Love in a Cold Climate (4 page)

When bridge was in progress, we would at least be spared the attention of Lady Montdore, who, even when dummy, had eyes for nothing but the cards; but if by chance there should not be a four staying in the house she would make us play racing demon, a game which has always given me an inferiority feeling because I do pant along so slowly.

“Hurry up, Fanny—we’re all waiting for that seven, you know, don’t be so moony, dear.”

She always won at demon by hundreds, never missing a trick. She never missed a detail of one’s appearance, either—the shabby
old pair of indoor shoes, the stockings that did not quite match each other, the tidy frock too short and too tight, grown out of, in fact—it was all chalked up on the score.

That was downstairs. Upstairs was all right, perfectly safe, anyhow, from intrusion, the nursery being occupied by nurses, the schoolroom by governesses and neither being subject to visits from the Montdores who, when they wished to see Polly, sent for her to go to them. But it was rather dull, not nearly as much fun as staying at Alconleigh. No Hons’ cupboard (the Hons was the Radlett secret society and the Hons’ cupboard its headquarters), no talking bawdy, no sallies into the woods to hide the steel traps or to unstop an earth, no nests of baby bats being fed with fountain-pen fillers in secret from the grown-ups, who had absurd ideas about bats, that they were covered with vermin, or got into your hair. Polly was a withdrawn, formal little girl, who went through her day with the sense of ritual, the poise, the absolute submission to etiquette of a Spanish Infanta. You had to love her, she was so beautiful and so friendly, but it was impossible to feel very intimate with her.

She was the exact opposite of the Radletts, who always “told” everything. Polly “told” nothing, and if there were anything to tell it was all bottled up inside her. When Lord Montdore once read us the story of the Snow Queen (I could hardly listen, he put in so much expression) I remember thinking that it must be about Polly and that she surely had a glass splinter in her heart. For what did she love? That was the great puzzle to me. My cousins and I poured out love, we lavished it to right and to left, on each other, on the grown-ups, on a variety of animals and, above all, on the characters (often historical or even fictional) with whom we were
in
love. There was no reticence, and we all knew everything there was to know about each other’s feelings for every other creature, whether real or imaginary. Then there were the shrieks. Shrieks of laughter and happiness and high spirits which always resounded through Alconleigh, except on the rare occasions when there were floods. It was shrieks or floods in that house, usually shrieks. But Polly did not
pour or lavish or shriek, and I never saw her in tears. She was always the same, always charming, sweet and docile, polite, interested in what one said, rather amused by one’s jokes, but all without exuberance, without superlatives, and certainly without any confidences.

Nearly a month then to this visit about which my feelings were so uncertain. All of a sudden, not only not nearly a month but now, to-day, now this minute, and I found myself being whirled through the suburbs of Oxford in a large black Daimler. One mercy, I was alone, and there was a long drive, some twenty miles, in front of me. I knew the road well from my hunting days in that neighbourhood. Perhaps it would go on nearly for ever. Lady Montdore’s writing paper was headed Hampton Place, Oxford, station Twyfold. But Twyfold, with the change and hour’s wait at Oxford which it involved, was only inflicted upon such people as were never likely to be in a position to get their own back on Lady Montdore, anybody for whom she had the slightest regard being met at Oxford. “Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry,” is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

So I fidgetted in my corner, looking out at the deep intense blue dusk of autumn, profoundly wishing that I could be safe back at home or going to Alconleigh or, indeed, anywhere rather than to Hampton. Well-known landmarks kept looming up; it got darker and darker but I could just see the Merlinford road, branching off with a big sign post, and then in a moment, or so it seemed, we were turning in at lodge gates. Horrors! I had arrived.

A
SCRUNCH OF GRAVEL
, the car gently stopped and exactly as it did so the front door opened, casting a panel of light at my feet. Once inside, the butler took charge of me, removed my nutria coat (a coming-out present from Davey), led me through the hall, under the great steep Gothic double staircase up which rushed a hundred steps, halfway to heaven, meeting at a marble group which represented the sorrows of Niobe, through the octagonal ante-chamber, through the green drawing room and the red drawing room into the Long Gallery where, without asking it, he pronounced my name, very loud and clear, and then abandoned me.

