My next caller was Norma Cozens, who came in for a glass of sherry, but her conversation was so dull that I have not the heart to record it. It was a compound of an abscess between the toes of the mother Border terrier, the things the laundry does to sheets, how it looked to her as if the slut had been at her store cupboard so she was planning to replace her by an Austrian at 2s. a week cheaper wages, and how lucky I was to have Mrs Heathery, but I must look out because new brooms sweep clean, and Mrs Heathery was sure not to be nearly as nice as she seemed.
I was very much mistaken if I thought that Lady Montdore was now out of my life for good. In less than a week she was back again. The door of my house was always kept on the latch, like a country-house door, and she never bothered to ring but just stumped upstairs. On this occasion it was five minutes to one and I plainly saw that I would have to share the little bit of salmon I had ordered for myself, as a treat, with her.
‘And where is your husband today?’
She showed her disapproval of my marriage by always referring to Alfred like this and never by his name. He was still Mr Thing in her eyes.
‘Lunching in college.’
‘Ah, yes? Just as well, so he won’t be obliged to endure my unintellectual conversation.’
I was afraid it would all start over again, including the working herself up into a temper, but apparently she had decided to treat my unlucky remark as a great joke.
‘I told Merlin,’ she said, ‘that in Oxford circles I am not thought an intellectual, and I only wish you could have seen his face!’
When Mrs Heathery offered the fish to Lady Montdore she scooped up the whole thing. No tiresome inhibitions caused her to ask what I would eat, and in fact I had some potatoes and salad. She was good enough to say that the quality of the food in my house seemed to be improving.
‘Oh, yes, I know what I wanted to ask you,’ she said. ‘Who is this Virginia Woolf you mentioned to me? Merlin was talking about her too, the other day at Maggie Greville’s.’
‘She’s a writer,’ I said, ‘a novelist really.’
‘Yes, I see. And as she’s so intellectual, no doubt she writes about nothing but station-masters.’
‘Well, no,’ I said, ‘she doesn’t.’
‘I must confess that I prefer books about society people, not being myself a highbrow.’
‘She did write a fascinating book about a society person,’ I said, ‘called Mrs Dalloway.’
‘Perhaps I’ll read it then. Oh, of course, I’d forgotten – I never read, according to you, don’t know how. Never mind. In case I have a little time this week, Fanny, you might lend it to me, will you? Excellent cheese, don’t tell me you get this in Oxford?’
She was in an unusually good temper that day. I believe the fall of the Spanish throne had cheered her up, she probably foresaw a perfect swarm of Infantas winging its way towards Montdore House, besides, she was greatly enjoying all the details from Madrid. She said that the Duke of Barbarossa (this may not be the name, but it sounded like it) had told her the inside story, in which case he must also have told it to the Daily Express, where I had read word for word what she now kindly passed on to me, and several days before. She remembered to ask for Mrs Dalloway before leaving, and went off with the book in her hand, a first edition. I felt sure that I had seen the last of it, but she brought it back the following week, saying that she really must write a book herself as she knew she could do much better than that.
‘Couldn’t read it,’ she said. ‘I did try, but it is too boring. And I never got to that society person you told me of. Now have you read the Grand Duchess’s Memoirs? I won’t lend you mine, you must buy them for yourself, Fanny, and that will help the dear duchess with another guinea. They are wonderful. There is a great deal, nearly a whole chapter, about Montdore and me in India – she stayed with us at Viceroy’s House, you know. She has really captured the spirit of the place quite amazingly, she was only there a week but one couldn’t have done it better oneself, she describes a garden party I gave, and visits to the Ranees in their harems, and she tells what a lot I was able to do for those poor women of India, and how they worshipped me. Personally, I find memoirs so very much more interesting than any novel because they are true. I may not be an intellectual, but I do like to read the truth about things. Now in a book like the Grand Duchess’s you can see history in the very making, and if you love history as I do (but don’t tell your husband I said so dear, he would never believe it), if you love history, you must be interested to know the inside story, and it’s only people like the Grand Duchess who are in a position to tell us that. And this reminds me, Fanny dear, will you put a call through to Downing Street for me please, and get hold of the P.M. or his secretary – I will speak myself when he is on the line. I’m arranging a little dinner for the Grand Duchess, to give her book a good start, of course, I don’t ask you dear, it wouldn’t be intellectual enough, just a few politicians and writers, I thought. Here is the number, Fanny.’
I was trying at this time to economize in every direction, having overspent myself on doing up the house, and I had made a rule
