(clattering) (horses neighing)
(dogs barking)
(mysterious instrumental music)
- Where are they?
Come on!
(suspenseful instrumental music)
(gentle instrumental music)
(laughs)
Got you at last.
Hey.
(playful instrumental music)
- [Fanny Voiceover] Linda Radlett was my age,
my favorite cousin
and, for many years, my favorite human being.
Though I lived with Aunt Emily,
I spent all my holiday at Alconleigh
with my cousins the Radletts.
- How's Emily?
- Father's going to hunt us tomorrow.
- Well, enjoy yourselves, children,
because we have got other things to do.
- [Fanny Voiceover] Linda and I were coming out that summer.
- What do you think?
- And Aunt Sadie was giving us a ball.
Oh, I like this.
- Heavenly Mrs. Crab copied it out of Vogue for me.
Look.
- Oh.
Do you think he'll come?
- Well, you never can tell in the country.
Somebody might bring him.
He might break down in his motor car
on the way to Badminton. - We were, of course,
both in love with people we had never met.
- Who is that beautiful girl in pink?
- Linda with the Prince of Wales.
It's Linda Radlett, Your Highness.
- [Fanny Voiceover] And I with a fat, red-faced farmer
I had seen in the village.
These loves were strong and painfully delicious.
They occupied all our thoughts,
but we hoped they would be superseded by real people.
- We still haven't got enough men.
We've got all the replies in now.
We'll have to get Matt home from Eton.
- What about the curate?
- Fanny, why don't we invite Lord Merlin?
- Lord Merlin?
- Ma and I have been for tea.
He dyes his doves pink.
- And dries them in the linen cupboard.
- Ha!
- And do you remember the whippets
with their diamond necklaces.
They have grander jewels than I do.
He could bring a house party.
- If you ask that brute Merlin to bring his friends,
we'll get a lot of aesthetes, sewers from Oxford.
I wouldn't put it past him to bring some foreigners.
- Foreigners!
- I hear he sometimes has frogs, even wops to stay with him.
I will not have my house filled with wops.
- But Fa... - It's all right, darling,
leave it to me.
- What do you think you're doing?
- It's palsy practice.
- In a few years when you're really old,
you'll probably have palsy.
- I'm giving you a little practice now,
before you actually get it,
so you won't be dropping things all the time.
(rustling) (gasps)
- Is that from The Bolter?
- Don't call her that, dear.
- Dashed fine-looking woman.
Is she still married to that sewer from Monte Carlo?
- My mother, who was too beautiful and gay
to be burdened with a child,
had left when I was a month old,
and had since run away so often
and with so many different people
that she became known as The Bolter.
She doesn't realize I've grown.
- Perhaps me wear it. - You'll have to pay her.
- Sixpence. - A shilling.
- Ninepence.
- Ninepence all right?
Fanny?
- And remember, you're paying us two shillings each
not to be embarrassing.
- Yes, Victoria.
- [Fanny] We spent the weeks before the ball
in an agony of waiting for our lives to begin.
- If this comes out,
I'll marry the man I love.
If this comes out,
I'll marry at 18.
If this comes out...
- [Fanny Voiceover] Linda was soft-hearted
and horribly easy to tease.
- A little houseless match.
It has no roof, no thatch.
It lies alone, makes no moan.
The little houseless match.
- [Fanny] As the only boy, my cousin Matt
was the sole Radlett allowed to go to school.
- All right, all right, all right.
I'll tell you how it happens.
The mother's stomach swells up and then
it bursts open like a ripe pumpkin,
and the infant shoots out.
- Oh, rot!
- Don't be such an ass, Matt.
Now, listen.
(clears throat) - What's that?
- Ducks And Duck Breeding. - Ducks.
- [Fanny Voiceover] The Hons was our secret society.
We met in the linen cupboard,
it was the only warm place at Alconleigh.
Anybody we hated was a counter-Hon.
