Sometimes I think that my fault was in trying to impose my own thoughts on Finola. Sometimes I think that my mistake was that I didn’t guide her enough. I don’t know and she doesn’t know and we can’t do anything about it; and I want to do something so much, though now Fin isn’t interested any more. She’s really been taking off on her own recently, spending a lot of time with her friends and becoming increasingly like them as far as I can see. I’m not saying she’s mindlessly conventional, as I used to think — after all, she wasn’t brought up to be as she is and so she’s made her own decision against us all. She’s terribly realistic and sensible — she sees through things as Mamma used to and I never could. She’s nearly as beautiful and nearly as intelligent as Mamma, and I do love her but somehow I can never bring myself to tell her. I imagine myself telling her, I can picture it — and Fin looks almost shocked, in my fantasy, at my saying that.
Anyway, there’s nothing to be done now. Fin’s nearly thirteen, and she’s got her own life. Whatever we’ve done wrong, we haven’t made a snivelling dependent out of her, although when she was a small child she was so clinging, and I thought, backward.
I take the Sketch and the Tatler now, to see what you’re up to. You’re terribly reticent about your friends, as though you think I’d dislike them just because they’re rich and like a good time. After all, you’re one of them, and I like you …
She does not say ‘I love you’, thought Miranda — because I refused to take up with her where I left off eighteen months ago.
But all the same, Miranda thought that Alice probably meant love.
I only wish I could meet one or two of your new friends, continued Alice, and Miranda frowned slowly to herself:
although I’d understand if they wouldn’t like me. Oh dear, that sounds almost resentful and spiteful, although it’s not meant to. I think I’d better leave off personal subjects; I’m using my letters to you almost as a sort of diary, because no one will hear except you but you Will hear, and I wouldn’t want to write in a book which no one will read till after my death, and then it’ll be the wrong person. How I do run on.
The weather is all right down here. I sold two paintings quite well recently. Anatole still hasn’t found a job yet and is very unhappy about it, but he’s got hopes of finding a place in another restaurant band — that was the sort of job he was hoping to avoid, of course, poor darling. Everyone else is fine, and we all send much love.
Alice
As usual, this letter had been quickly written and hastily posted; Alice had not gone back to correct anything.
Miranda was sitting at the little satinwood bureau in her sparsely furnished, pale-green room at Lynmore Hall, in Cheshire. It was twenty to six in the evening, in the middle of the short but empty interval between tea and drinks, during which Miranda usually wrote her letters; for she lived in the country as she lived in London, and was rarely out of bed before midday or in bed before four in the morning. She was wearing an old dark emerald green smoking suit of which her parents disapproved.
She yawned and frowned again at the letter. She too began to write, as though Alice were her intimate friend, her diary. She detailed her business; she wrote out clever remarks for future reference; and she confided.
Dearest Alice, she began:
So lovely to get your letter. The weather is foul up here and we’re en famille at the moment so there’s absolutely nothing to do except read — once I start reading I can’t stop but after the Season it takes me at least two months to pick up a serious book and then get into the routine. I’m coming down to London in ten days’ time and would love to see you then …
She consulted her diary to check that she had no social engagements and then she gave Alice a date.
Darling, why ever are you fussing about your treatment of Finola, who only wanted a nice strict nanny and a few friends of her own age — although God knows, if she’d had that, she’d probably have rebelled and kept on rebelling. You are not your mother, and you could never be ‘an inferior version’ because you’ve got qualities of your own which she didn’t have and which you can’t eradicate. You must realise, with your reason if not with your emotions, that she wasn’t perfect — though what chance did reason ever stand against the needs of the body?
