‘Say what you choose, France is a wonderful country – oh it is wonderful. Take the shops, dear, they groan with food, just like pre-war. I only wish you could see the meat, great carcasses for anybody to buy – the offal brimming over on to the pavement – animals like elephants. They could have suet every day if they knew how to make a nice suet pudding. But there is one drawback, nobody there can cook. They’ve got all the materials in the world but they cannot serve up a decent meal – funny, isn’t it? It’s the one thing I’m glad to be back for, you never saw such unsuitable food for a child – well I ended with a spirit lamp in the nursery, cooking for ourselves. There now – I wish you could have seen our nursery, a huge great room looking out over the garden, with a real English fireplace. Then I wish you could have seen the château, it is different from Bunbury – oh it is. Abroad, and no mistake. Like a castle in a book, at the top of a mountain, you quite expect to see knights in armour coming up on their horses. And warm! Well, imagine the worst heat wave you ever knew in your life, the summer of 1911 for instance, and double that. No, I didn’t mind a bit, it simply didn’t affect me, though the poor mite got rather peaky. You don’t know what heat can be, in this country.’
Sir Conrad gave Sigi a little gun, and with it a great talking to on the handling of guns in general and the manners of a sportsman in particular.
‘And just remember this,’ he said in conclusion, ‘never never let your gun pointed be at anyone. That it may unloaded be matters not a rap to me! And Black is going to keep it for you in the gun-room; he’ll teach you to clean it and so on, and you may only use it when you are with him.’
So Sigi never left Black’s side all the long summer days, trotting happily about the woods and pooping off at magpies and other vermin.
‘There’s something I do regret,’ he remarked to his mother. ‘I would like to show my gun to Canari. It’s small, but you could kill a man with it if you got the vital spot. Now Canari isn’t a silly little baby mollycoddle, like dear little Foster Dexter, or dear little Georgie in the Park. Canari is a maquisard, a brave, a dragon, and he would never sack me out of his bande again if I had this gun. They’re terribly short of equipment in Canari’s maquis, it’s a shame.’
Grace could hardly bear to think of lovely Bellandargues shut up and empty all the summer and that, for the first time in living memory, the big salon would no longer be the scene of a conversation piece like that which was discovered when Charles-Edouard had first held open the door for her to walk in, and repeated thereafter every day of her visit; Madame Rocher at the piano, M. de la Bourlie at his canvas, and Madame de Valhubert deep in earnest talk with M. le Curé.
She had an uneasy feeling of guilt, exactly as if it were all her own fault and not that of Charles-Edouard.
Also she longed very much for the heat and light of Provence. They had come home to a typical English summer. Rain poured all day on to the high trees out of the low clouds, clouds which lifted and parted towards nightfall so that a pallid ray of north-western sunshine illumined the soaking landscape, a pallid ray of hope for the morrow.
‘It’s lovely now – we must go out. Don’t you think the weather may have turned at last?’
The next morning those who, suffering in their bodies, or, like poor Grace, in their hearts, and who therefore slept little at a time, would awake with the birds to such a glorious glitter of sunshine from cloudless sky upon wet leaves that summer, it would seem, must be there at last. This happened nearly every morning to Grace, who would presently doze off again, rather happier. But long before breakfast the rain would be blowing in fine white sheets across her window, the promise of early morning quite forgotten. She would go down, later on, to the drawing-room, glad to find a little fire.
Charles-Edouard, she knew, had gone to Venice this year. He had taken a palazzo on the Grand Canal and was entertaining many Paris friends, among others Madame Rocher, the Novembre de la Fertés, and Albertine Marel-Desboulles. This had been a great blow to poor Hughie. He had cherished a hope all the summer that Albertine might have gone with him for a motor tour in Sweden. But as soon as the Venetian party offered itself, with Charles-Edouard and all her friends, the motor tour became, for various good reasons, impossible. Furthermore she discouraged Hughie from following her to Venice, saying vaguely that she would be taken up with the film festival. So he often came now to spend a day or two at Bunbury. He was trying to stand for Parliament, but had had no luck so far with the Selection Committees, partly of course, he said, because he was so stupid, and partly because he had no wife. He longed more than ever to be married to Albertine, even though he felt sure that in that case it would be her they would want as candidate and not him. He could just imagine the kind of speech she would make, bringing her point of view, inspired, sensible, and well expressed, to bear on all the problems under discussion.
‘I, the soul of the French bourgeoisie, my solid legs planted on the solid earth, I Albertine Labé, descended from generations of timber merchants, who have always given good measure for good money, I have the gift of seeing things clearly and truthfully as they are. I cannot pretend. I feel the truth, I feel it here in my heart and here in my bowels as well as knowing it here in my brain. It is a power, this seeing and feeling and knowing truth, and it has been bred in me by my ancestors the merchants.’
‘And I tell you, I, Albertine Labé, bourgeoise, that it is this power of truthfulness and of knowing truth which is needed if we are to rebuild your England, rebuild my France, and rebuild our Europe.’
