‘I was thinking of Christmas Day at home. I always feel sentimental at Christmas.’
‘If what I said might happen does happen and I have to send you back to England, shall you go home to your father?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Linda, ‘anyway, it won’t happen. All the English papers say we are killing Germany with our blockade.’
‘Le blocus,’ said Fabrice, impatiently, ‘quelle blague! Je vais vous dire, madame, ils ne se fichent pas mal de votre blocus. So where would you go?’
‘To my own house in Chelsea, and wait for you to come.’
‘It might be months, or years.’
‘I shall wait,’ she said.
The skeleton tree-tops began to fill out, they acquired a pinkish tinge, which gradually changed to golden-green. The sky was often blue, and, on some days, Linda could once more open her windows and lie naked in the sun, whose rays by now had a certain strength. She always loved the spring, she loved the sudden changes of temperature, the dips backward into winter and forward into summer, and, this year, living in beautiful Paris, her perceptions heightened by great emotion, she was profoundly affected by it. There was now a curious feeling in the air, very different from and much more nervous than that which had been current before Christmas, and the town was full of rumours. Linda often thought of the expression ‘fin de siècle’. There was a certain analogy, she thought, between the state of mind which it denoted and that prevailing now, only now it was more like ‘fin de vie’. It was as though everybody around her, and she herself, were living out the last few days of their lives, but this curious feeling did not disturb her, she was possessed by a calm and happy fatalism. She occupied the hours of waiting between Fabrice’s visits by lying in the sun, when there was any, and playing with her puppy. On Fabrice’s advice she even began to order some new clothes for the summer. He seemed to regard the acquisition of clothes as one of the chief duties of woman, to be pursued through war and revolution, through sickness, and up to death. It was as one who might say, ‘Whatever happens the fields must be tilled, the cattle tended, life must go on.’ He was so essentially urban that to him the slow roll of the seasons was marked by the spring tailleurs, the summer imprimés, the autumn ensembles, and the winter furs of his mistress.
On a beautiful windy blue and white day in April the blow fell. Fabrice, whom Linda had not seen for nearly a week, arrived from the front looking grave and worried, and told her that she must go back to England at once.
‘I’ve got a place for you in the aeroplane,’ he said, ‘for this afternoon. You must pack a small suitcase, and the rest of your things must go after you by train. Germaine will see to them. I have to go to the Ministère de la Guerre, I’ll be back as soon as possible, and anyhow in time to take you to Le Bourget. Come on,’ he added, ‘just time for a little war work.’ He was in his most practical and least romantic mood.
When he returned he looked more preoccupied than ever. Linda was waiting for him, her box was packed, she was wearing the blue suit in which he had first seen her, and had her old mink coat over her arm.
‘Tiens,’ said Fabrice, who always at once noticed what she had on, ‘what is this? A fancy-dress party?’
‘Fabrice, you must understand that I can’t take away the things you have given me. I loved having them while I was here, and while they gave you pleasure seeing me in them, but, after all, I have some pride. Je n’étais quand méme pas élevée dans un bordel.’
‘Ma chère, try not to be so middle-class, it doesn’t suit you at all. There’s no time for you to change – wait, though –’ He went into her bedroom, and came out again with a long sable coat, one of his Christmas presents. He took her mink coat, rolled it up, threw it into the waste-paper basket, and put the other over her arm in its place.
‘Germaine will send your things after you,’ he said. ‘Come now, we must go.’
Linda said good-bye to Germaine, picked up the bulldog puppy, and followed Fabrice into the lift, out into the street. She did not fully understand that she was leaving that happy life behind her for ever.
19
At first, back in Cheyne Walk, she still did not understand. The world was grey and cold certainly, the sun had gone behind a cloud, but only for a time: it would come out again, she would soon once more be enveloped in that heat and light which had left her in so warm a glow, there was still much blue in the sky, this little cloud would pass. Then, as sometimes happens, the cloud, which had seemed at first such a little one, grew and grew, until it became a thick grey blanket smothering the horizon. The bad news began, the terrible days, the unforgettable weeks. A great horror of steel was rolling over France, was rolling towards England, swallowing on its way the puny beings who tried to stop it, swallowing Fabrice, Germaine, the flat, and the past months of Linda’s life, swallowing Alfred, Bob, Matt, and little Robin, coming to swallow us all. London people cried openly in the buses, in the streets, for the English army which was lost.
Then, suddenly one day, the English army turned up again. There was a feeling of such intense relief, it was as if the war were over and won. Alfred and Bob and Matt and little Robin all reappeared, and, as a lot of French soldiers also arrived, Linda had a wild hope that Fabrice might be with them. She sat all day by the telephone and when it rang and was not Fabrice she was furious with the unlucky telephoner – I know, because it happened to me. She was so furious that I dropped the receiver and went straight round to Cheyne Walk.
I found her unpacking a huge trunk, which had just arrived from France. I had never seen her looking so beautiful. It made me gasp, and I remembered how Davey had said, when he got back from Paris, that at last Linda was fulfilling the promise of her childhood, and had become a beauty.
