‘If she knows that George III was a king and went mad.’
All the same, my aunt was right, and I knew it and she knew it. The Radlett children read enormously by fits and starts in the library at Alconleigh, a good representative nineteenth-century library, which had been made by their grandfather, a most cultivated man. But, while they picked up a great deal of heterogeneous information, and gilded it with their own originality, while they bridged gulfs of ignorance with their charm and high spirits, they never acquired any habit of concentration, they were incapable of solid hard work. One result, in later life, was that they could not stand boredom. Storms and difficulties left them unmoved, but day after day of ordinary existence produced an unbearable torture of ennui, because they completely lacked any form of mental discipline.
As we trailed out of the dining-room after dinner, we heard Captain Warbeck say:
‘No port, no, thank you. Such a delicious drink, but I must refuse. It’s the acid from port that makes one so delicate now.’
‘Ah – you’ve been a great port drinker, have you?’ said Uncle Matthew.
‘Oh, not me, I’ve never touched it. My ancestors –’
Presently, when they joined us in the drawing-room, Aunt Sadie said: ‘The children know the news now.’
‘I suppose they think it’s a great joke,’ said Davey Warbeck, ‘old people like us being married.’
‘Oh, no, of course not,’ we said, politely, blushing.
‘He’s an extraordinary fella,’ said Uncle Matthew, ‘knows everything. He says those Charles II sugar casters are only a Georgian imitation of Charles II, just fancy, not valuable at all. Tomorrow we’ll go round the house and I’ll show you all our things and you can tell us what’s what. Quite useful to have a fella like you in the family, I must say.’
‘That will be very nice,’ said Davey, faintly, ‘and now I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed. Yes, please, early morning tea – so necessary to replace the evaporation of the night.’
He shook hands with us all, and hurried from the room, saying to himself: ‘Wooing, so tiring.’
‘Davey Warbeck is a Hon,’ said Bob as we were all coming down to breakfast next day.
‘Yes, he seems a terrific Hon,’ said Linda, sleepily.
‘No, I mean he’s a real one. Look, there’s a letter for him, The Hon. David Warbeck. I’ve looked him up, and it’s true.’
Bob’s favourite book at this time was Debrett, his nose was never out of it. As a result of his researches he was once heard informing Lucille that ‘les origines de la famille Radlett sont perdues dans les brumes de l’antiquité.’
‘He’s only a second son, and the eldest has got an heir, so I’m afraid Aunt Emily won’t be a lady. And his father’s only the second Baron, created 1860, and they only start in 1720, before that it’s a female line.’ Bob’s voice was trailing off. ‘Still –’ he said.
We heard Davey Warbeck, as he was coming down the stairs, say to Uncle Matthew:
‘Oh no, that couldn’t be a Reynolds. Prince Hoare, at his very worst, if you’re lucky.’
‘Pig’s thinkers, Davey?’ Uncle Matthew lifted the lid of a hot dish.
‘Oh, yes please, Matthew, if you mean brains. So digestible.’
‘And after breakfast I’m going to show you our collection of minerals in the north passage. I bet you’ll agree we’ve got something worth having there, it’s supposed to be the finest collection in England – left me by an old uncle, who spent his life making it. Meanwhile, what’d you think of my eagle?’
‘Ah, if that were Chinese now, it would be a treasure. But Jap I’m afraid, not worth the bronze it’s cast in. Cooper’s Oxford, please, Linda.’
After breakfast we all flocked to the north passage, where there were hundreds of stones in glass-fronted cupboards. Petrified this and fossilized that, blue-john and lapis were the most exciting, large flints which looked as if they had been picked up by the side of the road, the least. Valuable, unique, they were a family legend. ‘The minerals in the north passage are good enough for a museum.’ We children revered them. Davey looked at them carefully, taking some over to the window and peering into them. Finally, he heaved a great sigh and said:
‘What a beautiful collection. I suppose you know they’re all diseased?’
‘Diseased?’
‘Badly, and too far gone for treatment. In a year or two they’ll all be dead – you might as well throw the whole lot away.’
Uncle Matthew was delighted.
‘Damned fella,’ he said, ‘nothing’s right for him, I never saw such a fella. Even the minerals have got foot-and-mouth, according to him.’
5
The year which followed Aunt Emily’s marriage transformed Linda and me from children, young for our ages, into lounging adolescents waiting for love. One result of the marriage was that I now spent nearly all my holidays at Alconleigh. Davey, like all Uncle Matthew’s favourites, simply could not see that he was in the least bit frightening, and scouted Aunt Emily’s theory that to be too much with him was bad for my nerves.
‘You’re just a lot of little crybabies,’ he said, scornfully, ‘if you allow yourselves to be upset by that old cardboard ogre.’
Davey had given up his flat in London and lived with us at Shenley, where, during term-time, he made but little difference to our life, except in so far as a male presence in a female household is always salutary (the curtains, the covers, and Aunt Emily’s clothes underwent an enormous change for the better), but, in the holidays, he liked to carry her off, to his own relations or on trips abroad, and I was parked at Alconleigh. Aunt Emily probably felt that, if she
