The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

boy placing his other foot in its appointed stirrup. Alas, he had not time to enjoy the fruits of triumph, as no sooner did the under groom, who was holding her, release Boadicea’s head from his grasp than, despite Paul’s frenzied tugs at the reins, she departed at a brisk trot out of the stable yard, and with a series of sickening slithers on to the tarmac road outside. Making a desperate effort, and by dint of counting out loud, one-two, one-two, Paul did manage to ‘rise’ in the approved Row style until he felt himself to be well out of Lady Bobbin’s sight, when, abandoning all pride and self-respect, he clung with one hand to the saddle, jerked at the reins with the other and sobbed out in pitiful gasps: ‘Stop, stop, dear Boadicea, whoa, whoa, Boadicea whoa, oh, please, please, stop!’ The insensitive Boadicea, however, paid no attention to his pathetic cries, but continued to trot on, very nearly pulling him over from time to time by suddenly throwing her head right forward with loud and terrifying snorts. At last, when Paul felt himself to be at the end of his tether and, having long since abandoned both reins and stirrups, was looking out for a soft piece of grass on which he could hurl his aching bones, he heard another horse come up behind him, Bobby’s outstretched hand seized the reins and, with a painful and alarming bump, Boadicea came to a standstill. She immediately began to eat grass at the side of the road, leaving, in the place where her head and neck had formerly been, a hideous gaping chasm. This was, for poor Paul, the last straw.

‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. I knew I should hate it. Lousy horse! Please, please let me get off and walk. Oh, what Gehenna!’

‘It’s all right,’ said Bobby, who was laughing so much he could hardly speak. ‘Oh, you did look too entrancing. I hope you’ll do it again for me. No, no, don’t get off, she’ll walk quite quietly now as far as Amabelle’s. Besides, you’ve got to get used to it, haven’t you? But, you know, I can’t think why she didn’t come down, spanking along the tarmac like that. You should have taken her up on to the grass.’

‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ said Paul, who was still on the verge of tears; ‘but I can’t guide the beastly thing at all, it’s as much as I can do to stay on its back.’

‘My God, you looked funny,’ said Bobby, rocking and guffawing. ‘I’d give anything to see that again.’

Paul felt that, considering he had just been rescued from the jaws of death, he was not receiving that sympathy which was his due, and for some time he maintained a dignified silence. Presently, however, his sense of humour asserted itself, and he began to giggle too.

‘I say, what will your mother have thought?’ he asked rather nervously when he had recovered his breath.

‘Well, by the mercy of Providence she was having a look at his horse’s fetlocks when you got up, so I don’t believe she noticed much. She did mutter something about “Why can’t the blasted idiot wait a minute; what’s all the damned hurry for?” But that doesn’t mean a lot from her. No, you had a lucky escape this time, old boy. If you had let Boadicea down on the tarmac it would have been the end of Compton Bobbin and the journals for you, believe me.’

10

‘One heart.’

‘I double a heart.’

‘Really, Sally, my sweet, don’t you ride that convention to death just a little? It seems to be your one and only idea of a bid.’

‘Well, I don’t want to have to play the hand any more; I’d much rather you did, then there’s no grumbling afterwards, you see.’

‘I should have thought it would be more useful,’ said Walter, ostentatiously looking at the score, ‘at this stage in the proceedings, if you would show a suit.’

‘Well, I’ve said before and I’ll say again that I can’t play bridge, and I don’t like playing bridge. I only do it, as you know quite well, to make up a four. I think it’s a horrible game, it makes everyone too bad-tempered and beastly for words – specially you, Walter darling, and you’re apt to be quite nice at other times,’ she added, for even when goaded to madness by Walter she always found it impossible to be unkind to him. ‘Thank goodness Jerome comes tomorrow, and I shall be able to go back to my kiddies for Christmas like Mrs Culbertson.’

‘Darling, now don’t be sour, please, my angel. I only meant that when you are playing you might try to concentrate a tiny bit more?’

‘Concentrate! My head’s aching with trying to concentrate, and all the thanks I get from you are these everlasting lectures, or else you sit there looking so reproachful and swallowing every time I play a card, as though I were doing it on purpose to annoy.’

‘I said a heart,’ murmured Bobby, who, having a superb hand, was anxious to get on with the business and had become rather restive during this family argument.

‘Well, now I’ve got to show a suit, have I?’ said Sally.

‘No, no! Of course not now,’ cried Walter in that agony of impatience only known to the good bridge player obliged to suffer the vagaries of an absolutely incompetent partner. ‘Not now, you can’t. You’ve doubled a heart, haven’t you? And you must stick at that. Paul says?’

‘Two hearts,’ said Paul.

‘Two spades,’ said Walter. ‘Now, if Sally would only sometimes show a suit instead of sitting there saying double –’

‘Oh, I’ll show you the whole of my hand, if you go on like this,’ said Sally, ‘and much good may it do you!’

‘Four hearts,’ said Bobby with an air of finality.

‘Tee-hee,’ he said as Paul put down a hand with six hearts to the ace, queen and