The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Linda, Louisa, and I were packed into Louisa’s bed, with Bob sitting on the end of it, chatting in whispers. These midnight talks were most strictly forbidden, but it was safer, at Alconleigh, to disobey rules during the early part of the night than at any other time in the twenty-four hours. Uncle Matthew fell asleep practically at the dinner-table. He would then doze in his business-room for an hour or so before dragging himself, in a somnambulist trance, to bed, where he slept the profound sleep of one who has been out of doors all day, until cockcrow the following morning, when he became very much awake. This was the time for his never-ending warfare with the housemaids over wood-ash. The rooms at Alconleigh were heated by wood fires, and Uncle Matthew maintained, rightly, that if these were to function properly, all the ash ought to be left in the fireplaces in a great hot smouldering heap. Every housemaid, however, for some reason (an early training with coal fires probably) was bent on removing this ash altogether. When shakings, imprecations, and being pounced out at by Uncle Matthew in his paisley dressing-gown at 6 a.m., had convinced them that this was not really feasible, they became absolutely determined to remove, by hook or by crook, just a little, a shovelful or so, every morning. I can only suppose they felt that like this they were asserting their personalities.

  The result was guerrilla warfare at its most exciting. Housemaids are notoriously early risers, and can usually count upon three clear hours when a house belongs to them alone. But not at Alconleigh. Uncle Matthew was always, winter and summer alike, out of his bed by 5 a.m., and it was then his habit to wander about, looking like Great Agrippa in his dressing-gown, and drinking endless cups of tea out of a thermos flask, until about seven, when he would have his bath. Breakfast for my uncle, my aunt, family, and guests alike, was sharp at eight, and unpunctuality was not tolerated. Uncle Matthew was no respecter of other people’s early morning sleep, and after five o’clock one could not count on any, for he raged round the house, clanking cups of tea, shouting at his dogs, roaring at the housemaids, cracking the stock whips which he had brought back from Canada on the lawn with a noise greater than gunfire, and all to the accompaniment of Galli-Curci on his gramophone, an abnormally loud one, with an enormous horn, through which would be shrieked ‘Una voce poco fà’ – ‘The Mad Song’ from Lucia – ‘Lo, here the gen-tel lar-ha-hark’ – and so on, played at top speed, thus rendering them even higher and more screeching than they ought to be.

  Nothing reminds me of my childhood days at Alconleigh so much as those songs. Uncle Matthew played them incessantly for years, until the spell was broken when he went all the way to Liverpool to hear Galli-Curci in person. The disillusionment caused by her appearance was so great that the records remained ever after silent, and were replaced by the deepest bass voices that money could buy.

  ‘Fearful the death of the diver must be,

  Walking alone in the de-he-he-he-he-epths of the sea’ or ‘Drake is going West, lads.’

  These were, on the whole, welcomed by the family, as rather less piercing at early dawn.

  ‘Why should she want to be married?’

  ‘It’s not as though she could be in love. She’s forty.’

  Like all the very young we took it for granted that making love is child’s play.

  ‘How old do you suppose he is?’

  ‘Fifty or sixty I guess. Perhaps she thinks it would be nice to be a widow. Weeds, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps she thinks Fanny ought to have a man’s influence.’

  ‘Man’s influence!’ said Louisa. ‘I forsee trouble. Supposing he falls in love with Fanny, that’ll be a pretty kettle of fish, like Somerset and Princess Elizabeth – he’ll be playing rough games and pinching you in bed, see if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Surely not, at his age.’

  ‘Old men love little girls.’

  ‘And little boys,’ said Bob.

  ‘It looks as if Aunt Sadie isn’t going to say anything about it before they come,’ I said.

  ‘There’s nearly a week to go – she may be deciding. She’ll talk it over with Fa. Might be worth listening next time she has a bath. You can, Bob.’

