The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Madame de la Ferté took Grace by the arm and led her round, introducing her to everybody. She was so much fascinated by what she saw that the terrible up and down examination accorded to a newcomer to the herd went on without her even being aware of it, and it was a long time before she realized how underdressed, under-painted, and under-scented she must seem. The jewels, however, which Charles-Edouard had forced her to put on against her own inclination, were second to nobody’s. Her face, too, though lacking the sparkle of the French faces, had no rival in that room for beauty of line and structure.

  The party waited some time for the arrival of a young Bourbon and of a certain not so young woman who, to underline the fact that she was now his mistress, liked to arrive late in queenly fashion. The affair was being discussed by the group round Grace, the rapid quality of whose talk, so precise, so funny, so accomplished, so frighteningly well-informed, positively paralysed her. Her own brain seemed to struggle along in the rear. Charles-Edouard, swimming in his native waters, was happy and animated as she had never seen him.

  A moment before the arrival of the Prince, his mistress came in on her husband’s arm. She curtsied lower than anybody, murmuring, ‘Monseigneur!’

  ‘They left the luncheon together, they must have been in bed the whole afternoon.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She had a fitting at Dior.’

  When the late arrivals had shaken hands with the company they all went in to dinner. Grace sat beside her host, the brother of Madame de Valhubert and Madame Rocher. He seemed a thousand years old, very frail, and wore a shawl over his shoulders. Opposite her was Charles-Edouard, between his hostess and a majestic old woman who had swept in to dinner holding in one hand the train of her dress and in the other a large ebony ear-trumpet. During the hush which fell while people were finding their places and settling down she said to Charles-Edouard, in the penetrating voice of a deaf person, but with a very confidential look as if she thought she was whispering:

  ‘Are you still in love with Albertine?’

  Charles-Edouard, not at all put out, took the trumpet and shouted into it, ‘No. I’m married now and I have a son of seven.’

  ‘So I heard. But what has that to do with it?’

  Grace tried to look as if she had heard nothing. She was wondering desperately what she could talk about to M. de la Ferté when, greatly to her relief, he turned to her and said that he had just read Les Hauts de Hurlevent by a talented young English writer.

  ‘I wondered if you knew her,’ he said. ‘Mademoiselle Émilie Brontë.’

  This was indeed a lifeline. ‘I really know her sister Charlotte better.’

  ‘Ah! She has a sister?’

  ‘Several. They all write books.’

  ‘But no brothers?’

  ‘One brother, but he’s a bad lot. Nobody ever mentions him.’

  ‘This Mademoiselle Brontë tells of country-house life in England. It must be very strange – well of course one knows it is. They do such curious things, I find. I should like to read other books by her talented family.’

  ‘I wonder whether they’ve been translated.’

  ‘No matter. My concierge’s son knows English, he can translate them for me.’

  M. de Tournon, on Grace’s other side, was handsome, blond, and young, and when the time came for them to talk he opened the conversation in English, saying, ‘You are new to Paris life, so I am going to explain some very important things to you, which you may not have understood, about society here.’

  ‘I wish you would,’ she said gratefully.

  ‘Footnotes, as it were, to the book you are reading.’

  ‘Just what I require.’

  ‘We will begin, I think, with precedence, since precedence precedes everything else. Now in England (and here I break off to explain that I know England extremely well; let me give you my credentials, Mary Marylebone and Molly Waterloo are two of my most intimate friends). Now what I am going to explain first is this. Please do not imagine that social life is easy here, as it is in England. It is a very very different matter. I will explain why. In England, as we know, everybody has a number, so when you give a dinner it is perfectly easy to place your guests – you look up the numbers, seat them accordingly, and they just dump down without any argument. Placement, such a terrible worry to us in France, never bothers you at all.’

  ‘Are you sure,’ said Grace, ‘about these numbers? I’ve never heard of them. Placement doesn’t bother us because nobody minds where they sit, at home.’

  ‘People always mind. I mean the numbers in the beginning of the peerage. I subscribe to your peerage, such a beautiful book, and then I know where I am with English visitors. I only wish we had such a thing here, but we have not, and as a result the complications of precedence are terrible. There is the old French nobility and that of the Holy Roman Empire (Lorraine, Savoy, and so on). These are complicated enough in themselves, but then we have the titles created by Napoleon, at the Restoration, by the July monarchy and Napoleon III. There are the Bourbon bastards and the Bonaparte bastards. I think you have no special place for your big bastards in England?’

  ‘I don’t think there are any.’

  He looked at her with pity and reeled off some well-known English family names. Grace saw that she was doing badly in this witness box.

  ‘Mrs Jordan alone had about eighteen children,’ he said. ‘After all, royal blood is not nothing. But to come back to France. Suppose you have asked three dukes to dinner, which do you put first? You ring up the protocol – good, but the dukes meanwhile ring you up, each putting forward his claim. Then, my dear, you will positively long to be back in England, where you can have any number of dukes and members of the Academy at the same time. Where do you place Academicians, in England?’

