by Bates, H. E.
‘Yes?’ Ma said. ‘What was that?’
‘I thought we’d open it for the christening. I thought it would be just the job for the christening.’
Nicest idea he’d had yet, Ma said. Like Mariette often said, he really did have the nicest ideas sometimes. The fair would make it a real good day Oh! and that reminded her of something. Was he aware that the christening was only ten days away and what had he done, if anything, about thinking up a nice present each for the two godmothers? Of course she hadn’t much experience of christenings but she thought it would be nice. She thought it was probably the done thing.
‘Present? Such as what?’
‘Something personal, I should think. Nice set of underclothes. Nice nightie. A nice nightie’s never in the way.’
Pop started to roar with laughter and Ma said:
‘Never mind. You know what I mean. And there’s another thing. Don’t forget you’ve got to go and meet Mademoiselle Dupont off the boat.’
Pop said he hadn’t forgotten; he had, in fact, given a lot of thought to that.
‘Serious, I hope?’ Ma said. ‘She’s come a long way and we want to make a good impression. After all it’s her first visit to England and we don’t want her to go away with any wrong ideas. Even if she is French.’
Pop cordially agreed. They most certainly didn’t. They had to make a good impression and, as he got up to stroll in the garden and finish his cigar and listen for a few moments to a late nightingale pouring song on the cool summer air, assured Ma that they most certainly would.
‘After all, Froggies are human, I suppose, Ma. In a way.’
7
Mademoiselle Dupont stood in the sunshine on the deck of the cross-channel steamer and gazed at the cream-white cliffs of Dover, crowned by their gigantic grey brooding lion of a castle, with a mixture of strange and conflicting emotions. Normally a person of a temperament tautly if not highly strung, she had experienced all day an apprehension verging on fear, a happiness at times very near to sickness and a sense of wondering expectancy so irrational that several times she had desperately wished she could turn and go back to France again. After all it wasn’t every day that you went to stay in the house of an English milord.
Deeply binding these feelings into a strong physical tension was a sense of almost primitive suspicion. Not a suspicion of anything or anybody in particular: merely a deep-rooted, peasant-blooded suspicion of being abroad, in a strange new country. For this reason she had put all her money into a suede leather belt which she had buckled under her corsets, had taken half a dozen aspirins against the dreaded likelihood of mal de mer and the paralysing excitements of travelling in general and had put on two sets of underclothes and two thick woollen jumpers against England’s notorious, crippling, even killing dampness. A deep superstition that she would be inevitably accosted by strange men or have her pocket picked had also made her put on dark glasses; by some illogical process of thought she felt she wouldn’t be seen so easily that way. The result of all this was that her stomach, even though the sea was soft and calm, seemed to have risen to the level of her too tightly corseted bust and was full of an astringent, contracting bile.
These insurances against fate and the half-dread of England’s shores were, however, small against the greater precaution she had taken with luggage. Five suitcases and a giant blue-and-green plaid hold-all contained among other things twenty dresses, six jumpers, eight nightdresses, a great assortment of lingerie and stockings, several pairs of heavy woollen bed socks, several scarves, three overcoats, two mackintoshes, seven hats and four bottles of cough cure.
It was her unshakable conviction that the social and domestic life in the house of an English milord would inevitably take her in a bewildering, paralysing grip. Every eventuality, from cocktail parties to dinners, tennis parties to race-meetings, tea parties to gymkhanas, not to speak of the christening itself, had had to be covered. And she had, she thought, covered them all.
After the boat had docked she found herself a porter, who wanted to know if she would be travelling by car or by train.
‘By car,’ she told him. ‘And it will be a Rolls Royce.’
‘Very good, lady. Meet you outside the station.’
The porter’s words merely served as yet another cause for misgiving. She suddenly experienced the fear that Milord Larkin wouldn’t be there to meet her. Something would have gone wrong. She would find herself deserted, her day in ruins.
Things were even worse when a customs officer took a not unsuspicious view of a Frenchwoman with five large suitcases and an even larger hold-all and it was nearly half an hour before she found herself outside the station, hot and flustered in her overweight woollens, looking for the Rolls.
