AUGUSTA WAS ALREADY DISSATISFIED with her Japanese decor. The drawing room was full of oriental screens, angular furniture on spindly legs, and Japanese fans and vases in black lacquered cabinets. It was all very expensive, but cheap copies were already appearing in the Oxford Street stores, and the look was no longer exclusive to the very best houses. Unfortunately, Joseph would not permit re-decoration so soon, and Augusta would have to live with increasingly common furniture for several years.
The drawing room was where Augusta held court at teatime every weekday. The women usually came first: her sisters-in-law Madeleine and Beatrice, and her daughter Clementine. The partners would arrive from the bank at about five: Joseph, old Seth, Madeleine's husband George Hartshorn, and occasionally Samuel. If business was quiet the boys would come too: Edward, Hugh and Young William. The only nonmember of the family who was a regular teatime guest was Micky Miranda, but occasionally there would be a visiting Methodist clergyman, perhaps a missionary seeking funds to convert the heathens in the South Seas, Malaya, or the newly opened-up Japan.
Augusta worked hard to keep people coming. All the Pilasters liked sweet things, and she provided delicious buns and cakes as well as the very best tea from Assam and Ceylon. Big events such as family holidays and weddings would be planned during these sessions, so anyone who stopped coming would soon lose touch with what was going on.
Despite all that, every now and again one of them would go through a phase of wanting to be independent. The most recent example had been Young William's wife Beatrice, a year or so before, after Augusta had been rather insistent about a dress fabric Beatrice had chosen that did not suit her. When this happened Augusta would leave them for a while, then win them back with some extravagantly generous gesture. In Beatrice's case Augusta had thrown an expensive birthday party for Beatrice's old mother, who was virtually senile and only barely presentable in public. Beatrice had been so grateful that she had forgotten all about the dress fabric--just as Augusta had intended.
