Love in a Cold Climate (13 page)

I began to deny that she was either sulky or dull when he said Fanny to me, the first time he ever had, and followed this up with a lot of things which I wanted to listen to very carefully so that I could think them over later on, when I was alone.

Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett shouted at me, from the arms of the Prince of Wales, “Hullo, my sweet! What news of the Bolter? Are you still in love?”

“What’s all this?” said my partner. “Who is that woman? Who is the Bolter? And is it true that you are in love?”

“Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett,” I said. I felt that the time was not yet ripe to begin explaining about the Bolter.

“And how about love?”

“Nothing,” I said, rather pink. “Just a joke.”

“Good. I should like you to be on the verge of love but not yet quite in it. That’s a very nice state of mind, while it lasts.”

But of course I had already dived over that verge and was swimming away in a blue sea of illusion towards, I supposed, the islands of the blest, but really towards domesticity, maternity and the usual lot of womankind.

A holy hush now fell upon the crowd as the Royals prepared to go home, the very grand Royals, serene in the knowledge that they would find the traditional cold roast chicken by their beds, not the pathetic Ma’ams and sinister Sirs who were stuffing away in the supper room as if they were far from sure they would ever see so much food again, nor the gay young Royals who were going to dance until morning with little neat women of the Chaddesley Corbett sort.

“How late they have stayed! What a triumph for Sonia!” I heard Boy saying to his wife.

The dancers divided like the Red Sea, forming a lane of bowing and curtsying subjects, down which Lord and Lady Montdore conducted their guests.

“Sweet of you to say so, Ma’am. Yes, at the next Court. Oh, how kind of you!”

The Montdores came back into the picture gallery, beaming happily and saying, to nobody in particular, “So simple, so easy, pleased with any little thing one can do for them, such wonderful manners, such a memory. Astounding how much they know about India, the Maharajah was amazed.”

They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech was worth noting and proclaiming.

The rest of the evening was spent by me in a happy trance, and I remember no more about the party, as such. I know that I was taken back to the Goring Hotel, where we were all staying, at five o’clock on a fine May morning by Mr. Wincham, who had clearly shown me, by then, that he was not at all averse to my company.

S
O POLLY WAS
now “out” in London society and played her part during the rest of the season, as she had at the ball, with a good enough grace, the performance only lacking vitality and temperament to make it perfect. She did all the things her mother arranged, went to the parties, wore the clothes and made the friends that Lady Montdore thought suitable for her, and never branched out on her own or gave any possible cause for complaint. She certainly did nothing to create an atmosphere of fun, but Lady Montdore was perhaps too much employed herself in that very direction to notice that Polly, though good and acquiescent, never for one moment entered into the spirit of the many entertainments they went to. Lady Montdore enjoyed it all prodigiously, appeared to be satisfied with Polly, and was delighted with the publicity that, as the most important and most beautiful debutante of the year, she was receiving. She was really too busy, in too much of a whirl of society while the season was going on to wonder whether Polly was being a success or not. When it was over, they went to Goodwood, Cowes, and Scotland, where, no doubt, among the mists and heather, she had time to take stock of the situation. They vanished from my life for many weeks.

By the time I saw them again, in the autumn, their relationship was back to what it had been before and they were clearly very much on each other’s nerves. I was now living in London myself, Aunt Emily having taken a little house in St. Leonard’s Terrace for the winter. It was a happy time in my life as presently I became engaged to Alfred Wincham, the same young man whose back view had so much disturbed me at the Montdore ball. During the weeks that preceded my engagement I saw a great deal of Polly.

She would telephone in the morning, “What are you up to, Fanny?”

“Aching,” I would reply, meaning aching with boredom, a malaise from which girls, before national service came to relieve them, were apt to suffer considerably.