The Long Gallery was, as I always remember it being, full of people. There were perhaps twenty or thirty on this occasion, a few very old ones, contemporaries of Lady Montdore, sitting stiffly round a tea table by the fire, while further down the room, glasses instead of cups in their hands, the rest of the party stood watching games of backgammon. Younger than Lady Montdore, they still seemed elderly to me, being about the age of my own mother. They were chattering like starlings in a tree, did not stop their chatter when I came in, when Lady Montdore introduced me to them, merely broke off what they were saying, stared at me for a moment
and went straight on again. However, when she pronounced my name, one of them said,

“Not the Bolter’s daughter?”

I was quite accustomed to hearing my mother referred to as the Bolter, indeed nobody, not even her own sisters, ever called her anything else, so, when Lady Montdore paused with a disapproving look at the speaker, I piped up, “Yes.”

It then seemed as though all the starlings rose in the air and settled on a different tree, and that tree was me.

“The Bolter’s girl?”

“Don’t be funny—how could the Bolter have a grown-up daughter?”

“Veronica, do come here a minute, do you know who this is? She’s the Bolter’s daughter, that’s all.”

“Come and have your tea, Fanny,” said Lady Montdore. She led me to the tea table and the starlings went on with their chatter about my mother in eggy-peggy, a language I happened to know quite well.

“Eggis sheggee reggeally, peggoor sweggeet! I couldn’t be more interested, naturally, when you come to think of it, considering that the very first person the Bolter ever bolted with, was my husband—wasn’t it, Chad? Tiny me got you next, didn’t I, my angel, but not until she had bolted away from you again.”

“I don’t believe it. The Bolter can’t be more than thirty-six. I know she can’t, we used to go to Miss Vacani together, and you used to come, too, Roly—couldn’t remember it better—poker and tongs on the floor for the sword dance and Roly in his tiny kilt. What do you say, darling—can she be more than thirty-six?”

“That’s right. Do the sum, birdbrain. She married at eighteen, eighteen and eighteen are thirty-six. Correct—no?”

“Well, steady on though, how about the nine months?”

“Not nine, darling, nothing like nine, don’t you remember how bogus it all was and how shamingly huge her bouquet had to be, poor sweet? It was the whole point.”

“Careful, Veronica. Really, Veronica always goes too far. Come on, let’s finish the game.…”

I had half an ear on this rivetting conversation, and half on what Lady Montdore was saying. Having given me a characteristic and well-remembered look, up and down, a look which told me what I knew too well, that my tweed skirt bulged behind and why had I no gloves? (why, indeed, left them in the motor no doubt and how would I ever have the courage to ask for them?), said in a most friendly way that I had changed more in five years than Polly had, but that Polly was now much taller than I. How was Aunt Emily? And Davey?

“You’ll have your tea?” she said.

That was where her charm lay. She would suddenly be nice just when it seemed that she was about to go for you tooth and nail; it was the charm of a purring puma. She now sent one of the men off to look for Polly.

“Playing billiards with Boy, I think,” and poured me out a cup of tea.

“And here,” she said, to the company in general, “is Montdore.”

She always called her husband Montdore to those she regarded as her equals, but to borderline cases such as the estate agent or Dr. Simpson he was Lord Montdore, if not His Lordship. I never heard her refer to him as “my husband.” It was all part of the attitude to life that made her so generally un-beloved, a determination to show people what she considered to be their proper place and keep them in it.

The chatter did not continue while Lord Montdore, radiating wonderful oldness, came into the room. It stopped dead, and those who were not already standing up, respectfully did so. He shook hands all round, a suitable word for each in turn.

“And this is my friend Fanny? Quite grown-up now, and do you remember that last time I saw you, we were weeping together over the ‘Little Match Girl’?”

Perfectly untrue, I thought. Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child.
Black Beauty
now …!

