The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Come on, Tante Régine, to work, to work!’

  ‘But I’ve told you all I can.’

  ‘That was yesterday. Today some new and hitherto unknown factor may have changed the whole course of my existence. Come, come!’

  Madame Rocher, completely good-natured, would take up the cards and go on to the end of her invention. ‘No wonder those five fortune-tellers said you would be killed in the war – they simply had to, to get rid of you.’

  ‘Once more, Tante Régine – do I cut in three this time?’

  ‘That’s it, flog the poor old horse till it drops.’

  ‘I passed by Madame André’s cottage this afternoon, and made her tell the cards. She is much more dramatic than you, Tante Régine – dark ladies and fair ladies – wicked ladies of all sorts about chez Madame André.’

  ‘Yes, but I am handicapped by the presence of your wife,’ said Madame Rocher, laughing.

  ‘Oh!’ said Grace, from the bridge table, ‘you mustn’t be. I’m not a bit a jealous person. I don’t know what it is to be jealous.’

  Madame Rocher raised her eyebrows, Madame de Valhubert and M. de la Bourlie looked sadly at each other across the table, and M. le Curé said, ‘I declare a little slam.’

  ‘That’s very naughty, M. le Curé,’ said Grace, ‘now we shall be two down.’

  6

  ‘It’s about this Mr Labby, dear.’

  Charles-Edouard, who always got things done at once when he had decided upon them, had produced a young abbé to give Sigismond his lessons, and of course M. l’Abbé and Nanny were, from the very first, at daggers drawn. That is to say, Nanny’s dagger was drawn, but it hardly penetrated the thick, black, clerical robes of the priest, who seemed quite unaware of her existence. That was his weapon.

  ‘Oh Nan! But he seems nice, don’t you think? So gentle. And Sigi loves him.’

  Indeed that was partly the trouble. Sigi was always running off to be with M. l’Abbé, adored his lessons, had asked for longer hours, and Nanny was jealous.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ she said darkly, ‘you never can tell with these foreign clergymen, but it’s his little brain I’m thinking of. Their little brains are so easily taxed. I wish you could hear him scream of a night. He’s nothing but a bundle of nerves, all on edge – awful dreams he has, poor little fellow. I was wondering if these lessons aren’t too much for him.’

  ‘No, darling, of course not. We all learnt to read, you know. I was reading The Making of a Marchioness when Mummy died, I remember it so well.’

  It was a memory that she always found rather disturbing. The little girl, with her nose in the book, had felt that she ought to feel sad, and yet all she wanted was to get on with the story. Sir Conrad had come into the nursery, tears pouring down his cheeks, at the very moment when Emily Fox-Seaton was setting out for the fish, and Grace had been distinctly annoyed by the interruption. Later on in life she had pondered over this apparent heartlessness with some astonishment. Did little children, then, not feel sorrow, or was it that the book had provided her with a refuge from the tragic, and perhaps embarrassing, reality?

  She did not remember feeling sorrow at the loss of her mother, though she had often been seized with a physical longing for the soft lap and scented bosom of that intensely luxurious woman.

  ‘I was only six – do you admit, Nanny?’

  ‘Practically seven, and girls are always more forward.’

  ‘Besides, you know, he simply must learn French.’

  Nanny sniffed. ‘He’s learning French quick enough from that Canary. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about, when he’s with Canary and all those other little devils they go off together goodness knows where, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they bathe in the pond.’

  ‘I expect they do.’ Grace had, indeed, often seen them at it, and very pretty they looked popping naked in and out of the green water of a Renaissance fountain on the edge of the village. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Sigi’s papa says he always bathed there when he was a child. It’s perfectly safe.’

  ‘Oh, perfectly safe until the poor little chap gets poliomyelitis and spends the rest of his life in a wheel chair. I wish to goodness he’d never taken up with that Canary, he’s a perfect menace.’

  Canari, the little yellow-headed son of Mignon the chemist, was Sigi’s friend. ‘M. l’Abbé is teaching me to pray. I prayed for a friend and I got Canari.’

