And my new friend Mr Wincham said, as we danced round before going to supper, ‘Of course she’s a beauty, I quite see that she is, but she doesn’t attract me, with that sulky expression, I’m sure she’s very dull.’
I began to deny that she was either sulky or dull when he said ‘Fanny’ to me, the first time he ever had, and followed this up with a lot of things which I wanted to listen to very carefully so that I could think them over later on, when I was alone.
Mrs Chaddesley Corbett shouted at me, from the arms of the Prince of Wales, ‘Hullo, my sweet! What news of the Bolter? Are you still in love?’
‘What’s all this?’ said my partner, ‘Who is that woman? Who is the Bolter? And is it true that you are in love?’
‘Mrs Chaddesley Corbett,’ I said. I felt that the time was not yet ripe to begin explaining about the Bolter.
‘And how about love?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, rather pink, ‘just a joke.’
‘Good. I should like you to be on the verge of love but not yet quite in it. That’s a very nice state of mind, while it lasts.’
But of course, I had already dived over that verge and was swimming away in a blue sea of illusion towards, I supposed, the islands of the blest, but really towards domesticity, maternity and the usual lot of womankind.
A holy hush now fell upon the crowd as the Royals prepared to go home, the very grand Royals serene in the knowledge that they would find the traditional cold roast chicken by their beds, not the pathetic Ma’ams and sinister Sirs who were stuffing away in the supper-room as if they were far from sure they would ever see so much food again, nor the gay young Royals who were going to dance until morning with little neat women of the Chaddesley Corbett sort.
‘How late they have stayed, what a triumph for Sonia,’ I heard Boy saying to his wife.
The dancers divided like the Red Sea forming a lane of bowing and curtsying subjects, down which Lord and Lady Montdore conducted their guests.
‘Sweet of you to say so, Ma’am. Yes, at the next Court. Oh, how kind of you.’
The Montdores came back into the picture gallery, beaming happily and saying, to nobody in particular,
‘So simple, so easy, pleased with any little thing one can do for them, such wonderful manners, such a memory. Astounding how much they know about India, the Maharajah was amazed.’
They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech, was worth noting and proclaiming.
The rest of the evening was spent by me in a happy trance, and I remember no more about the party as such. I know that I was taken back to the Goring Hotel, where we were all staying, at five o’clock on a fine May morning by Mr Wincham who had clearly shown me, by then, that he was not at all averse to my company.
10
So Polly was now ‘out’ in London society, and played her part during the rest of the season, as she had at the ball, with a good enough grace, the performance only lacking vitality and temperament to make it perfect. She did all the things her mother arranged for her, went to the parties, wore the clothes and made the friends that Lady Montdore thought suitable and never branched out on her own or gave any possible cause for complaint. She certainly did nothing to create an atmosphere of fun, but Lady Montdore was perhaps too much employed herself in that very direction to notice that Polly, though good and acquiescent, never for one moment entered into the spirit of the many entertainments they went to. Lady Montdore enjoyed it all prodigiously, appeared to be satisfied with Polly, and was delighted with the publicity that, as the most important and most beautiful débutante of the year, she was receiving. She was really too busy, in too much of a whirl of society while the season was going on, to wonder whether Polly was being a success or not; when it was over they went to Goodwood, Cowes, and Scotland, where no doubt among the mists and heather she had time to take stock of the situation. They vanished from my life for many weeks.
By the time I saw them again, in the autumn, their relationship was back to what it had been before and they were clearly very much on each other’s nerves. I was now living in London myself, Aunt Emily having taken a little house in St Leonard’s Terrace for the winter. It was a happy time in my life, as presently I became engaged to Alfred Wincham, the same young man whose back view had so much disturbed me at the Montdore ball. During the weeks that preceded my engagement I saw a great deal of Polly. She would telephone in the morning.
‘What are you up to, Fanny?’
‘Aching,’ I would reply, meaning aching with boredom, a malaise from which girls, before national service came to their rescue, were apt to suffer considerably.
‘Oh, good. So can I bend you to my will? You can’t think how dull, but if you are aching anyway? Well then, I’ve got to try on that blue velvet hat at Madame Rita, and go and fetch the gloves from Debenhams – they said they would have them today. Yes, but the worst is to come – I couldn’t possibly bend you to have luncheon with my Aunt Edna at Hampton Court and afterwards to sit and chat while I have my hair done? No, forget I said anything so awful – anyway, we’ll see. I’ll be round for you in half