We, of course, were Hons.
- Ducks can only copulate in running water.
- Tell us about sex, Fanny, you must know.
- Oh, you are lucky, Fanny, having a wicked mother.
- I know.
- She must be copulating all the time.
- I wish I didn't have a mother.
When I'm 19, I'm going to run away, just like yours.
- Well, you can't have my money.
- How much have you got?
- My fare to London and a month and two days in a bedsit
in Clapham with basin and breakfast.
- I can't wait.
- You see, we're still 20 men short.
- How many is Lord Merlin bringing?
- Ha!
Merlin.
Thin end of the wedge.
- Only six.
- Well, what are we going to do?
There's only five days left.
- It's all right.
Leave it to me.
- Where did he get them from?
- The Lords.
- Look at him.
His hair sort of slips off backwards, doesn't it?
- Like an eiderdown in the night.
Poor old thing.
I must say, if he was one's dog,
one would have him put down.
- Oh, no, bags it not be me.
- May I have the honor?
(gentle instrumental music)
- What's that thing hanging over your fireplace?
- That's my entrenching tool.
Used it in 1915.
Thrashed to death eight Germans one by one
as they crawled out of a dugout.
- Ooh, sorry. - Perfectly all right.
- I wish we'd been taught to dance.
- You're doing splendidly.
- I wish we'd been taught anything.
- I hope my wife is all right.
- I'm sorry you had to leave her at home.
- It's the first time we've been separated in 40 years.
- [Fanny Voiceover] So this was it.
This was what we had been waiting for all our lives.
- Lord Merlin's arrived!
- Oh, thank God.
- Who? - Merlin.
- Sadie, how lovely to see you.
- So happy to see you.
- I saw Nijinsky. - Did you?
(music drowns out speech)
- Linda. - Hello.
- Fanny.
I've heard so much about you.
- Have you really got a folly with an angel on top?
- Every evening, to celebrate the hour of my birth,
it blows its trumpet.
The locals get annoyed because it's at 20 past nine,
just too late to remind them to switch on the news.
- Might I have the pleasure of the next dance?
- Oh, yes, please.
- Isn't Linda remarkable?
- I adore her.
- She comes to tea sometimes
when she can get away from here.
I suspect with careful nurturing
she shall become one of the great beauties of the age.
You know Polly Hampton, don't you?
- Yes.
Oh, she used to be my best friend in the world
apart from Linda.
- Well, she's coming home from India next week.
- How wonderful.
Oh, I have missed her.
It will be lovely to see her again.
(lively instrumental music)
- Paddington.
Who's that sewer with Linda?
- His name's Tony Kroesig.
His father runs the Bank of England.
- Good God.
I never expected to harbor a full blown Hun in this house.
Who on earth asked him?
- The Kroesigs aren't Huns, Matthew,
they've been over here for generations.
They're a highly respectable family of English bankers.
- Once a Hun, always a Hun.
- Matthew, dear, go and check the boilers.
- What? - The boilers
for the hot water.
(romantic instrumental music) (laughing)
(slow instrumental music)
- Who do you hunt with?
- The Heythrop.
- Are you coming to the meet tomorrow?
- No.
We've got a house full of guests.
They'll never let me.
(energetic instrumental music)
- How about a race? - All right.
Oh, that poor hare.
(lively instrumental music)
- [Fanny Voiceover] Unfortunately, rescuing a hare
was the one romantic gesture of Tony Kroesig's life.
(mysterious instrumental music)
The next month, having come home from ruling India,
the Montdores invited me to a house party.
Life with the Radletts was tempestuous,
but underneath it I felt loved.
The terror at Hampton, however, was of a different kind,
and I would never have dared go there
if it wasn't for Polly.
- Miss Frances Logan.
- You're not by any chance The Bolter's daughter?
- Yes.
Yes, I am.
- The Bolter's girl. - Don't be funny.
