Love in a Cold Climate (8 page)

T
HE REST OF
that day was rather disorganized. The men finally went off shooting, very late, while the women stayed at home to be interviewed by various Inspectors on the subject of their lost possessions. Of course the burglary made a wonderful topic of conversation and indeed nobody spoke of anything else.

“I couldn’t care less about the diamond brooch. After all, it’s well insured and now I shall be able to have clips instead which will be far and away smarter. Veronica’s clips always make me miserable, every time I see her, and, besides, that brooch used to remind me of my bogus old mother-in-law too much. But I couldn’t think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife’s shawl?”

“Oh, I know. I’m in a terrible do about my bracelet of lucky charms—no value to anybody else—it really is too too sick-making. Just when I had managed to get a bit of hangman’s rope, Mrs. Thompson too, did I tell you? Roly will never win the National now, poor sweet.”

“With me it’s Mummy’s little locket she had as a child. I can’t
think why my ass of a maid had to go and put it in. She never does as a rule.”

These brassy ladies became quite human as they mourned their lost trinkets, and now that the men were out of the house they suddenly seemed very much nicer. I am speaking of the Veronica chorus, for Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett herself, in common with Lady Montdore and Lady Patricia, was always exactly the same, whatever the company.

At tea time the village policeman reappeared with his bicycle, having wiped the eye of all the grand detectives who had come from London in their shiny cars. He produced a perfect jumble-sale heap of objects which had been discarded by the burglars under a haystack and nearly all the little treasures were retrieved, with high cries of joy, by their owners. As the only things which now remained missing were jewels of considerable value, and as these were felt to be the business of the Insurance Companies, the party continued in a much more cheerful atmosphere. There was, however, a distinctly noticeable current of anti-French feeling. The Norahs and Nellies would have had a pretty poor reception if any of them had turned up just then, and Boy, if it was possible for him to have enough of a Duchess, must have been having enough of this one, since all but he fled from the machine-gun fire of questions, and he was obliged to spend the next two days practically alone with her.

I WAS HANGING
about, as one does at house parties, waiting for the next meal; it was not yet quite time to dress for dinner on Sunday evening. One of the pleasures of staying at Hampton was that the huge Louis XV map table in the middle of the Long Gallery was always covered with every imaginable weekly newspaper neatly laid out in rows and rearranged two or three times a day by a footman whose sole occupation this appeared to be.

I seldom saw the
Tatler
and
Sketch
, as my aunts would have thought it a perfectly unwarranted extravagance to subscribe to
such papers, and I was greedily gulping down back numbers when Lady Montdore called to me from a sofa where, ever since tea, she had been deep in talk with Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett. I had been throwing an occasional glance in their direction, wondering what it could all be about and wishing I could be a fly on the wall to hear them, thinking also that it would hardly be possible for two women to look more different. Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett, her bony little silken legs crossed and uncovered to above the knee, perched rather than sat on the edge of the sofa. She wore a plain beige kasha dress, which must certainly have been made in Paris, and certainly designed for the Anglo-Saxon market, and smoked cigarette after cigarette with a great play of long thin white fingers, flashing with rings and painted nails. She did not keep still for one moment, though she was talking with great earnestness and concentration.

Lady Montdore sat well back on the sofa, both her feet on the ground. She seemed planted there, immovable and solid, not actually fat, but solid through and through. Smartness, even if she had sought after it, would hardly be attainable by her in a world where it was personified by the other and had become almost as much a question of build, of quick and nervous movement as of actual clothes. Her hair was shingled, but it was grey and fluffy, by no means a smooth cap, her eyebrows grew at will, and when she remembered to use lipstick and powder they were any colour and slapped on anyhow, so that her face, compared with that of Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett was as a hayfield is to a lawn, her whole head looking twice as large as the polished little head beside her. All the same she was not disagreeable to look at. There was a healthiness and liveliness about her face which lent it a certain attraction. Of course she seemed to me, then, very old. She was, in fact, about fifty-eight.

“Come over here, Fanny.”

I was almost too much surprised to be alarmed by this summons and hurried over, wondering what it could all be about.

“Sit there,” she said, pointing to a needlework chair, “and talk to us. Are you in love?”

I felt myself becoming scarlet in the face. How could they have guessed my secret? Of course I had been in love for two days now, ever since my morning walk with the Duc de Sauveterre. Passionately, but, as indeed I realized, hopelessly in love. In fact the very thing that Lady Montdore had intended for Polly had befallen me.

“There you are, Sonia,” said Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett triumphantly, tapping a cigarette with nervous violence against her jewelled case and lighting it with a gold lighter, her pale blue eyes never meanwhile leaving my face. “What did I tell you? Of course she is, poor sweet, just look at that blush, it must be something quite new and horribly bogus. I know, it’s my dear old husband. Confess, now! I couldn’t mind less, actually.”

I did not like to say that I still, after a whole weekend, had no idea at all which of the many husbands present hers might be, but stammered out as quick as I could, “Oh, no, no, not anybody’s husband, I promise.” Only a fiancé, and such a detached one at that.

They both laughed.

“All right,” said Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett, “we’re not going to worm. What we really want to know, to settle a bet, is, have you always fancied somebody ever since you can remember? Answer truthfully, please.”