I do agree with you that Kate and Clementina are (was, of course, in Kate’s case — I am so sorry) admirable women, and Caitlin is a superb old lady. I was told by one old chap who’d known her forty years ago that she used to be a real virago — but age mellowed, evidently. Clementina is thoroughly human, but you know Kate and I never got on. But I don’t understand how you could want to be like them. There is this aura of municipal socialism and cold baths, combined with a bit of clean honest sex, which hangs about them and braces one for the Fabian future. They’re converts, you see, and one used to get the odd gleam of fanaticism from Kate. But you’ve just got your happy, muddled, inherited beliefs, and that’s so much more comfortable. Really, it’s better for others if one just publicly adheres to beliefs one grew up with without actually abiding by them, instead of making a great fuss and abandoning them in favour of what one thinks is the truth. So long as people keep thinking like that we’ll never have Church disestablishment!
You must be shocked to hear me talking like this, darling. The truth is, I don’t know what I think — I expect I’ll be half a Whig and half an anarchist for the rest of my life (no doubt I’m grossly misusing the terms). What I really care about is comfort, but I want everything else too. That’s why I’m so looking forward to being twenty-one, when my father will settle some money on me. I can see it all, it keeps me going to think of it: twelve hundred a year and a flat in Chelsea looking over the river, meeting only the people I really want to see, no questions asked by anyone — because I’m certainly not going to tie myself down to some man. Then I can see you often.
I want a job, too. Something in the decorating line. I supervised the doing-up of this incredibly hideous house last year and I sometimes feel that I can move mountains because I did manage to get a little light and simplicity and what-all into this gloomy monument to Self-help. However, I doubt my experience would qualify me for designing materials from ten till four in a little cellar beneath some chic shop in Bruton Street. I only planned the redecoration because my father decided he’d had a financial crisis and a professional would be too expensive though we had to get rid of some of the worst horrors. Now every time a guest who hasn’t seen the new decor arrives and looks surprised he can say in hushed tones, ‘Miranda did it,’ and wait for him or her to look sympathetic. Most of the dear old things do.
Actually I don’t think the redecoration is a success because no one’s happier in the new house than they were in the old. The most important thing about a place is how people feel about it — your Aunt Caitlin has all sorts of beautiful valuable things jumbled together higgledy-piggledy in her sitting rooms, and the Bramham Gardens kitchen is mostly unwashed plates and cats’ cushions and books and God knows what-else, and the sweet nurserymaid I used to have who lives in the lodge now has the most repulsive ‘Present from Margate’ type ornaments — but it’s what you all want that makes each room beautiful. Good taste is all rot — I’ve got it, but it doesn’t make my rooms beautiful.
I’m afraid I’m feeling rather low at the moment. The hordes are descending on Friday and their presence may drown even Damian’s end-of-the-holidays misery, though to me that’s always a weight on the stomach. He still doesn’t know that I ran away — the story is amnesia, as you know. I’m sure both my parents think he’d leg it if he had an example, and if he’s still got the spirit he had in the nursery, he will anyway — but if he was discovered he’d be far worse treated than I was because it matters so much more if a boy doesn’t show the stiff upper lip.
All my love, Miranda
At seven o’clock Miranda changed into a dark brown silk dress which reached her ankles. She brushed her hair, which she was now beginning to grow — like most oth
er young women of fashion, who had all worn short hair for the last five years. Round her shoulders she wrapped a very unusual, heavy embroidered shawl. She left her room and started to wander through the narrow, dark-panelled, thickly carpeted corridors towards the family sitting room. The corridors reminded her of a luxurious old-fashioned railway carriage: she had not managed to have them redecorated as well as the rooms, because of the expense.
At drinks and at dinner none of the family said much. Flora Pagett made the odd remark and received polite responses and cool replies. Usually, Thomas Pagett was fairly talkative at dinner, even alone with his family, and he talked chiefly of politics. Parliamentary politics was the only subject about which he knew more than did Miranda, in which she was actually interested. Tonight, he was looking down at his plate, only pausing to frown at his wife’s remarks and to glance at Miranda, when he was sure that she could not see him.