Just the stuff for the Selection Committees, he thought. There was another line of talk which ran, ‘I who loathe the bourgeoisie, I who would rather burn charcoal in the woods than buy or sell anything whatever it might be, I who would rather freeze to death out of doors in the cruel winter of my native Lorraine than sit over a warm fire in a back shop, I, Albertine Labé de Lespay, aristocrat, child of knight and warrior, whose ancestors never touched money or even carried it on their persons because they thought it the dirtiest of dirt, I tell you that I know the truth, I know it here and here and here, and it is this truth, this virtue, this hatred of gold that is needed if we are to rebuild etc. etc.’
The second statement, actually, had more foundation in fact, since Albertine did not possess one drop of bourgeois blood, and her ancestors, a line of powerful princes, had only been timber merchants to the extent of owning vast forests in Lorraine. But the trend of the modern world had not escaped her notice, and the timber merchants were ever increasingly brought into play. Hughie was much too much dazzled by her to notice any discrepancy; both these statements had, at different times, bowled him over, as he assumed that they would bowl over the Selection Committees. He was unable to imagine anybody, even an English Conservative, standing up against the charm and brilliance of this extraordinary woman. With her by his side, to inspire and teach him, it seemed that no goal in the world would be unobtainable.
‘Of course I’m glad to think of her in Venice,’ he said, not gladly though, to Grace, as they sat over the little drawing-room fire, summer rain fiercely beating on the windows. ‘She loves Italy so much, she needs the beauty. Then there is the important work she does there, with the films.’
‘What work? She’s frightfully rich, she doesn’t need to work.’
‘She doesn’t need to, she does it for her country, for France. She is a moving power in the French film industry with her taste and knowledge and influence. No film is ever made there without first being submitted to her, you know. She has an infallible instinct. Yes, I love to think of her in Venice, but I do wish she would write to me. She won’t, of course. “What is writing?” she said once. “Just a scratch of metal upon paper.” Well, look at it that way and what is it?’
Grace, whose heart was also in Venice, and who would also have welcomed a scratch of metal upon paper, or even upon a postcard, sympathized with Hughie, but did not quite enjoy his interminable eulogies of Alber
tine, who seemed to her one of the many causes of her own wretchedness. She wondered if he was aware that Charles-Edouard went to tea with her every day, but was too polite and tactful to mention it.
‘Don’t you think young people nowadays manage their lives much worse than we used to?’ Sir Conrad said to Mrs O’Donovan, who had come down for a little country air. ‘Surely you and I would have been more competent than either of those two in the same circumstances, and less gloomy? I’m tired of all the despondency in this house; it’s getting me down. Why on earth don’t they pack up and go off to Venice and have it out finally with these Frogs?’
‘Just imagine having anything out finally with Madame Marel,’ she replied. ‘As for Grace, you mustn’t be too hard on her. I think she has received a terrible shock, and is still suffering from it. To see a thing like that with your own eyes can have really grave results, psychologically.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Meg. She ought to have another baby, that’s all.’
‘Having a baby is not a sovereign cure for everything, although all men, I know, think it is.’
‘Anyhow, she’s in a thoroughly tiresome state of mind. I can’t find out what it is she does want – divorce or what. She says one thing one day and another the next, and it’s time something was settled, in my view.’
‘What does he think, do you know?’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve had a long letter from him. As I’ve often told you, I never understood why he wanted to marry her in the first place, but whatever the reason may have been it still seems to hold good, and he wants her back again.’
‘Have you told her?’
‘It wouldn’t be any use me telling her in her present mood; he must come and tell her himself. But meanwhile she goes on havering and wavering about shall she or shan’t she divorce until I’m tired of discussing it with her. She’s grown up, and she must decide for herself which it is to be.’
‘It really doesn’t make a pin of difference,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘They weren’t married in church, and therefore neither Charles-Edouard nor anybody else in Paris counts them as being properly married at all.’
‘I suppose it would only make a difference if one of them wanted to marry again. The whole thing is thoroughly tiresome and annoying. Well, after the holidays I’ll run over to Paris and have a word with Charles-Edouard, that will be best. I’ll tell him he must come and fetch her back if he wants her – I don’t believe she’d ever resist him in flesh and blood. She’d much better stick to him, this fidgeting about with husbands is no good for women, it doesn’t suit them. Hullo, Sigi, I didn’t know you were there –’
‘It’s too wet to go out and too early for Dick Barton, and Mummy and Mr Palgrave are talking about Madame Marel, as usual. If you go to Paris I wish you’d take me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to learn the words of A la voix du vainqueur d’Austerlitz, and nobody knows them here.’
‘Oh I do,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘I used to read them every morning of my life when I was a little girl with a hoop in the Tuileries Gardens. I’ll teach them to you if you come along to my bedroom before dinner.’