How could The Bolter have a grown-up daughter?
- Oh, Veronica, do come here a minute.
It's The Bolter's child.
- Ah, Fanny.
There you are.
Come and have some tea, dear.
- But surely The Bolter can't be more than 36.
- That's right, bird-brain, just do the sums.
- What about the nine months?
- Not nine, darling.
- Don't you remember how bogus it all was
and how shamingly huge her bouquet had to be, poor sweet?
- Do you know,
the first person she ever bolted with was my Chad.
Lucky me got him next,
but only after she'd bolted from him again.
- So, Fanny, how are the Radlett girls?
Do sit down, dear.
Go and fetch Polly.
She's in the billiards room with Boy.
Linda got engaged yet?
- No, not yet.
- Sadie's a wonderful woman, of course,
and I'm devoted to her,
but she hasn't the very smallest idea
of how to bring up girls.
- Tell me, are you in love?
- Oh, of course she is, poor sweet.
Just look at that blush.
Now, we're not going to worm,
but what we really want to know to settle a bet is
have you always fancied somebody
ever since you can remember?
- Oh, yes.
Lord Byron, Rudolph Valentino.
- Yeah, but there you are, you see.
- Oh.
- From kiddy car to hearse, darling,
I couldn't know it better.
After all, what would there be to think about
when one's alone, otherwise?
- The Duc de Sauveterre.
- He's still not married.
- He came to us in India.
Such fun.
He was very much taken up with the little ranee of Rawalpur.
In fact they do say her last baby...
- Shush.
- Poor creatures, it's one baby after another.
One can't help feeling sorry for them.
Like little birds, you know.
Of course they simply worshipped me.
It was really touching.
- Where is Boy?
- Playing billiards with Polly.
I've sent word once.
Ah, here they are. (Boy laughs)
- A-ha.
Here at last, my lady wife.
- Polly. - Oh, Fanny, I've missed you.
- I'm dying to hear about everything.
- Let's go upstairs and talk.
- Hello.
- That's Boy Dougdale, isn't it?
- Yes, you remember him.
He's married to my Aunt Patricia.
- Why is he called Boy?
He's frightfully old.
- He doesn't think he's old one bit.
- Polly.
- Are you pleased to be back in this room?
It's the one you used to have.
Do you remember?
- Oh, of course I do.
- I used to think about us sometimes in India.
Those black velvet dresses with red sashes we had
for coming down after tea.
- Oh.
Oh, that seems so long ago now.
I suppose you came out in India.
- Yes, I've been out two years, actually.
It was all very dull.
Do you enjoy it?
- I like the dressing up.
- So do I.
Do you think about dresses and hats all the time,
even in church?
I do too. (laughs)
But what is coming out in England like?
Does everybody talk about love all the time?
- Yes.
Yes, I suppose they do.
- And all going on like the people downstairs.
- Yes.
Yes.
- Oh, bother.
I thought it would be different in a cold climate.
- Have you fallen in love yet?
(laughs) I could have.
Lots of times.
Some of the rajahs are awfully attractive.
Honestly, Fanny, I believe Mama would rather I fell in love
with an Indian than not at all.
- But don't you want to fall in love?
Oh, I do.
- Oh, Fanny.
(gentle instrumental music)
- [Fanny Voiceover] What was the matter with Polly?
There was something I didn't understand, not then,
about the atmosphere at Hampton.
I wondered if Lord Montdore felt it.
He never reacted to anything
and he seemed somehow to be made of cardboard.
- Then the Mohammedans...
- Is your uncle Lord Alconleigh?
- Yes. - He's quite barmy.
Doesn't he hunt people with bloodhounds by full moon?
(laughs) - Oh, but we love it.
Oh, you can't imagine what fun it is.
- I hear those Radlett girls are simply killing.
Rats in their pockets, God knows what.
- But rats are very intelligent.
- No, no, no, Veronica.
