Don't Tell Alfred

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘The only person in Paris who isn’t is me,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling thoroughly out of it.’

  Philip looked guilty. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘that’s the whole morning wasted. How thankful I shall be when Miss Mackintosh arrives.’

  I was sorry that he and Davey were not quite hitting it off. I never saw my uncle again all day. Alfred and I had to lunch with the American Ambassador, who was passing through Paris between two holidays, and my evening was again taken up with ambassadresses from improbable lands which I could certainly not have pin-pointed on a globe; as I discussed the disappearance of the genus footman with them I again heard those shrieks which undoubtedly meant that Davey was keenly fratting in the entresol. I began to be very downhearted indeed.

  To add to my trials, the morning post brought news that good, clever, plain Jean Mackintosh, not attractive to men, unlikely to get married, whose sensible support was going to facilitate my task in such a variety of ways, was now not coming. She had married, suddenly, not sensibly at all, a member of the Chelsea Set; Louisa wrote to tell me this news, evidently thinking herself more to be pitied than I was.

  ‘Her godmother left her £4,000 and a tiara. It seems this Chelsea setter is always marrying or deed-polling people for little things like that. Oh Fanny!’

  Jean, I knew, was her favourite child. She ended up a perfect wail of despair: ‘PS. I am sending you Northey instead but it won’t be the same.’

  I had a feeling it would not be at all the same. I racked my brains to remember what I could about Northey, whom I had not seen since the early days of the war when Louisa and I were living at Alconleigh with our babies. A flaxen-haired toddler, she used to be brought to the drawing-room at tea-time and made to sing loud, tuneless songs, ‘S’all I be p’etty, s’all I be rit?’ We all thought her tremendously sweet. Louisa once told me that she was conceived in the Great Northern Hotel – hence her curious name. My children knew her well as they often stayed with the Fort Williams in Scotland; I seemed to have noticed that their verdict was rather scornful. ‘Northey is old-fashioned.’ ‘Northey, brimming as usual.’

  ‘Brimming?’

  ‘Yes, her eyes are always brimming over with tears.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Basil could have given me an account of her, he was good at describing people. Naughty Baz, in Spain, in Spain. I had at last received a sheet of paper from him, dirty and crumpled, having spent many a week in a trouser pocket, with a Barcelona postmark, on which was written, ‘I shan’t be able to lunch Saturday, all news when we meet. Love from Baz.’

  I wondered if I should not do well to put off this Northey, in spite of the fact that I had no other candidate and was beginning to feel the need of a secretary. Then my eye fell on the envelope of Louisa’s letter and I saw that she had scribbled something almost illegible on the back of it, by which I understood that the child was already on her way, in a cattle boat going from Glasgow via I couldn’t read what.

  ‘Good luck to her,’ said Philip, when I told him this. ‘What time do you think your uncle left the entresol last night?’ he added sourly.

  ‘About half past three,’ I said. ‘I heard them. Mrs Jung-fleisch brought champagne, by the sound of it.’

  ‘I’ve been talking to Mildred, she says it was absolutely hilarious – Pauline and Mr Warbeck are wonderful together, telling tales of the 1920s. If I were you I should put a stop to all this, it’s only prolonging the agony. Mildred says Pauline, who had been getting rather bored, has taken on a new lease of life.’

  ‘We must give him time, Philip. He’s only been here two days – I’m sure he’ll fix it in the end, he is so clever.’

  ‘Hm – I feel very doubtful.’

  So, in my heart of hearts, did I.

  Davey now appeared, bright and bustling, not at all like a man in the late sixties who had been up until half past three. ‘Sorry I’m late. Docteur Lecoeur has just been round to give me an injection of bull’s brains.’

  ‘Oh, so you found him then.’

  ‘He’s dead. But his son carries on in the same old house, with the same concierge. Paris is extraordinary the way nothing changes. If I hadn’t lost that address book I would have found all those nice friends of mine, or at least their children.’

  ‘And what about the Marquis and the Academician?’

  ‘Both away. Hope to see me next time I come. Anyhow, Lecoeur was the important one – goodness, I felt exhausted this morning – the lives you lead here – I wasn’t in bed till four!’