I was obliged to admit that this was the case. From a tiny child, ever since I could remember, in fact, some delicious image had been enshrined in my heart, last thought at night, first thought in the morning. Fred Terry as Sir Percy Blakeney, Lord Byron, Rudolph Valentino, Henry V, Gerald du Maurier, blissful Mrs. Ashton at my school, Steerforth, Napoleon, the guard on the 4.45, image had succeeded image. Latterly it had been that of a pale, pompous young man in the Foreign Office who had once, during my season in London, asked me for a dance, had seemed to me the very flower of cosmopolitan civilization, and had remained the pivot of existence until wiped from my memory by Sauveterre. For
that is what always happened to these images. Time and hateful absence blurred them, faded them but never quite obliterated them until some lovely new broom image came and swept them away.

“There you are, you see,” Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett turned triumphantly to Lady Montdore. “From kiddie car to hearse, darling, I couldn’t know it better. After all, what would there be to think about when one’s alone, otherwise?”

What, indeed? This Veronica had hit the nail on the head. Lady Montdore did not look convinced. She, I felt sure, had never harboured romantic yearnings and had plenty to think about when she was alone, which, anyhow, was hardly ever.

“But who is there for her to be in love with, and, if she is, surely I should know it,” she said.

I guessed that they were talking about Polly and this was confirmed by Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett saying, “No, darling, you wouldn’t, you’re her mother. When I remember poor Mummy and her ideas on the subject of my ginks …”

“Now, Fanny, tell us what you think. Is Polly in love?”

“Well, she says she’s not, but …”

“But you don’t think it’s possible not to be fancying someone? Nor do I.”

I wondered. Polly and I had had a long chat the night before, sprawling on my bed in our dressing gowns, and I had felt almost certain then that she was keeping something back which she would half have liked to tell me.

“I suppose it might depend on your nature?” I said, doubtfully.

“Anyhow,” said Lady Montdore, “there’s one thing only too certain. She takes no notice of the young men I provide for her and they take no notice of her. They worship me, of course, but what is the good of that?”

Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett caught my eye, and I thought she gave me half a wink. I liked her more every minute. Lady Montdore went on:

“Bored and boring. I can’t say I’m looking forward to bringing
her out in London very much if she goes on like this. She used to be such a sweet easy child, but her whole character seems to have changed, now she is grown-up. I can’t understand it.”

“Oh, she’s bound to fall for some nice chap in London, darling,” said Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett. “I wouldn’t worry too much, if I were you. Whoever she’s in love with now, if she is in love, which Fanny and I know she must be, is probably a kind of dream and she only needs to see some flesh and blood people for her to forget about it. It so often happens, with girls.”

“Yes, my dear, that’s all very well, but she was out for two years in India, you know. There were some very attractive men there, polo, and so on; not suitable, of course. I was only too thankful she didn’t fall in love with any of them, but she could have, it would not have been unnatural at all. Why, poor Delia’s girl fell in love with a Rajah, you know.”

“I couldn’t blame her less,” said Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett. “Rajahs must be perfect heaven—all those diamonds.”

“Oh, no, my dear—any Englishwoman has better stones than they do. I never saw anything to compare with mine when I was there. But this Rajah was rather attractive, I must say, though of course Polly didn’t see it; she never does. Oh, dear, oh, dear! Now, if only we were a French family, they seem to arrange things so very much better. To begin with, Polly would inherit all this, instead of those stupid people in Nova Scotia—so unsuitable—can you imagine Colonials living here?—and, to go on with, we should find a husband for her ourselves, after which he and she would live partly at his place with his parents and partly here with us. Think how sensible that is. The old French tart was telling me the whole system last night.”

Lady Montdore was famous for picking up words she did not quite understand and giving them a meaning of her own. She clearly took the word tart to mean old girl, trout, body. Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett was delighted. She gave a happy little squeak and rushed upstairs, saying that she must go and dress for dinner. When
I came up ten minutes later she was still telling the news through bathroom doors.

AFTER THIS, LADY
Montdore set out to win my heart, and, of course, succeeded. It was not very difficult. I was young and frightened, she was old and grand and frightening, and it only required a very little charm, an occasional hint of mutual understanding, a smile, a movement of sympathy to make me think I really loved her. The fact is that she had charm, and since charm allied to riches and position is almost irresistible, it so happened that her many haters were usually people who had never met her, or people she had purposely snubbed or ignored. Those whom she made efforts to please, while forced to admit that she was indefensible, were very much inclined to say “… but all the same she has been very nice to me and I can’t help liking her.” She herself, of course, never doubted for one moment that she was worshipped, and by every section of society.

Before I left Hampton on Monday morning Polly took me up to her mother’s bedroom to say good-bye. Some of the guests had left the night before, the others were leaving now, all rolling away in their huge rich motor cars, and the house was like a big school breaking up for the holidays. The bedroom doors we passed were open, revealing litters of tissue paper and unmade beds, servants struggling with suitcases and guests struggling into their coats. Everybody seemed to be in a struggling hurry all of a sudden.

Lady Montdore’s room—I remembered it of old—was enormous, more like a ballroom than a bedroom, and was done up in the taste of her own young days when she was a bride. The walls were panelled in pink silk covered with white lace, the huge wicker-work bed on a dais had curtains of pink shot silk, there was a lot of white furniture with fat pink satin upholstery outlined in ribbon roses. Silver flower vases stood on all the tables, and photographs in silver frames, mostly of royal personages, with inscriptions cordial in inverse ratio to the actual importance of the personage, reigning monarchs having contented themselves with merely a
Christian name, an R, and perhaps a date, while ex-kings and queens, archduchesses and grand dukes had scattered Dearest and Darling Sonia and Loving all over their trains and uniform trousers.