Love in a Cold Climate (29 page)

“Heavens! What does he look like?”

“You ought to know. It seems you were quite alone together after Reading.”

“Well, darling, I only remember a dreadful moustachio’d murderer sitting in a corner. I remember him particularly, because I kept thinking, ‘Oh, the luck of being
one
and not somebody like that.’”

“I expect that was Jock. Sandy and white.”

“That’s it. Oh, so that’s a Boreley, is it? And do you imagine people often make advances to him, in trains?”

“He says you gave him hypnotic stares through your glasses.”

“The thing is he did have rather a pretty tweed on.”

“And then apparently you made him get your suitcase off the rack at Oxford, saying you are not allowed to lift things.”

“No, and nor I am. It was very heavy, not a sign of a porter, as usual. I might have hurt myself. Anyway it was all right because he terribly sweetly got it down for me.

“Yes, and now he’s simply furious that he did. He says you hypnotised him.”

“Oh, poor him, I do so know the feeling.”

‘Whatever had you got in it, Cedric? He says it simply weighed a ton.”

“Complets,”
Cedric said. “And a few small things for my face. I have found a lovely new resting cream, by the way. Very little, really.”

“And now they are all saying, ‘There you are—if he even fixed old Jock, no wonder he has got round the Montdores.’”

“But why on earth should I want to get round the Montdores?”

“Wills and things. Living at Hampton.”

“My dear, come to that, Chèvres-Fontaine is twenty times more beautiful than Hampton.”

“But could you go back there now, Cedric?” I said.

Cedric gave me rather a nasty look and went on, “But in any case, I wish people would understand that there’s never much point in hanging about for wills. It’s just not worth it. I have a friend who used to spend months of every year with an old uncle in the Sarthe so as to stay in his will. It was torture to him, because he knew the person he loved was being unfaithful to him in Paris, and anyhow the Sarthe is utterly lugubrious, you know. But all the same he went pegging away at it. Then what occurs? The uncle dies, my poor friend inherits the house in the Sarthe, and now he feels obliged to live a living death there so as to make himself believe that there was some point after all in having wasted months of his youth in the Sarthe. You see my argument? It’s a vicious circle, and there is nothing vicious about me. The thing is, I love Sonia, that’s why I stay.”

I believed him, really. Cedric lived in the present, it would not be like him to bother about such things as wills. If ever there were a grasshopper, a lily of the field, it was he.

WHEN DAVEY GOT
back from his cruise he rang me up and said he would come over to luncheon and tell me about Polly. I thought Cedric might as well come and hear it at first hand. Davey was always better with an audience even if he did not much like its component parts, so I rang up Hampton, and Cedric accepted to lunch with pleasure, and then said could he possibly stay with me for a night or two?

“Sonia has gone for this orange cure—yes, total starvation, except for orange juice, but don’t mind too much for her, I know she’ll cheat, and Uncle Montdore is in London for the House and I
feel sad, all alone here. I’d love to be with you and to do some serious Oxford sightseeing, which there’s never time for when I’ve got Sonia with me. That will be charming, Fanny, thank you, dear. One o’clock then.”

Alfred was very busy just then and I was delighted to think I should have Cedric’s company for a day or two. I cleared the decks by warning Aunt Sadie that he would be there, and telling my undergraduate friends that I should not be wanting them around for the present.

“Who is that spotty child?” Cedric had once said, when a boy who had been crouching by my fireplace got up and vanished at a look from me.

“I see him as the young Shelley,” I answered, sententiously, no doubt.

“And
I
see him as the young Woodley.”

Davey arrived first.

“Cedric is coming,” I said, “so you mustn’t begin without him.” I could see he was bursting with his news.

“Oh, Cedric—I never come without finding that monster here. He seems to live in your house. What does Alfred think of him?”

“Doubt if he knows him by sight, to tell you the truth. Come and see the baby, Dave.”

“Sorry if I’m late, darlings,” Cedric said, floating in. “One has to drive so slowly in England, because of the walking
Herrschaften
. Why are the English roads always so covered with these tweeded stumpers?”

“They are colonels,” I said. “Don’t French colonels go for walks?”

“Much too ill. They have always lost a leg or two and been terribly gassed. I can see that French wars must have been far bloodier than English ones, though I do know a colonel, in Paris, who walks to the antique shops sometimes.”