After dinner her brother Damian went up to bed and the rest of the family retired to the small sitting room. The men did not remain in the dining room, because Miranda’s father and her sister Olivia’s husband did not have much to say to each other. Miranda started to play mah-jong with Olivia and her husband and her brother Jasper. Her sister Viola put a record on the gramophone and played it very quietly so as not to irritate her parents over much. The butler came with brandy, port and cigars on a tray. Thomas Pagett quickly poured himself some brandy, then remembered to offer something to Olivia’s husband. He thought that brandy and port and cigars were not for women, but tonight he asked Miranda, very nicely, whether she would like a little port and a cigar.
‘Thank you, Father,’ said Miranda. She looked at him and he turned away to pour her some port.
Presently Jasper called mah-jong. Thomas Pagett got to his feet.
‘Miranda, if you don’t mind, I’d like a word with you — could you come into the study for a moment?’ he said, straightening his tie.
‘Of course, Father,’ said Miranda. She followed him down the cold passage. Her father flung open the study door and just remembered to allow her to precede him. He watched her glide through. She looked very calm and bored and beautiful.
Miranda was hurriedly rehearsing in her head the conversation which was about to take place, about her enormous dressmaker’s bill. She looked round the study. This room was filled with various pieces of furniture which had, by some accident, not been discarded when the house was restored in 1873. The portraits on the walls were all of the Fitzwilliams, into which old Catholic family Thomas Pagett’s father had married.
‘I’ve paid your bills,’ said her father. ‘Your dressmaker’s bill was fairly steep but you seem to have been economising in your hats — very modest bill from your milliner. I want you to dress well, you know — I mean of course you do dress well — so don’t worry too much about the cost. Just as long as you don’t want three diamond tiaras.’
‘I thought you were still having a financial crisis?’ said Miranda, opening her eyes wide.
‘Well I’m not any more,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said. He started to choose logs from the log-basket to put on the fire. His hands were shaking.
‘Listen, Miranda,’ he began, ‘I could talk about this later but I’d better make it clear now. I don’t — I don’t want you to have too much of a shock. The thing is this: if you get married I will settle three hundred thousand pounds on you, and if you don’t I will not pay you an allowance if you chose to live apart from your mother and me after you’re twenty-one, nor will I leave you anything in my will,’ he gabbled. He did not hear a sound from Miranda in the second or two which he took to pause. He drew his breath in quickly.
‘You could have any man you liked, Miranda. You know you could. I don’t know why you object to getting married, it’s a quite irrational obsession, you could twist some man round your little finger anyway,’ he hurried on, while Miranda neither spoke nor moved. He tried to think of more things to say.
‘I see,’ said Miranda, in a very soft voice. ‘I have disgraced the family sufficiently already. I can’t be allowed to be an old maid in addition, or, of course, to marry someone unsuitable — naturally, you didn’t need to voice that clause in the ultimatum. Good heavens, here I’ve been living at your expense for two years after I could have caught a husband. As it is, here I am committing the heinous crime of sleeping with any man who takes my fancy, and not even having the decency to demand payment for my services …’
‘Stop it,’ he shouted. He covered his ears with his hands. ‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. Good God, Miranda, I’m thinking of your happiness. I can’t let you ruin yourself. I don’t want to see you an unwanted middle-aged woman on your own. Do you think I like having to — to blackmail like this?’
‘Of course, of course, Father, it hurts you more than it hurts me.’
He looked very old as he at last turned towards her again. ‘How can you think that I think that about you? You were accusing me of thinking you some sort of — of high-class prostitute,’ he said slowly.
Miranda started to laugh, and then she forced herself to stop. She walked out of the room.
Her father gazed. When she was out of his sight he ran to the door and shouted after her. ‘Miranda!’
‘I don’t think we’ve got anything more to say,’ she said and her footsteps clattered away.
In the flower room she put on her mother’s fur coat. She forgot to take gloves, galoshes or a hat. Swearing, she fumbled with the key of the flower-room door and at last wrenched the door open. She left it unlocked behind her as she went out into the icy stable yard and walked as fast as she could towards her car. Shivering, she clambered inside it and jerked it into action.
