Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (22 page)

‘Oh, Philadelphia, come in here a minute. I want to speak to you. Well, darling, Michael has told me your news and I am, I need hardly say, quite delighted. It is far the best thing that could possibly have happened, and we shall be able to announce your engagement at the dance I am giving the day before Bobby goes back to Eton.’

Lady Bobbin had the somewhat unfortunate effect upon both her children of invariably provoking them to argument.

‘But I haven’t any intention of marrying Michael,’ said Philadelphia defiantly. ‘He proposed to me, certainly, but I never accepted him.’

‘Then I hope that you will do so without delay,’ said Lady Bobbin acidly. ‘Michael spoke to me as though it was all settled.’

‘He may have settled it, but I haven’t.’

‘You really are a very silly obstinate little girl. Michael will make you a most ideal husband. Surely you like him, don’t you? What is it you have against him?’

‘Yes, I like him all right, except that I think he’s rather a pompous old thing,’ said Philadelphia, a phrase she had borrowed from Bobby.

‘Nonsense. Michael has a very proper sense of duty, of the responsibilities attached to his position in the world, and I am very glad that he has. You don’t want a sort of clown and buffoon for a husband. And in any case, if you don’t marry him you’ll probably remain an old maid, I should think. I can’t imagine that you will ever find anybody else half so suitable or so nice. And I may as well tell you, Philadelphia, while we are on this subject, that I am not obliged to settle a penny of money on you if you marry without my approval.’

‘All right,’ said Philadelphia sulkily, ‘I’ll think about it.’ She left the room, tearing up Michael’s letter into small pieces as she went.

In the schoolroom she found Paul, whom she had hardly seen all day.

‘Your grandmother was most certainly a genius,’ he said, looking up from the Journal, ‘although in some respects her character was not everything that could have been wished for. But her prose seems to me even to transcend her poetry in literary merit, and her metaphysical conclusions are always faultless. Listen to this now:

‘Funny reading that just now,’ Paul went on, ‘because last night I had just such a dream myself. Would you like to hear it?’

Philadelphia stifled the feeling of acute boredom which comes over those about to hear the dreams of others, and said that she would.

‘Well, it was a very odd dream indeed. You and I and Michael were going down to Brighton for the wedding of the Prince Regent to Mrs. Fitzherbert. We took first-class return tickets. But when we arrived at the Pavilion, where the wedding was to be held, we found that all the people there were French, and dressed in clothes of the time of Louis XIV, and Michael was very much put out by this. He said to me, loudly and angrily, “This is really too much. These people to begin with are not English, most of them don’t know the Regent, even by sight, and they haven’t had the common decency to dress in the proper clothes of the period. Besides, Sheridan isn’t here, and Mrs. Fitzherbert has gone off to the Y.W.C.A. in a rage. I don’t blame her, I must say, but I do feel annoyed that we have been dragged all the way down here, first-class for nothing.” So we all came straight back to London, first-class.

‘Now in the whole of that dream, which was long and quite involved, I was only really impressed by one important fact, which was that we travelled first-class. I woke up with the words “first-class” on my lips, and can still, although the rest of the dream has practically faded from my mind, see most clearly in my imagination the upholstered seats with arms, clean white lace antimacassars and little views of Bath and Wells in our first-class carriage.’

‘Very strange,’ said Philadelphia, burning the pieces of Michael’s letter. Life itself, she thought, as she went upstairs to dress for dinner, was stranger than dreams and far, far more disordered.

‘Jerome,’ said Amabelle.

Jerome looked up from his weekly, rather shamefaced, perusal of
The Tatler
.

‘Yes, Amabelle?’

‘I’ve got some news to tell you.’

‘What’s that, my dear?’

‘I’m going to marry Giles Stanworth.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Jerome, and buried his face in his hands.

‘Amabelle – it isn’t true, is it?’ he said, a minute later; ‘you don’t really mean it, do you?’

