‘But, dearest, how can we prevent it? Charles-Edouard is quite right. We can’t do more for the boys now (any of them) than look on at their vagaries with tolerance and provide a background when they need one.’ Twinge of conscience here. Had I been nice enough to David?
Valhubert said, ‘Exactly. They are grown up. Each man in the last resort is responsible for himself. Let them be – let them go. Sigi tells me they are drifting off tomorrow with Yanky Fonzy, taking 20 per cent of his earnings, plus their expenses and anything else they can nick. All right. Count it as the Grand Tour; they’ll see the world; it’s better than packing. When they come back, if they are eighteen by then, they can go to the wars like everybody else. Only do send Fabrice this afternoon to see Tante Odile.’
‘How French you are, Charles-Edouard,’ said Grace, laughing.
‘Hot news!’ This was Northey, coming in with my breakfast. ‘The Bomb from Brum has buggered!’
‘Already? And the boys never came to say good-bye?’
‘The point is, he has left them behind. There was the most terrific bust-up yesterday at Le Pop Club and he has gone.’
‘Can it be true? What has happened?’
‘It was all about the publicity. You see when Yank saw those kids in Main Street – biggest outdoor reception even he has dreamed of – he thought he’d never had it so good. He expected to hit the headlines on the front pages. Grandfather in the taxi, he thought, gave that little extra something that journalists love, then the crowds, the police, Alfred going to the Quai (I must say it wrung my withers not telling the dear little soul about it).’
‘If you had, Northey –’
‘Yes, well, I didn’t, did I? So Yank thought the boys were geniuses and honestly, Fanny, in a way they were. You’ve got to hand it to Sigi – he mobilized that enormous crowd – then the Vel d’Hiv was a whizz, every teenager in Paris must have been there and the receipts broke all records. At the Club they were congratulating Yank on his wonderful agents and he was so pleased he kept signing travellers’ cheques, giving them to the boys. Of course he could hardly wait to see the papers. Came the Dawn – quelle horrible surprise! As you know, sweet Amy and the rest of them barked up the wrong tree – Yank might have stayed in London for all they knew and the bitter thing was his wonderful riot was put down to those silly old islands. His name wasn’t mentioned in the news at all – no photographs of him with the screaming kids – taxi gimmick thrown away. A few paragraphs in the entertainment pages saying that he had arrived in Paris and sang from a balcony in the Avenue Gabriel. There’ll be a story in the jazz papers of course, but he always has them on his side and this time he’d counted on the dailies. In short, Sigi did marvels, but he only warned the jazz journalists and he got all of them in the garden. He never thought of telling the others – he had no idea, of course, that there would be such a mob of kids in Main Street. So the whole thing has fallen as flat as a pancake. Yank says that’s what comes of dealing with bloody amateurs; he telephoned to London for his old agent he’s always had and as soon as he arrived they drifted off –’
‘Northey! It’s too interesting and unexpected! So how are the boys taking it?’
‘If you ask me, they are relieved. They had begun to see that Yanky is a most unpleasant person. And Fanny, it’s my opinion they’ve had about enough of earning their own livings. They admit now that the shavers were a tremendous bore – it seems you are shut up in a horrible sort of place which brings on headaches. Driftin’ would have been rather fun, but not with Yank. He has put them right off the Showbiz – and they didn’t much care for the people at the Club (except for the Duke, who is heaven). They were all on Yanky’s side and made the boys feel inferior. Then one of their friends at Eton has asked them to a boys’ shoot in Jan which they long to accept. Apparently it’s a spiffing house to stay in, where the oldies know their place. They’d like to become ordinary again, you know – they’d really give anything to go back to Eton.’
‘Well, that’s out of the question – silly little fools. We shall have to see what can be done with them – Condorcet probably, before they cram for Oxford. Meanwhile it’s almost the Christmas holidays and they can go to their old shoot. Oh, darling, you don’t know what a weight off my mind this is!’
