couldn't disagree with you more than I do," said Primrose vehemently.
"Only the intensely class-conscious—like yourself, darling—would become so frantic on the subject. Go on about your relations. What did your mother do when you kicked loose?"
"What her kind always does. Looked more and more wistful and tried having heart-to-hearts that never came off because I wouldn't, and then got afraid of me. She's actually terrified of me."
"Of what you can do to hurt her," suggested Lonergan.
"I suppose so. Honestly, Rory, I don't set out to give her hell or anything like that, but I just come over utterly unnatural whenever we're within a mile of one another, and I hear myself saying the most brutal things and just can't stop. She embarrasses me so frightfully that I'm simply incapable of even looking at her, quite often."
"How is she embarrassing?"
"I don't know. She shows her feelings, for one thing. Or at least, she makes one know they're there. And she's so utterly incompetent—even more so than most of the women who were brought up the way she was. My grandfather was in the Diplomatic Service and she lived abroad till she married. I suppose that's helped to make her the dim kind of person she is—that and having a certain amount of French blood. Her name was Levallois. Mercifully both my sister and I take completely after the Arbell side of the family."
Lonergan kept silence.
After a minute Primrose said sharply:
"What is it?"
He gave her a look of appraisement.
"You're quick, aren't you. I was only thinking that I'd heard that name—your mother's name—Levallois—years and years ago, when I was an art student in Rome."
"That's right. They were there. Did you ever know them?"
Her voice sounded incredulous.
"Embassies weren't precisely up my street—even less so then than they are now. But one remembers the name."
"It was before the last war. You must have been frightfully young."
"Twenty—as a very simple calculation ought to show you, since you know perfectly well that I'm twenty-four years older than you are."
"You're terribly age-conscious, aren't you? I think it's silly, especially in a man," Primrose observed coldly.
"I agree. I wasn't thinking of my age, particularly, especially as I seem much younger to myself than I doubtless do to you."
"What were you thinking of then?"
"Temporarily viewing the situation through your eyes: that a lover of yours should have been a young man, already twenty years old, when your mother was a girl. It's an odd, unflattering sort of link with the past."
"The past doesn't mean a thing to me. Why should it? My mother, of course, lives in it. That'd be enough, in itself, to put me off."
"How vicious you are, about her."
"I don't think so. I just happen to dislike everything she stands for. Though I've got personal grievances against her, too. She made a complete mess of me, with the best intentions. Apparently most mothers do that."
"Did she do it to your sister, too?"
"I'm not sure about that. On the whole I think not. Jess is terribly normal and rather stupid, and as she was only born six years after I was, the first force of this awful maternal egotism had all been spent on me."
"You're sure it was egotism?"
"Rory, don't be such a fool. Nine women out of ten compensate themselves for the emotional disappointments of marriage by concentrating on their wretched children."
"But there must be other forms of compensation. Taking a lover, for instance."
"For some women, of course. I don't think mummie was that sort, even when she was younger. Otherwise why didn't she marry again? She wasn't much over thirty when my father died."
"Was she very young when she married him? She must have been."
"Nineteen. An idiotic age, but it was during the last war when people seem to have lost their heads pretty badly. It made a hash of her life, I imagine."
"Weren't they happy?"
"I shouldn't think so. I remember him perfectly, and he was very dull and completely inarticulate. He couldn't have suited the sentimentalist that mummie is. She's the kind of woman who'd always think of herself as a femme incomprise."
She paused for a minute.
"Rory, I believe I'm shocking you."
"I think you are," he agreed dispassionately.
"My God, don't tell me you've got a mother-fixation. Did you like yours?"
"Oh yes. But then the middle classes almost always do. It's part of their tradition."
"Shut up about classes. It makes me sick."
"You'll feel better when you've had a drink," said Lonergan smoothly.
"That's another thing I'd better warn you about at Coombe. You'll never get a drink, unless you can provide your own."
"I probably can. What about the uncle?"
"He's given up whiskey for the duration, and I don't think there's anything in the cellar worth speaking of. A bottle of port or sherry is brought up about once a year, and there's supposed to be some champagne waiting to celebrate the peace. Uncle Reggie's called General Levallois. He was invalided out of the Army and he's practically a cripple. Arthritis. He hasn't got a bean, except for some semi-invisible pension, and he's lived with us since I was twelve."
"Anybody else?"
"Only Jess. She's volunteered for the WAAF and is waiting to be called up. There are some evacuee kids from London, but I need hardly tell you that, in our democratic way, we make them use the top floor, and the kitchen stairs, and the back entrance. One practically doesn't know they're there at all."
"Then who looks after them?"
"The housemaid, I suppose," said Primrose indifferently. "I shouldn't know. I'm practically never at Coombe. I shouldn't be coming now if it wasn't for you."
"Angel," said Lonergan, in a voice as uninflected and meaningless as her own had been.
He had loosed her hand in order to replace his on the wheel but presently he sought it again, and when he next spoke his voice was warmer and more eager.
"You haven't yet told me if you're still in love with me."
"I haven't fallen for anybody else. Have you?"
"No."
They both laughed.
"Primrose—about this business of being at Coombe together. Is it going to work?"
"Of
