‘There’s another thing I wanted to tell you. Of course one never can say for certain, and people vary in this respect, but very often at Charles-Edouard’s age a man does begin, all the same, to settle down with his own wife. If you go back to him it would not surprise me in the least to see a very different Charles-Edouard five or ten years from now.
‘Tea with Albertine, yes I expect so, she is one whom people never quite get out of their systems, I’m afraid, and Charles-Edouard had her in his long before he ever met you. But the Juliettes of this world have their little day, it is soon over, and sometimes they are not replaced. I think Charles-Edouard is a particularly hopeful case because of the great love he has of his home. Consider the hours and the energy he expends on it, rearranging his furniture and pictures, adding to his collections, pondering over almost insignificant details of the lighting, and so on. Think how much he hates to leave it, even for a short holiday at Bellandargues or in Venice. He goes away, complaining dreadfully, for a month while the servants have their holiday and is back before the dust sheets are off.
‘All this can be very much on your side if you can manage to make him feel that you are part of his home, its goddess, in fact. I had a cousin, a terrible Don Juan, whose wife retrieved him, really, with her knitting. She sat through everything with this eternal ball of wool and click of needles – how we used to mock at her for it. But it was not stupid. In the end it became a symbol to him I think, a symbol of home life, and he so turned to her again that when they were old he seemed never to have cared for anybody else. Could you not try to see this whole problem rather differently, Grace? More like a Frenchwoman and less like a film star?’
Grace felt that she could, and knew that she longed to, since this different vision was clearly essential if she were to go home to Charles-Edouard.
‘Yes, Tante Régine,’ she said. ‘I will try, I promise you. But Charles-Edouard must come and fetch me.’
‘Oh – that! I shall have a word with him, and I can promise he’ll be here next week. So all is settled then – good. And now, when do I see my dear Vénérable?’
‘Ah well, the Vénérable dies for you. He rang up the Embassy to find out your plans – it seems they are taking you to the Ballet tonight, so he hopes that you will dine with us tomorrow. He’s out shopping this very moment, trying to find something fit to offer you.’
‘Wearing his apron, no doubt. But please tell him not to trouble. I love your English cuts, sirloins and saddles – you see how I remember, and I haven’t been here since 1914. I love them just as they are. That excellent roast meat, those steak and kidney puddings, what could be more delicious? At eight o’clock then tomorrow?’ She kissed Grace most affectionately on both cheeks.
Grace went home, a warm feeling at her heart. Everything was going to be all right now, she knew.
The dinner party for Madame Rocher consisted of an M.P., Clarkely by name, member of the Anglo-French Parliamentary Committee, Sir Henry and Lady Clarissa Teazle, owner of one of the big Sunday papers and his wife, noted francophiles, and, of course, Mrs O’Donovan. Madame Rocher arrived in full Paris fig. Her breasts were contained (but only just, it seemed that they might spring out at any moment, and then how to coax them back again?) in pale blue glass bubbles embroidered on yellow silk; her pale blue skirt, carved, as it were, out of hundreds of layers of tulle, was rather short, and when she sat down it could be seen that she wore yellow silk breeches also embroidered at the knee with bubbles. Mrs O’Donovan and Lady Clarissa could not take their eyes off bosom and knees, and exchanged many significant glances.
‘What a joy,’ Madame Rocher cried effusively, ‘to see dear Meg. Why do you never come to Paris now? I know more than one who still dies of love for you there. Nobody,’ she said to the company at large, ‘certainly no foreigner, has ever had so much success in Paris as Madame Audonnevent.’
All the English guests had been chosen because they spoke excellent French, but they did not get much opportunity to air this accomplishment, since Madame Rocher was determined to practise her English, and, furthermore, never drew breath the whole evening.
Her theme was the delight, the ravishment, the ecstasies into which she had been thrown by her two days in London.
‘This morning,’ she said, ‘I got up at eight, and imagine! I was ready for the opening at nine.’
‘The opening?’
‘Of the shops. Oh those shops! I have already bought all my hats for the Grande Semaine.’