At dinner that evening the boys were studiously normal. They wore dinner jackets, their hair, which had been standing on end, was now watered and brushed in the usual way; they were clean. They gave us looks which I well remembered from their early nursery days and which I could remember bestowing, myself, on the grown-ups; looks which said if all can be forgotten and forgiven we will be good again. They called Alfred Father, and asked him to explain about the C.E.D. They asked me what books I had been reading – I quite expected them to say ‘Have you been abroad lately?’ a favourite gambit with people they hardly knew. They were sweet and attentive to Uncle Matthew and told him about the shoot they were going to. His old face lit up because it had once belonged to a relation of his and he had shot there many a time in the past.
‘Who has got it now?’
‘The father of our friend Beagle. He has made nine (you know, the big ones, millions, I mean), since the war.’
‘Like blissful Jacques Oudineau,’ said Northey, half to herself.
‘Has he indeed? You want to look out, in the Sally Beds, not to shoot up the hill. Feller peppered me there once good and proper. Where’s young Fonzy this evening?’
Sheepish looks. ‘Gone to Moscow,’ said Northey.
‘What’s he want to do that for? Payne and I had our luncheon at a place where the cabmen eat. They haven’t got proper shelters; this is a restaurant. Dangerous good snack. We got talking with a Russian there who seemed heartily dissatisfied with his government – you’d hardly believe the things he told us. Now young Fonzy is a very civil chap. He gave me a lot of his records, signed. Of course the signature doesn’t make the smallest difference – I mean you can’t hear it – but he meant it kindly no doubt.’
‘What have you been doing all day, Uncle Matthew?’
‘After luncheon we went to the museum. Saw old Foch’s coat and a lot of dummy horses and some pictures of battles we liked very much. Then I came back to see if there would be a cocktail party but you were out.’
‘Oh bother, yes – it was a National Day we had to go to.’
‘It didn’t matter. I was rather tired you know, really.’
After dinner he said it was bedtime and he’d better say good-bye. ‘We have an early start – I shan’t come and disturb you in the morning, Fanny – I know you’ve never been much use before seven and I want to be off at half-past five. Many thanks. Payne and I have enjoyed ourselves.’
‘Come again,’ I said.
All three boys were invited to stay at Boisdormant. Before they left I screwed up my courage to have a long-postponed talk with Fabrice. This was a moment I had always dreaded, when I must tell him who his father was. He knew that my cousin Linda was his mother and presumably thought that her husband, Christian Talbot, whose surname he bore, was his father. He had never seen Christian or exhibited any interest whatever in him and since he had asked no questions I had not raised the subject. I found it, for some reason, deeply embarrassing to do so.
‘Fabrice, darling, you’re sixteen now –’
‘Definitely.’
‘Which is really grown-up. In fact you have taken charge of your own life; you’re not a child any more. So I suppose I can talk frankly to you –’
‘If this is a pi-jaw hadn’t I better fetch Charlie?’
‘No, it isn’t. One doesn’t pi-jaw with one’s fellow grown-ups. I simply want to talk about your parents. Now I’ve always told you that my darling cousin Linda was your mother.’
‘Definitely. And my father was the son of this old woman we are going to stay with.’
‘Yes, but how did you know?’
‘Mum, you are a scream! Of co
urse I’ve known since I was nine – from the very first moment I saw Sigi at Easterfields. He had heard the nannies telling each other when he was meant to be asleep.’
I suppose my feelings on hearing this must have been the same as those of a mother who finds that her girl has been conversant with the facts of life since childhood. Thankful, really, not to have to enter into difficult explanations, I felt slightly aggrieved to think that Fabrice had kept such important knowledge from me all these years and not best pleased at the way in which he had found it out.
‘Everything’s always arranged by Sigi,’ I said, crossly. ‘Never mind. So, darling, be very nice to your grandmother, won’t you?’
‘Then she might adopt me and leave me a lot of money?’
‘Oh dear! How cold-blooded you are –’
But I knew that at sixteen people put on a cold-blooded air partly because they are terrified of betraying sentiments which might embarrass them. Fabrice would be incapable now of saying that Alfred and I were his heart’s father and mother; that would come much later, if at all.
