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By Root 2618 0

wholly avoided an uninstructed predisposition to lay down the law on aesthetic matters, there would have been much to be said for this preference. Unhappily, you could never be certain of her adherence to such a rule of conduct. She seemed often to hold just as strong views on such matters as those who felt themselves most keenly engaged. Besides, her disinclination to discuss these subjects in general, left an area of uncertainty as to how far her taste, for example, in books and plays, had taken her; her self-esteem could be easily, disastrously, impaired by interpreting too literally her disavowal of all intellectual interests. In the same way, Frederica lumped together in one incongruous, not particularly acceptable agglomeration, all persons connected with painting, writing and music. I think she suspected them, in that time-honoured, rather engaging habit of thought, of possessing morals somehow worse than other people’s. Her mention of St John Clarke’s name was for these reasons unexpected.

‘Certainly I have heard of St John Clarke,’ I said. ‘He has just died. Isobel and I met him lunching at Hyde Park Gardens not long before he was taken ill.’

‘Not me,’ said Isobel, ‘I was being ill myself.’

‘St John Clarke used to lunch at Hyde Park Gardens?’ said Frederica. ‘I did not know that. Was he often there?’

‘He used to turn up at Aunt Molly’s too,’ said Isobel. ‘You must remember the story of Hugo and the raspberries —’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Frederica, showing no sign of wishing to hear that anecdote again, ‘I had forgotten it was St John Clarke. But what about him?’

‘Surely you read Fields of Amaranth secretly when you were growing up?’ said Isobel. ‘There was a copy without the binding in that cupboard in the schoolroom at Thrubworth.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Frederica, brushing off this literary approach as equally irrelevant. ‘But what sort of a man was St John Clarke?’

That was a subject upon which I felt myself something of an expert. I began to give an exhaustive, perhaps too exhaustive, account of St John Clarke’s life and character. No doubt this searching analysis of the novelist was less interesting to others – certainly less interesting to Frederica – than to myself, because she broke in almost immediately with a request that I should stop.

‘It really does not matter about all that,’ she said. ‘Just tell me what he was like.’

‘That was what I was trying to tell you.’

I felt annoyed at being found so inadequate at describing St John Clarke. No doubt it would have been better to have contained him in one single brief, brilliant epigram; I could not think of one at that moment. Besides, that was not the kind of conversational technique Frederica approved. I was attempting to approach St John Clarke from another angle, when Robert arrived. Whatever Frederica had been leading up to was for the moment abandoned. Robert, in his curiously muted manner, showed signs of animation.

‘I have got a piece of news,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Frederica. ‘Have you heard too, Robert?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Robert. ‘So far as I am aware, I am the sole possessor of this particular item.’

‘What is it?’

‘You will all know pretty soon anyway,’ said Robert, in a leisurely way, ‘but one likes to get in first. We are going to have a new brother-in-law.’

‘Do you mean Priscilla is engaged?’

‘Yes,’ said Robert. ‘Priscilla – not Blanche.’

‘Who to?’

‘Who do you think?’

A few names were put forward.

‘Come on,’ said Isobel. ‘Tell us.’

‘Chips Lovell.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Chips had just been accepted when I arrived back at the house.’

‘He was almost a relation before,’ said Frederica.

On the whole she sounded well disposed, at least looking on the bright side; because there must have been much about Chips Lovell which did not recommend itself to Frederica. She may have feared worse. Moreland’s name was unlikely to have reached her, but she could have heard vague, unsubstantiated gossip stemming ultimately from the same source.

‘I guessed something must be in the air when