Love in a Cold Climate

by Nancy Mitford

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

  Polly did not answer. The very 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 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 paper.

  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, 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 teapot, 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 ske 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 Gravesends’ 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, Schonbrunn, the Quirinal, Kotrocheny Palace, Miramar, Laecken and the island of Corfu had never known her, 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 it was all very formal. Crowned heads may not have had the sense to keep their crowns 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, and another kingdom gone always meant a few more royal habitues at Montdore House; 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 look-out, men are so lazy by nature, for example, Montdore is for ever 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 tar 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?’

  ‘She’s awfully pleased.’

  ‘Emily and Sadie are hopeless. You must ask my advice about this sort of thing, I’m very glad indeed you came round, we must think how we can get you out of it. C
ould you ring him up now and say you’ve changed your mind, I believe it would be kindest in the long run to do it that way.’

  ‘Oh, no, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not, dear? It isn’t in the paper yet’

  ‘It will be tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s where I can be so helpful. I’ll send for Geoffrey Dawson now and have it stopped.’

  I was quite terrified. Please –’ I said, ‘oh, please not I’

  Polly came to my rescue. ‘But she wants to marry him, Mummy, she’s in love, and look at her pretty ring!’

  Lady Montdore looked, and was confirmed in her opposition. ‘That’s not a ruby,’ she said, as if I had been pretending it was. ‘And as for love I should have thought the example of your mother would have taught you something – where has love landed her? Some ghastly white hunter. Love indeed – whoever invented love ought to be shot.’

  ‘Dons aren’t a bit the same as white hunters,’ said Polly. ‘You know how fond Daddy is of them.’

  ‘Oh, I daresay they’re all right for dinner, if you like that sort of thing. Montdore does have them over sometimes, I know, but that’s no reason why they should go marrying people. So unsuitable, megalomania, I call it. So many people have that, nowadays. No, Fanny, I’m very much distressed.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t be,’ I said.

  ‘However, if you say it’s settled, I suppose there’s no more I can do, except to try and help you make a success of it. Montdore can ask the Chief Whip if there’s something for you to nurse, that will be best.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say that what I hoped to be nursing before long would be sent by God and not the Chief Whip, but I restrained myself, nor did I date to tell her that Alfred was not a Tory.

  The conversation now turned upon the subject of my trousseau, about which Lady Montdore was quite as bossy though less embarrassing. I was not feeling much interest in clothes at that time, all my thoughts being of how to decorate and furnish a charming little old house which Alfred had taken me to see after placing the pigeon’s egg on my finger, and which, by a miracle of good luck, was to be let.

  ‘The important thing, dear,’ she said, ‘is to have a really good fur coat, I mean a proper, dark one,’ To Lady Montdore, fur meant mink; she could imagine no other kind except sable, but that would be specified. ‘Not only will it make all the rest of your clothes look better than they are but you really needn’t bother much about anything else as you need never take it off. Above all, don’t go wasting money on underclothes, there is nothing stupider – I always borrow Mont-dore’s myself. Now for evening a diamond brooch is a great help, so long as it has good big stones. Oh, dear, when I think of the diamonds your father gave that woman, it really is too bad. All the same, he can’t have got through everything, he was enormously rich when he succeeded, I must write to him. Now, dear, we’re going to be very practical. No time like the present.’

  She rang for her secretary and said my father’s address must be found out.

  ‘You could ring up the Under Secretary for the Colonies with my compliments, and will you make a note that I will write to Lord Logan tomorrow.’

  She also told her to make a list of places where linen, underclothes, and house furnishings could be obtained at wholesale prices.

  ‘Bring it straight back here for Miss Logan when it is ready.’

  When the secretary had gone, Lady Montdore turned to Polly and spoke to her exactly as if I had gone too, and they were alone. It was a habit she had, and I always found it very embarrassing, as I never quite knew what she expected me to do, whether to interrupt her by saying good-bye, or simply to look out of the window and pretend that my thoughts were far away. On this occasion, however, I was clearly expected to wait for the list of addresses, so I had no choice.

  ‘Now, Polly, have you thought of a young man yet, for me to ask down on the third?’

  ‘Oh, how about John Coningsby?’ said Polly, with an indifference which I could plainly see must be maddening to her mother. Lord Coningsby was her official young man, so to speak. She invited him to everything, and this had greatly pleased Lady Montdore to begin with since he was rich, handsome, agreeable and an ‘eldest son’, which meant in Lady Montdore’s parlance the eldest son of a peer (never let Jones or Robinson major think of themselves for one moment as eldest sons). Too soon, however, she saw that he and Polly were excellent friends and would never be anything else, after which she regretfully lost all interest in him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t count John,’ she said.

  ‘How d’you mean yon don’t count him?’

  ‘He’s only a friend. Now, I was thinking in Woollands – I often do have good ideas in shops – how would it be to ask Joyce Fleetwood.’

