Death of a Unicorn

Mummy wanted everything as grand as possible (though also, of course, as cheap as possible) and the grandest thing of all was already there, laid on, cost free, in the shape of the Banqueting Hall. There’d been a minor leak in its roof, which wasn’t unusual—there’s always a bucket or two standing round somewhere to catch the latest drip. But this time when the builders came out from Bolsover to patch things up before the party they found a complete section of lead that had somehow never been replaced in the 1924 repairs and had been leaking for years on to the huge main bearing timbers, which had been soaking up the leaks so that they didn’t show up below, and now the timbers were rotten through, and a lot of the other woodwork as well. The architect Mummy got out said that there were tons of baroque plasterwork up there held in place by cobwebs, and the Banqueting Hall wasn’t safe to walk through, let alone to dance in. In fact we danced in the Long Gallery, which was much better anyway because the wooden floor is easier on your feet than marble, but for Mummy it wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t part of the ritual, and in a mysterious way she decided that it was all somehow my fault.

It was my fault because I hadn’t been there and the ogre was sulky. Of course she didn’t say this—I sometimes think she hasn’t any imagination at all—but it was what she felt. Now it was my duty to leave London and come and help her in the crisis. We had three absolutely record rows, but she found she couldn’t beat me down any more. I was free. It was all happening outside me. (When I did get down to Cheadle I was much more interested in pumping Wheatstone for stories about my great-great-uncle, a truly fearsome old savage, which I could adapt for Uncle Tosh.) It was like one of those dreams when you are actually aware you are dreaming; monstrous things threaten you but they only frighten you on the surface because you know you can kill them by waking up. That’s what distinguishes a proper nightmare, like the Hansel-and-Gretel one I used to have. While it lasts, it’s real.

What was real for me was my happiness, my job, Petronella, my life with B. He was a congenital early riser, which I’d never been but took up because it was the only way I could cram everything in. We would get up at six, however late we’d got to bed, and off he would pad to his rowing machine and his sun-lamp. I would dress, switch my telephone through and go up to my flat and write for two hours and then have breakfast. He would telephone me at half-past eight to tell me where he would be during the day and what we were doing that evening. (If I had an engagement I’d have to have told him several days before.) He’d be very brisk, as though the only point in telling me at all was so that I’d know what to wear and whether to have my hair done. Then I’d catch a bus to Westminster and a tram along the Embankment and walk up through the Temple to Shoe Lane and the office. In spite of what B had said to me at Maidenhead nothing much had changed in the editorial department. Tom was still writing ‘By the Way’ and Bruce was drawing his sugar-daddies in bed with blondes (which now had a ghastly fascination for me, though I still didn’t think they were funny) and Mrs Clarke was writing the Round in the same unbelievable way. But, perhaps because I was so happy, I felt as if things were cheering up. The circulation was still falling, but not so fast, and I thought that fewer issues now had that musty, dead-mouse smell which used to hang around most of them when I’d first come to the paper.