As we were going upstairs to bed, Linda said to Aunt Sadie, in what she hoped was an offhand voice, but one which seemed to me vibrant with guilt:
‘That was Lavender ringing up. She wants Fanny and me to lunch there on Thursday.’
‘Oh, duck,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘you can’t have my car, I’m afraid.’
Linda became very white, and leant against the wall.
‘Oh, please, Mummy, oh please do let me, I do so terribly want to go.’
‘To the Davises,’ said Aunt Sadie in astonishment, ‘but darling, last time you said you’d never go again as long as you lived – great haunches of cod you said, don’t you remember? Anyhow, I’m sure they’ll have you another day, you know.’
‘Oh, Mummy, you don’t understand. The whole point is, a man is coming who brought up a baby badger, and I do so want to meet him.’
It was known to be one of Linda’s greatest ambitions, to bring up a baby badger.
‘Yes, I see. Well, couldn’t you ride over?’
‘Staggers and ringworm,’ said Linda, her large blue eyes slowly filling with tears.
‘What did you say, darling?’
‘In their stables – staggers and ringworm. You wouldn’t want me to expose Flora to that.’
‘Are you sure? Their horses always look so wonderful.’
‘Ask Josh.’
‘Well, I’ll see. Perhaps I can borrow Fa’s Morris, and if not, perhaps Perkins can take me in the Daimler. It’s a meeting I must go to, though.’
‘Oh, you are kind, you are kind. Oh, do try. I do so long for a badger.’
‘If you go to London for the season you’ll be far too busy to think of a badger. Good night then, ducks.’
*
‘We must get hold of some powder.’
‘And rouge.’
These commodities were utterly forbidden by Uncle Matthew, who liked to see female complexions in a state of nature, and often pronounced that paint was for whores and not for his daughters.
‘I once read in a book that you can use geranium juice for rouge.’
‘Geraniums aren’t out at this time of year, silly.’
‘We can blue our eyelids out of Jassy’s paint-box.’
‘And sleep in curlers.’
‘I’ll get the verbena soap out of Mummy’s bathroom. If we let it melt in the bath, and soak for hours in it, we shall smell delicious.’
*
‘I thought you loathed Lavender Davis.’
‘Oh, shut up, Jassy.’
‘Last time you went you said she was a horrible Counter-Hon, and you would like to bash in her silly race with the Hons’ mallet.’
‘I never said so. Don’t invent lies.’
‘Why have you got your London suit on for Lavender Davis?’
‘Do go away, Matt.’
‘Why are you starting already, you’ll be hours too early.’
‘We’re going to see the badger before luncheon.’
‘How red your face is, Linda. Oh, oh you do look so funny!’
‘If you don’t shut up and go away, Jassy, I swear I’ll put your newt back in the pond.’
Persecution, however, continued until we were in the car and out of the garage yard.
‘Why don’t you bring Lavender back for a nice long cosy visit?’ was Jassy’s parting shot.
‘Not very Honnish of them,’ said Linda, ‘do you think they can possibly have guessed?’
We left our car in the Clarendon yard, and, as we were very early, having allowed half an hour in case of two punctures, we made for Elliston & Cavell’s ladies-room, and gazed at ourselves, with a tiny feeling of uncertainty, in the looking-glasses there. Our cheeks had round scarlet patches, our lips were the same colour, but only at the edges, inside it had already worn off, and our eyelids were blue, all out of Jassy’s paint-box. Our noses were white, Nanny having produced some powder with which, years ago, she used to dust Robin’s bottom. In short, we looked like a couple of Dutch dolls.
‘We must keep our ends up,’ said Linda, uncertainly.
‘Oh, dear,’ I said, ‘the thing about me is, I always feel so much happier with my end down.’
We gazed and gazed, hoping thus, in some magical way, to make ourselves feel less peculiar. Presently we did a little work with damp handkerchiefs, and toned our faces down a bit. We then sallied forth into the street, looking at ourselves in every shop window that we passed. (I have often noticed that when women look at themselves in every reflection, and take furtive peeps into their hand looking-glasses, it is hardly ever, as is generally supposed, from vanity, but much more often from a feeling that all is not quite as it should be.)
