B007TB5SP0 EBOK (39 page)

A version of the Salamis affair that was new to Miss Dawkins.

‘—!’ she cooed, lifting her eyes in protest to a painting of Mary Marchioness of Jamaica and Miss Elizabeth Cockduck, of the school of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

‘… just as in the Golden Age; and the moon that night was extra enormous,’ the Countess broke off her tale, arrested by a wail of distress from the direction of the nursery.

The notion that Daisy might be diverting herself at Bianca’s expense caused the Countess to rise.

‘Precious darling!
C’est l’heure du berger
for the child,’ she exclaimed, directing her steps towards the door.

Traversing the hall, she perceived Daisy in the morning-room examining the visitors’ wraps; lifting the fabrics to her nose (much as might a savage), she appeared to be voluptuously revelling in the human odours they exhaled.

‘Fie, girl! What are you up to?’ her sister asked.

‘The Farquhar of Farquhar’s muffler, Mabel, has such a funny smell, something between honey and flowers and new goloshes.’

‘Oh!’

‘And Lady Watercarriage’s cloak! I don’t know what it is, but it’s almost overpowering.’

‘
Santo dio,
’ the Countess breathed, lending an ear to the uproar above.

Daisy displayed indifference.

‘She’s overturned her little Tamara again, I suppose, that’s all! ! !’

In the shadowy nursery, bafflingly lit by the dancing stars, some romantic fancy, it seemed, had disquieted the child.

On beholding both Mother and Aunt with a radiant light, she crowed, she smiled.

‘Bianca … Mother’s heaven.’ The Countess hovered.

‘From the look in those endless eyes of hers I shouldn’t wonder if she hadn’t seen the Owl that lived in an Oak.

There was an owl lived in an oak –

Whiskey, waskey, weedle;

And every word he ever spoke

Was fiddle, faddle, feedle.’

‘Don’t, Daisy!’

‘Oh, she loves her little Buen Retiro (when it’s dry); her own private corner in Bedfordshire.’

‘Let her be,’ the Countess answered, availing herself of the opportunity to deck with fresh white and red her constantly piquant face.

‘Has anyone cast a doubt on your union, Mab, being legal?’ Daisy asked, surveying with the eyes of a retired bus-horse her sister’s comfortable back.

‘Don’t ask silly questions, Daisy, if you don’t want foolish answers,’ the Countess returned, following in the mirror her infant’s yearning glance towards a bespangled negro doll, Topolobampa, Queen of the Sunset Isles.

‘’Cos I s’pose you know that’s what Spicer’s been tellin’ George …’

‘George?’

‘The extra footman.’

‘Oh, good gracious!’

‘Naturally he’ll repeat it. It seems he goes all over Yorkshire waiting, but his home-proper is the Capital. Hull, he says, is a dreadful place. No season, and with the morals of Sodom. And, fancy, Mabsey, his brother is the boy from Willinghorse and Wheelits …’

‘What!’

‘He aspires to the concert hall, he says, on account of his voice. So we made him sing and I must say his rendering of “Early one morning before the sun was dawning” won all our hearts.’

The Countess shrugged.

‘She wants, I think, to take Topolobampa to bed!’ she irrelevantly exclaimed.

‘She’d rather take her old Aunt – eh, chubby?’

‘Madonna, what next!’

‘Her little body, Mab … it’s as soft as satin! Oh, it’s terrible!’

‘— …?’

‘How arch the puss looks in her little nainsook!’

‘Mind and don’t tease her, Daisy,’ the Countess enjoined as she frisked away.

An odour of meat, wine and flowers hung erotically upon the dining-room air.

‘I want my life to be purple— Never less,’ Miss Dawkins was assuring the Member for Bovon.

Curtailing their colloquy, the Countess resumed her place.

At a delicate advantage with her newly-geraniumed lips, she was in a mood to enjoy herself.

‘Look two to your right; who is she, Countess?’ Miss Dawkins asked.

‘An immense heiress! Miss Nespole of Cupingforth.’

‘My dear, she’s the most extraordinarily-looking woman that I ever set eyes on!’ Miss Dawkins serenely stated.

Taking umbrage from her stare, Miss Nespole (with the eccentricity permitted to wealth) put out her tongue at her and drew it slowly in again.

‘Oh, good gracious!’ the Countess exclaimed, shooting a glance towards her father.

Listening to a description of Gleneagles from Lady Watercarriage, he appeared almost to have grown into his chair.

‘And from there we went on to a ghastly hotel where
all the bedclothes are grey
,’ the peeress fluted, fingering the pearls on her forward-falling shoulders.

