Love in a Cold Climate Read Online Free PDF

daughter?”
    “Veronica, do come here a minute, do you know who this is? She’s the Bolter’s daughter, that’s all.”
    “Come and have your tea, Fanny,” said Lady Montdore. She led me to the tea table and the starlings went on with their chatter about my mother in eggy-peggy, a language I happened to know quite well.
    “Eggis sheggee reggeally, peggoor sweggeet! I couldn’t be more interested, naturally, when you come to think of it, considering that the very first person the Bolter ever bolted with, was my husband—wasn’t it, Chad? Tiny me got you next, didn’t I, my angel, but not until she had bolted away from you again.”
    “I don’t believe it. The Bolter can’t be more than thirty-six. I know she can’t, we used to go to Miss Vacani together, and you used to come, too, Roly—couldn’t remember it better—poker and tongs on the floor for the sword dance and Roly in his tiny kilt. What do you say, darling—can she be more than thirty-six?”
    “That’s right. Do the sum, birdbrain. She married at eighteen, eighteen and eighteen are thirty-six. Correct—no?”
    “Well, steady on though, how about the nine months?”
    “Not nine, darling, nothing like nine, don’t you remember how bogus it all was and how shamingly huge her bouquet had to be, poor sweet? It was the whole point.”
    “Careful, Veronica. Really, Veronica always goes too far. Come on, let’s finish the game.…”
    I had half an ear on this rivetting conversation, and half on what Lady Montdore was saying. Having given me a characteristic and well-remembered look, up and down, a look which told me what I knew too well, that my tweed skirt bulged behind and why had I no gloves? (why, indeed, left them in the motor no doubt and how would I ever have the courage to ask for them?), said in a most friendly way that I had changed more in five years than Polly had, but that Polly was now much taller than I. How was Aunt Emily? And Davey?
    “You’ll have your tea?” she said.
    That was where her charm lay. She would suddenly be nice just when it seemed that she was about to go for you tooth and nail; it was the charm of a purring puma. She now sent one of the men off to look for Polly.
    “Playing billiards with Boy, I think,” and poured me out a cup of tea.
    “And here,” she said, to the company in general, “is Montdore.”
    She always called her husband Montdore to those she regarded as her equals, but to borderline cases such as the estate agent or Dr. Simpson he was Lord Montdore, if not His Lordship. I never heard her refer to him as “my husband.” It was all part of the attitude to life that made her so generally un-beloved, a determination to show people what she considered to be their proper place and keep them in it.
    The chatter did not continue while Lord Montdore, radiating wonderful oldness, came into the room. It stopped dead, and those who were not already standing up, respectfully did so. He shook hands all round, a suitable word for each in turn.
    “And this is my friend Fanny? Quite grown-up now, and do you remember that last time I saw you, we were weeping together over the ‘Little Match Girl’?”
    Perfectly untrue, I thought. Nothing about human beings ever had the power to move me as a child.
Black Beauty
now …!
    He turned to the fire, holding his thin white hands which shook a little to the blaze, while Lady Montdore poured out his tea. There was a long silence in the room. Presently he took a scone, buttered it, put it in his saucer, and turning to another old man said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
    They sat down together, talking in low voices, and by degrees the starling chatter broke loose again.
    I was beginning to see that there was no occasion to feel alarmed in this company, because, as far as my fellow guests were concerned, I was clearly endowed with protective colouring, their momentary initial interest in me having subsided, I might just as well not have been there at all,