Love in a Cold Climate (20 page)

Before going home, I paid a visit to Woolworth, having been enjoined by Jassy to get her a goldfish bowl for her frog spawn. She had broken hers the day before and had only got the precious jelly to the spare-room bath just in time, she said, to save it. Alfred and I were obliged to use the nursery bathroom until Jassy got a new bowl. “So you see how it’s to your own advantage, Fanny, not to forget.”

Once inside Woolworth I found other things that I needed, as one always does, and presently I ran into Polly and Boy. He was holding a mouse trap, but I think it was really shelter from the wind that they sought.

“Home soon?” said Polly.

“Now, d’you think?” I was dead tired.

“Do let’s.”

So we all three went to the Clarendon Yard where our respective motor cars were waiting. The Lecturer still had a terrible cold, which made him most unappetizing, I thought, and he seemed very grumpy. When he took my hand to say good-bye he gave it no extra squeeze, nor did he stroke and tickle our legs when tucking us up in the rug, which he would certainly have done had he been in a normal state, and when we drove off he just walked gloomily away with no backward glance, jaunty wave or boyish shake of the curls. He was evidently at a low ebb.

Polly leaned forward, wound up the window between us and the chauffeur and said, “Well, everything’s settled, thank goodness. A month from to-day if I can get my parents’ consent. I shall still be under age, you see. So the next thing is a tussle with Mummy. I’ll go over to Hampton tomorrow if she’s there and point out that I shall be of age in May, after which she won’t be able to stop me, so hadn’t she better swallow the pill and have done with it. They won’t be wanting to have birthday celebrations for me now, since, in any case, Daddy is cutting me off without a shilling.”

“Do you think he really will?”

“As if I cared! The only thing I mind about is Hampton, and he can’t leave me that even if he wants to. Then I shall say, ‘Do you intend to put a good face on it and let me be married in the chapel (which Boy terribly wants for some reason, and I would rather like it, I must say) or must we sneak off and be done in London?’ Poor Mummy—now I’m out of her clutches I feel awfully sorry for her, in a way. I think the sooner it’s over the better for everybody.”

Boy, it was clear, was still leaving all the dirty work to Polly. Perhaps his cold was sapping his will power, or perhaps the mere thought of a new young wife at his age was exhausting him already.

So Polly rang up her mother and asked if she could lunch at Hampton the following day and have a talk. I thought it would have been more sensible to have had the talk without the additional strain imposed by a meal, but Polly seemed unable to envisage a country house call which did not centre round food. Perhaps she
was right, since Lady Montdore was very greedy and therefore more agreeable during and after meals than at other times. In any case, this is what she suggested; she also told her mother to send a motor as she did not like to ask the Alconleighs for one two days running. Lady Montdore said very well, but that she must bring me, Lord Montdore was still in London and I suppose she felt she could not bear to see Polly alone. Anyhow, she was one of those people who always avoid a tête-à-tête, if possible, even with their intimates. Polly said to me that she herself had just been going to ask if I could come too.

“I want a witness,” she added. “If she says yes in front of you she won’t be able to wriggle out of it again later.”

Poor Lady Montdore, like Boy, was looking very much down. Not only old and ill (also like Boy, she was still afflicted with Lady Patricia’s funeral cold which seemed to have been a specially virulent germ), but positively dirty. The fact that she had never, at the best of times, been very well groomed, had formerly been off-set by her flourish and swagger, radiant health, enjoyment of life, and the inward assurance of superiority bestowed upon her by “all this.” These supports had been cut away by her cold as well as by the simultaneous defection of Polly, which must have taken much of the significance out of “all this” and of Boy, her constant companion, the last lover, surely, that she would ever have. Life, in fact, had become sad and meaningless.

