This Real Night by Rebecca West Page A

about,’ said Richard Quin. ‘I wouldn’t know how to go about getting mixed up in a divorce myself, and I don’t think Cordelia and Rose have the slightest idea how to start. But everybody has made us read the Bible, and our house is always knee-deep in newspapers, and we have a general idea as to why people get divorced. It starts with flirting, and goes on to mug-smudging, which is what the boys at my school call kissing; and, Mamma, do you know about things called limericks?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Mamma. ‘Edward Lear.’
    ‘No, not at all,’ said Richard Quin. ‘But let’s get on. Those beastly daughters, when they talked about the Captain Somebody-or-other at Pau who was getting married, they weren’t just drivelling. They were doing what is called letting the cat out of the bag. They were telling their father that their mother had been flirting with this riding master. They were sneaking. They were sneaking on their own mother to their own father.’
    My mother laughed, her voice rang out as if she were young. ‘No,’ she said, as if she were a girl who had scored a victory over a boy. ‘You are wrong. I tried not to listen, but it was Stephanie who had been foolish about the riding master. Stephanie, the youngest girl, poor child.’
    ‘Why, who said that?’ wondered Richard Quin.
    ‘Mrs Morpurgo!’ I said scornfully. ‘Oh, Mamma, really! You see,’ I explained to him, ‘while you were in the library she came and told Mr Morpurgo a silly story about how it had been Stephanie who was in love with the captain, and Mr Morpurgo as good as told her to shut up, and she would go on, and then he said that anyway it didn’t matter, and she was so stupid that she didn’t see that he was being nice to her. But you should have understood, Mamma, really you should.’
    ‘No, surely not, dear,’ said Mamma. ‘Surely what upset him was that she insisted on going to that silly fête, and that she was so rude about his beautiful pictures. But perhaps … oh, yes, it must have been more than that. She did not suddenly start being disagreeable this afternoon, she was so good at it, she had evidently practised whatever are the scales and arpeggios of rudeness every day of her life, he must be used to her refusing anything he might admit he wants, and that silliness about the pictures was something she had often brought out before, like the way people play the same encore. But Edgar was as if he had been hit a great blow which he had not expected. Oh, perhaps it is as you say,’ she said, her voice dying away.
    ‘Poor, poor Mr Morpurgo,’ said Richard Quin. ‘He is so.…’ The words choked in his throat, he passed his hand over his forehead.
    Cordelia broke into the silence. ‘Mamma,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, dear?’
    ‘Mamma, I have found out what I want to be.’
    ‘What?’ asked Mamma incredulously. ‘During that luncheon? In that house?’
    ‘Yes, Mamma. Mr Weissbach gave me the idea. I am going to be an art dealer’s secretary. Not just a typist. A sort of assistant. I know exactly what to do. I will find out everything tomorrow.’
    ‘Why, Cordelia,’ breathed my mother. ‘How single-minded you are!’ Then she grew wild and seemed to spread wide wings, an eagle defending its eyrie and its brood. ‘But you cannot become Mr Weissbach’s secretary. That I forbid.’
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Cordelia, looking very sturdy. ‘That would not do. But he hopes I will, so he has told me exactly what training to get, and I will be able to use it to get a post with someone else.’
    Richard Quin broke into laughter. ‘Good old Cordy! I’ve always told you we needn’t worry about old Cordy.’
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ said Cordelia, ‘and stop that hideous guffawing. Mamma, the training should not be so expensive. I just have to study the history of art, it seems that there are classes, and I must get my French and German really good, and start Italian. I will work hard and it will not