‘Is somebody ill?’ I ventured.
‘Not exactly ill, but she bores herself, poor thing. I quite understand it, Paris must be terrible without me, I don’t know how she can bear it. I do pity her, really.’
‘Who?’ I said, curiosity overcoming my shyness, and indeed it would be difficult to feel shy for long with this extraordinary man.
‘My fiancée,’ he said, carelessly.
Alas! Something had told me this would be the reply; my heart sank and I said dimly,
‘Oh! How exciting! You are engaged?’
He gave me a sidelong whimsical look.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘engaged!’
‘And are you going to be married soon?’
But why, I wondered, had he come away alone, without her? If I had such a fascinating fiancé I would follow him everywhere, I knew, like a faithful spaniel.
‘I don’t imagine it will be very soon,’ he said gaily. ‘You know what it is with the Vatican, time is nothing to them, a thousand ages in their sight are like an evening gone. Do I not know a lot of English poetry?’
‘If you call it poetry. It’s a hymn, really. But what has your marriage got to do with the Vatican, isn’t that in Rome?’
‘It is. There is such a thing as the Church of Rome, my dear young lady, which I belong to, and this Church must annul the marriage of my affianced – do you say affianced?’
‘You could. It’s rather affected.’
‘My inamorata, my Dulcinea (brilliant?) must annul her marriage before she is at liberty to marry me.’
‘Goodness! Is she married already?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. There are very few unmarried ladies going about, you know. It’s not a state that lasts very long with pretty women.’
‘My Aunt Emily doesn’t approve of people getting engaged when they are married. My mother is always doing it and it makes Aunt Emily very cross.’
‘You must tell your dear Aunt Emily that in many ways it is rather convenient. But all the same, she is quite right, I have been a fiancé too often and far too long and now it is time I was married.’
‘Do you want to be?’
‘I am not so sure. Going out to dinner every night with the same person, this must be terrible.’
‘You might stay in?’
‘To break the habit of a lifetime is rather terrible too. The fact is, I am so accustomed now to the engaged state that it’s hard to imagine anything different.’
‘But have you been engaged to other people before this one?’
‘Many many times,’ he admitted.
‘So what happened to them all?’
‘Various unmentionable fates.’
‘For instance, what happened to the last one before this?’
‘Let me see. Ah, yes – the last one before this did something I couldn’t approve of, so I stopped loving her.’
‘But can you stop loving people because they do things you don’t approve of?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘What a lucky talent,’ I said, ‘I’m sure I couldn’t.’
We had come to the end of the avenue and before us lay a field of stubble. The sun’s rays were now beginning to pour down and dissolve the blue mist, turning the trees, the stubble, and a group of ricks into objects of gold. I thought how lucky I was to be enjoying such a beautiful moment with so exactly the right person and that this was something I should remember all my life. The duke interrupted these sentimental reflections, saying,
‘Behold how brightly breaks the morning,
Though bleak our lot our hearts are warm.
Am I not a perfect mine of quotations? Tell me, who is Veronica’s lover now?’
I was once more obliged to confess that I had never seen Veronica before, and knew nothing of her life. He seemed less astounded by this news than Roly had been, but looked at me reflectively, saying,
‘You are very young. You have something of your mother. At first I thought not, but now I see there is something.’
‘And who do you think Mrs Chaddesley Corbett’s lover is?’ I said. I was more interested in her than in my mother at the moment, and besides all this talk about lovers intoxicated me. One knew, of course, that they existed, because of the Duke of Monmouth and so on, but so near, under the very same roof as oneself, that was indeed exciting.
‘It doesn’t make a pin of difference,’ he said, ‘who it is. She lives, as all those sort of women do, in one little tiny group or set, and sooner or later everybody in that set becomes the lover of everybody else, so that when they change their lovers it is more like a Cabinet reshuffle than a new government. Always chosen out of the same old lot, you see.’
