The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

talked to Davey, congratulating him upon an anthology he had recently published, called In Sickness and in Health. I heard him say that, to his mind, there was not quite enough Browning, but that apart from that it would all have been his own choice.

‘But Browning was so healthy,’ objected Davey. The stress throughout the book was upon sickness.

A footman handed round glasses of champagne. Aunt Sadie and I settled down, as one always did, somehow, at Hampton, to a prolonged scrutiny of Tatler, Sketch, and Bystander, and Polly took so long that I even got on to Country Life before she appeared. Through my happy haze of baronets’ wives, their children, their dogs, their tweeds and their homes, or just their huge faces, wave of hair on the forehead held by a diamond clip, I was conscious that the atmosphere in the Long Gallery, like that in the chapel, was one of embarrassment and gloom. When Boy reappeared, I saw him give a puzzled glance at the fire-screen with its jagged hole and then, as he realized what had happened to it, he turned his back on the room, and stood gazing out of the window. Nobody spoke to him. Lord Montdore and Davey sipped champagne, having exhausted the topic of the anthology, in silence.

At last Polly came in wearing her last year’s mink coat and a tiny brown hat. Though the cloud of tulle had gone the cloud of joy still enveloped her, she was perfectly unselfconscious, hugged her father, kissed us all, including Davey, took Boy by the arm and led him to the front door. We followed. The servants, looking sad, and the older ones sniffing, were gathered in the hall, she said good-bye to them, had some rice thrown over her, rather half-heartedly, by the youngest housemaid, got into the big Daimler, followed, very half-heartedly, by Boy, and was driven away.

We said good-bye politely to Lord Montdore and followed suit. As we went up the drive I looked back. The footmen had already shut the front door, and it seemed to me that beautiful Hampton, between the pale spring green of its lawns and the pale spring blue of the sky, lay deserted, empty and sad. Youth had gone from it and henceforward it was to be the home of two lonely old people.

PART TWO

1

My real life as a married woman, that is to say life with my husband in our own house, now began. One day I went to Oxford and a miracle seemed to have taken place. There was paper on all the walls of my house, the very paper I had chosen, too, and looking even prettier than I had hoped it would, the smell of cheap cigarettes, cement, stewed tea, and dry rot had gone, and in its place there was a heavenly smell of new paint and cleanliness, the floor boards were all smooth and solid, and the windows so clean that they seemed to be glassless. The day was perfect, spring had come and my home was ready; I felt too happy for words. To set the seal upon this happiness, the wife of a professor had called, her card and her husband’s two cards had carefully been put by the workmen on a chimneypiece: Professor and Mrs Cozens, 209 Banbury Road. Now, at last, I was a proper grown-up married lady on whom people called. It was very thrilling.

I had at this time a romantic but very definite picture in my mind of what life was going to be like in Oxford. I imagined a sort of Little Gidding, a community of delightful, busy, cultivated people, bound together by shared intellectual tastes and by their single-minded exertions on behalf of the youth entrusted to their care. I supposed that the other wives of dons would be beautiful, quiet women, versed in all the womanly arts but that of coquetry, a little worn with the effort of making a perfection of their homes at the same time as rearing large families of clever children, and keeping up with things like Kafka, but never too tired or too busy for long, serious discussions on subjects of importance, whether intellectual or practical. I saw myself, in the daytime, running happily in and out of the houses of these charming creatures, old houses with some important piece of architecture framed in the windows as Christ Church was in mine, sharing every detail of their lives, while the evenings would be spent listening to grave and scholarly talk between our husbands. In short I saw them as a tribe of heavenly new relations, more mature, more intellectual Radletts. This happy intimacy seemed to be heralded by the cards of Professor and Mrs Cozens. For one moment the fact that they lived in the Banbury Road struck a note of disillusionment, but then it occurred to me that of course the clever Cozenses must have found some little old house in that unpromising neighbourhood, some nobleman’s folly, sole reminder of long-vanished pleasure grounds, and decided to put up with the Banbury Road for the sake of its doorways and cornices, the rococo detail of its ceilings and the excellent proportions of its rooms.

I never shall forget that happy, happy day. The house at last was mine, the workmen had gone, the Cozens had come, the daffodils were out in the garden, and a blackbird was singing fit to burst its lungs. Alfred looked in and seemed to find my sudden rush of high spirits quite irrational. He had always known, he said, that the house would be ready sooner or later, and had not, like me, alternated between faith and black moods of scepticism. As for the Cozenses, in spite of the fact that I realized by now that one human being, in Alfred’s eyes, was exactly the same as another, I did find his indifference with regard to them and their