“Oh, good. So can I bend you to my will? You can’t think how dull, but if you are aching anyway? Well, then, I’ve got to try on that blue velvet hat at Madame Rita, and go and fetch the gloves from Debenhams—they said they would have them to-day. Yes, but the worst is to come—I couldn’t possibly bend you to have luncheon with my Aunt Edna at Hampton Court and afterwards to sit and chat while I have my hair done? No, forget I said anything so awful—anyway we’ll see. I’ll be round for you in half an hour.”

I was quite pliable. I had nothing whatever to do and very much enjoyed bouncing round London in the big Daimler and watching Polly who, although such a simple character in many ways, was very conscious of being a beauty, as she went about the business which that demands. Although society, at present, had no charm for Polly, she was very much interested in her own appearance, and would never, I think, have given up bothering about it as Lady Patricia had.

So we went to Madame Rita, and I tried on all the hats in the shop while Polly had her fitting, and wondered why it was that hats never seemed to suit me, something to do with my heather-like hair, perhaps, and then we drove down to Hampton Court where
Polly’s old great-aunt, the widow of a general, sat all day dealing out cards to herself as she waited for eternity.

“And yet I don’t believe she aches, you know,” said Polly.

“I’ve noticed,” I said, “that married ladies, and even widows, never do seem to ache. There is something about marriage that seems to stop it for good. I wonder why?”

Polly did not answer. The very mention of the word marriage always shut her up like a clam, it was a thing that had to be remembered in her company.

The afternoon before my engagement was to be announced in the
Times
, Aunt Emily sent me round to Montdore House to tell them the news. It is not at all my nature to be one of those who “drop in.” I like to be invited by people to their houses at a given time, so that when I arrive they are expecting me and have made their dispositions accordingly, but I saw Aunt Emily’s point when she said that, after all Lady Montdore’s kindness to me, and considering that Polly was such a very great friend, I could hardly allow them to become aware of my engagement by reading it casually, in the newspaper.

So round I went, trembling rather. Bullitt, the butler, always frightened me into a fit. He was like Frankenstein’s monster and one had to follow his jerky footsteps as though through some huge museum before arriving at the little green room, the only room in the house which did not seem as if it had been cleared ready for a reception, and in which they always sat. Today, however, the front door was opened by a footman of more human aspect, and, furthermore, he told me the good news that Her Ladyship had not yet come in, but Lady Polly was there alone, so off we trudged and presently discovered her amid the usual five-o’clock paraphernalia of silver kettle on flame, silver tea pot, Crown Derby cups and plates, and enough sugary food to stock a pastrycook’s shop. She was sitting on the arm of a chair reading the
Tatler
.

“Heavenly
Tatler
day,” she said. “It really does help with the aching. I’m in and Linda’s in, but not you this week. Faithful of you
to come. I was just wishing somebody nice would—now we can have our tea.”

I was uncertain how she would take my engagement. I had, in fact, never spoken to her of Alfred since I had begged her to get him asked to the ball. She always seemed so much against young men, or any talk of love. But when I told her the news she was enthusiastic and only reproached me with having been so secretive.

“I remember you made me ask him to the ball,” she said. “But then you never mentioned him again, once.”

“I didn’t dare to talk about it,” I said, “in case—well—it really was of too much importance.”

“Oh, I do understand that. I’m so glad you were longing for it before he asked you. I never believe in the other sort, the ones who have to make up their minds, you know. How lucky you are! Oh, fancy being able to marry the person you love. You don’t know your luck.” Her eyes were full of tears, I saw. “Go on,” she said. “Tell everything.”

I was rather surprised at this show of feeling, so unusual with Polly, but in my selfish state of great new happiness did not pause to consider what it might mean, besides, I was, of course, longing to tell.

