The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

She and Charles-Edouard now dined out nearly every day, and after all these dinners Charles-Edouard would sit with Juliette Novembre, as far removed from the rest of the company as possible, until it was time to go home.

  9

  Carolyn Dexter and Grace saw a good deal of each other, sitting on nursery fenders, and at first this was a comfort to Grace because of her need to feel at home somewhere. She felt at home with Carolyn. But as time went on Carolyn often irritated her dreadfully. Since marriage with the important Mr Dexter the swagger and self-assurance which had made her so fascinating to the other girls at her school had deteriorated into bossiness. She was forever telling Grace what she ought to do and whom she and Charles-Edouard ought to see, and was also forever enlarging upon the faults of the French. She had a particular grievance against the world of Parisians which was led by such young couples as the Tournons and the Novembre de la Fertés, not, oddly enough, on the grounds of their really frightening frivolity, but because they so seldom invited herself and her husband to their houses. In view of the importance of Mr Dexter and the fact that she was the niece of a former British Ambassador to Paris, she had expected immediately to be asked everywhere, but, except for big, official parties, the Dexters moved almost entirely in an Anglo-American world. Mr Dexter did not mind this at all. When he said, as he continually did, that he despised the French, he meant it. He had no wish to meet any, except those he was obliged to work with. But Carolyn was not quite so honest. If the French annoyed her it was very largely by ignoring her presence in their town.

  Carolyn thought that Grace ought to give a dinner party for her, and said so in her extremely outspoken way. Grace replied, with perfect truth, that, for the moment, she and Charles-Edouard were taken up with his many relations. Carolyn did not accept this as easily as some people would have, and often returned to the charge.

  ‘I hear you dined last night with the Polastrons. Are they relations of your husband?’ she said, before even saying hullo to Grace, who had come to tea.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘How are they related?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re not. But anyway, great old friends.’

  ‘Great old friends, but not related. I thought you were only seeing relations at present?’

  ‘Well, but Carolyn – I leave it all to Charles-Edouard, you know.’

  She felt instinctively that Charles-Edouard would find the Dexters very dull.

  ‘Let’s have a cocktail,’ said Carolyn. ‘I’m exhausted. I’ve had an awful afternoon struggling with the garage people to do something about my car. Promised for yesterday – you know the sort of thing. Really I’m fed up with these wretched French.’

  ‘I thought you loved France. You always used to.’

  ‘I love France, but I can’t say I love the French, nowadays. They are quite different, you know, since the war. Everybody says the same.’

  Grace somehow felt sure that they were not quite different at all. She really did love them. She loved the servants in her house for their friendly efficiency, their faithfulness to Charles-Edouard; she loved the highbrow aunts, now that she was getting to know them, for being so clever and so serious, and she loved the gay young diners for being so pretty and so light-hearted. She even loved their snobbishness, it seemed to her such a tremendous joke, so particularly funny, somehow, nowadays. She was beginning to love the critical spirit of all and sundry. It kept people up to the mark, no doubt, and had filled her with the desire to improve her mind and sharpen her wits. She longed to make a better appearance in the box, and be a credit to Charles-Edouard. And she loved the people in the streets for smiling at her and noticing her new clothes.

  ‘I don’t say I hate them,’ said Carolyn, ‘but they irritate me, and I see their faults.’

  ‘What faults?’

  ‘Oh, you’re sold to the French, Grace, it’s hardly worth talking to you about them. Faults! They hit you in the eye if you’re not blind. Never punctual – don’t get things done – not reliable (you should hear Hector) – dirty – the dirt! Look at the central heating here – just gusts of hot dust, impossible to keep anything clean. Then the butchers’ shops – after living in America you feel ill to see them – flies all over the meat –’

  ‘I like that,’ said Grace. ‘Meat can’t be too meaty, for my taste.’

  ‘Ugh! Anyhow, you can’t like the rudeness –’

  ‘Nobody’s ever rude to me. They smile when they see me, even strangers in the street.’

  ‘Trying to pick you up. And what about those dreadful policemen!’