‘Yes, you know, it’s quite true. The banns are going to be called tomorrow in the village church – not in this village, because Giles says the parson here is really a papist, but in Hogrush. It’s jolly exciting, don’t you think? We’re being married at the beginning of February, down here. I shall wear a hat, of course, and we both hope that you’ll give me away, darling.’

‘I shall do no such thing.’

‘Then Bobby will have to.’

‘Are you off your head, Amabelle? I really never heard such scandalous nonsense in all my life. Only think of that poor man dragged up to Portman Square, out of his element, wretched, bored –’

‘I don’t think of it for a moment. Giles would never leave his precious farm, not even for me; besides, I shouldn’t ask him to. I’m looking forward to living in the country myself.’

‘My dear, you are being a little bit childish, aren’t you?’

‘No, darling, not in the least. However, I suppose I had better explain the situation to you quite clearly, then perhaps you’ll see my point of view for once. First of all, then, I happen to be very fond of Giles, and I adore his little boy.’

‘If you’re so anxious to be married, why not marry Michael?’

‘Because Michael bores me into fits, and I don’t like being laughed at by my friends and acquaintances. People always laugh when a woman marries someone fifteen years younger than herself, quite right, too.’

‘I don’t understand why you want to marry at all. Aren’t you happy?’

‘If you would listen to me for one single minute –’

‘Oh, all right, go on.’

‘The real point is, old boy, that I am forty-five. You didn’t know that, did you? Still, there it is. Now what happens to women like me, unattached but not unattractive women, when they are over forty-five? It’s very tricky, I can tell you. They gradually begin to get taken up by boys at Oxford, who rather like being seen about with them and all that, but who really regard them as a cross between a fortune-teller, a nanny, and an interesting historical character who has somehow managed to live on until the present day. I’ve seen it happen over and over again, haven’t you, honestly? And at about fifty-five or so people start saying, “How
wonderful
Amabelle looks for her age. Of course she must be well over seventy now, why, when I was a girl she was quite an old woman.” It’s an awful, and, as far as I can see, an inevitable fate, and it seems to me more dignified to retire before it overtakes one.’

‘I think you are wrong,’ said Jerome. ‘You have been feeling depressed, I suppose, and no wonder in this ghastly house, but that is no reason for making such a terrible mistake. You’ll be miserable, bored and miserable living down here always.
Giles Stanworth is very nice, of course, I think he is charming, but what interests have you in common?’

‘The Fluke, for one. You wouldn’t believe how passionately I am interested in the Fluke. There is another fascinating disease called the staggers too, he tells me; horses have that. Then the rotation of crops –’

‘Can’t you be serious for one minute?’ cried Jerome in exasperation. ‘I see nothing to joke about in the fact that you are jeopardizing your whole future happiness for a crazy idea like this. Look here, Amabelle, if you must marry, marry me.’

‘Darling Jerome, you
are
sweet. But what would Mrs. Nickle say?’ Mrs. Nickle had been Jerome’s housekeeper for twenty years. ‘No, no, my dear, that would never do. Besides, strange though it may seem to you, I actually do want to marry Giles; and as nothing that you can say will stop me you might just as well look pleasant and wish me happiness.’

‘I may be dense, but I still don’t see the point in taking this step. It’s no good pretending to me that you are passionately in love with Giles Stanworth, or anything so silly as that.’

‘Actually I am rather in love with him. But that’s neither here nor there. The point, as I’ve told you already, is that I don’t want to be taken up by Oxford undergraduates.’

‘I think you exaggerate the danger of these youths, the modern young man is not quite so importunate as perhaps you may imagine.’

‘No, that’s just it, one wouldn’t mind so much if he were. It’s the maiden aunt relationship that I object to more than anything.’

‘You’re incorrigible, Amabelle.’

‘Pig-headed, you mean. Anyhow, you might wish me luck, old boy.’

‘I do – I do. Oh, how bored you’ll be after about six months of country life.’

‘You said that before, if you remember, when I took this house. Actually I was at first, terribly bored for about a day, but since then I’ve enjoyed myself top-hole.’

