The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Fabrice has a charmed life,’ said Lord Merlin. ‘I suppose he has been shot at more than anybody, and, as far as I know, he’s never had a scratch.’

  Linda was unmoved by these revelations, which had been forestalled by Fabrice himself. Anyhow, no woman really minds hearing of the past affairs of her lover, it is the future alone that has the power to terrify.

  ‘Come on, Mer,’ said Davey. ‘Time the petite femme got herself into a négligée. Goodness, what a scene there’ll be when he smells Mer’s cigar, there’ll be a crime passionel, I shouldn’t wonder. Good-bye, Linda darling, we’re off to dine with our intellectual friends, you know, will you be lunching with us at the Ritz tomorrow? About one, then. Good-bye – give our love to Fabrice.’

  When Fabrice came in he sniffed about, and asked whose cigar. Linda explained.

  ‘They say they know you?’

  ‘Mais bien sûr – Merlin, tellement gentil, et l’autre Warbeck, toujours si malade, le pauvre. Je les connaissais à Venise. What did they think of all this?’

  ‘Well, they roared at the flat.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine. It is quite unsuitable for you, this flat, but it’s convenient, and with the war coming –’

  ‘Oh, but I love it, I wouldn’t like anything else half so much. Wasn’t it clever of them, though, to find me?’

  ‘Do you mean to say you never told anybody where you were?’

  ‘I really didn’t think of it – the days go by, you know – one simply doesn’t remember these things.’

  ‘And it was six weeks before they thought of looking for you? As a family you seem to me strangely décousu.’

  Linda suddenly threw herself into his arms, and said, with great passion:

  ‘Never, never let me go back to them.’

  ‘My darling – but you love them. Mummy and Fa, Matt and Robin and Victoria and Fanny. What is all this?’

  ‘I never want to leave you again as long as I live.’

  ‘Aha! But you know you will probably have to, soon. The war is going to begin, you know.’

  ‘Why can’t I stay here? I could work – I could become a nurse – well, perhaps not a nurse, actually, but something.’

  ‘If you promise to do what I tell you, you may stay here for a time. At the beginning we shall sit and look at the Germans across the Maginot Line, then I shall be a great deal in Paris, between Paris and the front, but mostly here. At that time I shall want you here. Then somebody, we or the Germans, but I am very much afraid the Germans, will pour across the line, and a war of movement will begin. I shall have notice of that étape, and what you must promise me is that the very minute I tell you to leave for London you will leave, even if you see no reason for doing so. I should be hampered beyond words in my duties if you were still here. So you will solemnly promise, now?’

  ‘All right,’ said Linda. ‘Solemnly. I don’t believe anything so dreadful could happen to me, but I promise to do as you say. Now will you promise that you will come to London as soon as it’s all over and find me again. Promise?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fabrice. ‘I will do that.’

  Luncheon with Davey and Lord Merlin was a gloomy meal. Preoccupation reigned. The two men had stayed up late and merrily with their literary friends, and showed every sign of having done so. Davey was beginning to be aware of the cruel pangs of dyspepsia, Lord Merlin was suffering badly from an ordinary straightforward hangover, and, when he removed his spectacles, his eyes were seen to be not kind at all. But Linda was far the most wretched of the three, she was, in fact, perfectly distracted by having overheard two French ladies in the foyer talking about Fabrice. She had arrived, as, from old habits of punctuality drummed into her by Uncle Matthew she always did, rather early. Fabrice had never taken her to the Ritz, she thought it delightful, she knew she was looking quite as pretty, and nearly as well dressed, as anybody there, and settled herself happily to await the others. Suddenly she heard, with that pang which the heart receives when the loved one’s name is mentioned by strangers:

  ‘And have you seen Fabrice at all?’

  ‘Well, I have, because I quite often see him at Madame de Sauveterre’s, but he never goes out anywhere, as you know.’

  ‘Then what about Jacqueline?’

