The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

  I said all this to Davey and he winced a little. ‘I wish you needn’t go on about Sonia being an old woman on the brink of the grave,’ he said, ‘she is barely sixty, you know, only about ten years older than your Aunt Emily.’

  ‘Davey, she’s forty years older than I am, it must seem old to me. I bet people forty years older than you are seem old to you, now do admit.’

  Davey admitted. He also agreed that it is nice to see people happy, but made the reservation that it is only very nice if you happen to like them, and that although he was, in a way, quite fond of Lady Montdore, he did not happen to like Cedric.

  ‘You don’t like Cedric?’ I said, amazed. ‘How couldn’t you, Dave? I absolutely love him.’

  He replied that, whereas to an English rosebud like myself Cedric must appear as a being from another, darkly glamorous world, he, Davey, in the course of his own wild cosmopolitan wanderings, before he had met and settled down with Aunt Emily, had known too many Cedrics.

  ‘You are lucky,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t know too many. And if you think I find him darkly glamorous, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, my dear Dave. He seems to me like a darling Nanny.’

  ‘Darling Nanny! Polar bear – tiger – puma – something that can never be tamed. They always turn nasty in the end. Just you wait, Fanny, all this ormolu radiance will soon blacken, and the last state of Sonia will be worse than her first, I prophesy. I’ve seen this sort of thing too often.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Cedric loves Lady Montdore.’

  ‘Cedric,’ said Davey, ‘loves Cedric, and furthermore he comes from the jungle, and just as soon as it suits him he will tear her to pieces and slink back into the undergrowth – you mark my words.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if so, the Boreleys will be pleased.’

  Cedric himself now sauntered into the room and Davey prepared to leave. I think after all the horrid things he had just been saying he was afraid of seeming too cordial to him in front of me. It was very difficult not to be cordial to Cedric, he was so disarming.

  ‘I shan’t see you again, Fanny,’ Davey said, ‘until I get back from my cruise.’

  ‘Oh, are you going for a cruise – how delicious – where?’ said Cedric.

  ‘In search of a little sun. I give a few lectures on Minoan things and go cheap.’

  ‘I do wish Aunt Emily would go too,’ I said, ‘it would be so good for her.’

  ‘She’ll never move until after Siegfried’s death,’ said Davey. ‘You know what she is.’

  When he had gone I said to Cedric,

  ‘What d’you think, he may be able to go and see Polly and Boy in Sicily – wouldn’t it be interesting?’

  Cedric, of course, was deeply fascinated by anything to do with Polly.

  ‘The absent influence, so boring and so overdone in literature, but I see now that in real life it can eat you with curiosity.’

  ‘When did you last hear from her, Fanny?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, months ago, and then it was only a postcard. I’m so delighted about Davey seeing them because he’s always so good at telling. We really shall hear how they are getting on, from him.’

  ‘Sonia has still never mentioned her to me,’ said Cedric, ‘never once.’

  ‘That’s because she never thinks of her, then.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. This Polly can’t be much of a personality, to have left such a small dent where she used to live?’

  ‘Personality –’ I said. ‘I don’t know. The thing about Polly is her beauty.’

  ‘Describe it.’

  ‘Oh, Cedric, I’ve described it to you hundreds of times.’ It rather amused me to do so, though, because I knew that it teased him.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as I’ve often told you before, she is so beautiful that it’s difficult to pay much attention to what she is saying, or to make out what she’s really like as a person, because all you want to do is just gaze and gaze.’

  Cedric looked sulky, as he always did when I talked like this.

  ‘More beautiful than One?’ he said.

  ‘Very much like you, Cedric.’

  ‘So you say, but I don’t find that you gaze and gaze at One, on the contrary, you listen intently, with your eye out of the window.’

  ‘She is very much like you, but all the same,’ I said firmly, ‘she must be more beautiful because there is that thing about the gazing.’

