Mrs Blanchard and her daughter

Sunday afternoon. After lunch (roast lamb, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) I went across to Mrs Blanchard’s house for tea (she asked me over when we met at Mrs Swarichevski’s dinner party a couple of weeks back). I was expecting a proper tea (cakes, scones, sandwiches) but Mrs Blanchard only offered me a cup of tea, poured out with great ceremony in her sitting room, French windows open to the garden.

Mrs Blanchard was a friend of my grandmother, and after her death befriended my mother (who never really valued the friendship, despite a mutual interest in pelagoniums - I think she felt visiting Mrs Blanchard was an ordeal). Mrs Blanchard is someone who always seems to have been old. She must be in her late eighties since she was an adult during the Second World War. This afternoon she had on a dark purple-blue dress with a pattern of big silver-grey roses, flat shoes, and despite the warm sunshine had a blanket round her shoulders like a shawl. She has a daughter, Maud, who is an old lady herself - grey hair combed with a parting, skirt in Black Watch tartan (wide pleats), white blouse fastened at the neck with a dull gold broach. Maud has been ill all her life (epilepsy I think) and has always lived with her mother - out of the two she seems to be the dependent one, and hardly spoke during the time I was there.

No-one can remember Mr Blanchard, who apparently worked in the City and died in the 1960s. As Mrs Blanchard and her daughter have gradually lost mobility they have come to rely on their neighbours, Maurice and Doreen, who live in a small 1930s bungalow beyond a screen of trees. Despite being retired themselves, Maurice and Doreen are fairly active and have a car - they do Mrs Blanchard’s shopping and cope with any crises (such as when a rat appeared on the lawn eating the bread Maud had put out for the birds).

Mrs Blanchard and her daughter live in a big square house on the edge of the escarpment. The house is secluded from the road by a high brick wall, and further protected by a high hedge trimmed with grotesque topiary. The house is nineteenth-century, the architectural style ugly and uncompromising - as if all the architect wanted to do was to emphasise how much money had gone into the construction.

Inside you go into a big hall with a very fine staircase - shallow steps and inlaid banisters. There is a sense of hauteur about the interiors, despite most of the rooms being dark and slightly smelling of damp. Mrs Blanchard has a huge collection of china (Meissen, Rockingham, Sevres) mostly figures and odd bits of dinner services. In her sitting room and dining room she has two stunning chandeliers originally made for the local assembly rooms - they are made of opaque eighteenth-century glass and hang from the ceilings on chains wrapped in blue silk. The only pictures on display were family portraits - oil paintings on the walls, black and white photographs in silver frames among all the china. All the furniture was covered with chintz.

We had our tea and then went out into the garden, Mrs Blanchard rising from her chair with a great act of will, defying her arthritis (there was a walking stick by her chair, but presumably pride prevented her from using it). Unlike most gardens, which tend to be in decline when August arrives, Mrs Blanchard’s garden looks its best in late summer. Lots of roses still out, cream coloured gladioli, pink and white dahlias; hibiscus, oleander, and myrtle (in big pots); nasturtiums, rows and rows of nicotianas, drifts of night scented stock inbetween the pale yellow African marigolds and swaying clumps of agapanthus.

As we walked around the lawn (Mrs Blanchard regretting the clover) we talked about a whole range of subjects, Mrs Blanchard’s anecdotes usually ending with a reference to one of her contemporaries who had since died. “Old people carry on quite well until they fall” she said philosophically. “Once they fall they tend to go down hill very quickly” (this she said without irony, swaying on her elderly arthritic legs, her daughter looking on silent and concerned) .