“How do they take their exercise?” I asked.

“Quite another way, darling. You haven’t started about Boy, have
you? Oh, how loyal. I was delayed by Sonia, too, on the telephone. She’s in a terrible do.… It seems they’ve had her up for stealing the nurses’ breakfast—well, had her up in front of the principal, who spoke quite cruelly to her, and said that if she does it again, or gets one more bite of illicit food, he’ll give her the sack. Just imagine, no dinner, one orange juice at midnight, and woken up by the smell of kippers. So naturally the poor darling sneaked out and pinched one, and they caught her with it under her dressing gown. I’m glad to say she’d eaten most of it before they got it away from her. The thing is she started off demoralized by finding your name in the visitors’ book, Davey, apparently she gave a scream and said, ‘But he’s a living skeleton, whatever was he doing here?’ and they said you had gone there to put on weight. What’s the idea?”

“The idea,” said Davey, impatiently, “is health. If you are too fat you lose and if you are too thin you gain. I should have thought a child could understand that. But Sonia won’t stick it for a day. No self-discipline.”

“Just like
one,”
said Cedric. “But then what are we to do to get rid of those kilos? Vichy, perhaps?”

“My dear, look at the kilos she’s lost already,” I said. “She’s really so thin, ought she to get any thinner?”

“It’s just that little extra round the hips,” said Cedric. “A jersey and skirt is the test, and she doesn’t look quite right in that yet. And there’s a weeny roll round her ribs. Besides, they say the orange juice clears the skin. Oh, I do hope she sticks it for a few more days, for her own sake, you know. She says another patient told her of a place in the village where you can have Devonshire teas, but I begged her to be careful. After what happened this morning they’re sure to be on the lookout and one more slip may be fatal. What d’you think, Davey?”

“Yes, they’re madly strict,” said Davey. “There’d be no point, otherwise.”

We sat down to our luncheon and begged Davey to begin his story.

“I may as well start by telling you that I don’t think they are at all happy.”

Davey, I knew, was never a one for seeing things through rose-coloured spectacles, but he spoke so definitely and with so grave an emphasis, that I felt I must believe him.

“Oh, Dave, don’t say that. How dreadful!”

Cedric, who, since he did not know and love Polly, was rather indifferent as to whether she was happy or not, said, “Now, Davey dear, you’re going much too fast. New readers begin here. You left your boat …”

“I left my ship at Syracuse, having wired them from Athens that I would be arriving for one night, and they met me on the quay with a village taxi. They have no motor car of their own.”

“Every detail. They were dressed?”

“Polly wore a plain blue-cotton frock and Boy was in shorts.”

“Wouldn’t care to see Boy’s knees,” I said.

“They’re all right,” said Davey, standing up for Boy, as usual.

“Well then, Polly? Beautiful?”

“Less beautiful” (Cedric looked delighted to hear this news) “and peevish. Nothing right for her. Hates living abroad, can’t learn the language, talks Hindustanee to the servants, complains that they steal her stockings …”

“You’re going much too fast, we’re still in the taxi. You can’t skip to stockings like this—how far from Syracuse?”

“About an hour’s drive, and beautiful beyond words—the situation, I mean. The villa is on a southeasterly slope looking over olive trees, umbrella pines and vineyards to the sea—you know, the regular Mediterranean view that you can never get tired of. They’ve taken the house, furnished, from Italians and complain about it ceaselessly. It seems to be on their minds, in fact. I do see that it can’t be very nice in winter—no heating, except open fireplaces which smoke, bath water never hot, none of the windows fit, and so on, you know. Italian houses are always made for the heat, and of
course it can be jolly cold in Sicily. The inside is hideous, all khaki and bog oak, depressing, if you had to be indoors much. But at this time of year it’s ideal, you live on a terrace, roofed-in with vines and bougainvillaea—I never saw such a perfect spot—huge tubs of geraniums everywhere—simply divine.”

“Oh, dear, as I seem to have taken their place in life I do wish we could swop over sometimes,” said Cedric. “I do so love Sicily.”

“I think they’d be all for it,” said Davey. “They struck me as being very homesick. Well, we arrived in time for luncheon and I struggled away with the food (Italian cooking, so oily).”

“What did you talk about?”

