cheerful sound of musketry or been near a battle; he would have been rather elderly to have taken the field in the Great War, it is true, but his early years had vainly offered many a jolly fight, chances to hack away at native flesh, not to speak of Dutch flesh in that Boer war which had provided Uncle Matthew with such radiant memories, having given him his first experience of bivouac and battle.
‘Four days in a bullock waggon,’ he used to tell us, ‘a hole as big as your fist in my stomach, and maggoty! Happiest time of my life. The only thing was one got rather tired of the taste of mutton after a bit, no beef in that campaign, you know.’
But Lord Montdore was a law unto himself, and had even got away with the famous Montdore Letter to the Morning Post which suggested that the war had gone on long enough and might be brought to an end, several months before the cowardly capitulation of the Hun had made this boring adjournment necessary. Uncle Matthew found it difficult to condone such spoiling of sport but did so by saying that Lord Montdore must have had some good reason for writing it which nobody else knew anything about.
My thoughts were now concentrated upon the entrance to the ballroom door, where I had suddenly perceived the back of somebody’s head. So he had come after all. The fact that I had never thought he would (such a serious character) had in no way mitigated my disappointment that he had not; now, here he was. I must explain that the image of Sauveterre, having reigned in my hopeless heart for several months, had recently been ousted and replaced by something more serious, with more reality and promise.
The back of a head, seen at a ball, can have a most agitating effect upon a young girl, so different from the backs of other heads that it might be surrounded by a halo. There is the question, will he turn round, will he see her, and if so will he merely give a polite good-evening or invite her to dance? Oh, how I wished I could have been whirling gaily round in the arms of some fascinator instead of sitting with my aunts and uncles, too obviously a wallflower. Not that it mattered. There were a few moments of horrible suspense before the head turned round, but when it did he saw me, came straight over, said good-evening more than politely, and danced me away. He thought he would never get here, it was a question of borrowed, but mislaid, knee-breeches. Then he danced with Aunt Emily, again with me, and with Louisa, having engaged me to have supper after that.
‘Who is that brute?’ said Uncle Matthew, grinding his teeth as my young man went off with Louisa, ‘why does he keep coming over here?’
‘He’s called Alfred Wincham,’ I said, ‘shall I introduce him to you?’
‘For pity’s sake, Fanny!’
‘What an old Pasha you are,’ said Davey. And indeed, Uncle Matthew would clearly have preferred to keep all his female relations in a condition if not of virginity at any rate of exaggerated chastity, and could never bear them to be approached by strange men.
When not dancing I went back and sat with my relations. I felt calmer now, having had two dances and the promise of supper, and was quite happy to fill in the time by listening to my elders as they conversed.
Presently Aunt Sadie and Aunt Emily went off to have supper together; they always liked to do this at parties. Davey moved up to sit next Lady Patricia and Uncle Matthew stood by Davey’s chair, sleeping on his feet as horses can, patiently waiting to be led back to his stable. ‘It’s this new man Meyer-stein,’ Davey was saying. ‘You simply must go to him, Patricia, he does it all by salt elimination. You skip in order to sweat out all the salt in your organism, and eat saltless meals, of course. Too disgusting. But it does break down the crystals.’
‘Do you mean skip with a skipping-rope?’
‘Yes, hundreds of times. You count. I can do three hundred at a go, as well as some fancy steps, now.’
‘But isn’t it horribly tiring?’
‘Nothing tires Davey – fella’s as strong as a bull,’ said Uncle Matthew, opening one eye.
Davey cast a sad look at his brother-in-law and said that of course it was desperately tiring, but well worth it for the results.
Polly was now dancing with her uncle, Boy. She did not look radiant and happy as such a spoilt darling should at her coming-out ball, but tired and pinched about the mouth, nor was she chattering away like the other women.
‘I shouldn’t care for one of my girls to look like that,’ Aunt Sadie said, ‘you’d think she had something on her mind.’
And my new friend Mr Wincham said, as we danced round before going to supper, ‘Of course she’s a beauty, I quite see that she is, but she doesn’t attract me, with that sulky expression, I’m sure she’s very dull.’
I began to deny that she was either sulky or dull when he said ‘Fanny’ to me, the first time he ever had, and followed this up with a lot of things which I wanted to listen to very carefully so that I could think them over later on, when I was alone.
Mrs Chaddesley Corbett shouted at me, from the arms of the Prince of Wales, ‘Hullo, my sweet I What news of the Bolter? Are you still in love?’
‘What’s all this?’ said my partner, ‘Who is that woman? Who is the Bolter? And is it true that you are in love?’