‘How do you imagine this got here?’ she said, between tears and laughter. ‘What an extraordinary war. The Southern Railway people brought it just now and I signed for it, all as though nothing peculiar were happening – I don’t understand a word of it. What are you doing in London, darling?’
She seemed unaware of the fact that half an hour ago she had spoken to me, and indeed bitten my head off, on the telephone.
‘I’m with Alfred. He’s got to get a lot of new equipment and see all sorts of people. I believe he’s going abroad again very soon.’
‘Awfully good of him,’ said Linda, ‘when he needn’t have joined up at all, I imagine. What does he say about Dunkirk?’
‘He says it was like something out of the Boy’s Own – he seems to have had a most fascinating time.’
‘They all did, the boys were here yesterday and you never heard anything like their stories. Of course they never quite realized how desperate it all was until they got to the coast. Oh, isn’t it wonderful to have them back. If only – if only one knew what had happened to one’s French buddies –’ She looked at me under her eyelashes, and I thought she was going to tell me about her life, but, if so, she changed her mind and went on unpacking.
‘I shall have to put these winter things back in their boxes really,’ she said. ‘I simply haven’t any cupboards that will hold them all, but it’s something to do, and I like to see them again.’
‘You should shake them,’ I said, ‘and put them in the sun. They may be damp.’
‘Darling, you are wonderful, you always know.’
‘Where did you get that puppy?’ I said enviously. I had wanted a bulldog for years, but Alfred never would let me have one because of the snoring.
‘Brought him back with me. He’s the nicest puppy I ever had, so anxious to oblige, you can’t think.’
‘What about quarantine, then?’
‘Under my coat,’ said Linda, laconically. ‘You should have heard him grunting and snuffling, it shook the whole place, I was terrified, but he was so good. He never budged. And talking of puppies, those ghastly Kroesigs are sending Moira to America, isn’t it typical of them? I’ve made a great thing with Tony about se
eing her before she goes, after all I am her mother.’
‘That’s what I can’t ever understand about you, Linda.’
‘What?’
‘How you could have been so dreadful to Moira.’
‘Dull,’ said Linda. ‘Uninteresting.’
‘I know, but the point is that children are like puppies, and if you never see puppies, if you give them to the groom or the gamekeeper to bring up, look how dull and uninteresting they always are. Children are just the same – you must give them much more than their life if they are to be any good. Poor little Moira – all you gave her was that awful name.’
‘Oh, Fanny, I do know. To tell you the truth I believe it was always in the back of my mind that, sooner or later, I should have to run away from Tony, and I didn’t want to get too fond of Moira, or to make her too fond of me. She might have become an anchor, and I simply didn’t dare let myself be anchored to the Kroesigs.’
‘Poor Linda.’
‘Oh, don’t pity me. I’ve had eleven months of perfect and unalloyed happiness, very few people can say that, in the course of long long lives, I imagine.’
I imagined so too. Alfred and I are happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other’s company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pin-pricks. Nannies, cooks, the endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one’s very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, Alfred’s not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding upon honey-dew, and that is an incomparable diet.
The old woman who had opened the door to me came in and said was that everything, because, if so, she would be going home.
‘Everything,’ said Linda. ‘Mrs Hunt,’ she said to me, when she had gone. ‘A terrific Hon – she comes daily.’
‘Why don’t you go to Alconleigh,’ I said, ‘or to Shenley? Aunt Emily and Davey would love to have you, and I’m going there with the children as soon as Alfred is off again.’
‘I’d like to come for a visit some time, when I know a little more what is happening, but at the moment I must stop here. Give them my love though. I’ve got such masses to tell you, Fanny, what we really need is hours and hours in the Hons’ cupboard.’
After a great deal of hesitation Tony Kroesig and his wife, Pixie, allowed Moira to go and see her mother before leaving England. She arrived at Cheyne Walk in Tony’s car, still driven by a chauffeur in uniform not the King’s. She was a plain, stodgy, shy little girl, with no echo of the Radletts about her; not to put too fine a point on it she was a real little Gretchen.
‘What a sweet puppy,’ she said, awkwardly, when Linda had kissed her. She was clearly very much embarrassed.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Plon-plon.’
‘Oh. Is that a French name?’
‘Yes it is. He’s a French dog, you see.’
‘Daddy says the French are terrible.’
‘I expect he does.’
‘He says they have let us down, and what can we expect if we have anything to do with such people.’
‘Yes, he would.’
‘Daddy thinks we ought to fight with the Germans and not against them.’
‘M’m. But Daddy doesn’t seem to be fighting very much with anybody, or against anybody, or at all, as far as I can see. Now, Moira, before you go I have got two things for you, one is a present and the other is a little talk. The talk is very dull, so we’ll get that over first, shall we?’
‘Yes,’ said Moira, apathetically. She lugged the puppy on to the sofa beside her.
‘I want you to know,’ said Linda, ‘and to remember, please, Moira (stop playing with the puppy a minute and listen carefully to what I am saying) that I don’t at all approve of you running away like this, I think it most dreadfully wrong. When you have a country which has given you as much as England has given all of us, you ought to stick to it, and not go wandering off as soon as it looks like being in trouble.’