  Christmas Day was spent, as usual at Alconleigh, between alternate bursts of sunshine and showers. I put, as children can, the disturbing news about Aunt Emily out of my mind, and concentrated upon enjoyment. At about six o’clock Linda and I unstuck our sleepy eyes and started on our stockings. Our real presents came later, at breakfast and on the tree, but the stockings were a wonderful hors d’œuvre and full of treasures. Presently Jassy came in and started selling us things out of hers. Jassy only cared about money because she was saving up to run away – she carried her post office book about with her everywhere, and always knew to a farthing what she had got. This was then translated by a miracle of determination as Jassy was very bad at sums, into so many days in a bed-sitting-room.

  ‘How are you getting on, Jassy?’

  ‘My fare to London and a month and two days and an hour and a half in a bed-sitter, with basin and breakfast.’

  Where the other meals would come from was left to the imagination. Jassy studied advertisements of bed-sitters in The Times every morning. The cheapest she had found so far was in Clapham. So eager was she for the cash that would transform her dream into reality, that one could be certain of picking up a few bargains round about Christmas and her birthday. Jassy at this time was aged eight.

  I must admit that my wicked parents turned up trumps at Christmas, and my presents from them were always the envy of the entire household. This year my mother, who was in Paris, sent a gilded birdcage full of stuffed hummingbirds which, when wound up, twittered and hopped about and drank at a fountain. She also sent a fur hat and a gold and topaz bracelet, whose glamour was enhanced by the fact that Aunt Sadie considered them unsuitable for a child, and said so. My father sent a pony and cart, a very smart and beautiful little outfit, which had arrived some days before, and been secreted by Josh in the stables.

  ‘So typical of that damned fool Edward to send it here,’ Uncle Matthew said, ‘and give us all the trouble of getting it to Shenley. And I bet poor old Emily won’t be too pleased. Who on earth is going to look after it?’

  Linda cried with envy. ‘It is unfair,’ she kept saying, ‘that you should have wicked parents and not me.’

  We persuaded Josh to take us for a drive after luncheon. The pony was an angel and the whole thing easily managed by a child, even the harnessing. Linda wore my hat and drove the pony. We got back late for the Tree – the house was already full of tenants and their children; Uncle Matthew, who was struggling into his Father Christmas clothes, roared at us so violently that Linda had to go and cry upstairs, and was not there to collect her own present from him. Uncle Matthew had taken some trouble to get her longed-for dormouse and was greatly put out by this; he roared at everybody in turns, and ground his dentures. There was a legend in the family that he had already ground away four pairs in his rages.

  The evening came to a climax of violence when Matt produced a box of fireworks which my mother had sent him from Paris. On the box they were called pétards. Somebody said to Matt: ‘What do they do?’ to which he replied: ‘Bien, ça pète, quoi?’ This remark, overheard by Uncle Matthew, was rewarded with a first-class hiding, which was actually most unfair, as poor Matt was only repeating what Lucille had said to him earlier in the day. Matt, however, regarded hidings as a sort of natural phenomenon, unconnected with any actions of his own, and submitted to them philosophically enough. I have often wondered since how it was that Aunt Sadie could have chosen Lucille, who was the very acme of vulgarity, to look after her children. We all loved her, she was gay and spirited and read aloud to us without cease, but her language really was extraordinary, and provided dreadful pitfalls for the unwary.

  ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est ce custard, qu’on fout partout?’

  I shall never forget Matt quite innocently making this remark in Fuller�
��s at Oxford, where Uncle Matthew had taken us for a treat. The consequences were awful.

  It never seemed to occur to Uncle Matthew that Matt could not know these words by nature, and that it would really have been more fair to check them at their source.

