The Great Husband Hunt (26 page)

It was Beluga she was addressing.

“He's an interesting little chap,” she said, crouching down to inspect him. “Carrying too much weight, but bags of character. Better get him out of this foolish garment, though. My boys will think he's a rag doll.”

Reggie was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets.

“Bobbity,” he said. “The most extraordinary thing. Poppy and I got hitched.”

“Reggie!” she said. “You're far too young. Go and tell Merrick. He's in the Smoking Rum, brooding.”

“Rum” was the Merrick way of saying “room.”

The pattern on the stairhall rug was quite worn away. Bobbity's hands and face were ruddy, like an old Irish. And although Kneilthorpe was capacious, it had neither turrets, nor suits of armor, nor priceless tapestries. I was relieved Ma and Aunt Fish weren't there to see the castle I had promised them.

An old, old version of Reggie appeared. An empty sleeve hung at his side. It was Sir Neville, who had gone to Mesopotamia and left behind an arm.

I wondered whether I should drop a curtsy, but my frozen knees, tangled in Beluga's leash, wouldn't cooperate and, in any event, formality seemed not to be the order of the day. Reggie didn't bow to his brother, nor even introduce me properly. I had been prepared to have my hand kissed, but no such thing occurred. And though Bobbity did call her husband by his last name, I felt it was probably a strange English mark of affection rather than a point of protocol.

I decided almost immediately that I liked my new family, and those first instincts turned out to be right. Merricks never flapped over anything, or collapsed onto couches or threatened to write new codicils. And if they ever complained to Reggie about his marrying me, I certainly never heard about it. They accepted my foreignness and my sudden appearance, and eventually even the news that there were two small girls in New York, waiting to complete the picture.

“Poppy is a very good friend of Humpy Choate,” Reggie told them over a late supper of sharp cheese and dark beer.

“Humpy!” they both laughed. As though that explained everything. The only moment of discord I remember that evening was when Reggie mentioned I was in possession of a fortune.

“Steady on,” Sir Neville warned him. And the subject was never touched on again. I had no idea about Reggie's money. I believe he may not have had much, but, anyway, there was very little to spend it on in Melton Mowbray, England.

Supper was served on trays which we balanced on our knees. Bobbity provided me with a knubbly hand-knitted garment to wear over my Egyptian red, and an outdoors man was sent up with my luggage.

“I shall put you in the Acorn Rum,” Bobbity said. “It's drectly across from Reggie's old rum. And Bullyboy had better be put in the Boot Rum. Give my boys time to decide about him.”

She refused ever to call Beluga anything but Bullyboy. The girl who brought me a dish of oatmeal next morning, a kind of local Irish, told me he had howled and whined all night, bereft of my company and the comfort of my eiderdown, but he soon recovered. Within a week he became convinced he was an English terrier.

He frolicked in mud and ate unspeakable things brought by a butcher's boy and boiled in a cauldron, and the only time I ever tried to coax him back into his Hermès collar, for Murray's wedding, he sank his teeth deep into the ball of my thumb.

35

The daily routine at Kneilthorpe was unlike anything I'd ever known. Sir Neville visited farms, of which there seemed a great number, and looked at milk yields, which always seemed satisfactory but never satisfactory enough to cheer him, and Reggie tagged along behind.

“Thank goodness he met you, Poppy,” Bobbity often said to me. “Otherwise we'd have lorst him to Africa.”

Bobbity's days centered around horses and dogs. She was in a perpetual state of letting them out or bringing them in. It was a sadness to her, I know, that I would never be persuaded closer to a horse than observing it from inside the morning-room windows. A horse, to my mind, lacked all the advantages of a roadster or an airplane, and was equipped with an arsenal of dangerous features such as whimsy and temperament.

Bobbity, though, seemed to have been born to the saddle. Out of it she was bulky and ponderous. Even in the hip-skimming gun-metal chiffon tube I created for her to wear to the Quorn Hunt Ball, she had the look of a retreating rhinoceros. But on horseback she was transformed.

“Bobbity's an odd name,” I observed one day.

“Got it because I mastered the rising trot so young,” she explained. “I'm Marigold on paper. Funny, we're both flowers.”

