The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Then, suddenly, the whole tempo of the morning completely altered because here in my drawing-room, heavily pregnant, beautiful as ever, in a red coat and no hat, was Polly, and of course, all feelings of not wanting her melted away and were forgotten. In my drawing-room too was the Lecturer, looking old and worn.

  When Polly and I had finished hugging and kissing and laughing and saying ‘Lovely to see you’ and ‘Why did you never write?’ she said,

  ‘Can I bend you to my will?’

  ‘Oh, yes, you can. I’ve got simply nothing to do, I was just looking at the snow.’

  ‘Oh, the heaven of snow,’ she said, ‘and clouds, after all those blue skies. Now the thing is, Fanny, can I bend you until late this afternoon, because Boy has got an utter mass of things to do and I can’t stand about much, as you see. But you must frankly tell me if I shall be in your way, because I can always go to Elliston’s waiting-room – the blissful bliss of Elliston after those foreign shops, I nearly cried for happiness when we passed their windows just now – the bags! the cretonnes! the horror of abroad!’

  ‘But that’s wonderful,’ I said, ‘then you’ll both lunch here?’

  ‘Boy has to lunch with someone on business,’ said Polly, quickly, ‘you can go off then, darling, if you like, as Fanny says she can keep me, don’t bother to wait any more. Then come back for me here when you’ve finished.’

  Boy, who had been rubbing his hands together in front of the fire, went off rather glum, wrapping a scarf round his throat.

  ‘And don’t hurry a bit,’ she called after him, opening the door again and shouting down the stairs. ‘Now, darling Fanny, I want to do one final bend and make you lunch with me at Fuller’s – don’t speak, you’re going to say “Look at the weather”, aren’t you? but we’ll ring up for a taxi. Fuller’s! You’ll never know how much I used to long for Dover sole and walnut cake and just this sort of a day, in Sicily. Do you remember how we used to go there from Alconleigh when you were getting your house ready? I can’t believe this is the same house, can you, or that we are the same people, come to that. Except I see you’re the same darling Fanny, just as you were the same when I got back from India. Why is it that I, of all people, keep on having to go abroad? I do think it’s too awful, don’t you?’

  ‘I only went just that once,’ I said, ‘it’s very light, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, horrible glare. Just imagine if one had to live there for ever. You know we started off in Spain, and you’ll never believe this but they are two hours late for every meal – two hours, Fanny – (can we lunch at half-past twelve today?), so of course, by then, you’ve stopped feeling hungry and only feel sick, then when the food comes it is all cooked in rancid oil, I can smell it now, it’s on everybody’s hair too, and to make it more appetizing there are pictures all round you of some dear old bull being tortured to death. They think of literally nothing all day but bulls and the Virgin. Spain was the worst of all, I thought. Of course, Boy doesn’t mind abroad a bit, in fact he seems to like it, and he can talk all those terribly affected languages (darling, Italian! you’d die!), but I truly don’t think I could have borne it much longer, I should have pined away with homesickness. Anyway, here I am.’

  ‘What made you come back?’ I said, really wondering how they could afford it, poor as Davey said they were. Silkin was not a big house, but it would require three or four servants.

  ‘Well, you remember my Auntie Edna at Hampton Court? The good old girl died and left me all her money – not much, but we think we can just afford to live at Silkin. Then Boy is writing a book and he had to come back for that, London Library and Paddington.’

  ‘Paddington?’ I said, thinking of the station.

  ‘Duke, Muniment room. Then there’s this baby. Fancy, if one had to have a baby abroad, poor little thing, not a cow in the place. All the same, Boy doesn’t much want to settle down here for good, I think he’s still frightened of Mummy, you know – I am a bit, myself – not frightened, exactly, but bored at the idea of scenes. But there’s really nothing more she can do to us, is there?’

  ‘I don’t think you need worry about her a bit,’ I said, ‘your mother has altered completely in the last two years.’

  I could not very well say my real thought, which was that Lady Montdore no longer cared a rap for Boy or for Polly, and that she would most likely be quite friendly to them now, it all depended upon Cedric’s attitude, everything did nowadays, as far as she was concerned.

  Presently, when we were settled at our table at Fuller’s, among the fumed oak and the daintiness (‘Isn’t everything clean and lovely – aren’t the waitresses fair – you can’t think how dark the waiters always are, abroad.’) and had ordered our Dover soles, Polly said that now I must tell her all about Cedric.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she said, ‘how you and Linda used to look him up to see if he would do?’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t have done,’ I said, ‘that’s one thing quite certain.’

  ‘So I imagine,’ said Polly.

  ‘How much do you know about him?’

  I suddenly felt rather guilty at knowing so much myself and hoped that Polly would not think I had gone over to the enemy’s camp. It is so difficult for somebody who is as fond of sport as I am to resist running with the hare and hunting with the hounds whenever possible.

