Tableau in the garden

Rose Mountjoy evidently bears me no ill will. I met her in the high street yesterday and stopped to chat a while; after which she suggested we go and have coffee together in the little garden café down on the riverbank where, she assured me, they make a cappuccino quite as good as those at Starbucks. She was right; they make an excellent cup, and it must have acted as a stimulant with Rose, for she began at once to talk to me about Lady Macauley and Belle. Poor Belle has a hard time of it, apparently. The old lady is very exacting, and never more so than when she has taken it into her head to die again.

“She took to her bed ten days ago and hasn’t budged since” Rose informed me. “She engages a nurse of course, at the first sign of illness, but it’s always Belle she wants in the last resort. Belle’s only respite comes when there are visitors. Lady M allows herself to be whispered at from a discreet distance now and then, by those among the most faithful of her old friends whom she doesn’t regard as quite impossible; who don’t prognosticate or shout, and who haven’t about them anything of what she calls, even in her prostration, the aspect of the angel of death. She might be dying, she says, but she doesn’t require the assembled cast of the Oresteia to send her on her way!”

So, Theodora has a sharp tongue, I reflected, as I listened to this account. She doesn’t mince her words, and has a lively way of expressing herself. I supposed it must have taken something of the sort to have captivated Jack Macauley and held on to him so long; and I allowed myself to dwell a moment, on that old image I’d always had, of the early Theodora, the early Jack. Though what I went on to say to Rose, by way of a response at last, was something altogether more prosaic.

“And is she dying?” I inquired. To which Rose replied “ Oh good lord no! She’s tough as an old boot and will outlive us all. She’s bored, that’s all. She was bored with Florence and then with the Bay of Naples. When you have lived to become as bored as that, there’s very little left to keep you amused! We thank heaven, Belle and I, for the prime minister and the mayor of London, to each of whom she has taken such a profound dislike that it keeps her occupied for hours on end. She looks for them everywhere; she scours the newspapers and all the television bulletins. It seems to her that the one smiles too much, and the other too little. It’s evidence, she says, of their particular brands of perfidy: they resemble Hamlet’s mother - they can smile and smile ( or not smile, in the case of Mr Livingstone, whose best effort lies somewhere between a smirk, and a scowl)…. they can smile as much as they will, and still be villains. She thinks they’re bringing the country to ruin, and she can’t see how they have managed to persuade so many people to go on voting for them. But there they are, and there, by virtue of the persistent folly of the British people, they seem likely to remain. She has heard of Mr Brown of course, and of the likelihood of his taking over from Mr Blair at any moment. But she hardly sees how she’s going to like him any better – she thinks that if anything, especially on the smile front, he will actually turn out to be a great deal worse!”

I thought this such entertaining fare that I was loath to depart from it. But Rose herself had different ideas, and soon began talking of other things; notably of David Porteous, and that fantastic theory of Pamela’s, that he might be making love to little Frances Fanshawe! Rose can’t see it happening, herself. Though of course one never knows; and David, having nothing much more, himself, poor man, than his aunt’s rather decrepit old house, must find some temptation in what Rose calls 'Frances’s ten bedchambers and her rooms of state'.

We left the subject there; I finding myself unwilling to discuss Frances with the talkative, but rather indiscreet Mrs Mountjoy. It seemed to me that a certain caution was called for, with one who was apparently so willing to reveal intimate details about her friends. And that afternoon (it was yesterday in fact) I did take myself to the manor house at last, with the idea of trying to find out what actually is going on there.

Mrs Meade shuffled out to the gates to admit me. I thought she seemed a little out of sorts, and not just with the effects of possible gin consumed. More, did it seem to be with the general idea that Miss Fanshawe was just then, as she put it, ‘out in the garden with Mr Porteous.’ “You’ll find them in the herb garden” she rather stiffly told me, before shuffling back again to the house. “They’re having a little painting lesson out there, apparently.”

I know my way to what Mrs Meade calls the herb garden by now. Frances herself calls it the knot garden, and it’s a pretty place, filled with varieties of lavender, all lovingly kept trim by the faithful Mr Jessop. To enter it, you must cross the paved courtyard where a pair of ancient cedar trees block out the light, and follow a path through massed azaleas and rhododendrons, until you reach an arched gateway in an old brick wall. I went quietly, not wishing to disturb them, lest they should be too deeply engrossed in the work at hand. And what I saw, on parting a curtain of trailing clematis that partially blocked the gateway, was a little scene of such tranquillity, so much industry and quiet charm, that I was reluctant to break in on it.

Frances sat at one easel in flowered dress and sunhat; David Porteous, splendidly panama-ed, leant before another close beside her. So deeply absorbed were they in their respective canvases, only pausing now and then to look up and compare brush-strokes with one another, that I couldn’t find it in my heart to disturb them; and was just about to creep silently away again, when Frances looked up and saw me and, putting down her brush at once, called gaily to me to come and join them.

But I have already exceeded my allotted thousand words, alas. And, having pledged myself not to tax possible readers’ patience too much, all in the space of one blog entry, I must break off at this point, promising to come back again tomorrow, or thereabouts, to describe to you what happened next…….