Love in a Cold Climate (17 page)

I gave it up with some relief, ten minutes at the water’s edge was quite enough in that wind. Jassy was saying, “Look look, they’ve gone,” and there was the Daimler crossing the bridge, Lord Montdore sitting very upright in the back seat, bowing a little from side to side, almost like royalty. They overtook a butcher’s van and I saw him lean forward and give the driver a gracious salute for having got out of the way. Lady Montdore was hardly visible, bundled up in her corner. They had gone, all right.

“Come on, Fanny,” said my cousins, downing tools. “Home, don’t you think? Too cold here,” they shouted at their father, but he was busy cramming a giant chubb in its death throes into his hare pocket and took no notice.

“And now,” said Jassy as we raced up the hill, “for worming it all out of Sadie.”

IT WAS NOT
, in fact, necessary to do any worming, Aunt Sadie was bursting with her news. She was more human and natural with her younger children than she had ever been with the elder ones. Her attitude of awe-inspiring vagueness alternating with sudden fits of severity, which had combined with Uncle Matthew’s rages to drive Louisa and Linda and the boys underground, so that their real lives were led in the Hons’ cupboard, was very much modified with regard to Jassy and Victoria. She was still quite as vague, but never very severe, and far more companionable. She had always been inclined to treat her children as if they were all exactly the same age, and the younger ones were now benefiting from the fact that Louisa and Linda were married women who could be spoken to, and in front of, without reserve.

We found her and Davey in the hall. She was quite pink with interest and, as for Davey, he was looking as much excited as if he had developed some fascinating new symptom.

“Come on,” said the children, question marks all over their faces. “Tell.”

“You’ll never believe it,” said Aunt Sadie, addressing herself to me. “Polly Hampton has informed her poor mother that she is going to marry Boy Dougdale. Her uncle, if you please! Did you ever hear such a thing? The wretched Patricia, not cold in her grave …”

“Well,” said Jassy, aside, “cooling, in this weather …”

“Miserable old man!” Aunt Sadie spoke in tones of deep indignation and was clearly a hundred percent on Lady Montdore’s side. “You see, Davey, how right Matthew has been about him all these years?”

“Oh, poor Boy, he’s not so bad,” Davey said, uncomfortably.

“I don’t see how you can go on standing up for him after this, Davey.”

“But, Sadie,” said Victoria, “how can she marry him if he’s her uncle?”

“Just exactly what I said. But it seems, with an uncle by marriage that you can. Would you believe that anything so disgustingly dreadful could be allowed?”

“I say,” said Jassy. “Come on, Dave.”

“Oh, no, dear, thank you. Marry one of you demons? Not for any money!”

“What a law!” said Aunt Sadie. “Whenever was it passed? Why it’s the end of all family life, a thing like that.”

“Except it’s the beginning for Polly.”

“Who told Lady Montdore?” Of course I was fascinated. This key-piece of the jig-saw made everything quite clear, and now I could not imagine how I could ever have been so stupid as to have missed it.

“Polly told her,” said Aunt Sadie. “It happened like this. They hadn’t seen Boy since the funeral because he caught a bad cold at it and stayed indoors. Sonia got an awful cold there too, and still has it, but he had spoken to Sonia every day on the telephone, as he always does. Well, yesterday they both felt a bit better, and he went over to Hampton with the letters he’d had about poor Patricia, from Infantas and things, and they had a good gloat over them, and then a long discussion about what to put on the tombstone. It seems they more or less settled on, ‘She shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.’”

“Stupid!” said Jassy. “She had grown old already!”

“Old! A few years older than me,” said Davey.

“Well …!” said Jassy.