We began luncheon in silence. Polly turned her food over with a fork. Lady Montdore refused the first dish, while I munched away rather self-consciously alone, enjoying the change of cooking. Aunt Sadie’s food, at that time, was very plain. After a glass or two of wine, Lady Montdore cheered up a bit and began to chat. She told us that the dear Grand Duchess had sent her such a puddy postcard from Cap d’Antibes where she was staying with other members of the Imperial family. She remarked that the Government really ought to make more effort to attract such important visitors to England.

“I was saying so only the other day to Ramsay,” she complained. “And he quite agreed with me but, of course, one knows nothing will be done; it never is in this hopeless country. So annoying. All the Rajahs are at Survretta House again.… The King of Greece has gone to Nice.… The King of Sweden has gone to Cannes and the young Italians are doing winter sports. Perfectly ridiculous not to get them all here.”

“Whatever for,” said Polly, “when there’s no snow?”

“Plenty in Scotland. Or teach them to hunt. They’d love it. They only want encouraging a little.”

“No sun,” I said.

“Never mind. Make it the fashion to do without sun, and they’ll all come here. They came for my ball and Queen Alexandra’s funeral—they love a binge, poor dears. The Government really ought to pay one to give a ball every year. It would restore confidence and bring important people to London.”

“I can’t see what good all these old royalties do when they are here,” said Polly.

“Oh, yes, they do, they attract Americans, and so on,” said Lady Montdore, vaguely. “Always good to have influential people around, you know. Good for a private family and also good for a country. I’ve always gone in for them myself and I can tell you it’s a very great mistake not to. Look at poor dear Sadie, I’ve never heard of anybody important going to Alconleigh.”

“Well,” said Polly, “and what harm has it done her?”

“Harm! You can see the harm all round. First of all, the girls’ husbands.” On this point Lady Montdore did not lean, suddenly remembering, no doubt, her own situation in respect of daughters’ husbands, but continued, “Poor Matthew has never got anything, has he? I don’t only mean jobs, but not even a V.C. in the war and, goodness knows, he was brave enough. He may not be quite cut out to be a Governor, I grant you that, especially not where there are black people, but you don’t tell me there’s nothing he could have
got, if Sadie had been a little cleverer about it. Something at Court, for instance. It would have calmed him down.”

The idea of Uncle Matthew at Court made me choke into my pancake, but Lady Montdore took no notice and went on.

“And now I’m afraid it will be the same story with the boys. I’m told they were sent to the very worst house at Eton because Sadie had nobody to advise her or help her at all when the time came for them to go there. One must be able to pull strings in life. Everything depends on that in this world, I’m afraid. It’s the only way to be successful. Luckily for me, I like important people best, and I get on with them like a house on fire, but even if they bored me I should have thought it my duty to cultivate them, for Montdore’s sake.”

When we had finished our meal we installed ourselves in the Long Gallery. The butler brought in a coffee tray which Lady Montdore told him to leave. She always had several cups of strong black coffee. As soon as he had gone she turned to Polly and said sharply, “So what is it you want to say to me?”

I made a half-hearted attempt to go, but they both insisted on me staying. I knew they would.

“I want to be married in a month from now,” said Polly. “And to do that I must have your consent as I’m not of age until May. It seems to me that as it is only a question of nine weeks, when I shall marry anyhow, you might as well agree and get it over, don’t you think?”

“I must say that’s very puddy—your poor aunt—when the breath has hardly left her body.”

“It doesn’t make the slightest difference to Aunt Patricia whether she has been dead three months or three years, so let’s leave her out of it. The facts are what they are. I can’t live at Alconleigh much longer. I can’t live here with you. Hadn’t I better start my new life as soon as possible?”

“Do you quite realize, Polly, that the day you marry Boy Dougdale your father is going to alter his will?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Polly impatiently. “The times you’ve told me!”

“I’ve only told you once before.”

“I’ve had a letter about it. Boy has had a letter about it. We know.”

“I wonder whether you also know that Boy Dougdale is a very poor man? They lived, really, on Patricia’s allowance, which, of course, in the ordinary way your father would have continued during Boy’s lifetime. That will also stop if he marries you.”