To her intensely emotional relief it was there. She nearly wept. Pop too was there and with him someone who, dressed as he was in a pink jacket and small pink peaked cap, she could only think was some kind of old retainer, a footman or something of that sort.
‘Ah! bon jour, Mademoiselle!’ Pop, advancing cheerily into waves of lily-of-the-valley perfume, kissed her with gallantry on both cheeks, having been strictly warned by Ma not to kiss her on the lips in public, as this would undoubtedly upset her. Kissing on the lips in public wasn’t, she understood, quite the thing in France. Nor was he to call her froggy. ‘Comment allez-vous? Had a good journey? Nice crossing?’
‘Merveilleux, Monsieur Larkin,’ she said, pronouncing Larkin in the French way and oh! how good it was to see him.
This is the General,’ Pop said, with another show of gallantry. ‘And, General, this is Mademoiselle Dupont.’
The Brigadier, bowing with a certain military stiffness, expressed himself as delighted to meet her and held open the back door of the Rolls. The shining monograms seemed positively to wink in the sun. And odd though the elderly retainer’s uniform was – she almost supposed it was some medieval survival or something of that sort – Mademoiselle Dupont nevertheless felt a wave of flattery that completely calmed the last of her fears until she suddenly remembered something.
‘Quelle horreur, mes bagages! Where is my baggage?’
‘All is well, dear lady,’ the Brigadier said. ‘All in the boot. All taken care of.’
With a final gulp of relief she sat back on the Rolls’ luxurious cushions and the Brigadier, with a certain air of old-world circumspection, closed the door.
Pop decided that this was a good moment to have a mint-humbug. Ma didn’t like smoking in the Rolls; it made it smell like a four-ale bar. Nevertheless Pop often felt he had to have something to chew on while driving and mint-humbugs were the answer.
‘Mint-humbug, General?’
The Brigadier courteously declined the offer of a mint-humbug, at which Pop said:
‘Perhaps Mademoiselle Dupont would like one. Mind asking her?’
The mint-humbugs were large, rather like big gold-striped snails, and sticky. Mademoiselle Dupont, when offered one by the elderly pink-uniformed retainer, could only think it strange. Perhaps it was some old English custom which it would have been discourteous to refuse?
When she had put the mint-humbug into her mouth, where it clashed with some awkwardness against the top plate of her false teeth, the Brigadier got into the front seat of the Rolls with Pop, who now made instant use of the speaking-tube.
‘Well, Mademoiselle Dupont, this is England!’ he called to her, as if this astonishing truth were in danger of being overlooked or something.
Mademoiselle Dupont, now completely tongue-tied by the mint-humbug, could only utter some unintelligible mumble in reply.
‘Well, sit yourself back and make yourself comfortable now,’ Pop called. ‘We’ll be home in half an hour.’
Ma, supremely anxious to make the best of impressions, had placed dark red and bright yellow roses in the silver flower vases at the back of the Rolls and these, rich and beautifully scented, gave an air of great aristocracy to the interior, almost a sense of royalty.
England, here urban, there pas
toral, here downland, there a forest of television aerials, glided in its odd and entrancing mixture of scenes and styles past the windows of the Rolls. Every bit as anxious as Ma was to make the best of impressions, Pop now and then threw casual and concise information into the speaking-tube.
‘See that hill? Used to be called Caesar’s camp. Now turns out it was probably your bloke, William the Conqueror. Very old church just coming up. And a pub. Very old as well. The Saracen’s Head. Something to do with the wars of the Roses.’
‘The Holy Wars,’ the Brigadier reminded him. ‘The Crusades.’
Pop said he was very sorry. His mistake. Holy wars. Crusades. Very old anyway. He was supremely anxious to stress the fact that everything was very old and now inquired if Mademoiselle Dupont was familiar with the word pub? Pubs were a great feature of the land; Pop didn’t know what they’d do without ‘em.
Mademoiselle Dupont, rather despondently engaged in unequal struggle with the mint-humbug, which among other things was now making her perspire stickily, could only slobber, offering no word in reply, so that Pop confided to the Brigadier that he thought she’d gone deaf or something since he last saw her.