  ‘Boy made friends, in Sicily, with an Italian called Pincio, he is writing about a former Pincio in his new book, and this wop knew Cedric in Paris, so he told us a lot about him. He says he is very pretty.’

  ‘Yes, that’s quite true.’

  ‘How pretty, Fan, prettier than me?’

  ‘No. One doesn’t have to gaze and gaze at him like one does with you.’

  ‘Oh, darling, you are so kind. Not any longer though, I fear.’

  ‘Just exactly the same. But he is very much like you, didn’t the duke say that?’

  ‘Yes. He said we were Viola and Sebastian. I must say I die for him.’

  ‘He dies for you, too. We must arrange it.’

  ‘Yes, after the baby – not while I’m such a sight. You know how cissies hate pregnant ladies. Poor Pinchers would do anything to get out of seeing me, lately. Go on telling more about Cedric and Mummy.’

  ‘I really think he loves your mother, you know. He is such a slave to her, never leaves her for a moment, always in high spirits – I don’t believe anybody could put it on to that extent, it must be love.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Polly. ‘I used to love her before she began about the marrying.’

  ‘There!’ I said.

  ‘There what?’

  ‘Well, you told me once that you’d hated her all your life, and I knew it wasn’t true.’

  ‘The fact is,’ said Polly, ‘when you hate somebody you can’t imagine what it’s like not hating them, it’s just the same as with love. But of course, with Mummy, who is such excellent company, so lively, you do love her before you find out how wicked she can be. And I don’t suppose she’s in all that violent hurry to get Cedric off that she was with me.’

  ‘No hurry,’ I said.

  Polly’s blank blue look fell upon my face. ‘You mean she’s in love with him herself?’

  ‘In love? I don’t know. She loves him like anything, he makes such fun for her, you see, her life has become so amusing. Besides, she must know quite well that marriage isn’t his thing exactly, poor Cedric.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Polly. ‘Boy agrees with me that she knows nothing, nothing whatever about all that. He says she once made a fearful gaffe about Sodomites, mixing them up with Dolomites, it was all over London. No, I guess she’s in love. She’s a great, great faller in love, you know, I used to think at one time that she rather fancied Boy, though he says not. Well, it’s all very annoying because I suppose she doesn’t miss me one little bit, and I miss her, often. And now tell me, how’s my Dad?’

  ‘Very
old,’ I said. ‘Very old, and your mother so very young. You must be prepared for quite as much of a shock when you see her as when you see him.’

  ‘No, really? How d’you mean, very young? Dyed hair?’

  ‘Blue. But what one chiefly notices is that she has become thin and supple, quick little movements, flinging one leg over the other, suddenly sitting on the floor and so on. Quite like a young person.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ said Polly, ‘and she used to be so very stiff and solid.’

  ‘It’s Mr Wixman, Cedric’s and her masseur. He pounds and pulls for an hour every morning, then she has another hour in a hay-box – full-time work, you know, what with the creaming and splashing and putting on a mask and taking it off again and having her nails done and her feet and then all the exercises, as well as having her teeth completely rearranged and the hair zipped off her arms and legs – I truly don’t think I could be bothered.’

  ‘Operations on her face?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but that was ages ago. All the bags and wrinkles gone, eyebrows plucked and so on. Her face is very tidy now.’

  ‘Of course, it may seem odd here,’ said Polly, ‘but, you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of women like that abroad. I suppose she stands on her head and lies in the sun? Yes, they all do. She must be a sight, scene or no scene, I utterly can’t wait for her, Fanny, when can we arrange it?’

  ‘Not for the moment, they’re in London now, fearfully busy with the Longhi Ball they are giving at Montdore House. Cedric came to see me the other day and could talk of nothing else – he says they won’t be going to Hampton again until it’s over.’

  ‘What is a Longhi Ball?’

  ‘You know, Venetian. Real water, with real gondolas floating on it, in the ballroom. “O sole mio” on a hundred guitars, all the footmen in masks and capes, no light except from candles in Venetian lanterns until the guests get to the ballroom, when a searchlight will be trained on Cedric and your mother, receiving from a gondola. Fairly different from your ball, Polly? Oh, yes, and I know, Cedric won’t allow any Royalties to be asked at all, because he says they ruin everything, in London; he says they are quite different in Paris where they know their place.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Polly, ‘how times have changed. Not even old Super-Ma’am?’

  ‘No, not even your mother’s new Infanta. Cedric was adamant.’

  ‘Fanny, it’s your duty to go to it – you will, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, darling, I can’t. I feel so sleepy after dinner when I am pregnant, you know, I really couldn’t drag myself. We shall hear about it all right, from Cedric.’

  ‘And when does it take place?’

  ‘Under a month from now, the sixteenth, I believe.’

  ‘Why, that’s the very day I’m expecting my baby, how convenient. Then when everything’s all over we can meet, can’t we? You will fix it, promise.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, we shan’t be able to hold Cedric back. He’s fearfully interested in you, you’re Rebecca to him.’