He turned to the fire, holding his thin white hands which shook a little to the blaze, while Lady Montdore poured out his tea. There was a long silence in the room. Presently he took a scone, buttered it, put it in his saucer, and turning to another old man said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

They sat down together, talking in low voices, and by degrees the starling chatter broke loose again.

I was beginning to see that there was no occasion to feel alarmed in this company, because, as far as my fellow guests were concerned, I was clearly endowed with protective colouring, their momentary initial interest in me having subsided, I might just as well not have been there at all, and could keep happily to myself and observe their antics. The various house parties for people of my own age that I had been to during the past year had really been much more unnerving, because there I knew that I was expected to play a part, to sing for my supper by being, if possible, amusing. But here, a child once more among all these old people, it was my place to be seen and not heard. Looking round the room, I wondered vaguely which were the young men Lady Montdore had mentioned as being specially invited for Polly and me. They could not yet have arrived, as certainly none of these were the least bit young, all well over thirty, I should have said, and probably all married, though it was impossible to guess which of the couples were husbands and wives, because they all spoke to each other as if they all were, in voices and with endearments which, in the case of my aunts, could only have meant that it was their own husbands they were addressing.

“Have the Sauveterres not arrived yet, Sonia?” said Lord Montdore coming up for another cup of tea.

There was a movement among the women. They turned their heads like dogs who think they hear somebody unwrapping a piece of chocolate.

“Sauveterres? Do you mean Fabrice? Don’t tell me Fabrice is married? I couldn’t be more amazed.”

“No, no, of course not. He’s bringing his mother to stay. She’s an old flame of Montdore’s—I’ve never seen her, and Montdore hasn’t for quite forty years. Of course, we’ve always known Fabrice, and he came to us in India; he’s such fun, a delightful creature. He was very much taken up with the little Ranee of Rawalpur; in fact, they do say her last baby …”

“Sonia …!” said Lord Montdore, quite sharply for him. She took absolutely no notice.

“Dreadful old man the Rajah, I only hope it was. Poor creatures, it’s one baby after another; you can’t help feeling sorry for them, like little birds, you know. I used to go and visit the ones who were kept in purdah and of course they simply worshipped me, it was really touching.”

Lady Patricia Dougdale was announced. I had seen the Dougdales from time to time while the Montdores were abroad because they were neighbours at Alconleigh and although my Uncle Matthew by no means encouraged neighbours it was beyond even his powers to suppress them altogether and prevent them from turning up at the meets, the local point to points, on Oxford platform for the 9.10 and Paddington for the 4.45, or at the Merlinford market. Besides, the Dougdales had brought house parties to Alconleigh for Aunt Sadie’s dances when Louisa and Linda came out and had given Louisa, for a wedding present, an antique pin cushion, curiously heavy because full of lead. The romantic Louisa, making sure it was curiously heavy because full of gold, “Somebody’s savings, don’t you see?” had ripped it open with her nail scissors, only to find the lead, with the result that none of her wedding presents could be shown, for fear of hurting Lady Patricia’s feelings.

Lady Patricia was a perfect example of beauty that is but skin deep. She had once had the same face as Polly, but the fair hair had now gone white and the white skin yellow, so that she looked like a classical statue that has been out in the weather, with a layer of snow on its head, the features smudged and smeared by damp. Aunt Sadie said that she and Boy had been considered the handsomest
couple in London, but of course that must have been years ago; they were old now, fifty or something, and life would soon be over for them. Lady Patricia’s life had been full of sadness and suffering, sadness in her marriage and suffering in her liver. (Of course I am now quoting Davey.) She had been passionately in love with Boy, who was younger than she, for some years before he had married her, which he was supposed to have done because he could not resist the relationship with his esteemed Hampton family. The great sorrow of his life was childlessness, since he had set his heart on a quiverful of little half-Hamptons, and people said that the disappointment had almost unhinged him for a while, but that his niece, Polly, was now beginning to take the place of a daughter, he was so extremely devoted to her.