  Alas, the days when I, Albert Edward Christian George Andrew Patrick David, was considered to be the only person worthy of taking thee, Leopoldina, must have become indeed remote if Joyce Fleetwood was to be put forward as a substitute. Perhaps it was in Lady Montdore’s mind that, since Polly showed no inclination to marry an established, inherited position, the next best thing would be somebody who might achieve one by his own efforts. Joyce Fleetwood was a noisy, self-opinionated young Conservative M.P. who had mastered one or two of the drearier subjects of debate, agriculture, the Empire, and so on, and was always ready to hold forth upon them in the House. He had made up to Lady Montdore who thought him much cleverer than he really was; his parents were known to her, they had a place in Norfolk.

  ‘Well, Polly?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ said Polly. ‘It’s a shower-bath when he talks, but do let’s, he’s so utterly fascinating, isn’t he?’

  Lady Montdore now lost her temper and her voice got quite out of control. I sympathked with her really, it was too obvious that Polly was wilfully provoking her.

  ‘It’s perfectly stupid to go on like this.’

  Polly did not reply. She bent her head sideways and pretended to be deeply absorbed in the headlines, upside-down, of the evening paper which lay on a chair by her mother. She might just as well have said out loud, ‘All right, you horrible vulgar woman, go on, I don’t care, you are nothing to me,’ so plain was her meaning.

  ‘Please listen when I speak to you, Polly.’

  Polly continued to squint at the headlines.

  ‘Polly, will you please pay attention to what I’m saying?’

  ‘What were you saying? Something about Mr Fleetwood?’

  ‘Let Mr Fleetwood be, for the present. I want to know what, exactly, you are planning to do with your life. Do you intend to live at home and go mooning on like this for ever?’

  ‘What else can I do? You haven’t exactly trained me for a career, have you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed I have. I’ve trained you for marriage which, in my opinion (I may be old-fashioned), is by far the best career open to any woman.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but how can I marry if nobody asks me?’

  Of course, that was really the sore point with Lady Mont-dore, nobody asking her. A Polly gay and flirtatious, surrounded by eligible suitors, playing one off against the others, withdrawing, teasing, desired by married men, breaking up her friends’ romances, Lady Montdore would have been perfectly happy to watch her playing that game for several years if need be, so long as it was quite obvious that she would finally choose some suitably important husband and settle down with him. What her mother minded so dreadfully was that this acknowledged beauty should appear to have no attraction whatever for the male sex. The eldest sons had a look, said, ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ and went off with some chinless little creature from Cadogan Square. There had been three or four engagements of this sort lately which had upset Lady Montdore very much indeed.

  ‘And why don’t they ask you? It’s only because you give them no encouragment. Can’t you try to be a little jollier, nicer with them, no man cares to make love to a dummy, you know, it’s too discouraging.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t want to be made love to.�
��

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! Then what is it you do want?’

  ‘Leave me alone Mother, please.’

  ‘To stay on here, with us, until you are old?’

  ‘Daddy wouldn’t mind a bit.’

  ‘Oh, yes he would, make no mistake about that. Not for a year or two perhaps, but in the end he would. Nobody wants their girl to be hanging about for ever, a sour old maid, and you’ll be the sour kind, that’s too obvious already, my dear, wizened-up and sour.’

  I could hardly believe my ears; could this be Lady Mont-dore speaking, in such frank and dreadful terms, to Polly, her beautiful paragon, whom she used to love so much that she was even reconciled to her being a daughter and not an heir? It seemed to me terrible, I went cold in my very backbone. There was a long and deeply embarrassing silence, broken by Frankenstein’s monster who jerked into the room and said that the King of Portugal was on the telephone. Lady Mont-dore stumped off and I seized the opportunity to escape.

  ‘I hate her,’ said Polly, kissing me good-bye. ‘I hate her, and I wish she were dead. Oh, Fanny, the luck of not being brought up by your own mother – you’ve no idea what a horrible relationship it can be.’

  ‘Poor Polly,’ I said, very much upset. ‘How sad. But when you were little it wasn’t horrible?’

  ‘Always, always horrible. I’ve always hated her from the bottom of my heart.’

  I did not believe it.

  ‘She isn’t like this the whole time?’ I said.

  ‘More and more. Better make a dash for it, love, or you’ll be caught again. I’ll ring up very soon –’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I WAS married at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, and when Alfred and I returned from our honeymoon we went to stay at Alconleigh while our little house in Oxford was being got ready. This was an obvious and convenient arrangement as Alfred could go into Oxford every day for his work, and I was at hand to supervise the decoration of the house, but, although Alconleigh had been a second home to me from my babyhood, it was not without misgivings that I accepted Aunt Sadie’s invitation to take my husband there for a long visit, at the very outset of our married life. My Uncle Matthew’s likes and dislikes were famous for their violence, for the predomination of the latter over the former, and for the fact that he never made the slightest attempt to conceal them from their object; I could see that he was already prejudiced against poor Alfred. It was an accepted feet in the family that he loathed me; furthermore he also hated new people, hated men who married his female relations, hated and despised those who did not practise blood sports. I felt there was but little hope for Alfred, especially as, culmination of horror, ‘the fella reads books’.