The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  The Dexters now got up to leave. The Jungfleisches, they explained, were giving a party for important people, and they had promised to be there early.

  ‘Poor old Heck,’ said Hughie when they had gone. ‘He does see things in black and white. Funny, really, for such a clever man. I can’t help remembering how all over the Russians he used to be, in Italy. He bit my head off the other day for reminding him, but it’s true.’

  ‘Like Carolyn,’ Grace said, laughing, ‘she used to be our school Communist. I know it was she, though now she pretends I’ve been mixing her up with another girl. She gets furious when I tease her about it.’

  Hughie said, ‘Let’s go and have a glass of wine somewhere before bedtime, shall we?’

  Grace felt tired, as she often did now, but it seemed rather a shame to send him away so early, and she consented.

  ‘Just for an hour then,’ she said.

  They went to a White Russian night club, a stuffy, dark, enclosed room with music from the Steppes. Cossacks, in boots and white blouses, have keened here night after night for thirty years over a life that has gone for ever. The hours of darkness seem too short for them to express the whole burden of their desolation, so that any reveller who will sit up and listen to the wails and whimpers of their violins until late into the next day becomes their brother and their best beloved. Whereas in other night places the band may be anxious to catch the last metro and go home, these Russians would rather anything than that a lack of customers should drive them out to the first metro. The little room has come to represent Holy Russia to them, and when they leave it in the morning exile begins again. It is really a place designed for lovers or for drunkards, people who like to sit all night engulfed in sound rather than for those who want an hour of sober chat.

  Hughie had come to unburden himself about Albertine, and he had to talk very loud so as to be heard over the scream of the violins. From time to time the noise suddenly dropped to a dramatic hush, intended to represent the lull in a storm, and then Hughie’s powerful English voice would ring out into the silence so that he was embarrassed, and Grace wanted to giggle. As soon as he had lowered it a gusty crescendo would swallow up his next sentence. It was a very fidgety way of confiding.

  ‘Of course she’ll never want to marry me, I know. I don’t allow myself to think of it. She is far above me, far too clever and wonderful. She knows everything, not only all French literature but English and German too – she has even read Mrs Henry Wood, for instance. I wish you could hear her reciting – by the hour, it’s extraordinary. When I think of all the years I’ve wasted – but I never guessed there was somebody like that just round the corner or I would have tried to educate myself a bit. You can’t be surprised she rather looks down on me, as it is. So now I’m trying terribly hard to make up for lost time, just in case one day she might think of marrying me. Not very likely, I know, but in life things do sometimes happen. For instance she might be ruined and need a home, or have a fearful accident and be disfigured, or lose a leg –’

  The words ‘lose a leg’, falling into one of the pools of sudden silence, echoed round the room so that Grace could not help laughing.

  ‘Lose a leg?’ she said.

  Hughie laughed himself, saying, ‘Oh well, of course it sounds ridiculous; it’s one of those things which I sometimes think of. After all Sarah Bernhardt did, it can happen, and then she’d need somebody to push her about. The worst of it is such hundreds of people do want to marry her, she’d be unlikely to choose me. There’s another terrible worry. She talks of going into a convent. I wake up in the night and think about it. Supposing one day I were to call at her house only to be told “Madame Marel-Desboulles is no more. Pray for Soeur Angélique”?’

  Grace laughed again, and said, ‘You’ve been reading Henry James – so do I, in the hopes of understanding them all better. But I don’t think Albertine is another Madame de Cintré, nor do I think she’ll ever marry again. I guess you’ll be able to go on like this for years, if it’s any consolation to you.’

  ‘It’s very much better than nothing, of course. So, as I say, I read a lot to try to educate myself, but I must have let my mind go badly and it’s an awful strain. Have you ever tried the Mémoires of Saint-Simon? Heavy weather, I can tell you. Then I try and see as many clever people as I can. That’s why I go such a lot to the Dexters.’

  ‘D’you think them so very clever?’

  ‘Carolyn is brilliant of course, she takes me sight-seeing and we go to lectures. As for old Heck, well, if he is a bit muddle-headed about some things, he’s got the gift of the gab, hasn’t he? I wish I could talk like that, on and on.’