  ‘I heard you shrieking,’ I said, reproachfully.

  ‘I wished you’d popped down. Pauline was at the peak of her form. We had the life cycle of the Bolter, among other things, and now of course they are all longing to meet you.’

  Philip looked at me significantly.

  I said, ‘I hope you had a good dinner?’ Davey was fussy about food.

  ‘Not very. Coarsely mashed potatoes – there’s no excuse for that, nowadays. However, enough of this frivolity, agreeable as it has been. I was quite right to go into the thing thoroughly and in fact I only thought of the solution to our problem late at night after several glasses of wine.’

  ‘You have thought of a solution?’

  ‘Yes. It’s very simple but none the worse for that, I hope. As Philip so truly says, one can’t starve Pauline out and one certainly can’t lecture her out. We must bore her out. The problem is how to stop all these Dukes and Rothschilds and countless Countesses from going to visit her. Now I suppose the social life here is built up on “extras”, those men in white coats who go from party to party handing things round?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ said Philip, ‘more so every day.’

  ‘You must get hold of one who is seen at all the big receptions, IS SEEN are the operative words. He must know everybody by sight, but above all they must be well aware he does. Post him at the steps to the entresol, paper and pencil in hand, and tell him to write down the names of Pauline’s visitors – he might ask them as they go in – it must be very much underlined, what he is up to. At the same time, Philip, you must put it about on the grape vine that those who are found frequenting the entresol will not be invited to anything here during The Visit. I think you’ll find that will do the trick all right.’

  Philip gave a great shout of laughter – Davey joined in and they rocked to and fro. ‘Wonderful,’ Philip said.

  ‘I think it’s rather neat myself.’

  ‘But what Visit?’ I was considerably unnerved.

  ‘Not necessary to specify,’ said Philip, who now showed the true niceness of his character by accepting Davey’s scheme with whole-hearted appreciation, ‘the word Visit, with a capital V, is magical in Paris. To the gens du monde it is as the din of battle to the warrior. They will never risk missing it, like brave Crillon, simply in order to have a few more jolly evenings with Pauline. Hitherto it has been a sign of social failure not to be seen in the entresol – from now on it will be social death to go there. I’d have given anything to have thought of your scheme myself – what a genius you are. The decks will be cleared in half an hour.’

  ‘It must be properly organized,’ said Davey.

  ‘Yes, indeed. We won’t allow it to go off at half-cock, that would never do. First I’ll ring up the greatest gossips I know. Then I’ll go and engage M’sieur Clément. He’s our boy, he rules the concierges of the Avenue du Bois with a rod of iron and is the king-pin of that neighbourhood. All Paris knows him by heart. So I’ve got a busy day, better get on with it. I congratulate you keenly,’ he said to Davey and went off.

  Davey said complacently, ‘I hope now you are sorry that you suspected me of changing sides.’

  ‘Davey – I humbly apologize.’

  ‘Not that I mind. But you realize how it was. I had to find out what sort of people she was seeing. There are many amusing and delightful people here who wouldn’t care a rap about a Visit or even expect to be invited if there is one
. Docteur Lecceur, for instance. Those friends of hers, however, would. As I told you before, I understand the French.’

  Chapter Five

  DAVEY’S plan could not be put into operation for a day or two. When M’sieur Clément understood what he was being hired to do he demanded an enormous bribe. He pointed out that Lady Leone’s acquaintances all employed him in one capacity or another; if they suspected him of betraying them to les Anglais he might lose the many lucrative engagements and transactions on which his living depended. Philip, after a long session with him, came back to report and explained this to Davey and me but said that in fact no Parisian, especially not those who lived in M’sieur Clément’s district, would dare get on the wrong side of him. He had been king of the black market during the war and was now indispensable for things like difficult railway and theatre tickets and for his ability to produce any requirement, from unlimited whiskey to a trained nurse, not to speak of other, more sinister commodities, at a moment’s notice. Undoubtedly very thick with the police, he knew all about the private lives of a vast section of the community. Philip had suggested to him that he would not really be risking very much by undertaking our assignment and had said that we, for our part, were obliged to take into account the remuneration he would receive from people wanting him to keep dark the fact that they had been about to visit Lady Leone. After long, hard bargaining and double bluffing on both sides, Philip got him down to £500. They shook hands on this. M’sieur Clément, wreathed now in smiles, said it might seem rather expensive but he guaranteed that the work would be impeccable. Philip then flew to London and, with some difficulty, persuaded the powers that be to disburse this amount from the secret funds. All these negotiations had to take place without the knowledge of Alfred who would certainly never have allowed them for a single minute.