The drive from Cheshire to London usually took six and a half hours, but Miranda had reached the outskirts of London after five and a half. She continued to drive very fast until she reached the top of Baker Street, and then she slowed down and started to think of the coming conversation with Alice. Until now Miranda had held the pleasant belief that her father was unable to prevent her from doing as she liked with regard to Alice, although she was not yet twenty-one. ‘What do you mean you’ve got to marry some fool?’ Alice would say. ‘Mother of God, as though you couldn’t come and live with us. It’s not as though we’re so poor … you’ve told us you want to be comfortable financially, I know, but if you wouldn’t prefer to live with people who love you than to marry someone you despise … you were happy here, weren’t you?’
Miranda drove very slowly down Baker Street. She reached the corner of Marylebone Road and stopped. For a moment she rested her head on the wheel. She was shaking. Then she pulled herself round into Marylebone Road, and she took the last few hundred yards of her journey at over fifty miles an hour. She got out of the car in Bryanston Square and briefly looked up at the familiar house which was her final destination.
She had not brought the key to the house and she had to ring the doorbell several times, weeping with tiredness, before the housekeeper heard her and opened the door to her. Miranda barely apologised to the woman for fetching her from bed. She crawled upstairs and straight into her unaired bed. She slept until one o’clock the following day and then she drove back to Lynmore.
The following week she came down to London to see her dressmaker. She spent a very pleasant evening at Bramham Gardens, and said nothing of her new situation.
CHAPTER 23
BRAMHAM GARDENS
EARL’S COURT
March 1930
Finola was studying her face. She was standing several paces away from the mirror, squinting at her reflection. Slowly she walked towards it to see at what distance the three spots on her chin became noticeable: they could not be seen unless one was really quite close. Finola was not comforted. She stared at the spots and gingerly squeezed one. Then she opened a bottle of a new astringent and doused her face with it, though she had been told by Kate that anything other than plain water would probab
ly do her skin more harm than good. Perhaps one day someone would want to kiss her, and he would certainly notice her spots, and then he would say a hurried goodnight instead of kissing her. Jane at school had said that this particular lotion had rid her of several spots.
Next Finola brushed her hair and wondered whether she might wash it. She brushed it very gently because it took a long time to curl it, with rags. She was saving up for a permanent wave at the moment: she had not mentioned this to anyone at home because she was certain that everyone would claim firstly that it would ruin her hair, which was probably untrue, and secondly that her hair was beautiful anyway, which was a blatant lie, for her hair was ginger, although Alice called it red-gold and said it was almost as lovely as her mother’s.
Finola put on some white powder and red lipstick. The colours distracted attention from her large, soft, dark-grey eyes but she felt comfortable behind the bold lipstick. She still had half an hour before she was due to go out with the other girls to the cinema, although she was quite ready. She decided to go and see Jenny, who was in bed with ‘flu’. Jenny now had her doctorate, and was a biochemist. She worked at London University.
‘You look like a fashion plate,’ Jenny said from her bed when Finola came in.
‘Oh no,’ said Finola, ‘my hat’s a bit too big and my skirt’s too short too.’
‘Well, you know all about it,’ said Jenny. ‘Mais tout de même, tu es très jolie.’
They continued to talk in French. Only Anatole and his daughters were French speakers, but they did not all speak French to each other. Anatole occasionally spoke in French to all of them; Liza always spoke English.
Finola sat down on Jenny’s bed.
‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ said Finola, plucking at the eiderdown. ‘I don’t know whether I really want to carry on at school. I’ve spoken to Anatole and he was very understanding but he didn’t give me any advice, and Alice said it was entirely up to me to decide, and she was too busy to listen. Clementina was a bit patronising. She said I was too young to know my own mind and that I’d enjoy Queen’s.’
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