Wrongly Dressed in Tuscany - and What Rose has in Mind

Rose has evidently decided to keep her present intentions a secret. From me at least: for the first time ever I have found myself in the position of waiting for a visit from her, and feeling disappointed when it doesn’t come. I had begun to think I must have imagined it, that conspiratorial look she gave me on leaving Lady Macauley the other day. I was playing my usual game perhaps, of ascribing motive, sniffing subterfuge, where none existed. I had read too much into Rose’s uncharacteristic silence on the subject of Jack and Alice Macauley, and was doomed to find that even she has limits when it comes to plotting acts of sweet revenge... But then I met Pamela on the high street yesterday and the truth - or her interpretation of it at least - was unravelled. I had to wait for it though. Nothing ever occurs in quite straightforward sequence, where Pamela is concerned, and she had a good deal else of which to disburden herself first.

“Well, the knives are out now and no mistake!” was however her first dark observation - which gave me grounds to hope that all was about to be revealed. She had hustled me into a high street cafe and ordered tea and buns before I could protest that the afternoon was warm, and I would really very much rather have had an iced drink. She has been wearing a rather wounded air of late, it seems to me; she appears to think that a week of feeling wrongly dressed in Tuscany was probably too heavy a price to have had to pay for basking in the light of Lady Macauley’s favour –never mind about any little personal remuneration Roland might have expected to receive, for acting as her unofficial adviser.

“Of course we haven’t seen a penny yet” she said. “And Roland thinks it’s entirely on the cards we never will. The honour of the association is supposed to be all in such cases, he believes. Lady Macauley has probably convinced herself, besides, that a holiday in Tuscany was recompense enough, and that we would feel it demeaning to be offered money as well. But it doesn’t seem to us that there can be anything demeaning about receiving payment for services honestly rendered – and just between you and me, the Tuscan experience was a very mixed blessing. You had left by the time we arrived of course, so you missed the worst of it (why did you hurry away like that by the way? We have wondered and wondered about that...). But you can’t think what a bizarre lot they were who wound up the hill every evening in their antiquated limousines! Dripping jewels, and with every kind of trumped-up-looking foreign medal on the men – and this despite the fact that we were supposed to be dining al fresco, and quite informally. Roland found it quite a feat of endurance just to sit it all out, and I must say I was inclined to agree with him. So that what with one thing and another dear, I don’t mind telling you it will be a very long time before we accept another invitation to the Macauley villa!”

I had begun to feel by now that Pamela must have entirely forgotten her opening remark about the knives being out, but she finally made the switch effortlessly enough - digressing only once more, and then only momentarily, to tell me how very smoothly David Porteous and his daughters had been able to adapt themselves to Tuscan conditions.

“You had to marvel at it!” She was prepared to concede that much. “He had all those haughty old dames eating out of his hands in five minutes flat. And his girls were scarcely better – or worse, depending on the way you looked at it. But as Roland said, he was glad it was Imogen Porteous, and no daughter of his who snatched the limelight every evening by talking about Leonardo Da Vinci! She was touching up the frescoes in the porch you know. Making a rather undistinguished job of it, I thought - though to hear her talk about the problems of working before the plaster dried, you’d have thought she must have had studied personally under Leonardo herself... .”

I had heard about all this before of course, from Rose. I mentioned the fact, hoping it would act as a trigger; and when it did not, I went further, coming right out and remarking that Rose had evidently been somewhat dismayed at the prospect of seeing Jack Macauley again.

“Dismayed?” Pamela feelingly replied. “Yes, you could say that – and then go on to magnify it a hundred-fold. She’s all in pieces about it, as a matter of fact. She doesn’t see how she is to get through it at all. He is supposed to have been the great love of her life, you know. You must have heard her talk about it – how each of her husbands was measured against Jack Macauley, and not one of them came even near! The old lady was quick to nip that little affair in the bud. Jack was packed off somewhere abroad immediately; in connection with family business, or so it was said - but it gave Alice her chance to step in. There was a kind of poetic justice about that, I always thought – since in disposing of Rose, the old lady got Alice, whom she never could abide. But it was very unpleasant at the time, I gather, and Rose took it hard. She has been taking it hard for years, if you ask me. She has never forgotten it - and only now, with this new girl coming along for Will, does she see her chance to settle old scores.”

I expressed surprise. I was surprised indeed; having been unaware, until then, that all these things had run so very deep with Rose. I only wondered how it was that she planned to put the scheme in motion?

“Oh well, that’s simple enough!” Pamela’s response was heartfelt, though delivered with a rather unpleasant little laugh. “She means to take the girl in hand. Promote her cause you know, in a hundred clandestine little ways. She will advise her about her clothes, and her hair, and her deportment. She might take the mother on, even: she doesn’t think the poor woman can be quite beyond one’s help."

Rose 'knew the form by now', as Pamela went on to explain to me. “She hasn’t deferred and curtseyed all these years after all, without learning a thing or two. She will befriend the pair, conferring upon them all the wisdom of her own hindsight. She’ll tell them which forks to use, when to fall gracefully silent, and when speak out. She means to endow them with all the little airs and graces she only learnt herself, too late - she’ll polish them up, in short, and show them how to marry a Macauley, in Lady Macauley’s teeth!”

There seemed to me very little one could say in response to all this, so I didn’t try. Pamela’s narration had come to its natural end, and she seemed to be experiencing a little moment of triumph of her own. Which made me wonder if she perhaps meant to take advantage of the situation, for settling scores of her own and Roland’s? I didn’t voice this however, and we parted shortly after that; I having contributed nothing more useful to the conversation than the light-hearted observation that I hoped we weren’t about to see real social violence enacted between the walls of the Macauley house. It was lame of me, I knew; it was timid and inadequate. I ought to have had the courage of my convictions, and come down on one side or the other – but for the life of me, right there on the spot, I wasn’t able to decide which one.