The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  The Captain lived in a large, rambling, early nineteenth-century house, built to be an hotel or lodging-house, on the river, hard by the Royal George. This he shared with such members of the Crew who were able and willing to do housework. They lived in attics and cellars which no servant would have considered for a single moment, but which the clever Captain had invested with romance. ‘Les toits de Paris’ he would murmur, craning through a leaky skylight and squinting at les toits de Hammersmith, while the cellars, damp and dripping, were supposed to be the foundations of a famous convent, ‘the English Port Royal’. He reserved for himself big, sunny rooms on the first floor furnished in the later manner (much later, some said) of Jacob. Here an excellent supper, withdrawn from oven and hay-box by Phaedra with the assistance of Oenone, was served to quite a large party, consisting mostly of critics and fellow highbrows, such as the editors of Depth and Neoterism. The Indian author of Sir Theseus lay on the floor reading a book and never spoke to anybody.

  ‘What really wonderful champagne,’ said Sir Conrad.

  ‘I’m so glad you like it.’ The Captain was pouring out two sorts of wine, a Krug 1928 for some and an Ayala for others. This had nothing to do with meanness; he really could not bear to see the bright, delicious drops disappear into a throat that would as soon receive any other form of intoxicant. There were many such throats among them on this occasion.

  Presently those members of the Crew who had been engaged upon the more mechanical jobs at the theatre began to arrive. They looked very much alike, and might have been a large family of sisters; their faces were partially hidden behind curtains of dusty, blonde hair, features more or less obscured from view, and they were all dressed alike in duffel coats and short trousers, with bare feet, blue and rather large, loosely connected to unnaturally thin ankles. Their demeanour was that of an extreme sulkiness, and indeed they looked as if they might be on the verge of mutiny. But this appearance was quite misleading, the Captain had them well in hand; they hopped to it at the merest glance from him, emptying ash-trays and bringing more bottles off the ice. The Royal George, if not always a happy ship, was an intensely disciplined one. Like the Indian, however, the Crew added but little to the gaiety of the party. They sat in silent groups combing the dusty veils over their faces and thinking clever thoughts about The Book of the It, The Sheldonian Synthesis, The Literature of Extreme Situations and other neglected masterpieces.

  The Captain was very much struck by Grace with her French name and Paris clothes, a year old, but all the easier for that on an English eye. He knew about the General de Valhubert killed at Friedland because this General had been a great friend, indeed one of the few known friends, of General Choderlos de Laclos. He took Grace to his library and showed her what he said was his greatest treasure, General de Valhubert’s own copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It was bound in red morocco with the Valhubert coat of arms, a stag and a rose tree, and the General had written a sort of journal, or series of notes, during one of his campaigns, all over the margins. It was a collector’s piece of rare interest. That coat of arms, so familiar to Grace, who during her short and happy life in France had seen it every day on china, silver, carpets, books, and linen, gave her a dreadful pang.

  ‘How strange. It must have been stolen from Bellandargues,’ she said, looking sadly at the book.

  ‘Thrown away, more likely. No respectable French family would have cared to have Les Liaisons Dangereuses lying about their house, in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s it, of course. And then my husband always said they were really ashamed of the Marshal, though in another way pleased to have had a Marshal of France in the family. All very complicated.’

  ‘French people are complicated. Did you like the play?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, though I like the real Phèdre better.’ It was Charles-Edouard’s favourite play, she remembered.

  ‘The real Phèdre is wonderful poetry, but, as my friend Baggarat has shown us this evening, it is psychologically quite unsound. Racine’s Phèdre has two psychological weaknesses – the first is that we can never believe in Hyppolite’s love for Aricie, and the second we cannot understand why he should recoil in such horror from this fascinating woman who loves him.’

  ‘Except that she was as old as the hills.’