2
That night Sigi was woken up by a tinkle of breaking glass under his open window. He nipped out of bed and looked down. The pantry window was underneath his and he saw a bit of broken glass shining on the gravel beside it; there seemed to be a light on in the pantry. Nanny was snoring away undisturbed in the next room, so it must be very late he knew; well after midnight. He crept out of his room and down the back stairs, feeling his way by the banisters. Sure enough there was a light shining under the pantry door. He put his eye to the keyhole and saw a man examining the door of the silver cupboard, big and heavy like that of a safe. Now Sigi, owing to a great friendship formed in early babyhood with Atkin the butler, knew all the little ways of this silver cupboard. He opened the pantry door and walked in. The burglar, a small, fair young man, turned quickly round and pointed a revolver at him.
‘I don’t care for these manners,’ said Sigi, in a very governessy voice. ‘Surely you know that never never should your gun pointed be at anyone. That it may unloaded be matters not a rap to me.’
‘It’s not only unloaded,’ said the burglar, ‘but it’s not a gun at all. It’s a dummy. You get into a terrible mess, in my trade, if you go carrying guns about.’
‘Are you a burglar?’
‘Yes, I try to be.’
‘I think it’s very careless of you not to wear gloves. What about the finger-prints?’
‘I know. I simply cannot work in gloves – never could – can’t drive a car in them, either. I’m not very good at my work as it is – look at this wretched door, I don’t know how you’d open it.’
‘Why do you do it then?’
‘The hours suit me – can’t get up in the morning, and everything you earn, such as it is, is tax free, with no overheads. There’s a good deal to be said for it. I expect I shall improve.’
‘How about prison?’
‘Haven’t had any yet. I’m so fearfully amateurish that nobody ever thinks I can be serious, and when I get caught they simply think it must be a joke.’
‘Where I live it’s not a joke at all, burgling. They come with machine-guns and wearing masks and they generally kill off the whole family and the concierge before they begin.’
‘That must make it much easier.’
‘Yes. Sometimes they only sausage them.’
‘They what?’
‘Tie them up like sausages, brr round and round, and gag them and put them in a cupboard, where they are found next day more dead than alive.’
‘Where do you live then?’
‘Paris. I’m a French boy.’
‘You talk pretty good English for a French boy.’
‘Yes, and I talk pretty good French for an English boy. Would you like me to open the silver cupboard for you?’
‘Why? Do you know how to?’
‘Of course I do. Mr Atkin showed me. You blow on it, see. Like that.’ The door swung slowly open. ‘I always feel on the side of burglars because of Garth. So you go on and I’ll keep cave.’
The burglar looked at him uncertainly. ‘I suppose I’d better make sure,’ he said, half to himself, and before Sigi realized what was happening he found himself gagged and trussed up.
‘There you see. English burglars sausage people too sometimes,’ said the young man, putting Sigi gently on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, old fellow, it won’t be for long, but really to leave you keeping cave would be carrying amateurishness too far.’
Sigi was perfectly outraged. ‘All right then,’ he said to himself.
The burglar went into the cupboard and began to examine its contents. Sigi waited a moment, then he rolled under the pantry table and kicked a certain catch he knew of. The cupboard door clanged to, and the burglar was trapped. Then Sigi began to roll and wriggle through the green baize swing-door into the dining-room, through the dining-room door, which luckily was open, into the hall, where he lay kicking the big gong until Sir Conrad appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Good gracious,’ he said, when he saw Sigi rolling and wriggling like a little eel. ‘My dear child,’ he said, untying him, ‘whatever have you been up to?’
‘Ugh! That tasted awful. Grandfather, grandfather, I’ve got a burglar, in the silver cupboard.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Yes, I promise. I did it with Mr Atkin’s patent catch – he’s in there now. Come and see.’
‘I say! Good boy!’
‘And he’s got a dummy gun.’
‘Never mind. He won’t dare use that. Go and get Atkin for me, will you?’
‘Mr Atkin – Mr Atkin – Grandfather wants you – I’ve got a burglar in the silver cupboard! Mummy, Mummy, I’ve caught a burglar! Nanny, Nanny, I’ve got a burglar. I did it all by myself.’
Nanny, hur
rying into her dressing-gown, said, ‘Tut-tut, all this excitement in the middle of the night is very bad for little boys. You’re coming straight back to bed, my child.’
But Sigi was off again in a flash, down to the pantry, where Sir Conrad was sitting on the edge of the table talking to the burglar and surrounded by quite a little crowd. Hughie now put in an appearance.
‘Hullo, Hughie,’ said the burglar.
‘Oh! Hullo, Ozzie. It’s you, is it?’
‘That your nipper?’
‘No. I wish he were.’
‘Wouldn’t mind having him for a partner. The child’s an expert.’
‘I was your partner till you sausaged me,’ Sigi said furiously.
‘The milk train,’ said Sir Conrad, looking at the pantry clock, ‘leaves at 6.15. Perhaps you’d better be off, it’s more than an hour’s walk. Or would you suggest that I should send you in the motor?’
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 130