  This was perfectly true, and not only said to annoy poor Cedric and make him jealous. He was like Polly, and very good-looking, but not an irresistible magnet to the eye as she was.

  ‘I know exactly why,’ he said, ‘it’s my beard, all that horrible shaving. I shall send to New York this very day for some wax – you can’t conceive the agony it is, but if it will make you gaze, Fanny, it will be worth it.’

  ‘Don’t bother to do that,’ I said. ‘It’s not the shaving. You do look like Polly but you are not as beautiful. Lady Patricia also looked like her, but it wasn’t the same thing. It’s something extra that Polly has, which I can’t explain, I can only tell you that it is so.’

  ‘What extra can she possibly have except beardlessness?’

  ‘Lady Patricia was quite beardless.’

  ‘You are horrid. Never mind, I shall try it, and you’ll see. People used to gaze before my beard grew, like mad, even in Nova Scotia. You are so fortunate not to be a beauty, Fanny, you’ll never know the agony of losing your looks.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘And as talking about pretty Polly makes us both so disagreeable let’s get on to the subject of Boy.’

  ‘Ah now, nobody could say that Boy was pretty. No gazing there. Boy is old and grizzled and hideous.’

  ‘Now Fanny, that’s not true, dear. Descriptions of people are only interesting if they happen to be true, you know. I’ve seen many photographs of Boy, Sonia’s books are full of them, from Boy playing Diabolo, Boy in puttees for the war, to Boy with his bearer Boosee. After India I think she lost her Brownie, in the move perhaps, because “Pages from Our Indian Diary” seems to be the last book, but that was only three years ago and Boy was still ravishing then, the kind of looks I adore, stocky and with deep attractive furrows all over his face – dependable.’

  ‘Dependable!’

  ‘Why do you hate him so much, Fanny?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, he gives me the creeps. He’s such a snob, for one thing.’

  ‘I like that,’ said Cedric. ‘I am one myself.’

  ‘Such a snob that living people aren’t enough for him, he has to get to know the dead, as well – the titled dead of course, I mean. He dives about in their Memoirs so that he can talk about his dear Duchesse de Dino, or “as Lady Bessborough so truly says”. He can reel off pedigrees, he always knows just how everybody was related, royal families and things I mean. Then he writes books about all these people, and after that anybody would think they were his own personal property. Ugh!’

  ‘Exactly as I had supposed,’ said Cedric, ‘a handsome, cultivated man, the sort of person I like the best. Gifted, too. His embroidery, really wonderful, and the dozens of toiles by him in the squash court are worthy of the Douanier himself, landscapes with gorillas. Original and bold.’

  ‘Gorillas! Lord and Lady Montdore, and anybody else who would pose.’

  ‘Well, it is original and bold to depict my aunt and uncle as gorillas, I wouldn’t dare. I think Polly is a very lucky girl.’

  ‘The Boreleys think you will end by marrying Polly, Cedric.’ Norma had propounded this thrilling theory to me the day before. They thought that it would be a death blow to Lady Montdore, and longed for it to happen.

  ‘Very silly of them, dear, I should have thought they only had to look at One to see how unlikely that is. What else do the Boreleys say about me?’

  ‘Cedric, do come and meet Norma one day – I simply long to see you
together.’

  ‘I think not, dear, thank you.’

  ‘But why? You’re always asking what she says and she’s always asking what you say, you’d much better ask each other and do without the middleman.’

  ‘The thing is, I believe she would remind me of Nova Scotia, and when that happens my spirits go down, down, past grande pluie to tempête. The house-carpenter at Hampton reminds me, don’t ask me why but he does, and I have to rudely look away every time I meet him. I believe that’s why Paris suits me so well, there’s not a shade of Nova Scotia there, and perhaps it’s also why I put up with the Baron all those years. The Baron could have come from many a land of spices, but from Nova Scotia he could not have come. Whereas Boreleys abound there. But though I don’t want to meet them I always like hearing about them, so do go on with what they think about One.’

