He and Lady Montdore were much occupied, when they were in the country, with what they called ‘their art’, producing enormous portraits, landscapes and still lifes by the dozen. In the summer they worked out of doors, and in the winter they installed a large stove in a north-facing bedroom and used it as a studio. They were such great admirers of their own and each other’s work that the opinion of the outside world meant but little to them. Their pictures were always framed and hung about their two houses, the best ones in rooms and the others in passages.
By the evening Lady Montdore was ready for some relaxation.
‘I like to work hard all day,’ she would say, ‘and then have agreeable company and perhaps a game of cards in the evening.’
There were always guests for dinner, an Oxford don or two with whom Lord Montdore could show off about Livy, Plotinus and the Claudian family, Lord Merlin, who was a great favourite of Lady Montdore and who published her sayings far and wide, and the more important county neighbours, strictly in turns. They seldom sat down fewer than ten people; it was very different from Alconleigh.
I enjoyed these visits to Hampton. Lady Montdore terrified me less and charmed me more, Lord Montdore remained perfectly agreeable and colourless, Boy continued to give me the creeps and Polly became my best-friend-next-to-Linda.
Presently Aunt Sadie suggested that I might like to bring Polly back with me to Alconleigh, which I duly did. It was not a very good time for a visit there since everybody’s nerves were upset by Linda’s engagement, but Polly did not seem to notice the atmosphere, and no doubt her presence restrained Uncle Matthew from giving vent to the full violence of his feelings while she was there. Indeed, she said to me, as we drove back to Hampton together after the visit, that she envied the Radlett children their upbringing in such a quiet, affectionate household, a remark which could only have been made by somebody who had inhabited the best spare room, out of range of Uncle Matthew’s early morning gramophone concerts, and who had never happened to see that violent man in one of his tempers. Even so, I thought it strange, coming from Polly, because if anybody had been surrounded by affection all her life it was she; I did not yet fully understand how difficult the relations were beginning to be between her and her mother.
8
Polly and I were bridesmaids at Linda’s wedding in February, and when it was over I motored down to Hampton with Polly and Lady Montdore to spend a few days there. I was grateful to Polly for suggesting this, as I remembered too well the horrible feeling of anti-climax there had been after Louisa’s wedding, which would certainly be ten times multiplied after Linda’s. Indeed, with Linda married, the first stage of my life no less than of hers was finished, and I felt myself to be left in a horrid vacuum, with childhood over but married life not yet beginning.
As soon as Linda and Anthony had gone away Lady Montdore sent for her motor car and we all three huddled on to the back seat. Polly and I were still in our bridesmaids’ dresses (sweet-pea tints, in chiffon) but well wrapped up in fur coats and each with a Shetland rug wound round our legs, like children going to a dancing class. The chauffeur spread a great bearskin over all of us and put a foot warmer under our silver kid shoes. It was not really cold, but shivery, pouring and pouring with rain as it had been all day, getting dark now. The inside of the motor was like a dry little box, and as we splashed down the long wet shiny roads, with the rain beating against the windows, there was a specially delicious cosiness about being in this little box and knowing that so much light and warmth and solid comfort lay ahead.
‘I love being so dry in here,’ as Lady Montdore put it, ‘and seeing all those poor people so wet.’
She had done the journey twice that day, having driven up from Hampton in the morning, whereas Polly had gone up the day before, with her father, for a last fitting of her bridesmaid’s dress and in order to go to a dinner-dance.
First of all we talked about the wedding. Lady Montdore was wonderful when it came to picking over an occasion of that sort, with her gimlet eye nothing escaped her, nor did any charitable inhibitions tone down her comments on what she had observed.
‘How extraordinary Lady Kroesig looked, poor woman! I suppose somebody must have told her that the bridegroom’s mother should have a bit of everything in her hat – for luck perhaps. Fur, feathers, flowers and a scrap of lace – it was all there and a diamond brooch on top to finish it off nicely. Rose diamonds – I had a good look. It’s a funny thing that these people who are supposed to be so rich never seem to have a decent jewel to put on – I’ve often noticed it. And did you see what mingy little things they gave poor Linda? A
