Before the War (11 page)

Vivvie did one season, sat round looking sulky, refused to do another and has showed no interest in young men, only horses, ever since. Yes, decidedly Jeremy’s side.

Money Vivvie may have – far more of it, technically, than Adela herself – but she does not have grace, and will sit around at home graceless, or such is Adela’s nightmare, until she sees her mother out.

Then all of a sudden, a phone call from Jeremy and everything changes; the world lights up.

It occurs to Adela, with a great lifting of the heart, that married to someone like Sherwyn Sexton her only daughter might at last become a source of envy, not of pity. To have a daughter married to a successful and good-looking young man meant she, Adela, had not failed in her maternal duty. And since he was short and Vivvie was tall it might even itself out if it came to anything and they had children, and she could become a grandmother of perfectly acceptable children.

A Zebra-Skin Rug

Even as Adela recovers from her husband’s news Vivien bursts into the morning room in muddy boots, and strides across the black and white zebra-skin rug that takes up much of the parquet floor. It must have been an enormous beast. Now its poor dead legs reach to the white sofa on the left and to the mirrored walnut cabinet on the right, its head – though at least without its original Van Ingen taxidermy head – to the mirrored club fender, and its tail to the new plate glass picture windows with their view of the drab winter garden. Lady Adela’s best friend Syrie Maugham’s taste is here too, as it is in the Ripple offices, but perhaps seeming a little out of place in so rural an environment, so old a country house. (The redecorating zeal of Adela’s aunt Isobel seems to have been inherited, more’s the pity.
Surtout pas trop de zèle
?)

Vivvie’s boots leave strands of straw behind and tread mud into the striped white of the zebra skin. Adela does her best not to notice but her sensibilities are hurt.

Vivvie goes straight to the drinks cabinet and pours herself a large whisky, ignoring her mother. She is behaving rudely, reverting to teenager behaviour; albeit teenager is not a term to come into use for another forty years, when fifteen-to-twenty-year-olds with money to spare were recognised by advertisers as an identifiable consumer group.

‘Such wonderful news, darling,’ says Adela. ‘You and Sherwyn Sexton. But what a delightful surprise, my dear!’

‘Father phoned you?’

‘He did. Apparently Sherwyn – I suppose we must call him Sherwyn – asked permission for your hand in marriage. What a delightful lad – so old fashioned!’

‘That was quick,’ says Vivvie. ‘He didn’t waste much time. And Father said yes?’

‘He asked him to Sunday lunch.’

‘Oh dear,’ says Vivvie. ‘That’s a pity. Overcooked beef, soggy roast potatoes, flat Yorkshire pudding and disgusting trifle. Sherwyn is accustomed to Rules and The Ivy. I don’t want him changing his mind. I suppose we don’t have time to fire Cook?’

‘No,’ says Adela, flatly. And then, because in spite of all, she loves her daughter, ‘Vivvie, I suppose you know what you’re doing?’

‘I wouldn’t have proposed to him if I didn’t,’ says Vivvie, who has this unfortunate compulsion to tell the truth, if only because she can’t be bothered to look for a polite lie. ‘I just didn’t know if it would work. But he must have gone straight down and asked Father. I needn’t have worried. But Greystokes said I’d done the right thing, Greystokes always knows.’

‘I do wish you’d stop this Greystokes nonsense,’ says Adela, goaded. ‘Greystokes is a horse. And I wish you’d wipe your boots before coming in from the stables. It’s been raining.’

So much for the touching scene she has envisaged, but to which perhaps, she realises, only the mothers of beautiful daughters are entitled.

‘Let Lily brush it up,’ says her daughter. ‘It’s what she’s paid for.’

Intolerably Grand

Vivvie can be intolerably grand. Adela marvels: a royal blood line seems to control so many of her daughter’s sentiments, albeit housed in the body of a rough Alpine guide. Lily’s the maid of all work, one of a staff of three. Lily, the cook, and an outside man: all of them live out, not in, which is something. The unspoken fear amongst the Upstairs classes was that Downstairs would creep up in the middle of the night and kill them in their beds. It did happen from time to time. But we’re in 1922 now, and though the servant problem is worse than ever, at least it’s easier to get menials to live out than live in, so it’s safer. At the best of times Adela has never quite had the knack of keeping hers in control. Servants have always been a bother. When it comes to it she’d actually rather make a bed herself than have to instruct other people in how it’s properly done. It’s a matter of principle. She is, after all, like Jeremy, a socialist: she respects the proletariat. Besides, once servants were silent and shrinking (if murderous) when master and mistress passed by. Now they demand conversation, care and concern. They poke and pry and are as likely to despise you as to love you, and can be worryingly quick to take offence. If Lily is asked to clean up unnecessary mud she will probably do so. But she is bound to scowl; and look cross; best now to placate, not aggravate.

