‘Is he a chef, in Paris?’
‘By no means! He directs an enormous electrical concern – Jacques Oudineau will produce all the atomic plant of the future. He’s immensely powerful and very attractive, one meets him dining out everywhere – that’s his Mercedes, parked by the kitchen garden.’
‘What a charming room this is!’
‘Yes – there’s nothing so pretty as a château-fort – redecorated in the eighteenth century. This panelling is by Pineau. Look at those heaps of illustrated papers – they go back fifty years and more. One day Grace and I were waiting for her to come down and we began looking at them (I am particularly fond of Matania – orgies – galley-slaves – jousting and so on). Literally showers of banknotes came tumbling out of them, all obsolete. Yes, she’s a miser in the true sense of the word.’
Presently our hostess appeared looking, I thought, exactly the same as she had some twenty-seven years ago, at Hampton. She had then been in her fifties; she was now in her eighties; she had seemed old then and not a day older now. She must once have been pretty, with little turned-up nose and black eyes, but almost before middle age, probably, she had become stout; there was something porcine in her look. It was hard to imagine that she could have given birth to the irresistible Fabrice. Almost on her heels, Oudineau reappeared and in a voice of thunder announced, ‘’chesse est servie.’
We lunched, in a narrow room with windows on both sides, off Sèvres plates which must literally have been worth their weight in gold. ‘They belonged to Bauffremont – you know them very well, my dear Charles-Edouard. I never allow Jacques Oudineau to wash them up; he is quite a good cook, but a most unreliable boy in other ways.’
The luncheon was indeed worth the journey. We began with brochet. Why is brochet so good and pike so nasty, since the dictionary affirms that they are one and the same? Then partridges, followed by thick juicy French cutlets quite unlike the penny on the end of a brittle bone which is the English butcher’s presentation of that piece of meat. They were burnt on the outside, inside almost raw. Boiled eggs suddenly appeared, with fingers of buttered toast, in case anybody should still be famished. Then a whole brie on bed of straw; then chocolate profiteroles. I was beginning to get used to such meals, but they always made me feel rather drunk and stupid for an hour or two afterwards.
When she tasted the salad, Madame de Sauveterre said ‘Vinegar!’
‘Jacques is in despair, Madame la Duchesse, he forgot to bring a lemon.’
‘It’s inadmissible. This boy always forgets something. Last time it was the truffles. He has no head. Thank goodness I haven’t got shares in his concern.’
‘Thank goodness I have,’ said Valhubert, ‘since they double every year.’
The Duchess asked a hundred questions about the Embassy, specially wanting to know what had become of all the English people she had known there in the past.
‘Et cette adorable Ava – et la belle Peggy – et ce vieux type si agréable du Service, Sir Charles?’
When she saw how little I could tell her about any of them she put me down for what I am, provincial. Valhubert, however, knew all the answers. He told her that she had met me already, at Hampton, after which she got on to Lady Montdore and her circle. Here I did better.
‘Yes, she died before the war, of heart failure while having an operation in Switzerland.’
I did not add that it was an operation for leg-lifting which Cedric, the present Lord Montdore, had persuaded her to undergo against a great deal of medical advice. He said that he utterly refused to be seen with her at the Lido again until it had been done. Her heart, worn out by dieting and excessive social life, had stopped under the anaesthetic. As this happened at a very convenient moment for him, the whole affair seemed fishy and many people openly said that he had murdered her. Soon afterwards the war broke out and he fled to America. ‘Darling, you can’t really imagine one going over the top?’
Indeed it was an unlikely conception. However, having killed Lady Montdore and failed to kill Germans, he was badly received in England when he returned there after the war. He had very soon gone back and settled in his native continent.
‘The present Montdore? Yes, he lives in the West Indies. I miss him very much. Polly? She is happy, has thousands of children and has completely lost her looks.’
‘Fabrice always said she would. And Lady Montdore’s lover – ce vieux raseur – I forget his name?’
‘Boy Dougdale? He has become one of our foremost biographers.’
