The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Thank you, Katie.’ I rang off and looked at Philip, suppressing a giggle as best I could. He shook his head, not very much amused.

  ‘This Northey!’ he said. ‘In the first place the French navy, a thoroughly Anglophobe institution, will immediately assume that we are up to some monkey work. Why should Alfred want to know where the Seine becomes tidal, all of a sudden? In the second place Busson, who is the new Minister of Atomic Energy, is the leader of a small but powerful group in the Chambre. He is also a famous gourmet. He will be angry and disappointed when his lobsters fail to appear this evening – he may never forgive. In the third place, I think it’s too irresponsible of Mees to go off like this on the one day when she might be some slight use to you!’

  The telephone bell rang: Katie again. ‘I forgot to say, she took a follower. At least I expect he is one by now –’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Chef de Cabinet. She arranged to pick him up at the side door of the Ministry in the rue St Florentin.’

  ‘That’s quite a good thing,’ I said to Philip, ‘at least he’ll see for himself she’s not spying.’

  ‘My dear, they are madly suspicious of Mees – all the ones who aren’t in love with her, that is. The sweet lobsters won’t reassure them, I can tell you.’

  ‘What time should you say she’ll be back?’

  ‘Who knows? Rouen is nearly 100 miles, I think. The Chef de Cabinet will spin it out as long as he can, no doubt. Oh well – it’s not as if she’d be much use here, one can’t trust her even to put cards round the table, let alone work out the seating. I should have had to do it for you in any case. I’ll get on to old Hughie, presently.’

  ‘Let’s put M. Busson next to Northey so that she can explain about the lobsters in her own words – ?’

  ‘And make an enemy for life? He has never been a minister before, he wouldn’t at all relish sitting next to your social secretary. We must make her apologize to him before dinner – lucky she’s so irresistible to French politicians. Now – business. Let’s see who we’ve got. I suppose I shall have to have Mees – no hope of Grace for me, eh? Talking of Grace, why not ask her to come and give you a hand with the flowers and things? I know she’d love to.’

  ‘Philip, what a good idea!’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to telephone now – she’ll turn up trumps, you’ll see.’

  He was quite right. Grace came for me in her motor after luncheon and took me to St Cloud to pick flowers for the party. Valhubert had a property there, just outside the park, an ancient garden on the site of a hunting-lodge which the Germans had destroyed in 1870. Here he grew flowers and fruit for his own use. It was a melancholy, romantic spot, especially in the autumn when the dark green leaves of the adjacent woodlands were flecked with yellow and the old fruit trees covered with apples and pears and peaches. Impossible to imagine that one was only ten minutes away from Paris. The flowers that were visible all grew in tubs and stone vases, while those for cutting were planted in regular rows, like vegetables, behind a hornbeam hedge. ‘Charles-Edouard hates to see flowers growing in the earth,’ Grace explained. ‘Look how the hot summer has brought out the orange blossom and even ripened a few oranges; very rare, in this climate.’ Wearing a dark grey linen dress with broderie anglaise collar and cuffs she looked exactly right there, as she always did whatever the circumstances. She gave me a pair of secateurs with which to cut the old-fashioned roses, lilies, hollyhocks, tuberoses, carnations, fuchsias and geraniums. ‘We’ll make a lovely mixture,’ she said. ‘Don’t they smell better than those you buy in shops?’

  ‘And no nursing-home flowers,’ I said. ‘That’s rare at this time of year.’

  ‘Those horrible gladioli, we don’t dream of allowing them. Aren’t English autumn flowers too loathsome!’

  ‘Nursing homes here have them too.’

  ‘Not quite such brutes. The English are forever building themselves up as being so good at growing flowers, best gardeners in the world and all that, and what does it boil down to en fin de compte? Michaelmas daisies and chrysanths, sentant le cimetière.’ Grace was off on her hobby-horse now. ‘Have you ever noticed it’s just those very things the English pride themselves on most which are better here? Trains: more punctual; tweeds: more pretty; football: the French always win. Doctors: can’t be compared, nobody ever dies here until they are a hundred. Horses, we’ve got M. Boussac. The post, the roads, the police – France is far better administered –’

  I felt quite furious. ‘Well, come on, Fanny,’ she said, ‘I’m waiting for the answer – you’re the Ambassadress, you’re meant to know it –’

  ‘It isn’t fair. You’ve got these things all ready to trot out, and I suppose facts and figures to bolster them up if I begin to query them. Before I see you next I shall do a bit of prep, but for the moment my mind is a blank. Oh! I know – justice. Better and much quicker at home – admit?’

  ‘We hurry people to the gallows all right. Fluster them up in the witness box and then swing them. Give me a dear old juge d’instruction, plodding away, when I’m in trouble –’

  ‘No, Grace, we don’t hang them any more.’

  ‘Not even murderers?’

  ‘Specially not them.’

  ‘What are you telling me? I don’t care for this news at all! Do you mean people can murder one as much as they like and nothing happen to them?’