‘More probably extreme shyness.’
‘Could be. She’s a bit the nervous type.’
‘By no means unattractive.’
You were telling him, Pop said and promptly recalled not unpassionate moments in bedrooms at the Hôotel Beau Rivage which Mademoiselle Dupont kept at Saint Pierre le Port in Brittany, at the same time inviting the Brigadier to admire the cuff-links she had given him as a farewell present a few summers before.
‘Bit in love with me. Had a job to hold her back once or twice.’
To this modest confession the Brigadier offered no comment and Pop said:
‘Got her a present too. For the christening. Set of underwear. Ma thought it would be the thing. Black. Sort you can see through.’
‘Not in danger of being misinterpreted?’
Pop said he didn’t think so; she was old enough to know what was what by now.
Mademoiselle Dupont, who had now been able satisfactorily to disengage herself from the mint-humbug, which she had popped into her handkerchief and thence into her handbag, thought England looked remarkably pretty as she gazed from the windows of the Rolls. Oats were turning to a beautiful pinkish yellow in some fields; in others wheat bore on it a kind of bloom, almost blue, that heralded full ripening, and everywhere along the hedgerows wild roses and honeysuckle were in full, abundant bloom. She wasn’t disappointed.
What she was really looking for, however, were the great houses. She had conjured up in her mind, over and over again, a picture of an English house such as that milord Larkin might live in. Rejecting the idea of moats, drawbridges, turreted walls and battlements as being perhaps almost too much to expect, she nevertheless knew it would be old, probably in that style of black-and-white timbering she had often seen in travel magazines, with tall, fine chimneys and black oak doors, and certainly full of calm, peace and dignity.
A few moments later the Rolls went past exactly such a house and all the thrill of long pent-up expectancy shot through her, actually making her cry out with emotion and excitement.
‘Ah! that house! – ah! how really most beautiful!’
‘Very old,’ Pop assured her. ‘Manor house. Very like Elizabethan.’
‘Ah! manoir. La Reine Elizabeth.’
This, this was it, she thought; this was what she had come for.
‘Home in about five minutes,’ Pop called down the speaking-tube.
‘Sounds extraordinarily excited all of a sudden,’ the Brigadier said. ‘Still, the Gallic temperament, I suppose. Odd how very different they are from us, especially when you think how much of their blood really runs in ours.’
‘Well, foreign, ain’t they?’ Pop said, as if this explained, even if it didn’t condone, all sins.
‘By the way,’ the Brigadier said, ‘what time is the christening on Sunday?’
‘Twelve o’clock. Midday. Afterwards you’re all coming to lunch – you, Angela, Jasmine, Edith, Mademoiselle Dupont, the Rev. Candy, the lot. Going to have a marquee. Ma’s going to lay it out with stacks of cold stuff. Plenty of champagne – three colours, ordinary, pink and red – and barrels o’ beer and cider. And then when that lot’s gone down we’ll open the fair. Got the old organ fixed – plays some very nice old tunes.’
‘Clearly going to be quite an event.’
‘It is an’ all. First time me and Ma have had a wholesale christening anyway, I’ll tell you. And probably the last. Still, you never know.’
A few minutes later Pop drew up the Rolls in the Larkin yard, riotously sounding first the town horn and then the country one to announce his arrival, the continuous contrapuntal clamour disturbing geese, turkeys, hens, guinea-fowl, pigs, ponies and all the rest and finally bringing Ma, Primrose and Victoria running from the house in greeting.
In the back of the Rolls Mademoiselle Dupont passed from a temporary state of paralysis into a dark bad dream. Her vision of calm antiquity, of dignity distilled from the aristocratic wine of centuries, disappeared under a mad, ruinous mess of muck-heaps, rusty iron, old oil drums, decaying tactors, nettles, haystacks, crumbling hovels and all the rest of Pop’s perfick paradise. An earthquake could hardly have shattered her more; and as she finally bestirred herself, shocked and actually trembling, and saw the old pink-coated retainer holding open the door of the Rolls for her – no, he couldn’t possibly be an old retainer, after all, she thought, he could only be a member of some strange exclusive English club – she was desperately near to tears.
