The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, heartily. (One could almost see, as in the strip advertisements, a bubble coming out of his head – thinks – ‘You are a most unsatisfactory daughter-in-law, but nobody can say it’s our fault, we always have a welcome and a kind smile for you.’) ‘Car going well, I hope? Tony and Moira have gone out riding, I thought you might have passed them. Isn’t the garden looking grand just now, I can hardly bear to go to London and leave all this beauty with no one to see it. Come for a stroll before lunch – Foster will see to your gear – just ring the front-door bell, Fanny, he may not have heard the car.’

  He led us off into Madame Butterfly-land.

  ‘I must warn you,’ he said, ‘that we have got rather a rough diamond coming to lunch. I don’t know if you’ve ever met old Talbot who lives in the village, the old professor? Well, his son, Christian. He’s by way of being rather a Communist, a clever chap gone all wrong, and a journalist on some daily rag. Tony can’t bear him, never could as a child, and he’s very cross with me for asking him today, but I always think it’s as well to see something of these Left-wing fellows. If people like us are nice to them they can be tamed wonderfully.’

  He said this in the tone of one who might have saved the life of a Communist in the war, and, by this act, turned him, through gratitude, into a true blue Tory. But in the first world war Sir Leicester had considered that, with his superior brain, he would have been wasted as cannon fodder, and had fixed himself in an office in Cairo. He neither saved nor took any lives, nor did he risk his own, but built up many valuable business contacts, became a major and got an O.B.E., thus making the best of all worlds.

  So Christian came to luncheon, and behaved with the utmost intransigence. He was an extraordinarily handsome young man, tall and fair, in a completely different way from that of Tony, thin and very English-looking. His clothes were outrageous – he wore a really old pair of grey flannel trousers, full of little round moth-holes in the most embarrassing places, no coat, and a flannel shirt, one of the sleeves of which had a tattered tear from wrist to elbow.

  ‘Has your father been writing anything lately?’ Lady Kroesig asked, as they sat down to luncheon.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Christian, ‘as it’s his profession. I can’t say I’ve asked him, but one assumes he has, just as one assumes that Tony has been banking something lately.’

  He then planted his elbow, bare through the rent, onto the table between himself and Lady Kroesig and swivelling right round to Linda, who was on his other side, he told her, at length and in immense detail, of a production of Hamlet he had seen lately in Moscow. The cultured Kroesigs listened attentively, throwing off occasional comments calculated to show that they knew Hamlet well – ‘I don’t think that quite fits in with my idea of Ophelia’, or ‘But Polonius was a very old man’, to all of which Christian turned an utterly deaf ear, gobbling his food with one hand, his elbow on the table, his eyes on Linda.

  After luncheon he said to Linda:

  ‘Come back and have tea with my father, you’d like him,’ and they went off together, leaving the Kroesigs to behave for the rest of the afternoon like a lot of hens who have seen a fox.

  Sir Leicester took me to his water-garden, which was full of enormous pink forget-me-nots, and dark-brown irises, and said:

  ‘It is really too bad of Linda, little Moira has been so much looking forward to showing her the ponies. That child idolizes her mother.’

  She didn’t, actually, in the least. She was fond of Tony and quite indifferent to Linda, calm and stolid and not given to idolatry, but it was part of the Kroesigs’ creed that children should idolize their mothers.

  ‘Do you know Pixie Townsend?’ he asked me, suddenly.

  ‘No,’ I said, which was true, nor did I then know anything about her. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s a very delightful person.’ He changed the subject.

  Linda returned just in time to dress for dinner, looking extremely beautiful. She made me come and chat while she had her bath – Tony was reading to Moira upstairs in the night nursery. Linda was perfectly enchanted with her outing. Christian’s father, she said, lived in the smallest house imaginable, an absolute contrast to what Christian called the Kroesighof, because, although absolutely tiny, it had nothing whatever of a cottage about it – it was in the grand manner, and full of books. Every available wall space was covered with books, they lay stacked on tables and chairs and in heaps on the floor. Mr Talbot was the exact opposite of Sir Leicester, there was nothing picturesque about him, or anything to indicate that he was a learned man, he was brisk and matter-of-fact, and had made some very funny jokes about Davey, whom he knew well.

