The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Thank heaven for your Aunt Emily,’ he said. ‘I really could not have married somebody quite illiterate.’

  Of course, I too thanked heaven more than ever for dear Aunt Emily, but at the same time Jassy and Victoria made me laugh so much, and I loved them so much, that it was impossible for me to wish them very different from what they were. Hardly had I arrived in the house than I was lugged off to their secret meeting-place, the Hons’ cupboard, to be asked what IT was like.

  ‘Linda says it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ said Jassy, ‘and we don’t wonder when we think of Tony.’

  ‘But Louisa says, once you get used to it, it’s utter utter utter blissikins,’ said Victoria, ‘and we do wonder, when we think of John.’

  ‘What’s wrong with poor Tony and John?’

  ‘Dull and old. Come on then Fanny – tell.’

  I said I agreed with Louisa, but refused to enter into details.

  ‘It is unfair, nobody ever tells. Sadie doesn’t even know, that’s quite obvious, and Louisa is an old prig, but we did think we could count on Linda and you. Very well then, we shall go to our marriage beds in ignorance, like Victorian ladies, and in the morning we shall be found stark staring mad with horror and live sixty more years in an expensive bin, and then perhaps you’ll wish you had been more helpful.’

  ‘Weighted down with jewels and Valenciennes costing thousands,’ said Victoria. ‘The Lecturer was here last week and he was telling Sadie some very nice sexy stories about that kind of thing – of course, we weren’t meant to hear but you can just guess what happened, Sadie didn’t listen and we did.’

  ‘I should ask the Lecturer for information,’ I said. ‘He’d tell.’

  ‘He’d show. No thank you very much.’

  Polly came over to see me. She was pale and thinner, had rings under her eyes and seemed quite shut up in herself, though this may have been in contrast with the exuberant Radletts. When she was with Jassy and Victoria she looked like a swan, swimming in the company of two funny little tumbling ducks. She was very fond of them. She had never got on very well with Linda, for some reason, but she loved everybody else at Alconleigh, especially Aunt Sadie, and was more at her ease with Uncle Matthew than anybody I ever knew, outside his own family circle. He, for his part, bestowed on her some of the deference he felt for Lord Montdore, called her Lady Polly, and smiled every time his eyes fell on her beautiful face.

  ‘Now children,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘leave Fanny and Polly to have a little chat, they don’t want you all the time, you know.’

  ‘It is unfair – I suppose Fanny’s going to tell Polly now. Well, back to the medical dictionary and the Bible. I only wish these things didn’t look quite so sordid in cold print. What we need is some clean-minded married woman, to explain, but where are we to find her?’

  Polly and I had a very desultory little chat, however. I showed her photographs of Alfred and me in the South of France, where we had been so that he could meet my poor mother the Bolter, who was living there now with a nasty new husband. Polly said the Dougdales were off there next week as Lady Patricia was feeling the cold so dreadfully that winter. She told me also that there had been a huge Christmas party at Hampton and that Joyce Fleetwood was in disgrace with her mother for not paying his bridge debts.

  ‘So that’s one comfort. We’ve still got the Grand Duchess, poor old thing. Goodness she’s dull – not that Mummy seems to think so. Veronica Chaddesley Corbett calls her and Mummy Ma’am and Super-Ma’am.’

  I did not like to ask if Polly and her mother were getting on any better, and Polly volunteered nothing on that subject, but she looked, I thought, very miserable. Presently she said she must go.

  ‘Come over soon and bring Alfred.’

  But I dreaded the impact of Lady Montdore upon Alfred even more than that of Uncle Matthew, and said he was too busy but I would come alone sometime.

  ‘I hear that she and Sonia are on very bad terms again,’ Aunt Sadie said when Polly had driven off.

  ‘The hell-hag,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘drown her if I were Montdore.’

  ‘Or he might cut her to pieces with nail scissors like that French duke the Lecherous Lecturer was telling you all about, Sadie, when you weren’t listening and we were.’

  ‘Don’t call me Sadie, children, and don’t call Mr Dougdale the Lecherous Lecturer.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Well, we always do behind your backs so you see it’s bound to slip out sometimes.’

