When we had finished our meal and installed ourselves in the Long Gallery, the butler brought in a coffee tray which Lady Montdore told him to leave. She always had several cups of strong black coffee. As soon as he had gone she turned to Polly and said sharply, ‘So what is it you want to say to me?’
I made a half-hearted attempt to go, but they both insisted on me staying. I knew they would.
‘I want to be married in a month from now,’ said Polly, ‘and to do that I must have your consent as I’m not of age until May. It seems to me that as it is only a question of nine weeks, when I shall marry anyhow, you might as well agree and get it over, don’t you think?’
‘I must say that’s very puddy – your poor aunt – when the breath has hardly left her body.’
‘It doesn’t make the slightest difference to Aunt Patricia whether she has been dead three months or three years so let’s leave her out of it. The facts are what they are. I can’t live at Alconleigh much longer, I can’t live here with you, hadn’t I better start my new life as soon as possible?’
‘Do you quite realize, Polly, that the day you marry Boy Dougdale your father is going to alter his will?’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Polly impatiently, ‘the times you’ve told me!’
‘I’ve only told you once before.’
‘I’ve had a letter about it, Boy has had a letter about it. We know.’
‘I wonder whether you also know that Boy Dougdale is a very poor man? They lived, really, on Patricia’s allowance, which, of course, in the ordinary way your father would have continued during Boy’s lifetime. That will also stop if he marries you.’
‘Yes. It was all in the letters.’
‘And don’t count on your father changing his mind because I’ve no intention of allowing him to.’
‘I’m quite sure you haven’t.’
‘You think it doesn’t matter being poor, but I wonder if you realize what it is like.’
‘The one who doesn’t realize,’ said Polly, ‘is you.’
‘Not from experience I’m glad to say, but from observation I do. One’s only got to look at the hopeless, dreary expression on the faces of poor people to see what it must be.’
‘I don’t agree at all, but anyhow, we shan’t be poor like poor people. Boy has £800 a year, besides what he makes from his books.’
‘The parson here and his wife have £800 a year,’ said Lady Montdore. ‘And look at their faces –!’
‘They were born with those – I did better, thanks to you. In any case, Mummy, it’s no good going on and on arguing about it, because everything is as much settled as if we were married already, so it’s just pure waste of time.’
‘Then why have you come? What do you want me to do?’
‘First, I want to have the wedding next month, for which I need your consent, and then I also want to know what you and Daddy prefer about the actual marriage ceremony itself – shall we be married here in the chapel or shall I go off without you to London for it? We naturally don’t want anybody to be there except Fanny and Lady Alconleigh, and you, if you’d care to come. I must say I would love to be given away by Daddy –’
Lady Montdore thought for a while, and finally said, ‘I think it is quite intolerable of you to put us in this position and I shall have to talk it over with Montdore, but frankly, I think that if you intend to go through with this indecent marriage at all costs, it will make the least talk if we have it here, and before your birthday. Then I shan’t have to explain why there are to be no coming-of-age celebrations, the tenants have begun asking about that already. So I think you may take it that you can have the marriage here, and next month, after which, you incestuous little trollop, I never want to set eyes on either you or your uncle again, as long as I live. And please don’t expect a wedding present from me.’
Tears of self-pity were pouring down her cheeks. Perhaps she was thinking of the magnificent parure in its glass case against which, had things been otherwise, so many envious noses would have been pressed during the wedding reception at Montdore House. ‘From the Bride’s Parents.’ Her dream of Polly’s wedding, long and dearly cherished, had ended in a sad awakening indeed.
‘Don’t cry, Mummy, I’m so very very happy.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said Lady Montdore, and rushed furiously from the room.
16
Exactly one month later, Davey, Aunt Sadie and I drove over to Hampton together for the wedding, our ears full of the lamentations of Jassy and Victoria who had not been invited.
‘Polly is a horrible Counter-Hon and we hate her,’ they said, ‘after we made our fingers bleed over that rope ladder, not to speak of all the things we would have done for her, smuggling the Lecturer up to the Hons’ cupboard, sharing our food with him – no risk we wouldn’t have taken to give them a few brief moments of happiness together, only they were too cold-blooded to want it, and now she doesn’t even ask us to the wedding. Do admit, Fanny.’
‘I don’t blame her for a single minute,’ I said, ‘a wedding is a very serious thing, naturally she doesn’t want gusts of giggles the whole way through it.’
‘And did we gust at yours?’
‘I expect so, only