  ‘Yes. Unless you’re a policewoman. I’m not sure they are meant to poison one either or perhaps it’s shooting that’s not allowed. I can never remember. But don’t worry. If they know nothing will happen they don’t murder so much.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, it was all in the papers. I say – I’ve thought of something else – the papers are better at home –’

  ‘Are they? I can’t say I ever see them except when Mockbar has a go at us, then some kind friend cuts it out and sends it. He’s a delightful writer, such polish, such accuracy!’

  ‘You take in The Times,’ I said. ‘I know you do. Try and be more truthful, Grace –’

  ‘My father sends it, but we hardly ever open it. I keep it for covering the furniture in the summer.’

  ‘I’ve thought of something else – digestives.’

  ‘All right, I’ll give you digestives and I’ll give you Cooper’s Oxford and if you’re very good potted shrimps as well. Now that’s rather typical. The only subject we agree on is food, which is not supposed to be an English talent at all. It’s the things they pretend to be good at which are such flops.’

  ‘It’s THEY now, is it!’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be angry, Fanny. After all, Charles-Edouard and the children are French –’

  ‘That’s no reason for downing the English.’

  ‘I don’t down them – not really, but they annoy me with their pretended superiority. And oh, how they chill me! Not only the climate –’

  ‘Same as here.’

  ‘Nonsense, darling, there’s no comparison – but also the hearts. I was noticing that yesterday. I had to go to a wedding at the Consulate – cold as charity it was. Gabble gabble gabble – gabble gabble gabble – may I give you my best wishes? Over. Think of the difference between that and a wedding in a mairie! When the bride and bridegroom come in, M. le Maire, in his sash of office, throws up his arms like General de Gaulle: “Mes enfants! Voici la plus belle journée de votre vie –”’

  ‘Yes, Grace. I dare say, but people must be themselves you know. Can you imagine poor Mr Stock throwing up his arms like General de Gaulle and saying “My children, this is the most beautiful day of your lives”? It would be simply ridiculous if he did.’

  ‘Ridiculous, because he hasn’t got a heart. That’s what I complain of.’

  ‘Anyhow it wouldn’t have sounded very convincing at yesterday’s wedding when you think that the Chaddesley-Corbetts are both nearly seventy and have been divorced I don’t know how many times.’


  We snipped away in silence. Presently Grace asked how the Minquiers were getting on.

  ‘Nothing new, I think. Mr Gravely comes here next week to see M. Bouche-Bontemps. Partly about the Eels, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, does he? Bringing Angela?’

  ‘No. Wives mustn’t come too often because of foreign currency. It seems she was here in the summer.’

  ‘So she was. Isn’t it mad of the Treasury the way they drive these important politicians to the brothels just for the sake of the few pounds it would cost to bring their wives with them!’

  ‘Darling! He’s sixty, looks like an empty banana skin and is only coming for the inside of a week –’

  ‘Some chaps can’t stand more than twenty-four hours, you know.’

  The Chef de Cabinet did indeed spin it out. Grace and I had done the flowers and done the table and she had gone home to dress when Northey reappeared. She seemed quite unaware of having done wrong and I saw no point in scolding as that particular misdeed was unlikely to recur. Besides, I was longing to hear about her day as much as she was longing to tell. The sweet lobsters having been returned to their native element the Chef de Cabinet had told Jérôme to make a little detour of about fifty miles which took them to a three-star restaurant. Here they ordered luncheon and then went for a walk in beautiful woods. The Chef de Cabinet, no doubt in an emotional state, had lost his head and ordered homard à l’armoricaine. When Northey discovered that this was French for lobster, and the cruellest sort at that, she was furious; she cried and sent him to Coventry for half an hour. They made it up again, ordered a different luncheon and got rather tipsy while it was being cooked. Back in Paris at last, the Chef de Cabinet, unable to endure the parting, put it off by taking her to see Notre Dame. ‘Though really,’ said Northey, ‘when you know the outside you can guess what the inside is going to be like and he made me miss my fitting at Lanvin –’

  ‘Fitting at Lanvin?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? M. Castillo has offered me Cecil Beaton. Oh, sharpen your wits, Fanny – Cecil Beaton, that heavenly dress with the bobbles –’

  11

  Our guests assembled under the gaze of King George and Queen Mary. When there is a large dinner at the Embassy it takes place in a banqueting-hall added on to the ground floor by Pauline Borghese. Though by no means beautiful, it is of an earlier date and therefore less catastrophically hideous than its equivalent at the Élysée which so torments the ghost of poor little Madame de Pompadour. The eighteenth-century dining-room on the first floor, with Flemish tapestries painful to a French eye, where we usually had our meals, only holds about twenty people.

  When M. Busson arrived, Philip grabbed Northey by the shoulder and steered her towards him, saying that she had something to explain. She took him into a corner and I could see her launching into a pantomime, partly French, partly English, mostly dumb show, tortured expression and flying hands. He looked puzzled, though fascinated, and then amused. Finally, to my relief, he burst out laughing. He gathered his colleagues round him and gave a rapid résumé of Northey’s statement. ‘And now,’ he ended up in English, ‘these succulent crustaceans are no doubt swimming away to Les Îles Minquiers.’