  ‘I always think they look like young saints, in their capes.’

  ‘Saints! I must tell that to Hector, he’ll roar.’

  ‘I’ve never had anything but niceness from them – over Nanny’s identity card and so on.’

  ‘I expect your husband gives them enormous bribes.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t.’

  ‘I suppose even you will admit the French would do anything for money.’

  ‘Perhaps they may – it’s never crossed my path, but you may be right. Perhaps they are more frank and open about it than other people.’

  ‘Frank and open is the word. They always frankly and openly marry for money, to begin with.’

  ‘Charles-Edouard didn’t.’

  ‘Are you – Oh well there may be exceptions, and I suppose he wouldn’t need to. But at the time when our grandfathers were marrying actresses for love their contemporaries here were all marrying Jewesses for money. I was thinking of dozens of examples last night in bed.’

  ‘I think they were quite right. Just look at it from the point of view of their grandchildren. Honestly now, which would you prefer as a grandmother – a clever old Jewess, who has brought brains and money and Caffieri commodes into the family, or some ass of an actress?’

  ‘I can’t understand you, Grace, you used to seem so very English at home.’

  ‘Yes, well now,’ said Grace rather sadly, ‘I’m nothing at all. But I would love to have been born a Frenchwoman, and I can’t say more, can I?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll change your tune, I bet. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you – we quite often see Hughie.’

  ‘Hughie! Does he live here too?’

  ‘He was here with a military mission, now he’s back in England, but he keeps coming over. Hector sees him at the Travellers and brings him in for a drink, most weeks. He’s terribly in love with a Frenchwoman here, a Madame Marel-Desboulles. Hector thinks it’s a disaster for him, he has heard all about this Madame Marel and says she’s no good.’

  ‘Marel – Marel-Desboulles. Don’t I know her?’ Grace said vaguely.

  The names and faces of the French people she met had not yet clicked into place, they floated round her mind separately, many names and many faces, all wonderfully romantic and new but not adding up into real people. So the name Marel-Desboulles had a familiar ring but no face, while the brilliant woman who played conversational ping-pong with Charles-Edouard, across a dinner-table, sometimes across a whole roomful of people all delighted by the speed and accuracy of the game, volley, volley, high lob with a spin, volley, cut, smash, had not yet acquired a surname. Grace only knew her as Albertine.

  ‘He wants to marry her.’

  Carolyn looked at Grace to see if she minded, but she hardly even seemed interested.

  ‘And will he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He says she is very Catholic, and talks all the time of going into a convent – poor Hughie says he’ll kill himself if she does. But Hector says nobody at the Travellers thinks there’s much danger of that. What happened about your engagement to Hughie, Grace? I never really knew.’

  ‘Oh, just that we were engaged, and he went to the war and I married Charles-Edouard instead. I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well.’

  ‘Pity, in a way.’

  ‘I can’t agree.’

  �
�I meant nothing against your husband. I hear he is charming. I only meant pity to marry a Frenchman.’

  Grace longed to retaliate with ‘well then, what about marrying an American’ but she knew that, while it is considered nowadays perfectly all right to throw any amount of aspersions on poor old France and England, one tiny word reflecting anything but exaggerated love for rich new America is thought to be in the worst of taste. She was also, by nature, more careful of people’s feelings than Carolyn. So she said, mildly, that she could not imagine any other sort of husband.

  The two nannies clung to each other like drowning men, and Sigi was now taken every day for air and exercise to the Parc Monceau instead of the Tuileries Gardens. He was very cross about this, and complained bitterly to his mother.

  ‘Pascal and I are so fond of each other. I never knew such an obliging goat, and now I never see him. It’s a shame, Mummy.’

  ‘Why don’t you meet Nanny Dexter in the Tuileries sometimes for a change?’ Grace said to her Nan.

  ‘Oh no thank you, dear. We don’t like those Tuileries. It’s the draughtiest place in Paris. I only wish you could feel the stiff neck I caught there the other day, waiting for the little monkey to finish his ride. I don’t think all those smelly animals are very nice, if you ask me, and the children there are a funny lot too. Some of them are black, dear, and one was distinctly Chinese. The Parc Monceau is a much better place for little boys.’