‘Sherwyn Sexton is certainly a very good-looking young man,’ Adela says cautiously. ‘I met him briefly at your father’s investiture party. The one you refused to go to, because you didn’t like your dress. The Coco Chanel one with the bow. The bow was removable, didn’t you realise? And so charming. And now suddenly an engagement! A wedding! Indeed, a wonderful surprise. I had no idea you and he were so close! How did it all happen? Do tell!’

Vivvie, almost deliberately, Adela thinks, shakes her boot so that more mud and straw fall onto the floor and then tips down her whisky in a great gulp, chokes a little and then says with a calm ferocity:

‘We’re not at all close, Mother. Do stop gushing.’

On Having A Difficult Daughter

It is not just her daughter’s looks – or her lack of them – that so bother Adela, but how she can have given birth to someone who is so swift with the truth but so bad at light conversation. Or indeed a person of so much aggressive – how could she put it? – solid physicality? Yes, that’s it. Solidity of body and mind, look at Vivvie now – she has been down at the stables again. Her great grimy hands seize the thick glass of the decanter and pour with no trouble at all, while she, Adela, a snowflake of a person, almost translucent – like an angel, admirers declare – can hardly get her tiny fluttering hands to lift such a thing, nor would it occur to her to pour such a drink for herself. Well, sherry, perhaps, whisky no.

She tries to absorb what her daughter has just said and plays for time.

‘And doesn’t one need more water in one’s whisky than that, darling?’

‘Spoils it,’ says Vivien shortly, as she tips yet more golden liquid down her massive throat.

Vivvie doesn’t sip, she tips. She is trying to annoy. But why? She should be really happy. Even if she did the proposing – an indignity to be driven to such lengths, Adela can see – but the response was positive. Engaged to be married, and after so many disappointments! Now a flake of mud falls off the hem of Vivvie’s skirt onto the brilliant white of the shockingly expensive rug. It springs to Adela’s lips to say ‘
I might be losing a daughter but at least I would gain a rug
’, but she bites back the words. Her daughter is easily hurt and views parental witticisms with mistrust.

Adela loves Vivvie though she has difficulty showing it, as do most mothers of the time. The maternal role was to instruct, chide and feed. The paternal role was to educate: hugging and kissing was frowned on, as were any declarations of love. Maternal embraces were what turned sons into pansies, daughters into trollops. The duty of the parent is to refrain from praise, no matter how naturally it sprang to one’s lips, since it was what made boys self-satisfied and girls vain: better to search for reasons to find fault, so that the child strives harder. Never tell a girl she’s pretty or it will go to her head and she’ll end up on the streets. Never tell a boy he’s clever or he’ll stop trying and end up in the gutter. It is a world away from how we live now.

Anyway...

The Story Continues

‘Vivvie, I wish you every happiness, you know that,’ Adela says. ‘Your father and I will be losing a very precious daughter. Just be sure you are doing the right thing. Such a good-looking young man. Most manly, though perhaps rather short.’

‘Only in comparison to me, Mama,’ says Vivvie. ‘I expect to other people he seems to be within acceptable limits.’

‘And well spoken. St Paul’s, I believe. He must be really very clever.’

‘I could hardly aspire to Eton, Mama. One must be realistic.’

One never knew when Vivvie was being sarcastic, that was the trouble. Adela decides, wrongly, that she is not.

‘My dear girl! ’says Adela. ‘You’re not as bad as all that. You’re a lovely girl and quite a brain box yourself. You should get on well. Like calls to like. Not everyone has the money for Eton, these days. But the main thing is for you to be happy.’

‘Happy?’ repeats Vivvie. ‘Happy? What has happiness to do with anything?’

