‘You pay for the lecturer. He shows all sorts of unexpected things.’
‘I will take you over it one day. I know much more about it than any lecturer.’
‘You would never show me what he did, this afternoon.’
‘Ha!’ said Charles-Edouard. He went to the window and looked out of it.
‘This is very annoying,’ he said presently.
‘I thought so too. I’ve seen the whites of their eyes, Charles-Edouard.’
‘Imbecile of a lecturer. He should know better than to come bursting into bedrooms like that.’
‘Yes. Being French you’d think he would.’
‘Perhaps I’ll give up Juliette.’
‘You needn’t bother. I’m going back to England.’
‘Do stay,’ said Charles-Edouard.
‘For the week-end?’
‘No. For ever.’
‘It’s no good, Charles-Edouard. I’m too English; your behaviour makes me too miserable, and I can’t bear it any more.’
‘But my dear, that’s nothing to do with being English. All women are the same; indeed if you were Spanish I dare say you would have killed me by now, or Juliette, or both. No, we’ve been particularly unlucky. This unspeakable lecturer, paid 100 francs to open bedroom doors in the middle of the afternoon! What could have induced Tante Edmonde to let him, she is out of her mind. I know what it is of course, she hopes to get off taxes by allowing the public into her house, but what a shortsighted action! Half that crowd must have been Treasury spies, nosing about to see how many signed pieces she owns, and the rest of course were burglars making out lists of all the objects in the glass cases. I blame her terribly. Then I’m bound to say it was a little bit your own fault, wasting 100 francs and a whole afternoon in a house where you dine at least once a week. Bad luck, and bad management.’
‘In fact everybody’s fault but yours.’
‘No, no, I blame myself most, for being so careless.’
‘Oh dear! How cynical you are.’
‘Not at all. I see things in the light of reality.’
‘Yes. Well I also must try to be a realist. After this I could never again be happy with you because I should never again have an easy moment when you were out of my sight, never. You are wonderful at explaining things away until one happens to have seen with one’s own eyes, but from now on the explanations won’t be any good. So I shall go back to Papa.’
‘And when do you leave?’
‘Tomorrow. I shall take Sigi.’
‘Yes, you must. And Nanny, too, perhaps?’
‘And Nanny, too. And please excuse me to Tante Régine. I’ve got a headache, and there’s a great deal of packing to be done.’
‘Nanny, we’re going home to England tomorrow.’
‘What, all of us?’
‘You and me and Sigismond.’
‘Mm.’ The tone was one of disapproval. ‘Tomorrow, dear? And what about the packing?’
‘The train isn’t till 12.30 and there’s Marie to help you. You must manage somehow, darling, please.’
‘But how long are we going for?’
‘For good. Now don’t look sad, it will be London, not Bunbury. So think – Hyde Park every day, Daniel Neal, steam puddings, Irish stew –’
‘Irish stew indeed. My sister says you never see a nice neck, these days. And Sigi’s Papa?’
‘He’s not coming.’
‘Mm.’
‘Do be pleased, darling. I thought at least somebody would be.’
‘Well dear, I’ve always said little boys ought to have a mummy and a daddy.’
‘That can’t be helped. And think of the hundreds who don’t.’
‘I’m wondering how I’m ever to get all his toys packed up in the time. Funny thing, one never gets any notice of these journeys.’
‘Send Marie out to buy an extra hamper if there’s no room.’
Next day there had to be a special motor to take Sigi’s luggage; he had exactly twice as many items as his mother.
‘Anybody would suppose that he was a famous cocotte,’ said Charles-Edouard, who went to the station exactly as if he were seeing them off for a little change. Sigi skipped about on the platform, getting in everybody’s way and saying, ‘Can I ride on the engine, please, Papa?’
‘Certainly not. And I hope you’ll have learnt to read before I see you again.’
‘Will you give me a prize if I can?’
‘Perhaps. If you can read everything, and not only the little bit out of the Journal des Voyages you already know by heart.’
‘What sort of prize?’
‘A good sort.’
‘Can I ride on the chevaux de Marly for my prize?’
