The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  This contretemps postponed but did not avert Lady Bobbin’s furious upbraiding of Bobby and Philadelphia, who, having disappeared at the first dance on the programme, had never been seen again mingling with their guests.

  ‘I know it’s all Louisa’s fault,’ she said angrily, ‘and I’m damned if I’ll go on having that woman to the house. I’m sick and tired of her rudeness, and as for that little— Héloïse, I’d much sooner neither of you had any more to do with her.’

  Paul and Philadelphia parted the next day with tears and promises of eternal fidelity. Their farewells were rendered slightly more bearable than they would otherwise have been by the fact that Aunt Loudie, having given them the only moral support they had as yet received, had promised that she would invite Philadelphia to stay in London as soon as she herself should return from Switzerland.

  ‘See you very soon, my darling,’ said Paul, as they stood on Woodford platform waiting for his train.

  ‘Yes, darling. And mind you write to me.’

  ‘Of course I will, every day. And mind you do, too. Take care of yourself, my precious, and don’t worry too much. Everything will come all right in the end, you’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Philadelphia, miserably.

  ‘Now come on,’ said Bobby impatiently as the train came to a standstill, ‘jump in, Paul – good-bye, Delphie, come and see me at Eton some time, old girl. Don’t let them forget to send on my letters and parcels. Good-bye – good-bye.’

  To Philadelphia, left alone on the cold, wet and empty platform, it seemed as though all happiness had come to an end. She cried so much that she could hardly see to drive her car home.

  Paul and Bobby lounged luxuriously in their first-class carriage (it was one of Bobby’s talents that he could always travel first-class on a third-class ticket), and argued as to whether they should lunch at the Ritz or the Berkeley, and what film they should go to afterwards. At Oxford they got out and bought all the illustrated papers. Paul felt agreeably sentimental and wretched, but he was glad, on the whole, to be going back to London. The only drawback was that he had promised Philadelphia to look for work, a pastime that he detested, and worse still, to do work if he found it. Much would he have preferred to settle down in a desultory manner to his life of Lady Maria Bobbin. However, he put these unpleasant thoughts from him without any difficulty and was soon deep in perusal of the Tatler.

  Philadelphia wandered about Compton Bobbin like a lost soul. She could find no comfort in her situation. It was typical, she thought again, of the malignant spirit which apparently controlled her destiny to cram just one month of her life with fascinating people and events, only to remove them all in a single day, leaving in their place a few memories to make everything seem flatter, more dreary than before. Paul had gone, Sally and Walter had gone for ever, Amabelle would not, it appeared, be back before Easter – her plans for a country wedding had been altered; she now intended to get married quietly in London as soon as the lambing season should be over and go to her villa on the Riviera for the honeymoon.

  Philadelphia found herself once more without any occupation or interests, and for the rest of that day she sat before the fire in an arm-chair, assailed by the ghastly boredom only known to those who live in the country but have no love for country pursuits, and no intellectual resources on which they can fall back. And in the clutches of that boredom, too boring even to describe, she remained during the weeks to come. She would get up in the morning as late as she dared, and read the papers over and over again, hoping to pass the time until luncheon. In the afternoon she would go for a little walk, and when she came in from that would sit or wander aimlessly about the house, waiting for tea. After tea she would perhaps try to read some improving work suggested to her by Michael, or, more often, play canfield on the schoolroom table (if this comes out it means that he loves me and I shall marry him) until it was time to have her bath and change for dinner. The evenings were occupied with wireless, to which Lady Bobbin was devoted. And so the days dragged on, from one meal to the next. Poor Philadelphia hardly employed the best methods with which to fight depression, but it is difficult to know, under the circumstances, what else she could have done. Her education had not fitted her for study, and in any case, like most women, she was only really interested in personalities. When she received a letter from Paul it would colour a whole day, and she would spend hours reading, re-reading and answering it; but he wrote at the most irregular intervals. Like most people who write for a living he hated writing letters, and moreover seldom had any notepaper in his lodgings.

