Good Behaviour by Molly Keane

Author:Molly Keane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

18

At luncheon Papa decided for me. He said: ‘Got to go to the Wine Cellars. And the car’s not her burning best either. Care to come along in case she stops with me? We’ll get her sharpened up while we’re busy in the Cellars.’

‘So long as we don’t have to go to tea with the Crowhurst girls.’

The girls lived near the Wine Cellars and he had often been known to call in and bask for an hour in their acidulated adoration. I can only suppose the girls and their lives were like a comic strip to Papa. He followed their activities, some of them rather shady; it was a game, laughing at their contrivances. Their bitter, nipped tongues kept him guessing at what they might say next. He liked to nose out their small scandalous escapades – nothing like love affairs, poor things, of course not, more likely a sharpish bit of horse dealing. One of their pleasures was not telling. It put an edge on everything they did or said. Poor unhappy things. Much as I pitied and faintly despised them, they had the knack of making me feel I was lolling helplessly through an objectless, boring life. I never wanted to see them, or listen to them, or even to eat any of the delightful food they produced from air, or sea, or garden.

Papa, I knew, felt very differently about their ways of overriding poverty, rejecting its limitations. He was fascinated by all they had taught themselves about horses, and never tired of analysing the curious theories they accepted from that wild tinker fellow they employed as a part-time groom. He could charm warts, or go up to any horse, where another dare not lay his hand. Besides being so knowledgeable on horses and horse lore, they knew the cures for all the diseases from which dogs could suffer. They despised vets. Even when one of their viperous miniature dachshunds was in hideous whelping difficulties, they used their own clever fingers, and an hour after achieving a safe delivery for their darling they would be sitting on a sofa at their petit-point, their hands as elegantly and carefully employed as those of any ancestress. They were very well born and never forgot it.

Today I could sense Papa making his way wordlessly towards a cup of tea with Nod and Blink; it was a delayed action. At the garage he ordered work on the car which must take hours to accomplish. At the Wine Cellars we stayed a long time ordering good things in the dark drift of smells in the grocery department. After that came the real matter of the visit, wines and their years and qualities, their prices unimportant when compared with the delights Papa was accumulating.

When, at half past four, I heard him ask for a bottle of Gordon’s gin, a bottle of Noilly Prat, ‘and, of course, a lemon,’ I knew we were bound for tea with the Crowhurst girls, bringing a little present with us.

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