  ‘I always think he talks as if he doesn’t quite know English.’

  ‘Really, Grace, what an idea. All those words – I’m English, but I don’t know what half of them mean. Albertine would like me much better if I could put on an act like Hector, I’m sure she would. But when I’m with her I seem to get so tongue-tied.’

  At this moment a large party of people got up to go. The violinists came forward, still playing, to try and persuade them to stay. They surrounded them, playing with all their souls. But the people, though smiling, were firm, and made a passage through the deeply bowing, still playing Cossacks. When they had gone, and the violinists had returned to the band, Grace suddenly perceived, in a very dark corner, hitherto obscured by these other people, the figures of Charles-Edouard and Juliette. Their backs were turned, but she could see their faces in a looking-glass. They were evidently enjoying themselves enormously, heads close together, laughing and chattering sixteen to the dozen. Grace was particularly struck, stricken to the heart indeed, by Charles-Edouard’s look, a happy, tender, and amused expression, which, she thought, she herself used to evoke at Bellandargues but which she had not seen of late.

  She felt weak, as if she were bleeding to death. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘but I think I might faint. Could we go home please, Hughie?’

  ‘Goodness,’ he said, ‘you are white, Grace.’ He hurried her to the motor, full of self-reproach. ‘I should never have suggested this, you’re not strong enough yet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing, I promise. I feel better already. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Don’t come in,’ she said, when they arrived at her house. ‘My maid always waits for me – she’s old-fashioned; I’m so lucky. Good night, Hughie.’

  When Charles-Edouard got back, not very late, she was in bed, crying dreadfully.

  ‘Why do you weep?’ he said, with great solicitude.

  ‘Because you’re in love.’

  ‘I am in love?’

  ‘With Juliette.’

  ‘Why do you say this?’

  ‘I was at the Russian place. I saw you.’

  Charles-Edouard looked very much taken aback. ‘But you never go to night places.’

  ‘I know. I hate them, but Hughie wanted to –’

  ‘Ha! You’ve been out with Hughie?’

  ‘I told you we were all going to dine here, me and Hughie and the Dexters. Well the Dexters went on to a party after dinner so Hughie and I – Oh Charles Edouard, you’re in love with her?’

  He raised his hand, shook his head, and replied, ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Then why were you looking so happy?’

  ‘Would I look happy if I were in love with Juliette? It would be very inconvenient, after all she is my cousin’s wife. No, I look happy because I am happy – happy in my life and with you, and then I do love to go out with a pretty woman.’

  ‘Why did you pretend you were going to dine with Tante Edmonde?’

  ‘But my dear Grace, it was no pretence at all. I did dine there. It so happens that Juliette also was dining with her mother-in-law. Jean has gone to Picardy; she was alone in her flat so she dined downstairs. When I had finished talking with my aunt I took her out for half an hour before bedtime. I didn’t want to come back here and
find your dinner still going on.’

  ‘Oh!’ This sounded so reasonable. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to make a scene and I do apologize.’

  ‘For what? The rights of passion have been proclaimed once and for all in the French Revolution.’

  ‘The worst part of the whole thing,’ said Grace, tears beginning to well into her eyes again, ‘is that what I minded so terribly was your look of happiness. I am supposed to love you and yet I mind you looking happy. When you were sad, when your grandmother died, I was sorry, of course, but I could easily bear it – now I find that what I can’t bear is for you to look happy. What can it mean, it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘That, I’m afraid,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘is love.’

  ‘But what can I do! I can’t live with somebody whom I would rather see sad than happy. Perhaps I’d better go back to England?’

  ‘No. Do stay.’

  Grace laughed. ‘You say that as if you were asking me for a week-end.’

  ‘Do stay, for good.’

  ‘I can’t bear to make scenes, I’m ashamed of myself, it is dreadful.’

  ‘You won’t have to very often.’

  ‘I shall begin to imagine all sorts of things whenever you go out.’

