The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

to cheer her up by telling her, what, in fact, proved to be the case, that in a very short time the fields would be covered with sheep, the trees with birds, and the barrows with fruit just as usual. But though the future did not disturb me I found the present most disagreeable, that winter should set in again so late in the spring, at a time when it would not be unreasonable to expect delicious weather, almost summer-like, warm enough to sit out of doors for an hour or two. The sky was overcast with a thick yellow blanket from which an endless pattern of black and white snowflakes came swirling down, and this went on day after day. One morning I sat by my window gazing idly at the pattern and thinking idle thoughts, wondering if it would ever be warm again, thinking how like a child’s snowball Christ Church looked through a curtain of flakes, thinking too how cold it was going to be at Norma’s that evening without Lady Montdore to stoke the fire, and how dull without Cedric and his narrow edging of white. Thank goodness, I thought, that I had sold my father’s diamond brooch and installed central heating with the proceeds; then I began to remember what the house had been like two years before when the workmen were still in it, and how I had looked out through that very same pane of glass, filthy dirty then, and splashed with whitewash, and seen Polly struggling into the wind with her future husband. I half wanted and half did not want Polly in my life again. I was expecting another baby and felt tired, really, not up to much.

Then, suddenly, the whole tempo of the morning completely altered because here in my drawing-room, heavily pregnant, beautiful as ever, in a red coat and no hat, was Polly, and of course, all feelings of not wanting her melted away and were forgotten. In my drawing-room too was the Lecturer, looking old and worn.

When Polly and I had finished hugging and kissing and laughing and saying ‘Lovely to see you’ and ‘Why did you never write?’ she said,

‘Can I bend you to my will?’

‘Oh, yes, you can. I’ve got simply nothing to do, I was just looking at the snow.’

‘Oh, the heaven of snow,’ she said, ‘and clouds, after all those blue skies. Now the thing is, Fanny, can I bend you until late this afternoon, because Boy has got an utter mass of things to do and I can’t stand about much, as you see. But you must frankly tell me if I shall be in your way, because I can always go to Elliston’s waiting-room – the blissful bliss of Elliston after those foreign shops, I nearly cried for happiness when we passed their windows just now – the bags! the cretonnes! the horror of abroad!’

‘But that’s wonderful,’ I said, ‘then you’ll both lunch here?’

‘Boy has to lunch with someone on business,’ said Polly, quickly, ‘you can go off then, darling, if you like, as Fanny says she can keep me, don’t bother to wait any more. Then come back for me here when you’ve finished.’

Boy, who had been rubbing his hands together in front of the fire, went off rather glum, wrapping a scarf round his throat.

‘And don’t hurry a bit,’ she called after him, opening the door again and shouting down the stairs. ‘Now, darling Fanny, I want to do one final bend and make you lunch with me at Fuller’s – don’t speak, you’re going to say “Look at the weather”, aren’t you? but we’ll ring up for a taxi. Fuller’s! You’ll never know how much I used to long for Dover sole and walnut cake and just this sort of a day, in Sicily. Do you remember how we used to go there from Alconleigh when you were getting your house ready? I can’t believe this is the same house, can you, or that we are the same people, come to that. Except I see you’re the same darling Fanny, just as you were the same when I got back from India. Why is it that I, of all people, keep on having to go abroad? I do think it’s too awful, don’t you?’

‘I only went just that once,’ I said, ‘it’s very light, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, horrible glare. Just imagine if one had to live there for ever. You know we started off in Spain, and you’ll never believe this but they are two hours late for every meal – two hours, Fanny – (can we lunch at half-past twelve today?), so of course, by then, you’ve stopped feeling hungry and only feel sick, then when the food comes it is all cooked in rancid oil, I can smell it now, it’s on everybody’s hair too, and to make it more appetizing there are pictures all round you of some dear old bull being tortured to death. They think of literally nothing all day but bulls and the Virgin. Spain was the worst of all, I thought. Of course, Boy doesn’t mind abroad a bit, in fact he seems to like it, and he can talk all those terribly affected languages (darling, Italian! you’d die!), but I truly don’t think I could have borne it much longer, I should have pined away with homesickness. Anyway, here I am.’

‘What made you come back?’ I said, really wondering how they could afford it, poor as Davey said they were. Silkin was not a big house, but it would require three or four servants.

‘Well, you remember my Auntie Edna at Hampton Court? The good old girl died and left me all her money – not much, but we think we can just afford to live at Silkin. Then Boy is writing a book and he had to come back for that, London Library and Paddington.’

‘Paddington?’ I said, thinking of the station.

‘Duke, Muniment room. Then there’s this baby. Fancy, if one had to have a