  Davey arrived. He had come to stay for a week or so for treatment at the Radcliffe Infirmary. Aunt Emily was becoming more and more attached to all her animals and could seldom now be persuaded to leave them, for which, on this occasion, I was thankful, since our Sundays in Kent really were an indispensable refuge to Alfred and me.

  ‘I met Polly in the drive,’ Davey said, ‘we stopped and had a word. I think she looks most dreadfully unwell.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Aunt Sadie, who believed in no illness except appendicitis. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Polly, she needs a husband, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh! How like a woman!’ said Davey. ‘Sex, my dear Sadie, is not a sovereign cure for everything, you know. I only wish it were.’

  ‘I didn’t mean sex at all,’ said my aunt, very much put out by this interpretation. Indeed, she was what the children called ‘against’ sex, that is to say it never entered into her calculations. ‘What I said, and what I meant, was she needs a husband. Girls of her age, living at home, are hardly ever happy and Polly is a specially bad case because she has nothing whatever to do, she doesn’t care for hunting, or parties, or anything much that I can see, and she doesn’t get on with her mother. It’s true that Sonia teases and lectures her and sets about it all the wrong way, she’s a tactless person, but she is perfectly right, you know. Polly needs a life of her own, babies, occupations, and interests – an establishment, in fact – and for all that she must have a husband.’

  ‘Or a lady of Llangollen,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Time you went to bed, miss, now off you go both of you.’

  ‘Not me, it’s not nearly my bedtime yet.’

  ‘I said both of you, now begone.’

  They dragged themselves out of the room as slowly as they dared and went upstairs, stamping out ‘Man’s long agony’ on the bare boards of the nursery passage so that nobody in the whole house could fail to hear them.

  ‘Those children read too much,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘But I can’t stop them. I honestly believe they’d rather read the label on a medicine bottle than nothing at all.’

  ‘Oh, but I love reading the labels of medicine bottles,’ said Davey, ‘they’re madly enjoyable, you know.’

  12

  The next morning when I came down to breakfast I found everybody, even the children, looking grave. It seemed that by some mysterious local tom-tom Aunt Sadie had learnt that Lady Patricia Dougdale had died in the night. She had suddenly collapsed, Lord Montdore was sent for, but by the time he could arrive she had become unconscious, and an hour later was dead.

  ‘Oh, poor Patricia,’ Aunt Sadie kept saying, very much upset, while Uncle Matthew, who cried easily, was mopping his eyes as he bent over the hot plate, taking a sausage, or in his parlance, a ‘banger’, with less than his usual enthusiasm.

  ‘I saw her only last week,’ he said, ‘at the Clarendon Yard.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘I remember you told me. Poor Patricia, I always liked her so much, though of course, all that about being delicate was tiresome.’

  ‘Well, now you can see for yourself that she was delicate,’ said Davey triumphantly. ‘She’s dead. It killed her. Doesn’t that show you? I do wish I could make you Radletts understand that there is no such thing as imaginary illness. Nobody who is quite well could possibly be bothered to do all the things that I, for instance, am obliged to, in order to keep my wretched frame on its feet.’

  The c
hildren began to giggle at this, and even Aunt Sadie smiled because they all knew that so far from it being a bother to Davey it was his all-absorbing occupation, and one which he enjoyed beyond words.

  ‘Oh, of course, I know you all think it’s a great great joke, and no doubt Jassy and Victoria will scream with laughter when I finally do conk out, but it’s not a joke to me, let me tell you, and a liver in that state can’t have been much of a joke to poor Patricia, what’s more.’

  ‘Poor Patricia, and I fear she had a sad life with that boring old Lecturer.’

  This was so like Aunt Sadie. Having protested for years against the name Lecturer for Boy Dougdale she was now using it herself, it always happened; very soon no doubt we should hear her chanting ‘Man’s long agony’.

  ‘For some reason that I could never understand, she really loved him.’

  ‘Until lately,’ said Davey. ‘I think for the past year or two it has been the other way round, and he had begun to depend on her, and then it was too late, she had stopped bothering about him.’