  ‘How do you know? My guess is that she was half-way between the ages of Thésée and Hyppolite, and still very attractive. But if Hyppolite was homosexual, everything is explained – he adores Hara-See the dancing boy, he loathes the idea of making love to a woman. I think my friend Baggarat has done a very fine piece of work, valuable for the future of the theatre.’

  Grace was impressed. She liked the Captain very much, she liked his jolly, careless, piratical look, she thought his house most original and charming, and she was quite prepared to like the Crew. But the Crew despised her and made no effort to conceal the fact. They could not be the clever girls they were without seeing life a little bit through Marx-coloured spectacles, and to them Grace was the very personification of the rich bourgeoisie. They despised the rich bourgeoisie. Her presence in the house made them uneasy, superstitious, it was as though Jonah had come aboard the Royal George.

  They sat in a sulky, silent group, combed their hair over their faces and watched the Captain through it. To their distress they saw that he was putting himself out to be as agreeable to Grace as if she had been Panayotis Canellopoulos in person. Why? What could he see in this spineless creature, who, unable to get on with her husband, had run back to her father like a spoilt child? When the various members of the Crew had been unable to get on with their husbands they had struck proudly out on their own, taken rooms near the Deux Magots, hitch-hiked to Lithuania, or stowed away to the Caribbean. She was the sort of woman, with no self-respect, whom they positively execrated. They combed and watched, but if they harboured mutinous thoughts, they still hopped to it at a look from the Captain. In those days it seemed unthinkable that actual rebellion should ever break out on that ship while the Captain was at the helm.

  The Captain soon fell in love with Grace, if that can be called love which has nothing physical in its composition. He was not attracted to her physically, she was too clean, too tidy, and too reserved for him; impossible to conceive of cuddling or rumpling Grace. Her stiff Paris dresses, lined with buckram and padded petticoats, in themselves precluded such cosy goings on. He could not even imagine her sitting on his lap. But in every other way he loved her; he loved her elegance, her sad, romantic look, and the serious attention which she bestowed upon everything he said. Above all he loved his own mental picture of what life with her would be like if they were to marry. He imagined a small eighteenth-century villa not too far from London, where great luxury would prevail. Large, delicious, regular meals would arrive with no effort to himself, none of the expense of spirit which it cost him to keep Phaedra up to the mark; he would have a gentleman’s library, a first-class cellar, intellectual friends would come and stay, he would be able to chuck the Royal George and write a masterpiece. Later, when Sir Conrad was dead, they would live at beautiful Bunbury. Sex would not play much part in all this. The French husband, it was to be hoped, would have satisfied her in that respect for ever, and after all people could live together very happily without it. He knew many cases. They would just have to sublimate their sexual desires, it was really quite easy.

  Grace, too, had made a mental picture of what marriage with the Captain would be like, as women always do when they become aware that a man’s thoughts have turned in that direction. Her picture was not so very different from his. As with his, sex was left out. They would live together like brother and sister, she thought, a long, quiet, cultivated life. She saw them as the Wordsworths, in a larger, warmer house, nearer to London and without Coleridge; as Charles and Mary Lamb without the madness; as Mr and Mrs Carlyle without the liver attacks. Visits to Paris came into this picture, since she could not imagine life always a
way from France, and revenge of some sort on Charles-Edouard for making her so very unhappy. She began to see a great deal of the Captain, whose intentions became increasingly clear.

  Sir Conrad was not enthusiastic about either of his possible sons-in-law as such. Hughie was a nice, good creature, of course, but so boring, with his political pretensions. Sir Conrad thought that politics should be transacted, lightly, by clever men, and not ponderously by stupid ones. The Captain, whose company he very much enjoyed, seemed to him altogether too bohemian for marriage.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ he said to Mrs O’Donovan, ‘that there may still be a chance of her marrying Charles-Edouard again? They both adore the boy, surely it’s only reasonable to think that they ought to make some sacrifices on his account. After all, so little is wanted – a little discretion from Charles-Edouard and a little toleration from Grace. Mind you, it all depends on Grace. I happen to know that Charles-Edouard would take her back tomorrow, he still wants her.’