‘Is it like that in France?’ I said.
‘With society people? Just the same all over the world, though in France I should say there is less reshuffling on the whole than in England, the ministers stay longer in their posts.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Frenchwomen generally keep their lovers if they want to because they know that there is one infallible method of doing so.’
‘No!’ I said, ‘Oh, do tell.’
I was more fascinated by this conversation every minute.
‘It’s very simple. You must give way to them in every respect.’
‘Goodness!’ I said, thinking hard.
‘Now, you see, these English femmes du monde, these Veronicas and Sheilas and Brendas, and your mother too though nobody could say she stays in one little set, if she had done that she would not be so déclassée, they follow quite a different plan. They are proud and distant, out when the telephone bell rings, not free to dine unless you ask them a week before – in short, elles cherchent à se faire valoir, and it never never succeeds. Even Englishmen, who are used to it, don’t like it after a bit. Of course, no Frenchman would put up with it for a day. So they go on reshuffling.’
‘They’re very nasty ladies, aren’t they?’ I said, having formed that opinion the night before.
‘Not at all, poor things. They are les femmes du monde, voilà tout, I love them, so easy to get on with. Not nasty at all. And I love la mère Montdore, how amusing she is, with her snobbishness. I am very very much for snobs, they are always so charming to me. I stayed with them in India, you know. She was charming and Lord Montdore pretended to be.’
‘Pretended?’
‘That man is made up of pretence, like so many of these stiff old Englishmen. Of course, he is a great great enemy of my country – dedicated to the undoing of the French empire.’
‘Why?’ I said, ‘I thought we were all friends now.’
‘Friends! Like rabbits and snakes. I have no love for Lord Montdore but he is rather clever. Last night after dinner he asked me a hundred questions on partridge shooting in France. Why? You can be very sure he had some reason for doing so.’
‘Don’t you think Polly is very beautiful?’ I said.
‘Yes, but she also is rather a riddle to me,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps she is not having a properly organized sex life. Yes, no doubt it is that which makes her so dreamy. I must see what I can do for her – only there’s not much time.’ He looked at his watch.
I said primly that very few well brought up English girls of nineteen have a properly organized sex life. Mine was not organized at all, I knew, but I did not seem to be so specially dreamy.
‘But what a beauty, even in that terrible dress. When she has had a little love she may become one of the beauties of our age. It’s not certain, it never is with Englishwomen. She may cram a felt hat on her head and become a Lady Patricia Dougdale, everything depends on the lover. So this Boy Dougdale, what about him?’
‘Stupid,’ I said, meaning, really, ‘stchoopid’.
‘But you are impossible, my dear. Nasty ladies, stupid men – you really must try and like people more or you’ll never get on in this world.’
‘How d’you mean, get on?’
‘Well, get all those things like husbands and fiancés, and get on with them. They are what really matter in a woman’s life, you know.’
‘And children?’ I said.
He roared with laughter.
‘Yes, yes, of course, children. Husbands first, then children, then fiancés, then more children – then you have to live near the Parc Monceau because of the nannies – it’s a whole programme having children, I can tell you, especially if you happen to prefer the Left Bank, as I do.’
I did not understand one word of all this.
‘Are you going to be a Bolter,’ he said, ‘like your mother?’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘A tremendous sticker.’
‘Really? I’m not quite sure.’
Soon, too soon for my liking, we found ourselves back at the house.
‘Porridge,’ said the duke, again looking at his watch.
The front door opened upon a scene of great confusion, most of the house party, some in tweeds and some in dressing-gowns, were assembled in the hall, as were various outdoor and indoor servants, while a village policeman, who in the excitement of the moment had brought his bicycle in with him, was conferring with Lord Montdore. High above our heads, leaning over the balustrade in front of Niobe, Lady Montdore, in a mauve satin wrap, was shouting at her husband:
‘Tell him we must have Scotland Yard down at once, Montdore. If he won’t send for them I shall ring up the Home Secretary myself. Most fortunately, I have the number of his private line. In fact, I think I’d better go and do it now.’