Adela supposes her daughter knows the facts of life, and what marriage entails, though it’s possible that she doesn’t. Vivien seems to lack the basic curiosity that other girls have. She lives in the country and will have seen the antics of livestock often enough, but it is still possible for a girl not to make the necessary connection between animal and human life. It’s just not the kind of knowledge a refined mother can impart to a daughter without unease and embarrassment. Now is hardly the time to bring the subject up. She could envisage her own naked body next to Sherwyn Sexton’s well enough, but Vivien and Sherwyn together made a comic scene.

‘I just so hope you know what you’re doing, darling.’

‘I have no illusions, if that’s what you mean. Sherwyn is putting up with my looks and nature in favour of my bank balance, and you and Father are anxious to get me out of the house, for fear of my having to live with you for the rest of your lives. Of course you want a wedding! Don’t concern yourself. Courtney and Baum will no doubt look after my financial interests, or rather you will, as usual. Don’t concern yourself. I will not interfere with our existing arrangements, other than perhaps take over Father’s stud farm. At least Sherwyn is not like Father: he knows nothing about horses; and is concerned only with himself, his writing, and his sensual consolations. I hope to leave him alone as I hope he will leave me.’

It was a full half minute before Adela replies. Vivvie downs some more whisky.

Then Adela says: ‘But darling, life can’t be all practicalities and money. Surely there has to be a little love?’

Adela speaks with sincerity and from the heart. She crosses the room and touches her daughter’s large red hand with her own little fingers; she is not quite sure why she does it, other than is this not the flesh of her flesh? Her own creation, however strange, burst from her loins, just as she herself once burst, a sensuous, passionate stranger, into her mother’s chaste and abstemious life?

And as she does it the poor girl’s face puckers and Vivvie explodes into tears and actually howls, and the hundred silver tipped prisms in the four concentric rings which compose the chandelier jangle and clink. When Adela cries she is an angel weeping for the sins of the world, which are far removed. When Vivvie cries she grows bloated and pink, and makes chandeliers rattle. Adela snatches her fingers away. She trusted where she had no business to trust.

‘What love did you ever show me? All you ever wanted is to get rid of the embarrassment of me. Father couldn’t wait, could he? Did he offer Sherwyn money to get me off your hands? Is that how it happened? And you with your “darlings” and “dears” and “do tells”. More love in a day than I’ve had in twenty years.’

‘Vivvie, you are very cruel and unreasonable. What I’d like is for you to go and fetch a dustpan and brush and clear up the mud your boots have left behind. Lily has enough to do as it is.’ At which, after another gulp and a hoot or two at least, Vivien regains her composure and says:

‘I am not your answer to your servant problem, Mama.’

And Adela, floored, thinks: ‘Well, if this Sherwyn Sexton is prepared to take Vivvie on, he has my blessings,’ and hopes that if children result the girls will take after their father. It doesn’t matter so much about boys.

‘And by the way,’ says Vivvie, as she stalks in indignation to the door, and the ceiling chandelier shakes and rattles some more, ‘if I am expected to pay for thatching the stable roof, I think the least Father can do is allow me to ride Greystokes whenever and however I want. And your friend Syrie Maugham is an idiot and ruins everything she touches. Ripple & Co now looks like some vulgar advertising agency, and as for this bloody morning room it’s a joke. Before you spend any more of my money I’d like you to consult me. And I hate this rug.’ And she stomps away to her bedroom.

Things Not Working Properly

This, thinks Adela, puts a new and rather alarming slant on everything. It is dark outside and the temperature is falling. There are scattered drops of rain on the inside of the plate glass window which can only mean it hasn’t been fitted properly. Nothing ever works properly in the morning room. But then it’s where in 1905 they laid to rest the body of her uncle Robert, Earl of Dilberne after his shooting accident – one could hardly expect the room to be cheerful. It’s all very well in the summer to have the mirrored walls which Syrie Maugham so adores, but in the winter all they do is magnify a sense of desolation, surrounding one with the sight of dank lawns and decaying vegetation, not the fecundity of summer and the generosity of nature.

Memories of past litigation assail Adela, the anxious tedium of it all, the obtuseness of countless lawyers, decades of waiting while she and Jeremy fought through the international courts for their child’s inheritance – the child herself seeming quite indifferent to their success or otherwise, only now at this late stage deciding to throw her weight (considerable) about and deciding to interfere in matters she knows nothing about: the art of interior design, for example. And heaven knew what kind of wild card this Sherwyn Sexton is going to turn out to be. What can Jeremy be thinking of? Doesn’t he realise just how vulnerable Vivvie is? How delicate the situation?