  ‘It all depends,’ said Mrs O’Donovan rather severely, ‘on Grace taking a more Christian view of the duties of a wife. I have been able to forgive her behaviour up to now on account of the shock she must have received, but she has got over that. She is certainly planning to marry again, and is making up her mind whether it shall be Hughie or the Captain. This ceremony, if you can call it that, in a registry office naturally meant nothing to her and marriage as a sacrament is quite outside her experience.’

  ‘Yes, well, you’re a Papist, Meg, so that’s how you look at it. I think it all comes from a sort of silly pride. Anyhow it’s most exceedingly tiresome. That wretched Carolyn with her mania for sight-seeing. I never could stand her, even as a child. The sort of woman who always manages to put her foot in it. Well she managed that time to some tune, it’s enough to make you cry. Just when everything was going like a marriage bell. Grace was so happy with Charles-Edouard, and furthermore so happy, which is rare for an Englishwoman, living in Paris. She loved it.’

  ‘Is that rare?’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know I should love it.’

  ‘Most English people hate living in France. I always think it’s got a great deal to do with French silver. They don’t realize it’s another alloy, they think that dark look means that it hasn’t been properly cleaned, and that makes them hate the French. You know what the English are about silver, it’s a fetish with them. I’ve so often noticed it. In the other war the silver at Bombon used to put up the backs of all our generals; they never could talk about anything else after a meal there with old Foch.’

  ‘I like that rich, dark silver,’ said Mrs O’Donovan.

  But then she liked everything French, indiscriminately and unreasonably, and her life in England, though it was all she had ever known, seemed to her a perpetual exile, so insistent was the beckoning from over the Channel.

  9

  Grace, called to the telephone in the middle of a rubber of bridge at Yeotown, came back and said to Hughie, ‘Most mysterious – Sigi and Nanny have arrived in London. I think I must go back.’

  ‘Don’t do that. I’ll send the motor for them. They’ll be here by dinner-time.’

  Dinner had begun when the little boy burst into the room and threw himself into his mother’s arms, saying ‘D’you know what, Mum – I rode on a cheval de Marly.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes I did – look!’ He fished some very tattered newspaper cuttings out of one pocket, but somehow forgot to fish a letter from Charles-Edouard out of another. Charles-Edouard had written coldly but clearly stating that, in his view, it was their absolute duty to their child to re-marry as soon as possible. He had done so without much hope of moving Grace, but he wanted her to know quite definitely, to read in black and white, his views on the subject, and to make it clear that their continued estrangement was her own responsibility.

  ‘My darling Sigi – however did you get up there? But first say how d’you do please to Mr and Mrs Fawcett and Hughie, and thank Hughie very very much for sending his motor. No – you don’t kiss people’s hands in England.’

  ‘Please always kiss mine,’ said Mrs Fawcett, ‘I love it, Sigismond.’

  ‘Don’t muddle him, Virginia, he must learn the difference.’

  ‘Well, Mummy, I got up a ladder the workmen had left. Papa allowed me to and then he went home and left me there, and I rode for ages, it was so lovely up in the sky, and there was an enormous crowd to see me and I recited to them. Well first I said the words, that was for Papa, then we had Waterloo, morne plaine, then we all sang Les voyez-vous, and then the pompiers came and we had the Marseillaise, all the verses, then they carried me down and took me home.’

  ‘I never heard such a thing,’ said Grace, with a look at Hughie which clearly said ‘Now what? We can never compete with this.’ ‘Ask Hughie if you may dine here with us as a great great treat.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be any treat at all in Paris, I always dine with Papa and have a glass of Bordeaux and 100 francs if I can tell the vintage.’

  ‘You can have a glass of Bordeaux here,’ said Hughie, ‘only we call it claret, and half a crown if you can tell the vintage.’

