The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell [56]
‘I saw you coming up the drive,’ she said.
She wore trousers. Her head was tied up in a handkerchief. I kissed her, and introduced Stevens.
‘Do come in for a moment and have a drink,’ she said. ‘Or have you got to push on? I’m sure not at once.’
Frederica was not usually so cordial in manner to persons she did not already know; often, not particularly cordial to those she knew well. I had not seen her since the outbreak of war. The war must have shaken her up. That was the most obvious explanation of this new demeanour. The trousers and handkerchief were uncharacteristic. However, it was not so much style of dress that altered her, as something within herself. Robin Budd her husband had been killed in a fall from his horse nine or ten years before. By now not far from forty, she had never – so far as her own family knew – considered remarriage, still less indulged in any casual love affair; although those rather deliberately formidable, armour-plated good looks of hers were of the sort to attract quite a lot of men. Her sister, Priscilla, had some story about Jack Udney, an elderly courtier whose wife had died not long before, getting rather tight at Ascot after a notable win, and proposing to Frederica while the Gold Cup was actually being run, but the allegation had never been substantiated. It was true Frederica had snapped out total disagreement once, when Isobel met Jack Udney somewhere and said she thought him a bore. In short, Frederica’s most notable characteristic was what Molly Jeavons called her ‘dreadful correctness’. Now, total war seemed slightly to have dislodged this approach to life. Frederica’s reception of Stevens showed that. Stevens himself did not need further pressing to come in for a drink.
‘Nothing I’d like better,’ he said. ‘It’ll help me to face Aunt Doris’s woes about shortages and ration cards. Half a sec, I’ll back the car to a place where I’m not blocking your front door.’
He started up the car again.
‘How’s Isobel?’
‘Pretty well,’ said Frederica. ‘She’s resting. She’ll be down in a moment. We’re rather full here. Absolutely packed to the ceiling, as a matter of fact.’
‘Who have you got?’
‘Priscilla is here – with Caroline.’
‘Who is Caroline?’
‘Priscilla’s daughter, our niece. You ought to know that.’
‘Ah, yes, I’d forgotten her name.’
‘Then Robert turned up unexpectedly on leave.’
‘I’ll be glad to see Robert.’
Frederica laughed.
‘Robert has brought a lady with him.’
‘No?’
‘But yes. One of my own contemporaries, as a matter of fact, though I never knew her well.’
‘What’s she called?’
‘She married an American, now deceased, and has the unusual name of Mrs Wisebite. She was nee Stringham. I used to see her at dances.’
‘Charles Stringham’s sister, in fact.’
‘Yes, you knew him, didn’t you. I remember now. Well, Robert has brought her along. What do you think of that? Then the boys are home for the holidays – and there’s someone else you know.’
‘Who is that?’
‘Wait and see.’
Frederica laughed shrilly again, almost hysterically. That was most unlike her. I could not make out what was happening. Usually calm to the point of iciness, rigidly controlled except when she quarrelled with her sister, Norah, Frederica seemed now half excited, half anxious about something. It could hardly be Robert’s morals she was worrying about, although she took family