Polly said ‘Yes? Oh? Very well. Good-bye’ and hung up the receiver. Even this ordeal had done nothing to shake her serenity.
She told us that Boy had changed the rendezvous, saying he thought it was pointless to go all the way to London, and suggesting the Mitre in Oxford as a more convenient meeting-place.
‘So perhaps we could go in together, Fanny darling.’
I was going, anyhow, to visit my house.
‘Ashamed of himself,’ said Davey, when Polly had gone upstairs. ‘Doesn’t want to be seen. People are beginning to talk. You know how Sonia can never keep a secret, and once the Kensington Palace set gets hold of something it is all round London in a jiffy.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘but if they are seen at the Mitre it will look far worse. I feel rather worried, I only promised Sonia they shouldn’t meet here, but ought I to tell her? What do you think?’
‘Shall I go over to Silkin and shoot the sewer?’ said Uncle Matthew, half asleep.
‘Oh, no, darling, please don’t. What do you think, Davey?’
‘Don’t you worry about the old she-wolf – good Lord, who cares a brass button for her?’
If Uncle Matthew had not hated Boy so much he would have been quite as eager as his daughters were to aid and abet Polly in any enterprise that would fly in the face of Lady Montdore.
Davey said, ‘I wouldn’t give it a thought. It so happens that Polly has been perfectly open and above-board about the whole thing – but suppose she hadn’t told you? She’s always going into Oxford with Fanny, isn’t she? I should turn the blind eye.’
So in the morning Polly and I motored to Oxford together, and I lunched, as I often did, with Alfred at the George. (If I never mention Alfred in this story it is because he is so totally uninterested in other human beings and their lives that I think he was hardly aware of what was going on. He certainly did not enter into it with fascination like the rest of us. I suppose that I and his children and perhaps an occasional clever pupil seem real to him, but otherwise he lives in a world of shadows and abstract thought.)
After luncheon I spent a freezing, exhausting, and discouraging hour in my little house, which seemed hopelessly haunted by builders. I noted, with something like despair, that they had now made one of the rooms cosy, a regular home from home, with blazing fire, stewing tea, and filmstars on the walls. As far as I could see they never left it at all to ply their trade, and indeed, I could hardly blame them for that, so terrible were the damp and cold in the rest of the house. After a detailed inspection with the foreman which merely revealed more exposed pipes and fewer floor-boards than last time I had been there, I went to the window of what was supposed to be my drawing-room to fortify myself with the view of Christ Church, so beautiful against the black clouds. One day, I thought (it was an act of faith), I would sit by that very window, open wide, and there would be green trees and a blue sky behind the college. I gazed on, through glass which was almost opaque with dirt and whitewash, forcing myself to imagine that summer season, when, battling their way down the street, the east wind in their faces, Polly and the Lecturer appeared to view. It was not a happy picture, but that may have been the fault of the climate. No aimless dalliance hand in hand beneath warm skies for poor English lovers who, if circumstances drive them to making love out-of-doors, are obliged to choose between the sharp brisk walk and the stupefying stuffiness of the cinema. They stumped on out of my sight, hands in pockets, heads bowed, and plunged, one would have said, in gloom.
Before going home I paid a visit to Woolworth’s, having been enjoined by Jassy to get her a goldfish bowl for her frog spawn. She had broken hers the day before and had only got the precious jelly to the spare-room bath just in time, she said, to save it. Alfred and I were obliged to use the nursery bathroom until Jassy got a new bowl. ‘So you see how it’s to your own advantage, Fanny, not to forget.’
Once inside Woolworth’s I found other things that I needed, as one always does, and presently I ran into Polly and Boy. He was holding a mouse-trap, but I think it was shelter from the wind that they really sought.
‘Home soon?’ said Polly.
‘Now, d’you think?’ I was dead tired.
‘Do let’s.’
So we all three went to the Clarendon Yard, where our respective motor cars were waiting. The Lecturer still had a terrible cold, which made him most unappetizing, I thought, and he seemed very grumpy. When he took my hand to say good-bye he gave it no extra squeeze, nor did he stroke and tickle our legs when tucking us up in the rug, which he would certainly have done had he been in a normal state, and when we drove off he just walked gloomily away with no backward glance, jaunty wave or boyish shake of the curls. He was evidently at a low ebb.
Polly leaned forward, wound up the window between us and the chauffeur and said,
‘Well, everything’s settled, thank goodness. A month from today if I can get my parents’ consent – I shall still be under age, you see. So the next thing is a tussle with Mummy. I’ll go over to Hampton tomorrow if she’s there and point out that I shall be of age in May, after which she won’t be able to stop me, so hadn’t she better swallow the pill and have done with it. They won’t be wanting to have birthday celebrations for me now since in any case Daddy is cutting me off with