The whole point was,
he brought the microscope to look at his own...
- Roly!
Dare you to use that word at dinner.
Even if you know how to pronounce it, which I doubt.
It's too shame-making.
Not a dinner thing at all.
(Roly laughs)
- Dear Fanny.
I remember you when you were little.
Hm?
My, you have grown.
(laughs)
- Have I?
- And hasn't Polly turned out to be a beauty?
Dear Sonya.
She's done absolutely everything for that girl.
Some man's going to be very lucky.
Don't you think?
I mean, with her inheriting all of this,
she's probably the wealthiest young woman in Britain.
Oh, yes.
We expect a splendid match.
- I know people do say he's a daisy, whatever that may be,
but half these rumors are put about by anarchists.
- I must go and powder my nose.
(scoffs)
- I go in the morning and that's that.
I don't have to be let out
like a dog at intervals, thank goodness.
There's nothing so common, to my mind.
- I think the worst... - Really, Polly, it's too bad.
Just chatter, can't you?
It's of no consequence what you say.
Better recite out of the A, B, C
than sit there like a deaf-mute.
What did they think of you?
Sit here, Fanny, and talk to us.
Dear, what is the matter with my daughter?
She takes no notice of the young men I provide for her
and they take no notice of her.
They worship me, of course, but what is the good of that?
- [Woman] She's bound to fall
for some nice chap in London, darling.
- It's all very well,
but she was out for two years in India, you know.
Even poor Delia's girl fell in love with a rajah.
- I don't blame her.
Rajahs must be perfect heaven.
All those diamonds.
- Oh, no, my dear.
Any English family has better stones than they do.
I never saw anything to compare with mine when I was there.
- Oh, it's such a relief to have you here, Fanny.
She only asked that Frenchman
because she thinks no one can resist him.
Even me.
- Oh.
I've been thinking of porridge for hours.
- It's funny how a huge dinner
makes you even hungrier next morning.
- Curious, isn't it?
We can't stay here.
It's too sad.
- Don't you think Polly is very beautiful?
- Yeah.
But she is also a riddle to me.
Perhaps she is not having a properly organized sex life.
- Very few English girls of 19
have a properly organized sex life.
- They go hunting instead.
She is a beauty despite those terrible clothes.
When she has had a little love, she may blossom.
Or she may cram a hat on her head
and become a Lady Patricia Dougdale.
Everything depends on the lover.
- I'm so confused in this house.
Who is whose lover?
- (scoffs) It doesn't make a bit of difference.
Sooner or later,
everybody becomes the lover of everybody else.
When they change lovers,
it's more like a cabinet reshuffle than a new government.
- Is it like that in France?
- Oh, no.
The ministers stay longer in their posts.
- Why?
- French women generally keep their lovers if they want to
because they know there is one infallible method
of doing so.
- No.
Oh, do tell.
- It's very simple.
They give into them.
In every respect.
These English (speaks foreign language)
hm, they play their little games, out when you telephone.
All that.
No Frenchman would put up with it for a moment.
- They're very nasty, aren't they?
- Not at all.
Poor things.
I love them.
So easy to get on with.
And I love la mere Montdore.
How amusing she is with her snobbishness.
I'm very fond of snobs.
They are always so charming to me.
And dear old Montdore.
He can't see what's going on under his nose.
- What is going on under his nose?
- And so, Fanny dear,
are you going to be a bolter like your mother?
- Oh, no.
A tremendous sticker.
- Hm.
(chuckles)
- You've ruffled a few feathers here, mon cher.
Our hostess was hoping you'd pay court to her daughter,
rather than bowling over the rabbits.
- If this comes out, he'll telephone.
What's the time, darling?
- Guess.
- A quarter to six.
- Better than that. - Six.
- Not quite so good.
- Five to.
- Yes.
- If this comes out, he's thinking about me.
- [Victoria] A little houseless match.
- Victoria!
Go away!