  Michael, on the other hand, wrote from his bed of jaundice nearly every day. Although his letters were, in tone, more those of a father than a lover, he evidently quite regarded himself as engaged to Philadelphia, and she was too indolent, and too much afraid of bringing matters to a climax to disillusion him. Besides, she rather enjoyed receiving and answering his letters, Lady Bobbin also assumed that the engagement was to be announced as soon as Michael recovered.

  Meanwhile, Paul was leading his usual happy-go-lucky existence in London. He obtained, without much difficulty, a ‘job’ in his uncle’s office. The uncle having flatly refused to give him work, was quite glad to let him sit for a few hours every day in the office, at a pound a week, so that he might obtain that background of respectability which was to prove such a valuable factor in influencing Lady Bobbin. He still loved Philadelphia very much, and wanted nothing more than to marry her, but he felt that since several months must now elapse before it would be in any way feasible to ask her mother’s consent, he might as well pass those months as pleasantly as he could. With this end in view he went, a few days after his arrival in London, to a fancy-dress party given in a tiny flat off the Brompton Road. On entering the room, which was a seething mass of travesty, the togas of ancient Rome and the beards of Elizabethan England rubbing against the talc wings of modern fairyland, he was immediately greeted with cries of enthusiasm by Marcella Bracket.

  ‘Here’s darling Paul. Oh, how cross I am with you. Where have you been all this time? I’ve done nothing but ring you up for weeks. You might have sent me a Christmas card, you ogre.’

  Paul tried to ignore the girl, he really tried hard. Nevertheless, before the night was over he had abjectly apologized for his neglect of her during the past month, and had finally found himself with her in his arms, her large painted mouth pressed to his as of yore.

  The next day he woke up with a bad headache and a worse conscience.

  ‘This is really terrible,’ he thought, ‘I must pull myself together. How can I, how can I be behaving in this caddish manner whilst poor little Philadelphia is shut up in that dreary house with no one to speak to but Lady Bobbin, and she out hunting all day. It is beginning to look as if Amabelle were right in saying that I have no talent for true love. I am evidently incapable of being faithful to one person. All the same, I do love Philadelphia far, far the best, although Marcella seems to have this extraordinary effect on me.’

  And he resolved never to see Marcella again. That determined young woman, however, was not easily to be put off. She had just suffered a serious reverse in her own love affairs, and it suited her very well to have Paul hanging around her once more. Paul, on the other hand, lonely, worried and very much attracted by Marcella, did not require a great deal of encouragement, and at the end of a fortnight they were inseparable.

  21

  As soon as Michael was allowed to move again he returned by train to Compton Bobbin to arrange about his wedding. No doubts whatever had crossed his mind as to Philadelphia’s attitude towards him, and he travelled as far as London with perfect serenity. On his way through London he took the opportunity to lunch with Amabelle, and she immediately put him in possession of all the facts with regard to Paul and Philadelphia, once more giving it as her opinion that the whole affair was a piece of childish nonsense.

  ‘Everything will be quite all right,’ s
he said, ‘if you do as I tell you. First of all, you’d better go round to Cartier this afternoon and buy her a lovely ring and some other little present as well, one of those diamond bracelets for instance. I should give her the bracelet when you arrive, but keep the ring for a day or two to give her when she has been really nice to you – it will seem more romantic like that. Be very sweet and sympathetic, of course, but perfectly firm, make her feel she is definitely engaged to you; and if by any chance she should mention Paul, take up the attitude of being surprised and pained but ready to forgive just this once. I should try to keep off the subject for as long as you can, though. I think you will find that, what with the boredom of her present existence and her fear of you (she regards you with a good deal of wholesome awe, you know), she will be beside you on the altar steps in no time. That’s what you really do want, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Michael, adding uncertainly: ‘Poor child, I only hope I shall be able to make her happy. You know, Amabelle, that it is you who will always be the love of my life, don’t you?’