  At last the stage was set. Davey, Philip, and I were the audience, established behind muslin curtains at Philip’s bedroom window. His flat, which was over one of our lodges, had good views both of the courtyard and the street and was therefore in a commanding position. One could see and not be seen.

  ‘I haven’t been so excited since-chub-fuddling days with Uncle Matthew,’ I said to Davey.

  M’sieur Clément, a lugubrious individual with bottle nose, had posted himself by the staircase of the entresol. For some reason he was not only dressed in inky black from head to foot but the sheets of paper which he held ready for the guilty names were black-edged like those put out, for the congregation to sign, at a French funeral. No doubt, in fact, pinched from one, according to Philip, since M’sieur dement was, of course, a beadle. (Another of his part-time jobs was that of executioner’s assistant.)

  Presently a group of Lady Leone’s gossips sauntered elegantly into the courtyard. There were five or six of them, all seemed to have arrived together and they were deep in talk. A tall, commanding man began to recount something, the others clustered round him, savouring his words. Two more people came in from the street; they joined the group, shook hands and were evidently put into the picture, after which the teller continued his tale. Suddenly, looking round as if to illustrate some point, his eye fell on M’sieur Clément. He stopped short, clutched the arm of a young woman and pointed; they all turned and looked. Consternation. Hesitation. Confabulation. Flight. Never had chub been more thoroughly fuddled; they flapped off, mouths open, and disappeared into the main stream of the Faubourg.

  After this, incidents succeeded each other. A well-known pederast fainted dead away on seeing M’sieur Clément and was heaved, like Antony to the Monument, into the entresol. Women screamed; very few kept their heads and demanded to sign our book. Nobody else went near Lady Leone. Gradually, the intervals between visitors became longer; at eight o’clock, when the entresol was usually at its liveliest, a whole hour had gone by without a single soul coming through our gate.

  ‘It’s done the trick,’ Philip said, ‘all the telephones in Paris must be engaged. I’d better go and give the old fiend his ill-gotten gains and then we can dine. Good work!’ he said to Davey.

  ‘I must say I never saw £500 so easily earned.’

  ‘M’sieur Clément would reply, like Whistler, that we are paying for the knowledge of a lifetime.’

  Lady Leone was now deserted by her friends, except for faithful Mrs Jungfleisch, but greatly to my disappointment she showed no signs of leaving us. She lay on in her bed, perfectly contented, according to Davey, with her embroidery, the crossword puzzle and a very loud gramophone. When I suggested that we might take the gramophone away, since it did not belong to her at all but had been presented to the Embassy by a visiting rajah long ago, Davey and Philip made me feel like some cruel gaoler trying to remove the last solace of a lovely, unfortunate, incarcerated princess. It was less irritating, certainly, for me to hear strains of Mozart or the war speeches of Sir Winston Churchill, which she was inordinately fond of and which she played at full blast, than shrieks of laughter; at least Lady Leone could not be discussing me and my mother with a gramophone. The sting of her presence had been drawn by Davey’s clever manoeuvre – now that nobody went near her any more the fiction of illness could be maintained. Alfred’s face was saved. All the same it annoyed me that she should still be under my roof and so did the fact that Davey was in the habit of slipping downstairs for a game of scrabble before dinner. However, both he and Philip were rather reassuring. They said she was bored and restless; furthermore Mrs Jungfleisch was anxious to goto London for a debate at Chatham House. Their view was that Lady Leone would not be with us much longer, that she was merely biding her time in order to make a suitable exit. ‘Pauline won’t sneak out unobserved, you can be very sure. I expect she is hiring the Garde Républicaine to conduct her with trumpets and drums.’