  ‘Possibly. Anyway, there it is, all very sad. We must send a wreath, darling, at once. What a time of year – it will have to come from Oxford, I suppose – oh, the waste of money.’

  ‘Send a wreath of frog spawn frog spawn frog spawn, lovely lovely frog spawn it is my favourite thing,’ sang Jassy.

  ‘If you go on being so silly, children,’ said Aunt Sadie, who had caught a look of great disapproval on Alfred’s face, ‘I shall be obliged to send you to school, you know.’

  ‘But can you afford to?’ said Victoria. ‘You’d have to buy us plimsolls and gym tunics, underclothes in a decent state and some good strong luggage. I’ve seen girls going off to school, they are covered with expensive things. Of course, we long for it, pashes for the prefects and rags in the dorm. School has a very sexy side you know, Sadie – why, the very word “mistress”, Sadie, you know –’

  But Aunt Sadie was not really listening; she was away in her cloud and merely said,

  ‘Mm, very naughty and silly, and don’t call me Sadie.’

  Aunt Sadie and Davey went off to the funeral together. Uncle Matthew had his Bench that day, and particularly wanted to attend in order to make quite sure that a certain ruffian, who was to come up before it, should be committed to the Assizes, where, it was very much to be hoped, he would get several years and the cat. One or two of Uncle Matthew’s fellow beaks had curious, modern ideas about justice and he was obliged to carry on a strenuous war against them, in which he was greatly assisted by a retired Admiral of the neighbourhood.

  So they had to go to the funeral without him, and came back in low spirits.

  ‘It’s the dropping off the perches,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘I’ve always dreaded when that begins. Soon we shall all have gone – oh well, never mind.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Davey said, briskly. ‘Modern science will keep us alive, and young, too, for many a long day yet. Patricia’s insides were a terrible mess – I had a word with Dr Simpson while you were with Sonia and it’s quite obviously a miracle she didn’t die years ago. When the children have gone to bed I’ll tell you.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Aunt Sadie, while the children implored him to go then and there with them to the Hons’ cupboard and tell.

  ‘It is unfair, Sadie doesn’t want to hear the least bit, and we die to.’

  ‘How old was Patricia?’ said Aunt Sadie.

  ‘Older than we are,’ said Davey. ‘I remember when they married she was supposed to be quite a bit older than Boy.’

  ‘And he was looking a hundred in that bitter wind.’

  ‘I thought he seemed awfully cut up, poor Boy.’

  Aunt Sadie, during a little graveside chat with Lady Montdore, had gathered that the death had come as a shock and surprise to all of them, that, although they had known Lady Patricia to be far from well, they had no idea that she was in immediate danger; in fact, she had been greatly looking forward to her trip abroad the following week. Lady Montdore, who resented death, clearly thought it most inconsiderate of her sister-in-law to break up their little circle so suddenly, and Lord Montdore, devoted to his sister, was dreadfully shaken by the midnight drive with a deathbed at the end of it. But surprisingly enough, the one who had taken it hardest was Polly. It seemed that she had been violently sick on hearing the news, completely prostrated for two days, and was still looking so unwell that her mother had refused to take her to the funeral.

  ‘It seems rather funny,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘in a way. I’d no idea she was so particularly devoted to Patricia, had you, Fanny?’

  ‘Nervous shock,’ said Davey. ‘I don’t suppose she’s ever had a death so near to her before.’

  ‘Oh, yes she has,’ said Jassy. ‘Ranger.’

  ‘Dogs aren’t exactly the same as human beings, my dear Jassy.’

  But to the Radletts they were exactly the same, except that to them dogs on the whole had more reality than people.

  ‘Do tell about the grave,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Not very much to tell, really,’ said Aunt Sadie. ‘Just a grave, you know, lots of flowers and mud.’

  ‘They’d lined it with heather,’ said Davey, ‘from Craigside. Poor Patricia, she did love Scotland.’

  ‘And where was it?’

  ‘In the graveyard, of course, at Silkin – between the Wellingtonia and the Blood Arms, if you see where I mean. In full view of Boy’s bedroom window, incidentally.’