  4

  I naturally awaited the arrival of Aunt Emily and her future intended with some agitation. She was, after all, my real mother, and, greatly as I might hanker after that glittering evil person who bore me, it was to Aunt Emily that I turned for the solid, sustaining, though on the face of it uninteresting relationship that is provided by motherhood at its best. Our little household at Shenley was calm and happy and afforded an absolute contrast to the agitations and tearing emotions of Alconleigh. It may have been dull, but it was a sheltering harbour, and I was always glad to get back to it. I think I was beginning dimly to realize how much it all centred upon me; the very time-table, with its early luncheon and high tea, was arranged to fit in with my lessons and bedtime. Only during those holidays when I went to Alconleigh did Aunt Emily have any life of her own, and even these breaks were infrequent, as she had an idea that Uncle Matthew and the whole stormy set-up there were bad for my nerves. I may not have been consciously aware of the extent to which Aunt Emily had regulated her existence round mine, but I saw, only too clearly, that the addition of a man to our establishment was going to change everything. Hardly knowing any men outside the family, I imagined them all to be modelled on the lines of Uncle Matthew, or of my own seldom seen, violently emotional papa, either of whom, plunging about in that neat little house, would have been sadly out of place. I was filled with apprehension, almost with horror, and, greatly assisted by the workings of Louisa’s and Linda’s vivid imaginations, had got myself into a real state of nerves. Louisa was now teasing me with The Constant Nymph. She read aloud the last chapters, and soon I was dying at a Brussels boarding-house, in the arms of Aunt Emily’s husband.

  On Wednesday Aunt Emily rang up Aunt Sadie, and they talked for ages. The telephone at Alconleigh was, in those days, situated in a glass cupboard half-way down the brilliantly lighted back passage; there was no extension, and eavesdropping was thus rendered impossible. (In later years it was moved to Uncle Matthew’s business-room, with an extension, after which all privacy was at an end.) When Aunt Sadie returned to the drawing-room she said nothing except: ‘Emily is coming tomorrow on the 3.5. She sends you her love, Fanny.’

  The next day we all went out hunting. The Radletts loved animals, they loved foxes, they risked dreadful beatings in order to unstop their earths, they read and cried and rejoiced over Reynard the Fox, in summer they got up at four to go and see the cubs playing in the pale-green light of the woods; nevertheless, more than anything in the world, they loved hunting. It was in their blood and bones and in my blood and bones, and nothing could eradicate it, though we knew it for a kind of original sin. For three hours that day I forgot everything except my body and my pony’s body; the rushing, the scrambling, the splashing, struggling up the hills, sliding down them again, the tugging, the bucketing, the earth, and the sky. I forgot everything, I could hardly have told you my name. That must be the great hold that hunting has over people, especially stupid people; it enforces an absolute concentration, both mental and physical.

  After three hours Josh took me home. I was never allowed to stay out long or I got tired and would be sick all night. Josh was out on Uncle Matthew’s second horse; at about two o’clock they changed over, and he started home on the lathered, sweating first horse, taking me with him. I came out of my trance, and saw that the day, which had begun with brilliant sunshine, was now cold and dark, threatening rain.

  ‘And where’s her ladyship hunting this year?’ said Josh, as we started on a ten-mile jog along Merlinford road, a sort of hog’s back, more cruelly exposed than any road I have ever known, without a scrap of shelter or windscreen the whole of its fifteen miles. Uncle Matthew would never allow motor cars, either to take us to the meet or to fetch us home; he regarded this habit as despicably soft.

  I knew that Josh meant my mother. He had been with my grandfather when she and her sisters were girls, and my mother was his heroine, he adored her.

  ‘She’s in Paris, Josh.’

  ‘In Paris – what for?’

  ‘I suppose she likes it.’

  ‘Ho,’ said Josh, furiously, and we rode for about half a mile in silence. The rain had begun, a thin cold rain, sweeping over the wide views on each side of the road; we trotted along, the weather in our faces. My back was not strong, and trotting on a side-saddle for any length of time was agony to me. I edged my pony on to the grass, and cantered for a bit, but I knew how much Josh disapproved of this, it was supposed to bring the horses back too hot; walking, on the other hand, chilled them. It had to be jog, jog, back-breaking jog, all the way.

  ‘It’s my opinion,’ said Josh at last, ‘that her ladyship is wasted, downright wasted, every minute of her life that she’s not on a ’oss.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful rider, isn’t she?’

  I had had all this before from Josh, many times, and could never have enough of it.

  ‘There’s no human being like her, that I’ve ever seen,’ said Josh, hissing through his teeth. ‘Hands like velvet, but strong like iron, and her seat – ! Now look at you, jostling about on that saddle, first here, then there – we shall have a sore back tonight, that’s one thing certain we shall.’

  ‘Oh, Josh – trotting. And I’m so tired.’