  ‘That would be the greatest pity – imaginative women are terrible. Now let’s calmly consider what did happen this evening. What did you actually see? Juliette and me, sitting quite properly at a table in a perfectly proper establishment. I was not looking unhappy, but then I have no reason to, I’m not a White Russian violinist. So! That is what you saw. Then your imagination got to work, and what did you imagine? That I had told you a lie, sneaked off to dine in a loving intimacy with Juliette and then taken her to a night club. Knowing me as you do, you might have thought it more probable that, if I were in love with Juliette, I would go straight to bed with her, but no! We choose the night club where we can be seen by all and sundry, and where in fact you see us, staying perhaps an hour, not more. I take her home, but only to the door. My aunt’s concierge, like ours, has to get out of bed to let people in, so there could be no question of me going upstairs with Jean’s wife; the whole of Paris would know it tomorrow if I did. I say good night in the street and come back here – it is still not one o’clock. I don’t think any of this indicates the existence of a great and guilty passion for Juliette. You must be more reasonable, dearest. Shall I give you a piece of advice, quite as useful in love as in warfare? Save your ammunition, and only shoot when you see the whites of their eyes. Now in this particular case I would have you observe that I spent exactly the same sort of evening as you did. We both dined with a few rather dull people, and then went out with the least dull of them for an hour or so before bed.’

  ‘Hughie isn’t as pretty as Juliette.’

  ‘Hughie is very handsome, and you know it. But I haven’t come near to seeing the white of his eyes yet. I shan’t shoot this time, and nor must you.’

  Grace was completely reassured. She went happily to sleep.

  14

  A few days later Grace lunched with Carolyn, and the talk was all of a certain guide who took personally conducted tours into the private houses of Paris. Carolyn said that she had followed one of these tours every day that week.

  ‘I’ve been into such wonderful houses, which I would never have seen otherwise,’ she said. ‘He gets permission to visit anything that is “classé”, and of course that means anything worth seeing. His lectures, too, are good and informative. Yesterday we went to Mansard’s own house in the Marais.’

  She described it to Grace. Carolyn was at her best on the subject of old Paris and really knew a great deal about it. She liked the monuments of the town better than its denizens who still threw her into a fever of irritation.

  ‘Now I asked you not to be late,’ she said, ‘because this afternoon M. de la Tour is taking us to see a very famous private house, one of the hardest to get into, the Hôtel de Hauteserre in the rue de Varenne. I simply must go, and you’d better come too, Grace. It’s a chance we shan’t have again for ages, and I believe the boiseries are unique.’

  Grace had nothing much to do and was, like Hughie, forever trying to scrape up a little culture. Besides, she thought, it might be something for Charles-Edouard with his perpetual ‘What are the news?’ She never had enough to tell him about her day. ‘So, what did la belle Lesbienne recount? Or did you sit, as usual, gazing at each other in silence?’ As her talk with Carolyn was never anything that could possibly interest him, being all about nannies, the Parc Monceau, and mutual friends at home, and as Grace had no talent for cooking up such plain food with either the spice of malice or the sauce of funniness, she was always obliged to leave it that they had gazed in silence. ‘Very strange, this dumbness.’

  After luncheon Carolyn drove her across the river to the rue de Varenne. Her exasperation with the French always reached boiling-point when she was driving a motor. As they went she told Grace about a dishonest mechanic who had put back her spare wheel unmended (she was never happier than when some little thing of this sort occurred, another stick with which to beat them), and punctuated her story with, ‘Look at that! Did you ever see such driving? I shan’t give way; I’m in my rights and he knows it. Disgusting. Oh get on. What a place to park. What people, really!’

  It was one of those Paris afternoons when, by some trick of the light, the buildings look as if they are made of opaque, blue glass. Grace wondered how much Carolyn really did love the stones of Paris. She seemed not to notice, as they went by, the blue glass façade of the Invalides surmounted by its dome powdered with gold, but only the bad driving in the Esplanade.