“Yes. It was all in the letters.”

“And don’t count on your father changing his mind, because I’ve no intention of allowing him to.”

“I’m quite sure you haven’t.”

“You think it doesn’t matter being poor, but I wonder if you realize what it is like.”

“The one who doesn’t realize,” said Polly, “is you.”

“Not from experience, I’m glad to say, but from observation I do. One’s only got to look at the hopeless, dreary expression on the faces of poor people to see what it must be.”

“I don’t agree at all. But anyhow we shan’t be poor like poor people. Boy has £800 a year, besides what he makes from his books.”

“The parson here and his wife have £800 a year,” said Lady Montdore. “And look at their faces …!”

“They were born with those. I did better, thanks to you. In any case, Mummy, it’s no good going on and on arguing about it, because everything is as much settled as if we were married already, so it’s just pure waste of time.”

“Then why have you come? What do you want me to do?”

“First, I want to have the wedding next month, for which I need your consent and then I also want to know what you and Daddy prefer about the actual marriage ceremony itself. Shall we be married here in the chapel or shall I go off without you to London for it? We naturally don’t want anybody to be there except Fanny and Lady Alconleigh, and you, if you’d care to come. I must say, I would love to be given away by Daddy.…”

Lady Montdore thought for awhile and finally said, “I think it is
quite intolerable of you to put us in this position and I shall have to talk it over with Montdore, but frankly I think that if you intend to go through with this indecent marriage at all costs, it will make the least talk if we have it here, and before your birthday. Then I shan’t have to explain why there are to be no coming-of-age celebrations. The tenants have begun asking about that already. So I think you may take it that you can have the marriage here, and next month, after which, you incestuous little trollop, I never want to set eyes on either you or your uncle again, as long as I live. And please don’t expect a wedding present from me.”

Tears of self-pity were pouring down her cheeks. Perhaps she was thinking of the magnificent parure in its glass case against which, had things been otherwise, so many envious noses would have been pressed during the wedding reception at Montdore House. “From the Bride’s Parents.” Her dream of Polly’s wedding, long and dearly cherished, had ended in a sad awakening indeed.

“Don’t cry, Mummy, I’m so very, very happy.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Lady Montdore, and rushed furiously from the room.

E
XACTLY ONE MONTH
later Davey, Aunt Sadie and I drove over to Hampton together for the wedding, our ears full of the lamentations of Jassy and Victoria, who had not been invited.

“Polly is a horrible Counter Hon and we hate her,” they said. “After we made our fingers bleed over that rope ladder, not to speak of all the things we would have done for her, smuggling the Lecturer up to the Hons’ cupboard—sharing our food with him—no risk we wouldn’t have taken to give them a few brief moments of happiness together, only they were too cold-blooded to want it, and she doesn’t even ask us to the wedding. Do admit, Fanny.”

“I don’t blame her for a single minute,” I said. “A wedding is a very serious thing. Naturally she doesn’t want gusts of giggles the whole way through it.”

“And did we gust at yours?”

“I expect so, only it was a bigger church, and more people, and I didn’t hear you.”

Uncle Matthew, on the other hand, was asked and said that nothing would induce him to accept.

“Wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off the sewer,” he said. “Boy!” he went on, scornfully. “There’s one thing, you’ll hear his
real name at last. Just note it down for me, please. I’ve always wanted to know what it is, to put in a drawer.”

It was a favourite superstition of Uncle Matthew’s that if you wrote somebody’s name on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer, that person would die within the year. The drawers at Alconleigh were full of little slips bearing the names of those whom my uncle wanted out of the way, private hates of his and various public figures, such as Bernard Shaw, de Valera, Gandhi, Lloyd George and the Kaiser, while every single drawer in the whole house contained the name Labby, Linda’s old dog. The spell hardly ever seemed to work, even Labby having lived far beyond the age usual in Labradors, but he went hopefully on, and if one of the characters did happen to be carried off in the course of nature he would look pleased, but guilty, for a day or two.