Progress of the party

“Oh good lord, just look at Mummy now!” cried Belle Macauley, as she and Frances and I carried our trays out into the garden on the afternoon of my tea-party last week. “First she gate-crashed your party, and now she seems to have appropriated it –and is behaving just as if she thought it were her own!”

It was true that in the fifteen minutes or so during which we had been busy in the kitchen, Lady Macauley had succeeded not only in acquainting herself with most of my guests, but also in collecting what had all the appearance of a little coterie around her, at the table in the gazebo. David Porteous was there, and so were his daughters. Amy, the pretty fair-haired younger one was seated beside her on the right, listening, and smiling, and doing her best to seem at ease; while her sister Imogen, dark-eyed and sharply glancing, sat looking distinctly uncomfortable on her left. Imogen at least seemed unmoved by anything that Lady Macauley was saying to her; and there was that about her expression which seemed to say she would exert herself, conversationally, for no old woman, not even the very grandest or most presumptuous; and that she had almost certainly been dragged there by her father entirely against her will.

Imogen’s skirt was very short and her legs, by contrast, very long. So that none of the men present knew quite what to do with their eyes. I noticed Bill’s eyes, and those of the Brigadier, being drawn, and riveted a moment, before they collected themselves, and sharply looked away. Even poor Roland was affected – though a severe sideways glance from Pamela soon pulled him up, and restored his gaze to a more proper contemplation of a clump of trees in the middle distance. Imogen herself seemed oblivious of the attention she was receiving. Or if she saw it, which I thought likely, chose to disregard it; doubtless telling herself there were better ways to spend an afternoon than sitting about in somebody’s garden being ogled by a group of rather dreadful old men.

Rose was in the gazebo too; sitting somewhat behind the others, and looking a little stiff, I thought, as if she believed her rightful place had on this occasion been usurped. She was doing her best to engage the attention of David Porteous; but I could see it was a losing battle, for he was leaning back in his seat with his customary meditative look, and evidently had eyes and ears, and the occasional small, carefully measured smile, only for Lady Macauley and his daughters. Most of my other guests, among whom were Pamela and Roland, stood about in little groups just outside the gazebo, chatting among themselves as apparently nonchalantly as they could, but glancing inwards all the while, as if they hoped at any moment to receive the call to climb the steps and join the inner circle.

Lady Macauley looked up at our approach, and called blithely to us. “I think I’m going to like your Mr Porteous after all!” she cried. “He has all the priestly virtues and none of the drawbacks so far as I can see. Only think of it – we have been together full ten minutes, and he hasn’t raised the question of my immortal soul once!”

Belle winced, and her sigh of resignation was long and deep. “What can you do with her?” she softly wailed. “The fact is, I gave up trying long ago – and can only hope you’ll excuse her impertinence on the grounds of her extreme old age. Though the truth is she has been impertinent all her life, and age has really nothing whatever to do with it!”

Neither Frances nor I knew quite how to respond to this, and were glad to be spared the effort of attempting it, by the arrival in our midst of David Porteous, and Bill, and Bill’s brigadier, who had come to insist upon relieving us of our trays. The trays disposed, and tea laid out, a little flurry of introductions followed. David brought Frances forward to be presented to Lady Macauley, who looked hard at her a moment, before extending a languid hand and murmuring something vague which seemed to contain a reference to her engagement, and her grandmother... This caused a momentary awkwardness: producing on Frances’s part a deep blush, and on Belle’s, another sharp intake of breath. For as each of them knew only too well, there had existed between the Macauleys and Frances’s grandmother, a fierce mutual animosity that had soured relations from the first moment, and had never been resolved.

Lady Macauley chose to ignore old feuds today however; though it was clear that Frances herself held very little interest for her, and she had turned, the next moment, to call Belle over to be introduced to David Porteous. This was the moment Belle had dreaded, of course. I felt for her acutely, and had just time, before moving on to welcome and talk to other guests, to witness her response to it. I had wondered how she would fare beneath that particular considered scrutiny, and I hoped her nerve would hold. I believe it did; though I could not help but see how taken aback she was, by the unexpectedly powerful physical presence of the man. I believe that the momentary touch of his hand produced little shocks in her, just as it had once done in me - and that it had suddenly become of vital importance to her that she should not stumble in his presence, or say anything which he might consider dull, or foolish.