“That’s enough, miss. Sonia says he seemed terribly low and unhappy, talking about Patricia and what she’d always been to him, and how empty the house seems without her—just what you’d expect after twenty-three years, or something. Miserable old hypocrite! Well, he was supposed to stay for dinner, without dressing, because of his cold. Sonia and Lord Montdore went upstairs to
change, and when Sonia came down again she found Polly, still in her day clothes, sitting on that white rug in front of the fire. She said, ‘What are you doing, Polly? It’s very late. Go up and dress. Where’s Boy, then?’ Polly got up and stretched herself and said, ‘He’s gone home and I’ve got something to tell you. Boy and I are going to be married.’ At first, of course, Sonia didn’t believe it, but Polly never jokes, as you know, and she very soon saw she was in deadly earnest and then she was so furious she went sort of mad—how well I can understand that!—and rushed at Polly and boxed her ears, and Polly gave her a great shove into an armchair and went upstairs. I imagine that Sonia was perfectly hysterical by then. Anyway, she rang for her maid who took her up and put her straight to bed. Meanwhile Polly dressed, came down again and calmly spent the evening with her father without saying a single word about it all to him, merely telling him that Sonia had a headache and wouldn’t dine. So this morning poor Sonia had to tell him. She said it was terrible, because he so adores Polly. Then she tried to ring up Boy, but the wretched coward has gone away, or pretends to have, leaving no address. Did you ever hear such a story?”

I was speechless with interest. Davey said, “Personally, and speaking as an uncle, the one I feel for over all this is the unhappy Boy.”

“Oh, no, Davey, nonsense. Just imagine the Montdores’ feelings—while they were trying to argue her out of it this morning she told them she’d been in love with him since before they went to India, when she was a little girl of fourteen.”

“Yes, very likely, but how do we know he wanted her to be in love with him? If you ask me, I don’t suppose he had the very faintest idea of it.”

“Come now, Davey, little girls of fourteen don’t fall in love without any encouragement.”

“Alas, they do,” said Jassy. “Look at me and Mr. Fosdyke. Not one word, not one kindly glance has he ever thrown me and yet he is the light of my life.”

Mr. Fosdyke was the local M.F.H.

I asked if Lady Montdore had had an inkling of all this before, knowing really quite well that she had not, as everything always came straight out with her and neither Polly nor Boy would have had one moment’s peace.

“Simply no idea at all. It was a complete bolt from the blue. Poor Sonia, we know she has her faults, but I can’t think she has deserved this. She said Boy had always been very kind about taking Polly off her hands when they were in London, to the Royal Academy and so on, and Sonia was pleased because the child never seemed to have anybody to amuse her. Polly wasn’t a satisfactory girl to bring out, you know. I’m very fond of her myself, I always have been, but you could see that Sonia was having a difficult time in many ways. Oh, poor Sonia, I do feel … Now children, will you please go up and wash your fishy hands before tea?”

“This is the very limit. You’re obviously going to say things while we’re away. What about Fanny’s fishy hands then?”

“Fanny’s grown-up, she’ll wash her hands when she feels like it. Off you go.”

When they were safely out of the room, she said, in horror, to Davey and me, “Just imagine, Sonia, who had completely lost control of herself (not that I blame her), sort of hinted to me that Boy had once been her own lover.”

“Darling Sadie, you are such an innocent,” Davey said, laughing. “It’s a famous, famous love affair which everybody except you has known all about for years. I sometimes think your children are right and you don’t know the facts of life.”

“Well, all I can say is, I’m thankful I don’t. How perfectly hateful! Do you think Patricia knew?”

“Of course she did, and she was only too glad of it. Before his affair with Sonia began, Boy used to make Patricia chaperone all the dismal little debutantes that he fancied, and they would sob out broken hearts on her shoulder, and beg her to divorce him. Very
last thing he wanted, naturally. She had a lot of trouble with him, you know.”

“I remember a kitchen maid,” Aunt Sadie said.

“Oh, yes, it was one thing after another before Sonia took him on, but she had some control over him, and Patricia’s life became much easier and more agreeable, until her liver got so bad.”

“All the same,” I said, “we know he still went for little girls, because look at Linda.”

“Did he?” said Aunt Sadie. “I have sometimes wondered. Ugh! What a man! How you can think there’s anything to be said for him, Davey, and how can you pretend he hadn’t the faintest idea Polly was in love with him? If he made up to Linda, of course he must have done the same to her.”

“Well, Linda’s not in love with him, is she? He can’t be expected to guess that because he strokes the hair of a little girl when she’s fourteen she’s going to insist on marrying him when she grows up. Bad luck on a chap, I call it.”