  ‘Nonsense, my dear, of course you’ll make her happy. You two are cut out for each other, obviously. As for Paul, I’m very fond of him myself, but all the same I feel perfectly certain that she would be wretched with him; he has far too weak a character to marry a girl of her sort. He needs something really hard-boiled. Why, at this very moment he is having an affair with that awful Marcella Bracket, whom he actually dislikes – I’ve no patience with him sometimes, I must say.’

  Michael looked very much relieved. ‘Then he’s not in love with Philadelphia at all?’

  ‘I tell you the whole thing is nonsense from beginning to end, and it’s the greatest mercy that you are about again and can put a stop to it. All the same, I believe that in his queer way he does love Philadelphia, only he hasn’t the strength of mind to get rid of the Bracket. Now, Michael, dear, you must be off. My last words to you are be firm and don’t forget the diamond bracelet. It ought to work wonders for you.’

  Michael followed this advice to the letter. Immediately on leaving Portman Square, he went to Cartier, where he bought a large and beautiful emerald ring and a diamond bracelet of magnificent proportions. With these in his pocket he caught the 4.45 from Paddington, arriving at Compton Bobbin just in time to dress for dinner.

  He was met by his Aunt Gloria with the news that Philadelphia had gone to bed with a headache.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I think I will go up and see her for a moment,’ and before Lady Bobbin, gratified but somewhat scandalized at such haste, had time to utter a half-hearted protest, he had run up the stairs and was knocking at Philadelphia’s bedroom door.

  It would be idle to pretend that Philadelphia was not pleased to see him. The boredom and depression of the last few weeks had been such that she was ready to welcome with delight any new face, anybody from the outer world. With the greatest reluctance she had forced herself to avoid him by pretending to be ill, feeling in some obscure way that loyalty to Paul demanded this gesture, and when Michael came up to see her immediately on his arrival she was more touched and pleased than she cared to admit.

  He sat on the edge of her bed and talked of this and that, cheerfully and without embarrassment, looking most attractively pale and thin from his recent illness. Presently, having made no mention whatever of an engagement, he said: ‘Now I must have my bath, or I shall be late for Aunt Gloria, and you ought to go to sleep if you’re not very well, so I will say good night. But first of all put out your hand and shut your eyes, darling.’ Philadelphia did so, and he snapped the diamond bracelet on to her wrist.

  The diamond is a stone possessed for the female mind, however unsophisticated, of curious psychological attributes. Philadelphia looked at the sparkling flowers on her wrist and forgot that she had been about to announce her betrothal to another. She flung her arms round Michael’s neck in an access of childlike pleasure and cried: ‘Oh, the lovely bracelet. Thank you, thank you, darling Michael. You are sweet to me.’

  Amabelle’s love potion had done its work for the moment. Its effect, however, wore off sadly during the night, and the next morning, very early, at about six o’clock, Philadelphia woke up tormented with agonies of self-reproach.

  ‘Paul, my darling, darling Paul,’ she wept into her pillow. ‘I won’t lose you; they shan’t bribe me like this. I will never give you up, never, as long as I live.’ She flung the offending bracelet, which gleamed beneath her bedside lamp, into the farthest corner of the room, sobbing bitterly. After a while she pulled herself together and began to consider her position. The idea had come to her that if she should stay any longer at Compton Bobbin now that Michael had arrived, she would inevitably find herself engaged to him. She knew that she was too weak to offer, alone and unsupported, any real resistance; and she dreaded beyond words the idea of those frightful scenes with her mother which would certainly ensue if she did. If she was ever to escape, now and now only, was the time. It would be her last opportunity. She must go, at once, to Paul.

  Having taken this decision she began very quickly to dress. Better leave the house before anybody was about. She slipped downstairs, feeling like an escaping criminal, took the key of the garage from the hall table, climbed out of the schoolroom window into the cold, dark morning air, and by seven o’clock was well on the road to London in her little car. She would be in time to have breakfast with Paul before he left for his office. Poor darling, how he must hate working in such a place; it was wonderful to think of him doing it for her sake. Everything would be all right when she was with him, and she would be safe again. The idea of seeing him so soon filled her with nervous excitement.

