Love in a Cold Climate (32 page)

“Say it again.”

“Dense. Nobody would think that you were a hostess to the younger cosmopolitan intellectual set, noted for her brilliant repartee.”

“Do you mean Polly?” I said, light suddenly dawning.

“Very bright of you, dear. Josh was out exercising this morning and he stopped at the Blood Arms for a quick one, and that’s what he heard. So we came dashing over to tell you, Fanny, in sickness and in health. So does one good turn not deserve another, Fanny?”

“Oh, do stop being such a bore,” I said, “and go on telling. When?”

“Any day now. The tenants have gone and the house is being got ready. Lady Patricia’s sheets and things, you know. She’s going to have a baby.”

“Who is, Polly?”

“Well, dear, who do you think? Not Lady Patricia. So that’s what she’s coming back for. So are you admitting that it was handsome of us to come over and tell you?”

“Very handsome,” I said.

“So will you invite us to luncheon one day soon?”

“Any day you like. I’ll make chocolate profiterolles with real cream.”

“And what about closing our eyes with holy dread?”

“Cedric, if that’s what you mean, is in London, but you can close them at Jock Boreley,” I said.

“Oh, Fanny, you brute. Can we go upstairs and see dear little David?”

T
HE WEATHER NOW
became intensely cold, and much snow fell. The newspapers came out every day with horror stories of sheep buried in snowdrifts, of songbirds frozen to the branches on which they perched, of fruit trees hopelessly nipped in the bud, and the situation seemed dreadful to those who, like Mrs. Heathery, believe all they see in print without recourse to past experience. I tried to cheer her up by telling her, what, in fact, proved to be the case, that in a very short time the fields would be covered with sheep, the trees with birds and the barrows with fruit just as usual. But, though the future did not disturb me I found the present most disagreeable, that winter should set in again so late in the spring, at a time when it would not be unreasonable to expect delicious weather, almost summer-like, warm enough to sit out of doors for an hour or two. The sky was overcast with a thick yellow blanket from which an endless pattern of black-and-white snowflakes came swirling down, and this went on day after day. One morning I sat by my window gazing idly at the pattern and thinking idle thoughts, wondering if it would ever be warm again, thinking how like a child’s snowball Christ Church looked through a curtain of flakes, thinking, too, how cold it was going to be at Norma’s that evening
without Lady Montdore to stoke the fire, and how dull without Cedric and his narrow edging of white. Thank goodness, I thought, that I had sold my father’s diamond brooch and installed central heating with the proceeds. Then I began to remember what the house had been like two years before when the workmen were still in it, and how I had looked out through that very same pane of glass, filthy dirty then, and splashed with whitewash, and seen Polly struggling into the wind with her future husband. I half wanted and half did not want Polly in my life again. I was expecting another baby and felt tired, really, not up to much.

Then, suddenly, the whole tempo of the morning completely altered because here in my drawing room, heavily pregnant, beautiful as ever, in a red coat and hat, was Polly, and, of course, all feelings of not wanting her melted away and were forgotten. In my drawing room, too, was the Lecturer, looking old and worn.

When Polly and I had finished hugging and kissing and laughing and saying, “Lovely to see you,” and “Why did you never write?” she said,

“Can I bend you to my will?”

“Oh, yes you can. I’ve got simply nothing to do. I was just looking at the snow.”

“Oh, the heaven of snow,” she said, “and clouds, after all those blue skies. Now the thing is, Fanny, can I bend you until late this afternoon, because Boy has got an utter mass of things to do and I can’t stand about much, as you see. But you must frankly tell me if I shall be in your way, because I can always go to Elliston’s waiting room. The blissful bliss of Elliston after those foreign shops! I nearly cried for happiness when we passed their windows just now—the bags! the cretonnes! The horror of abroad!”

“But that’s wonderful,” I said, “then you’ll both lunch here?”

