The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘In other words, send for the doctor. Davey, how like you – !’

  ‘No, Fanny. Did I order doctors for Pauline? Did I get rid of her?’

  ‘All right, I admit. And there may be something in what you say. But I’m wondering if he will cooperate. He’s become so difficult.’

  ‘He’ll be delighted to. He is evidently an exhibitionist – that is shown by the beard, the pipe, the strange clothes and Chinese baby. The more attention paid to him the better pleased he’ll be. Say what you like about the modern world, we must give three cheers for science. Look at me! If I’d been born fifty years sooner I’d have been pushing up the daisies by now.’

  ‘Very likely, since you would have been a hundred and sixteen. Uncle Matthew always says you are the strongest man he has ever met.’

  ‘It is too bad of Matthew when he knows quite well how delicate I am.’ Davey was seriously annoyed. He rose to his feet and said he must go home and have a rest before dinner.

  ‘We’ve asked some people to meet you.’

  ‘Oh dear! You always seem to dine alone, so I made a little plan with Mildred. One can count on interesting conversation there.’

  As Davey and I came to the Place de la Concorde we saw that there was something going on. A mob of men in mackintoshes, armed with cameras, were jostling each other on the roadway outside the Hôtel Crillon. Mockbar leant against the wall by the revolving door of the hotel. I never can resist a crowd. ‘Do let’s find out who it is they are waiting for,’ I said.

  ‘It can only be some dreary film star. Nothing else attracts any interest nowadays.’

  ‘I know. Only, if we don’t wait we shall hear afterwards that something thrilling occurred and we shall be cross.’ I showed him Mockbar. ‘There’s the enemy. He looks more like a farmer than a gossip writer.’

  ‘Lady Wincham – how are you?’ It was the Times correspondent. There was a moment of agony when I could remember neither his name nor Davey’s. I feebly said, ‘Do you know each other?’ However my embarrassment was covered by the noisy arrival of policemen on motor-bicycles.

  ‘Who is it?’ I shouted to the Times man.

  ‘Hector Dexter. He has chosen Freedom. He and his wife are expected here from Orly any minute now.’

  ‘Remind me –’ I shouted.

  ‘That American who went to Russia just before Burgess and Maclean did.’

  I vaguely remembered. As everybody seemed so excited I could see that he must be very important. The noise abated when the policemen got off their bicycles. Davey said: ‘You must remember, Fanny – there was a huge fuss at the time. His wife is English – your Aunt Emily knew her mother.’

  More police dashed up, clearing the way for a motor. It stopped before the hotel; the journalists were held back; a policeman opened the door of the car and out of it struggled a large Teddy-bear of an American in a crumpled beige suit, a coat over his arm, holding a brief-case. He stood on the pavement, blinking and swallowing, green in the face; I felt sorry for him, he looked so ill. Some of the journalists shouted questions while others flashed and snapped away with their cameras. ‘So what was it like, Heck?’ ‘Come on, Heck, how was the Soviet Union?’ ‘Why did you leave, Heck? Let’s have a statement.’

  Mr Dexter stood there, silent, swaying on his feet. A man pushed a microphone under his nose. ‘Give us your impressions, Heck, what’s the life like, out there?’

  At last he opened his mouth. ‘Fierce!’ he said. Then he added, in a rush, ‘Pardon me, gentlemen, I am still suffering from motion discomfort.’ He hurried into the hotel.

  ‘Suffering from what?’ said Davey, interested.

  ‘It means air sickness,’ said the Times man. ‘I wonder when we shall get a statement. Dexter used to be a tremendous chatterbox – he must be feeling very sick indeed to be so taciturn all of a sudden.’

  A large pink knee loomed in the doorway of the motor. It was followed by a woman as unmistakably English as Dexter was American. She merely said ‘Shits’ to the snapping and flashing photographers. Using the New Statesman as a screen she ran after her husband. Her place was taken by a fat, pudding-faced lad who stood posing and grinning and chewing gum until everybody lost interest in him. I saw that Mockbar’s elbows were getting into motion, followed by the rheumaticky superannuated stable-boy action of his lower limbs, the whole directed at me. ‘Come on,’ I said to Davey, ‘we must get out of this, quick –’

  Philip was invited to the Jungfleisch dinner as well as Davey and next morning he came to report. The return of the Dexters had been, of course, the sole topic of conversation. When it transpired that Davey had actually witnessed it he became the hero of the evening.

