The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘How are you, Michael?’ Amabelle was saying. ‘Ring the bell, will you, Paul? How lovely to see you, my dear. I can’t think why, but I imagined you were still abroad. You know Mr Fotheringay, do you?’

  ‘Mr Fisher?’ said Lord Lewes.

  ‘What am I thinking of – Mr Fisher I mean, of course. And Walter and Sally you know, don’t you? And this is the Monteath heiress, Miss Elspeth Paula, who was born at one of my cocktail parties.’

  ‘Indeed she wasn’t,’ cried Sally indignantly.

  ‘Well, more nearly than I care to think about; if that taxi hadn’t come when it did –’

  ‘My dear, she wasn’t born till four in the morning.’

  ‘What a cheesey time,’ said Bobby. ‘Well, darling, we’ve finished our tiny rubber and I think we’d better be going. See you all tomorrow and thanks so much for having us. Come on, Paul, to horse, to horse!’

  ‘Where are you off to, Sally?’

  ‘I think I’d better take baby up to her beddie-bye. Come along then, you sweet precious.’

  ‘I’m going to see Paul on to his horse,’ said Walter, chuckling. ‘It sounds too good to be missed.’

  Amabelle sighed. There was evidently a conspiracy to leave her alone with Lord Lewes.

  ‘You look very well, my dear,’ she said briskly, as the door shut on Walter and Sally. ‘Did you enjoy yourself in Cairo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it all sounded so nice and interesting. I saw photos, in The Sphere, wasn’t it, of a camp stool four thousand years old (or was it four hundred? I’m so bad at figures). Anyway, a very interesting old camp stool that you had found, and I thought how pleased you would be to find a lovely old camp stool like that,’ said Amabelle desperately, making up the fire until it was a sort of burning fiery furnace.

  ‘I shall never enjoy anything, and I shall never have a single moment’s happiness in life until I can persuade you to marry me, Amabelle.’

  ‘Oh dear. I hoped so much – I mean, surely Cairo must be full of lovely girls, isn’t it. One’s always reading about them, anyway. Haven’t you changed your mind at all?’

  ‘How could you imagine such a thing? No, indeed, I thought of you every moment of the day. I dreamt of you every moment of the night. I saw no beautiful girls, or if I did they looked to me like dolls stuffed with sawdust. Occasionally I came across people who knew you, they would mention your name in passing and it would go through me like a red-hot sword; if I saw in some illustrated paper a photograph of you it would make me even more wretched than I was already, and for days. Anything of beauty or of interest became intolerable because you were not there to share it with me. I tell you, you have made life very sad for me, Amabelle.’

  ‘Dear Michael,’ said Amabelle, stifling a yawn.

  Curious, she thought, how some people have this devastating effect of boredom upon one. She had forgotten in three years just how much he did bore her, but the moment he had opened his mouth it had all come back to her in a wave and she was hopelessly, crushingly bored again.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ she said.

  ‘But I haven’t come here to reproach you with that. I am here because I know, I feel quite certain that in your heart, only you won’t admit it, you love me too.’

  Amabelle was startled by this remark. Had she really behaved so badly as to lead him to suppose that this was the case? Or was it just his own vanity? ‘Perhaps you think that because you wish it so much,’ she said kindly.

  ‘It’s true, it must be true, I know it is. Only you are such an angel that you won’t marry me because you think, quite mistakenly, that it would spoil my life, because you are older than I am and because of –’

  ‘My international reputation?’ Amabelle was of an age to think of reputation in these terms; in her young days a woman either had a good reputation or an international reputation, and, modern as she was in many ways, she never could quite rid her mind of these nineteenth-century nuances.

  ‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘I admit that is partly the reason. If I didn’t feel certain that you would soon be very unhappy indeed I suppose I might make the sacrifice of marrying you. But in a short time you would be miserable, your career would be ruined for one thing’ (international reputations and ruined careers went hand-in-hand when Amabelle was young), ‘and besides that it is important for you to have children, and I’m not Sarah, you know, though in many ways a remarkable woman. But don’t you see, Michael dear, that if I were in love with you I shouldn’t consider any of that for five minutes. I’m far too selfish. I’m not in love with you. I like you, I’m fond of you, and we have much in common. All that leads you to suppose that I’m in love with you, so now I must try and make you understand once and for all that I’m not. I’m not. And in any case I’m sick and tired to death of love. You must remember that for years it was my trade, my shop, my profession. Now I’ve retired, left my practice or whatever you like to call it, and I won’t begin all over again. It bores me. I’m not strong enough to face the wear and tear and racket of a new love affair, with all the business of being your wife into the bargain; your relations who would come and see me, rightly as I think, to dissuade me from such a step, the sneers of the newspapers and of my own friends. Why should I be obliged to put up with all these things for something I don’t even want? Because you must see, Michael, that, apart from any other consideration, if I marry you I lose instead of gaining a position. I become neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. In the case of James Fortescue it was quite different; he was an old man of the world when he married me and it was a good bargain for us both. He needed someone to keep his house, amuse his friends and be good company for himself; I needed a home and a name. We were both admirably suited, the best of friends, and, I think, very happy. I certainly was. This case is utterly different; if I married you we should each in our different way lose much of what makes life bearable, but I honestly believe that I should lose more than you would. Anyhow, Michael, I am telling the truth, I swear to you that I am, when I say that nothing would influence me, none of these worldly considerations would prevent me from marrying you tomorrow if I loved you; but I don’t love you. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Is it possible that perhaps now at last you understand me?’

  After making this speech Amabelle fell back on the sofa with a look of utter exhaustion and there was a long silence between them.

  ‘Then what is to become of me?’ said Michael bitterly.

  ‘Oh, my dear, really I don’t know. What does become of people who have been crossed in love? I never have been myself so I can’t say from experience, but I imagine that sooner or later they meet somebody else who attracts them, mentally or physically, et violà! L’affaire est morte, vive l’affaire. In your case let’s hope it will be some nice, pretty girl who will make you very, very happy.’

  ‘If you speak like that,’ said Michael, ‘it only shows that you can’t understand the meaning of true love. Some people are made so that they can only love once in their lives.’

  ‘Nobody is,’ said Amabelle firmly. ‘Unless, of course, they live with the person they love all their lives. Permanent and exclusive affection between married people may be possible, but nobody can remain faithful to a person they never see. As for true love, I didn’t believe in that until I met Walter and Sally, but I am really beginning to be very much afraid that in their case it does exist. Maddening, because it upsets all my theories about life.’

  ‘You promise, then, that you don’t love me at all, and that no argument, no persuasion will ever induce you to marry me?’

  ‘No, Michael, I don’t love you. I never have loved you and I never shall love you, and nothing that you can say or do will ever make me marry you. And I beg you, from the bottom of my heart, if we are to remain friends, that you won’t bring up this subject any more.’

  ‘Very well. I won’t speak of it again. No woman has ever be
en so much loved as I have loved you, none has ever been so cherished and considered as I would have cherished and considered you if you had married me. Let that pass. I promise that I will never mention this subject to you again as long as I live, if you will promise that we can go on being friends?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Michael dear,’ said Amabelle gloomily. It seemed hard that she should have been at such pains to retire from Lewes Park on purpose to avoid this very boring scene, only to find that Michael was staying in the next house to hers.

  ‘Are you staying at Compton Bobbin?’

  ‘I arrived yesterday.’

  ‘How did you find out that I was here?’

  ‘By a fortunate chance. I happened to go for a little stroll before lunch with Bobby, and just as we got on to the Stow Road a large blue Bentley drove past, and Bobby said, “Oh, look, there’s Amabelle’s car.” Not my usual luck, it would have been more like me to have stayed here three weeks without knowing that you were in the neighbourhood at all.’

  Amabelle looked pensively into the fire. She did not and never had possessed a large blue Bentley. She thought out a few pungent observations which might be made to Sir Roderick when he came for his next game of bridge.

  ‘Bobby is a very naughty little boy; he needs a thoroughly good spanking,’ she said.

  ‘It’s really amazing how much he has grown up since I was in England last,’ said Michael. ‘Of course, it is three years, but even so it seems like a conjuring trick. When I left he was a little boy, rather young for his age. Now he is more like a man of thirty.’