“Boy has to lunch with someone on business,” said Polly, quickly. “You can go off then, darling, if you like, as Fanny says she can keep me. Don’t bother to wait any more. Then come back for me here when you’ve finished?”

Boy, who had been rubbing his hands together in front of the fire, went off, rather glum, wrapping a scarf round his throat.

“And don’t hurry a bit,” she called after him, opening the door again and shouting down the stairs. “Now, darling Fanny, I want to do one final bend and make you lunch with me at Fullers. Don’t speak! You’re going to say ‘look at the weather,’ aren’t you? but we’ll ring up for a taxi. Fullers! You’ll never know how much I used to long for Dover sole and walnut cake and just this sort of a day in Sicily. Do you remember how we used to go there from Alconleigh when you were getting your house ready? I can’t believe this is the same house, can you? Or that we are the same people, come to that. Except I see you’re the same darling Fanny, just as you were the same when I got back from India. Why is it that I, of all people, keep on having to go abroad? I do think it’s too awful, don’t you?”

“I only went just that once,” I said. “It’s very light, isn’t it?”

“Yes, horrible glare. Just imagine if one had to live there for ever. You know we started off in Spain. And you’ll never believe this, but they are two hours late for every meal—two hours, Fanny—(can we lunch at half past twelve to-day?) so of course by then you’ve stopped feeling hungry and only feel sick. Then, when the food comes, it is all cooked in rancid oil. I can smell it now, it’s on everybody’s hair, too, and to make it more appetizing there are pictures all round you of some dear old bull being tortured to death. They think of literally nothing all day but bulls and the Virgin. Spain was the worst of all, I thought. Of course Boy doesn’t mind abroad a bit, in fact, he seems to like it, and he can talk all those terribly affected languages (darling, Italian! you’d die!) but I truly don’t think I could have borne it much longer. I should have pined away with homesickness. Anyway, here I am.”

“What made you come back?” I said, really wondering how they could afford it, poor as Davey said they were. Silkin was not a big house, but it would require three or four servants.

“Well, you remember my Auntie Edna at Hampton Court? The
good old girl died and left me all her money—not much, but we think we can just afford to live at Silkin. Then Boy is writing a book and he had to come back for that, London Library and Paddington.”

“Paddington?” I said, thinking of the station.

“Duke Muniment room. Then there’s this baby. Fancy, if one had to have a baby abroad, poor little thing, not a cow in the place. All the same, Boy doesn’t much want to settle down here for good. I think he’s still frightened of Mummy, you know. I am a bit, myself—not frightened exactly, but bored at the idea of scenes. But there’s really nothing more she can do to us, is there?”

“I don’t think you need worry about her a bit,” I said. “Your mother has altered completely in the last two years.”

I could not very well say my real thought, which was that Lady Montdore no longer cared a rap for Boy or for Polly, and that she would most likely be quite friendly to them. It all depended upon Cedric’s attitude, everything did, nowadays, as far as she was concerned.

Presently, when we were settled at our table at Fullers, among the fumed oak and the daintiness (“Isn’t everything clean and lovely? Aren’t the waitresses fair? You can’t think how dark the waiters always are, abroad.”) and had ordered our Dover soles, Polly said that now I must tell her all about Cedric.

“Do you remember,” she said, “how you and Linda used to look him up to see if he would do.”

“Well, he wouldn’t have
done,”
I said. “That’s one thing quite certain.”

“So I imagine,” said Polly.

“How much do you know about him?”

I suddenly felt rather guilty at knowing so much myself and hoped that Polly would not think I had gone over to the enemy’s camp. It is so difficult if you are fond of sport to resist running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

“Boy made friends, in Sicily, with an Italian duke called Monte
Pincio. He is writing about a former Pincio in his new book, and this wop knew Cedric in Paris, so he told us a lot about him. He says he is very pretty.”

“Yes, that’s quite true.”

“How pretty, Fan? Prettier than me?”

“No. One doesn’t have to gaze and gaze at him like one does with you.”