  ‘They are puzzled, poor dears,’ said Philip.

  ‘Who – the Jungfleisches?’

  ‘All the Americans here. Don’t know how to take the news. Is it Good or Bad? What does it mean? How does Mr Khrushchev evaluate it? What will the State Department say? The agony for our friends is should they send flowers or not? You know how they can’t bear not to be loved, even by Dexter – it’s ghastly for them to feel they are not welcoming old Heck as they ought to – at the same time it was very, very wrong of him to leave the Western Camp and it wouldn’t do for them to appear to condone. The magic, meaningless word Solidarity is one of their runes; old Heck has not been solid and that’s dreadfully un-American of him. But one must remember old Heck has now chosen Freedom, he has come back to the Western Camp of his own accord and they would like to reward him for that. So they are in an utter fix. In the end it was decided that Mildred must have a dinner party for policy makers; Jo Alsop, Elsa Maxwell, Mr Gallagher and Mr Shean are all flying over for it – but most of them can’t get here before the end of the week. We shan’t know any more until they have been consulted. Meanwhile there’s the question of the flowers. Either you send at once or not at all; what are they to do? Davey suggested sending bunches with no cards, so that presently, if they want to, they can say, “Did you get my roses all right, Heck?”

  ‘Isn’t Davey wonderful?’

  ‘It went down very badly. They were sharked.’

  Davey got to work on his godson. Dr Lecœur came and took many tests, David cooperating quite satisfactorily. The Americans at Mrs Jungfleisch’s dinner had been unanimous in recommending Dr Jore, head psycho-analyst to N.A.T.O. David brought him to the Salon Vert to have a word with me before taking him up to see his patient. He wanted to get the background first. He was a gangling young man, perhaps really much older than he looked. Davey seemed to like him; I tried to put prejudice out of my mind and do the same. When I had told him all I knew about my son, going back to babyhood, even trying to remember how I had taught him to use a pot (‘I suppose I smacked him’), Dr Jore cleared his throat.

  ‘As I see it then, Mrs Ambassadress, though of course I may be wrong since no system of psychiatry is as yet I believe infallible, the human element playing, as it must play in all human affairs, its part, since we are only endeavouring towards daylight and though I think I may say that the system by which I personally am guided is now very largely perfectioned, the foregoing reservation must be very distinctly borne in mind. With this reservation, then, very distinctly borne in mind, what I am about to say may be deemed to approximate the facts as they most probably are. Your son, Mrs Ambassadress, in addition to a condition of aboulia which is probably due to oily terlet training, and which may be possible to combat but which is likely to be difficult, stubborn and lengthy, in short not easy, to overcome, your son has an anoetic Pull to the East. Period.’

  ‘A Pull to the East?’ I said.

  ‘Please let Dr Jore speak,’ Davey said, sternly.

  Dr Jore slightly bowed and went on. ‘Perhaps I could put this matter rather more succinctly by stating a paradigm which I believe to be unconfutable. Human beings, in my view and in the view of others more qualified than I, are roughly divided (in respect of what I am abou
t to enucleate, to the best of my endeavour and without having had access to my case), human beings, then, fall into two roughly definable categoremia: those who are subject and liable to a Pull to the East and others, I am happy to say an appreciably larger grouping, who are subject and liable to a Pull to the West. Perhaps I could explain this matter more readily comprehensibly if I were to state that those on the continent of Europe who feel a very compelling wish and desire to visit England, Ireland and the Americas feel little wish or desire to go to Russia, China and the Indias, whereas those forcibly attracted to China, Russia and the Indias –’

  ‘Don’t want to go to America.’

  ‘Please let Dr Jore finish what he is saying,’ Davey said peevishly. ‘It’s so interesting, Fanny –’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If you go far enough East you come to the West. If you could manage to push my son a little further we might get him to Hollywood. Then he could join up with Auden and everybody,’ I said to Davey, ‘and Jassy could keep an eye on him. That might be a solution?’