  ‘Well, so then Norma was full of you just now, when I met her out shopping, because it seems you travelled down from London with her brother Jock yesterday, and now he can literally think of nothing else.’

  ‘Oh, how exciting. How did he know it was me?’

  ‘Lots of ways. The goggles, the piping, your name on your luggage. There is nothing anonymous about you, Cedric.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘So according to Norma he was in a perfect panic, sat with one eye on you and the other on the communication cord, because he expected you to pounce at any minute.’

  ‘Heavens! What does he look like?’

  ‘You ought to know. It seems you were quite alone together after Reading.’

  ‘Well, darling, I only remember a dreadful moustachioed murderer sitting in a corner. I remember him particularly, because I kept thinking, “Oh, the luck of being One and not somebody like that”.’

  ‘I expect that was Jock. Sandy and white.’

  ‘That’s it. Oh, so that’s a Boreley, is it? And do you imagine people often make advances to him, in trains?’

  ‘He says you gave him hypnotic stares through your glasses.’

  ‘The thing is, he did have rather a pretty tweed on.’

  ‘And then, apparently, you made him get your suitcase off the rack at Oxford, saying you are not allowed to lift things.’

  ‘No, and nor I am. It was very heavy, not a sign of a porter as usual, I might have hurt myself. Anyway, it was all right because he terribly sweetly got it down for me.’

  ‘Yes, and now he’s simply furious that he did. He says you hypnotized him.’

  ‘Oh, poor him, I do so know the feeling.’

  ‘Whatever had you got in it, Cedric? He says it simply weighed a ton.’

  ‘Complets,’ Cedric said, ‘and a few small things for my face. Very little, really. I have found a lovely new resting-cream I must tell you about, by the way.’

  ‘And now they are all saying, “There you are – if he even fixed old Jock, no wonder he has got round the Montdores”.’

  ‘But why on earth should I want to get round the Montdores?’

  ‘Wills and things. Living at Hampton.’

  ‘My dear, come to that, Chèvres-Fontaine is twenty times more beautiful than Hampton.’

  ‘But could you go back there now, Cedric?’ I said.

  Cedric gave me rather a nasty look and went on,

  ‘But in any case I wish people would understand that there’s never much point in hanging about for wills – it’s just not worth it. I have a friend who used to spend months of every year with an old uncle in the Sarthe so as to stay in his will. It was torture to him, because he knew the person he loved was being unfaithful to him in Paris, and anyhow, the Sarthe is utterly lugubrious, you know. But all the same, he went pegging away at it. Then what occurs? The uncle dies, my poor friend inherits the house in the Sarthe, and now he feels obliged to live a living death there so as to make himself believe that there was some point after all in having wasted months of his youth in the Sarthe. You see my argument? It’s a vicious circle, and there is nothing vicious about me. The thing is, I love Sonia, that’s why I stay.’

  I believed him, really. Cedric lived in the present. It would not be like him to bother about such things as wills; if ever there was a grasshopper, a lily of the field, it was he.

  When Davey got back from his cruise he rang me up and said he would come over to luncheon and tell me about Polly. I thought Cedric might as well come and hear it at first hand. Davey was always better with an audience even if he did not much like its component parts, so I rang up Hampton, and Cedric accepted to lunch with pleasure and then said could he possibly stay with me for a night or two?

  ‘Sonia has gone for this orange cure – yes, total starvation except for orange juice, but don’t mind too much for her, I know she’ll cheat. Uncle Montdore is in London for the House and I feel sad, all alone here. I’d love to be with you and to do some serious Oxford sightseeing, which there’s never time for when I’ve got Sonia with me. That will be charming, Fanny, thank you, dear. One o’clock, then.’

  Alfred was very busy just then and I was delighted to think I should have Cedric’s company for a day or two. I cleared the decks by warning Aunt Sadie that he would be there, and telling my undergraduate friends that I should not be wanting them around for the present.