  ‘Still in England. He is utterly lost without her, poor Fabrice, he is like a dog looking for its master. He sits sadly at home, never goes to parties, never goes to the club, sees nobody. His mother is really worried about him.’

  ‘Who would ever have expected Fabrice to be so faithful? How long is it?’

  ‘Five years, I believe. A wonderfully happy ménage.’

  ‘Surely Jacqueline will come back soon.’

  ‘Not until the old aunt has died. It seems she changes her will incessantly, and Jacqueline feels she must be there all the time – after all, she has her husband and children to consider.’

  ‘Rather hard on Fabrice?’

  ‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? His mother says he rings her up every morning and talks for an hour –’

  It was at this point that Davey and Lord Merlin, looking tired and cross, arrived, and took Linda off to luncheon with them. She was longing to stay and hear more of this torturing conversation, but, eschewing cocktails with a shudder, they hurried her off to the dining-room, where they were only fairly nice to her, and frankly disagreeable to each other.

  She thought the meal would never come to an end, and, when at last it did, she threw herself into a taxi and drove to Fabrice’s house. She must find out about Jacqueline, she must know his intentions. When Jacqueline returned would that be the moment for her, Linda, to leave as she had promised? War of movement indeed!

  The servant said that M. le Duc had just gone out with Madame la Duchesse, but that he would be back in about an hour. Linda said she would wait, and he showed her into Fabrice’s sitting-room. She took off her hat, and wandered restlessly about. She had been here several times before, with Fabrice, and it had seemed, after her brilliantly sunny flat, a little dismal. Now that she was alone in it she began to be aware of the extreme beauty of the room, a grave and solemn beauty which penetrated her. It was very high, rectangular in shape, with grey boiseries and cherry-coloured brocade curtains. It looked into a courtyard and never could get a ray of sunshine, that was not the plan. This was a civilized interior, it had nothing to do with out-of-doors. Every object in it was perfect. The furniture had the severe lines and excellent proportions of 1780, there was a portrait by Lancret of a lady with a parrot on her wrist, a bust of the same lady by Bouchardon, a carpet like the one in Linda’s flat, but larger and grander, with a huge coat of arms in the middle. A high carved bookcase contained nothing but French classics bound in contemporary morocco, with the Sauveterre crest, and open on a map table lay a copy of Redouté’s roses.

  Linda began to feel much more calm, but, at the same time, very sad. She saw that this room indicated a side of Fabrice’s character which she had hardly been allowed to apprehend, and which had its roots in old civilized French grandeur. It was the essential Fabrice, something in which she could never have a share – she would always be outside in her sunny modern flat, kept away from all this, kept rigidly away even if their liaison were to go on for ever. The origins of the Radlett family were lost in the mists of antiquity, but the origins of Fabrice’s family were not lost at all, there they were, each generation clutching at the next. The English, she thought, throw off their ancestors. It is the great strength of our aristocracy, but Fabrice has his round his neck, and he will never get away from them.

  She began to realize that here were her competitors, her enemies, and that Jacqueline was nothing in comparison. Here, and in the grave of Louise. To come here and make a scene about a rival mistress would be utterly meaningless, she would be one unreality complaining about another. Fabrice would be annoyed, as men always are annoyed on these occasions, and she would get no satisfaction. She c
ould hear his voice, dry and sarcastic:

  ‘Ah! Vous me grondez, madame?’

  Better go, better ignore the whole affair. Her only hope was to keep things on their present footing, to keep the happiness which she was enjoying day by day, hour by hour, and not to think about the future at all. It held nothing for her, leave it alone. Besides, everybody’s future was in jeopardy now the war was coming, this war which she always forgot about.

  She was reminded of it, however, when, that evening, Fabrice appeared in uniform.

  ‘Another month I should think,’ he said. ‘As soon as they have got the harvest in.’

  ‘If it depended on the English,’ said Linda, ‘they would wait until after the Christmas shopping. Oh, Fabrice, it won’t last very long, will it?’

  ‘It will be very disagreeable while it does last,’ said Fabrice. ‘Did you come to my flat today?’