‘No, no, my dear, please not. An Inspector is on his way, I tell you.’
‘Yes, I dare say, but how do we know it’s the very best Inspector? I think I’d better get on to my friend, I think he’d be hurt with me if I didn’t, the dear thing. Always so anxious to do what he can.’
I was rather surprised to hear Lady Montdore speak so affectionately of a member of the Labour Government, this not being the attitude of other grown-ups, in my experience, but when I came to know her better I realized that power was a positive virtue in her eyes and that she automatically liked those who were invested with it.
My companion, with that look of concentration which comes over French faces when a meal is in the offing, did not wait to hear any of this. He made a bee-line for the dining-room, but although I was also very hungry indeed after my walk, curiosity got the better of me and I stayed to find out what it all meant. It seemed that there had been a burglary during the night and that nearly everybody in the house, except Lord and Lady Montdore, had been roundly robbed of jewels, loose cash, furs and anything portable of the kind that happened to be lying about. What made it particularly annoying for the victims was that they had all been woken up by somebody prowling in their rooms, but had all immediately concluded that it must be Sauveterre, pursuing his well-known hobby, so that the husbands had merely turned over with a grunt, saying, ‘Sorry, old chap, it’s only me, I should try next door,’ while the wives had lain quite still in a happy trance of desire, murmuring such words of encouragement as they knew in French. Or so, at least, they were saying about each other, and when I passed the telephone box on my way upstairs to change my wet shoes I could hear Mrs Chaddesley Corbett’s bird-like twitters piping her version of the story to the outside world. Perhaps the Cabinet changes were becoming a little bit of a bore after all and these ladies did rather long, at heart, for a new policy.
The general feeling was now very much against Sauveterre, whose fault the whole thing clearly was. It became positively inflamed when he was known to have had a good night’s rest, to have got up at eight to telephone to his mistress in Paris and then to have gone for a walk with that little girl. (‘Not the Bolter’s child for nothing,’ I heard somebody say bitterly.) The climax was reached when he was seen to be putting away a huge breakfast of porridge and cream, kedgeree, eggs, cold ham, and slice upon slice of toast covered with Cooper’s Oxford. Very un-French, not at all in keeping with his reputation, unsuitable behaviour too, in view of the well-known frailty of his fellow guests. Britannia felt herself slighted by this foreigner, away with him! And away he went, immediately after breakfast, driving hell-for-leather to Newhaven to catch the boat for Dieppe.
‘Castle life,’ explained his mother, who placidly stayed until quite late on Monday, ‘always annoys Fabrice and makes him nervous, poor boy.’
6
The rest of that day was rather disorganized. The men finally went off shooting, very late, while the women stayed at home to be interviewed by various Inspectors on the subject of their lost possessions. Of course, the burglary made a wonderful topic of conversation, and indeed, nobody spoke of anything else.
‘I couldn’t care less about the diamond brooch, after all, it’s well insured and now I shall be able to have clips instead, which will be far and away smarter. Veronica’s clips always make me miserable, every time I see her, and besides, that brooch used to remind me of my bogus old mother-in-law too much. But I couldn’t think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife’s shawl?’
‘Yes, it is a shame. I’m in a terrible do about my bracelet of lucky charms – no value to anybody else – really – too too sick-making. Just when I had managed to get a bit of hangman’s rope, Mrs Thompson too, did I tell you? Roly will never win the National now, poor sweet.’
‘With me it’s Mummy’s little locket she had as a child. I can’t think why my ass of a maid had to go and put it in, she never does as a rule.’
These brassy ladies became quite human as they mourned their lost trinkets, and now that the men were out of the house they suddenly seemed very much nicer. I am speaking of the Veronica chorus, for Mrs Chaddesley Corbett herself, in common with Lady Montdore and Lady Patricia, was always exactly the same whatever the company.