  ‘R.A.s?’ said Grace. ‘I don’t know any.’

  ‘Indeed! Now here, when you get to the dining-room, those of your guests who think themselves badly placed, if they don’t leave at once, will turn their plates in protest and refuse the first course (though if it looks very delicious they may take it when it is handed round again).’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Grace, ‘so what is the solution?’

  ‘Do not ask more than one duke at a time.’

  ‘But supposing they are friends?’

  ‘Never will they be friends to that extent. But it shows how you are fortunate over there, you could ask all twenty-six – am I not right in saying there are twenty-six?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Grace.

  ‘I think so. You could ask all twenty-six to the same dinner without making a single enemy. Unimaginable. To go on with our lesson. Whereas in England the host and hostess sit at the ends of the table, here they face each other across the middle, the ends being reserved for low people, those who have married for love and so on. Two years of love, we say here, are no compensation for a lifetime at the end of the table.’

  ‘Might not the end be more amusing?’

  ‘No. It is not amusing to be with one’s near relations and the people other people have married for love. Because near relations of the house go to the end, you and Charles-Edouard would be there tonight, except that this dinner is being given in your honour. Juliette, as you see, is there; as you also see, she is far from liking it.’

  The young woman he indicated was the prettiest of them all, and the most dressed-up. She wore white tulle with swags of blue taffeta which matched her eyes, her skin looked as if a light were shining through it, and her hair fell on her shoulders in fat, chestnut curls. She was very lively and very young, hardly more than a child.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Juliette Novembre de la Ferté, daughter-in-law of the house. The other end is her husband, watching with his jealous eye, poor Jean, and much good will it do him. She is the great success of the year.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Eighteen? – ninet
een? Very soon she will have to begin her family, poor dear. Jean will have to take her to the country if he wants the necessary number, and wants them to be his.’

  ‘Necessary number?’

  ‘Yes, hasn’t Charles-Edouard explained? We all have to have six nowadays if we are to prevent everything – but everything – being taken away in taxation. So most of us took advantage of the war years and just devoted ourselves to procreation. My wife and I have four (we prayed for twins – in vain, alas). Very soon we shall have to make up our minds again. Oh, how we were bored, I never shall forget it. We had our house full of Germans, how they were middle-class and dreary.’

  Grace, who regarded Germans as frightening rather than dreary, was very much surprised, and more so when he went on:

  ‘There was one not so bad, a Graf, who sang little lieder after dinner, a charming baritone. But we had moments of grave disquietude, you know, caused by the maquisards. They were well-intentioned, but so tactless – at one moment we thought they would kill our baritone, and then, only think, there might have been a battle!’

  ‘In wars,’ said Grace, ‘you rather expect battles.’

  ‘Not in one’s own château, my dear! How we were relieved when the Germans went away – just packed up one day and went – and we saw two nice young Guards officers of good family, Etonians, coming up the drive. Because please don’t think I was on the side of the Germans. Why, when I saw them swarming over the hill (we lived in the unoccupied zone), I put out my hand and took down my gun. There and then I made a vow never to shoot again until they were out of France.’

  ‘You mean, never to shoot birds again?’

  ‘And rabbits and pigs, yes. You may not think much of this vow, but I live for shooting, it is my greatest joy.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you join the maquis and shoot the Germans?’

  ‘Oh no, my dear, one couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For many reasons. My brother-in-law joined a maquis, dreadful people, he soon had to give that up. They weren’t possible, I assure you.’

  ‘Well they may not have been possible, but they were on our side, and I love them for it.’

  ‘Oh! my dear, we were all on your side, so you must love us all in that case.’

  After dinner Charles-Edouard made a bee-line for Juliette Novembre. Grace heard him say, ‘If you were Juliette de Champeaubert how is it I don’t remember you? Jeanne Marie is one of my very greatest friends.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve only just been invented,’ she said gaily, ‘but before I was invented I used to hang out of the window, waiting to see you get into that pretty black motor you had in those days. My governess used to pull me back by my hair.’

  ‘No! But that’s awfully nice,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Come – I want to see my uncle’s Subleyras again.’

  They went off together into another room. Somebody said, ‘It was quite indicated that those two would take to each other – she might be made for Charles-Edouard.’

  M. de Tournon brought his wife over to Grace. He wanted her to see for herself this uncouth girl Charles-Edouard had so oddly married, in order to be able to talk about her when they got home. Madame de Tournon was Italian, more really beautiful and more elegant than Juliette Novembre but with much less sparkle.

  ‘I am a cousin of yours now,’ she said. ‘Let’s all sit here. So tell me what you have been doing in Paris since you arrived – there haven’t been any dinners so far, have there? We only got back ourselves last night – we came back for this.’

  ‘Really I’ve done very little. I’ve bought some clothes.’