  ‘Eton does that for them. Bobby has a peculiar character, I must say. I suppose he is the one complete egotist of this generation. It is very lucky for him, because it means that he will never, in his whole life, know the meaning of the word boredom. He will always be quite happy so long as he is with other people, because it is wildly interesting to him to watch the effect that he is producing, and their reactions to his personality. If they like him, so much the better; if not, there is the entrancing problem of how to make them. Leave him alone and he would collapse, of course; but in company, of whatever description, he is contented and amused, and always will be. Perfect from his point of view, because he will never have to be alone in his whole life presumably, and for the rare occasions when loneliness will be forced upon him he has a certain weapon of self-defence, an absolutely inexhaustible facility for sleeping.’

  ‘Yes, I should think that sums up his character pretty well,’ said Michael, who had taken no great fancy for his cousin. ‘And now that we are on the subject of Bobby, what’s all this mystery about his tutor? Is he Fisher or is he Fotheringay?’

  ‘By the way, yes, I must explain that to you, because it’s all my doing really. His name is Paul Fotheringay, a great friend of mine. He very much wanted to read the journal of Lady Maria Bobbin with a view to writing her life. Your aunt wouldn’t hear of lending it to him, which he very politely asked if she would do, so Bobby and I between us arranged for him to come down here under another name as Bobby’s tutor. You won’t go and muck it all up, now will you, Michael darling?’

  ‘Really, Amabelle, you are a baby. If you can play a trick on anybody you will. Poor Aunt Gloria; what a shame!’

  ‘Honestly, I can’t see any harm in it. In so far as anybody can have an influence over Bobby, Paul’s will only be for the good, and as for the book on Lady Maria’s Life and Works, I think it may be very well done and most amusing.’

  ‘It will certainly be amusing, from what I remember of the journal,’ said Michael, ‘although it will probably be a case of laughing at and not with my poor great-grandmother. Philadelphia has become extraordinarily pretty since I saw her last, by the way.’

  ‘Paul says she is so intelligent. He says she hardly ever speaks but that she has the most “heavenly instincts”. I think he is falling in love with her, you know.’

  Michael looked rather thoughtful on hearing this, and presently took his departure, saying, ‘Good-bye then, my dear, dear friend. Please allow me to come and see you again soon. “Friendship,” Lord Byron said, “is love without its wings,” and that is a very consoling thought for me.’

  When he had gone Amabelle went up to the nursery, where Elspeth Paula was having her evening meal.

  ‘Oh, you cad,’ she said to Sally, ‘how could you have left me like that? You must have seen I didn’t want to be alone with him; you are a monster, Sally darling.’

  ‘It had to be, sooner or later,’ said Sally calmly. ‘Well what happened?’

  ‘Oh, it was all most exhausting, you know, and frightfully dull. The same old arguments over and over again, just like a debate on protection versus free trade, each side knowing exactly what the other will say next and neither having any intention whatever of being convinced. Poor Michael, it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he’d been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can’t bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago.’

  ‘Even boring as he is?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. One never can tell, of course. It was all this nonsense about love that put me off so much. And of course he is a cracking old bore, isn’t he?’

  ‘When I was a girl,’ said Sally, ‘and before I met Walter, you know, I fixed a definite price at which I was willing to overlook boringness. As far as I can remember it was twenty-five thousand pounds a year. However, nothing more than twelve seemed to offer, so I married Walter instead.’

  ‘You have always had such a sensible outlook,’ said Amabelle approvingly. ‘If I had a girl I should say to her, “Marry for love if you can, it won’t last, but it is a very interesting experience and makes a good beginning in life. Later on, when you marry for money, for heaven’s sake let it be big money. There are no other possible reasons for marrying at all.”’

  Michael Lewes walked back through the moonlight to Compton Bobbin in a most curious frame of mind. During his three years’ absence abroad he had persuaded himself that Amabelle really and in her heart of hearts wanted to marry him; at the same time he was convinced that if (too terrible a thought to contemplate) by any unhappy chance he should prove to be wrong and if she should definitely refuse him, in such a manner as to make him feel certain that there was no hope of her ever changing her mind, under those circumstances he would be so very unhappy that he would undoubtedly feel tempted to commit suicide. He had sincerely thought that for him the prospect of life without her would be more than he would be able to bear. And yet now, strangely enough, he felt almost as though a load had been lifted from his shoulders, happier and more light-hearted than for months.

