‘How lovely – green velvet and silver, I call that a dream, so soft and delicious, too.’ She rubbed a fold of the skirt against her cheek. ‘Mine’s silver lamé, it smells like a bird cage when it gets hot but I do love it. Aren’t you thankful evening skirts are long again? But I want to hear more about what coming-out is like in England.’
‘Dances,’ I said, ‘girls’ luncheon parties, tennis if you can, dinner parties to go to, plays, Ascot, being presented. Oh, I don’t know, I expect you can just about imagine.’
‘And all going on like the people downstairs?’
‘Chattering all the time? Well, but the downstairs people are old, Polly. Coming-out is with people of one’s own age, you see.’
‘They don’t think they’re old a bit,’ she said, laughing.
‘Well –’ I said, ‘all the same, they are.’
‘I don’t see them as so old myself, but I expect that’s because they seem young beside Mummy and Daddy. Just think of it, Fanny, your mother wasn’t born when Mummy married, and Mrs Warbeck was only just old enough to be her bridesmaid. Mummy was saying so before you came. No, but what I really want to know about coming-out here is what about love? Are they all always having love affairs the whole time? Is it their one and only topic of conversation?’
I was obliged to admit that this was the case.
‘Oh, bother. I felt sure, really, you would say that – it was so in India, of course, but I thought perhaps in a cold climate –! Anyway, don’t tell Mummy if she asks you, pretend that English débutantes don’t bother about love. She is in a perfect fit because I never fall in love with people; she teases me about it all the time. But it isn’t any good because if you don’t, you don’t. I should have thought, at my age, it’s natural not to.’
I looked at her in surprise, it seemed to me highly unnatural, though I could well understand not wanting to talk about such things to the grown-ups, and specially not to Lady Montdore if she happened to be one’s mother. But a new idea struck me.
‘In India,’ I said, ‘could you have fallen in love?’ Polly laughed.
‘Fanny darling, what do you mean? Of course I could have, why not? I just didn’t happen to, you see.’
‘White people?’
‘White or black,’ she said, teasingly.
‘Fall in love with blacks?’ What would Uncle Matthew say?
‘People do, like anything. You don’t understand about Rajahs, I see, but some of them are awfully attractive. I had a friend there who nearly died of love for one. And I’ll tell you something, Fanny. I honestly believe Mamma would rather I fell in love with an Indian than not at all. Of course there would have been a fearful row, and I should have been sent straight home, but even so she would have thought it quite a good thing. What she minds so much is the not at all. I know she’s only asked this Frenchman to stay because she thinks no woman can resist him. They could think of nothing else in Delhi – I wasn’t there at the time, I was in the hills with Boy and Auntie Patsy, we did a heavenly, heavenly trip – I must tell you about it but not now.’
‘But would your mother like you to marry a Frenchman?’ I said. At this time love and marriage were inextricably knotted in my mind.
‘Oh, not marry, good gracious no. She’d just like me to have a little weakness for him, to show that I’m capable of it – she wants to see if I’m like other women. Well, she’ll see. There’s the dressing-bell – I’ll call for you when I’m ready, I don’t live up here any more, I’ve got a new room over the porch. Heaps of time, Fanny, quite an hour.’
4
My bedroom was in the tower, where Polly’s nurseries had been when she was small. Whereas all the other rooms at Hampton were classical in feeling the tower rooms were exaggeratedly Gothic, the Gothic of fairy-story illustrations; and in this one the bed, the cupboards and the fireplace had pinnacles, the wallpaper was a design of scrolls and the windows were casements. An extensive work of modernization had taken place all over the house while the family was in India, and looking round I saw that in one of the cupboards there was now a tiled bathroom.
In the old days I used to sally forth, sponge in hand, to the nursery bathroom, which was down a terrifying twisting staircase, and I could still remember how cold it used to be outside in the passages, though there was always a blazing fire in my room. But now the central heating had been brought up to date and the temperature everywhere was that of a hothouse. The fire which flickered away beneath the spires and towers of the chimney piece was merely there for show, and no longer to be lighted at 7 a.m., before one was awake, by a little maid scuffling about like a mouse. The age of luxury was ended and that of comfort had begun. Being conservative by nature I was glad to see that the decoration of the room had not been changed at all, though the lighting was very much improved, there was a new quilt on the bed, the mahogany dressing-table had acquired a muslin petticoat and a triple looking-glass and the whole room and bathroom were close-carpeted. Otherwise everything was exactly as I remembered it, including two large yellow pictures which could be seen from the bed, Caravaggio’s ‘The Gamesters’ and ‘A Courtesan’ by Raphael.
As I dressed for dinner I passionately wished that Polly and I could have spent the evening together upstairs, supping off a tray, as we used to do, in the schoolroom. I was dreading this grown-up dinner ahead of me because I knew that, once