  Davey sighed deeply. ‘And now, perhaps, we could be allowed to hear what the doctor has to say?’

  Dr Jore had shut his eyes while I spoke. He opened them again. ‘Mrs Ambassadress, ma’am, you have put your finger on the very heart of the matter.’

  I looked triumphantly at Davey who said ‘Ssh.’

  ‘This is a point which has by no means escaped the learned professor who was the first to proclaim this doctrine of Oriental versus Occidental attraction. Now this attraction (whether towards the Orient or East or towards the Occident or West) occurs in the persons subjected to its magnetism in greater or lesser degrees and we practising psychiatrists find it possible to cure or check it according to its strength. May I explain myself? If the pull, whether to the East or to the West (a pull to the West, of course, is very much more desirable than its converse, and rarely needs to be cured, though in a few, very extreme, cases it should be checked), if the pull, then, is very strong it is comparatively easy to cure. If it is overwhelmingly strong the patient has only to be encouraged to follow it and in these days of jet travel he will find himself back where he started in a surprisingly short time. Period. In the case, however, Mrs Ambassadress, of your son, the pull, by all the evidence which I have been able to garner, is weak. It has pulled him over the English Channel and across Normandy as far as Paris. Here it seems to have left him. Where there is so little for me to combat, the case is difficult. Therefore when your uncle suggested that I should work in collaboration with a physician I gladly agreed to do so. I feel that by super-adding the action of certain glands it should be possible to augment the will-power of your son, thus giving myself a basis on which to proceed. I must now touch upon another and more serious aspect of the Pull. Should the patient yearn towards the manners, customs and ways of thought of the Eastern Lands – should he sit on the floor eating rice; should the muezzin call for him in the Champs Élysées; should he dream of military deploys in the Red Square and think the bronzes of Démé-Jioman superior to those of Michelangelo – then, what I might call the jet treatment will not be sufficient. Then we must wean him back to the manners, customs and ways of Western Civilization and this we must do by means of his subconscious. Here the silent, long-playing gramophone record during sleep has its role, super-added to a daily personal collocution with myself or one of my assistants. Period.’

  Dr Jore shut his eyes again and there was silence. I did not dare to break it. At last Davey said, ‘Excellent. That is precisely the conclusion I had come to myself. Now I think you should see your patient in his own surroundings – I’ll take you up to his room.’

  Dr Jore was with David for about an hour, after which he went to Davey’s room for an uninterrupted consultation. David came rocketing down to me.

  ‘I see that you and Uncle Davey think I’m mad.’

  ‘Oh, no, darling – whatever makes you say that?’

  ‘Then why have you called in this ghastly Yank?’

  ‘Davey – you know what he is – thought you weren’t looking very well.’

  ‘He’s quite right there. I don’t feel a hundred per cent. But isn’t Dr Lecœur coping with that? Why should I need an alienist?’

  ‘You must ask Davey,’ I said weakly. ‘He’s your godfather, he has taken you on, it’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You told this doctor about teaching me to pee into a pot, didn’t you?’

  ‘He asked.’

  ‘Yes, well, another time please let him ask. After all, this was most private between you and me, I call it wildly indiscreet of you to discuss it with a stranger. Another thing, Ma, if Dr Jore comes here every day like he says he’s going to he will drive me mad. Really, properly barking. I am quite serious.’

  ‘I must say I see your point.’

  ‘I heard him telling Davey he’s going to empty my mind and refurnish it with contemporary Western ideas. Now my Zen Master empties my mind and fills it with the ancient unlearning of the East. It can’t be right for them to go on empyting and filling it in competition with each other?’

  ‘I must say it doesn’t sound right. You wouldn’t think of giving up the Zen Master?’

  ‘I don’t like talking to you about Zen – I know you think it’s funny – you’re laughing now, Ma, aren’t you? That’s what makes it difficult to confide in you, you laugh at everything.’

  ‘Darling, never at you,’ I said, guiltily.

  ‘In that case I’m the only one. You’re nothing but a mocking materialist, like all your generation. If your children are not well-balanced you have only yourself to blame.’

