Free The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd

Island
. It’s alwayspeople whose virginity is entirely valueless who seem to treasure it most. Not that Hetty treasured hers, of course.’
    ‘But behinds wouldn’t show under those crinoline dresses,’ I objected.
    ‘That wouldn’t stop her waggling it,’ said Arthur. ‘Unfortunately she wasn’t seasick. She stood by the gunwale in a stiff breeze and imagined herself to be some sort of splendid sea queen, riding the storm, and I’ve no doubt that she had a damned silly smug expression. The sea went to her head. She met Percy Dell on that voyage. At first she wouldn’t look at him. She liked men large and vigorous and he was a miserable worm. He was never a real husband to Hetty, but like that piece of jelly, protoplasm or something which I believe some primeval animals had in place of the male sex. Then, a few weeks before they landed, she turned all her batteries on him—literally took him by assault. It must have been terrifying for the poor devil, though he always was very fond of her.’ Arthur paused and looked at me suspiciously. ‘D’you know about that?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound indifferent.
    ‘H’m.’ He was evidently considering whether to tell me more. The gleam in his eye showed that he was itching to make some monstrous final disclosure, when the telephone rang.
    ‘Answer it, will you, my dear boy?’ he said, a little irritated at the interruption.
    I went out into the hall, picked up the receiver and heard the stern throaty voice of an elderly gentlewoman asking to speak to Mr Arthur Langton.
    ‘He’s at dinner,’ I said. ‘Could I give a message?’
    ‘Who is that?’ she demanded testily.
    ‘It’s Guy Langton.’
    ‘Oh, Guy!’ The voice sounded deep and kind and old. ‘This is Cousin Hetty. Would you ask Uncle Arthur if he will come to luncheon with me at the Alexandra Club on Thursday to meet Mrs Sprigge?’
    I felt awful, as if I had been caught taking part in some shameful indulgence. Cousin Hetty was vivid before me in her black taffetas and her black bonnet relieved as always with a jaunty tuft of four white feathers. There were jokes made about the feathers. She was never without them, and when one tuft became shabby, she had another made, exactly the same. Everyone knew they had some meaning, but no one knew what. It could not be that of Mr Mason’s novel, as whatever doubts people may have had about Cousin Hetty, no one questioned her courage. It was said that the feathers stood for her sons, four feathers in her cap. But she had five sons.
    Now, I was only aware of her as an object of great respect, with the impressiveness of a slightly shrunken Mussolini, someone who without much money and by sheer willpower, had made herself of social importance in Melbourne. And I had just been laughing about her virtue and her anatomy, and she must have been nearly eighty. I had the same dreadful sensations as when a fat middle-aged woman standing in front of me on the beach at Lavandou, began to undress with a modesty which only had regard to those whom she could see. I went back to the dining-room and said in a sickly voice:
    ‘Cousin Hetty wants you to lunch on Thursday at the Alexandra Club to meet someone called Sprigge.’
    Arthur was even more upset than I was. His old resentment and his pleasure in malice had surged up, making him forget that the person he was ‘throwing to the wolves’ as he called it, was someone whom he now, as the result of life-long association, though much of it was hostile, thought of in his sober moments, as a close friend. He was also ashamed and angry that he had betrayed one of his own superior generation, one of the sylphides, though the least graceful, to a miserable modern weakling. He dropped the nut-crackers on the floor.
    ‘Very well,’ he said.
    ‘Thank you very much. He’d like to, Cousin Hetty,’ I said into the telephone.
    ‘And how is your dear mother?’
    ‘Very well thank you, Cousin