Now that we had actually achieved our objective, we were beginning to feel horribly nervous, not only wicked, guilty and frightened, but also filled with social terrors. I think we would both gladly have got back into the car and made for home.
On the stroke of one O’clock we arrived in Tony’s room. He was alone, but evidently a large party was expected, the table, a square one with a coarse white linen cloth, seemed to have a great many places. We refused sherry and cigarettes, and an awkward silence fell.
‘Been hunting at all?’ he asked Linda.
‘Oh, yes, we were out yesterday.’
‘Good day?’
‘Yes, very. We found at once, and had a five-mile point and then –’ Linda suddenly remembered that Lord Merlin had once said to her: ‘Hunt as much as you like, but never talk about it, it’s the most boring subject in the world.’
‘But that’s marvellous, a five-mile point. I must come out with the Heythrop again soon, they are doing awfully well this season, I hear. We had a good day yesterday, too.’
He embarked on a detailed account of every minute of it, where they found, where they ran to, how his first horse had gone lame, how, luckily, he had then come upon his second horse, and so on. I saw just what Lord Merlin meant. Linda, however, hung upon his words with breathless interest.
At last noises were heard in the street, and he went to the window.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘here are the others.’
The others had come down from London in a huge Daimler, and poured, chattering, into the room. Four pretty girls and a young man. Presently some undergraduates appeared, and completed the party. It was not really very enjoyable from our point of view, they all knew each other too well. They gossiped away, roared with laughter at private jokes, and showed off; still, we felt that this was Life, and would have been quite happy just looking on had it not been for that ghastly feeling of guilt, which was now beginning to give us a pain rather like indigestion. Linda turned quite pale every time the door opened, I think she really felt that Uncle Matthew might appear at any moment, cracking a whip. As soon as we decently could, which was not very soon, because nobody moved from the table until after Tom had struck four, we said good-bye, and fled for home.
The miserable Matt and Jassy were swinging on the garage gate.
‘So how was Lavender? Did she roar at your eyelids? Better go and wash before Fa sees you. You have been hours. Was it cod? Did you see the the badger?’
Linda burst into tears.
‘Leave me alone, you horrible Counter-Hons,’ she cried, and rushed upstairs to her bedroom.
Love had increased threefold in one short day.
*
On Saturday the blow fell.
‘Linda and Fanny, Fa wants you in the business-room. And sooner you than me by the look of him,’ said Jassy, meeting us in the drive as we came in from hunting. Our hearts plunged into our boots. We looked at each other with apprehension.
‘Better get it over,’ said Linda, and we hurried to the business-room, where we saw at once that the worst had occurred.
Aunt Sadie, looking unhappy, and Uncle Matthew, grinding his teeth, confronted us with our crime. The room was full of blue lightning flashing from his eyes, and Jove’s thunder was not more awful than what he now roared at us:
‘Do you r
ealize,’ he said, ‘that, if you were married women, your husbands could divorce you for doing this?’
Linda began to say no they couldn’t. She knew the laws of divorce from having read the whole of the Russell case off newspapers with which the fires in the spare bedrooms were laid.
‘Don’t interrupt your father,’ said Aunt Sadie, with a warning look.
Uncle Matthew, however, did not even notice. He was in the full flood and violence of his storm.
‘Now we know you can’t be trusted to behave yourselves, we shall have to take certain steps. Fanny can go straight home to-morrow, and I never want you here again, do you understand? Emily will have to control you in future, if she can, but you’ll go the same way as your mother, sure as eggs is eggs. As for you, miss, there’s no more question of a London season now – we shall have to watch you in future every minute of the day – not very agreeable, to have a child one can’t trust – and there would be too many opportunities in London for slipping off. You can stew in your own juice here. And no more hunting this year. You’re damned lucky not to be thrashed; most fathers would give you a good hiding, do you hear? Now you can both go to bed, and you’re not to speak to each other before Fanny leaves. I’m sending her over in the car to-morrow.’