‘You can only ride on the chevaux de Marly when you know A la voix du vainqueur d’Austerlitz by heart.’
‘How can I learn it, in England?’
‘I can’t imagine. Anyhow you can learn to read. Shall I tell you what will become of you if you can’t read when you are grown up?’
‘All grown-up people can read,’ said the child, conclusively.
‘Good-bye, Grace,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Do come back soon.’
‘For a week-end?’
‘No. For good.’
He kissed her hand and left them. He was quite surprised at how much he minded their departure.
15
‘What’s all this about?’ said Sir Conrad when Sigi, Nanny, and their baggage had been deposited in the nursery and he had Grace to himself. ‘I’m delighted to see you, it goes without saying, but why such short notice? Is it not rather hysterical?’
‘Yes, well, you may call it so. I’ve left Charles-Edouard.’
‘You’ve left your husband?’
‘Yes.’
Sir Conrad was not surprised, since this sudden run for home could hardly, he knew, mean anything else.
‘And are you going to tell me why?’
He did not doubt what the reason would be, broadly speaking, but was curious as to the details.
Grace told him at some length about her life in Paris.
‘I could bear it when he went to tea every day with Madame Marel, though I didn’t like it; I could even bear his terribly open flirtation at every party we went to, with Juliette Novembre, but what happened yesterday afternoon at the Hôtel de Hauteserre is more than I can endure or forgive.’
‘What did happen?’
But when she told him Sir Conrad annoyed her very much indeed by bursting into a hearty laugh.
‘I say, what bad luck! Now don’t look so cross and prim, darling, I quite see it was horrible for you, and I’m very sorry, but I can’t help thinking of Charles-Edouard too. You must admit it was bad luck on him, poor chap.’
‘Perhaps it was. But lives can’t be built entirely on luck.’
‘No good saying that, as they always are. Luck, my darling, makes the world we live in. After all, it was by luck you met Charles-Edouard in the first place (bad luck for Hughie); by luck that he came back from the war safe and sound; by luck that you had that clever little Sigi – by luck, indeed, that you got your mother’s large blue eyes and lovely legs and not my small green eyes and bow legs. Luck is a thing you can never discount. It may be unfair, it generally is, but you can’t discount it. And if Charles-Edouard is having, as he seems to be, a run of bad luck you ought to be there, sympathizing with the poor chap. It doesn’t seem right to go off and leave him all alone. I hoped I’d brought you up better than that.’
‘You’re talking as if he had lost all his money at the races.’
‘Oh well, not quite so bad, thank goodness.’
‘And as if you’re on his side.’
‘We must try and see his side of the question, I suppose.’
‘I don’t think you need, you’re my father.’
‘Now listen, my darling child. I love yo
u, as you know, and only desire your happiness. This is your home, available for you whenever you need it. You can always come here, and even bring Nanny if you must, so please don’t think I want to send you away. Quite the contrary, I like to have you here, it’s a great pleasure. But it’s my plain duty, as your father, to try to make you see things as they are, and, above all, to try and make you see Charles-Edouard as he is. I’m very fond of Charles-Edouard, and I presume that you are too, as you married him.
‘Now he is a man who likes women in the French way of liking them, that is he likes everything about them, including hours of their company and going to bed with them. I suppose you would admit that this is part of his charm for you. But you hardly ever find a man, or anyhow a young man, with his liking for women who can be faithful to one woman. It’s most exceedingly rare.’
‘Yes, Papa, all this may be true about Charles-Edouard. But with me it’s a question of how much I can stand, and I can’t stand a life of constant suspicion and jealousy. Juliette, Albertine, the women he looks at in the street, the way he flirts with everybody, everybody, even Tante Régine, the way he kisses their hands, the way he answers the telephone when they ring up – oh no, it’s too much for me, I can’t.’
‘My dear child, I always thought you had a healthy outlook on life, but this is positively morbid. You really must pull yourself together or I foresee great unhappiness for you in the future.’
‘I shan’t be unhappy a bit if I can marry an ordinary, faithful, English husband.’
