“As long as that?”
“As long as that,” Nanny echoed sharply. “Disgraceful. I’ve always thought it, the way you neglected your mother – but there, she wouldn’t listen to me.
“‘Write and tell her to come back,’ I’ve said to her so often, but she wouldn’t listen.
“‘She’s having a lovely time, Nanny,’ she’d answer, ‘and she’s meeting nice people. That’s what I want for my daughter – nice friendships with the right sort of people.’”
Mona turned away sharply. If Mummy only knew! But thank God she didn’t!
“Nice people!” she almost laughed aloud.
What would Mummy have thought of..? But no, she wouldn’t even think about them now, they had passed, they had all gone from her life, they all belonged to a chapter that was closed. She had tried to forget their names. She had tried to forget all they had said and all that they had meant over the passing years. Some things she could never forget, those things that were hers and Lionel’s, secretly, exquisitely their own – but the rest could be swept away into the limbo of the unwanted and forgotten.
“You look sad, pet.” It was Nanny speaking.
“Do I?” Mona asked. “I’m not.”
No, she wasn’t sad. How could anyone speak of sadness when their whole life had collapsed, had crashed into pieces? That didn’t make one sad, that just shattered one’s whole being, left one dazed and broken and too utterly forsaken even for misery.
“No, I’m not sad,” she repeated. “I am happy, so happy to be home. Let’s go downstairs. Where’s Mother?”
“She’s getting the tea ready for you.”
“Haven’t we any maids?”
“We have a woman who comes in in the mornings, of course all the others have been called up – and then your mother and I manage in the afternoon.”
“Good heavens! – but what about the housework?”
“We’ve shut up most of the rooms,” Nanny explained. “We had evacuees in them at the beginning of the war but they all went back to London. They found it too dull here. ‘I’d rather be bombed than bored,’ one of them said to me – a pert young bit she was. Complained because she couldn’t get her hair waved once a week! If they start bombing again, I suppose we may get some children, but at the moment the rooms are empty. I give them an airing once a month, but otherwise we keep them shut up.”
“Perhaps it’s a good thing,” Mona said. “The house always was too large for us, or rather, too large for our income.”
“And your Mother has let the Lodge. Did she tell you?”
“No, I haven’t heard any of the gossip yet. Who has she let it to?”
“A writing woman of some sort,” Nanny answered. “She got her house bombed in London and has three small children. Her husband is there, too, he’s an adjutant at the aerodrome. They manage all right, but how, I can’t think. The Lodge was always too small even for old Hodge and his wife.”
“What’s happened to them?”
“Dead some time now. Both carried off the same winter from pneumonia.”
“I thought I saw some new gravestones in the churchyard as I passed.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Nanny said,
“Well, don’t be gloomy darling,” Mona admonished. “I think I had better hear about the births first and come to the deaths slowly, although I know there’s nothing Little Cobble enjoys more than a funeral.”
She left her room and walked down the wide oak staircase with its heavy carving, which had been there since Elizabeth’s reign. The stained glass in the hall windows cast a strange, iridescent light and the heraldic leopards on the newels stood out in relief against the sombre darkness of the panelling.
Mona opened the door of the sitting room. It was a long, low room and over the open fireplace was the one treasure in the house, the portrait of the first Vale to own the Priory, painted by Van Dyck.
Mrs. Vale, small, grey-haired, and indefatigably energetic, was sitting by the fire pouring out tea. She looked up as her daughter entered and smiled. There was a faint, faded echo of Mona’s loveliness, combined with the charm of a sweet personality.
“Come along, darling,” she said. “I’ve made some hot buttered toast for you. You must be hungry after that long journey. I wish I could offer you an egg, but just because Nanny and I particularly hoped they’d do their best for your arrival, the hens have all refused to lay for three days.”
“I couldn’t eat one even if it was there.”
“All the same, I’d like to have been able to offer you one. You have got so thin darling, you really must try to eat a lot now you are home again.”
“At least I’m fashionable,” Mona said lightly.
“But I don’t think it’s pretty,” her mother replied. “You never were fat, but your face has got quite haggard.”
“Tell me I’m looking a fright and have done with it.”
Her mother smiled at her affectionately.
“You were always pretty, you silly child, but I like to see you looking your best. After all, you’ve been away so long I want to show you off.”
“Good heavens! – who to?”
“All our friends,” Mrs. Vale replied. “I can’t tell you how excited everyone is at the thought of your return.”
Mona helped herself to hot buttered toast.
“It gives them something to talk about, I suppose. They must have been hard up for scandal since I went away.”