  Every afternoon, at the hottest time of the day, Sigi would race down to the vineyard to meet Canari and his band of maquisards. He was seen no more until Nanny rang the bell for Dick Barton, when he would race back up the hill. Nanny now had a powerful wireless installed, which turned the nursery into for ever England with six o’clock news, nine o’clock news, Music While you Work, and Twenty Questions. The Daily Mirror, too, had begun to arrive, bringing Garth in person, and so had Woman and Beauty, since when the nursery front had been distinctly calmer.

  ‘But we mustn’t worry too much, Nanny darling. Sigi is a little boy, growing up fast now, he’s bound to dash off, you know, that’s what little boys are like. I think it’s a lovely life for him here, I only wish we could stay for ever.’

  ‘You love M. l’Abbé, don’t you, Sigismond?’ said Grace, next morning. He always sat on her bed while she had her breakfast, a great bowl of coffee with fresh white bread, served on old Marseilles china. It was in many ways her favourite moment of the day; she drank her coffee looking at the hot early morning sky through muslin curtains; everything in the room was pretty, and the little boy on the end of her bed, in a white cotton jersey and red linen trousers, the prettiest object of all.

  ‘I love M. l’Abbé and I revere him, and I’ve got a new ambition now. I wish to be able to converse with him in Latin.’

  ‘French first, darling.’

  ‘No, Mummy, the Romans were civilized before the Gauls, M. l’Abbé says. He tells some smashing stories about these Romans, and I’ve a new idea for Nanny. Supposing we got her into an arena with a particularly fierce bear?’

  ‘Oh, poor Nanny. Where will you find the bear?’

  ‘One of our maquisards comes from the Pyrenees, and they’ve got three bears there, wild, to this day. I showed him a picture of Garth digging a cunning pit, covered with leaves and branches –’

  ‘Not Garth still?’ said Charles-Edouard, coming in with the morning’s letters. ‘Run along, Sigi,’ he said, holding the door and shooing him with a newspaper.

  ‘Why do you always say run along, Papa?’ He dragged through the door, looking crestfallen.

  ‘It’s what my mother used to say to me. “Run along, Charles-Edouard.” The whole of my childhood was spent running along. I did hate it, too. Off with you! That was another.’ He shut the door and gave Grace her letters.

  ‘If you didn’t like it,’ she said, ‘I can’t think why you inflict it on the poor little boy. I don’t think he sees enough of us, and he never sees us together.’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is that we see quite enough of him,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘There is nothing so dull as the conversation of small children.’

  ‘It amuses me.’

  ‘It does sometimes amuse women. They’ve got a childish side themselves, nature’s way of enabling them to bear the prattle. And while we are on the subject, M. l’Abbé tells me that Nanny won’t leave them alone at lesson time, she’s always fussing in with some excuse or other. It’s very annoying. Perhaps you’d speak to her about it?’

  ‘I do know. I was afraid you’d be cross.’

  ‘Well, speak.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll try. But you know what it is with Nanny, I’m dreadfully under her thumb. She thinks M. l’Abbé is taxing his little brain.’

  ‘But his little brain has got to be taxed, it’s there for that. Let Nanny wait till he’s reading for his bachot if she wants to see him taxed – going on to twelve and one at night – poor little
green face – rings under his eyes – attempted suicide – breakdowns –’

  ‘Oh, Charles-Edouard, you are a brute,’ said Grace, quite horrified.

  He laughed, and began kissing her arm and shoulder.

  ‘All this loony kissing again,’ Sigi appeared in the window, ‘over the pathless Himalayas, that’s where I’ve come.’

  ‘Yes, I wondered how long it would be before you found the way,’ said Charles-Edouard.

  ‘Shall I tell you something? I’ve just seen the Daily, and Garth has renounced the love of women.’

  ‘Oh, he’s like that, is he?’

  ‘He’s an Effendi now. What’s an Effendi, Papa?’

  ‘Talk about taxing his brain,’ said Charles-Edouard.

