6
Charming Northey, how to describe her? Can this creature of commedia dell’arte really have resulted from the copulation on a hard, brass, hotel bed, trains rumbling below, of dear old Louisa and terribly dull John Fort William? Some pretend that the place of conception, that of birth, and also the Christian name have a bearing on personality. Northey, product of King’s Cross and Hill View Clinic, Oban, and with that name, must be a living refutation of this theory. Nothing of the northerner about her, no vague mistiness, no moments of absence; she was not romantic nor did she yearn after the unknown. She was the typical product, one would have said, of an ancient civilization beneath cerulean skies. Impossible to believe that she had a Scotch father, old enough to be her grandfather, and Pictish ancestors; yet surely good Louisa – oh no, perish the thought! She was incapable of inventing such a wealth of detail to cover up a sin. I incline to think that Northey must have been a changeling; that carelessness occurred in Hill View Clinic, Oban, by which the child of some noble Roman lady and a strolling player was exchanged for Louisa’s brat. Physically she bore no resemblance whatever to the other Mackintoshes who all had solid frames, ginger heads and freckles. She was like a small exquisite figure in enamelled glass, with hair the colour of a guinea; her eyes the liveliest and most expressive I ever saw, not very large, brilliantly blue. In moments of excitement or distress they became diamond-shaped. When she talked she used her whole body in the concentrated effort of expressing herself, gesticulating, wriggling, as babies and puppies do. Her little thin hands never lay still in her lap. Furthermore, there was something indescribably lovable about her, she radiated affection, happiness, goodwill towards men. From the first moment we set eyes on her Alfred and I were her slaves.
She exploded into our household as we were dining alone together, tired and depressed, after the Dominions party. Davey had gone off saying that his friend the Marquis was now in Paris; it seemed that Philip was obliged to dine with his London stockbroker; both, I suspected, had really joined Lady Leone at Mrs Jungfleisch’s. I thought the party had been a total flop, though I heard afterwards that it was the most successful ever given at the Embassy in the sense that those who had missed it were wild with fury while those who had been present were sought after by the whole of Paris and supplied with free meals for weeks. But as Alfred and I could not discuss the great topic of the evening with our guests we were naturally the last people they wanted to talk to. They were longing to compare notes with others who had witnessed Lady Leone’s exit, to buttonhole newcomers who had not and tell them about it, above all to leave as soon as they decently could and get on to the telephone. Everybody was very polite; indeed I was finding out that diplomats are diplomatic, it is one thing you can say for them. After the frank and outspoken rudeness I was accustomed to in Oxford this made a pleasant change. There were, too, moments of encouragement as when somebody said, ‘Ah! The Irish Ambassador! That is a feather in Sir Alfred’s cap – he never came to the Leones.’
The Ambassador of the Channel Islands praised my carnations, a major export, so he told me, of his country. A marvellous-looking Othello of a man gorgeously draped in pale blue taffeta (slightly marred by boots sticking out below, as my walking shoes had stuck out from beneath the Chinese robe) had invited me to go lion shooting in his. But the party had had a restless undercurrent and was certainly not much fun for the hosts.
So now it was over and we were dining. All of a sudden Northey was there, in the doorway, an inquiring look on her face. ‘It’s me,’ she said.
‘Darling!’
‘I’m so sorry, I had to ask them to pay the taxi. No money at all. The station-master had to lend me a ticket. Yes I did, but I lost it.’
‘Nothing matters now you’re here. You must have had a beastly journey.’
‘Oh Cousin Fanny (oh, you are kind, may I really), oh Fanny –’ the soft skin of her forehead crumpled like tissue paper, her eyes took on a diamond-shaped, tormented expression which was to become very familiar to me and they brimmed. I saw exactly what Basil had meant about the brimming. ‘You can’t, you can’t imagine. There were sweet bullocks on board. You don’t know the sadness – the things they do to them. Their poor horns had been cut off – imagine the pain – and all because they get a pound more for them without horns and that’s because then they can pack them tighter. I’d like to drop a hydrogen bomb on Ireland.’
‘And kill millions of cows and all the birds and animals and the Irish also who are so charming?’ Alfred said, gently.
‘Charming!’
‘Oh yes, they are. They have to export these bullocks in order to live. They have no industries, you see.’
‘I hate and loathe and execrate them.’
‘Darling, you mustn’t be so worked up.’
‘But I must be. These little creatures are put in the world for us to look after them. We are responsible. How do we treat them? They don’t sleep you know, cows, they never have a moment of forgetting. Their comfort is to chew the cud – nobody feeds them properly on the journey – not enough water –