  Shortly after nine o’clock she drove up to the house in Ebury Street where Paul had rooms. Her heart beat in great thumps as she rang the front door bell. For an eternity there was no answer; at last, however, the door was opened by an elderly woman who held in one hand a bucket of soapy water. She looked at Philadelphia with hostility and said, in reply to her question, ‘Mr Fotheringay has not been called yet.’ Philadelphia hesitated. She felt cold and dazed after her long drive.

  ‘I must see him, though,’ she said at last. ‘It is very important. I am his sister. Please will you show me the way to his room?’

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘Mr Fotheringay is on the first floor, but he gave orders that he was not to be called. You must please yourself,’ she said, and falling to her knees she began scrubbing the linoleum on the floor.

  Philadelphia went upstairs timidly. She knocked several times on the first door that she came to, and finally, receiving no answer, she turned the handle and walked in. The room was evidently a sitting-room, and at first sight seemed to be empty, although the electric light was burning. Suddenly, however, it was empty no more, for she realized with a start that Paul himself lay on the sofa, fully dressed.

  In certain emergencies the human brain neglects to register such subsidiary emotions as that of surprise. To Philadelphia, overstrung, hysterical, and worn out by her long and fasting drive, it seemed quite natural that Paul should be lying on his sofa instead of in his bed, that he should still be wearing evening dress at nine o’clock in the morning, and that although he was fast asleep the electric light should be turned on, shining full in his face. A person of more experience might have been prepared for what followed; Philadelphia only felt an overpowering relief that she had found him again. Everything must be all right now, it seemed.

  ‘Paul,’ she said, leaning over him. ‘Darling. Wake up.’

  No answer. No movement. No sound in the room but that of his thick, heavy and regular breathing. She touched him rather shyly on the arm. ‘Please wake up, Paul.’ She shook him gently. She shook him really hard. ‘Paul, don’t be so unkind to me. You must wake up. I’ve come so far to see you. Please, please, my darling.’

  At last he half-opened his eyes, looked at her as though from a great distance, and said in a thick voice
: ‘For God’s sake, leave me alone. I told them not to call me,’ after which he turned over deliberately and once more lay motionless.

  ‘Paul, you must speak to me,’ she cried, shaking now with angry sobs, and losing all self-control she began to hit him on the chest until he opened his eyes again. This time he seemed to recognize her. He took one of her hands in his and said with a great effort, ‘Go away, darling, I’m drunk.’ After that neither tears nor protestations could move him.

  Philadelphia went slowly down the stairs. That was the end. She must get back to Michael, who would never treat her so. She felt sick and faint now, and was blinded by her tears. The woman who had let her in was scrubbing the front door steps. Philadelphia passed her quickly, aware of curious looks, got into her car and drove down the street until she thought she must be out of sight. Then, oblivious of passers-by, she stopped and cried until she could cry no more. After that she began to think of what she should do next. In spite of her unhappiness she realized that to drive home at once in her present condition would be impossible; she must have something to eat first, and a rest. Whom did she know in London? Her Aunt Loudie was in Switzerland, Sally was almost certainly still on the Riviera. Amabelle – she would be kind. She started up the engine of the car and, after getting lost several times, for she did not know her way about London, she found herself at last outside Amabelle’s house. She rang the front door bell; there was no answer. She rang again, and presently a red-faced footman appeared still struggling into his coat.

  ‘Can I see Mrs Fortescue, please?’

  ‘Mrs Fortescue has not been called yet.’

  Philadelphia was trying to decide what she should say next when she found that the door had been rudely shut in her face. Such terrible things had happened to her already that this incident, which on any ordinary occasion would have caused her unspeakable mortification, seemed quite unimportant. She even sat in her car this time without bothering to move on while she considered what her next step should be. Sally was her last remaining hope, if she was back from the Riviera all would be well. She drove to Fitzroy Square. ‘Please, God, let her be there please, please.’ This time the door was opened immediately by a fat and smiling charlady.