‘But it’s not my fault,’ said Moira, her forehead puckering. ‘I’m only a child and Pixie is taking me. I have to do what I’m told, don’t I?’
‘Yes, of course, I know that’s true. But you’d much rather stay, wouldn’t you?’ said Linda, hopefully.
‘Oh no, I don’t think so. There might be air-raids.’
At this Linda gave up. Children might or might not enjoy air-raids actually in progress, but a child who was not thrilled by the idea of them was incomprehensible to her, and she could not imagine having conceived such a being. Useless to waste any more time and breath on this unnatural little girl. She sighed and said:
‘Now wait a moment and I’ll get your present.’
She had in her pocket, in a velvet box, a coral hand holding a diamond arrow, which Fabrice had given her, but she could not bear to waste anything so pretty on this besotted little coward. She went to her bedroom and found a sports wristwatch, one of her wedding presents when she had married Tony and which she had never worn, and gave this to Moira, who seemed quite pleased by it, and left the house as politely and unenthusiastically as she had arrived.
Linda rang me up at Shenley and told me about this interview.
‘I’m in such a temper,’ she said, ‘I must talk to somebody. To think I ruined nine months of my life in order to have that. What do your children think about air-raids, Fanny?’
‘I must say they simply long for them, and I am sorry to say they also long for the Germans to arrive. They spend the whole day making booby-traps for them in the orchard.’
‘Well that’s a relief anyhow – I thought perhaps it was the generation. Actually of course, it’s not Moira’s fault, it’s all that bloody Pixie – I can see the form only too clearly, can’t you? Pixie is frightened to death and she has found out that going to America is like the children’s concert, you can only make it if you have a child in tow. So she’s using Moira – well, it does serve one right for doing wrong.’ Linda was evidently very much put out. ‘And I hear Tony is going too, some Parliamentary mission or something. All I can say is what a set.’
All through those terrible months of May, June, and July, Linda waited for a sign from Fabrice, but no sign came. She did not doubt that he was still alive, it was not in Linda’s nature to imagine that anyone might be dead. She knew that thousands of Frenchmen were in German hands, but felt certain that, had Fabrice been taken prisoner (a thing which she did not at all approve of, incidentally, taking the old-fashioned view that, unless in exceptional circumstances, it is a disgrace), he would undoubtedly manage to escape. She would hear from him before long, and, meanwhile, there was nothing to be done, she must simply wait. All the same, as the days went by with no news, and as all the news there was from France was bad, she did become exceedingly restless. She was really more concerned with his attitude than with his safety – his attitude towards events and his attitude towards her. She felt sure that he would never be associated with the armistice, she felt sure that he would want to communicate with her, but she had no proof, and, in moments of great loneliness and depression, she allowed herself to lose faith. She realized how little she really knew of Fabrice, he had seldom talked seriously to her, their relationship having been primarily physical while their conversations and chat had all been based on jokes.
They had laughed and made love and laughed again, and the months had slipped by with no time for anything but laughter and love. Enough to satisfy h
er, but what about him? Now that life had become so serious, and, for a Frenchman, so tragic, would he not have forgotten that meal of whipped cream as something so utterly unimportant that it might never have existed? She began to think, more and more, to tell herself over and over again, to force herself to realize, that it was probably all finished, that Fabrice might never be anything for her now but a memory.
At the same time the few people she saw never failed when talking, as everybody talked then, about France, to emphasize that the French ‘one knew’, the families who were ‘bien’, were all behaving very badly, convinced Pétainists. Fabrice was not one of them, she thought, she felt, but she wished she knew, she longed for evidence.
In fact, she alternated between hope and despair, but as the months went by without a word, a word that she was sure he could have sent if he had really wanted to, despair began to prevail.
Then, on a sunny Sunday morning in August, very early, her telephone bell rang. She woke up with a start, aware that it had been ringing already for several moments, and she knew with absolute certainty that this was Fabrice.
‘Are you Flaxman 2815?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got a call for you. You’re through.’
‘Allô – allô?’
‘Fabrice?’
‘Oui.’
‘Oh! Fabrice – on vous attend depuis si longtemps.’
‘Comme c’est gentil. Alors, on peut venir tout de suite chez vous?’
‘Oh, wait – yes, you can come at once, but don’t go for a minute, go on talking, I want to hear the sound of your voice.’
‘No, no, I have a taxi outside, I shall be with you in five minutes. There’s too much one can’t do on the telephone, ma chère, voyons –’ Click.
She lay back, and all was light and warmth. Life, she thought, is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them. The early morning sun shone past her window on to the river, her ceiling danced with water-reflections. The Sunday silence was broken by two swans winging slowly upstream, and then by the chugging of a little barge, while she waited for that other sound, a sound more intimately connected with the urban love affair than any except the telephone bell, that of a stopping taxicab. Sun, silence, and happiness. Presently she heard it in the street, slowly, slower, it stopped, the flag went up with a ring, the door slammed, voices, clinking coins, footsteps. She rushed downstairs.
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 87
