“Let the house for the winter then?” said Pepino.
“Excellent idea, if we could be certain of letting it. But we can’t be certain of letting it, and all the time a stream of rates and taxes, and caretakers. It would be wretched to be always anxious about it, and always counting the dibs. I’ve been going into what we spent there this summer, caro, and it staggered me. What I vote for, is to sell it. I’m not going to use it without you, and you’re not going to use it at all. You know how I looked forward to being there for your sake, your club, the Reading Room at the British Museum, the Astronomer Royal, but now that’s all kaput, as Tony says. We’ll bring down here anything that’s particularly connected with dear Auntie: her portrait by Sargent, of course, though Sargents are fetching immense prices; or the walnut bureau, or the Chippendale chairs or that little worsted rug in her bedroom; but I vote for selling it all, freehold, furniture, everything. As if I couldn’t go up to Claridge’s now and then, when I want to have a luncheon-party or two of all our friends! And then we shall have no more anxieties, and if they say you must get away from the cold and the damp, we shall know we’re doing nothing on the margin of our means. That would be hateful: we mustn’t do that.”
“But you’ll never be able to be content with Riseholme again,” said Pepino. “After your balls and your parties and all that, what will you find to do here?”
Lucia turned her gimlet-eye on him.
“I shall be a great fool if I don’t find something to do,” she said. “Was I so idle and unoccupied before we went to London? Good gracious, I was always worked to death here. Don’t you bother your head about that, Pepino, for if you do it will show you don’t understand me at all. And our dear Riseholme, let me tell you, has got very slack and inert in our absence, and I feel very guilty about that. There’s nothing going on: there’s none of the old fizz and bubble and Excelsior there used to be. They’re vegetating, they’re dry-rotting, and Georgie’s getting fat. There’s never any news. All that happens is that Daisy slashes a golf-ball about the Green for practice in the morning, and then goes down to the links in the afternoon, and positively the only news next day is whether she has been round under a thousand strokes, whatever that means.”
Lucia gave a little indulgent sigh.
“Dear Daisy has ideas sometimes,” she said, “and I don’t deny that. She had the idea of ouija, she had the idea of the Museum, and though she said that came from Abfou, she had the idea of Abfou. Also she had the idea of golf. But she doesn’t carry her ideas out in a vivid manner that excites interest and keeps people on the boil. On the boil! That’s what we all ought to be, with a thousand things to do that seem immensely important and which are important because they seem so. You want a certain touch to give importance to things, which dear Daisy hasn’t got. Whatever poor Daisy does seems trivial. But they shall see that I’ve come home. What does it matter to me whether it’s Marcia’s ball, or playing Alf’s accompaniments, or playing golf with Daisy, or playing duets with poor dear Georgie, whose fingers have all become thumbs, so long as I find it thrilling? If I find it dull, caro, I shall be, as Adele once said, a bloody fool. Dear Adele, she has always that little vein of coarseness.”
Lucia encountered more opposition from Pepino than she anticipated, for he had taken a huge pride in her triumphant summer campaign in London, and though at times he had felt bewildered and buffeted in this high gale of social activity, and had, so to speak, to close his streaming eyes and hold his hat on, he gloried in the incessant and tireless blowing of it, which stripped the choicest fruits from the trees. He thought they could manage, without encroaching on financial margins, to keep the house open for another year yet, anyhow: he acknowledged that he had been unduly pessimistic about going to Aix, he even alluded to the memories of Aunt Amy which were twined about 25 Brompton Square, and which he would be so sorry to sever. But Lucia, in that talk with his doctor, had made up her mind: she rejected at once the idea of pursuing her victorious career in London if all the time she would have to be careful and thrifty, and if, far more importantly, she would be leaving Pepino down at Riseholme. That was not to be thought of: affection no less than decency made it impossible, and so having made up her mind, she set about the attainment of her object with all her usual energy. She knew, too, the value of incessant attack: smash little Alf, for instance, when he had landed a useful blow on his opponent’s face, did not wait for him to recover, but instantly followed it up with another and yet another till his victim collapsed and was counted out. Lucia behaved in precisely the same way with Pepino: she produced rows of figures to show they were living beyond their means: she quoted (or invented) something the Prime Minister had said about the probability of an increase in income-tax: she assumed that they would go to the Riviera for certain, and was appalled at the price of tickets in the Blue Train, and of the tariff at hotels.
“And with all our friends in London, Pepino,” she said in the decisive round of these combats, “who are longing to come down to Riseholme and spend a week with us, our expenses here will go up. You mustn’t forget that. We shall be having a succession of visitors in October, and indeed till we go south. Then there’s the meadow at the bottom of the garden: you’ve not bought that yet, and on that I really have set my heart. A spring garden there. A profusion of daffodils, and a paved walk. You promised me that. I described what it would be like to Tony, and he is wildly jealous. I’m sure I don’t wonder. Your new telescope too. I insist on that telescope, and I’m sure I don’t know where the money’s to come from. My dear old piano also: it’s on its very last legs, and won’t last much longer, and I know you don’t expect me to live, literally keep alive, without a good piano in the house.”
Pepino was weakening. Even when he was perfectly well and strong he was no match for her, and this rain of blows was visibly staggering him.