“Oh, darling, you are so kind. Not any longer though, I fear.”

“Just exactly the same. But he is very much like you. Didn’t the Duke say that?”

“Yes. He said we were Viola and Sebastian. I must say I die for him.”

“He dies for you, too. We must arrange it.”

“Yes, after the baby—not while I’m such a sight. You know how sissies hate pregnant ladies. Poor Monte would do anything to get out of seeing me, lately. Go on telling more about Cedric and Mummy.”

“I really think he loves your mother, you know. He is such a slave to her, never leaves her for a moment, always in high spirits.… I don’t believe anybody could put it on to that extent, it must be love.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Polly. “I used to love her before she began about the marrying.”

“There!” I said.

“There what?”

“Well, you told me once that you’d hated her all your life, and I knew it wasn’t true.”

“The fact is,” said Polly, “when you hate somebody you can’t imagine what it’s like not hating them. It’s just the same as with love. But of course with Mummy, who is such excellent company, so lively, you do love her before you find out how wicked she can be. And I don’t suppose she’s in all that violent hurry to get Cedric off that she was with me.”

“No hurry,” I said.

Polly’s blank blue look fell upon my face. “You mean she’s in love with him herself?”

“In love? I don’t know. She loves him like anything. He makes such fun for her, you see, her life has become so amusing. Besides, she must know quite well that marriage isn’t his thing exactly, poor Cedric.”

“Oh, no,” said Polly. “Boy agrees with me that she knows nothing, nothing whatever about all that. He says she once made a fearful gaffe about Sodomites, mixing them up with Dolomites. It was all over London. No, I guess she’s in love. She’s a great, great faller in love, you know. I used to think at one time that she rather fancied Boy, though he says not. Well, it’s all very annoying because I suppose she doesn’t miss me one little bit, and I miss her, often. And now tell me, how’s my dad?”

“Very old,” I said. “Very old, and your mother so very young. You must be prepared for quite as much of a shock when you see her as when you see him.”

“No, really? How d’you mean, very young? Dyed hair?”

“Blue. But what one chiefly notices is that she has become so thin and supple, quick little movements, flinging one leg over the other, suddenly sitting on the floor, and so on. Quite like a young person.”

“Good gracious,” said Polly. “And she used to be so very stiff and solid.”

“It’s Mr. Wixman, Cedric’s and her masseur. He pounds and pulls for an hour every morning, then she has another hour in a hay-box—full-time work, you know, what with the creaming and splashing and putting on a mask and taking it off again and having her nails done and her feet and then all the exercises, as well as having her teeth completely re-arranged and the hairs zipped off her arms and legs—I truly don’t think I could be bothered.”

“Operations on her face?”

“Oh, yes, but that was ages ago. All the bags and wrinkles gone, eyebrows plucked, and so on. Her face is very tidy now.”

“Of course it may seem odd here,” said Polly, “but you know there are hundreds and hundreds of women like that abroad. I suppose
she stands on her head and lies in the sun? Yes, they all do. She must be a sight. Scene or no scene, I utterly can’t wait for her, Fanny. When can we arrange it?”

“Not for the moment. They’re in London now, fearfully busy with the Longhi ball they are giving at Montdore House. Cedric came to see me the other day and could talk of nothing else—he says they won’t be going to Hampton again until it’s over.”

“What is a Longhi ball?”

“You know, Venetian. Real water, with real gondolas floating on it, in the ballroom.
O sole mio
on a hundred guitars, all the footmen in masks and capes, no light except from candles in Venetian lanterns until the guests get to the ballroom, when a searchlight will be trained on Cedric and your mother, receiving from a gondola. Fairly different from your ball, Polly. Oh, yes, and I know, Cedric won’t allow any Royalties to be asked at all, because he says they ruin everything, in London. He says they are quite different in Paris where they know their place.”

“Goodness!” said Polly. “How times have changed! Not even old Super-Ma’am?”