  ‘Never saw her tired. I’ve seen ’er change ’osses after a ten-mile point, get on to a fresh young five-year-old what hadn’t been out for a week – up like a bird – never know you had ’er foot in your hand, pick up the reins in a jiffy, catch up its head, and off over a post and rails and bucking over the ridge and furrow, sitting like a rock. Now his lordship (he meant Uncle Matthew) he can ride, I don’t say the contrary, but look how he sends his ’osses home, so darned tired they can’t drink their gruel. He can ride all right, but he doesn’t study his ’oss. I never knew your mother bring them home like this, she’d know when they’d had enough, and then heads for home and no looking back. Mind you, his lordship’s a great big man, I don’t say the contrary, rides every bit of sixteen stone, but he has great big ’osses and half kills them, and then who has to stop up with them all night? Me!’

  The rain was pouring down by now. An icy trickle was feeling its way past my left shoulder, and my right boot was slowly filling with water, the pain in my back was like a knife. I felt that I couldn’t bear another moment of this misery, and yet I knew I must bear another five miles, another forty minutes. Josh gave me scornful looks as my back bent more and more double; I could see that he was wondering how it was that I could be my mother’s child.

  ‘Miss Linda,’ he said, ‘takes after her ladyship something wonderful.’

  At last, at last, we were off the Merlinford road, coming down the valley into Alconleigh village, turning up the hill to Alconleigh house, through the lodge gates, up the drive, and into the stable yard. I got stiffly down, gave the pony to one of Josh’s stable boys, and stumped away, walking like an old man. I was nearly at the front door before I remembered, with a sudden leap of my heart, that Aunt Emily would have arrived by now, with HIM. It was quite a minute before I could summon up enough courage to open the front door.

  Sure enough, standing with their backs to the hall fire, were Aunt Sadie, Aunt Emily, and a small, fair, and apparently young man. My immediate impression was that he did not seem at all like a husband. He looked kind and gentle.

  ‘Here is Fanny,’ said my aunts in chorus.

  ‘Darling,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘can I introduce Captain Warbeck?’

  I shook hands in the abrupt graceless way of little girls of fourteen, and thought that he did not seem at all like a captain either.

  ‘Oh, darling, how wet you are. I suppose the others won’t be back for ages – where have you come
from?’

  ‘I left them drawing the spinney by the Old Rose.’

  Then I remembered, being after all a female in the presence of a male, how dreadful I always looked when I got home from hunting, splashed from head to foot, my bowler all askew, my hair a bird’s nest, my stocking a flapping flag, and, muttering something, I made for the back stairs, towards my bath and my rest. After hunting we were kept in bed for at least two hours. Soon Linda returned, even wetter than I had been, and got into bed with me. She, too, had seen the Captain, and agreed that he looked neither like a marrying nor like a military man.

  ‘Can’t see him killing Germans with an entrenching tool,’ she said, scornfully.

  Much as we feared, much as we disapproved of passionately as we sometimes hated Uncle Matthew, he still remained for us a sort of criterion of English manhood; there seemed something not quite right about any man who greatly differed from him.

  ‘I bet Uncle Matthew gives him rat week,’ I said, apprehensive for Aunt Emily’s sake.

  ‘Poor Aunt Emily, perhaps he’ll make her keep him in the stables,’ said Linda with a gust of giggles.

  ‘Still, he looks rather nice to know, and, considering her age, I should think she’s lucky to get anybody.’

  ‘I can’t wait to see him with Fa.’

  However, our expectations of blood and thunder were disappointed, for it was evident at once that Uncle Matthew had taken an enormous fancy to Captain Warbeck. As he never altered his first opinion of people, and as his few favourites could commit nameless crimes without doing wrong in his eyes, Captain Warbeck was, henceforward, on a good wicket with Uncle Matthew.

  ‘He’s such a frightfully clever cove, literary you know, you wouldn’t believe the things he does. He writes books and criticizes pictures, and whacks hell out of the piano, though the pieces he plays aren’t up to much. Still, you can see what it would be like, if he learnt some of the tunes out of the Country Girl, for instance. Nothing would be too difficult for him, you can see that.’