‘Now tell me about yourself, charmante Ambassadrice. I hear you have two boys at school with that little monster of Charles-Edouard’s? I don’t know much about young people as I never see any, but one hears such tales –’
‘Does one?’ said Charles-Edouard, amused. ‘What sort of tales penetrate to Boisdormant, ma tante?’
‘You would know how true it is,’ she said to me, ‘but I am told the boys and girls nowadays are against birth?’
‘Against birth?’
‘Against being born.’
‘My aunt means they don’t care whether they belong to good families or not, any more.’
‘Oh, I see.’ I had supposed she meant something to do with birth control. ‘But do you think young people ever cared about such things?’
‘When I was young we did. In any case it is shocking to be against. The grandchildren of a friend of mine actually started a newspaper against birth – horrible, I find, and so of course one of the girls married somebody who wasn’t born –’
‘Yes,’ said Valhubert, with a quizzical look in my direction, ‘it won’t do. We can’t have these goings-on in society, though I must say the unborn young man is rather solid for a disembodied spirit.’
‘You laugh now, Charles-Edouard, but when your daughters are grown up you will see these things in a very different light. Tell me more about your boys, Madame l’Ambassadrice, I hear that one of them is called Fabrice?’
‘He is the child of my cousin who is dead. I have adopted him.’
Suddenly we both found that we could not go on with this conversation. We looked at Valhubert who came to the rescue. ‘When all three of them come over for the Christmas holidays I’ll bring them here for a few days.’
‘Yes, you must. Old Oudineau can teach them to ride bicycles – children like that very much, I find. Do you heat the Embassy with coal or mazout?’
16
When we got back to the Embassy Philip was crossing the courtyard. Charles-Edouard refused a cup of tea; he said Grace would be longing to hear about our day and he thought he had better get back. He drove straight off. Philip came into the house with me. I said, ‘I like Valhubert very much.’
‘The thing about lady-killers is that they kill ladies,’ he replied, grumpily. ‘That ass of a Northey is dining with him again tonight.’
‘Oh, Philip – alone?’
‘I’ve no idea. Did you see the papers this morning?’
‘Hardly. I was in a rush.’
‘Didn’t see Mockbar?’
I stood still. We were half-way up the stairs. ‘Now what?’
‘He has found out that the famous Frenchman who won your mother in a lottery is none other than poor old Bouche-Bontemps. He says he is able to reveal that the French premier is one of the ex-stepfathers of Ambassadress Lady Wincham.’ Philip pulled a newspaper cutting from his pocket. ‘Here we are – able to reveal, yes – Her sixty-three-year-old mother, he goes on – yes, listen to this, it’s stirring stuff – ex-Lady Logan, ex-Mrs Chaddesley-Corbett, ex-Viscountess Tring, ex-Madame Bouche-Bontemps, ex-Mrs Rawle, ex-Mrs Plugge, ex-Señora Lopez, ex-Mrs Chrisolithe, is now married to Pimlico man “Grandad” Markson, 22, organizer of Grandad’s Tours. Interviewed in London, Mrs Markson said she had lost touch with husband number four. “We were madly in love,” she said. Asked if it was true that M. Bouche-Bontemps won her in a lottery, she said, “I think it was
a tombola.”’
‘So?’
‘Bouche-Bontemps is frantic, I’ve had him on the telephone a dozen times. He says he remembers keenly living with this lady, out of her head, but pretty and funny, and he thinks they were together for two or three months but he certainly never married her.’
‘Goodness!’ I said, ‘that seems to put him in an awkward position, doesn’t it? Like when are you going to stop beating your wife? If he married the Bolter it’s bad but if he didn’t marry her it’s worse?’
‘No, no. You don’t understand the French, as Davey would say. If he married her that’s the end of his career but if he only lived with her nobody here would think anything of it. Can’t you ring her up and find out?’
‘Dear me! But I’m afraid she says [I was looking at Mockbar’s piece] husband number four. Come on, we’ll put a call through now.’
