‘But if you don’t ask them,’ said Lady Patricia, ‘will they ask her?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Montdore shortly, ‘they’ll be dying to have her. I can pay them back in other ways. But, anyhow, I don’t propose to take her about in the débutante world very much (all those awful parties, S.W. something), I don’t see the point of it. She would become quite worn out and meet a lot of unsuitable people. I’m planning to let her go to not more than two dances a week, carefully chosen. Quite enough for a girl who’s not very strong. I thought later on, if you’ll help me, Boy, we could make a list of women to give dinners for my ball. Of course, it must be perfectly understood that they are to ask the people I tell them to; can’t have them paying off their own friends and relations on me.’
After dinner, we went back to the Long Gallery. Boy settled down to his petit-point while we three women sat with idle hands. He had a talent for needlework, had hemstitched some of the sheets for the Queen’s doll’s house and had covered many chairs at Silkin and at Hampton. He was now making a fire-screen for the Long Gallery which he had designed himself in a sprawling Jacobean pattern, the theme of it was supposed to be flowers from Lady Montdore’s garden, but these flowers really looked more like horrid huge insects. Being young and deeply prejudiced it never occurred to me to admire his work. I merely thought how too dreadful it was to see a man sewing and how hideous he looked, his grizzled head bent over the canvas, into which he was deftly stitching various shades of khaki. He had the same sort of thick coarse hair as mine and I knew that the waves in it, the little careless curls (boyish) must have been carefully wetted and pinched in before dinner.
Lady Montdore had sent for paper and a pencil in order to write down the names of dinner hostesses. ‘We’ll put down all the possible ones and then weed,’ she said. But she soon gave up this occupation in order to complain about Polly, and though I had already heard her on the subject when she had been talking with Mrs Chaddesley Corbett, the tone of her voice was now much sharper and more aggrieved.
‘One does everything for these girls,’ she said, ‘everything. You wouldn’t believe it, perhaps, but I assure you I spend quite half my day making plans for Polly – appointments, clothes, parties and so on. I haven’t a minute to see my own friends, I’ve hardly had a game of cards for months. I’ve quite given up my art – in the middle of that nude girl from Oxford, too – in fact, I devote myself entirely to the child. I keep the London house going simply for her convenience. I hate London in the winter, as you know, and Montdore would be quite happy in two rooms without a cook (all that cold food at the club), but I’ve got a huge staff there eating their heads off, entirely on her account. You’d think she’d be grateful, at least, wouldn’t you? Not at all. Sulky and disagreeable, I can hardly get a word out of her.’
The Dougdales said nothing. He was sorting out wools with great concentration, and Lady Patricia lay back, her eyes closed, suffering, as she had suffered for so long, in silence. She was looking more than ever like some garden statue, her skin and her beige London dress exactly the same colour, while her poor face was lined with pain and sadness, the very expression of antique tragedy.
Lady Montdore went on with her piece, talking exactly as if I were not there.
‘I take endless trouble so that she can go and stay in nice houses, but she never seems to enjoy herself a bit, she comes home full of complaints and the only ones she wants to go back to are Alconleigh and Emily Warbeck. Both pure waste of time! Alconleigh is a madhouse – of course, I love Sadie, everybody does, I think she’s wonderful, poor dear, and it’s not her fault if she has all those eccentric children – she must have done what she can – but they are their father over again. No more need be said. Then I like the child to be with Fanny and one has known Emily and Davey all one’s life – Emily was our bridesmaid and Davey was an elf in the very first pageant I ever organized – but the fact remains, Polly never meets anybody there, and if she never meets people how can she marry them?’
‘Is there so much hurry for her to marry?’ said Lady Patricia.
‘Well, you know, she’ll be twenty in May, she can’t go on like this for ever. If she doesn’t marry what will she do, with no interests in life, no occupation? She doesn’t care for art or riding or society. She hardly has a friend in the world – oh, can you tell me how Montdore and I came to have a child like that – when I think of myself at her age. I remember so well Mr Asquith saying he had never met anybody with such a genius for improvisation –’
‘Yes, you were wonderful,’ said Lady Patricia, with a little smile. ‘But after all, she may be slower at developing than you were, and, as you say, she’s not twenty yet. Surely it’s rather nice to have her at home for another year or two?’
‘The fact is,’ replied her sister-in-law, ‘girls are not nice, it’s a perfectly horrid age. When they are children, so sweet and puddy, you think how delightful it will be to have their company later on, but what company is Polly to Montdore or to me? She moons about, always half cross and half tired, and takes no