  Boy came back to my house just as we were finishing our tea, he looked perished with cold and very tired but Polly would not let him wait while some fresh tea was made. She allowed him to swallow a tepid cup and dragged him off.

  ‘I suppose you’ve lost the key of the car, as usual,’ she said unkindly on their way downstairs.

  ‘No no, here it is, on my key-ring.’

  ‘Miracle,’ said Polly, ‘well then, good-bye, my darling, I’ll telephone and we’ll do some more benders.’

  When Alfred came in later on I said to him,

  ‘I’ve seen Polly, just imagine, she spent the whole day here, and oh, Alfred! she’s not a bit in love any more!’

  ‘Do you never think of anything but who is or is not in love with whom?’ he said, in tones of great exasperation.

  Norma, I knew, would be just as uninterested, and I longed very much for Davey or Cedric to pick it all over with.

  8

  So Polly now settled into her aunt’s house at Silkin. It had always been Lady Patricia’s house more than Boy’s, as she was the one who lived there all the time, while Boy flitted about between Hampton and London with occasional visits to the Continent, and it was arranged inside with a very feminine form of tastelessness, that is to say, no taste and no comfort either. It was a bit better than Norma’s house, but not much, the house itself being genuinely old instead of Banbury Road old and standing in the real country instead of an Oxford suburb; it contained one or two good pieces of furniture, and where Norma would have had cretonnes the Dougdales had Boy’s needlework. But there were many similarities, especially upstairs, where lineoleum covered the floors, and every bathroom, in spite of the childlessness of the Dougdales, was a nursery bathroom, smelling strongly of not very nice soap.

  Polly did not attempt to alter anything. She just flopped into Lady Patricia’s bed, in Lady Patricia’s bedroom whose windows looked out on to Lady Patricia’s grave. ‘Beloved wife of Harvey Dougdale’ said the gravestone, which had been erected some weeks after poor Harvey Dougdale had acquired a new beloved wife. ‘She shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.’

  I think Polly cared very little about houses, which, for her, consisted of Hampton and the rest, and that if she could no longer live at Hampton she could not take much interest in any other house anywhere else. Whatever it was in life that Polly did care for, and time had yet to disclose the mystery, it was certainly not her home. She was in no sense what the French call a femme d’intérieur and her household arrangements were casual to the verge of chaos. Nor any longer, alas, was it Boy. Complete disillusion had set in as far as he was concerned, and she was behaving towards him with exactly the same offhand coldness that had formerly characterized her attitude towards her mother, the only difference being that whereas she had always been a little frightened of Lady Montdore it was Boy, in this case, who was a little frightened of her.

  Boy was busily occupied with his new book. It was to be called Three Dukes, and the gentlemen it portrayed were considered by Boy to be perfect prototypes of nineteenth-century aristocracy in their three countries. The Dukes in question were Paddington, Souppes and Pincio, all masters, it seemed, of the arts of anecdote, adultery, and gourmandise, members of the Paris Jockey Club, gamblers and sportsmen. He had a photograph, the frontispiece for his book, of all three together taken at a shoot at Landçut. They stood in front of an acre of dead animals and, with their tummies, their beards, their deerstalker’s hats and white gaiters, they looked like nothing so much as three King Edwards all in a row. Polly told me that he had finished Pincio while they were in Sicily, the present man having put the necessary documents at his disposal, and was now engaged upon Paddington with the assistance of the duke’s librarian, motoring off to Paddington Park every morning, notebook in hand. The idea was that when that was finished he should go to France in pursuit of Souppes. Nobody ever had the least objection to Boy ‘doing’ their ancestors. He always made them charming and endowed them with delightful vices, besides which it gave a guarantee, a hall-mark of ancient lineage, since he never would take on anybody whose family did not go back to well before the Conquest, in England, or who, if foreign, could not produce at least one Byzantine Emperor, Pope, or pre-Louis XV Bourbon in their family tree.

  The day of the Montdore House ball came and went, but there was no sign of Polly’s baby. Aunt Sadie always used to say that people unconsciously cheat over the dates when babies are expected in order to make the time of waiting seem shorter, but if that is so it certainly makes the last week or two seem endless. Polly depended very much on my company and would send a motor car most days to take me over to Silkin for an hour or two. The weather was heavenly at last, and we were able to go for little walks and even to sit in a sheltered corner of the garden, wrapped in rugs.

  ‘Don’t you love it,’ Polly said, ‘when it’s suddenly warm like this after the winter, and all the g
oats and hens look so happy?’

  She did not give me the impression that she was very much interested in the idea of having a baby, though she once said to me,

  ‘Doesn’t it seem funny to have talcum powder and things and boring old Sister waiting about, and all for somebody who doesn’t exist?’

  ‘Oh, I always think that,’ I said, ‘and yet the very moment they are there, they become such an integral part of your life that you can’t imagine what it was like without them.’