  Jassy began to talk fast and earnestly.

  ‘You will promise to bury me here, whatever happens, won’t you, won’t you, there’s one exact place I want, I note it every time I go to church, it’s next door to that old lady who was nearly a hundred.’

  ‘That’s not our part of the churchyard – miles away from grandfather.’

  ‘No, but it’s the bit I want. I once saw a dear little dead baby vole there. Please please please don’t forget.’

  ‘You’ll have married some sewer and gone to live in the Antipodes,’ said Uncle Matthew who had just come in. ‘They let that young hog off, said there was no evidence. Evidence be damned, you’d only got to look at his face to see who did it, afternoon completely wasted, the Admiral and I are going to resign.’

  ‘Then bring me back,’ said Jassy, ‘pickled. I’ll pay, I swear I will. Please, Fa, you must.’

  ‘Write it down,’ said Uncle Matthew, producing a piece of paper and a fountain-pen, ‘if these things don’t get written down they are forgotten. And I’d like a deposit of ten bob please.’

  ‘You can take it out of my birthday present,’ said Jassy, who was scribbling away with great concentration. ‘I’ve made a map like in Treasure Island,’ she said. ‘See?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, that’s quite clear,’ said Uncle Matthew. He went to the wall, took his master-key from his pocket, opened a safe, and put in the piece of paper. Every room at Alconleigh had one of these wall-safes, whose contents would have amazed and discomfited the burglar who managed to open them. Aunt Sadie’s jewels, which had some very good stones, were never kept in them, but lay glittering about all over the house and garden, in any place where she might have taken them off and forgotten to put them on again, on the downstairs wash-basin, by the flower-bed she had been weeding, sent to the laundry pinning up a suspender. Her big party pieces were kept in the bank. Uncle Matthew himself possessed no jewels and despised all men who did. (Boy’s signet ring and platinum and pearl evening watch-chain were great causes for tooth-grinding.) His own watch was a large loudly ticking object in gun-metal, tested twice a day by Greenwich mean time on a chronometer in the business-room, and said to gain three seconds a week. This was attached to his key-ring across his moleskin waistcoat by an ordinary leather bootlace, in which Aunt Sadie often tied knots to remind herself of things.

  The safes, nevertheless, were full of treasures, if not of valuables, for Uncle Matthew’s treasures were objects of
esoteric worth, such as a stone quarried on the estate and said to have imprisoned for two thousand years a living toad; Linda’s first shoe; the skeleton of a mouse regurgitated by an owl; a tiny gun for shooting bluebottles; the hair of all his children made into a bracelet; a silhouette of Aunt Sadie done at a fair; a carved nut; a ship in a bottle; altogether a strange mixture of sentiment, natural history, and little objects which from time to time had taken his fancy.

  ‘Come on, do let’s see,’ said Jassy and Victoria, making a dash at the door in the wall. There was always great excitement when the safes were opened, as they hardly ever were, and seeing inside was considered a treat.

  ‘Oh! The dear little bit of shrapnel, may I have it?’

  ‘No, you may not. It was once in my groin for a whole week.’

  ‘Talk about death,’ said Davey. ‘The greatest medical mystery of our times must be the fact that dear Matthew is still with us.’

  ‘It only shows,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘that nothing really matters the least bit so why make these fearful efforts to keep alive?’

  ‘Oh, but it’s the efforts that one enjoys so much,’ said Davey, and this time he was speaking the truth.

  13

  I think it was about a fortnight after Lady Patricia’s funeral that Uncle Matthew stood, after luncheon, outside his front door, watch in hand, scowling fiercely, grinding his teeth and awaiting his greatest treat of all the year, an afternoon’s chubb fuddling. The Chubb Fuddler was supposed to be there at half-past two.

  ‘Twenty-three and a quarter minutes past,’ Uncle Matthew was saying furiously, ‘in precisely six and three-quarter minutes the damned fella will be late.’

  If people did not keep their appointments with him well before the specified time he always counted them as being late, he would begin to fidget quite half an hour too soon, and wasted, in this way, as much time as people do who have no regard for it, besides getting himself into a thoroughly bad temper.