‘No! Where?’ said Mrs O’Donovan, hoping for the name of a talented little French modiste, kept perhaps in some secret mews by the ladies of the French Embassy.
‘My dear, can you ask? D. H. Heavens, of course – in the basement. I never saw such beauties – the straw! the workmanship! the chic! I have got Christmas presents for all my friends – how they will be thrilled – of your famous English scent, the Yardley – so delicious, so well presented, such chic bottles. Then all my cotillon favours for the bal des Innouïs at the Woolworth – oh the joy just to wander in the Woolworth. The very names of the shops are a poem – the Scotch House – I bought a hundred mètres of tartan to cover all my furniture, many country beréts, and a lovely fur bag, in the Scotch House, while as for the Army and the Fleet! The elegance! I shall come over once a month now for the elegance alone.
‘At Oopers I ordered a new Rolls-Royce, of cane-work – you see the chic of that. From time to time, when I get a little tired, for all this shopping does tire me rather, I go to the Cadena Café and order a café crême and sit very happily watching your English beauties. They are a refreshment to the eye. I notice how sensible they are, they scorn the demi-toilette, and quite right too, there is nothing worse. They come out with no make-up, hardly having combed their hair even, to do their shopping. Then, of course, they go home and arrange themselves properly. Now I admire that. All or nothing, how I agree.
‘So I had no time for luncheon as you can imagine, but who cares when you can have a bun and a cup of tea? The afternoon I spent in fittings!’
‘Fittings?’ Mrs O’Donovan and Lady Clarissa were stunned by this recital.
‘Junior Miss, my dear. All my little dresses for the plage. Don’t ask me what Dior will say when he hears of Junior Miss. I’d rather not think. No thank you, no wine – when I am in England I drink nothing but whisky.’
Mr Clarkely, more interested in French politics than English elegance, began asking a few questions about the Third Force, saying that he had made friends, through his Committee, with many of the Ministers, but Madame Rocher merely cried,
‘Don’t talk to me of these dreadful people – they think of nothing, day and night, but their stomachs and their mistresses.’
‘Really?’ said Mr Clarkely. ‘Are you sure?’ It had not been his impression at all.
‘On what do you suppose they squander their salaries – those huge augmentations for which they are always and forever voting?’ (Madame Rocher would have complained very much if she had found herself compelled to dress on the amount annually earned by a French Minister.) ‘Stomachs, dear sir, and mistresses. The vast sums that dreadful Dexter gives them for tanks and aeroplanes, what d’you suppose happens to them? My nephew, a commandant, tells me there are no tanks and no aeroplanes and hardly even a pop-gun. Why? Because, my dear sir, these sums are spent on the stomachs and the mistresses of your friends.’
Mr Clarkely was very much surprised. ‘Surely not so and so,’ he said, mentioning a certain prominent Minister noted for his dyspeptic austerity of life and devotion to work.
‘All – all! Don’t mention their names or I shall have an attack! All, I tell you, all! They take the best houses to live in, they have fleets of motors, they spend the day eating and drinking and all night the relays of mistresses are shown up the escalier de service. It has ever been so, but let me tell you that the scandals of Wilson and Panama, of the death of Félix Fauré even, are nothing, but nothing,
to what goes on today. Give us back our King, my dear sir, and then speak to me of politics,’ she said, rather as if her King were kept a prisoner in the Tower of London. ‘More whisky, Vénérable, I pray.’
Mrs O’Donovan whispered to Mr Clarkely, ‘It’s no use asking that sort of Frenchwoman about politics – ask me. I know a great deal more than she does.’
But Mr Clarkely went to tea once a week at St Leonard’s Terrace and had been told what Mrs O’Donovan knew already. He had hoped for something more direct from the horse’s mouth.
‘Is she really so royalist?’ he turned to Grace. Madame Rocher was telling Sir Conrad her summer plans and begging him to go with her to Deauville, Venice, and Monte Carlo.
‘Like all the Faubourg,’ said Grace, ‘she has a photograph of the King on her piano, but I don’t think she’d raise a finger to get him back. My husband says the French hate all forms of authority quite equally.’