He went on, ‘Sigi thinks we might make a syndicate for getting what we can out of her. She can take the place of Yanky in our lives.’
‘Good luck to you!’ I said. ‘I expect that Duchess is capable of looking after herself – just like Yanky. You boys aren’t quite as clever as you think you are –’
‘Don’t be ghoulish, Mum.’
They stayed a week at Boisdormant and came back in tearing spirits, having greatly enjoyed themselves. Oudineau had taken them out shooting every day and Jacques Oudineau, who kept a little aeroplane at a nearby aero-club, had allowed them to flop out of it in parachutes to their hearts’ content. In the evenings they had listened with real, not simulated, interest to the Duchess’s endless tales of her family and the history of Boisdormant. They were taking notes of episodes suitable to be incorporated in the Son et Lumiére and other attractions for tourists which they planned to produce there the following summer. Jacques Oudineau would see to the technical details, Sigi was to be publicity agent in Paris while our boys, collaborating with Basil and Grandad, would supply an endless stream of Britons. Beautiful Boisdormant was clearly destined to wake up one day and find itself the French Woburn. As these activities were not likely to get the boys into much trouble and could easily be combined with their lessons, I could only feel thankful at the turn their lives had taken. Jacques Oudineau, young and dynamic, seemed to have gained a far more complete ascendancy over them in one week than Alfred and I during their whole lives; they could only talk of him. He had decreed that they must now work very hard and pass all the exams with which the modern child is plagued; then he would take them into his business and they would be happy ever after. As for the Duchess, according to Valhubert she found that Fabrice more than came up to her expectations. As soon as she saw Uncle Matthew, she said, she realized that the family was bien. Fabrice himself then won her heart by looking like her late son and exhibiting perfect manners. Her will, it seemed, had already been altered in his favour.
24
After Christmas, Philip was posted to Moscow. It seemed to me that everybody had either gone or was going there. M. Bouche-Bontemps, in a fur hat, was conferring with Mr K. at the Kremlin; the French papers were full of lines and sidelines on Russia, no photograph without its onion dome. On Boxing Day, David and Dawn had their baby in a snowstorm between Omsk and Tomsk, causing the maximum amount of trouble to Alfred’s colleague in Moscow; telegrams flew back and forth. They were illegally on Soviet territory; it was not easy to get permission for them to stay there until David should be out of danger. (The other two had risen above the experience but it had nearly killed him.) However, the kind Ambassadress took them all in; knowing by experience how difficult it would be to budge them again, I felt sorry for the Ambassador. Yanky Fonzy was enjoying a triumphant season at the Bolshoi. Basil and Grandad had just got their visas and were going to Moscow to negotiate a long-term exchange of tourists.
It was more of a blow than a surprise to learn that we were to lose Philip. We had always known that he was due for a move and that he had only been left at Paris long enough to see us comfortably into the Embassy before becoming Counsellor somewhere else. When he came to tell me his news I said, ‘Talk about a Pull to the East – I feel as if I were living in the last act of The Three Sisters. All we get back from Moscow is Hector Dexter, a very poor exchange for you and Northey.’
‘How d’you mean, me and Northey?’
‘I naturally suppose you’ll be taking her. You’re not going to leave her here with a broken heart, Philip – don’t tell me that?’
‘Oh, dearest Fanny, do I really want the whole of the Praesidium milling round my dacha? Not to speak of faithful wolves and sweet Siberian crows in one’s bedroom?’
‘As soon as she’s married, with a baby, all that will stop, I’ve seen it so often. How is your love for Grace?’
‘Very hopeless, what with one thing and another. My own fault for telling Mees about St Expédite. Every time I go to St Roch, there she is keenly putting up candles. It’s quite ridiculous – the saint doesn’t know which way to turn, as Mees said herself, last time we met there.’
‘Chuck the whole thing and marry her.’
‘What a matchmaker you are.’
‘It’s time the poor duck was settled. Besides, think how lonely you’d be in Moscow, without any of us.’
