Love in a Cold Climate (34 page)

“Well, Cedric and Boy are chatting away like mad. I think Boy is admiring Cedric’s suit, a sort of coarse blue tweed, very pretty, piped with scarlet. Lady Montdore is all smiles, having a good look round. You know the way she does.”

“I can just see it,” said Polly, combing her hair.

I did not quite like to say that Lady Montdore at this very moment was peering over the churchyard wall at her sister-in-law’s grave. Boy and Cedric had left her there and were wandering off together towards the wrought-iron gates which led to the kitchen garden, laughing, talking and gesticulating.

“Go on,” said Polly, “keep it up, Fanny.”

“There’s Sister, she is floating up to your mother, who is simply beaming—they both are—I never saw such smiles. Goodness, how Sister is enjoying it! Here they come. Your mother looks so happy, I feel quite sentimental, you can see how she must have been missing you, really at the bottom of her heart, all this time.”

“Nonsense,” said Polly, but she looked rather pleased.

“Darling, I do so feel I shall be in the way. Let me escape now through Boy’s dressing room.”

“Oh, on no account whatever, Fanny. Fanny you’ll upset me if you do that—I absolutely insist on you staying here—I can’t face her alone, beams or no beams.”

Perhaps it had occurred to her, as it now did to me, that Lady Montdore’s beam would very likely fade at the sight of Polly in Lady Patricia’s room, unchanged in almost every respect, in the
very bed where Lady Patricia had breathed her last, and that her repugnance for what Polly had done would be given a new reality. Even I had found it rather unattractive until I had got used to the idea. But over-sensibility had never been one of Lady Montdore’s failings, and, besides, the great flame of happiness that Cedric had lit in her heart had long since burnt up all emotions which did not directly relate to him. He was the only person in the world now who had any substance for her.

So the beam did not flicker. She positively radiated good humour as she kissed Polly first and then me. She looked round the room and said, “You’ve moved the dressing table. It’s much better like that, more light. Lovely flowers, dear, these camellias—can I have one for Cedric’s buttonhole? Oh, from Paddington, are they? Poor Geoffrey, I fear he’s a bit of a megalomaniac. I haven’t been over there once since he succeeded. His father, now, was very different, a charming man, great friend of ours. King Edward was very fond of him, too, and of course Loelia Paddington was perfectly lovely—people used to stand on chairs, you know. So the poor little baby died. I expect it was just as well. Children are such an awful expense, nowadays.”

Sister, who came back into the room just in time to hear this remark, put her hand to her heart and nearly fainted. That was going to be something to tell her next patients about, never, in all her sister-hood, can she have heard its like from a mother to an only daughter. But Polly, gazing open-mouthed at her mother, taking in every detail of the new appearance, was quite unmoved. It was too typical of Lady Montdore’s whole outlook on life for somebody who had been brought up by her to find it odd or upsetting. In any case, I doubt if she minded much about the baby, herself. She seemed to me rather like a cow whose calf has been taken away from it at birth, unconscious of her loss.

“What a pity you couldn’t have come to the ball, Fanny,” Lady Montdore went on. “Just only for half an hour, to have a look. It was really beautiful. A lot of Cedric’s friends came from Paris for it, in
most striking dresses and, I am bound to say, though I have never liked the French, they were very civil indeed and so appreciative of anything one did for them. They all said there hadn’t been such a party since the days of Robert de Montesquieu, and I can believe it. It cost £4000, you know, the water for the gondolas was so heavy, for one thing. Well, it shows these foreigners that England isn’t done for yet; excellent propaganda. I wore all my diamonds and I have given Cedric a revolving diamond star (goes by clockwork) and he wore it on his shoulder—most effective, I must say. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute and I wish you could read the letters I’ve had about it, really touching, people have had so little pleasure the last year or two and it makes them all the more grateful, of course. Next time we come over I’ll bring the photographs. They give a wonderful idea of what it was like.”

“What was your dress, Mummy?”

“Longhi,” said Lady Montdore evasively. “Veronica Chaddesley Corbett was very good, as a prostitute (they were called something different in those days) and Davey was there, Fanny, have you heard from him? He was the Black Death. Everybody made a real effort, you know. It’s a terrible pity you girls couldn’t have come.”

There was a pause. She looked round the room and said with a sigh, “Poor Patricia—well, never mind that’s all over now. Boy was telling us about his book, such an excellent idea—
Three Dukes—
and Cedric is very much interested because young Souppes, the son of the Prince des Ressources whom we used to see at Trouville, is a friend of his and Chèvres-Fontaine, which Cedric used to take every summer, belongs to his first cousin. Isn’t it a curious coincidence? So of course Cedric can tell Boy a great many things he never knew about them all, and they think later on they might go to Paris together to do some research. In fact, we might all go, wouldn’t that be amusing?”

“Not me,” said Polly, “no more abroad for me, ever.”

At this point Boy came into the room and I discreetly left it, in spite of a furious look from the bed. I went into the garden to find
Cedric. He was sitting on the churchyard wall, the pale sunshine on his golden hair, which I perceived to be tightly curled, an aftermath of the ball, no doubt, and plucking away with intense concentration at the petals of a daisy.

“He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, don’t interrupt, my angel, he loves me, he loves me not, oh, heaven, heaven, heaven! He loves me! I may as well tell you, my darling, that the second big thing in my life has begun.”

A most sinister ray of light suddenly fell upon the future.

“Oh, Cedric,” I said. “Do be careful.”

I NEED NOT
have felt any alarm, however. Cedric managed the whole thing quite beautifully. As soon as Polly had completely recovered her health and looks, he put Lady Montdore and Boy into the big Daimler and rolled them away to France. The field was thus left to a Morris Cowley which, sure enough, could be seen outside Silkin day after day. Before very long, Polly got into it and was driven over to Paddington Park, where she remained.

Then the Daimler rolled back to Hampton.

“So here we are, my darling, having lovely cake and eating it, too, which is
one’s
great aim in life.”

“The Boreleys think it simply terrible,” I said.