Nearly a month then to this visit about which my feelings were so uncertain. All of a sudden, not only not nearly a month but now, today, now this minute, and I found myself being whirled through the suburbs of Oxford in a large black Daimler. One mercy, I was alone, and there was a long drive, some twenty miles, in front of me. I knew the road well from my hunting days in that neighbourhood. Perhaps it would go on nearly for ever. Lady Montdore’s writing-paper was headed Hampton Place, Oxford, station Twyfold. But Twyfold, with the change and hour’s wait at Oxford which it involved, was only inflicted upon such people as were never likely to be in a position to get their own back on Lady Montdore, anybody for whom she had the slightest regard being met at Oxford. ‘Always be civil to the girls, you never know whom they may marry’ is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.
So I fidgeted in my corner, looking out at the deep intense blue dusk of autumn, profoundly wishing that I could be safe back at home or going to Alconleigh or indeed anywhere rather than to Hampton. Well-known landmarks kept looming up, it got darker and darker, but I could just see the Merlinford road with its big signpost. Then in a moment, or so it seemed, we were turning in at lodge gates. Horrors! I had arrived.
3
A scrunch of gravel; the motor car gently stopped, and exactly as it did so the front door opened, casting a panel of light at my feet. Once inside, the butler took charge of me, removed my nutria coat (a coming-out present from Davey), led me through the hall, under the great steep Gothic double staircase up which rushed a hundred steps, half-way to heaven, meeting at a marble group which represented the sorrows of Niobe, through the octagonal antechamber, through the green drawing-room and the red drawing-room into the Long Gallery where, without asking it, he pronounced my name very loud and clear and then abandoned me.
The Long Gallery was, as I always remember it being, full of people. On this occasion there were perhaps twenty or thirty; some sat round a tea table by the fire while others, with glasses instead of cups in their hands, stood watching a game of backgammon. This group was composed, no doubt, of the ‘young married’ people to whom Lady Montdore had referred in her letter. In my eyes, however, they seemed far from young, being about the age of my own mother. They were chattering like starlings in a tree, did not break off their chatter when I came in, and when Lady Montdore introduced me to them, merely stopped it for a moment, gave me a glance and went straight on with it again. When she pronounced my name, however, one of them said:
‘Not by any chance the Bolter’s daughter?’
Lady Montdore paused at this, rather annoyed, but I, quite used to hearing my mother referred to as the Bolter – indeed nobody, not even her own sisters, ever called her anything else – piped up ‘Yes’.
It then seemed as though all the starlings rose in the air and settled on a different tree, and that tree was me.
‘The Bolter’s girl?’
‘Don’t be funny – how could the Bolter have a grown-up daughter?’
‘Veronica – do come here a minute – do you know who this is? She’s the Bolter’s child, that’s all –!’
‘Come and have your tea, Fanny,’ said Lady Montdore. She led me to the table and the starlings went on with their chatter about my mother in ‘eggy-peggy’, a language I happened to know quite well.
‘Egg-is shegg-ee reggealleggy, pwegg-oor swegg-eet? I couldn’t be more interested, considering that the very first person the Bolter ever bolted with was Chad, wasn’t it, darling? Lucky me got him next, but only after she had bolted away from him again.’
‘I still don’t see how it can be true. The Bolter can’t be more than thirty-six, I know she can’t. Roly, you know the Bolter’s age, we all used to go to Miss Vacani’s together, you in your tiny kilt, poker and tongs on the floor, for the sword dance. Can she be more than thirty-six?’
‘That’s right, bird-brain, just do the sum. She married at eighteen, eighteen plus eighteen equals thirty-six, correct? No?’
‘Yes. Steady on though, what about the nine months?’
‘Not nine, darling, nothing like nine, don’t you remember how bogus it all was and how shamingly huge her bouquet had to be, poor sweet? It was the whole point.’
‘Veronica’s gone too far as usual – come on, let’s finish the game.’
I had half an ear on this riveting conversation and half on what Lady Montdore was saying. Having given me a characteristic and well-remembered look, up and down, a look which told me what I knew already, that my tweed skirt bulged behind and why had I no gloves (why,