The Countess raised a discreet glass of Perrier to her lips.

But as course succeeded course The Farquhar was moved to beg his hostess to allow her younger daughter to join them for the sugared kickshaws at dessert.

A lover of young girls and with a cult for them, he was believed to harbour Satanesque inclinations towards the Age of Candour.

‘Just for a prune!’ he insidiously pressed, brushing a napkin to the spreading branches of his moustache.

Miss Dawkins, meanwhile, was becoming blandly Bacchic.

‘Oh, thank you, Member for Bovon, sweetest of men to me,’ she exclaimed, addressing him champagnishly across her friend.

It was towards the close of dessert, just as the ladies were about to withdraw, that Daisy, clasping Bianca, chose to present herself. ‘I brought Niece, too; I thought it would widen her little sphere,’ she chirruped, coming blithely forward into the room.

She had a coronet-brooch on a well trussed-out blouse, and a strip of deep green velvet tied sparkishly below the middle.

Cautioned by her sister’s eye, she turned towards the Rector, who was engaging to loan a stallion to a parishioner. ‘A thing I seldom do,’ he murmured, bestowing a frigid smile on the infant papist.

Refusing to wet her lips in some curaçoa, Daisy approached The Farquhar. Appreciating notice, his jolly ogle was a welcome stimulus.

A blood-orange? Grapes? … Preserve-of-ginger? She answered him whimsically by a little leap of the tongue.

‘She’s an amusette, Mrs Collins, your wee girl; a sweet piece; ah, these golden blondes! … these golden blondes!’

‘But why is that?’ Mrs Collins inattentively answered, watching her grandchild circulate, as might a fruit, from guest to guest along the table.

Flattered by The Farquhar’s interest, Daisy was demonstrating already her social acumen.

‘I’ve seen statues … often. Oh it’s terrible!’ she rapported, shooting back her hair.

‘Little deviless! Where?’ The Farquhar queried, stealing a surreptitious arm about her middle.

‘Often on lawns, and in gardens, too; oh it’s terrible!’

‘… Indeed,’ he murmured, alarmed by an ear-piercing shriek, attesting to Bianca’s aversion to the Rector.

It was a warning, it seemed, to adjourn. Laughing hectically as she rose, Miss Dawkins had lost her bearings.

‘Where ever was I last old October?’ she exclaimed, waving the long lyric feathers of her fan in Sir Harry Ortop’s face. ‘I’ll own I forget …’

‘Yes, dear, and so I’m really off—! And there were so many things I had wanted to say to you. But somehow I’ve not found time.’

‘Stay another week,’ the Countess begged.

‘Call me Ola.’

‘Ola.’

‘Your father’s a regular rake, darling.’

‘What are you looking for?’

Miss Dawkins gazed with lethargy about the room.

Above the mantelpiece were engravings of Salammbô in Matho’s tent and Monna Vanna in Prinzivalle’s, known collectively as
The Fair Trespassers,
and published by the Fine Art Society ‘as the Act directs’.

‘The Isol,’ she said.

‘I love your box, Ola.’

‘It’s not distinguished.’

‘The labels it has on it!’

‘Driving to and from a place in carnival time the students take it away.’

‘I envy you your independence.’

‘I’d rather roost.’

‘Domesticity tires one so. Every time I enter the nursery now it’s a strain. To-day was the climax. I’ve had many years’ experience, Mrs Occles said to me, as a nurse, and I’ll have no meddling. Very well, I said to her, you can go! Oh, good gracious! Then at the door, dear, I turned back and I added, Am I the child’s mother or are you? That, she said, is no affair of
mine! But as a rule I’m accustomed to see the father! ! What do you mean by the father? I said. But she wouldn’t say.’

Miss Dawkins passed her parasol beneath the bed.

‘My button boots—!’

‘A child has so many little wants, nurse, I said … It should have proper attention …
I
know what a child wants, she said (so rudely), and when it wants it … And there was Bianca looking at her with her little eyes …’

‘Still, I wish the Count would come!’

‘I hope he’s not false to me,’ the Countess quavered.

‘Foreigners usually are, dear. They deceive their wives …’

‘If I thought he was unworthy …?’

‘You’re sure, of course, it’s binding?’

‘Binding?’

‘No loopholes?’

The Countess tittered.

‘None,’ she said.

‘Knowing the world as I know it,’ Miss Dawkins sighed. ‘Ah, well …’

‘There … the carriage is at the door.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘Have you a magazine or anything for the train?’

‘I’ve a novel only –
Three Lilies and a Moustache.
’

‘I like a love story,’ the Countess confessed, ‘so long as it isn’t drivel.’