It was not necessary, however. In the Salon Vert there was a telegram on top of my afternoon letters. ‘Never married him darling it was deed-pollers gave no interview have taken it up with Grumpy who promises denial tomorrow in Daily Post Bolter.’
‘Oh well,’ said Philip when I handed him this. ‘That will make it much better. If they really deny it in the Daily Post the French papers won’t copy it. They are far keener on accuracy than ours.’
‘Don’t you think Mockbar has gone too far? Might he not get the sack?’
‘Not he! Much more likely to get a rise so that he can fatten his brats until the next jump in the cost of living forces him to make another scoop.’ He lifted up the receiver. ‘Katie, get the Président du Conseil for Lady Wincham, will you?’
‘Is that my stepfather?’ I said and was nearly blown over by a burst of laughter. ‘Listen – I’ve had a telegram from my mother which Philip thinks will make everything all right. She says the paper is denying a marriage. It was only deed-poll she says.’
‘Deed-poll,’ said Bouche-Bontemps suspiciously, ‘what is this?’
‘What’s deed-poll in French?’ I asked Philip and repeated after him. ‘Acte unilatéral but you don’t have it here like we do. You know – it means she took your name.’
‘Did she? There was certainly no acte. But why should she take my name?’
‘For the neighbours, I expect.’
‘But, chère Madame l’Ambassadrice, it was at Harrar! The neighbours were Abyssinians – never mind, go on.’
‘Anyhow, the point is there will be a denial tomorrow. Oh dear, I’m so sorry – though it’s not exactly my fault.’
‘But nothing matters as long as I am not supposed to be bigame – what is it in English? – bigamous. That would be very annoying – the Hautes-Pyrénées would not like it and nor would my late wife’s family les Pucelards (textiles Pucelard) from Lille. The only person who would be delighted is my daughter-in-law who hates me, it would quite compensate her for being married to a bastard. Now, of course, I shall be labelled Intelligence Service but as the only Frenchman of whom that is never said is General de Gaulle I suppose I can bear it. Sacrée Dorothée – is she really your mother? How strange! No women could be less alike – though I now see a striking resemblance between her and Mees.’
‘Oh don’t! I always try not to!’
When I had finished talking to Bouche-Bontemps I went to find Northey. Her room was full of newborn wails. ‘Mélusine has had six lovely babies, clever girl.’
‘I thought you said she was old?’
‘Yes. They are miracle-children.’
‘So now what? Hadn’t somebody better bucket them at once? Before she has got fond of them?’
‘Fanny!’
‘I know. But darling duck, we can’t keep them here.’
‘In this enormous house? I saw a dead rat in the courtyard only yesterday.’
‘It was a visiting rat then. There aren’t any in the house and we’ve got a perfectly good cat in the kitchen.’
‘Sweet Minet. Very well, if you are so unwelcoming I shall give them away.’
‘Yes. You must. Did you enjoy the Return of the Cinders?’
‘It was lovely. We all shouted Vive l’Empereur – a bit late, but never mind.’
‘I hear you are going out with M. de Valhubert again?’
‘On business, Fanny. I must have a long serious talk about the porte-feuille. If the assainissement de notre place goes on like this all my profits will disappear and then what will my old age be like? Can you afford to pension me off? I’m getting seriously annoyed about it.’
‘You talk worse pidgin than Grace. Do try to keep to one language at a time. I suppose you read Mockbar this morning?’
‘Clever little soul. By the way, Davey asked me to say good-bye.’
‘Davey has buggered off?’
‘Fanny! Never mind, I won’t tell Alfred. Yes. He says he can feel himself getting cancer of the lungs at every breath he takes in Paris.’
‘What nonsense! Among all these trees! There’s no smell of petrol here.’
‘He says it’s the scentless fumes, heavier than air, which do all the damage.’
‘I must say that’s a bit too much. He turns David into a sex-maniac and then leaves us to bear the brunt.’