(laughing)
(sobs)
(telephone rings)
Hello.
Go away.
Go away, go away.
Tony!
(humming)
That was Lavender Davies on the telephone.
She wants Fanny and me to lunch there on Thursday.
- Oh, you can't have my car, I'm afraid.
- Oh, but, Mummy, please, I do so terribly want to go.
- To Lavender's?
Mm.
Last time you said you never wanted to go there
as long as you lived.
Great haunches of cod, you said.
- But, erm, her brother's got a baby badger.
- When you go to London for the season,
you'll be far too busy to think about badgers.
- Please, Mummy.
- Oh, well.
Perhaps Perkins can take me in the Daimler.
- We must get hold of some rouge.
- I think you can use geranium juice.
- But geraniums aren't out at this time of year, silly.
- We can blue our eyelids out of Jassy's paint box.
- Oh, yes.
I'll get the verbena soap from Mummy's bathroom.
We can let it melt in the bath and we shall smell delicious.
Nanny.
Where do you keep
that powder that you used to dust our bottoms with?
- I thought you loathed Lavender Davies.
- Oh, shut up.
- Last time, you said she was the dullest girl you ever met
and you'd like to bash her in the face with a Hons mallet.
- I didn't.
- Why have you got that red stuff on your cheeks?
- Oh, do go away.
- Why are you starting already?
You'll be hours too early.
- If you don't shut up, I'll put your newt back in the pond.
(horn beeping)
- Why don't you bring Lavender Davies back
for a nice long visit?
(lively instrumental music)
- Not very Honnish of them.
- You don't think they'll tell Farve?
Oh.
We look like Dutch dolls.
- Cigarette?
- No, thank you.
- Been hunting lately?
- Oh, yes.
We were out yesterday.
- Good day? - Yes, very.
We found at once
and had a five-mile point and...
- That's marvellous.
A five-mile point?
Well, I must come out with the Heythrop again,
they're doing awfully well this season, I hear.
We had a good day yesterday too.
- Did you really?
- Well, the going was a bit sticky down in Bailiff's Meadow.
Damn fool farmer never drains it, you know.
- Oh.
- But once we got up on the ridge, we had a splendid gallop.
(door knocking)
Ah, good.
Here are the others.
(laughing)
- Did you hear that Freddy got sent down?
- No. Oh?
- [Fanny Voiceover] This was life, we felt,
and we would have been quite happy just looking on
had it not been for that ghastly feeling of guilt,
which was starting to give us a pain
rather like indigestion.
- Linda and Fanny.
Fa wants you in the business room now.
- Do you realize that if you were married women
your husbands could divorce you for this?
Your poor Aunt Emily.
All these years she's looked after you
and this is her reward.
- It's not Fanny's fault.
- You can go straight home.
Oh, you'll go the same way as your mother.
Sure as eggs is eggs.
As for you, miss...
You're damn lucky not to get a thrashing, do you hear?
There'll be no question of a London season now.
- Oh.
- You'll have to be watched every minute of the day.
And I don't want that Hun's name ever mentioned
in this house again.
- I didn't tell, I promise.
Somebody left a scarf in his room,
(yelps) in Tony Kroesig's room
and he rang up to ask whether it was yours.
(opera music)
- [Fanny Voiceover] It was Uncle Matthew's
favorite superstition that if you wrote somebody's name
on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer,
that person would die within a year.
The drawers were full of the names of people he hated.
Bernard Shaw, Lloyd George, Gandhi.
Tony Kroesig.
As always, Uncle Matthew's bark was worse than his bite.
Relaxation began, the thin end of the wedge,
and gradually things returned to normal.
Plans for the London season went ahead,
though under conditions of strict vigilance.
However, not strict enough,
and what I knew would happen inevitably did.
At five in the morning in a beautiful house
on the east side of Berkeley Square.
(lively instrumental music)
- That bloody Hun Kroesig's just telephoned.