  I had various preoccupations at this time, still without a secretary, Philip much busier than he had been at the beginning. The days seemed too short for the hundred and one things which I must see to, among others our first entertainment, a cocktail party for the Dominions’ Ambassadors. I was terrified at the thought of it, nightmares crowding in. I had not felt so nervous since the first dinner party I gave at Oxford, many years ago, for Alfred’s professor. This was rather unreasonable since I had very little to do with the organization. Philip made out the lists and Major Jarvis, our comptroller, saw to the drink and the food of which there was to be a mountain. ‘How can people eat anything at all between an enormous luncheon and an even more terribly stuffing dinner?’I asked.

  ‘You’ll see how they can. Are you going to do the flowers, Lady Wincham?’

  The day came. I bought a lot of pink carnations (my favourite flowers) and stuck them into silver bowls. They looked so pretty, I was quite amazed at my own cleverness. Then I went upstairs and put on my cocktail dress. Nobody could have said that it looked pretty; hideous it was and very strange. My maid, Claire, pronounced it to be ‘chic’, but without much conviction. I had never liked it, even when worn by a wonderfully elegant Indo-Chinese mannequin, and had only been persuaded into ordering it because my vendeuse, in urging it on me, seemed to have the backing of a prominent English writer on fashion.

  ‘Make no mistake,’ asserted this pundit (photograph appended), with her usual downright authority, ‘waists have gone for good.’

  Having no wish to make a mistake over a dress which cost what had formerly been my allowance for a whole year, I had plumped for this waistless creation and oh! how I loathed it. However, there was nothing to be done; I was in it now, I must hope for the best and only try not to see myself in a glass.

  The party was to take place in the state rooms on the ground floor. I went down and found Philip and Davey in hilarious mood, having had, I thought, good strong cocktails. I hurried towards them. They were kind enough not to remark on my dress but began making silly criticisms of the flowers.

  ‘So like you, Fanny – why didn’t you ask us first?’

  ‘Carnations dumped in vases simply don’t do any more. Haven’t you ever hear
d of Arrangements? Don’t you know about the modern hostess and her clever ways? Still-lifes – imaginative – not only flowers but yards of red velvet, dead hares, pumpkins, wrack from the seashore, common grasses from the hedgerow and the Lord knows what rubbish! Or else Japanesey, one reed by itself cunningly placed is worth five dozen roses, nowadays.’

  I did know what they meant. Once, asked to the house of a Dior don, with other wives (women in Oxford have no identity, they are lumped together as wives), I had noticed a lot of top-heavy old-man’s-beard in an urn surrounded by cabbages on the floor, and thought it all looked like a harvest home. People were saying, ‘Utterly divine, your Arrangements.’

  ‘Did Lady Leone go in for them?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Her feeling for colour and sense of form were the despair of all the hostesses here.’

  ‘Shall I tell you something? – I intend to stick to pink carnations.’

  Alfred joined us, saying, ‘What’s that dress, Fanny?’ in a falsetto voice he sometimes used to denote that he was being quizzical.

  ‘It’s the fashion.’

  ‘We are not here to be fashionable, you know.’

  There were voices in the hall now, our guests were beginning to arrive; Alfred and I stood by the fireplace waiting to come forward effusively when they were announced. Philip had suggested that warm American rather than cold English manners might be adopted on this occasion and that we must do our best to look as if we were pleased to see the people.’

  ‘I can’t say it, it wouldn’t seem a bit real.’

  ‘Don’t force yourself then, but do just bare the gums.’

  So there we were, preparing to simper, under the eyes of King George and Queen Mary, bad copies of bad portraits. I felt them disapproving of the fashionable dress, of the grins and of the whole notion of a cocktail party but approving of the carnations. Nobody came into the room. I felt perfectly idiotic planted there like a waxwork, horrible dress and artificial smile. There were clearly a lot of people in the hall; a curious silence had fallen on them. Davey and Philip went over to the door; when they got there they looked left towards the entrance and then, as though following the gaze of others, they sharply turned their heads to the staircase. They remained quite still, looking up it, with a stupefied expression.