Grace had been sustained during her journey by the mental picture of an idealized anglicized Charles-Edouard, whom she was to meet and marry in an incredibly short space of time. This vision had come to her when the light airiness of Northern France, with its young wheat, pink roads and large, white, rolling clouds, had been exchanged for the little, dark, enclosed Kentish landscape, safe and reassuring – home, in fact. She had looked out of the window at the iron grey sky pressing upon wasteful agriculture, coppices untouched by hand of woodman, tangles of blackberry and gorse, all so familiar to her eyes, and she was comforted by the thought that she could be an English countrywoman once more, gardening, going for walks, playing bridge with neighbours, a faithful English Charles-Edouard, tweeded and hearty, by her side. She would be quite happy, she thought, living in an oast-house, or a cottage with a twist of smoke on the edge of Mousehold Heath, or a little red villa with glass veranda in the Isle of Wight – anything, anywhere, so long as it was safe in England and she safely married to this tower of strength and reliability, this English Charles-Edouard.
‘I’m afraid an ordinary faithful English husband will seem very plain pudding after the extraordinarily fascinating French one you are throwing away so carelessly,’ said her father. ‘People like Charles-Edouard don’t grow on every tree, you know. The fact is women must choose in life what sort of a man it is that they do want – whether what is called a good husband, faithful to his wife but seldom seeing her, going off to the club and so on for his relaxation, or one that really loves women, loves his wife, probably, best and longest, but who also and inevitably feels the need for other relationships with other women.’
‘Is that the sort of husband you were, Papa?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. And as I never had a quarter the bad luck of poor Charles-Edouard, and as your mother was either entirely unsuspicious or else very very clever, it was a perfect success, and we were happy. But I didn’t care to risk it again after her death, so here I am unmarried.’
‘Don’t you feel lonely sometimes?’
‘Often. That’s why I can’t help being pleased to see you and the little boy back again, though I suppose if I had any moral sense whatever I’d send you off with a flea in your ear. May I ask what you are planning next?’
‘Really, Papa, I hadn’t thought.’
‘You should try to think before you act, my dear child. Do you want a divorce?’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it now, I’m so tired. Divorce sounds so horrible.’
‘Yes, well, leaving your husband is rather horrible.’
‘But I suppose it will come to that.’
Sigi now put in an appearance, to say ‘Grandfather –’
‘Yes, Sigi?’
‘You know adultery –?’
Sir Conrad raised an eyebrow and Grace quickly intervened, saying, ‘Really Nanny is too naughty, she will teach him these dreadful words out of the Bible. Adultery is for when you’re older, darling.’
‘Oh I see. A sort of pas devant thing?’
‘Yes, that’s just it. So Nanny must be pleased to be back in her own old nursery again?’
‘Not a bit. Fluff under the carpet – she doesn’t know what the girls are coming to these days. One thing she will say for Paris, the housemaids there did know their work. And she’s just rung up her sister – offal is a thing you never see in London now. So Nanny’s in a terrible dump. Grandfather –’
‘Now what?’
‘Are there cartridges again, and can I learn to shoot?’
‘We’ll have to talk to Black about that, when we go to Bunbury.’
‘Oh good. Can you have a word with Nanny before dinner, Mum?’
Grace, who had been expecting this summons, sighed deeply and went upstairs.
PART TWO
1
The days of ‘run along, Sigismond’ were now in the past; nobody ever said it to him again. Grace, lonely and wretched, concentrated herself on the little boy, he was with her from first thing in the morning to his bedtime. He would arrive with her breakfast tray, open her letters, answer her telephone, and play with the things on her dressing-table. From time to time, in a desultory manner, she gave him reading lessons.
‘You simply must be able to read books by the time you see Papa again,’ she said.
‘And when shall I see him again?’
‘I expect it will be after the summer holidays.’
‘Shall I go and stay with him?’
‘I expect so.’
‘In Paris, or Bellandargues?’
‘Paris. He’s not going to Bellandargues this year.’
‘And you too?’
‘We’ll see when the time comes.’
‘I say, Mummy, are you divorced?’
‘Certainly not, darling. What do you know about divorce?’