It was months before we knew how they found out. It seemed like magic, but the explanation was simple. Somebody had left a scarf in Tony Kroesig’s rooms, and he had rung up to ask whether it belonged to either of us.
8
AS always, Uncle Matthew’s bark was worse than his bite, though, while it lasted, it was the most terrible row within living memory at Alconleigh. I was sent back to Aunt Emily the next day, Linda waving and crying out of her bedroom window: ‘Oh, you are lucky, not to be me’ (most unlike her, her usual cry being ‘Isn’t it lovely to be lovely me’); and she was stopped from hunting once or twice. Then relaxation began, the thin end of the wedge, and gradually things returned to normal, though it was reckoned in the family that Uncle Matthew had got through a pair of dentures in record time.
Plans for the London season went on being made, and went on including me. I heard afterwards that both Davey and John Fort William took it upon themselves to tell Aunt Sadie and Uncle Matthew (especially Uncle Matthew) that, according to modern ideas, what we had done was absolutely normal, though, of course, they were obliged to own that it was very wrong of us to have told so many and such shameless lies.
We both said we were very sorry, and promised faithfully that we would never act in such an underhand way again, but always ask Aunt Sadie if there was something we specially wanted to do.
‘Only then, of course, it will always be no,’ as Linda said, giving me a hopeless look.
Aunt Sadie took a furnished house for the summer near Belgrave Square. It was a house with so little character that I can remember absolutely nothing about it, except that my bedroom had a view over chimney-pots, and that on hot summer evenings I used to sit and watch the swallows, always in pairs, and wish sentimentally that I too could be a pair with somebody.
We really had great fun, although I don’t think it was dancing that we enjoyed so much as the fact of being grown up and in London. At the dances the great bar of enjoyment was what Linda called the chaps. They were terribly dull, all on the lines of the ones Louisa had brought to Alconleigh; Linda, still in her dream of love for Tony, could not distinguish between them, and never even knew their names. I looked about hopefully for a possible life-partner, but, though I honestly tried to see the best in them, nothing remotely approximating to my requirements turned up.
Tony was at Oxford for his last term, and did not come to London until the end of the season.
We were chaperoned, as was to be expected, with Victorian severity. Aunt Sadie or Uncle Matthew literally never let us out of the sight of one or the other; as Aunt Sadie liked to rest in the afternoon, Uncle Matthew would solemnly take us off to the House of Lords, park us in the Peeresses’ Gallery, and take his own forty winks on a back bench opposite. When he was awake in the House, which was not often, he was a perfect nuisance to the Whips, never voting with the same party twice running; nor were the workings of his mind too easy to follow. He voted, for instance, in favour of steel traps, of blood sports, and of steeplechasing, but against vivisection and the exporting of old horses to Belgium. No doubt he had his reasons, as Aunt Sadie would remark, with finality, when we commented on this inconsistency. I rather liked those drowsy afternoons in the dark Gothic chamber, fascinated by the mutterings and antics that went on the whole time, and besides, the occasional speech one was able to hear was generally rather interesting. Linda liked it too, she was far away, thinking her own thoughts. Uncle Matthew would wake up at tea-time, conduct us to the Peer’s dining-room for tea and buttered buns, and then take us home to rest and dress for the dance.
Saturday to Monday was spent by the Radlett family at Alconleigh; they rolled down in their huge, rather sick-making Daimler; and by me at Shenley, where Aunt Emily and Davey were always longing to hear every detail of our week.
Clothes were probably our chief preoccupation at this time. Once Linda had been to a few dress shows, and got her eye in, she had all hers made by Mrs Josh, and, somehow, they had a sort of originality and prettiness that I never achieved, although mine, which were bought at expensive shops, cost about five times as much. This showed, said Davey, who used to come and see us whenever he was in London, that either you get your clothes in Paris or it is a toss-up. Linda had one particularly ravishing ball-dress made of masses of pale grey tulle down to her feet. Most of the dresses were still short that summer, and Linda made a sensation whenever she appeared in her yards of tulle, very much disapproved of by Uncle Matthew, on the grounds that he had known three women burnt to death in tulle ball-dresses.
