Pomfret Towers

CHAPTER ONE INVITATION TO THE TOWERS-2

‘Well, ask your mother,’ said Mr. Barton in a cowardly way. ‘Here she is. Susan, Pomfret has asked Guy and Alice to the Towers. Alice doesn’t much want to go. What do you think?’

Mrs. Barton laid a heap of letters on the table and sat down.

‘I haven’t seen Lady Pomfret for years,’ she said. ‘Not for years,’ she added reflectively.

‘Well, darling, none of us have,’ said Guy, kissing the top of her head, ‘because she hasn’t been here. If I brought you some coffee and some food, do you think you could concentrate for a moment? Lord Pomfret has asked us for a week-end. Lady Pomfret hasn’t, but I don’t suppose that matters. I do want to go. Alice doesn’t. Father says ask you.’

‘But Lady Pomfret has asked you,’ said Mrs. Barton. ‘Don’t give me eggs, because I ordered fish cakes as well, and I want to show that we eat them. I brought Lady Pomfret’s letter down to show you all. It is somewhere among my post. Oh, here it is. I haven’t seen her since Florence before the War. She had a German doctor, which annoyed the Italians so much. I don’t suppose they would mind so much to-day, but really I don’t know, because they are so very, very insular, though that can’t be exactly what I mean. She writes to me that she has been seeing the Skinners in Florence, who sent all kinds of messages to us, Walter, and would like to have my young people to stay. I do detest the phrase young people.’

‘Well, say Giovinezza, darling,’ said Guy, ‘and here are the fish cakes, and I’m glad you drew my attention to them, because I just felt I needed a little something to fill in the gap, and they will do admirably. Who are the Skinners?’

‘People we used to know,’ said Mr. Barton vaguely. ‘People you would never have heard of, too dull to explain. It is a remarkable thing that when people know people in Florence they are always English. I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve never met anyone who knew an Italian there, and I imagine it as consisting entirely of Skinners.’

‘You are perfectly right, Walter,’ said Mrs. Barton, turning her beautiful eyes upon her husband. ‘Perfectly right. That is why people like Florence. They could never find so many concentrated Skinners in England. Alice had better have a new frock and go.’

‘It isn’t frocks, darling, it’s nightgowns,’ said Guy. ‘She thinks the housemaids will despise her.’

‘Oh, I know they will,’ said Alice, flushing darkly with misery. ‘Please, please need I?’

Mr. Barton and Guy very basely said good-bye and went off to their work, leaving Mrs. Barton to deal with her daughter. Mrs. Barton did not at all wish to be unkind to her, but she felt it was really high time that Alice began to get about and learn to meet people. Her suggestion of a little coming-out dance had been received with a frightened resignation that entirely wrecked her plans. It was impossible to invite guests to a party when the heroine of the evening was losing weight at the mere thought, and every day had darker circles under her eyes. Mrs. Barton then suggested that the ball should be changed to a small evening party, at which Alice’s relief was so great that she could only cry. As she looked like tears every time the party was mentioned, her mother again abandoned her plans, and said a little dinner party would be nice. Alice falteringly said that it would be very nice, but she supposed she would have to speak to the people on each side of her, and looked so abjectly wretched that her mother gave up the idea altogether. Alice could hardly believe her good fortune and went about for several days with terrified eyes, shrinking from everyone, but she had now recovered her spirits and relapsed into her usual routine, painting in her studio, occasionally taking tea with Sally Wicklow, or visiting the kennels in a timid way with Roddy Wicklow. Not that she particularly liked dogs, whose loud, indiscriminating hospitality she found rather overpowering, but Roddy was so large that no one ever noticed her when she was with him, which gave her a safe feeling.

Alice sat in miserable silence, twisting her legs round her chair and fiddling with her cup and saucer, while her mother considered how best to persuade her unhappy daughter that two days at Pomfret Towers would not last for ever, and that far from all eyes being critically fixed upon her, it was probable that no one would notice her. It was true devotion on Mrs. Barton’s part to take so much trouble, for she was burning to get back to Ganimede, a vicious but artistic little hunchback, whose exact position in an illegitimate branch of the Borgia family was still undefined.

‘Alice,’ said her mother.

Alice dropped her cup on to her saucer with a crash and looked wildly round for help. As none was forthcoming she twisted her hands desperately together and said ‘Yes, mother.’

‘I don’t think the Towers would be so bad,’ said her mother, with a carelessness that did not deceive herself or Alice in the least. ‘It isn’t as if Lord Pomfret were a stranger, and it’s only for two days, and Guy will be with you. It might be rather fun.’

Emboldened by despair Alice at last gave voice to the awful fear that had been haunting her ever since the plan was mentioned.

‘Do you think there would be any other girls there?’ she asked, hopelessly.

‘Oh, I should think so, certainly,’ said Mrs. Barton, glad that Alice was for once showing a little interest in people of her own age. ‘And I daresay there will be some dancing, or games, in the evening.’