  ‘Who is that spotty child?’ Cedric had once said, when a boy who had been crouching by my fireplace got up and vanished at a look from me.

  ‘I see him as the young Shelley,’ I answered, sententiously, no doubt.

  ‘And I see him as the young Woodley.’

  Davey arrived first.

  ‘Cedric is coming,’ I said, ‘so you mustn’t begin without him.’ I could see he was bursting with his news.

  ‘Oh, Cedric, it is too bad, Fanny, I never come without finding that monster here, he seems to live in your house. What does Alfred think of him?’

  ‘Doubt if he knows him by sight, to tell you the truth. Come and see the baby, Dave.’

  ‘Sorry if I’m late, darlings,’ Cedric said, floating in, ‘one has to drive so slowly in England, because of the walking Herrschaften. Why are the English roads always so covered with these tweeded stumpers?’

  ‘They are colonels,’ I said, ‘don’t French colonels go for walks?’

  ‘Much too ill. They have always lost a leg or two and been terribly gassed. I can see that French wars must have been far bloodier than English ones, though I do know a colonel, in Paris, who walks to the antique shops sometimes.’

  ‘How do they take their exercise?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite another way, darling. You haven’t started, about Boy, have you? Oh, how loyal. I was delayed by Sonia, too, on the telephone. She’s in all her states – it seems they’ve had her up for stealing the nurses’ breakfast – well, had her up in front of the principal, who spoke quite cruelly to her, and said that if she does it again, or gets one more bit of illicit food, she’ll have her holiday. Just imagine, no dinner, one orange juice at midnight, and woken up by the smell of kippers. So naturally, the poor darling sneaked out and pinched one, and they caught her with it under her dressing-gown. I’m glad to say she’d eaten most of it before they got it away from her. The thing is she started off demoralized by finding your name in the visitors’ book, Davey. Apparently she gave a scream and said, “But he’s a living skeleton, whatever was he doing here?” and they said you had gone there to put on weight. What’s the idea?’

  ‘The idea,’ said Davey, impatiently, ‘is health. If you are too fat you lose and if you are too thin you gain. I should have thought a child could understand that. But Sonia won’t stick it for a day, no self-discipline.’

  ‘Just like One, poor darling,’ said Cedric. ‘But then, what are we to do to get rid of those kilos? Vichy, perhaps?’

  ‘My dear, look at the kilos she’s lost already,’ I said, ‘she’s really so thin, ought she to get any thinner?’

  ‘It’s just that little extra round t
he hips,’ said Cedric, ‘a jersey and skirt is the test, and she doesn’t look quite right in that yet – and there’s a weeny roll round her ribs. Besides, they say the orange juice clears the skin. Oh, I do hope she sticks it for a few more days, for her own sake, you know. She says another patient told her of a place in the village where you can have Devonshire teas, but I begged her to be careful. After what happened this morning they’re sure to be on the look-out and one more slip may be fatal, what d’you think, Davey?’

  ‘Yes, they’re madly strict,’ said Davey. ‘There’d be no point, otherwise.’

  We sat down to our luncheon and begged Davey to begin his story.

  ‘I may as well start by telling you that I don’t think they are at all happy.’

  Davey, I knew, was never a one for seeing things through rose-coloured spectacles, but he spoke so definitely and with so grave an emphasis that I felt I must believe him.

  ‘Oh, Dave, don’t say that. How dreadful.’

  Cedric, who, since he did not know and love Polly, was rather indifferent as to whether she was happy or not, said,

  ‘Now, Davey dear, you’re going much too fast. New readers begin here. You left your boat –’

  ‘I left my ship at Syracuse, having wired them from Athens that I would be arriving for one night, and they met me on the quay with a village taxi. They have no motor car of their own.’

  ‘Every detail. They were dressed?’

  ‘Polly wore a plain blue cotton frock and Boy was in shorts.’