  ‘Oh well, Nan, it’s just as you like, of course, but when I went there I thought it fearfully depressing, such thousands of children, like a children’s market or something, and all those castor-oil plants. Hideous.’

  ‘Still you do see a little grass there,’ said Nanny, ‘and decent railings.’

  ‘I hate the silly little baby Parc Monceau,’ piped up Sigi, ‘and I loathe dear little Foster Dexter aged four. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I loathe Foss and Foss loathes me.’

  ‘Very stupid and naughty, Sigismond. Foster’s a dear little chap – so easy too. Nanny Dexter has never had one minute’s trouble with him since he was born, and they’ve been all over the place – oh, they have travelled! I must say Mrs Dexter’s a marvellous mummy.’

  ‘In what way?’ Grace asked, with interest. She tried her best to be a marvellous mummy too, but her efforts never received much acknowledgement.

  ‘Well, she has tea in the nursery every day.’

  ‘But, Nanny, so do I – nearly every day.’

  ‘And gives little Foss his bath often as not, and, what’s more, every Saturday and Sunday Mr Dexter gives him his bath. He is a nice daddy, Mr Dexter.’

  Unfortunately Grace was stumped by this. Nobody could say that Charles-Edouard was that sort of nice daddy; he never went near the nursery. He liked the idea of Sigi, and was delighted when people said the child was his living image, but a few minutes of his company at a time were more than sufficient. He was such a restless man that a few minutes of almost anybody’s company at a time were more than sufficient.

  Grace said to Charles-Edouard,

  ‘You know my friend Carolyn?’

  ‘The beautiful Lesbian?’

  ‘No, no, Carolyn Dexter.’

  ‘You said she was a Lesbian at school.’

  ‘I said we were all in love with her, that’s quite different. Besides, people are all sorts of things at school – Carolyn used to be a Communist then – we used to point her out to visitors as the school Communist – and look at her now! Marshall Plan up to the eyes. Anyway, can we dine there on Thursday? – I’m to let her know.’

  ‘You keep our engagements, it’s for you to say.’

  ‘We are quite free, but I wanted to know if you’d like it.’

  ‘Who will be there?’

  ‘Well, it sounded like this, but I may have got it wrong. The Jorgmanns of Life, the Schmutzes of Time, the Jungfleisches, who are liaison between Life and Time, the Oberammergaus who have replaced the Pottses on the Un-American Activities Committee, European branch, the Rutters, who are liaison between the French Chamber of Commerce, the Radio-Diffusion Française and the Chicago Herald Tribune, and an important French couple, the Tournons. Are the Tournons important really?’

  ‘Of course they are, in their way, but it won’t be those Tournons. It will be what we call les faux Tournons – he is chef de cabinet to Salleté, very dull, but she is rather nice.’

  ‘Carolyn says these are all people you ought to meet.’

  ‘Why ought I to meet them?’

  ‘Now darling, do be serious for once. It’s all that Aid and so on. They might like you, and it’s so terribly important for them to like French people because of the Aid. Carolyn’s always saying so, and she’s very clever, as I’ve told you. She says what happens is that the important Americans who come here meet all the wrong sort of French. Then they go back to the middle of America and tell the people there, who hate foreigners anyway, that the French are undependable, and so nasty it would be better to cut the Aid and concentrate on Italy, where they are undependable too but so nice, and specially on Germany, where they are dependable and so wonderful, and leave the nasty French to rot. All because they meet the wrong sort. And all this is very discouraging to Hector Dexter, who is dying to help and aid the French more and more.’

  ‘Well of course Hector Dexter would lose his job if they cut the Aid, that’s very plain.’

  ‘There you are, being French and cynical, just like Carolyn always says. And as if it would matter to Mr Dexter whether he lost his job or not. He’s far too important.’