This was almost more than Alice could bear. Her own mother had entirely misunderstood her, and was pushing her helpless offspring with all her might into the lions’ den. A week-end at the Towers might just, just be bearable if no one else were there, or if under cover of a crowd of grown-ups one could stay in a corner, restfully ignored. But if there were to be girls, Alice thought she had better die. They would all have wonderful dresses and exquisite shoes, and be permanently waved and made up, and be frightfully clever and know all about people and theatres and films, and despise one, and why couldn’t mother understand that girls of one’s own age were simply the most awful thing one could be asked to face.

‘I see,’ she said, in a voice whose want of enthusiasm her mother decided to ignore.

‘So it won’t be awful after all,’ continued Mrs. Barton, with monstrous want of tact, ‘and it will be such fun for you and Guy to go together. I must go and see cook now. Don’t go out this morning, will you, darling? There’s such an east wind, and it won’t do you any good.’

She collected her letters, kissed Alice, and left the room. Alice, who had been toying with the idea of walking very slowly by the river till she was frozen to death, obediently got up and went to her studio. She was designing a dust jacket and end-papers for her mother’s new book. These were to be a surprise, and though she humbly felt that her clever, beautiful mother would probably find them quite inadequate, she took a great deal of pleasure in the work. From time to time she stopped working to look out of the window at the bitter, frostbound world and thought that even Pomfret Towers might be better than walking in the cold wind till one died, though if any warm and painless kind of death were handy she would much prefer it to Pomfret Towers. She had her mother’s way of becoming completely absorbed in what she was doing, and by lunch-time had almost forgotten the impending doom. Mr. Barton and Guy, who came home for lunch, were full of a fifteenth-century manor house which its new owner wanted reconditioning, and could talk of nothing else. Mrs. Barton, lost in the mazes of Ganimede’s family, who had very careless views about marriage, sat in a kind of trance, eating her lunch abstractedly, though with a good appetite, and not hearing anything her family said. So nothing was said about the visit, and Alice went off to have the afternoon rest, which was still part of her régime, in fairly good spirits.

When she came down at tea-time the cold world outside was safely shut away. In the drawing-room a huge log fire threw a golden light on the panelling, the heavy curtains were drawn, and Mrs. Barton, looking a little tired, but triumphant, was lying back in a big chair beside the fire.

‘Will you pour out for me, darling,’ she said to Alice. ‘I am quite exhausted.’

‘Was it your book?’ asked Alice, whose attitude to her mother was worshipping awe that anyone could look so nice and yet be so clever.

‘Yes. It’s rather stupid of me to take it seriously, and we’ll talk about something else.’

Alice, afraid that the something might be Pomfret Towers, set herself to make her mother talk about her work, but this was always difficult, and they sank into a warm, comfortable silence. This was suddenly broken by a deafening noise of barking in the hall.

‘Sally and her horrible dogs, I suppose,’ said Mrs. Barton, sitting up and pushing her hair back. ‘I do wish—’

But what she wished, and the butler’s announcement of Miss Wicklow, were equally drowned in the noise of three dogs who came bouncing into the room under the false assumption that they were all welcome and honoured guests, paying no attention to their mistress’s loud commands of silence.

‘Sorry,’ said Sally Wicklow, picking up a fox terrier, half throttling a large lurcher, and kicking in a friendly way an excitable Airedale. ‘They must have smelt Penny. They’re as quiet as angels as a rule. How do you do, Mrs. Barton. Any more books lately? I always tell Roddy I can’t think how you do it. Hullo, Alice, I didn’t see you. How’s art?’

Without waiting for any replies Miss Wicklow sank into a chair and stretched out her long legs in riding breeches toward the fire. From under her chair a hoarse subterranean growl arose and all the dogs began to bark again.

‘Hullo, it’s Penny,’ said Miss Wicklow, feeling under the chair and dragging out an old Scotch terrier with a face as large as an elephant’s. ‘Isn’t he a clever dog to know his Aunt Sally is here? And weren’t Aunt Sally’s dogs clever children to smell Penny?’

‘No, they weren’t, Sally,’ said Mrs. Barton rather sharply. ‘Anyone could smell Penny. I have told Walter again and again that he ought to be destroyed, and Penny knows he isn’t supposed to be in the drawing-room. Ring, Alice.’

The butler came almost at once and Mrs. Barton delivered Penny to him.

‘And take Miss Wicklow’s dogs into the hall, Horton,’ she said. No, Sally, I will not have dogs in the drawing-room, and you know it. Horton can look after them.’

Miss Wicklow accepted the situation calmly and began to make a very substantial tea, explaining that she had been riding with her brother and had forgotten to have any lunch.

‘Roddy’ll be along in a moment,’ she said. ‘He had to go up to the Towers for Mr. Hoare about something. I say, I hope Horton isn’t feeding those dogs, Mrs. Barton. Hadn’t I better go and bring them in again? They won’t make a sound now, or if they do, I’ll give Wuffy a good beating—he’s the one that always sets them off.’

‘I’m sure Horton wouldn’t feed them,’ said Alice, who knew that Sally, a martinet in the field or the kennels, was incapable of controlling her dogs indoors.