‘For a few weeks, yes. You’ve had people to amuse you and so on. But think of months and years on that awful farm.’

‘It isn’t awful at all. It’s a sweet little house. I think I shall adore being a farmer’s wife. I intend to have a still room and make my own face creams out of herbs, and Giles has lent me a book of sillabubs and flummery caudles and all sorts of art and craft food, and did you know before that ye rhubarbe maketh to go to ye privy? I bet you didn’t.’

The news of Amabelle’s engagement spread like wildfire after the banns had been read out in church the following Sunday. Bobby came round in a state of high excitement, and after kissing her repeatedly he said to Major Stanworth:

‘Amabelle has always been in love with me really, of course, and that’s why she’s going to marry you, simply in order to live near Compton Bobbin. Darling, darling, you ought to have seen mummy’s face in church! She said afterwards, “Poor Giles, I must say I never imagined that he would end up by marrying a woman of the demimonde, but I suppose she has got him into her clutches like so many others. It will be a finisher for him.” ’

Major Stanworth got rather red. Although by his own lights he was an exceptionally broadminded man, he never could quite accustom himself to hearing Amabelle’s friends refer in this light-hearted way to her past.

‘You heard what mother said to Auntie Loudie,’ went on the tactless child. ‘You see apparently she found out somehow that I know you quite well, and she was talking it over with Auntie Loudie, who was divine as usual, and said nothing matters for boys in that sort of way, and mother agreed with her more or less, and finally she said, “Anyhow I am told it costs £10,000 to sleep with Mrs. Fortescue, so I suppose it’s all right for Bobby to go over there sometimes.”

‘Your mother can’t know much about the state of the market in these days,’ observed Amabelle drily.

‘However, she said at lunch that she will receive you when you’re married for Giles’ sake, because she always stands by her friends in their misfortunes. It’s one of her boasts, like changing for dinner in the bush – she’s white all through, my mother is. And she’s going to the wedding with the whole hunt, they’ll meet at the church and play “gone to ground” over you on the horn and everything. It will be a riot, won’t it?’

‘Won’t it just?’ said Amabelle delightedly. ‘Will you be able to get away from Eton for it, my sweet?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that. May I be best man? Then they’ll simply have to give me leave.’

‘No, you may not,’ said Giles Stanworth.

‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,’ said Paul. ‘I love you. And if there were anything more to say I should say it, but there isn’t, really.’

‘Oh, isn’t there just,’ said Philadelphia rather tartly, drawing herself to the other end of the sofa and smoothing down her ruffled hair. ‘Personally, I should have thought there was a good deal more that you might have said by now.’

‘That only shows that you don’t love me as much as I love you, my sweet poppet.’

‘Yes, I do. Much more, as a matter of fact.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘For one thing I’ve never loved anybody in my life before.’

‘Nor have I.’

‘What about Marcella then?’

‘Oh, Marcella! She never meant a thing to me, not a thing. I thought she was rather attractive, but as for loving her –’

‘And Susan and Elizabeth and Sheila and Sonia and Rosemary and Joan and Veronica?’

‘Sally’s been talking to you. I think it’s very naughty and horrid of her. I promise you I never cared for any of those girls in the way I care for you. No other woman will ever be the same to me, you’re something quite special in my life, quite apart.’

‘Well, I believe you, darling, though I expect it’s very silly of me to, and you must see it’s a risk I’m taking. In any case, it’s time we began to think of what we’re going to do next.’

‘Darling, don’t be so practical. Everything will be all right in the end, I promise you it will, only don’t hiss.’

‘But I am fussing. Here we’ve been engaged for two whole days, and you’ve done nothing about it except to kiss me on the sofa and tell me lies about other girls you’ve been in love with.’

‘But, my darling, what d’you expect me to do?’

‘I expect you to take steps.’

‘What steps?’

‘Oh, you are maddening.’

‘Yes, but really, what steps? I’m going to marry you, my precious, and that’s taking a big step, I should have thought.’