  ‘He’s perfect heaven,’ Linda kept saying, her eyes shining. What she really meant, as I could see too clearly, was that Christian was perfect heaven. She was dazzled by him. It seemed that he had talked without cease, and his talk consisted of variations upon a single theme – the betterment of the world through political change. Linda, since her marriage, had heard no end of political shop talked by Tony and his friends, but this related politics entirely to personalities and jobs. As the persons all seemed to her infinitely old and dull, and as it was quite immaterial to her whether they got jobs or not, Linda had classed politics as a boring subject, and used to go off into a dream when they were discussed. But Christian’s politics did not bore her. As they walked back from his father’s house that evening he had taken her for a tour of the world. He showed her Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, civil war in Spain, inadequate Socialism in France, tyranny in Africa, starvation in Asia, reaction in America, and Right-wing blight in England. Only the U.S.S.R., Norway, and Mexico came in for a modicum of praise.

  Linda was a plum ripe for shaking. The tree was now shaken, and down she came. Intelligent and energetic, but with no outlet for her energies, unhappy in her marriage, uninterested in her child, and inwardly oppressed with a sense of futility, she was in the mood either to take up some cause, or to embark upon a love affair. That a cause should now be presented by an attractive young man made both it and him irresistible.

  13

  The poor Alconleighs were now presented with crises in the lives of three of their children almost simultaneously. Linda ran away from Tony, Jassy ran away from home, and Matt ran away from Eton. The Alconleighs were obliged to face the fact, as parents must sooner or later, that their children had broken loose from control and had taken charge of their own lives. Distracted, disapproving, worried to death, there was nothing they could do; they had become mere spectators of a spectacle which did not please them in the least. This was the year when the parents of our contemporaries would console themselves, if things did not go quite as they hoped for their own children, by saying: ‘Never mind, just think of the poor Alconleighs!’

  Linda threw discretion, and what worldly wisdom she may have picked up during her years in London society, to the winds; she became an out-and-out Communist, bored and embarrassed everybody to death by preaching her new-found doctrine, not only at the dinner-table, but also from a soap-box in Hyde Park, and other equally squalid rostra, and finally, to the infinite relief of the Kroesig family, she went off to live with Christian. Tony started proceedings for divorce. This was a great blow to my aunt and uncle. It is true that they had never liked Tony, but they were infinitely old-fashioned in their ideas; marriage, to their way of thinking, was marriage, and adultery was wrong. Aunt Sadie was, in particular, profoundly shocked by the light-hearted way in which Linda had abandoned the little Moira. I think it all reminded her too much of my mother, and that she envisaged Linda’s future from now on as a series of uncontrollable bolts.

  Linda came to see me in Oxford. She was on her way back to London after having broken the news at Alconleigh. I thought it was really very brave of her to do it in person, and indeed, the first thing she asked for (most unlike her) was a drink. She was quite unnerved.

  ‘Goodness,’ s
he said. ‘I’d forgotten how terrifying Fa can be – even now, when he’s got no power over one. It was just like after we lunched with Tony; in the business-room just the same, and he simply roared, and poor Mummy looked miserable, but she was pretty furious too, and you know how sarcastic she can be. Oh, well, that’s over. Darling, it’s heaven to see you again.’

  I hadn’t seen her since the Sunday at Planes when she met Christian, so I wanted to hear all about her life.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m living with Christian in his flat, but it’s very small, I must say, but perhaps that is just as well, because I’m doing the housework, and I don’t seem to be very good at it, but luckily he is.’

  ‘He’ll need to be,’ I said.

