Yet it is pitiless and clear-eyed in its engagement with class, its questioning of the willful blindness and privileges of the upper middle-classes. It actually has something to say. And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine.
As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing.
Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels. Forget I am your mother. Treat me as an honoured guest. But Meg could not possibly go and supervise the men. She had washed her hair before breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each cheek.
Jose, the butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket. Away Laura flew, still holding her piece of bread-and-butter. Four men in their shirt-sleeves stood grouped together on the garden path. They carried staves covered with rolls of canvas, and they had big tool-bags slung on their backs.
They looked impressive. She blushed and tried to look severe and even a little bit short-sighted as she came up to them. His smile was so easy, so friendly, that Laura recovered. What nice eyes he had, small, but such a dark blue! And now she looked at the others, they were smiling too. How very nice workmen were! And what a beautiful morning! The marquee. They turned, they stared in the direction. A little fat chap thrust out his under-lip, and the tall fellow frowned.
