The men, as they always do in Oxford, remained an inordinate length of time over their port, so long, in fact, that Lady Montdore, with growing impatience, suggested to Norma that they might be sent for. Norma, however, looked so absolutely appalled at the idea that Lady Montdore did not press it any further, but went on with her self-appointed task as stoker, one spaniel-eye on the door.
‘The only way to make a good fire,’ she said, ‘is to put on enough coal. People have all kinds of theories about it, but it’s really very simple. Perhaps we could ask for another scuttle, Mrs Cozens? Very kind. Cedric mustn’t get a chill, whatever happens.’
‘Dreadful,’ I said, ‘him being so ill, wasn’t it?’
‘Don’t speak of it. I thought I should die. Yes, well, as I was saying. It’s exactly the same with coffee, you know, people have those percolators and things and get the Bolter to buy them special beans in Kenya, perfectly pointless. Coffee is good if it is made strong enough and nasty if it is not. What we had just now would have been quite all right if your cook had put in three times the amount, you know. What can they be talking about in the dining-room? It’s not as if any of them were interested in politics.’
At last the door opened. Davey came in first, looking bored and made straight for the fire. Cedric, the Professor, and Alfred followed in a bunch, still pursuing a conversation which seemed to be interesting them deeply.
‘Just a narrow edging of white –’ I heard Cedric say, through the open door, as they came down the passage.
Later on I remembered to ask Alfred what could have led up to this remark, so typical of Cedric but so untypical of the conversation in that house, and he replied that they had been having a most fascinating talk on burial custom in the High Yemen.
‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that you bring out the worst in Cedric Hampton, Fanny. He is really a most intelligent young man, interested in a large range of subjects, though I have no doubt at all that when he is with you he confines himself, as you do, to remarks in the nature of “and did you notice the expression on her face when she saw who was there?” because he knows that general subjects do not amuse you, only personalities. With those whose horizon is a little wider he can be very serious, let me tell you.’
The fact was that Cedric could bring out edgings of white to suit all tastes.
‘Well, Fanny, how do you like it?’ he asked me, giving a twitch to Lady Montdore’s tulle skirt. ‘We ordered it by telephone when we were at Craigside – don’t you die for television – Mainbocher simply couldn’t believe that Sonia had lost so much weight.’
Indeed, she was very thin.
‘I sit in a steam barrel,’ she said, looking fondly at Cedric, ‘for an hour or two, and then that nice Mr Wixman comes down twice a week when we are at Hampton and he beats and beats me and the morning is gone in a flash. Cedric sees the cook for me nowadays, I find I can’t take very much interest in food, in my barrel.’
‘But my dear Sonia,’ said Davey, ‘I hope you consult Dr Simpson about all this? I am horrified to see you in such a state, really much too thin, nothing but skin and bones. You know, at our age, it’s most dangerous to play about with one’s weight, a terrible strain on the heart.’
It was generous of Davey to talk about ‘our age’, since Lady Montdore was certainly fourteen years older than he was.
‘Dr Simpson!’ she said derisively. ‘My dear Davey, he’s terribly behind the times. Why, he never even told me how good it is to stand on one’s head, and Cedric says in Paris and Berlin they’ve been doing it for ages now. I must say I feel younger every day since I learnt. The blood races through your glands you know, and they love it.’
‘How d’you know they love it?’ said Davey, with considerable irritation. He always scorned any régime for health except the one he happened to be following himself, regarding all others as dangerous superstitions imposed on gullible fools by unscrupulous quacks. ‘We understand so very little about our glands,’ he went on. ‘Why should it be good for them? Did Dame Nature intend us to stand on our heads – do animals stand on their heads, Sonia?’
‘The sloth,’ said Cedric, ‘and the bat hang upside down for hours on end – you can’t deny that, Davey.’
‘Yes, but do sloths and bats feel younger every day? I doubt it. Bats may, but I’m sure sloths don’t.’
‘Come on, Cedric,’ said Lady Montdore, very much put out by Davey’s remarks, ‘we must be going home.’
Lady Montdore and Cedric now installed themselves at Montdore House for the winter and were seen no more by me. London society, having none of the prejudices against the abnormal which still exists among Boreleys and Uncle Matthews in country places, simply ate Cedric up, occasional echoes of his great success even reaching Oxford. It seemed that such an arbiter of taste, such an arranger of festivities, had not been known since the days of the beaux, and that he lived in a perfect welter of parties, dragging Lady Montdore along in his wake.
‘Isn’t she wonderful? You know, she’s seventy – eighty – ninety –’ her age went up by leaps and bounds. ‘She’s a darling, so young, so delicious, I do hope I shall be just like her when I’m a hundred.’
So Cedric had transformed
