‘Do let me see,’ said Lady Marjorie. ‘Oh, good! Wilma Alexander. Of course, I forgot that she lives near here – the Faircombes too. I say, Poppy, there are masses of people we know on this list, will it matter, d’you think?’
‘I don’t suppose they’ll recognize us in our fancy dresses.’
‘Well, it can’t be helped if they do. I really can’t live the whole rest of my life in disguise on account of Osborne.’ She went on perusing the list.
‘The episodes are all arranged for, now,’ Jasper told Mrs Lace. ‘Each branch of Social Unionism in the county is responsible for one. There will be nearly three hundred Comrades acting, as far as I can make out, for whom we have to provide clothes. We shall have to call a committee meeting to discuss it.
‘Then Miss Trant, the organist, has had a wonderful idea. She thinks we should have an Olde Englyshe Fayre going on at the same time, and she is arranging Maypole dances and art needlework stalls and so on.’
‘Oh! surely,’ said Mrs Lace, ‘Olde Englyshe things are rather a bore, aren’t they? I should have thought that we want to keep an eighteenth-century spirit? Why not a Regency Rout for example?’
‘We like Olde Englyshe best,’ said Jasper, ‘because it is so wonderfully funny. Besides, a pageant must be kept thoroughly lowbrow or it loses all character.’
‘Miss Trant is being very kind and helpful. She is so sweet,’ said Poppy. ‘Do you know her?’
Mrs Lace had spent the eight years of her married life patronizing Miss Trant, whom she regarded as a stupid, common little woman, second only in dreariness to Mr Wilkins. There seemed no end to the pin-pricks which poor Mrs Lace was doomed to endure.
Eugenia, who had sat in silence, munching a twopenny bar, since the departure of Mr Leader, now said she must be off. She hailed Vivian Jackson, who appeared from nowhere, took Mrs Lace’s list of the neighbours, kicked up the Reichshund, who was snoring in the sun; and, still munching, she trotted away. That evening Mr Leader was dragged from his bed by masked men wearing Union Jack shirts and flung into an adjacent duck pond. As the weather was extremely hot he took no chill and suffered nothing worse than a little mortification and the loss of his eau-de-nil pyjama trousers. Nobody else witnessed the affair and Mr Leader did not take any legal or other steps. Nevertheless, the seed was sown of an active resentment against Social Unionism and his treacherous enchantress, Mrs Lace.
14
Lady Chalford sent her motor car to the Jolly Roger with a message that she wished to see Mrs St Julien and Mr Aspect on a matter of extreme importance, and would be greatly obliged if they would come to Chalford House immediately. The car would wait to take them. They entered it with some trepidation, feeling very much like naughty children and wondering which particular enormity had been found out.
When they arrived however, their minds were set at rest on this score; T.P.O.F. was in an almost hysterical mood, but not on account of anything they had done.
‘Dear child, dear Mr Aspect,’ she said, waving the list of neighbours at them, ‘I need your advice, a really dreadful thing has happened – I don’t know when I have felt so much upset. On reading this list I am horrified and disgusted to see that there is nobody on it (not a single soul) whom I could possibly ask inside my house. Do you know that when I had been through it twice I could scarcely believe that there was not some mistake, so I sent for my husband’s agent and he assured me that it is perfectly accurate, every family for miles round is mentioned on it. I had no idea that we lived in such a shocking neighbourhood.’
‘Really,’ said Poppy, with interest, ‘why, whatever is the matter with them all?’
‘The matter?’ said Lady Chalford, in a voice of bewilderment, ‘the matter is that none of them are respectable. I really cannot understand it. Since I stopped going out of course some of the houses have changed hands, but for all that a great many are still occupied by the same families as the ones I used to know quite well, and who were ordinary decent people like you or me. Since those days the most shocking, distressing things seem to have taken place.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘My dear, you may well ask. I tell you this list has upset me more than I can say. Take any name from it at random – they are all alike, they all have some sort of cloud hanging over them. Take for instance the first name, the Alexanders. The late Lord Alexander, my dear husband’s closest friend for many years, has been succeeded at Bruton Park by his eldest son, Lord Bruton whom, as a child, I often held in my arms. Now, what do I learn? This unfortunate young man has been trapped into marriage with a woman years older than himself, a woman from the variety stage; what is called, I believe, a cabaret artiste.’
Poppy gave half a look in Jasper’s direction and they both checked a giggle. Trapped into marriage was hardly the expression to use of Lord Alexander, who was well known to have pursued his lovely wife over three continents before she would make up her mind to marry him.
‘But you know,’ said Poppy, ‘Wilma Alexander is awfully respectable and the sweetest person in the world. You’d love her. They are as happy as kings and she is quite wrapped up in Bertie and the children.’
‘My dear, I am prepared to believe anything you tell me about this Lady Alexander, but I have no intention of inviting her to my house. She may, for all I know, be a most