  He poured it out.

  ‘Quite an honourable wine,’ said Sigi, ‘but not grand cru. I can only tell when it’s grand cru.’

  This remark having gone down, he saw, rather badly, Sigismond settled to a hearty meal.

  Presently Hughie said to him, ‘What do you do all day in Paris, Sigi?’

  ‘In Paris,’ said Sigi, ‘I have two great friends. One is Madame Novembre de la Ferté, who gives me treats, allows me to drive her motor, and so on, and the other is Madame Marel, who gives me my lessons. They both give me very very expensive presents.’

  ‘But doesn’t M. l’Abbé give you your lessons any more?’

  ‘He did for a while, but he’s gone away. So now I have lessons with Madame Marel. I like it far better. I know masses of poetry by heart and we go to the jardin des plantes.’ Sigi was curling up bits of hair with one hand. ‘And what d’you think we saw the turtles doing? Yes, but it wasn’t her fault, they only do it once every three years – bad luck really. You ought to have heard them bellowing.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hughie, ‘that doesn’t amount to much. You’ve ridden a stone horse and driven a car – which you’ll do every day of your life when you’re grown up – and learnt poetry and heard turtles bellowing.’

  ‘They weren’t only bellowing,’ said Sigi. ‘Expensive presents, too – and a ball.’

  He spoke very crossly. He was tired after the journey, more than half asleep, and felt that he had not done himself justice or made it sufficiently clear that nobody in Paris could think of anything from morning till night but how best to keep him amused. However he was reassured by Hughie’s next words.

  ‘What about learning to ride a real horse so that you can go hunting next winter?’

  ‘O.K. Can I begin tomorrow?’

  ‘No. Tomorrow is Sunday. You can begin on Monday.’

  Grace left Sigi in the dining-room and went up to see Nanny.

  ‘High time we did get back, in my opinion. Such goings on, dear. The Marquee does spoil him – oh he does, lets him do anything he says. That Madam November too and that Madam Marel – they fill his head with the most unsuitable ideas between them. Did he tell you about the ball?’

  ‘He did say something. He’s half-asleep, I think.’

  ‘You’ll hear it all, no doubt. I never saw such an exhibition in my life, those poor little mites, in ridiculous clothes for children (though I must say Sigi looked sweet) kept up I believe, some of them, till six in the morning. Nanny Dexter and I – the servants didn’t want to let us in, but we weren’t having any of that – we went and fetched our two away quite early on. Sigi was sound asleep, but poor little Foss, oh he was sick. I wish you could have seen the stuff he kept on bringing up. She hasn’t got his little tummy right yet. The usual rush over the packi
ng, of course, and nobody to meet us at Victoria, dear.’

  ‘But Nanny, nobody knew you were coming.’

  ‘There now. The Marquee said he’d rung up and everything was arranged – oh well, French you know!’

  Sigismond was very sleepy indeed, but not too sleepy to burn his father’s letter to his mother in the empty nursery grate, with a match he had brought upstairs with him on purpose, while Nanny was running his bath.

  The fact that Hughie now began to pay court to Sigismond just as, in Paris, Albertine and Juliette had paid court, and with the same end in view, that of becoming his step-parent, was clear as daylight to the little boy. Like his mother he had been quite doubtful whether the high level of amusement to which he had lately become accustomed could be maintained in England. Greatly to his surprise he found that it was positively surpassed. It so happened that Sigi had a natural aptitude for all forms of sport, and therefore very much enjoyed practising them. Hughie, an excellent athlete, gave up hours a day to coaching him; he played tennis, squash, and cricket with him, and taught him to ride. So of course Sigi loved being at Yeotown and very much approved of Hughie, whose stock, in consequence, soared with Grace. Visits to Yeotown became more and more frequent and prolonged, and very soon Sigi was quite ready to consider Hughie as an auxiliary papa. He realized that his mother could never have put on such a good show by herself.