It is the lot of the hostess though, to be able to involve herself only peripherally in her own party. I was obliged to leave the group in the gazebo at that point, to move about among my other guests. Tea must be served, and everyone made as welcome, and as much at their ease as it was in my power to do. Bill helped where he could – especially with Pamela, for whose sake, in a sense, the party had been convened; and with whom he in fact took the kind of trouble that I knew he couldn’t possibly be enjoying. I saw him engaged in long and earnest conversation with Roland, for example – for which act of heroic self-denial I vowed to repay him with especial acts of sisterly kindness in the future.

I was able to return now and then to the gazebo, where Lady Macauley continued to hold court with David Porteous and his daughters. I was glad to see that Frances was now of the group, and that David leant towards her confidingly enough at regular intervals, evidently doing his best to keep her involved in what was mostly Lady Macauley’s conversation. I caught only disjointed snatches of that conversation myself; though was able to observe that Lady Macauley was taking a good deal of trouble with Imogen Porteous, and that the girl herself was perceptibly, if still somewhat reluctantly, unbending. They appeared at one point to be talking about the excitement of living at what Lady Macauley had called ‘the throbbing centre of that great heart, the capital’...

“It must be very thrilling” I heard Lady Macauley say to the girl. “ I can quite see how for a young girl there could be no other life that could match it. Rose is a great one for the capital, you know. She goes up to Covent Garden to the opera constantly – I’m always trying to get my own poor Belle to go with her. The opera is so uplifting, don’t you think? One always comes away from it somehow feeling like Carmen or Violetta....”

Imogen Porteous seemed uncertain of how she ought to respond to this. Her look seemed to say that she had never felt especially like Carmen or Violetta herself – though she murmured something to the effect that she was sure it was very uplifting, but that she seldom found the time herself – much less the hundred pounds – that one seemed to require for going to hear it. It was not much, but it was a beginning,it seemed to me. The girl had not been altogether ungracious in her reply, and I could see that for Lady Macauley at least, there was something here which she thought it would probably amuse her to try to cultivate.

Pamela remained my primary pre-occupation though. I had resolved to grant her an audience with Lady Macauley if I could – the only difficulty lay in finding a way to achieve it without appearing too eager, or too obvious. Bill it was in fact, who finally had the inspiration that was to bring it off. He told me later that it had suddenly come to him that there must be some recompense for having listened for half an hour to Roland Baines drone on about the inequity of the country’s taxation policy, and all the little ruses he’d devised for getting round it... And then it had come to him. Only put them together, he’d thought: Lady M with her obsession about being robbed, posthumously, by the taxman - and Roland Baines with all his dry-as-dust little formulae for avoiding it!

The miracle was, it worked. It involved a kind of gate-crashing of the gazebo on Bill’s part of course. But then Bill has gate-crashed more perilous places than a gazebo in an English garden. And in any case there is nothing in the world that Bill can do that will not bring the light of amusement to Lady Macauley’s eyes. She suffered the curious intrusion of Bill with a Baines on either arm more or less without turning a hair. She did raise a quizzical eyebrow for a moment; but she nonetheless sat perfectly still and listened for a full ten minutes; and it was clear that, dull as he was, she found every word of Roland’s very much to her purpose. She ended almost by enveloping the astonished man in a lavender-scented embrace.

“What an impossibly clever creature you are to have thought-up all that!” she cried. “You have probably saved me more thousands than you can ever imagine, and I and my descendents will have cause to sing your praises forever!”

I doubt that Roland Baines has been the recipient of such extravagant praise from such a source in his life before; and I doubt still more that he will ever receive anything of the kind again. He positively beamed in the glow of it though, and so did Pamela. And if my little party achieved nothing else, it achieved this: that Pamela now has a perfect bi-line for any luncheon party she ever attends. “Dear Lady Macauley!“ she will be in a position to say with perfect impunity wherever she goes; “Such a friend of mine you know – especially since Roland saved her such a deal of money on the question of her inheritance tax...”

So far as Mr Porteous and his daughters are concerned – well, I believe they have already received their first invitation to go to tea at the Macauley house. Whether Imogen will consent to go or not, I can’t be sure - and I confess I’m even less sure about how all this will affect Belle's equanimity, or Frances's engagement. But on the whole I think I can claim that my little party achieved most of its desired ends. And after all, one can’t expect to have got absolutely everything right at just one attempt, can one?


I have amended the text to show that Part One now ends with this instalment rather than with the other, earlier one. Part Two will therefore begin with the next instalment.