Wanted to speak to you.
I told him to get the hell out of it.
I don't want you mixed up with any Germans.
Do you understand?
- Well, I am mixed up, as it happens.
I'm engaged to him.
- Sadie!
Sadie!
I...
Sadie!
(sobs)
(gentle instrumental music)
- Jassy.
Jassy, darling.
Lend me your running-away money.
- I've saved and scraped for five years.
I simply can't begin all over again.
- But I'll give it you back.
Tony will.
When we're married.
- I know men.
(telephone rings)
- Yes?
Linda!
That hog Merlin's on the phone.
- I'm in love.
- What makes you think so?
- Well, one doesn't think.
One knows.
- Fiddlesticks.
- Well, you evidently don't know about love,
so what's the use of talking to you?
- Love is for grown-up people,
as you will one day discover.
You will also discover
that it has nothing to do with marriage.
I'm all in favor of you marrying soon, in a year or two.
Oh, but for God's sake, for all our sakes,
don't go and marry a boor like Tony Kroesig.
- Well, if he's such a boor,
why did you ask him to stay?
- I didn't ask him.
Begbie brought him because Cecil had flu and couldn't come.
Besides, I can't guess you'll marry
every stopgap I have in my house.
- Well, you ought to be more careful.
Anyhow, I can't think why you say Tony's a boor.
He knows about everything.
- Exactly.
(opera music)
- [Fanny Voiceover] It was a terrible time.
The Kroesigs were as opposed to the marriage
as the Alconleighs.
(singing in foreign language)
Aunt Sadie tried to persuade Uncle Matthew
that the marriage, though by no means ideal, was inevitable,
and that if he didn't want
to alienate forever his favorite child,
he'd better put a good face on it.
- Well, at least the fellow's not a Roman Catholic.
(tutting)
- So Linda's marrying him, then.
What a silly girl.
Well, she always has been in my opinion.
He's rich, of course, but it's banker's money.
It comes and it goes,
and however much of it there may be,
it's not like marrying all this.
So that's her accounted for.
Now you must be the next one, Fanny.
- Oh, no.
No one will ever marry me.
- Mm, Nonsense.
And don't you go marrying just anybody for love.
Remember that love cannot last.
It never, never does.
But if you marry all this, it's for your life.
- A-ha. - Where are you going?
- To see your mother. - She's not dressed yet.
(laughs)
- Lady Kroesig, this is my mother, Lady Alconleigh.
- How do you do?
- My father, Lord Alconleigh.
- Good evening. - Good evening.
- How do you do? - How do you do?
- Good evening. - Good evening.
- Evening. - Let's go in, shall we?
It's rather nippy out here.
- We love the theater.
Don't we, dear?
- Yes.
- Have you seen any of the new shows?
- Well, we don't go up to London a great deal.
- Well, you did see Romeo And Juliet once.
- But your father got so upset.
- All the fault of that damn padre.
That fellow Romeo might have known a blasted papist
would mess up the whole thing.
Damn fool of a nurse too.
Bet she was an RC.
Dismal old bitch.
Hmph.
- I expect they keep you very busy at the bank.
- Oh, yeah.
- Don't know how you can stand it.
I was saying to the bank manager at Monford only yesterday,
must be the hell of a life,
fussing about with other fellas' money all day.
Indoors.
- I don't spend my whole life indoors.
I have my roses.
- What a lot you London people always know about gardens.
- Well, I'm not really a London person.
I work in London, but my home is in Surrey.
- I count that as the same.
They're all so excited in the village, Lady Kroesig.
They've already planned the flowers for the church.
- But we presumed that you'd have a London wedding, my dear.
- But we thought... - St Margaret's, of course.
Well, nobody will come down to Gloucestershire.
And Linda will have half the number of wedding presents.
- Oh, Ma, do let's.
- I am not going to lead my daughter
through a crowd of gaping strangers.