‘Well I’ve told you about Georgie in the Park? His mummy and daddy are divorced and he says it’s an awfully good idea – you have a much better time all round, he says, when they are.’
‘Goodness, darling –!’
‘Actually his mummy and daddy have both married again, so he’s got two of each now, and he says the new ones are smashing, really better than the original ones. You ought to see the things they give him, they’re so lovely and rich. So shall you be marrying again, Mummy?’
‘You seem to forget that I’m married already, to Papa.’
‘Nanny told her sister she thought perhaps Mr Palgrave. She always thought it would have been better, in the first place.’
‘Don’t fidget with that necklace, Sigi, you’ll wear out the string.’
‘Do you know what Mr Palgrave gave me last time I saw him?’
‘No, what?’
‘Eleven bob.’
‘What a funny sum.’
‘Yes, well, Nanny always takes 10 per cent for her old lepers. I told him that and he very nicely made it up. I need a lot of money.’
‘Why do you?’
‘Because I’m saving up for a space ship when it’s invented. Mum, when can I have a bike?’
‘When we go to the country perhaps.’
‘And why don’t you marry Mr Palgrave?’
‘Because not.’
‘Nanny says it’s nicer for little boys to have a mummy and a daddy, but I expect it’s best of all when they have two mummies and two daddies.’
‘Shall
we get on with the reading?’
They went for the summer holidays to Bunbury. At first Grace thought she would find it unbearable to be in the place so impregnated now with memories of Charles-Edouard, where they had spent their honeymoon, where she had lived all those years dreaming of him, and where he had come to find her after the war. But her father wanted to go there, it would be good for Sigismond, and it was, after all, her home, the home of her ancestors; it would belong to her when Sir Conrad died. Memories of Charles-Edouard were not the only ones connected with it. And, in any case, her thoughts were of him all day, wherever she was.
‘One thing I must ask you,’ she said to Sir Conrad. ‘Will you give orders for the Archduke to be taken out of my room?’
‘Certainly I will,’ he replied. ‘The proper place for that Archduke is the hall – I never could understand what he was doing upstairs. And while we are on the subject, I should very much like to see my Boucher back in the drawing-room, if you don’t mind.’
In the end Grace’s room became less like a corner of the Wallace Collection and more like an ordinary country-house bedroom. It was really more convenient.
Nanny, in so far as she was ever pleased by anything, was pleased to be back at Bunbury. Just as Grace had spent the war years dreaming of Charles-Edouard, so Nanny had spent them dreaming of Hyde Park and what fun it would be, now she had a baby once more, taking him there. But when at last, on their return from Paris, she had achieved this objective, the dream, as dreams so often do, had turned to ashes. The Park, she found, had lost its old character. Not only had the railings disappeared, the beautiful fleur-de-lis railings which used to surround it, the stout stumps of Rotten Row, the elegant Regency railings of the flower beds, and the railings on which children loved to walk a tight-rope at the edges of the paths, but so, to a very great extent, had the nannies. Increasing numbers of little boys, it seemed, while they had a multiplicity of mummies and daddies, had no nannies at all. They were no longer wheeled about in prams, morning and afternoon, as a matter of course, but when they needed fresh air they were hung out of windows in meat safes. As soon as they could toddle they toddled off to nursery schools, where they were taught to sing little songs, given a great deal of milk to drink, and kept strictly out of the way of their harassed parents. So Park society was not what it had been. There was no wide range of choice, as in the past, and the few nannies who were left clung together, a sad little bunch, like the survivors in an autumnal poultry yard, most of whose fellows had already gone to the pot. Nanny had few friends among them and pronounced them to be, on the whole, a very inferior type of person. But at Bunbury she had congenial gossips, the old housekeeper, the groom’s wife, Mrs Atkin the butler’s wife, and Mrs Black, to whom she was able to boast and brag about her year in France until they stretched their eyes. Anybody who knew how terribly she had complained during the whole of her sojourn there, or who could have heard her comments to Nanny Dexter on every aspect of French civilization, would have been amazed by the attitude she now assumed over the clanking cups of tea with her cronies.
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 129