“Well, you know, really, it was one long wail from them about how difficult everything is, more expensive than they thought it would be and how the people—village people, I mean—don’t really help but say yes, yes, the whole time and nothing gets done, and how they are supposed to have vegetables out of the garden in return for paying the gardener’s wages but actually they have to buy everything and as they are sure he sells the vegetables in the village they suppose that it’s their own that they buy back again; how when they first came there wasn’t a kettle in the place and the blankets were as hard as boards, and none of the electric-light switches worked and no lamps by the beds—you know, the usual complaints of people who take furnished houses. I’ve heard them a hundred times. After luncheon it got very hot, which Polly doesn’t like, and she went off to her room with everything drawn and I had a session with Boy on the terrace, and then I really saw how the land lay. Well, all I can say is, I know it is wrong, not right, to arouse the sexual instincts of little girls so that they fall madly in love with you, but the fact is, poor old Boy is taking a fearful punishment. You see, he has literally nothing to do from morning to night, except water his geraniums, and you know how bad it is for them to have too much water. Of course they are all leaf as a result, I told him so. He has nobody to talk to, no club, no London Library, no neighbours,
and, of course, above all, no Sonia to keep him on the run. I don’t expect he ever realized what a lot of his time used to be taken up by Sonia. Polly’s no company for him, really. You can see that, and in many ways she seems dreadfully on his nerves. She’s so insular, you know, nothing is right for her, she hates the place, hates the people, even hates the climate. Boy, at least, is very cosmopolitan, speaks beautiful Italian, prepared to be interested in the local folklore, and things like that, but you can’t be interested quite alone and Polly is so discouraging. Everything seems rot to her and she only longs for England.”

“Funny,” I said, “that she should be quite so narrow-mindedly English when you think that she spent five years in India.”

“Oh, my dear child, the butler was grander and the weather was hotter but otherwise there wouldn’t be much to choose between Hampton and Viceroy’s House. If anything, Viceroy’s House was the less cosmopolitan of the two, I should say, and certainly it was no preparation for Sicilian housekeeping. No, she simply loathes it. So there is the poor fellow, shut up month after month with a cross little girl he has known from a baby. Not much cop, you must admit.”

“I thought,” said Cedric, “that he was so fond of dukes? Sicily is full of heavenly dukes, you know.”

“Fairly heavenly, and they’re nearly always away. Anyhow, he doesn’t count them the same as French or English dukes.”

“Well, that’s nonsense, nobody could be grander than Monte Pincio. But if he doesn’t count them (I do see some of the others are a bit unreal), and if he’s got to live abroad, I can’t imagine why he doesn’t choose Paris. Plenty of proper dukes there—fifty, to be exact—Souppes told me so once. You know how they can only talk about each other, in that trade.”

“My dear Cedric, they are very poor—they can’t afford to live in England, let alone Paris. That’s why they are still in Sicily. If it wasn’t for that they’d come home now like a shot. Boy lost money
in the crash last autumn, and he told me that if he hadn’t got a very good let for Silkin they would really be almost penniless. Oh, dear, and when you think how rich Polly would have been …”

“No cruel looks at
one,”
said Cedric. “Fair’s fair, you know.”

“Anyway it’s a shocking business and only shows where dear old sex can land a person. I never saw anybody so pleased as he was when I appeared—like a dog let off a lead. Wanted to hear every single thing that’s been going on. You could just see how lonely and bored he feels, poor chap.”

But I was thinking of Polly. If Boy was bored and lonely, she was not likely to be very happy, either. The success or failure of all human relationships lies in the atmosphere each person is aware of creating for the other. What atmosphere could a disillusioned Polly feel that she was creating for a bored and lonely Boy? Her charm, apart from her beauty, and husbands, we know, get accustomed to the beauty of their wives so that it ceases to strike them at the heart, her charm used to derive from the sphinx-like quality which came from her secret dream of Boy. In the early days of that dream coming true, at Alconleigh, happiness had made her irresistible. But I quite saw that with the riddle solved, and with the happiness dissolved, Polly, without her own little daily round of Madame Rita, Debenhams and the hairdresser to occupy her, and too low in vitality to invent new interests for herself, might easily sink into sulky dumps. She was not at all likely to find consolation in Sicilian folklore, I knew, and probably not, not yet anyhow, in Sicilian noblemen.