‘He’ll bravely come back, when he’s decarbonized, to see about David. Meanwhile Docteur Lecœur has given him a calming injection so the idea is that all our virtues are saved for the present. Katie had a ghastly time with him last night – she says it was the nearest thing – that beard and those feet, how can poor Dawnie? Why are Zen-men’s feet always so awful?’ She shuddered.
‘I wish Docteur Lecœur would give Mockbar a calming injection.’
‘No, Fanny, he’s courting. It would be too unfair.’
‘Courting whom?’
‘Phyllis McFee, for one.’
‘Tell me something, Northey. Does Phyllis McFee really exist?’
Wide-eyed, injured look. ‘How d’you mean, does she really exist?’
‘You haven’t invented her, by any chance?’
‘She’s my old friend of for ever. (The poor make no new friends – oh don’t! That wretched Bourse!) Surely I’m allowed the one?’
‘Then I can’t understand why you never bring her to see me?’
‘She works.’
‘What at?’
‘World Something.’
‘Not in the evening surely?’
‘Specially then because, you know, the World is round so it’s later in America. When that great throbbing, teeming, bustling heart of little old New York begins to beat, Phyllis McFee, relaxed, efficient, smiling (not to grin is a sin), suitably dressed in her latest Mainbocher, immaculate hair-do, neat ankles and red nails, must be on the Transatlantic line. She has no time to waste on people like you.’
‘Bring her to luncheon one day?’
‘She’s far too busy. She can’t do more than un queek dans un drog which is French for luncheon in a chemist’s shop. Just imagine, scrumptious grub all among the cotton wool – takes thinking of – admit –’
‘All right then, don’t bring her. I don’t mind. She seems to work a good deal harder than some people we know.’
‘Is that a hint? Not very kind, Fanny. As a matter of fact, Phyllis McFee has ambitions, she wants to hug her boss (which would be French for employer if it didn’t happen to mean bruise). I don’t.’
‘Another person I never see, while we are on the subject of invisible beings, is M. Cruas.’
‘He’s timid. He wouldn’t like to be seen by you. And speaking as your secretary, quite as much up to date, thorough and efficient as Phyllis, may I remind you that you and Alfred have got the National Day of the North Koreans, after which you dine early with the Italians to go to a lovely play, at the Théâtre des Nations, about refrigerators. Some people have all the luck – !’
Feeling myself dismissed, I went up to my bedroom and tried to forget my manifold wor
ries in a long, hot, scented bath.
It took us some time to get from the North Korean to the Italian Embassy. Between the hours of seven and eight all the Americans who live in Paris bring out motor cars the size of lorries, shiny, showy and horribly cheap-looking, and sally forth to meet each other, drink whisky and rub up their accents. This also happens to be the time when the Parisians are on the move from work-place to home; the streets become almost impassable.
As we drove towards the Alma, at about one mile an hour, Alfred said, ‘You seem preoccupied, darling. Is there something on your mind?’
‘Something! About a ton of different things –’
‘Such as?’
‘Mockbar, to begin with. I suppose you didn’t see it –’
‘Yes, I did. Philip put it under my eyes. Anything sillier I have seldom read. Bouche-Bontemps says it’s quite untrue and he must know. Really – if that’s all –’
‘Oh, how I wish it were. Northey worries me dreadfully.’
‘Northey? Why?’
‘Any little girl as attractive as she is must be a worry until one has married her off. The followers –’
‘Safety in numbers, surely.’
‘There are one or two whom I don’t think safe.’ I did not want to specify Valhubert to Alfred without more proof than I had that he was really a danger.
‘Can you wonder they follow? The other day – it was after your luncheon party – she took Madame Meistersinger downstairs. I’d just been seeing off the Burmese and then had gone into Mrs Trott’s room to telephone. When I came out the hall was empty – the footman was putting the old woman into her motor and behind their backs, at the top of the steps, Northey was going through a sort of pantomime of ironical reverences. Oh I can’t describe how funny it was! Of course she had no idea anybody was watching. It made me realize that one might be terribly in love with that little creature.’
‘We all are,’ I said, ‘except Philip. One does so long for her to have a happy life, not like the Bolter.’