Free This Real Night by Rebecca West Page A

know,’ she explained to Mamma, meaning that she was sure Mamma did not know. ‘It’s in aid of all those poor horses somewhere. The Rothschilds are very fond of horses. I said I’d go so long ago that I can’t possibly not keep my promise.’ It appeared then that she was no more able to keep her private thoughts when they were to her own disadvantage than when they assailed other people. Her expression now made it plain that what she had just said was not true, that she thought her husband would perceive this, and that now she was improvising. ‘To tell the truth,’ she said, ‘I’m being punished for my dishonesty. I wrote from Pau saying I would be pleased to come to this wretched fête, thinking I hadn’t a ghost of a chance of being back here for months, because of Mamma’s illness, so that I’d seem good-natured, and have a perfect excuse when the time came, because I’d be out there in the Pyrenees, hundreds, or is it thousands, of miles away. But here I am, and Lady Rothschild’s telephoned twice since she saw in The Times that I was back again. I can’t, I really can’t, disappoint her,’ She paused, quite relaxed. But as Mr Morpurgo said nothing to break the silence, her handsome features broke their ranks again, she looked disturbed. ‘I suppose you’re not going to maintain,’ she said bitterly, ‘that we’re in a position to snub the Rothschilds? And we have to start early, it takes hours and hours to get out to Gunnersbury.’ She appealed to my mother for sympathy. ‘Isn’t it tiresome when one’s friends live neither in town nor in the country? One has to set out in one’s car for a journey one should go by train, but trains don’t go to such suburban places. Well, we must go now. I know you will understand, Mrs Aubrey. And so should you, Edgar.’ Again it was apparent that she was a little frightened by her husband’s continued silence. ‘I told you all this. Long ago. I really did. I told you that I had an engagement early this afternoon. Always, from the first, I said, “Luncheon, luncheon I can just manage, but I will have to leave immediately afterwards.”’
    ‘I do not remember that,’ Mr Morpurgo answered pleasantly enough. ‘But very well, go. We will get on very well by ourselves. I have sent for Mr Kessel and he will look after us, and Mr Weissbach,’ he said smiling, ‘can fill in the gaps. So you and the girls can say goodbye, and go off to give the poor horses what you might have given to us.’
    ‘I need not go this minute,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, suddenly timid.
    ‘Oh, you had better not wait any longer,’ her husband told her. ‘Gunnersbury Park is certainly a long way off, as you say, and if you leave later you may disturb the Aubreys when they have settled down to looking at the things.’
    When she and her daughters had left, the time and the place came to their own. We became aware of a fine day looking in at the windows, and of the great ugly, competently capacious house which pretended to be a palace, but was something better, a complex of store cupboards stocked with celestial sorts of jam. ‘My father and mother collected all sorts of things, but hardly any pictures except what they brought back from the Continent when they’d been travelling; the rest I’ve found,’ said Mr Morpurgo comfortably. ‘But I keep up the original collections, I even add to them, I like to keep things going. One must,’ he sighed, ‘keep things going. There are the bronzes, I’m fond of the bronzes. They’re all over the house. When you see a bronze about, Rose, go up and look at it, it’s probably good. There’s a copy of a classical Andromeda by a man called Bonacolsi Antico who worked at Mantua, and that’s something more than the original. And I’ve got a room full of prints, but I don’t believe you’d care for them, though probably that’s because I don’t care for them myself. My father loved them, but then he loved technicalities and I hate