  Now when they arrived at their destination Grace saw that it was none other than the Ferté house. She had never known that its old name was Hôtel de Hauteserre, to her it had always been 83 rue de Varenne or the house of Tante Edmonde. She laughed, and said to Carolyn, ‘But I know this house by heart – it belongs to Charles-Edouard’s old great-uncle; we lunch or dine here every week of our lives. I don’t think there’s much point in me going in.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Carolyn, ‘you’d better come along as you’re here. M. de la Tour will tell you all about it, and very likely show you lots of things you hadn’t ever suspected.’

  Grace thought again that it would be something funny to tell Charles-Edouard, and that the idea of her sight-seeing in that house would be sure to amuse him. So she paid 100 francs at the door and went in with Carolyn. There was quite a crowd of people, and the guide was just beginning his lecture.

  ‘This house,’ he said, ‘was built in 1713 by Boffrand for the famous – I should perhaps say notorious – Marquise de Hauteserre, who created a record by keeping the Régent as her lover for eighteen weeks. He was by no means her only lover, and they were, in fact, numberless. I am glad to be able to announce that when we have seen the state rooms, which are of an extraordinary beauty, we are to be allowed the great privilege, hardly ever accorded to tourists, of seeing Madame de Hauteserre’s own bedroom. Madame la Duchesse has given me the key; she knows that we are all serious students of French art and not mere gaping sightseers.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ whispered Carolyn to Grace.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There – what did I tell you?’

  ‘This bedroom,’ the guide continued, ‘has an erotic ceiling, a thing rare in France though not uncommon in Italy, by Le Moine; a Régence bed of wonderful quality, and boiseries by Robert de Cotte. When I tell you that all this is quite unrestored, you will easily realize that what you are about to see is unique, of its sort, in Paris.’

  They went upstairs into the reception rooms of the first floor which Grace knew so well, gold and white, blue and white, gold and blue with painted ceilings. The lecturer went at length into the history of every detail; they were nearly an hour examining these three rooms, and Grace began to feel tired. At last, in the Salon de Jupiter, where the Fertés us
ually sat after dinner, the lecturer went to a little door in the wall, which Grace had never noticed there. Taking a large key from his pocket he unlocked this door, saying, ‘And now for the famous bedroom of Madame de Hauteserre.’

  Grace happened to be standing beside him, and together they looked in. It was a tiny room decorated with a gold and white trellis; an alcove contained a bed, and on the bed, in a considerable state of disarray, were Juliette and Charles-Edouard.

  The guide quickly slammed and relocked the door. He turned to the crowd, saying, ‘Excuse me, I had quite forgotten, but of course the boiseries and the ceiling have gone to the Beaux Arts for repair.’

  Nobody but Grace and the guide had seen into the room; greatly to her relief the tourists accepted his statement without dispute, if rather crossly. They had certainly had their money’s worth in this beautiful house, although they had been looking forward to the erotic ceiling as a final titbit. Carolyn, still gazing at a panel in the Jupiter room, said, ‘Oh never mind, we’ve really seen enough for one day. Shall I give you a lift home, Grace?’

  Grace got into the motor, talked away quite naturally, thanked Carolyn for the afternoon, and went into her house as if nothing had happened. She lay on the day bed in her library, saying to herself, ‘This is the end.’ But, as with some physical blow, she had not yet begun to feel any pain.

  Presently Charles-Edouard came in.

  ‘I looked for you in the nursery,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t you having tea with Madame Marel?’

  ‘Not today. I never do on Wednesday, it’s her day for receiving. Where do we dine? Oh yes, of course, I remember, Tante Régine. That’s sure to be great fun. So, what are the news? Don’t tell me, I can guess. You lunched, in an impenetrable silence, with la Dexter. Such a curious friendship, I find.’

  ‘And after luncheon we went sight-seeing.’

  ‘Indeed? Where?’

  ‘The Hôtel de Hauteserre.’

  Charles-Edouard looked at her, startled, and then said, quite angrily for him, ‘Really, Grace, you are too extravagant. What could have induced you to pay 100 francs to see the house of your uncle, which you know perfectly well already? No – this is not sensible, and I’m very cross with you. Why, 100 francs was a dowry when my grandmother was young.’