After dinner Madame Rocher took Sir Conrad aside, saying, ‘And tell me, mon cher Vénérable, how goes the Grand Orient? You know,’ she said, breathing a scented whisper (not Yardley’s) into his ear, ‘that I have designs on one of your adherents?’
‘I am most glad to hear it,’ he replied, delightfully drowning in the great billows of sex that emanated from her in spite of her seventy-odd years. ‘Come in here a minute and we will discuss ways and means together.’
12
Madame Rocher’s journey turned out not to have been really necessary. The night of Sir Conrad’s dinner party Sigismond was very sick and feverish; in the morning the doctor came, and said he must have his appendix out at once. He was taken by ambulance to a nursing home to be prepared for the operation, deeply interested in the whole affair.
‘Shall I die? And go to the Père La Chaise? And see l’Empereur, like in Le Rêve? Well, I forgive Nanny for everything. Can I see the knife? I shall have a scar now, like Canari! oh good! When are you going to do it?’
‘Not until tomorrow morning,’ said the nurse, ‘and don’t get so excited.’
‘Better give him something to keep him quiet,’ said the doctor, after which Sigi became intensely drowsy. Grace sat with him until evening, when Nanny came, prepared to spend the night in the nursing home. As there seemed no point in them both being there and as Nanny insisted on staying, Grace went back to Queen Anne’s Gate. Charles-Edouard was getting out of a cab just as she arrived.
It seemed quite natural to see him, she felt no embarrassment or constraint, and nor, quite obviously, did he.
‘Ravi de vous voir, ma chère Grace,’ he said, kissing her hand in his rapid way.
She opened the door with her key and they went into the house together.
‘So how is he? And when is the operation? I was out when your father telephoned or I could have been here sooner.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘he’s been asleep more or less all day and the operation isn’t till the morning. There’s no danger, and no need to worry.’ She sat down rather suddenly, feeling giddy.
‘You look tired.’
‘Yes. I was up most of the night, and I’ve been at the nursing home ever since without much to eat. I shall feel better after dinner.’
The butler came into the hall. He looked uncertainly at Charles-Edouard’s bag, left it where it was and said, ‘Sir Conrad won’t be back from the House until late.’
‘Perhaps we could have dinner at once then, please.’
Charles-Edouard was delightful at dinner; he told her all the Paris gossip.
‘I’m so very pleased to see you,’ he said from time to time, and towards the end of the meal, ‘You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.’
‘Oh Charles-Edouard, I’ve been ill from missing you.’
‘I thought I would open Bellandargues this summer. Sigi can get over his operation there. Won’t you come?’
‘For a week-end?’
‘For good. Let’s go upstairs.’
They went up. When they got to the drawing-room Grace opened the door, but Charles-Edouard took her hand and pointed further up.
‘Charles-Edouard, we can’t. We’re not married.’
‘We never have been married,’ he said.
They went together into her bedroom.
‘But I think we had better be,’ he said, later on, ‘and properly this time. For the sake of the child.’
Grace repeated happily and sleepily ‘For the sake of the child.’ Then she woke up a little more and said, ‘But why, Charles-Edouard, did you never make a sign? A whole year and no sign?’
‘No sign? When you refused to see me although I’d come all the way from Paris – when you told Sigi nothing would induce you to speak to me on the telephone – when you never answered the long letter I gave him for you. No sign? What more could I have done?’
So then it all came out. All poor Sigi’s major acts of iniquity and minor acts of trouble-making were revealed before the horrified gaze of his parents.
‘We seem to have given birth to a Borgia,’ said Charles-Edouard at last.
‘Rubbish!’ Grace said indignantly, ‘he’s a dear, affectionate little boy. The whole thing was entirely our own fault for leaving him too much alone when we were happy and depending too much on him when we were lonely. We’ve been thoroughly selfish and awful with the poor darling from the very beginning, I see it all now. He only did it because he loves us and wants to be with us. When we were together we left him out and made him jealous, so of course he thought the best plan would be to keep us apart.’
‘It’s terrible all this jealousy. First you and then the child. What am I going to do about it?’
‘You must try to be nicer, Charles-Edouard.’