So much so that she hardly heard Pop’s stentorian announcement of ‘Well, ‘ere we are!’ and in confused desperation dived into her handbag for her handkerchief, which she pressed nervously to her face so that for the space of about a second the mint-humbug was stuck there.
A moment later it fell off and as if at this signal one of the twins switched on a gramophone at the open sitting-room window, where it blared out La Marseillaise, while the other switched on the lights in the suits of armour, so that the two vizored heads grinned out in blue, red and yellow welcome, convincing Mademoiselle Dupont that she was the centre of some awful, garish, medieval nightmare.
8
While Mademoiselle Dupont, overwhelmed by the day’s too-powerful emotions, retired to her room and there sobbed inconsolably into her pillow, Ma proceeded to remonstrate rather severely with Pop, particularly in the matter of the mint-humbug, actually calling him Sydney Larkin several times, which he was fully aware was the greatest expression of reprimand she could muster.
‘If I thought you’d been larking about with the poor dear and upsetting her, Sydney Larkin, I wouldn’t half give you what for with the chill off. I might even keep you rationed –’
‘Good Gawd, Ma, steady. I never done a thing –’
‘Well, I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. All I can say is you’ll have to make it up to her. She’s started off with a very bad impression and that was the last thing I wanted. You’ll have to be very, very nice to her.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Never mind yes, but. You go and be nice to her. Taken her present up yet? No? Well then, go and take it up. And then ask her to come down for a champagne cocktail. No Red Bulls or Moon-Rockets or that lark tonight. She wants her nerves calming. And you’ve got to keep sober too.’
‘Good Gawd, Ma, have a bit of heart. You sound as if you’d got the pip.’
Shortly afterwards Pop proceeded to marshal all his forces of diplomatic gallantry. He found the set of lingerie, which Ma had wrapped in a box with mauve and silver paper round it and a big broad yellow ribbon, and took it upstairs. For a few moments he considered getting Primrose, whose French was pretty fair, to write some few well-chosen words of French greeting on a card, but Primrose was in the bathroom, shampooing her hair in readiness for Sunday, and he decided to give the idea the go-by.
‘Mademoisell
e Dupont?’ With quite uncharacteristic discretion Pop tapped very gently on her bedroom door. ‘Mademoiselle Dupont? May I come in?’
There was no answer.
‘Mademoiselle? Have a word with you?’
Presently he heard her footsteps coming across the bedroom floor and the key turning in the lock. Then the door opened and a singularly depressed-looking Mademoiselle Dupont stood before him, eyes crimson and downcast. She had clearly been copiously weeping.
‘Bear up now, bear up!’ Pop said with the tenderest sort of cheerfulness. ‘Mustn’t turn the milk sour. Worse things happen at sea.’
Mademoiselle Dupont, who couldn’t for the life of her understand what the sea had to do with her own particular distress, said nothing. Her lips merely trembled.
‘Pour vous,’ Pop said, holding out the gay silver, mauve and yellow parcel, ‘avec amour.’
‘Pas pour moi? Non?’
‘Oui, oui. Little present. From me. Sort of welcome to England.’
Pop, who was nowhere near as bilingual as Mademoiselle Dupont, now decided to give French the go-by too. It was a lot of fag really and he’d only get himself all tangled up. He was however astute enough to remember a French gesture and with something like courtliness he bent and kissed her hand. This was entirely the wrong thing to have done, as it turned out, because she instantly started weeping again, not very loudly, but with very low, heartfelt sobs.
Pop, half afraid that Ma would hear and start giving him the old salt and vinegar again, led her into the bedroom and shut the door. He had already decided that comfort had better take a physical form, with as few words as possible. With this in mind he put his arm round her waist and squeezed her several times, the pressure positive but not urgent – very far from the sort of thing that, in Ma’s words, would bring her to the boil.
Eventually she sat on the bed, with the parcel on her knees, and started muttering muted words of apology and how it was all so strange. She supposed she had become ridiculously overexcited. Pop didn’t say a word but merely continued with the physical treatment, which presently began to have some success, so that she actually dried her eyes and prepared to undo the parcel.