“He was terribly nice to me at your ball. I hadn’t a bit expected that he would come to London for it because, for one thing, knee breeches. I knew how he wouldn’t have any, and then he’s so busy always and hates parties, so you can imagine when I saw him I was all excited. Then he asked me to dance, but he danced with old Louisa too and even Aunt Emily, so I thought oh, well, he doesn’t know anybody else, it must be that. So then he took me to supper and said he liked my dress and he hoped I’d go and see him at Oxford, and then he said something which showed he’d remembered a conversation we had had before. You know how encouraging that always is. After that he asked me to Oxford, twice—once he had a luncheon party and once he was alone—but in the holidays he went to Greece. Oxford holidays are terribly long, you know. Not even a postcard, so I thought it was all off. Well, on Thursday
I went to Oxford again and this time he proposed to me and look …” I said, showing a pretty old ring, a garnet set in diamonds.

“Don’t say he had it on him like in
The Making of a Marchioness,”
said Polly.

“Just like, except that it’s not a ruby.”

“Quite the size of a pigeon’s egg, though. You are lucky.”

Lady Montdore now appeared. She bustled in, still wearing her outdoor clothes and seemed unusually mellow.

“Ah! The girls!” she said. “Talking balls, I suppose, as usual! Going to the Gravesend’s tonight, Fanny? Give me some tea, I’m quite dead, such an afternoon with the Grand Duchess, I’ve just dropped her at Kensington Palace. You’d never believe that woman was nearly eighty. She could run us all off our feet, you know, and such a dear, so human, one doesn’t mind what one says to her. We went to Woollands to get some woollens—she does feel the cold. Misses the double windows, so she tells me.”

It must have been rather sad for Lady Montdore (though with her talent for ignoring disagreeable subjects she probably never even realized the fact) that friendship with royal personages only ever began for her when their days of glory were finished. Tsarskoe Selo, the Quirinal, Kotrocheny Palace, Miramar, Laecken and the island of Corfu knew her not, unless among an enormous crowd in the state apartments. If she went to a foreign capital with her husband she would, of course, be invited to official receptions, while foreign rulers who came to London would attend her big parties, but there was no intimacy. These potentates may not have had the sense to keep their power, but they were evidently not too stupid to realize that give Lady Montdore an inch and she would take an ell. As soon as they were exiled, however, they began to see her charm, another kingdom gone always meant a few more royal habitués at Montdore House, and when they were completely down and out, and had got through whatever money they had managed to salt away, she was allowed to act as lady-in-waiting and go with them to Woollands.

Polly handed her a cup of tea and told her my news. The happy afterglow from her royal outing immediately faded and she became intensely disagreeable.

“Engaged?” she said. “Well, I suppose that’s very nice. Alfred what did you say? Who is he? What is that name?”

“He’s a don, at Oxford.”

“Oh, dear, how extraordinary. You don’t want to go and live at Oxford, surely? I should think he had better go into politics and buy a place—I suppose he hasn’t got one, by the way? No, or he wouldn’t be a don, not an English don, at least. In Spain, of course, it’s quite different—dons are somebody there, I believe. Let’s think—yes, why shouldn’t your father give you a place as a wedding present? You’re the only child he’s ever likely to have. I’ll write to him at once—where is he now?”

I said vaguely that I believed in Jamaica, but did not know his address.

“Really, what a family! I’ll find out from the Colonial Office and write by bag, that will be safest. Then this Mr. Thing can settle down and write books. It always gives a man status if he writes a book, Fanny. I advise you to start him off on that immediately.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t much influence with him,” I said, uneasily.

“Oh, well, develop it, dear, quick. No use marrying a man you can’t influence. Just look what I’ve done for Montdore, always seen that he takes an interest, made him accept things (jobs, I mean) and kept him up to the mark, never let him slide back. A wife must always be on the lookout, men are so lazy by nature. For example, Montdore is forever trying to have a little nap in the afternoon, but I won’t hear of it. Once you begin that, I tell him, you are old, and people who are old find themselves losing interest, dropping out of things and then they might as well be dead. Montdore’s only got me to thank if he’s not in the same condition as most of his contemporaries, creeping about the Marlborough Club like dying flies and hardly able to drag themselves as far as the House of Lords. I make Montdore walk down there every day. Now, Fanny dear, the more I
think of it the more it seems to me quite ridiculous for you to go marrying a don. What does Emily say?”