The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Now it so happened that a certain member of the Crew had been teasing the Captain for quite a long time to put on a play she had translated from some Bratislavian dialect, and of which the protagonist was a little boy of ten. The Captain had read her translation, which, he thought, probably failed to convey the fiery poetry and political subtleties of the original. In English it seemed rather dreary. But now this play was being very much discussed on the Continent. It was put on in Paris, where it had a mixed reception, and was said to have run clandestinely for several months in Lvov. The Captain, with Sigi in mind, decided to have another look at it.

  It was called The Younker. An old Communist, whose days had been spent wringing a livelihood from the bitter marsh land round his home, lay on his bed, ageing. He lay alone because, so ungovernable was his temper, no human dared approach him. His dog, a famous mangler, lay snarling by the empty hearth. His only son had married a foreign Fascist woman; for this he had turned him out. The son had gone to the foreign Fascist woman’s land and there had died. The old man kept his savings in gold in a pot under his bed, and it came upon him that he would like to give this pot, before he died and before the Party got it, to his son’s son, and that he would like to see this child before his old eyes failed. The younker arrived. He was a manly little fellow, not at all awed by his grandfather’s ungovernable rages, or by his grandfather’s dog, the mangler. Indeed he went everywhere with his little hand resting on its head. He brought love into that house, and presently he brought his mother, the Fascist woman, and she made the bed, which had never been made before. And by degrees this child, this innocent, loving little creature, bridged even the great political gap between his mother and his grandfather. They joined a middle-of-the-road party and all ended in happiness.

  The Captain began to see possibilities in this play if it could be altered and adapted according to an idea he had, and put on with Sigi in the name part. The great difficulty would be to get round the Crew; if only he could achieve that he foresaw a box-office success at last.

  He called a conference on the stage after the Saturday matinée. The Crew sat about in high-necked sweaters, shorts, and bare, blue feet, their heads bowed and their faces entirely obscured by the curtain of hair. Though he did not know it, they were in a dangerous mood. They had hardly set eyes on the Captain of late, either at home or in his theatre; he had been, they knew, to many parties, in rich, bourgeois houses, with Grace. Rumour even had it that he had been seen in Sir Conrad’s box at the Ascot races. None of this had done him much good with his Crew.

  The Captain began by saying that it was quite essential for the Royal George to have a monetary success. If it did not, he pointed out, they would no longer be able to satisfy their serious public with plays that they alone were brave enough to produce. They would, in fact, be obliged to shut their doors and put out their lights and close, leaving a very serious gap in the intellectual life of London. The Crew knew that all this was so. They sat quite still listening. The Captain went on to praise Fiona very highly for her translation of The Younker. He said he had been re-reading it, that it was very good, that he thought it would do. He then branched off into a disquisition on the psychology of audiences through the ages.

  ‘The two greatest dramatists of the modern world,’ he said, ‘are Shakespeare and Racine.’

  There was no sign of life from the figures round him; faceless and dumb, bowed immovably over their bare, blue feet, they waited for him to go on. The Captain knew that had he said Sartre and Lorca there would have been some response, a tremor, perhaps, parting the silky blonde curtains, or a nodding of the veiled heads. No such tremor, no such nodding, occurred. He began to feel nervous, to wonder whether he was going to fail in what he was attempting. But he had never failed, as yet, to master his Crew, and he thought all would be well.

  ‘Now Shakespeare and Racine,’ he went on, nervously for him, ‘understood the psychology of the playgoer, and they both knew that there are two things that audiences cannot resist. The first (and if we are to take a lesson from these great men, as I think we should, this will give scope to Ulra when designing her set) is the appeal of the past. The second, I am afraid, discloses a weakness in human nature, a weakness which exists as strongly today as it did in the seventeenth century. Not to put too fine a point on it, audiences like a lord. Shakespeare knew what he was about, that can’t be denied. You’ll hardly find a single commoner in Shakespeare’s plays, and when they do occur he doesn’t even trouble to invent names for them. 1st gravedigger, 2nd soldier, and so on. You’d think he might have written some very penetrating studies of the burghers of Stratford, he must have had plenty of copy. Not a bit. Kings and lords, queens and ladies made up his dramatis personae. Webster the same. And who’s to say they’re wrong? “I am Duchess of Malfi still” makes us cry. “I am Mrs Robinson still” wouldn’t be at all the same thing.’

  The Crew did not raise a titter at this joke, and the Captain had an uneasy feeling it had probably been made before. He hoped he was not losing his grip, and hurried on,

  ‘As for Racine, his heroes and heroines are usually Imperial.

  ‘Now I say that what was good enough for the Globe and the Théâtre Royal is good enough for the Royal George. Supposing, Fiona dear, that you were to rewrite The Younker, to set it in an English country house in the nineties, to change the violent old Communist into a violent old Earl? Write the part of the boy for our adorable little Sigismond – he should prove a tremendous attraction. If you do all this, as only you can, Fiona, if Ulra makes a really amusing set for it – a Victorian castle, Ulra, in the Gothic style, lace collar, velvet suit for the Younker – I think I can prophesy certain success. I think we could count on six months with the house packed. After that we shall be able to go on with what we are trying to do in this theatre, don’t be afraid that I’ve lost sight of that. I won’t keep you now,’ he looked at his watch, ‘I have to go to London, but I will be home for dinner.’ They always dined after the evening performance in the Captain’s house. ‘We can talk it over then –’

  Not a movement, the curtained figures sat as in a trance. He did not quite like it, but was not seriously alarmed; he had weathered too many a storm in that ship with that Crew, those hearts of oak.