  ‘Yes, after lunching with those two old cross-patches I suddenly felt I wanted to see you very much.’

  ‘Comme c’est gentil,’ he looked at her quizzically, as though something had occurred to him, ‘but why didn’t you wait?’

  ‘Your ancestors frightened me off.’

  ‘Oh, they did? But you have ancestors yourself I believe, madame?’

  ‘Yes, but they don’t hang about in the same way as yours do.’

  ‘You should have waited,’ said Fabrice, ‘it is always a very great pleasure to see you, both for me and for my ancestors. It cheers us all up.’

  Germaine now came into the room with huge armfuls of flowers and a note from Lord Merlin, saying:

  ‘Here are some coals for Newcastle. We are tottering home by the ferry-boat. Do you think I shall get Davey back alive? I enclose something which might, one day, be useful.’

  It was a note for 20,000 francs.

  ‘I must say,’ said Linda, ‘considering what cruel eyes he has, he does think of everything.’

  She felt sentimental after the occurrences of the day.

  ‘Tell me, Fabrice,’ she said, ‘what did you think the first moment you ever saw me?’

  ‘If you really want to know, I thought: “Tiens, elle ressemble à la petite Bosquet.”’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘There are two Bosquet sisters, the elder, who is a beauty, and a little one who looks like you.’

  ‘Merci beaucoup,’ said Linda. ‘J’aimerais autant ressembler à l’autre.’

  Fabrice laughed. ‘Ensuite, je me suis dit, comme c’est amusant, le côté démodé de tout ça –’

  When the war, which had for so long been pending, did actually break out some six weeks later, Linda was strangely unmoved by the fact. She was enveloped in the present, in her own detached and futureless life, which, anyhow, seemed so precarious, so much from one hour to another: exterior events hardly impinged on her consciousness. When she thought about the war it seemed to her almost a relief that it had actually begun, in so far as a beginning is the first step towards an end. That it had begun only in name and not in fact did not occur to her. Of course, had Fabrice been taken away by it her attitude would have been very different, but his job, an intelligence one, kept him mostly in Paris, and, indeed, she now saw rather more of him than formerly, as he moved into her flat, shutting up his own and sending his mother to the country. He would appear and disappear at all sorts of odd moments of the night and day, and, as the sight of him was a constant joy to Linda, as she could imagine no greater happiness than she always felt when the empty space in front of her eyes became filled by his form, these sudden apparitions kept her in a state of happy suspense and their relationship at fever point.

  Since Davey’s visit Linda had been getting letters from her family. He had given Aunt Sadie her address and told her that Linda was doing war work in Paris, providing comforts for the French army, he said vaguely, and with some degree of truth. Aunt Sadie was pleased about this, she thought it very good of Linda to work so hard (all night sometimes, Davey said), and was glad to hear that she earned her keep. Voluntary work was often unsatisfactory and expensive. Uncle Matthew thought it a pity to work for foreigners, and deplored the fact that his children were so fond of crossing the oceans, but he also was very much in favour of war work. He was himself utterly disgusted that the War Office were not able to offer him the opportunity of repeating his exploit with the entrenching tool, or, indeed, any job at all, and he went about like a bear with a sore head, full of unsatisfied desire to fight for his King and country.

  I wrote to Linda and told her about Christian, who was back in London, had left the Communist party and had joined up. Lavender had also returned; she was now in the A.T.S.

  Christian did not show the slightest curiosity about what had happened to Linda, he did not seem to want to divorce her or to marry Lavender, he had thrown himself heart and soul into army life and thought of nothing but the war.

  Before leaving Perpignan he had extricated Matt, who, after a good deal of persuasion, had consented to leave his Spanish comrades in order to join the battle against Fascism on another front. He went into Uncle Matthew’s old regiment, and was said to bore his brother officers in the mess very much by arguing that they were training the men all wrong, and that, during the battle of Ebro, things had been done thus and thus. In the end his colonel, who was rather brighter in the head than some of the others, hit upon the obvious reply, which was, ‘Well anyway, your side lost!’ This shut Matt up on tactics, but got him going on statistics – ‘30,000 Germans and Italians, 500 German planes’, and so forth – which were almost equally dull.