  Linda was notorious in the family for her unhandiness, she could never even tie her own stock, and on hunting days either Uncle Matthew or Josh always had to do it for her. I so well remember her standing in front of a looking-glass in the hall, with Uncle Matthew tying it from behind, both the very picture of concentration, Linda saying: ‘Oh, now I see. Next time I know I shall be able to manage.’ As she had never in her life done so much as make her own bed, I could not imagine that Christian’s flat could be very tidy or comfortable if it was being run by her.

  ‘You are horrid. But oh how dreadful it is, cooking, I mean. That oven – Christian puts things in and says: “Now you take it out in about half an hour.” I don’t dare tell him how terrified I am, and at the end of half an hour I summon up all my courage and open the oven, and there is that awful hot blast hitting one in the face. I don’t wonder people sometimes put their heads in and leave them in out of sheer misery. Oh, dear, and I wish you could have seen the Hoover running away with me, it suddenly took the bit between its teeth and made for the lift shaft. How I shrieked – Christian only just rescued me in time. I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened.’ She sighed.

  ‘Christian is very strong,’ she said, ‘and very brave. He doesn’t like it when I shriek.’

  She seemed tired I thought and rather worried, and I looked in vain for signs of great happiness or great love.

  ‘So what about Tony – how has he taken it?’

  ‘Oh, he’s awfully pleased, actually, because he can now marry his mistress without having a scandal, or being divorced, or upsetting the Conservative Association.’

  It was so like Linda never to have hinted, even to me, that Tony had a mistress.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Called Pixie Townsend. You know the sort, young face, with white hair dyed blue. She adores Moira, lives near Planes, and takes her out riding every day. She’s a terrific Counter-Hon, but I’m only too thankful now that she exists, because I needn’t feel in the least bit guilty – they’ll all get on so much better without me.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and divorced her husband years ago. She’s frightfully good at all poor Tony’s things, golf and business and Conservatism, just like I wasn’t, and Sir Leicester think’s she’s perfect. Goodness, they’ll be happy.’

  ‘Now, I want to hear more about Christian, please.’

  ‘Well, he’s heaven. He’s a frightfully serious man, you know, a Communist, and so am I now, and we are surrounded by comrades all day, and they are terrific Hons, and there’s an anarchist. The comrades don’t like anarchists, isn’t it queer? I always thought they were the same thing, but Christian likes this one because he threw a bomb at the King of Spain; you must say it’s romantic. He’s called Ramón, and he sits about all day and broods over the miners at Oviedo because his brother is one.’

  ‘Yes, but, darling, tell about Christian.’

  ‘Oh, he’s perfect heaven – you must come and stay – or perhaps that wouldn’t be very comfortable – come and see us. You can’t think what an extraordinary man he is, so detached from other human beings that he hardly notices whether they are there or not. He only cares for ideas.’

  ‘I hope he cares for you.’

  ‘Well, I think he does, but he is very strange and absent-minded. I must tell you, the evening before I ran away with him (I only moved down to Pimlico in a taxi, but running away sounds romantic) he dined with his brother, so naturally I thought they’d talk about me and discuss the whole thing, so I couldn’t resist ringing him up at about midnight and saying: “Hullo, darling, did you have a nice evening, and what did you talk about?” and he said: “I can’t remember – oh, guerrilla warfare, I think.”’

  ‘Is his brother a Communist too?’

  ‘Oh, no, he’s in the Foreign Office. Fearfully grand, looks like a deep-sea monster – you know.’

  ‘Oh, that Talbot – yes, I see. I hadn’t connected them. So now what are your plans?’

  ‘Well, he says he’s going to marry me when I’m divorced. I think it’s rather silly, I rather agree with Mummy that once is enough, for marriage, but she says I’m the kind of person one marries if one’s living with them, and the thing is it would be bliss not to be called Kroesig any more. Anyway, we’ll see.’

  ‘Then what’s your life? I suppose you don’t go to parties and things now, do you?’