  The truth was that during those three years he had made an imaginary picture of Amabelle in his own mind which had become, the longer he was away from home, the more unlike the real woman; until, on finding himself sitting with her, holding that first interview on which he had built so many hopes, he found himself sitting beside a stranger, and the image of Amabelle in his mind was shattered for ever. The things which he said to her then had little real meaning or conviction behind them. They were speeches which he had been rehearsing to himself for three years, and out of a sort of habit, a sort of loyalty to that self which had invented them, he repeated them to her. It was with no particular feeling, except perhaps that of relief, that he received in reply a final and definite refusal. And now, it seemed that the course of his life was delightfully plain before him. Having left diplomacy, a profession of which he was heartily tired, he would settle down at Lewes Park, take his seat in the House of Lords, and marry some pretty, well-born and delightful girl, someone, in fact, not unlike his cousin, Philadelphia Bobbin. He hummed a little tune as he walked.

  11

  Lady Bobbin was always most particular that the feast of Chri
stmas should be kept by herself, her family and dependents at Compton Bobbin in what she was pleased to call ‘good old-fashioned style’. In her mind, always rather a muddled organ, this entailed a fusion of the Christmas customs brought to his adopted country by the late Prince Consort with those which have been invented by the modern Roman Catholic school of Sussex Humorists in a desperate attempt to revive what they suppose to have been the merrieness of England as it was before she came to be ruled by sour Protestants. And this was odd, because Germans and Roman Catholics were ordinarily regarded by Lady Bobbin with wild abhorrence. Nothing, however, could deter her from being an ardent and convinced Merrie Englander. The maypole on the village green, or more usually, on account of pouring rain, in the village hall; nocturnal expeditions to the local Druid stones to see the sun rise over the Altar Stone, a feat which it was seldom obliging enough to perform; masques in the summer, madrigals in the winter and Morris dances all the year round were organized and led by Lady Bobbin with an energy which might well have been devoted to some better cause. This can be accounted for by the fact of her having a sort of idea that in Merrie England there had been much hunting, no motor cars and that her bugbear, Socialism, was as yet unknown. All of which lent that imaginary period every attribute, in her eyes, of perfection.

  But although each season of the year had its own merrie little rite it was at Christmas time that Lady Bobbin and her disciples in the neighbourhood really came into their own, the activities which she promoted during the rest of the year merely paving the way for an orgy of merrieness at Yule. Her first step in this direction was annually to summon at least thirty of the vast clan of Bobbin relations to spend the feast beneath their ancestral roof, and of these nearly twenty would, as a rule, find it convenient to obey. The remainder, even if their absence in Araby or Fair Kashmir rendered it palpably unlikely that they should accept, were always sent their invitation just the same. This was called Decent Family Feeling. Having gathered together all those of her late husband’s relations who were available to come (her own had mostly died young from the rigours of tea planting in the Torrid Zone) she would then proceed to arrange for them to have a jolly Christmas. In this she was greatly helped by her brother-in-law, Lord Leamington Spa, who was also a fervent Merrie Englander, although, poor man, having been banished by poverty from his country estates and obliged to live all the year round in Eaton Square, he had but little scope for his activities in this direction. Those who should have been Lady Bobbin’s prop and mainstay at such a time, her own children, regarded the whole thing with a sort of mirthful disgust very injurious to her feelings. Nothing, however, could deter her from her purpose, and every year at Compton Bobbin the German and the Sussex customs were made to play their appointed parts. Thus the Christmas Tree, Christmas stockings and other activities of Santa Claus, and the exchange through the post of endless cards and calendars (German); the mistletoe and holly decorations, the turkeys, the boar’s head, and a succession of carol singers and mummers (Sussex Roman Catholic); and the unlimited opportunity to over-eat on every sort of unwholesome food washed down with honest beer, which forms the groundwork for both schools of thought, combined to provide the ingredients of Lady Bobbin’s Christmas Pudding.