  ‘Is that Dior? Yes, I could see. But are they making these high necks now?’

  ‘I had it altered – it seemed too naked.’

  ‘Oh no, my dear,’ said Madame de Tournon, ‘you’ve got beautiful breasts, so why hide them up like that? It spoils the line. What else?’

  ‘I’ve met Charles-Edouard’s aunts.’

  Madame de Tournon made a little face of sympathy. ‘Any cocktail parties?’

  ‘There have been one or two, but I never go to them, I hate them. Charles-Edouard goes. I don’t terribly like lunching out either,’ she went on. ‘If I had my way I’d never go out before dinner-time.’

  The Tournons looked at each other in growing amazement as she spoke.

  ‘But listen,’ cried Madame de Tournon, ‘nobody can dine out more than eight times in a week. But if one lunches every day and goes to, say, three cocktails, as well as dining out, one can go to forty houses in a week. We often have, haven’t we, Eugène?’

  ‘Sometimes more, in the summer. I wish you could see us in July, fit for a nursing home by the time we get to the seaside.’

  ‘Where do you go to the seaside as a rule?’ asked Grace, thinking of them on the sands of some French Eastbourne with their four tots.

  ‘Always Venice. Say what you like, it’s the only place in August.’

  ‘But is it fun for the children?’

  They stared at her. ‘We don’t take the children to Venice – poor little things, what on earth would they do there? Besides, the children don’t need a change, they don’t have an exhausting season in Paris, they lead a perfectly healthy outdoor life in the Seine et Marne.’

  Charles-Edouard and Juliette only reappeared when a general move was being made to go home. In the hall, as they were putting on their coats, Juliette flourished a hand for Charles-Edouard to kiss, saying, ‘Good-bye for the present then, wickedness, I will consider your proposition.’ She and her husband then got into the lift which took them to their own apartments.

  ‘What proposition?’ said Grace, in the motor.

  ‘No proposition.’

  ‘Oh dear! Need we dine out very often?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Let’s dine together, alone, in future.’

  ‘It would be very dull,’ said Charles-Edouard.

  ‘Such a terrible man I sat next to.’

  ‘Eugène? He’s a friendly old thing.’

  ‘You can’t think what he’s like when he talks about the war.’

  ‘I know. I saw him at a picture dealer’s the other day and we had it all. But you mustn’t be too hard on old Eugène – he joined up quite correctly in ’39 and fought quite bravely in ’40. His father was killed quite correctly in 1917. These Eugènes are not so rotten, it is the State of Denmark.’

  The Tournons, meanwhile, were discussing Grace.

  ‘My dear, the lowest peasant of the Danube knows more than she – just fancy, she had never heard of the English order of precedence, didn’t know how many dukes there are in England, and didn’t seem to think any of it mattered.’

  ‘And did you hear what she said about taking the children to Venice? She must be backward, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Allingham. What is this name? I must write at once to Molly Waterloo and ask her if they are people one can know. Poor Charles-Edouard – I pity him really.’

  ‘Everything will be all right. Madame Rocher told my mother they are not married religiously.’

  Madame Rocher had gone to Venice the week after Grace and Charles-Edouard left Bellandargues, and there she had managed to do quite a lot of harm to Grace, not wilfully at all, not intending mischief, but because she was utterly incapable of holding her tongue on any subject of general interest. Interest was very much centred, at the moment, on Charles-Edouard and his marriage.

  Everybody thought it a pity that he, with his name and his fortune, should have married an English Protestant. When it transpired that she was the daughter of a Freemason, the general disapproval knew no bounds, a Bolshevist would have been as gladly received. Those who were informed on political subjects pointed to the dire results, for France, of the Allingham Commission, and it was freely hinted that Grace was very likely in the pay of the Intelligence Service. Rather soon, however, the pendulum swung back i
n her favour. Older, cosmopolitan Frenchmen, writers, diplomats, and the like, who did not only live for society and yet had great influence with the Tournons of the world, had known the charming, cultivated, francophile Sir Conrad, and had read his books. They said he was by no means to the Left in politics, a rigid Conservative, in fact. Silly old Régine must have got the Freemason story all wrong, so like her, for it could not possibly be true. As to the Allingham Commission, the prime mover in that was a terrible villain called Sparks, paid by Arabs, in whose hands poor Sir Conrad had been as putty, and furthermore the results of the Commission, while annoying to the French government of the day, had not in the long run done any harm to France. It was absurd to say that the Allinghams were not the sort of people you could know; even Eugène de Tournon was quite impressed when he saw in his peerage who Grace’s mother had been.

  The highbrow aunts, who, dowdy as they seemed, counted for a good deal in society, weighed in on her side, saying that, though not an intellectual, she was very nice and well brought up. Her beauty, too, was in her favour. At last the nine days’ wonder came to an end, and Grace was accepted. She was a new girl, she must watch her step, but the general feeling was that she would do.