At tea-time the village policeman reappeared with his bicycle, having wiped the eye of all the grand detectives who had come from London in their shiny cars. He produced a perfect jumble-sale heap of objects which had been discarded by the burglars under a haystack, and nearly all the little treasures were retrieved, with high cries of joy, by their owners. As the only things which now remained missing were jewels of considerable value, and as these were felt to be the business of the Insurance Companies, the party continued in a much more cheerful atmosphere. I never heard any of the women mention the burglary again though their husbands droned on rather about underwriters and premiums. There was now, however, a distinctly noticeable current of anti-French feeling. The Norahs and Nellies would have had a pretty poor reception if any of them had turned up just then, and Boy, if it was possible for him to have enough of a duchess, must have been having enough of this one, since all but he fled from the machine-gun fire of questions, and he was obliged to spend the next two days practically alone with her.
I was hanging about as one does at house parties, waiting for the next meal; it was not yet quite time to dress for dinner on Sunday evening. One of the pleasures of staying at Hampton was that the huge Louis XV map table in the middle of the Long Gallery was always covered with every imaginable weekly newspaper neatly laid out in rows and rearranged two or three times a day by a footman, whose sole occupation this appeared to be.
I seldom saw the Tatler and Sketch, as my aunts would have thought it a perfectly unwarranted extravagance to subscribe to such papers, and I was greedily gulping down back numbers when Lady Montdore called to me from a sofa where, ever since tea, she had been deep in talk with Mrs Chaddesley Corbett. I had been throwing an occasional glance in their direction, wondering what it could all be about and wishing I could be a fly on the wall to hear them, thinking also that it would hardly be possible for two women to look more different. Mrs Chaddesley Corbett, her bony little silken legs crossed and uncovered to above the knee, perched rather
than sat on the edge of the sofa. She wore a plain beige kasha dress which must certainly have been made in Paris and certainly designed for the Anglo-Saxon market, and smoked cigarette after cigarette with a great play of long thin white fingers, flashing with rings and painted nails. She did not keep still for one moment though she was talking with great earnestness and concentration.
Lady Montdore sat well back on the sofa, both her feet on the ground. She seemed planted there, immovable and solid, not actually fat, but solid through and through. Smartness, even if she had sought after it, would hardly be attainable by her in a world where it was personified by the other, and had become almost as much a question of build, of quick and nervous movements, as of actual clothes. Her hair was shingled, but it was grey and fluffy, by no means a smooth cap; her eyebrows grew at will, and when she remembered to use lipstick and powder they were any colour and slapped on anyhow, so that her face, compared with that of Mrs Chaddesley Corbett, was as a hayfield is to a lawn, her whole head looking twice as large as the polished little head beside her. All the same she was not disagreeable to look at. There was a healthiness and liveliness about her face which lent it a certain attraction. Of course, she seemed to me, then, very old. She was, in fact, about fifty-eight.
‘Come over here, Fanny.’
I was almost too much surprised to be alarmed by this summons and hurried over, wondering what it could all be about.
‘Sit there,’ she said, pointing to a needlework chair, ‘and talk to us. Are you in love?’
I felt myself becoming scarlet in the face. How could they have guessed my secret? Of course I had been in love for two days now, ever since my morning walk with the Duc de Sauveterre. Passionately, but as indeed I realized hopelessly, in love. In fact, the very thing that Lady Montdore had intended for Polly had befallen me.
‘There you are, Sonia,’ said Mrs Chaddesley Corbett triumphantly, tapping a cigarette with nervous violence against her jewelled case and lighting it with a gold lighter, her pale blue eyes never meanwhile leaving my face. ‘What did I tell you? Of course she is, poor sweet, just look at that blush, it must be something quite new and horribly bogus. I know, it’s my dear old husband. Confess, now! I couldn’t mind less, actually.’