‘S.A.,’ said Lady Patricia faintly, ‘or B.O.’
‘When we were young none of that existed, thank goodness. S.A. and B.O., perfect rubbish and bosh – one was a beauty or a jolie-laide and that was that. All the same, now they have been invented I suppose it is better if the girls have them, their partners seem to like it, and Polly hasn’t a vestige, you can see that. But how differently,’ she said with a sigh, ‘how differently life turns out from what we expect! Ever since she was born, you know, I’ve worried and fussed over that child, and thought of the awful things that might happen to her – that Montdore might die before she was settled and we should have no proper home, that her looks would go (too beautiful at fourteen I feared), or that she would have an accident and spend the rest of her days in a spinal chair – all sorts of things, I used to wake up in the night and imagine them, but the one thing that never even crossed my mind was that she might end up an old maid.’
There was a rising note of aggrieved hysteria in her voice.
‘Come now, Sonia,’ said Lady Patricia rather sharply, ‘the poor girl is still in her teens. Do wait at least until she has had a London season before you call her an old maid – she’ll find somebody she likes there soon enough you can be quite sure.’
‘I only wish I could think it, but I have a strong feeling she won’t, and that what’s more they won’t like her,’ said Lady Montdore, ‘she has no come-hither in her eye. Oh, it is really too bad. She leaves the light on in her bathroom night after night too, I see it shining out –’
Lady Montdore was very mean about modern inventions such as electric light.
9
As her mother had predicted, summer came and went without any change in Polly’s circumstances. The London season duly opened with a ball at Montdore House which cost £2,000, or so Lady Montdore told everybody, and was certainly very brilliant. Polly wore a white satin dress with pink roses at the bosom and a pink lining to the sash (touches of pink as the Tatler said), chosen in Paris for her by Mrs Chaddesley Corbett and brought over in the bag by some South American diplomat, a friend of Lady Montdore’s, to save duty, a proceeding of which Lord Montdore knew nothing and which would have perfectly horrified him had he known. Enhanced by this dress, and by a little make-up, Polly’s beauty was greatly remarked upon, especially by those of a former generation, who were all saying that since Lady Helen Vincent, since Lily Langtry, since the Wyndham sisters (according to taste), nothing so perfect had been seen in London. Her own contemporaries, however, were not so greatly excited by her. They admitted her beauty but said that she was dull, too large. What they really admired were the little skinny goggling copies of Mrs Chaddesley Corbett which abounded that season. The many dislikers of Lady Montdore said that she kept Polly too much in the background, and this was hardly fair because, although it is true to say that Lady Montdore automatically filled the foreground of any picture in which she figured, she was only too anxious to push Polly in front of her, like a hostage, and it was not her fault if she was forever slipping back again.
On the occasion of this ball many of the royalties in Lady Montdore’s bedroom had stepped from their silver frames and come to life, dustier and less glamorous, poor dears, when seen in all their dimensions; the huge reception rooms at Montdore House were scattered with them, and the words Sir or Ma’am could be heard on every hand. The Ma’ams were really quite pathetic, you would almost say hungry-looking, so old, in such sad and crumpled clothes, while there were some blue-chinned Sirs of dreadfully foreign aspect. I particularly remember one of them because I was told that he was wanted by the police in France and not much wanted anywhere else, especially not, it seemed, in his native land where his cousin, the King, was daily expecting the crown to be blown off his head by a puff of east wind. This Prince smelt strongly, but not deliciously, of camellias, and had a fond de teint of brilliant sunburn.
‘I only ask him for the sake of my dear old Princess Irene,’ Lady Montdore would explain if people raised their eyebrows at seeing him in such a very respectable house. ‘I never shall forget what an angel he was to Montdore and me when we were touring the Balkans (one doesn’t forget these things). I know people do say he’s a daisy, whatever that may be, but if you listen to what everybody says about everybody you’ll end by never having anybody, and besides, half these rumours are put about by anarchists, I’m positive.’
Lady Montdore loved anybody royal. It was a genuine emotion, quite disinterested, since she loved them as much in exile as in power, and the act of
