Love in Country Life by Charlotte Bingham

Author:Charlotte Bingham [Bingham, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

The sudden arrival of the Countess was in the nature of a relief. It was dramatic. It was meant to be. It was without anything but the shortest notice, a peremptory telephone call notifying that she would be at Longborough for tea, and that she would not stay longer than for a drink, as she was continuing on later to weekend somewhere else with someone else.

‘Is that one of the gardeners?’ she asked Georgiana as Gus strolled off into the far horizon from which he would not return until dark.

Georgiana looked at her aunt. She did not frighten Georgiana as she once had, but she frightened her enough to make it difficult to lie to her.

‘No,’ she said, after some thought.

‘Oh it’s not,’ said the Countess. ‘I thought it didn’t look like a gardener.’ It - as they both knew - looked just like a painter disappearing into the undergrowth.

‘I hope you’re not having another of your immensely unsuitable affairs, Georgiana?’ said the Countess after no pause for thought.

‘More tea?’

‘Yes, thank you. You know - having affairs with unsuitable people can only amuse for so long,’ the Countess continued, now addressing a nearby yew tree. ‘It is most important to understand that women who have too many lovers, for too long, in the end inevitably grow into institutions. They become used, and once a woman becomes used then she’s a nuisance to herself and to everyone else. She starts to regret her whole-hearted embraces, she even forgets that she has enjoyed those embraces and she takes to blaming the opposite sex for her own follies, and once that happens there is nothing else for her to do but turn back to her diaries and have them published in one of the cheaper Sunday newspapers. Here, in condensed form, she will be portrayed, by herself, as a hapless victim whose heart ruled her head, someone whom no one but the hardest person could really despise, not, as is always the case, a lusty, greedy person to whom restraint was foreign.’

Georgiana’s foot moved slightly to avoid an early summer wasp. She was not uninterested in what the Countess had said. She certainly did not want to become an institution. She did not want to end up in middle age publishing her diaries, and yet, at the same time, she did not feel that she could possibly be, as yet, eligible for the dire future that the Countess was obviously predicting for her. Two lovers was not a cricket team, and even though neither of them would be in the Countess’s first eleven, on the other hand neither was negligible. They were not men whom other men could easily despise, particularly not Kaminski whom the Countess had even socialized with on a large scale, by attending his private party for five hundred.

‘I think we should go and see that border your mother was describing to me the other day. She’s very proud of it just now, it seems.’

The Countess rose, and Georgiana followed her obediently.

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