Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Author:Nancy Mitford [Mitford, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-74135-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

DAVEY NOW DECIDED that it would be only kind to go over and see his old friend Lady Montdore, so he rang her up and was invited to luncheon. He stayed until after tea, and, by good luck, when he got back Polly was lying down in her bedroom, so he was able to tell all.

“She is in a rage,” he said. “A rage. Simply frightening. She has taken what the French call a ‘coup de vieux.’ She looks a hundred. I wouldn’t care to be hated by anyone as much as she hates Boy. After all, you never know. There may be something in Christian Science, and evil thoughts and so on, directed at us with great intensity may affect the body. How she hates him! Just imagine, she has had the tapestry he made for that fire screen cut out quite roughly with a pair of scissors, and the screen is there in front of the fire with a huge hole in it. It gave me quite a shock.”

“Poor Sonia, how like her, somehow. And what does she feel about Polly?”

“She mourns her, and she’s pretty cross with her too for being so underhand and keeping it a secret all these years. I said, ‘You really couldn’t expect that she would tell you?’ but she didn’t agree. She asked me a lot of questions about Polly and her state of mind. I was obliged to say that her state of mind is not revealed to me, but that she is looking twice as pretty as before, if possible, so it can therefore be presumed that she is happy.”

“Yes, you can always tell by that, with girls,” said Aunt Sadie. “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have thought she cared a bit, one way or the other. What a strange character she must have, after all.”

“Not so strange,” said Davey. “Many women are rather enigmatic, very few laugh when they are happy and cry when they are sad to the extent that your children do, my dear Sadie, nor do we all see everything in black and white. Life is oversimplified at Alconleigh. It’s part of the charm and I’m not complaining, but you mustn’t suppose that all human beings are exactly like Radletts, because it is not so.”

“You stayed very late.”

“Poor Sonia, she’s lonely. She must be, dreadfully, if you come to think of it. We talked about nothing else, too, round and round the subject, every aspect of it. She asked me to go over and see Boy to find out if there’s any hope of his giving up the idea and going abroad for a bit. She says Montdore’s lawyer has written and told him that the day Polly marries him she will be completely cut out of her father’s will and also Montdore will stop Patricia’s allowance which he was intending to give Boy for his life. Even so, she fears they will have enough to live on, but it might shake him, I suppose.

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