‘Heavens! What does he look like?’
‘You ought to know. It seems you were quite alone together after Reading.’
‘Well, darling, I only remember a dreadful moustachioed murderer sitting in a corner. I remember him particularly, because I kept thinking, “Oh, the luck of being One and not somebody like that”.’
‘I expect that was Jock. Sandy and white.’
‘That’s it. Oh, so that’s a Boreley, is it? And do you imagine people often make advances to him, in trains?’
‘He says you gave him hypnotic stares through your glasses.’
‘The thing is, he did have rather a pretty tweed on.’
‘And then, apparently, you made him get your suitcase off the rack at Oxford, saying you are not allowed to lift things.’
‘No, and nor I am. It was very heavy, not a sign of a porter as usual, I might have hurt myself. Anyway, it was all right because he terribly sweetly got it down for me.’
‘Yes, and now he’s simply furious that he did. He says you hypnotized him.’
‘Oh, poor him, I do so know the feeling.’
‘Whatever had you got in it, Cedric? He says it simply weighed a ton.’
‘Complets,’ Cedric said, ‘and a few small things for my face. Very little, really. I have found a lovely new resting-cream I must tell you about, by the way.’
‘And now they are all saying, “There you are – if he even fixed old Jock, no wonder he has got round the Montdores”.’
‘But why on earth should I want to get round the Montdores?’
‘Wills and things. Living at Hampton.’
‘My dear, come to that, Chèvres-Fontaine is twenty times more beautiful than Hampton.’
‘But could you go back there now, Cedric?’ I said.
Cedric gave me rather a nasty look and went on,
‘But in any case I wish people would understand that there’s never much point in hanging about for wills – it’s just not worth it. I have a friend who used to spend months of every year with an old uncle in the Sarthe so as to stay in his will. It was torture to him, because he knew the person he loved was being unfaithful to him in Paris, and anyhow, the Sarthe is utterly lugubrious, you know. But all the same, he went pegging away at it. Then what occurs? The uncle dies, my poor friend inherits the house in the Sarthe, and now he feels obliged to live a living death there so as to make himself believe that there was some point after all in having wasted months of his youth in the Sarthe. You see my argument? It’s a vicious circle, and there is nothing vicious about me. The thing is, I love Sonia, that’s why I stay.’
I believed him, really. Cedric lived in the present. It would not be like him to bother about such things as wills; if ever there was a grasshopper, a lily of the field, it was he.
When Davey got back from his cruise he rang me up and said he would come over to luncheon and tell me about Polly. I thought Cedric might as well come and hear it at first hand. Davey was always better with an audience even if he did not much like its component parts, so I rang up Hampton, and Cedric accepted to lunch with pleasure and then said could he possibly stay with me for a night or two?
‘Sonia has gone for this orange cure – yes, total starvation except for orange juice, but don’t mind too much for her, I know she’ll cheat. Uncle Montdore is in London for the House and I feel sad, all alone here. I’d love to be with you and to do some serious Oxford sightseeing, which there’s never time for when I’ve got Sonia with me. That will be charming, Fanny, thank you, dear. One o’clock, then.’
Alfred was very busy just then and I was delighted to think I should have Cedric’s company for a day or two. I cleared the decks by warning Aunt Sadie that he would be there, and telling my undergraduate friends that I should not be wanting them around for the present.
‘Who is that spotty child?’ Cedric had once said, when a boy who had been crouching by my fireplace got up and vanished at a look from me.
‘I see him as the young Shelley,’ I answered, sententiously, no doubt.
‘And I see him as the young Woodley.’
Davey arrived first.
‘Cedric is coming,’ I said, ‘so you mustn’t begin without him.’ I could see he was bursting with his news.
‘Oh, Cedric, it is too bad, Fanny, I never come without finding that monster here, he seems to live in your house. What does Alfred think of him?’
‘Doubt if he knows him by sight, to tell you the truth. Come and see the baby, Dave.’
‘Sorry if I’m late, darlings,’ Cedric said, floating in, ‘one has to drive so slowly in England, because of the walking Herrschaften. Why are the English roads always so covered with these tweeded stumpers?’
‘They are colonels,’ I said, ‘don’t French colonels go for walks?’
‘Much too ill. They have always lost a leg or two and been terribly gassed. I can see that French wars must have been far bloodier than English ones, though I do know a colonel, in Paris, who walks to the antique shops sometimes.’
‘How do they take their exercise?’ I asked.
‘Quite another way, darling. You haven’t started, about Boy, have you? Oh, how loyal. I was delayed by Sonia, too, on the telephone. She’s in all her states – it seems they’ve had her up for stealing the nurses’ breakfast – well, had her up in front of the principal, who spoke quite cruelly to her, and said that if she does it again, or gets one more bit of illicit food, she’ll have her holiday. Just imagine, no dinner, one orange juice at midnight, and woken up by the smell of