‘I must anyhow try to be more careful.’
‘One thing, he did stop us marrying anybody else.’
‘Were we seriously considering such a step?’
‘I was, twice.’
‘How extraordinary. Confess you would never have amused yourself so much as you do with me.’
‘Amusement is not the only aim of marriage,’ said Grace primly.
‘Are you quite sure?’
They decided never to let Sigi realize that they knew all, but to keep a firm look-out for any underhand dealings in the future.
When Sir Conrad got back, very late, he found Charles-Edouard’s suitcase still in the hall, the drawing-room empty and dark. He nodded to himself, and went happily to bed.
Next morning Sigismond, still very much interested, was lifted on to a trolley, ‘Like the pudding tray at the Ritz,’ he said, and was wheeled away. The last thing he knew was the surgeon’s enormous eye gazing into his.
The very next minute, or half a lifetime later, he opened his eyes again. He was back in his bed. He saw the nurse and smiled at her. Then he saw his father and mother. They were holding hands. His mother leant over him. ‘How d’you feel, darling?’ Suddenly the full significance of all this became hideously apparent. He shut his eyes again with a shudder.
‘He’s not quite round,’ said the nurse, ‘he hasn’t seen you yet.’
‘Oh yes I have,’ said Sigi, ‘and I’m going to be sick.’
As soon as Sigismond was well enough to travel they all left for Paris on the Golden Arrow, complete with Nanny, the usual mountain of luggage, and Grace’s carpet, a huge roll done up with straps.
‘It will do for your bedroom at Bellandargues,’ said Charles-Edouard.
‘I meant it for your bedroom in Paris.’
But Charles-Edouard raised his hand, shook his head, and said, very kindly but firmly, ‘No.’
Madame Rocher, who was already back in Paris and delighted by this turn of events, rang up Charles-Edouard the day before their journey. ‘I’ve got Fr Lanvin,’ she said, ‘he’ll marry you on Thursday morning at eleven, and then Grace must be converted by him. He’s far the best and quickest, he did the Princes
se de Louville in no time.’
But Albertine, whom Charles-Edouard rang up to make quite sure that all Paris should know the facts of the case, begged him to go to her priest. ‘Fr Lanvin is quite all right, I’m sure, but I think you need somebody of a different calibre. Fr Strogonoff is so gentle and understanding, and then he specializes in foreign converts –’
‘Yes, I’m sure, Albertine, but you see my aunt has made the appointment now, I think we’d better keep it. We can always change, if Grace doesn’t like him.’ Grace thought it was just the way people go on about their dentists.
‘What?’ said Charles-Edouard, still on the telephone. ‘No! Are you sure?’
He was listening with all his ears. Grace could hear Albertine’s voice, quack, quack, quack, down the receiver, but could not hear what she was saying. Charles-Edouard seemed entranced by whatever it was.
‘Oh how interesting. Go on. Yes. What a sensation! Don’t you know any more? Don’t cut off – wait while I tell Grace. The Dexters,’ he said to Grace, ‘have flown to Russia. They’ve been Communist spies from the very beginning, and they’ve gone. It will be in the papers tomorrow. Salleté has just told Albertine the whole story. Well then, Albertine dearest, good-bye, and we’ll count on you Thursday at eleven. Saint Louis des Invalides. Nobody at all except Tante Régine and my father-in-law. Good-bye.’
‘So –?’ said Grace, all agog.
‘Well, it seems the Americans have been rather suspicious of your friend Heck for quite a long time. At last they had enough evidence to arrest him – he must have got wind of it and he flew to Prague the day before yesterday. The latest information is that he has turned up in Moscow.’
‘And Carolyn?’
‘With Carolyn and little Foss.’
‘Rather a comfort,’ said Grace, ‘to think that little Foss won’t be ruling the world after all.’
‘Rather a comfort,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘to think that we shall never have to listen to Hector’s views on anything again.’
‘Poor Carolyn, will she like living in Russia? One thing, the Russians can’t get on her nerves more than the French used to. So I was quite right, you see, she was a Communist at school. No wonder she got so cross when I reminded her.’
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 139