"Well well" he said, not to commit himself perhaps. "And Philip?"
"Oh no, there I'm in despair" she announced. "Simply desperate."
"Would you like me to talk to him?"
"Dear John I've changed my mind" she said. "I think I'd really rather not, that you didn't. It was poor Richard offered himself you remember and put it in my head. Of course I thought at once how much better you would be if you could. But the boy's been so disagreeable, John. Don't remind me of him please."
"He hasn't been rude to you?"
"Oh no not quite. It's just I think he's insane. Better leave him strictly to his poor mad self. And you? How have you been?"
"As well as may be these hard times."
"How true that is darling. But then Mary? What's her news?"
"I don't seem to see much of her, Jane. One's offspring are a sacred farce."
"John you don't think this extraodinary feeling they have for snobbery, some of them that is because I'm sure I've not noticed the tiniest trace, even, in Mary, can you suppose it would go oh I can't tell but to absurd lengths with them, even to refusing to marry outside the family?"
"What've you got in mind? The old Continental requirement of sixteen quarterings in a husband?"
"No no my dear I wish I had" she said. "Or rather I think it quite out of date don't you and in any ease haven't any, that is I can't run to that extraordinary number. But of course in a small way it might simplify things."
"How Jane?"
"Well naturally not with my Philip" she explained in a laugh. "He's got the idea now right enough. Yet I've warned him it might cut both ways, prevent his marrying someone he very much wanted. And again I don't mean Mary, I'm sure the dear child is much too sensible. But oh John I have warned Philip if not once then quite a thousand times. No but the whole picture has grown so enormous in his poor head t really believe he feds deep down inside him that he must simply must find a wife so dose that the marriage could almost turn out to be incestious John."
"Incestuous. So you're afraid he'll never start a family is that it?" Mr Pomfret did not appear to take the conversation seriously.
At this point Mrs Weatherby left her place to twitter in bad Italian down the dumb-waiter shaft. She was answered by a sweet babble that was almost song.
"Ah these Southerners" the lady remarked as she sat herself at table again. "The other day Isabella came to me for half a crown. The last occasion she asked for money was only the whole return fare to go back to Italy to vote in the elections. So I naturally wanted to know what for this time and what d'you suppose she said, why simply to buy a mouse. 'Get a mouse?' I said after I'd looked the word up in the dictionary. 'Because Roberto' that's our cat 'is so lonely' she answered. I screamed, I just yelled, wouldn't you? I can't bear cruelty to animals John dear. But she's so persistent and in the end of course she got her own way! Naturally I kept out of the house for a few days after that and forbade sweet Penelope the kitchen or I said I'd simply never speak to the child again. And then I forgot. Isn't it dreadful the way one does? I went down there for something or other and Isabella showed me. They were both drinking milk out of the same saucer, Roberto and his mouse. John is it sorcery, spellbinding or something?"
He laughed. "No I'd heard of that before, dear Jane."
"You truly had? Sometimes, lying in my lonely, lonely bed at night I wonder if I just imagine I'm alive and all these queer things are true. Because I don't like to say it but Philip is simply very odd. He asks me the most extraordinary questions John."
"Does he now?"
"Oh I don't want to go into things" she said in haste. "Were we like that once dear?" she asked. Then "Are we never to be served?" she demanded with hardly a pause and in the same voice. At which she called from the table an unintelligible phrase in which she displayed great confidence to be answered by an understanding, distant shout.
"Mary's been displaying quite an interest lately" he suggested.
"Has she? No you know you have really something there in that gift" she said. "Mary's such a sweet child."
"Thank you Jane" he replied. "Yes" he went on "she seems quite taken up with the past for the present, no pun intended."
"What past?"
"Ours of course" he answered. "What other could she wish to learn at eighteen? She wants to know the who's who of all our friends and to find out even if you and I didn't see a deal of each other at one time."
"Well I don't know if i'd care…" Mrs Weatherby murmured.
"And you don't imagine I'd blurt I don't know what out to me own daughter?" Mr Pomfret demanded. "No what's over is over."
"Maybe for you perhaps" she responded. "Oh how must it be to be born a man!"
"Trousers my dear are very uncomfortable. I wish I wore skirts. No honestly since my tailor lost his cutter to a bomb in the war I haven't been able to sit down to meals in comfort, it's frightful."
"Would you like to go out for a minute then since' we never seem to be going to get anything to eat?"
"What and leave you on your own, darling?" he cried. "At the mercy of a foreign language you hardly understand?"
"I speak Italian quite nicely now thank you" she smiled. "And do you know, I've never had a single lesson."
"Don't don't" he wailed. "When I think of the daily woman who changes every two months and who what she calls cooks for us."
"My poor John you should have someone to look after you" Mrs Weatherby said obviously delighted.
"Oh Mary's very good" he said at once. "It's not her fault you know."
"I do realize, who could understand better than me?" she exclaimed. "If I hadn't always been so quick with languages I'd be in the same boat" she cried. "But it's not the children's fault John. We were able to travel, try our accents out and they still can't."
"Mary's very good" he said "only she won't get me jugged hare."
"Jugged hare?" Mrs Weatherby echoed in plain desperation. "Jugged hare! Oh my dear does that mean you are very difficult about it? Because that's precisely what I'm giving you this evening."
Her lovely eyes filled with tears. He got to his feet, went round to the back of her and kissed a firm cheek while she held her face up to him.
"My perfect woman" he said.
"But should I have remembered?"
"You have" he answered sitting down again. "My favourite dish."
"That's just it John oh dear" she cried. "You're an expert, you've tried jugged hare in all your clubs and now here's, poor me offering it to you cooked by a Neapolitan 'who probably thinks the jugged part comes out of a jar in spite of all I poured out to her about port wine! And I tried to teach her so hard darling. There's still time to change though. Would you like some eggs instead?"
"But I told you" he replied eyes gleaming "you've picked my favourite. Jane this is a red-letter evening."
"I only hope it will be" she said at her most dry. "We're still at the stage of just having had the soup. Some 'more wine John?" and she passed the bottle then went to shout down the shaft.
"Io furiosa" she yelled "Isabella!"
A long wail in Italian was the answer.
"No don't darling, I can smell it at last" Mr Pomfret laughed. "And it is going to be delicious."
AT THE same great hotel in which they held their Sunday luncheons Mrs Weatherby reserved a private room to entertain old friends in honour of Philip's twentyfirster.
Standing prepared, empty, curtained, shuttered, tall mirrors facing across laid tables crowned by napkins, with space rocketing transparence from one glass silvered surface to the other, supporting walls covered in olivecoloured silk, chandeliers repeated to a thousand thousand profiles to be lost in olive-grey depths as quiet as this room's untenanted attention, but a scene made warm with mass upon mass of daffodils banked up against mirrors, or mounded once on each of the round white tables and laid in a fiat frieze about their edges-here then time stood still for Jane, even in wine bottles over to one side holding the single movement, and that unseen, of bubbles rising just as the air, similarly trapped even if conditioned, watched unseen across itself in a superb but not indifferent pause of mirrors.