("Wedding March")
- [Fanny Voiceover] Of course Linda married for love.
She was too much of a romantic to marry for anything else.
But the odds were stacked against her from the start.
The families were no longer on speaking terms.
The Kroesigs considered her eccentric and extravagant,
and her family uncouth,
while the Radletts considered the Kroesigs vulgar
and Tony a first-class boor.
- Did you ever see anything so ghastly
as Lady Kroesig's hat?
- [Boy] Bankers don't appear to be much to look at.
- It's extraordinarily unsuitable
having to know them at all, let alone marry them.
But these sort of people have got megalomania nowadays,
one can't get away from them.
- Really, Alconleigh's not fit to have children
if this is the best he can do.
(chuckling)
- You'll never get all this into your coffin.
- What do you mean?
- Women are always buried in their wedding dresses.
- Don't be such a ghoul!
- Come on, Jassy, let's not upset Linda today.
- Did you see what mingy little things they gave poor Linda?
- A check.
I mean, it's all very well, but for how much, I wonder.
- No tiara, no necklace.
What will the poor child wear at court?
Hardly worth being called by that nasty German name,
I should say.
- And a horrible house in one of those squares
near Marble Arch.
- Oh, Lord Merlin.
- Oh, hello, Merlin.
- Boy.
- Have you seen the Kroesig sister?
- They'll have a job getting her off.
- [Fanny] She's training to be a vet.
- First sensible thing I've heard about any of them.
No point in cluttering up the ballrooms
with girls who look like that.
Simply not fair on anybody.
(laughing)
- How do you know Boy Dougdale?
- Erm...
He wrote a history of my family.
He's an expert on ducal genealogy.
- Oh, yes.
He used to give talks at the Women's Institute
when I was little.
He did such stupid things to us.
Linda and I called him the Lecherous Lecturer.
- He's certainly very fond of dukes and duchesses.
- Is that why he trails around
after Lady Montdore everywhere?
- [Merlin] They do say he's her lover.
- Her lover?
- But I think it's more complicated than that.
- What do you mean? - Poor Patricia.
Suffering in silence.
- May Day, I think.
- Well, that's good.
It must either be the first,
or indeed the last ball of the season
if people are going to remember it.
- Polly.
Honestly.
You'd think she'd be grateful, wouldn't you?
Not at all.
Sulky and disagreeable.
I can hardly get a word out of her.
She never meets anybody.
And if she never meets people, how can she marry them?
- Is there so much hurry for her to marry?
- Well, you know she'll be 21 in May.
She can't go on like this forever.
- Polly, my dear.
Come over here.
- Well, marriage doesn't solve everything, you know.
You don't want her to make an unfortunate choice.
- What could be the matter with her?
So beautiful and no BA at all.
- Oh, no, no, no.
It's SA, my darling.
Sex appeal.
- Or BO.
- When we were young, none of that existed, thank goodness.
Once was either a beauty or a jolie-laide and that was that.
All the same, now it's been invented, this sex appeal,
I suppose it's better if the girls have it,
their partners seem to like it.
And Polly hasn't a vestige, you can see that.
Ever since she was born,
I've worried and fussed over that child,
thought of the awful things that might happen to her,
that Montdore might die before she was settled,
her looks would go,
she might have a terrible accident
and spend the rest of her days in a spinal chair.
All sorts of things.
But the one thing that never crossed my mind
was that she might end up an old maid.
Oh.
Where's she gone?
- [Fanny Voiceover] After the honeymoon,
Tony started work in his father's old bank,
and prepared to step into a safe Conservative seat.
- Come back to bed.
- [Fanny Voiceover] An ambition which was soon realized.
- What, dear?
Now, you haven't forgotten about tonight, have you?
- No.
- [Fanny Voiceover] I think Linda's marriage was a failure
almost from the start, but being Linda,
she maintained for as long as possible a good shop front.
(lively instrumental music)