  Linda heard no more about Jacqueline, and the wretchedness into which she had been thrown by those few chance words overheard at the Ritz were gradually forgotten. She reminded herself that nobody ever really knew the state of a man’s heart, not even, perhaps specially not, his mother, and that in love it is actions that count. Fabrice had no time now for two women, he spent every spare moment with her and that in itself reassured her. Besides, just as her marriages with Tony and Christian had been necessary in order to lead up to her meeting with Fabrice, so this affair had led up to his meeting with her: undoubtedly he must have been seeing Jacqueline off at the Gare du Nord when he found Linda crying on her suitcase. Putting herself in Jacqueline’s shoes, she realized how much preferable it was to be in her own: in any case it was not Jacqueline who was her dangerous rival, but that dim, virtuous figure from the past, Louise. Whenever Fabrice showed signs of becoming a little less practical, a little more nonsensical, and romantic, it was of his fiancée that he would speak, dwelling with a gentle sadness upon her beauty, her noble birth, her vast estates, and her religious mania. Linda once suggested that, had the fiancée lived to become a wife, she might not have been a very happy one.

  ‘All that climbing,’ she said, ‘in at other people’s bedroom windows, might it not have upset her?’

  Fabrice looked intensely shocked and reproachful and said that there never would have been any climbing, that, where marriage was concerned, he had the very highest ideals, and that his whole life would have been devoted to making Louise happy. Linda felt herself rebuked, but was not entirely convinced.

  All this time Linda watched the tree-tops from her window. They had changed, since she had been in the flat, from bright green against a bright blue sky, to dark green against a lavender sky, to yellow against a cerulean sky, until now they were black skeletons against a sky of moleskin, and it was Christmas Day. The windows could no longer be opened until they disappeared, but, whenever the sun did come out, it shone into her rooms, and the flat was always as warm as toast. On this Christmas morning Fabrice arrived, quite unexpectedly, before she was up, his arms full of parcels, and soon the floor of her bedroom was covered with waves of tissue paper through which, like wrecks and monsters half submerged beneath a shallow sea, appeared fur coats, hats, real mimosa, artificial flowers, feathers, scent, gloves, stockings, underclothes, and a bu
lldog puppy.

  Linda had spent Lord Merlin’s 20,000 francs on a tiny Renoir for Fabrice: six inches of seascape, a little patch of brilliant blue, which she thought would look just right in his room in the rue Bonaparte. Fabrice was the most difficult person to buy presents for, he possessed a larger assortment of jewels, knick-knacks, and rare objects of all kinds than anybody she had ever known. He was delighted with the Renoir, nothing, he said, could have pleased him more, and Linda felt that he really meant it.

  ‘Oh, such a cold day,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been to church.’

  ‘Fabrice, how can you go to church when there’s me?’

  ‘Well, why not.’

  ‘You’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am. What do you suppose? Do you think I look like a Calvinist?’

  ‘But then aren’t you living in mortal sin? So what about when you confess?’

  ‘On ne précise pas,’ said Fabrice, carelessly, ‘and in any case, these little sins of the body are quite unimportant.’

  Linda would have liked to think that she was more in Fabrice’s life than a little sin of the body, but she was used to coming up against these closed doors in her relationship with him, and had learnt to be philosophical about it and thankful for the happiness that she did receive.

  ‘In England,’ she said, ‘people are always renouncing each other on account of being Roman Catholics. It’s sometimes very sad for them. A lot of English books are about this, you know.’

  ‘Les Anglais sont des insensés, je l’ai toujours dit. You almost sound as if you want to be given up. What has happened since Saturday? Not tired of your war work, I hope?’

  ‘No, no, Fabrice. I just wondered, that’s all.’

  ‘But you look so sad, ma chérie, what is it?’