  ‘Well I know, but if it wasn’t for Garth and Dick Barton he’d never go near the nursery, and poor Nanny would have a stroke looking for him on the roof and in the vineyards all day.’

  ‘Now, Sigismond, just go back over those trackless paths, will you?’

  ‘In other words, run along and off with you. All right, if I must.’

  ‘M. l’Abbé talks about teaching him Latin.’

  ‘Yes?’ Charles-Edouard was opening his letters.

  ‘Seems rather a waste of time?’

  ‘Latin is a waste of time?’ he said, putting a letter in his pocket and looking at Grace with surprise. ‘Surely he must learn it before he goes to Eton?’

  ‘Well it won’t be the right pronunciation. Do we want Sigi to go to Eton?’

  ‘Why not, for a bit? Then he can be top in English when he goes to St Cyr.’

  ‘But I don’t think they can go to Eton for a bit. Oh dear, I thought the thing about being French was you had your blessing always at home.’

  ‘Do we always want him at home?’

  ‘I do. Anyway, you have to be put down for Eton before your parents are married now – long before you are conceived, so I think this dream will come to nothing.’

  Charles-Edouard, who was still reading his letters, said, ‘Brighton College then, it’s all the same.’

  ‘Please can I come to the sea with you?’

  ‘Not today, darling. We’re lunching with some grown-up people.’

  ‘It is unfair. I want to take a photograph of a huge, frightened wave.’

  ‘But today it will be flat calm. Next time there’s a mistral we’ll take you.’

  ‘I’m so hot. I do so want to bathe.’

  ‘Don’t you bathe in the fountain, with Canari?’

  ‘I’m brouillé with le chef.’

  ‘Not brouillé with Canari?’

  ‘Yes I am. It was convenu that the maquisards should come here and be chasseurs alpins on the roof one day and the next I should spend with them doing sabotage in the village. Well, they came here, and yesterday I went down to the village and he was under the lime trees with les braves, and he said, “va-t-en. On ne veut pas de toi.”’

  ‘But why, Sigi?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I don’t care, not a bit. I want to go to the sea and swim under water and spear an octopus.’

  ‘When you are older.’

  ‘When shall I be older?’

  ‘All in due course. Run along now and find M. l’Abbé.’

  ‘He is reading his bréviaire.’

  ‘Well, Nanny then. Anyway, run along, darling.’

  That night, at dinner, Madame de Valhubert said, ‘Do you know our poor little maquisard spent the whole afternoon by himself in the salon? He looked the picture of woe. In the end Régine and I had to play cards with him for very pity.’

  ‘It’s that wretched Canari,’ said Grace, ‘he has sent him packing, and nobody knows why. Oh, I do hope they’ll make it up soon, or the poor duck will have no more fun at all. I feel quite worried. Couldn’t you go down and speak to M. Mignon, Charles-Edouard, and find out what it is?’

  Charles-Edouard laughed, looked round the table at the others, who were all smiling, and said, ‘Alas, my influence with Mignon is but limited, I fear.’

  ‘But why? He made that nice speech.’

  ‘That was the solidarité de la libération. It just held long enough for him to make the speech. Now we are back among all the old feuds again. A very good sign that peace is really here.’

  ‘M. le Curé, couldn’t you do something?’ said Grace.

  At this there was a general laugh. M. le Curé lifted his hands, saying that Grace did not quite grasp the situation. M. Mignon, he said, was a Radical Socialist. If Grace had not spent the years of the war so idly, stitching dreams into an ugly carpet or leading goats to browse on blackberries, if she had taken the advice of her father and concentrated instead upon Messrs Bodley and Brogan, whose works lay among a huge heap of unopened books behind the back stairs, these words would have meant something to her, and what was to follow would have been avoided. But as she looked completely blank Charles-Edouard began to explain.

  ‘Not only is M. Mignon, père, a Radical Socialist of the deepest dye – Canari doesn’t go to our school, I would have you observe, but to the Instituteur – but he is actually a Freemason.’

  ‘Well, in that case, it’s a pity my father’s not here to have a word with him. They could wear their aprons, and do whatever it is together.’