“Davey, you’re hopeless! And if I didn’t know quite well that you’re only teasing me I should be very cross with you.”

“Poor Sonia,” said Davey. “I feel for her, her daughter and her lover at a go.… Well, it often happens, but it can’t ever be very agreeable.”

“I’m sure it’s the daughter she minds,” said Aunt Sadie. “She hardly mentioned Boy. She was moaning and groaning about Polly, so perfectly beautiful, being thrown away like that. I should be just the same. I couldn’t bear it for any of mine.… That old fellow they’ve known all their lives, and it’s worse for her, Polly being the only one.”

“And such a treasure, so much the apple of their eye. Well, the more I see of life the more profoundly thankful I am not to have any children.”

“Between two and six they are perfect,” said my aunt, rather sadly, I thought. “After that, I must say they are a worry, the funny
little things. Then another horror for Sonia is wondering what went on all those years between Polly and Boy. She says last night she couldn’t sleep for thinking of times when Polly pretended to have been to the hairdresser and obviously hadn’t—that sort of thing—she says it’s driving her mad.”

“It needn’t,” I said firmly. “I’m quite sure nothing ever happened. From various things I can remember Polly saying to me I’m quite sure her love for the Lecturer must always have seemed hopeless to her. Polly’s very good, you know, and she was very fond of her aunt.”

“I daresay you’re right, Fanny. Sonia herself said that when she came down and found Polly sitting on the floor she thought at once, ‘The girl looks as if she had been making love,’ and said she’d never seen her look like that before, flushed, her eyes simply huge and a curl of tousled hair hanging over her forehead. She was absolutely struck by her appearance, and then Polly told her …”

I could so well imagine the scene, Polly sitting, it was a very characteristic attitude with her, on the rug, getting up slowly, stretching, and then carelessly and gracefully implanting the cruel banderillas, the first movement of a fight that could only end in death.

“What I guess,” I said, “is that he stroked a bit when she was fourteen and she fell in love then without him having any idea of it. Polly always bottles things up, and I don’t expect anything more happened between them until the other evening.”

“Simply too dreadful,” said Aunt Sadie.

“Anyhow, Boy can’t have expected to get engaged there and then, or he wouldn’t have had all that talk about the Infanta’s letter and the gravestone, would he?” said Davey. “I expect what Fanny says is true.”

“You’ve been telling—it is unfair—Fanny’s hands are still foully fishy.” The children were back, out of breath.

“I do wonder what Uncle Matthew and Lord Montdore talked about in the business-room,” I said. I could not imagine such a tale being unfolded between those two, somehow.

“They topicked,” said Aunt Sadie. “I told Matthew afterwards, I’ve never seen anybody so angry. But I haven’t told you yet what it was that Sonia really came about. She’s sending Polly here for a week or two.”

“No!” we all cried in chorus.

“Oh, the utter fascination!” said Jassy. “But why?”

“Polly wants to come. It was her idea and Sonia can’t endure the sight of her for the present, which I can well understand. I must say I hesitated at first, but I am very fond of that little girl, you know. I really love her, and if she stays at home her mother will have driven her into an elopement within a week. If she comes here we might be able to influence her against this horrible marriage—and I don’t mean you, children. You’ll please try and be tactful for once in your lives.”

“I will be,” said Jassy, earnestly. “It’s dear little Vict you must speak to. There’s no tack in her and, personally, I think it was a great mistake ever to have told her at all—ow—help—help—Sadie, she’s killing me …!”

“I mean both of you,” said Aunt Sadie, calmly, taking no notice whatever of the dog-fight in progress. “You can talk about the chubb at dinner. That ought to be a safe subject.”

“What?” they said, stopping the fight. “She’s not coming today?”

“Yes, she is. After tea.”

“Oh, what a thrill. Do you think the Lecturer will have himself carried into the house dressed up as a sack of wood?”

“They shan’t meet under my roof,” Aunt Sadie said firmly. “I promised Sonia that, but of course I pointed out that I can’t control what Polly does elsewhere. I can only leave that to her own sense of what is in good taste, while she is staying with me.”