‘Mrs Chaddesley Corbett,’ I said. I felt that the time was not yet ripe to begin explaining about the Bolter.
‘And how about love?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, rather pink, ‘just a joke.’
‘Good. I should like you to be on the verge of love but not yet quite in it. That’s a very nice state of mind, while it lasts.’
But of course, I had already dived over that verge and was swimming away in a blue sea of illusion towards, I supposed, the islands of the blest, but really towards domesticity, maternity and the usual lot of womankind.
A holy hush now fell upon the crowd as the Royals prepared to go home, the very grand Royals serene in the knowledge that they would find the traditional cold roast chicken by their beds, not the pathetic Ma’ams and sinister Sirs who were stuffing away in the supper-room as if they were far from sure they would ever see so much food again, nor the gay young Royals who were going to dance until morning with little neat women of the Chaddesley Corbett sort.
‘How late they have stayed, what a triumph for Sonia,’ I heard Boy saying to his wife.
The dancers divided like the Red Sea forming a lane of bowing and curtsying subjects, down which Lord and Lady Montdore conducted their guests.
‘Sweet of you to say so, Ma’am. Yes, at the next Court. Oh, how kind of you.’
The Montdores came back into the picture gallery, beaming happily and saying, to nobody in particular,
‘So simple, so easy, pleased with any little thing one can do for them, such wonderful manners, such a memory. Astounding how much they know about India, the Maharajah was amazed.’
They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech, was worth noting and proclaiming.
The rest of the evening was spent by me in a happy trance, and I remember no more about the party as such. I know that I was taken back to the Goring Hotel, where we were all staying, at five o’clock on a fine May morning by Mr Wincham who had clearly shown me, by then, that he was not at all averse to my company.
CHAPTER TEN
SO Polly was now ‘out’ in London society, and played her part during the rest of the season, as she had at the ball, with a good enough grace, the performance only lacking vitality and temperament to make it perfect. She did all the things her mother arranged for her, went to the parties, wore the clothes and made the friends that Lady Montdore thought suitable and never branched out on her own or gave any possible cause for complaint. She certainly did nothing to create an atmosphere of fun, but Lady Montdore was perhaps too much employed herself in that very direction to notice that Polly, though good and acquiescent, never for one moment entered into the spirit of the many entertainments they went to. Lady Montdore enjoyed it all prodigiously, appeared to be satisfied with Polly, and was delighted with the publicity that, as the most important and most beautiful debutante of the year, she was receiving. She was really too busy, in too much of a whirl of society while the season was going on, to wonder whether Polly was being a success or not; when it was over they went to Goodwood, Cowes, and Scotland, where no doubt among the mists and heather she had time to take stock of the situation. They
vanished from my life for many weeks.
By the time I saw them again, in the autumn, their relationship was back to what it had been before and they were clearly very much on each other’s nerves. I was now living in London myself, Aunt Emily having taken a little house in St Leonard’s Terrace for the winter. It was a happy time in my life, as presently I became engaged to Alfred Wincham, the same young man whose back view had so much disturbed me at the Montdore ball. During the weeks that preceded my engagement I saw a great deal of Polly. She would telephone in the morning.
‘What are you up to, Fanny?’
‘Aching,’ I would reply, meaning aching with boredom, a malaise from which girls, before national service came to their rescue, were apt to suffer considerably.
‘Oh, good. So can I bend you to my will? You can’t think how dull, but if you are aching anyway? Well then, I’ve got to try on that blue velvet hat at Madame Rita, and go and fetch the gloves from Debenhams – they said they would have them today. Yes, but the worst is to come – I couldn’t possibly bend you to have luncheon with my Aunt Edna at Hampton Court and afterwards to sit and chat while I have my hair done? No, forget I said anything so awful – anyway, we’ll see. I’ll be round for you in half an hour.’
I was quite pliable. I had nothing whatever to do and enjoyed bouncing round London in the big Daimler, while Polly went about the business which is demanded of a beauty. Although society, at present, had no attractions for her, she was very much interested in her own appearance and would never, I think, have given up bothering about it as Lady Patricia had.
So we went to Madame Rita, and I tried on all the hats in the shop while Polly had her fitting, and wondered why it was that hats never seemed to suit me, something to do with my heather-like hair perhaps, and then we drove down to Hampton Court where Polly’s old great-aunt, the widow of a general, had an apartment. She sat all day dealing out cards to herself as she waited for eternity.
‘And yet I don’t believe she aches, you know,’ said Polly.