  Charles-Edouard tried to kick Grace under the table, but she was too far for him to reach her. She went blandly on.

  ‘Papa is one of the top Freemasons, at home, you know. Couldn’t we tell M. Mignon that? It might help.’

  Silence fell, so petrifyingly cold that she realized something was very wrong, but couldn’t imagine what.

  Madame de Valhubert’s black eyes went with a question mark to Charles-Edouard. Madame Rocher and M. de la Bourlie exchanged glances of mournful significance; M. le Curé and M. l’Abbé gazed at their plates and Charles-Edouard looked extremely put out, as Grace had never seen him look before. At last he said to his grandmother, ‘Freemasons are quite different in England, you know.’

  ‘Oh! Indeed?’

  ‘The Grand Master, there, is a member of the Royal Family – is that not so, Grace?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t really know much about them.’

  ‘With the English anything is possible,’ said Madame Rocher. ‘What did I tell you, Sosthène?’

  ‘Oh no, but all the same,’ muttered the old man, ‘this is too much.’

  There was another long silence, at the end of which Madame de Valhubert rose from the table, and they all went into the little salon. The evening dragged much worse than usual, and the party dispersed for the night very early indeed.

  ‘What have I done?’ said Grace in her bedroom.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Charles-Edouard, crossly, for him, not knowing that it was entirely her fault for neglecting the information Sir Conrad had put at her disposal, ‘but I must beg you never again to speak of Freemasons before French people. Take a lover – take two – turn Lesbian – steal valuable boxes off your friends’ tables – anything, anything, but don’t say that your father is a Freemason. It will need ten years of virtuous life before this is forgiven, and it will never be forgotten. La fille du francmaçon! Well, I’ll see my grandmother in the morning and try to explain –’ He was laughing again now, but Grace saw that he was really very much embarrassed by what she had done.

  Madame de Valhubert having rushed to the chapel, Madame Rocher went down with M. de la Bourlie to his motor, and they stood for a moment on the terrace together.

  ‘You see!’ she said, ‘daughter of Freemasons! What did I tell you? No wonder she was married by a mayor, all is now plain as daylight. Can they, I wonder, really be considered decent people in England? I must find out. Poor Charles-Edouard, I see his path beset by thorns. Terrible for the Valhuberts, especially as they have had this sort of trouble in the family once – well not Freemasonry, of course, but that dreadful
Marshal. All so carefully lived down ever since. No wonder Françoise is upset – she will be on her knees all night, I feel sure.’

  M. de la Bourlie was greatly shocked at the whole affair. Even were he not over eighty, even were Madame de la Bourlie not still alive, a beautiful English wife now ceased to be any temptation to him. He had learnt his lesson.

  Grace’s blunder had one good result however. Sigi got back into the Canari set, from which he had been expelled, had he but known it, on grounds of clericalism. His adherence to M. l’Abbé had been doing him no good among the maquisards.

  M. le Curé was unable to keep the extraordinary pronouncement of young Madame de Valhubert to himself; he told one or two gossips, and the news spread like wild-fire, causing the greatest possible sensation in the village. The Catholics, adherents of the M.R.P. and so on, were very much shocked, but the rest of the population was jubilant. The daughter of a Freemason was an unhoped-for addition to the Valhubert family. Nanny, whose resistance to M. l’Abbé stiffened every day, came to be regarded as the very champion of anti-clericalism. The position of Charles-Edouard remained anomalous, a certain mystery seemed to surround his opinions, and nobody knew exactly where he stood. On one hand there was the Freemason wife, on the other it was he and nobody else who had summoned M. l’Abbé to teach his child. Since he was popular, jolly, and a good landlord, since his war record was above reproach, and they knew, from his own voice on the radio, that he had been one of the very first to join General de Gaulle, he tended to be claimed as one of themselves by all sections of the community while they awaited further evidence from which to draw further conclusions.

  Charles-Edouard did manage to convince his grandmother that Freemasonry in England was regarded by decent, and even royal, families as perfectly correct. It took some doing, but finally he succeeded.