  Indeed the word important seemed, at that time, to have been coined only for Mr Dexter, and his name never occurred either in print or in conversation without it. It seemed that he was one of the most, if not the most, important of living men.

  ‘My dear child, do you really think, when a great country like America has settled on a certain policy with regard to another great country like France, it can be deflected from it by the Jungfleisches, meeting the wrong sort of French person?’

  ‘Carolyn says it can.’

  ‘And what makes you think I’m the right sort of French person for them to meet?’

  ‘Well look at what you did in the war.’

  ‘But the Americans hate the people who were on their side in the war. It’s one thing they can never forgive. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that. Never mind,’ he said, seeing her face fall. ‘We’ll go, and I’ll do my best to be nice, I promise you.’

  10

  The Dexters invited their guests at eight, but only sat down to dinner at nine. The intervening hour was spent drinking cocktails while Hector Dexter talked about the present state of France.

  ‘I have known France all my life. I came here as a kid; I came during my vacations from college; I came on my honeymoon with my first wife, the first Mrs Dexter, and I was here during World War II. So I am in some sort qualified to make my diagnosis, and I have made my diagnosis, and my diagnosis is as follows, but first I would like to tell you all a little story which I think will help me to illustrate the point I am going to try if I can to make.

  ‘Well, it was just before the Ardennes counter-offensive; we were up in this little village near the frontier of Belgium, or no, maybe it was near the frontier of Luxembourg – it makes no odds really and doesn’t affect my story. Now there was this boulanger in the village, and I think now I will if I may describe the state of the village. Well it had been bombed by the U.S. air force, precision bombed, if you see what I mean; it had then been bombed by the Luftwaffe quite regardless I am sorry to say (sorry because I am one who hopes very soon to see the Germans playing a very very important part in the family of nations), bombed, then, quite regardless of civilian property and military objectives. It had then been shelled by U.S. infantry and taken and occupied; it had then been shelled and retaken and reoccupied by the Reichswehr, and I am sorry to say that when it was reoccupied by the Reichswehr cer
tain atrocities took place which I for one would rather forget. It had then been shelled and retaken and occupied by the U.S. infantry. And the rain was falling down day and night. I dare say you can picture the state of this village at the time of which I am telling you. But it so happened that the habitation of this boulanger was still intact. It had been damaged, of course, the windows were blown in and so on, but the walls were standing, a bit of roof was left and the big oven had suffered no impairment. So I went and asked him if he would care to have some U.S. army flour so that he could bake bread for those civilians who were left in the village. But this little old boulanger simply said what the hell, though he said it in French of course, what the hell, the Boches will be back again this evening and I don’t see much point baking bread for the Boches to eat tonight.

  ‘Now this little story is symbolical of what I see around me and of what we Americans in France are trying to fight against. There is a malaise in this country, a spirit of discontent, of nausea, of defatigation, of successlessness around us, here in this very city of Paris, which I for one find profoundly discouraging.

  ‘Now my son Heck junior is here temporarily with us, my son by the first Mrs Dexter, an independent, earning, American male of some twenty-two summers. He trained to be a psychiatrist. In my view, everybody nowadays, whatever profession they intend eventually to embrace, ought to have this training. Now he has a column.’

  Charles-Edouard, gazing all this time at Mrs Jungfleisch, who happened to be very pretty, and wondering if there were another room he could sit in after dinner with her (but he knew really that the flat was not likely to have a suite of drawing-rooms), was startled out of his reverie by the word column.

  ‘Doric?’ he asked with interest, ‘or Corinthian?’

  But Mr Dexter, in the full flood of locution, took no notice.

  ‘And my son walks in the streets of this town – he is not here with us tonight because he prefers to eat alone using his eyes and his ears in some small, but representative bistro – and he claims that he can sense, by observing the faces of the ordinary citizens, and by various small actions they perform in the course of their daily round, he claims to observe this malaise in every observable walk of life, and I am sorry to say, sorry because I am very deeply sincere in my wish and desire to help the French people, that what my son senses as he goes about this city is entirely reflected in this column.’