She was wearing this dress when Tony proposed to her in the Berkeley Square summer-house at six o’clock on a fine July morning. He had been down from Oxford about a fortnight, and it was soon obvious that he had eyes for nobody but her. He went to all the same dances, and, after stumping round with a few other girls, would take Linda to supper, and thereafter spend the evening glued to her side. Aunt Sadie seemed to notice nothing, but to the whole rest of the debutante world the outcome was a foregone conclusion, the only question being when and where Tony would propose.
The ball from which they had emerged (it was in a lovely old house on the east side of Berkeley Square, since demolished) was only just alive, the band sleepily thump-thumped its tunes through the nearly empty rooms; poor Aunt Sadie sat on a little gold chair trying to keep her eyes open and passionately longing for bed, with me beside her, dead tired and very cold, my partners all gone home. It was broad daylight. Linda had been away for hours, nobody seemed to have set eyes on her since supper-time, and Aunt Sadie, though dominated by her fearful sleepiness, was apprehensive, and rather angry. She was beginning to wonder whether Linda had not committed the unforgivable sin, and gone off to a night club.
Suddenly the band perked up and began to play ‘John Peel’ as a prelude to ‘God Save the King’; Linda, in a grey cloud, was galloping up and down the room with Tony; one look at her face told all. We climbed into a taxi behind Aunt Sadie (she never would keep a chauffeur up at night), we splashed away past the great hoses that were washing the streets, we climbed the stairs to our rooms, without a word being spoken by any of us. A thin oblique sunlight was striking the chimney-pots as I opened my window. I was too tired to think, I fell into bed.
*
We were allowed to be late after dances, though Aunt Sadie was always up and seeing to the household arrangements by nine o’clock. As Linda came sleepily downstairs the next morning, Uncle Matthew shouted furiously at her from the hall:
‘That bloody Hun Kroesig has just telephoned, he wanted to speak to you. I told him to get to hell out of it. I don’t want you mixed up with any Germans, do you understand?’
‘Well, I am mixed up,’ said Linda, in an offhand, would-be casua
l voice, ‘as it happens I’m engaged to him.’
At this point Aunt Sadie dashed out of her little morning-room on the ground floor, took Uncle Matthew by the arm, and led him away. Linda locked herself into her bedroom and cried for an hour, while Jassy, Matt, Robin, and I speculated upon further developments in the nursery.
There was a great deal of opposition to the engagement, not only from Uncle Matthew, who was beside himself with disappointment and disgust at Linda’s choice, but also quite as much from Sir Leicester Kroesig. He did not want Tony to marry at all until he was well settled in his career in the City, and then he had hoped for an alliance with one of the other big banking families. He despised the landed gentry, whom he regarded as feckless, finished and done with in the modern world, he also knew that the vast, the enviable capital sums which such families undoubtedly still possessed, and of which they made so foolishly little use, were always entailed upon the eldest son, and that very small provision, if any, was made for the dowries of daughters. Sir Leicester and Uncle Matthew met, disliked each other on sight, and were at one in their determination to stop the marriage. Tony was sent off to America, to work in a bank house in New York, and poor Linda, the season now being at an end, was taken home to eat her heart out at Alconleigh.
‘Oh, Jassy, darling Jassy, lend me your running-away money to go to New York with.’
‘No, Linda. I’ve saved and scraped for five years, ever since I was seven, I simply can’t begin all over again now. Besides I shall want it for when I run away myself.’
‘But, darling, I’ll give it you back, Tony will, when we’re married.’
‘I know men,’ said Jassy, darkly.
She was adamant.
‘If only Lord Merlin were here,’ Linda wailed. ‘He would help me.’ But Lord Merlin was still in Rome.