‘Here is Daisy to say good-bye.’

‘Where’s Niece?’

‘In France!’ the Countess crooned.

‘Isn’t the child here?’

‘Come and kiss me,’ Miss Dawkins invited.

‘I’ve such news!’

‘What is it?’

‘The Chase is let at last.’

‘Goodness!’

‘Madame La Chose is in the library now with a professional witness.’

‘Well?’

‘And they’ve taken the house. I was listening … Madame La Chose said she was prepared to put her hand to an agreement for a ninety-nine years’ lease without the farm. And it’s to be pulled down immediately … Oh, the rats!’

‘Who’s the witness?’

‘General Lover.’

‘My dear father once struck me for listening at a door,’ Miss Dawkins observed.

‘And as a reference she gives La Belle Zula. She says her diamonds
alone
are worth the half of Yorkshire.’

‘Mum must be overjoyed.’

‘She is.’

‘One place or another!’ Miss Dawkins drawled. ‘Once the glamour’s gone.’

‘Oh, Ola!’

‘I maintain there’s little in it.’

‘I long to go about!’ Daisy murmured, pirouetting vainly before the glass.

‘Jesu!’

‘What openings have I here?’

‘There’s time enough yet,’ the Countess assured.

‘One sister should help another.’

‘When you’re eligible we’ll see.’

‘If I’m not eligible now I don’t know who is!’

Miss Dawkins drew on nervously a glove.

‘You’ve my address in Australia, Viscountess, all right?’

‘Belleview – isn’t it? Lake George? …’

‘That’s it, old girl.’

‘I shan’t forget.’

‘I hope the sea’ll be level, dear. I can’t endure it rough.’

‘Write soon.’

Miss Dawkins nodded.

‘It depends on the Master Potter now. But if I ever should find my beloved ones in the East I’ll be sure to let you know.’

‘How would Phryne Street appeal to you, Isabel?’ Mr Collins asked his wife as they sat one morning at breakfast.

‘H-m, Charles! …’

‘Maxilla Gardens then?’

‘H-m! …’

‘Or Gardingore Gate?’

‘I want to live in Lisbon,’ Mrs Collins said.

Mr Collins cast aside the paper.

‘Where to bend our footsteps to is a problem and a tragedy,’ he muttered.

‘’Vieto,’ Daisy suggested in an insinuating voice.

‘What would one do dumped down in Orvieto?’ Mrs Collins asked. ‘It would be as bad as Bovon.’

‘At ’Vieto it’s all arcades, and right on top of a hill! You’ve to take a lift to get to it. It’s the funicular for all …’

‘If it’s to be Italy I’d sooner it was Rome.’

Daisy showed fervour.

‘Mab was telling me of the preserves they sell there. All speared on little sticks. At the street corners, she says, the sugar-plums sparkle in the sun just as if they were jewels … I should like to see them … And to taste them too,’ she added.

‘Papa has written to Mrs Whewell already, alas,’ Mrs Collins said, ‘to inquire whether she has a vacancy at all at York Hill.’

‘If I studied anywhere it would be abroad.’

‘Master your native tongue at any rate to begin with,’ Mr Collins advised.

‘I don’t care a jot for distinctions!’

‘At your age,’ Mrs Collins asserted, ‘I had a diploma.’

‘For what?’

‘As a nurse.’

‘Nursing’s different.’

‘I assure you it’s very disagreeable. Often it’s by no means pleasant.’

‘Why?’

‘What I never could bear about nursing,’ Mrs Collins reminiscently said, ‘was sponging the paint off the face of a corpse.’

‘I would leave it.’

‘Even a hospital nurse can go too far …’

‘Where’s Mabel?’

‘I heard her romping with Bianca as I passed her door.’

‘She doesn’t bother herself much of a morning about the time,’ Mr Collins complained.

‘It’s on account of prayers, Charles. Until they’re over she naturally doesn’t care to come down.’

Daisy sipped her tea.

‘She did her best to convert me the other day,’ she said. ‘With one of her hatpins.’

‘What?’

‘… An old bead affair. Such a common thing. Not worth sixpence.’

‘Mab did?’

‘And she has her eye on Queen!’

‘I fear the tap-room at the Mitre is as near as
he’ll
ever get to Rome,’ Mr Collins remarked.

‘S-s-s-h, Charles. Here he is!’

‘Is the Signora stirring yet, Queen?’ Daisy asked.

‘She has just received her letters.’

‘Is there anything for me?’

‘No, Miss Daisy. There is not.’