‘Who is that sewer with Linda?’
‘Kroesig, Governor of the Bank of England, you know; his son.’
‘Good God, I never expected to harbour a full-blooded Hun in this house – who on earth asked him?’
‘Now, Matthew dear, don’t get excited. The Kroesigs aren’t Huns, they’ve been over here for generations, they are a very highly respected family of English bankers.’
‘Once a Hun always a Hun,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘and I’m not too set on bankers myself. Besides, the fella must be a gate-crasher.’
‘No, he’s not. He came with Merlin.’
‘I knew that bloody Merlin would start bringing foreigners here sooner or later. I always said he would, but I didn’t think even he would land one with a German.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time somebody took some champagne to the band?’ said Davey.
But Uncle Matthew stumped down to the boiler-room, where he had a long soothing talk with Timb, the odd man, about coke.
Tony, meanwhile, thought Linda ravishingly pretty, and great fun, which indeed she was. He told her so, and danced with her again and again, until Lord Merlin, quite as much put out as Uncle Matthew by what was happening, firmly and very early took his party home.
‘See you at the meet tomorrow,’ said Tony, winding a white scarf round his neck.
Linda was silent and preoccupied for the rest of the evening.
‘You’re not to go hunting, Linda,’ said Aunt Sadie, the next day, when Linda came downstairs in her riding-habit, ‘it’s too rude, you must stay and look after your guests. You can’t leave them like that.’
‘Darling, darling Mummy,’ said Linda, ‘the meet’s at Cock’s Barn, and you know how one can’t resist. And Flora hasn’t been out for a week, she’ll go mad. Be a love and take them to see the Roman villa or something, and I swear to come back early. And they’ve got Fanny and Louisa after all.’
It was this unlucky hunt that clinched matters as far as Linda was concerned. The first person she saw at the meet was Tony, on a splendid chestnut horse. Linda herself was always beautifully mounted, Uncle Matthew was proud of her horsemanship, and had given her two pretty, lively little horses. They found at once, and there was a short sharp run, during which Linda and Tony, both in a somewhat showing-off mood, rode side by side over the stone walls. Presently, on a village green, they checked. One or two bounds put up a hare, which lost its head, jumped into a duckpond, and began to swim about in a hopeless sort of way. Linda’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh, the poor hare!’
Tony got off his horse, and plunged into the pond. He rescued the hare, waded out again, his fine white breeches covered with green muck, and put it, wet and gasping, into Linda’s lap. It was the one romantic gesture of his life.
At the end of the day Linda left the hounds to take a short cut home across country. Tony opened a gate for her, took off his hat, and said:
‘You are a most beautiful rider, you know. Good night, when I’m back in Oxford I’ll ring you up.’
When Linda got home she rushed me off to the Hons’ cupboard and told me all this. She was in love.
Given Linda’s frame of mind during the past two endless years, she was obviously destined to fall in love with the first young man who came along. It could hardly have been otherwise; she need not, however, have married him. This was made inevitable by the behaviour of Uncle Matthew. Most unfortunately Lord Merlin, the one person who might perhaps have been able to make Linda see that Tony was not all she thought him, went to Rome the week after the ball, and remained abroad for a year.
Tony went back to Oxford when he left Merlinford, and Linda sat about waiting, waiting, waiting for the telephone bell. Patience again. If this comes out he is thinking of me now this very minute – if this comes out he’ll ring up tomorrow – if this comes out he’ll be at the meet. But Tony hunted with the Bicester, and never appeared on our side of the country. Three weeks passed, and Linda began to feel in despair. Then one evening, after dinner, the telephone bell rang; by a lucky chance Uncle Matthew had gone down to the stables to see Josh about a horse that had colic, the business-room was empty, and Linda answered the telephone herself. It was Tony. Her heart was choking her, she could scarcely speak.
‘Hullo, is that Linda? It’s Tony Kroesig here. Will you come to lunch next Thursday?’
‘Oh! But I should never be allowed to.’
‘Oh, rot,’ very impatiently, ‘several other girls are coming down from London – bring your cousin if you like.’
‘All right, that will be lovely.’
‘See you then – about one – 7 King Edward Street, I expect you know the rooms. Altringham had them when he was up.’
Linda came away from the telephone trembling, and whispered for me to come quick to the Hons’ cupboard. We were absolutely forbidden to see young men at any hour unchaperoned, and other girls did not count as chaperons. We knew quite well, though such a remote eventuality had never even been mooted at Alconleigh, that we would not be allowed to have luncheon with a young man in his lodgings with any chaperon at all, short of Aunt Sadie herself. The Alconleigh standards of chaperonage were medieval; they did not vary in the slightest degree from those applied to Uncle Matthew’s sister, and to Aunt Sadie in youth. The principle was that one never saw any young man alone, under any circumstances, until one was engaged to him. The only people who could be counted on to enforce this rule were one’s mother or one’s aunts, therefore one must not be allowed beyond the reach of their ever-watchful eyes. The argument, often put forward by Linda, that young men were not very likely to propose to girls they hardly knew, was brushed aside as nonsense. Uncle Matthew had proposed, had he not? to Aunt Sadie, the very first time he ever saw her, by the cage of a two-headed nightingale at an Exhibition at the White City. ‘They respect you all the more.’ It never seemed to dawn upon the Alconleighs that respect is not an attitude of mind indulged in by modern young men, who look for other qualities in their wives than respectability. Aunt Emily, under the enlightened influence of Davey, was far more reasonable, but, of course, when staying with the Radletts, I had to obey the same rules.
In the Hons’ cupboard we talked and talked. There was no question in our minds but that we must go, not to do so would be death for Linda, she would never get over it. But how to escape? There was only one way that we could devise, and it was full of risk. A very dull girl of exactly our age called Lavender Davis lived with her very dull parents about five miles away, and once in a blue moon, Linda, complaining vociferously, was sent over to luncheon with them, driving herself in Aunt Sadie’s little car. We must pretend that we were going to do that, hoping that Aunt Sadie would not see Mrs Davis, that pillar of the Women’s Institute, for months and months, hoping also that Perkins, the chauffeur, would not remark on the fact that we had driven sixty miles and not ten.
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 r
ingworm,’ 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 face 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 realize,’ 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 tomorrow, 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 s
tew 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 tomorrow.’
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.