  ‘Swimming!’ said Northey, scornfully. ‘I have yet to see a lobster with fins.’

  M. Béguin, who was always rather grumpy and more so now that he was no longer Président du Conseil, remarked sourly that these succulent crustaceans were more likely to be boiling away, at this very moment, in peasant cottages. Far better for them, he explained in his cold, clipped voice, had they been cooked at the Embassy, because the cottage saucepans would be smaller, the cottage fires weaker and the agony more prolonged.

  Northey was unmoved by this argument. ‘I could see on their sweet faces when they were bug – I mean making off – that they would never let themselves be caught again,’ she said, comfortably.

  Bouche-Bontemps said, ‘Perhaps Mees is quite right, who knows? The Holy Office forbade the boiling alive of heretics – they tried it once, in Spain, and even Spanish nerves gave way at the sight. Ought we really to subject living creatures to such terrible cruelty in order to have one or two delicious mouthfuls?’

  ‘M. le Président,’ said Northey, ‘je vous aime.’

  ‘It is reciprocal.’

  M. Béguin looked like a Nanny whose charges have gone too far in silliness. He said something to M. Hué about the frivolity of les britanniques being beyond endurance. M. Hué, a good-natured fellow, replied that while naturally deploring the waste of delicious lobsters, he found the whole thing funny, touching and plutôt sympathique. M. Béguin raised his eyes to heaven. His shoulders, too, went up until it seemed as if they would never come down again. He looked round for a partisan, saw that Madame Hué’s gaze was also fixed to the ceiling and that she was clearly on his side. They went off together to a sofa where they sat talking very fast, throwing malignant glances in the direction of Northey.

  The Valhuberts now arrived, raising the level of looks and elegance. I introduced him to Northey and had the satisfaction of seeing that this well-known ravager of the female heart fell there and then victim to the charm of Mees. The evening seemed to have begun extremely well; most of the guests, if not all, were there and were getting on famously. I am always struck by how easily a French party slides down the slipway and floats off to the open sea. People arrive determined to enjoy themselves instead of, as at Oxford, determined (apparently) to be awkward. There are no pools of silence, all the guests find congenial souls, or at least somebody with whom to argue. Even M. Béguin’s disapproval had that positive quality which facilitates the task of a hostess; it led to lively talk and a reshuffling of the company.

  At this point, Northey was supposed to count the guests and let me know if they were all there. However she was so completely surrounded by ministers that I could not catch her eye to remind her of her duty. Philip, with a resigned wink in my direction, performed it for her. ‘That’s it,’ he said, presently.

  The door opened. I supposed that dinner was going to be announced and vaguely wondered why by that door and not the one which led to the dining-room. For a moment nothing happened. Then my bearded son David came crab-wise into the room, pulling after him a blue plastic cradle and a girl attached to its other handle. He was dressed in corduroy trousers, a duffel coat, a tartan shirt and sandals over thick, dirty, yellow woollen socks. The girl was tiny, very fair with a head like a silk-worm’s cocoon, short white skirt (filthy) swinging over a plastic petticoat, a black belt, red stockings and high-heeled, pointed, golden shoes.

  In the silence which fell as this curious group came into the room I heard a voice (M. Béguin’s I expect) saying something about ‘cet individu à mine patibulaire’ and another (Charles-Edouard de Valhubert probably), ‘pas mal, la petite.’

  I am always pleased when my children turn up. The sight of them rejoices me, I rush forward, I smile and I embrace. I did so now. David and the girl dumped the cradle on a precious piece by Weisweiller. He kissed me warmly (oh horrid, scrubbing-brush beard) and said, ‘Ma, this is Dawn.’

  Alfred’s reactions were not as immediately enthusiastic as mine. With him it is not so much a physical instinct as a matter of principle that makes him welcome the boys whatever the circumstances of their arrival. Our house is their home, their shelter from the stormy blast. If they are naked they must be clothed; if hungry, fed; if the police of five nations are hot on their heels they must be hidden. No questions must ever be asked. Now he came forward and shook hands with his son, giving him a stern, grave, penetrating look. ‘This is Dawn, Father.’

  ‘How do you do?’

  Alfred led Dawn and David round the room, introducing them, while I held a hurried consultation with Philip about fitting them in to our dinner.

  He said, ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea? They are so travel-stained –’

  Unfortunately I knew my David far too
well to think that the stains had anything to do with travel.

  ‘We can’t possibly send them out when they have just arrived,’ I said. ‘Alfred wouldn’t hear of it.’

  ‘There’s no room for them here. The table only holds fifty – it would take at least an hour to put in another leaf and re-do it.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ I considered a moment. ‘In that case, Philip, I’m most dreadfully afraid, and too sorry, that you’ll have to take Northey out to dinner. Go to the Cremaillere – on the house of course. Do you mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philip, displeased at this turn of affairs. Though he had not been able to arrange the seating so that he would be next to Grace (he was between Northey and Mrs Jungfleisch) he had been placed exactly opposite her so that he would be able to look at her all the time and occasionally lean over and exchange a remark. ‘I mind but I bow to the inevitable.’