‘Oh, thank you, Lady Valance,’ said Eva, with a slightly nervous laugh.
‘It’s most unexpected,’ said Clara, with her involuntary German air of meaning rather more.
Louisa gazed around. ‘I find it really most restful,’ she said, as if restfulness were a quality she specially cared for.
‘You haven’t seen anything yet,’ said Dudley, lurching towards his mother with her favourite drink. ‘We’re going to brighten the whole place up.’
‘I’d be sorry to see the library changed,’ said Louisa.
‘If you say so, Mamma, the library will be spared, it will retain its primeval gloom.’
‘Well…’ She took a sip of lemonade, and smiled tightly, as if relishing her own good humour. ‘And what of the hall?’
‘Now the hall… I believe Mrs Riley has quite set her sights on the fireplace.’
‘Oh, not the fireplace!’ said Freda, rather wildly. ‘But the children adore the fireplace.’
‘One would have to be a child, surely, to adore the fireplace,’ said Eva Riley.
‘Well, I must be a child in that case,’ said Freda.
‘Which makes me the child of a child,’ said Daphne, ‘a babe in arms!’
Dudley looked round the roomful of women with a glint of annoyance, but at once recovered. ‘You know a lot of the best people nowadays are getting rid of these Victorian absurdities. You should run over and see what the Witherses have done at Badly-Madly, Mamma. They’ve pulled down the bell-tower, and put an Olympic swimming-pool in its place.’
‘Goodness!’ said Louisa – which alternated with ‘Horror!’ in her small repertoire of interjections, and was more or less interchangeable with it.
‘At Madderleigh, of course,’ said Eva Riley, ‘they got to work long ago. They boxed in the dining-room there in the Eighties, I believe.’
‘There you are! Even the man who built it couldn’t stand it,’ said Dudley.
‘The man who built this house was your grandfather,’ said Louisa. ‘He loved it.’
‘I know… wasn’t it odd of him?’
‘But then you never showed any feeling for the things your grandfather held dear, or your father either.’ She grinned round at the others, as though they were all with her.
‘Oh, not true,’ said Dudley, ‘I love cows, and claret.’
‘Now won’t you sit down, Louisa?’ said Freda warmly, smoothing the expanse of plumped cushion beside her. Daphne knew she hated the candour of talk at Corley since Sir Edwin had died, the constant sparring she herself had quickly become inured to.
‘I prefer a hard chair, my dear,’ said Louisa. ‘I find armchairs somewhat effeminate.’ She sighed. ‘I wonder what Cecil would have made of all these changes.’
‘Mm, I wonder,’ said Dudley, turning away; and then facetiously, as if only half-hoping to be heard, ‘Perhaps you could ask him, the next time you’re in touch?’
Daphne slid a horrified glance at Louisa, it wasn’t clear if she’d heard, Dudley’s head was nodding in noiseless laughter, and his mother went on with tense determination, ‘Cecil had a keen sense of tradition, he was never less than dignified-’ but at that moment the door flew open, and there was Nanny, with a hand on each child’s shoulder. She held them to her, perhaps a moment too long, in a little tableau of her own efficiency. ‘Well, here they are!’ she said. When Granny Sawle visited, they were brought down at six, between nursery supper and bed. Wilfrid broke away and ran to greet her, with a low sweeping bow, which was his new game, while Corinna walked in front of the fireplace with her hands behind her back, as though about to make one of her announcements. They each found a moment to peep nervously at their father – but Dudley’s high spirits didn’t much falter.
‘Say hello to Mrs Riley,’ he said.
‘Hello, Mrs Riley,’ said the children, promptly but with no great warmth.
‘My dears…’ said Mrs Riley over her cocktail-glass.
Wilfrid ran round politely to bow to Granny V as well, who said warily, ‘Look at you!’ as with a quick panting sound and the thwack of his tail against chairs and table-legs Rubbish bustled across the room from the open garden door and excitedly circled his master.
‘Oh, do we really want the dog in?’ said Daphne, with a flutter of panic as her mother raised her drink away from its thrusting nose and made a face at the gamy heat of its breath. She got up to grab it, but Dudley was growling indulgently and provokingly, ‘Oh, Wubbishy Wubbishy Wubbish!’ and had already produced from somewhere one of the bone-hard black biscuits that Rubbish was said to like, which after a bit of teasing he threw into the air – it went down in one. Clara was still nervous of the dog, and smiled keenly at it to suggest she was not. She hid her shyness in a bit of pantomime, stretching out a hand in childish reconciliation, but she had no biscuit, and Rubbish walked past as if he hadn’t seen her.
Corinna had moved in a discreetly purposeful way towards the piano, and now perched on the edge of the stool, studying her father for the best moment to speak. ‘You’re not going to play for us, or anything, are you, old girl?’ said Dudley.
‘Oh, does she play?’ said Eva, with a sly spurt of smoke.
‘Play? She’s a perfect fiend at the piano,’ said Dudley. ‘Aren’t you, my darling?’ At which Corinna smiled uncertainly.
‘I’ll play for you tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Good idea. Play for Uncle George,’ said Dudley, tired already of his own sarcasm, as well as the subject itself.
‘And Wilfie can do his dance,’ said Corinna, reminding her father of the terms of the deal.
‘Well exactly…’ said Dudley after a minute.
Louisa, still rather fixed on Eva, said, ‘I imagine you might care for music, Mrs Riley?’
Mrs Riley smiled at her to prepare her for her answer: ‘Oh, awfully – certain music, at least.’
‘What, Gounod and what have you?’
‘Not Gounod particularly, no…’
‘I should think one would draw the line at Gounod.’
‘Now Wilfie,’ said Dudley, with a loud cough, as if reproving him; but then went on, ‘have you heard about the Colonel and the Rat?’
‘No, Daddy,’ said Wilfrid softly, hardly daring to believe that a poem was starting, but perhaps apprehensive too about its subject.
‘Well…’ said Dudley. ‘The Colonel was there, with bristling hair, and a terrible air, of pain and despair.’
Wilfrid laughed at this, or at least at the awful face his father had pulled to go with it; anything awful could be funny too. ‘Oh ducky,’ said Daphne, ‘is Daddy doing doggerel for you.’
‘It’s not doggerel, Duffel,’ said Dudley, tightly suppressing a snort at so much alliteration, ‘it’s called Skeltonics, it dates from the time of King Henry VIII. If you remember Skelton was the poet laureate.’
‘Oh, in that case,’ said Daphne.
‘Well, if you don’t want me to tell you a poem.’
‘Oh, yes, Daddy!’ said Wilfrid.
‘Your uncle Cecil was a famous poet, but what people tend not to know is that I have quite a talent that way myself.’
Daphne glanced at Louisa, who had an unprovokable look, as though she found her son and her grandson equally beyond comprehension.