Bobbity's younger sister was a flower, too. Angelica Bagehot. She became my friend, though having a friend in Meltun Merbrey was nothing like New York or Paris. There was nowhere to get a manicure or shop for scent. There were no lunch counters where you could sit on high stools and gossip. But sometimes, at breakfast, Bobbity would say, “Angelica may heck over today” and I could look forward to a little girlish company.

Hecking was when you rode your horse along the metaled road, as distinct from riding crorse-country. Within six months I was quite fluent in English.

I settled as best I could into the position of junior mistress of Kneilthorpe. I overcame the cold by spending a great deal of the day in bed, and solved the problem of my constant hunger by establishing my authority in the kitchen. Bobbity had no interest in food, except soup, which she believed could be made out of anything.

I peeled off paper money for the girl who did the ordering and Angelica obtained recipes from the Bagehots's cook, and before long cake was making daily appearances.

During the season she hunted, but in the summer Angelica and I would play tennis, and when we were rained off, or “orf” as I learned to say, we'd play checkers instead or dance to records. She had led a very sequestered life and I was able to teach her all kinds of things, from the wild, darkie dances I'd learned from Badgirl Duprée to the best way to avoid babies.

“But why would one want to?” she asked. “I can't wait to have babies.”

Social life at Kneilthorpe was feast or famine. Between April and the end of the summer nothing much happened, but in September the pace started to quicken. Once or twice a week Bobbity would go cub-hunting, riding off wearing what she called “ret cetcher” and I would call a good tweed jacket. I believe the point of cub-hunting was to teach the fox cubs what was expected of them when the true hunting season began. Then the season opened and Bobbity changed into a much more flattering costume. Some of the ladies wore skirts and veiled hats, but Bobbity rode astride and looked a picture. She had a black frock coat and a canary vest. I would have taken up fox-hunting myself if I could have dispensed with the horse.

People came to stay during the season, to hunt and sometimes to shoot pheasant, which was Reggie's preferred sport. House guests were put up in the many bedrooms we had at Kneilthorpe, all as cold as the grave, and after dinner they played billiards or cards. We never played Truth or drank champagne wine or had any kind of
scandale.
They were dull types, and I especially disliked the way they ran off all the hot water. The only time I ever recall being cross with Reggie was when I was unable, because of this selfish behavior, to bathe before dinner. I asked for a tray in my rum.

“I don't know, old thing,” he said. “It'd be pretty bad form. And it doesn't matter if you haven't bathed, you know? Bobbity hasn't, and she's been in the saddle all day.”

Then he discussed it with his brother, quite within earshot of our door.

“I think you'll find,” said Sir Neville, “she'll come nicely to the bridle when she's hungry.”

Humpy did come to Kneilthorpe, just once. He said he'd come to see me, but I believe the truth centered around a rather handsome Johnny called Gordie.

A party came down for shooting, and the small select group included Gordie, who actually owned a castle, and the P of W, who stood to inherit the whole country.

Then Humpy arrived looking altogether too debonair for shooting.

“Look at you!” he said. “You've gone native!”

I hadn't at all gone native, but when you have slow circulation woolen socks are a great comfort.

I said, “Are you really going to shoot?”

“No,” he said. “But I may ride out with the lunch wagon and catch up on old times. Gordie and I go back a long way.”

I said, “What about the P of W? I'd hoped to get acquainted with him but he hasn't paid me the least attention. None of them have. All they do is count dead birds.”

But Humpy said he had absolutely no pull with the royals. He asked whether I missed Paris.

“Not a bit,” I lied. I said, “I'm so happy with Reggie.” That much was the truth.

Humpy reported that Gil had disappeared from rue Vavin, Hannelore Ettl was living in my house with a Dutch hermaphrodite, and Stassy's neckties were on sale in Samaritaine.

“And I suppose your babies will be joining you any moment?” he said.

That was the big unanswered question.

Reggie wanted us to do the right thing. But “the right thing” could be viewed in different lights. Though Bobbity and Sir Neville had given their full approval to the introduction of children, I feared they would find, as I had, that the reality was more inconvenient than the prospect. Then, perhaps Sapphire and Emerald liked growing up in New York and would react badly to being transplanted. And perhaps my sister wouldn't bear to be parted from them. A photograph had arrived, the two girls posed on cushions side by side, not babies anymore, and Honey behind them, with an arm around each child, and a challenging light in her eye.