‘Good for trade,’ said Philip, ‘promotion, important post and so forth, but I can’t say I greatly look forward to it. I would certainly find it much jollier if I had Mees there. But what would you do without her yourself?’
‘It won’t be the same, but I can have sister Jean now. The Chelsea setter has already found another girl with more money and a larger tiara, and Jean is looking for a job.’
‘Oh dear – how I hate taking irrevocable decisions!’
‘Go on, Philip. No time like the present. She’s in her office – go and propose to her this very minute.’
‘All right. So long as you realize that it’s entirely your responsibility.’ He kissed me on both cheeks and went off.
I was now seized by misgivings. Left to himself, would not Philip have havered and wavered and in the end gone away without coming to a decision? I had induced him to propose, deliberately ignoring the wise reflections of Alfred, although I knew that there was a great deal of truth in them. On the face of it, Philip had the makings of an excellent husband. Attractive, kind, clever, gay, and amusing, never boring, he was also very rich. Nevertheless something was missing, some sort of intensity or ardent flame which, had it existed, might well have won over Grace, or, in the old Oxford days, me myself. Furthermore, he had been in love with us as he was not with Northey. She had fallen in love at first sight, so she loved an image which she had invented and which might easily be rubbed away in daily wear and tear. On the other hand, I told myself, there are no rules for successful marriage. Northey and Philip seemed rather suited, she so lively, he so orthodox; her superabundant vitality, the maternal instinct she lavished on creatures, would turn into their proper channel when she had babies; she was accustomed, now, to Embassy life.
Another factor, I must say, weighed with me. Mockbar had, of late, taken Northey as the heroine of his page. It was no secret now to the readers of the Daily Post that the Marquis de Valhubert, who had escorted the world’s most beautiful women, was her ‘friend’. His British-born wife was expecting her fifth child in March; Mockbar gave the impression that, after this happy event, Valhubert would announce his engagement to Northey.
‘Really, darling,’ Grace said, ‘I shall have to find out what sort of thing the bridegroom’s wife is expected to wear at a wedding.’
‘Poor soul,’ was Northey’s reflection, ‘he has found out the truth about the riots and he is minding. Hard put to it to mollify Lord Grumpy, just as the children are getting to the age of a glass of wine with t
heir food, you know. However, there’s hot news today. M. Cruas is engaged to Phyllis McFee!’
I wondered why these characters were suddenly being liquidated. M. Cruas may have been based on fact; Phyllis McFee was certainly a figment of Northey’s imagination; both played a useful part in what Philip called ‘the carry-on’. During the last week or two they had been unusually busy – hardly a day without one or other being invoked. It seemed rash of her to make such a clean sweep; I felt a little uneasy. ‘Is it wise to get rid of them both at a blow?’ I asked.
‘Much as I shall miss the beloveds, I have their happiness to consider. Each for each is what we teach. They are buggering off on a long, long honeymoon in Asia Minor.’
Everything considered, was it not my duty to Louisa to get this wayward creature married if I could?
Northey stood in the doorway. Her eyes were like blue brilliants; she radiated happiness. She stood quite still and said, ‘It’s me, Fanny! I’m engaged!’
‘Darling – yes, I know. I can’t tell you how delighted I am!’
‘You know?’
‘Philip told me.’
‘But I’ve only just told him.’
I saw that I had been tactless, of course she would not like the idea of Philip having discussed the matter beforehand.
‘He was looking everywhere for you and I suppose he felt so happy that he couldn’t resist telling me.’
‘Oh yes, I see – he did very kindly offer. Only think, Fanny, two short weeks ago I would have accepted.’ She shuddered.
‘But, darling, I don’t quite understand. I thought you said you were engaged?’
‘Yes. I’m engaged to Jacques Oudineau.’
1. Nancy would not allow the novel to be republished during her lifetime, on the basis that what was amusing at the time wasn’t amusing later. ‘We were younger and high-spirited then,’ she wrote to Evelyn Waugh in the context of her husband Peter Rodd’s fl irtation with Mosley’s Blackshirts, ‘and didn’t know about Buchenwald.’
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 164