Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

Author:Nancy Mitford [Mitford, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-74137-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

10

Next day at the usual hour Noel pushed his way, hooting from time to time, through the undergrowth which surrounded his trysting-place. As he heard no answering cry, he presumed that Anne-Marie had been unable to come. He found her lying, however, a little crumpled heap of despondency, on the steps of the temple, and very soon she was sobbing her heart out on Noel’s shoulder.

‘Darling, I really can’t see that it matters as much as all that,’ he said, when at last he had realized the reason for all this misery. ‘Of course it would have been fun to do it together, and it is sweet of you to mind, but you know, Lady Marjorie is quite right, Mr Wilkins is the living double of George the Third. Rather clever of her to notice I thought.’

‘Oh! you don’t understand,’ sobbed Mrs Lace. ‘I’m not so stupid as to make all this fuss over an old pageant, although I had been looking forward to acting with you quite particularly.’

‘Then what is it, my darling?’ said Noel, who was getting rather bored with this scene.

‘I’m so dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy.’

‘Darling, why?’

‘You’re so unkind to me. I feel I can’t bear it any longer.’

‘Unkind?’

‘All the secrecy.’

‘What secrecy?’

Mrs Lace had now, more or less, recovered her composure. She knew that she looked pretty when she cried, so long as the crying only lasted a little while. Therefore, at the psychological moment she usually stopped. She did so now, and proceeded to comb her hair and powder her nose, peeping from beneath dewy eyelashes at Noel from time to time. There was an expression on his face which she interpreted as a warning not to go too far. In actual fact he was merely reminding himself that all women like an occasional good cry; it was a tax which lovers had to pay. He hoped that she would cut it short, meanwhile steeling himself to endurance.

‘You see, darling,’ she went on presently, ‘it is rather cruel, the way you never tell me anything about yourself.’

Typical grievance, thought Noel. ‘My darling,’ he said, ‘there really isn’t much to tell. The history of my life up to date is extremely dull, believe me.’

‘The smallest things about you are interesting to me,’ said Anne-Marie, passionately.

‘Well,’ said Noel, with that bright facetiousness which was such an unattractive feature of his mind, ‘shall we begin at the beginning? I was born of poor but honest parents —’

‘Where?’

‘Where was I born? I don’t know exactly, it was somewhere in the Balkans. My father, you see, was an archaeologist, and he and my mother spent the first years of their married life wandering about in that part of the Continent. I know she had a bad time when I was born, as I was premature, and they could not get hold of a proper doctor for ages. They were both so vague, always.’

‘Yes, I see. So then where were you educated?’

‘In England, of course. After the War broke out circumstances compelled my

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