“Come and get them,” she seemed to be saying, “if you dare.”

“The thing is,” I had explained to Reggie, “my sister will need time to get used to the idea.”

“Oh, quite so,” he said. “Absolutely. But sometimes what seems cruel is actually kind. I've seen it with bitches. No matter how devoted they are, there comes a time when they're actually pretty relieved to see the back of the whelps.”

I said, “Perhaps we should go to New York? Kind of ease ourselves in?”

“I'd have to put it to Merrick,” he said. “See when I can be spared.”

But another summer came and went. Sir Neville grew more and more gaunt, Bobbity had the girl turn great quantities of sour plums into great quantities of a condiment called chutney, and Bullyboy Beluga was stung by wasps. Then one fall morning, as I looked out of the morning-room windows, I saw a boy riding a pedal cycle up the gravel sweep. He disappeared and reappeared on the gentle wind of the road and it must have been fully five minutes before he reached the door and handed in a telegram.

“It'll be bad news,” the girl said. “Telegrams are always bad news.”

The first bad news was the way the telegram was addressed. “To Her Highness Poppy Minton Merrick.”

“RETURN NY IMMEDIATELY,” it said. “FATHER DEAD.” It was signed “GRACE.”

“Will there be an answer?” the girl wanted to know. “Walter always waits in case there's an answer.”

“Yes,” I said. “No. I'll let you know.”

The fact was, I didn't quite know what to make of it.

“The Missus can't make her mind up,” I heard the girl say. “Why don't you come round to the kitchen for a cup of tea, Walter, while she's pondering.”

The signature was “Grace,” which was Harry. But whose father's death was he reporting? Not mine. Not his. And what had possessed him to address me in such a way? I saw Ma's hand in that.

For the rest of the morning the telegram lay on the table, defying interpretation. Bobbity was out, hecking over to the Bagehot place to look at a hunter that was lame. And Reggie was in Melton Merbrey with Neville, seeing the feed merchant. I was alone except for the servants. Eventually I saw the delivery boy ride away, full of tea and my sultana cake, no doubt.

When Reggie and Neville returned from town they brought with them newspapers with gloomy reports about the United States.

“Things sound to be pretty rocky over there,” Reggie said. “The stock market took a fearful dive.”

He suggested I send my own telegram to Harry, asking for clarification.

“I'll rush it over to the telegraphic office, drectly after luncheon,” he said.

I wanted to ride in the sidecar but he wouldn't allow it.

“Better not, old bean,” he said. “I'm going to go like the clappers.”

It was 11 P.M., an extraordinarily late hour for Kneilthorpe House, especially on the eve of a meet, when another telegram arrived.

“HARRY DEAD,” it said. “RETURN IMMEDIATELY. SHERMAN.”

And so the facts began to emerge. A tragedy had befallen my brother-in-law, and my nephew, who in my mind's eye still wore diapers, was suddenly old enough to send telegrams and give orders.

“Well,” said Reggie. “There we have it. Emerald and Sapphire must certainly be brought home now. How often things work out this way. One wonders and wonders what to do for the best, and eventually the answer becomes clear.”

Bobbity said, “Will they be here before the end of the season?”

Hunting took up an enormous amount of her time and I could understand she wouldn't want children around, getting beneath horses' hooves.

But Reggie said, “I hope so. I hope they'll be here absolutely as soon as possible. I think it's going to be rather fun. Don't worry about getting their quarters up to scratch. I'll see to it. I'll have the girl bring in a spare sister, to do some scrubbing and so forth. And I suppose we'd better alert Nanny Faulds.”

There was then some discussion as to whether Nanny Faulds was merely old or desperately old. In any event, she had nannied at least two generations of Merricks and I was quite prepared to give her a chance with the next.

How Reggie clung to me in the week before I set off.

“Do hurry back, old sausage,” he said, curving around me till we were like spoons in a box. “And while you're gone I'm going to look into ponies. One can't get them started too soon, and it'll help to get Bobbity on side.”

I said, “Isn't she on side already?”

“Of course,” he said. “But she and Neville aren't accustomed to small fry. I'm sure it's been a disappointment to them. Bobbity would have adored to have children.”