  ‘Oh dear. Do you think that you and Basil are different from other people because I mocked?’ I was very much disturbed at this notion.

  ‘Different from other people – different from whom? You go about the world with your eyes shut. If you opened them you would see thousands of people exactly like me and Basil – Beards and Teds abounding in every direction. Next time you go driving in that awful great hearse of yours, just look out of the window. You’ll see that we’re not as different from other people as all that –’

  ‘Then in what way do you think you are unbalanced?’

  ‘I lack self-confidence and will-power. That’s what Dr Jore thought.’

  ‘And you don’t feel that he can help you?’

  ‘I’ve told you, Dr Jore would drive me into a bin. Only two people can help me. Dawn is one and the Zen Master is the other. They understand. I could never give them up, either of them.’

  ‘No, darling, you shan’t. I absolutely agree about Dr Jore – he’s a bore.’

  ‘There you are, with your scale of false values! You divide human souls into bores and non-bores, don’t you? I’m a bore and Basil isn’t, that I’ve always known. You ought to be considering where everybody stands in the universal scheme instead of laughing at them and saying they are bores.’

  ‘Anyway, in this case our different methods bring us to the same conclusion. I say Jore is a bore; you say Jore’s standing in the universal scheme is low: we both say Jore must go.’

  At this David became more agreeable. He kindly admitted that though I was regrettably frivolous I was not without a certain comprehension. He harrowed my face with his beard and we parted on the best of terms.

  Davey was more hurt than surprised when I told him that he must get rid of Jore. In my view, I explained, he was calculated to give anybody who had to see much of him a nervous breakdown and I refused to have one of my own children handed over to him. ‘David can’t bear him,’ I said, ‘so I’m sure he wouldn’t be much good.’

  ‘He’s far better than the Zen Master,’ said Davey, who, unlike me, had been allowed to meet this legendary figure.

  ‘That I can easily believe. However, David doesn’t think so; people must be allowed to go to hell their own way.’

  ‘It’s the greatest pity he has taken agains
t Jore. I thought his diagnosis quite amazing – he hit the nail on the head in one. Mildred says he is intensely brilliant; the Supreme Commander has him every afternoon.’

  ‘How can he bear the dissertation?’

  ‘You must remember, with Americans, that they are fighting to express themselves in a language they’ve never properly learnt. They need the dissertation; the kind of shorthand that we talk would be useless to them.’

  The next evening, Davey was good enough to dine in. We were waiting for Alfred and sipping cocktails.

  ‘Why does one never see Northey?’ Davey was asking, upon which the door opened and the pretty face looked round it.

  ‘I say, what’s happened to David? He fell on me like a stallion just now, in my office.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Davey. ‘Dr Lecœur’s super-adding gland injection must have begun to work.’

  ‘Really, Davey, I call that rather inconvenient!’ I said. ‘What about all the young women in the Chancery? I’m supposed to be responsible for their morals, you know.’

  ‘This is Paris. They must be used to dealing with satyrs.’

  ‘In the Bois, perhaps, but not in the Embassy. Is it necessary to turn the poor fellow into a satyr?’

  ‘Please, Fanny, I must ask you not to interfere any more with my treatment of David.’

  ‘Oh, very well. Do you dine with us, darling?’

  ‘Not really. I’m after France Soir. Goody gum trees, the Bourse has found her vigour again – but Ay de mi, the Reps have reacted unfavourably to M. Bourguiba’s speech. Now there will be a pause for introspection, mark my words. The worry of it!’

  ‘Where’s Baz?’ I said.

  ‘Buggered. He’ll be coming back next week.’

  ‘Buggered!’ said Davey, faintly.

  ‘Now, Davey, you tell her she mustn’t.’

  ‘It’s all right, I know I mustn’t and I’m trying desperately hard not to.’

  ‘Is he bringing the atom marchers next week?’

  ‘No, ruminants until the end of the month. He’s been very busy organizing the march – he spent hours yesterday with precious Amy, seeing about the publicity. Anything for me to do, Fanny? Don’t say yes, there’s a darling, but lend me your little mink jacket, I’m so tired of my bunny.’