  ‘Darling, such killing parties, you can’t think – he won’t let us go to ordinary ones at all. Grandi had a dinner-dance last week, and he rang me up himself and asked me to bring Christian, which I thought was awfully nice of him actually – he always has been nice to me – but Christian got into quite a temper and said if I couldn’t see any reason against going I’d better go, but nothing would induce him to. So in the end, of course, neither of us went, and I heard afterwards it was the greatest fun. And we mayn’t go to the Ribs or to …’ and she mentioned several families known as much for their hospitality as for their Right-wing convictions.

  ‘The worst of being a Communist is that the parties you may go to are – well – awfully funny and touching, but not very gay, and they’re always in such gloomy places. Next week, for instance, we’ve got three, some Czechs at the Sacco and Vanzetti Memorial Hall at Golders Green, Ethiopians at the Paddington Baths, and the Scotsboro’ boys at some boring old rooms or other. You know.’

  ‘The Scotsboro’ boys,’ I said. ‘Are they really still going? They must be getting on.’

  ‘Yes, and they’ve gone downhill socially,’ said Linda, with a giggle. ‘I remember a perfectly divine party Brian gave for them – it was the first party Merlin ever took me to so I remember it well, oh, dear, it was fun. But next Thursday won’t be the least like that. (Darling, I am being disloyal, but it is such heaven to have a chat after all these months. The comrades are sweet, but they never chat, they make speeches all the time.) But I’m always saying to Christian how much I wish his buddies would either brighten up their parties a bit or else stop giving them, because I don’t see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly. You see, I bet the Scotsboro’ boys will be electrocuted in the end, if they don’t die of old age first, that is. One does feel so much on their side, but it’s no good, people like Sir Leicester always come out on top, so what can one do? However, the comrades don’t seem to realize that, and, luckily for them, they don’t know Sir Leicester, so they feel they must go on giving these sad parties.’

  ‘What do you wear at them?’ I asked, with some interest, thinking that Linda, in her expensive-looking clothes, must seem very much out of place at these baths and halls.

  ‘You know, that was a great tease at first, it worried me dreadfully, but I’ve discovered that, so long as one wears wool or cotton, everything is all right. Silk and satin would be the blunder. But I only ever do wear wool and cotton, so I’m on a good wicket. No jewels, of course, but then I left them behind at Bryanst
on Square, it’s the way I was brought up but I must say it gave me a pang. Christian doesn’t know about jewellery – I told him, because I thought he’d be rather pleased I’d given them all up for him, but he only said: “Well, there’s always the Burma Jewel Company.” Oh, dear, he is such a funny man, you must meet him again soon. I must go, darling, it has so cheered me up to see you.’

  I don’t quite know why, but I felt somehow that Linda had been once more deceived in her emotions, that this explorer in the sandy waste had seen only another mirage. The lake was there, the trees were there, the thirsty camels had gone down to have their evening drink; alas, a few steps forward would reveal nothing but dust and desert as before.

  A few minutes only after Linda had left me to go back to London, Christian and the comrades, I had another caller. This time it was Lord Merlin. I liked Lord Merlin very much, I admired him, I was predisposed in his favour, but I was by no means on such intimate terms with him as Linda was. To tell the real truth he frightened me. I felt that, in my company, boredom was for him only just round the corner, and that, anyhow, I was merely regarded as pertaining to Linda, not existing on my own except as a dull little don’s wife. I was nothing but the confidante in white linen.

  ‘This is a bad business,’ he said, abruptly, and without preamble, though I had not seen him for several years. ‘I’m just back from Rome, and what do I find – Linda and Christian Talbot. It’s an extraordinary thing that I can’t ever leave England without Linda getting herself mixed up with some thoroughly undesirable character. This is a disaster – how far has it gone? Can nothing be done?’

  I told him that he had just missed Linda, and said something about her marriage with Tony having been unhappy. Lord Merlin waved this remark aside – it was a disconcerting gesture and made me feel a fool.

  ‘Naturally she never would have stayed with Tony – nobody expected that. The point is that she’s out of the frying-pan into an empty grate. How long has it been going on?’