  When the Captain arrived home rather late for dinner the house was in darkness, and empty as the Marie Céleste. There were signs of recent human activity, a meal had evidently just been eaten and not cleared away, but nobody was there.

  The Captain supposed that his Crew must have gone on shore. They sometimes did so of an evening and always, on these occasions, left some delectable titbit sizzling in the oven for him. But the kitchen was in darkness, the oven cold and bare. He peered into the bedroom usually occupied by Ulra to see if a sulking figure were not perhaps lolling on the bed. If so it must be stirred up, made to minister to his needs. Not only was there no sulking figure, but nylon hairbrush and broken comb had vanished from the dressing-table, crumpled underclothes no longer brimmed from half-open drawers, duffel coats and ragged ball dresses no longer bulged behind the corner curtain, there were no old shoes lying about on the deal floor and no old hats on the deal shelf. Ulra had clearly gone, and taken all her belongings. Down in the Port Royal, up beneath the Toits de Paris, the same state of affairs existed in every bedroom. The Captain’s heart sank within him. This was desertion. Mutiny he could have dealt with, his dreaded cat o’ nine tails, sarcasm, had but to be seen by the Crew for them to come to heel, but desertion was far more serious. They had almost certainly, he knew, gone off in a body to join the staff of Neoterism.

  The Captain passed a sleepless night, during which he decided that there was only one course left for him to take. He must go and see Grace and persuade her to marry him. Not a bad thing, perhaps, to do it on an impulse, though he would have preferred to lead up to it with the triumphant success on the boards of Sigismond. He must try and whirl her to a registry office before ei
ther she or he had any more chance of thinking it over. Thinking it over was no good now, the time had come for action. Breakfastless, feeling rather sea-sick, the Captain set out for Queen Anne’s Gate.

  Now it so happened that on this particular day Grace had woken up sadder and more hopeless than at any time since leaving Paris. Her divorce had just become absolute, and she had finished her carpet. She had made a sort of bet with herself that before these two things happened there would have been a sign from Charles-Edouard; none had come. The weather, which always affected her spirits, remained terrible, as it had been so far the whole summer. Day after day it was a question of putting on winter clothes and crowning them, for no other reason than that the month was June, with a straw hat, through which the cold wind whistled horribly. She was putting on one of these hats to go out to a dull luncheon when her maid came in and said that the Captain was downstairs. This news cheered her up.

  ‘Give him a glass of vodka – I’m just coming.’

  The Captain was already pouring vodka down his throat in great gulps like a Russian and feeling much more confident that all would yet be well. The door opened, and, instead of Grace, Sigismond appeared.

  ‘Good morning, Old Salt,’ he said, too cockily for a child of his age the Captain thought, irritated. He must get rid of him, he had got to see Grace alone while the action of the vodka on his doubly empty stomach (no dinner, no breakfast) was having its excellent effect.

  ‘And when do I go into rehearsal, Cap?’

  This was too much for the Captain’s nerves. He took Sigi by the shoulder, propelled him to the door, gave him a sharp push and said,

  ‘It’s your Mummy I want to see, not you. Run along to Nanny, there’s a good boy.’

  Sigi gave him a very baleful glance. Aware that he had done himself no good, the Captain felt about in his pocket. He had a shilling and a fiver, and if one seemed too little the other seemed immeasurably too much. He fished out the shilling, which Sigi pocketed without a word, going furiously upstairs. Nobody had ever insulted him with so small a coin in his life before.

  Grace appeared. She looked very pretty and was pleased to see the Captain, quite approachable, he thought. He took the plunge.

  ‘I’ve come on an impulse, to ask you to marry me, Grace.’

  ‘Good heavens, Captain!’

  ‘I suppose you think I ought to lead up to it, pave the way, break it like bad news. I don’t. We’re both grown-up people, and I think if I want to marry you the easiest thing is to say so straight out.’

  ‘Yes. I expect you’re quite right.’

  ‘And please don’t think it over. I hate the sort of people who are forever thinking things over, horrid, calculating thoughts. Say yes now – and I’ll go off and get a licence.’

  Grace was seriously tempted to do so. She was feeling furious with Charles-Edouard, with his attitude of ‘come back whenever you like but don’t expect me to bother about you, or make it any easier for you’, and with his manner of conveying it to her, indirectly, through Sir Conrad. Why did he never telephone, write, or make any direct approach? It was intolerable. She felt it would punish him if she were to marry the Captain, brilliant, sparkling, friend of Paris intellectuals, much more than if she were to marry someone like Hughie. Hughie could only be a stopgap, the Captain might well be a great new love.

  ‘I don’t want to think it over,’ she said, ‘but I shall have to consult Sigismond.’

  The Captain was very much taken aback. ‘Consult Sigi?’

  ‘Oh Captain, if Sigi didn’t like it I could never do it, you know. I’ve given him my word never to marry without asking him first.’

  ‘It’s mad. Little boys of that age change their ideas every few minutes – he might say yes one day and no the next, it would mean nothing at all. According to whether – well for instance according to whether one had last tipped him with a shilling or five pounds. Sigi is very fond of me, you must have noticed that for yourself. I shan’t turn out to be a Mr Murdstone, I can assure you – I am good-natured and I love children. I tell you this, so it must be true. What people say about themselves is always true. When they say “Don’t fall in love with me, I shall make you very unhappy” you must believe them, just as you must believe me when I tell you that both you and Sigi will have happy lives once you are married to me. Quiet, uneventful, but happy.’

  ‘Oh I do, Captain, I do believe it. I’ve known it really for a long time.’

  As Grace said this she looked positively cuddlable, and the Captain was about to press her to his bosom when she saw the time, gave a tremendous jump, said she was half an hour late for luncheon already and fled – shouting from the staircase ‘Come back at tea-time.’

  ‘Tell me something, Sigi. You love the Captain, darling, don’t you?’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I think of the Captain?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m asking you.’

  ‘I think he’s a bloody bastard, so there.’

  ‘Sigismond – go to bed this instant. Nanny – Nanny –’ Grace was running furiously upstairs, ‘Please put Sigismond to bed without any supper and without Dick Barton. I won’t have it, Sigi, you’re not to speak of grown-up people like that, do you understand? Oh no, it’s too much,’ and she burst into tears. She had quite made up her mind that she was going to marry the Captain and now this consolation was to be denied her.

  Sigi, rather puzzled and very cross, received pains and penalties, but he had hit his target first. That night the Captain left London, alone, for France. The Royal George had gone down, without her crew complete. Her new owner, having repainted, furbished up, and rechristened her, more in the spirit of the age, The Broadway, opened triumphantly that autumn with a dramatization of Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  11

  Madame Rocher des Innouïs, as old ladies sometimes do, now got an idea into her head, and decided that she would not rest until she had seen it carried out. The idea was that Grace and Charles-Edouard must be brought together again, must be married properly this time, that Grace must be converted, that they must have more children, and do their duty by the one they had already. The present situation had become impossible. Charles-Edouard quite clearly had no intention of marrying any of the nice, suitable girls vetted and presented by his aunt, and was now in trouble with half the husbands of Paris. Grace, according to information received by Madame Rocher through the French Embassy in London, was contemplating remarriage with some very unsuitable sailor, and the child was being outrageously spoilt on both sides of the Channel. Bad enough that a Valhubert should be written about and photographed in Samedi Soir, it now seemed that his mother contemplated putting him on the London stage, while Sir Conrad, whom Madame Rocher loved but whom she did not trust a yard, was no doubt initiating him into the terrible rites of Freemasonry. Charles-Edouard’s heir was on the way to becoming a publicity-monger, an actor, and a Nihilist; what must poor Françoise be thinking?

  Madame Rocher took action. She arrived in London to stay with the French Ambassador, sent for Grace, and weighed in at once with what she had to say.

  ‘Grace, my child, it is your duty to return to Paris and marry Charles-Edouard. Picture this unfortunate man, lonely, unhappy, reduced to pursuing the wives of all his friends, forced to go to bed at the most inconvenient times, and always with the risk of his motive being misunderstood. He may find himself trapped into some perfectly incongruous marriage before we know where we are. Then think of your little boy, brought up like this between the two of you, no continuity in his education. Nothing can be worse for a child than these six months of hysterical spoiling from each of you in turn. You are very reasonable, Grace dear, surely you must understand where it is that your duty lies.

  ‘I know the English are fond of duty, it is their great speciality. We all admire you so much for having no black market, but what is the good of no black market if you will not do your duty by your own family, Grace? Have
you thought of that?’

  Grace, sick to death of living alone, longing night and day for Charles-Edouard, was unable to conceal from Madame Rocher’s experienced eye the happiness these words gave her, and that in her case duty and inclination were the same.

  ‘But Charles-Edouard never asks me to go back,’ she said. ‘I’m always hearing from my father that he wants me, but I’ve never had a direct communication from him. It makes it rather difficult.’

  Madame Rocher gave a sigh of relief. The day, she saw, was won.

  ‘It is perhaps not so very strange,’ she said. ‘Charles-Edouard has never been left before by a woman. He fully understands the technique of leaving, one might say he has brought it to a fine art, but being left is a new experience. No doubt it puzzles him, he is not quite sure how to deal with it. Could you not take the first step?’

  ‘Oh Tante Régine! Yes, perhaps. But then what about Juliette and Albertine?’

  ‘Back to them again? You are behind the times, my dearest. Juliette is quite finished. But let’s try and be sensible about it. Charles-Edouard was sleeping with you, I suppose?’

  Grace became rather pink, but she nodded.

  ‘Well then, that’s all right. Why not look upon these others as his hobby? Like hunting or racing, a pursuit that takes him from you of an afternoon sometimes, amuses him, and does you no harm?