Don't Tell Alfred

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘Run away?’ I said, perhaps too cheerfully, in my relief.

  ‘People don’t exactly run away any more. The snivelling boy dragged off the stagecoach by an usher is a thing of the past.’

  I laughed hysterically at this piece of light relief, put in perhaps to steady my nerves.

  ‘No, you could hardly call it that. In any case, running away is a spontaneous action with which one can have a certain sympathy. This was a premeditated, indeed an organized, departure. They asked to speak to me after early school and announced it, quite politely I must say. Then all three got into a Rolls-Royce, apparently hired for the purpose, and drove off – ’

  ‘All three?’

  ‘Valhubert was with them.’

  ‘Oh, he was, was he! And did they give a reason?’

  ‘The excuse was the food – in other words, no excuse at all because I think I may say the food in my house is excellent. I eat it myself. They pretended that poor little Billy last half – you remember the tragedy – threw himself into the weir on purpose because of it. Nothing could be more far-fetched. They said the choice was between a suicide pact and immediate departure.’

  ‘Naughty!’ I stifled a giggle.

  ‘I need hardly tell you that I shall be unable to take them back again after this. The drama was played out in public – half the school saw them go. It seems they stopped in Slough for Fabrice to say good-bye to his mistress and three children.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said irritably. ‘I’ve heard about this mistress in Slough all my life – ever since my cousins were at school. And the King of Siam’s seven wives living over the post-office. Typical Eton tales.’

  ‘That may be. I’m only telling you to show the effect of all this on the other boys and the impossibility of my overlooking their conduct.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see, and I quite realize. Does M. de Valhubert know?’

  ‘Not yet. I shall ring him up now.’

  ‘Just tell me where they’ve gone, will you?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘No idea! Didn’t you ask them?’

  ‘Certainly I did not.’

  My irritation turned to fury. What did we pay the wretched man for? With incredible frivolity he had allowed these children we had put in his care, while we were serving our country overseas, to vanish into the blue. All very well for him to be so light-hearted about it; he had got rid of them for good. My troubles were just beginning, but that evidently left him cold.

  ‘Then there’s nothing more to say?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’ We rang off.

  I told Katie to keep the line clear until Mme de Valhubert should ring up. Presently I asked her, ‘What’s become of Northey? I haven’t seen her this morning.’

  ‘She was up all night with the kittens. Mélusine doesn’t seem to have any milk – too old probably – so it’s the fountainpen filler. Poor Northey’s trying to get some sleep; I’ve taken over for her. Every two hours, and one of them isn’t sucking properly. I think this is Mme de Valhubert now – that was her butler’s voice – ’

  ‘Fanny – you are au courant?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. That idiot rang us up first. I’m simply furious – ’

  ‘Old Tartuffe! Did you ever hear anything so shameful!’

  ‘It’s a disgrace, Grace. I shall tell Alfred he’s not to pay a penny for this half.’

  ‘No, don’t let’s. The boys have never cost him much at any time – Sigi lived on mercy parcels I had to send from Hédiard. The wretch! Calmly telephoning to say he let the boys leave without even having taken the trouble to find out where they were going! I expect they are all being murdered by a sex maniac in the fog at this very minute, poor little things – ’

  ‘Oh well, I expect not – ’

  ‘You know what England is, darling. I was wondering if couldn’t porter plainte against the school?’

  ‘What does Charles-Édouard say?’

  ‘He’s down in his circonscription for the Armistice – and I suppose Alfred has gone to Compiègne? What ought we to do? So dreadful to think of those children all alone in London.’

  ‘We aren’t even sure they’ve gone to London.’

  ‘Knowing Sigi I think they have. Who will feed them?’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go over now and see what they are up to,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t. There’s a fog as usual. Didn’t you notice, no English papers? Look at it here, such a heavenly day – ’

  ‘In any case it wouldn’t be much good for me to wander round London looking for them like Thomas à Becket’s mother, without a clue as to where they are. I suppose we must wait and consult with our husbands when they get back. We’ll keep in touch, but let’s anyhow meet tomorrow and talk it over. I should think we’ll know more by then.’

  ‘You’re an optimist!’ said Grace. ‘À demain then, unless there’s any news before.’

  However, at tea-time she rang up again. ‘Almost too irritating,’ she said, ‘I’ve just telephoned to my father on the chance he might know something and sure enough he gave them all luncheon at Wilton’s. Of course the wicked old man is on their side – he would be. like all Englishmen he’s a schoolboy himself really. What a race! He says they ate everything within sight. They showed him menus of all the meals they’ve had this half which they kept as pièces justificatives and he says he can’t think how they stuck it as long as they did. Naturally no mention of the mercy parcels. Clever of Sigi, that was, the way to my father’s heart has always been through his stomach.’

  ‘Little brutes!’ I said. I had transferred some of my rage with the housemaster to the boys, as, I noticed, had Grace.

  ‘The maddening thing is,’ she went on, ‘he admits he gave them money.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘He pretends he can’t remember – a few pounds he says. If I know Papa, he’ll have had at least £50 on him and if I know Sigi, he’ll have wheedled it all. So now goodness alone knows when we shall hear any more of them. They were still alive at luncheon-time, apart from that the situation is worse than if he hadn’t seen them.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask where they were staying?’

  ‘Naturally I did. He only said not with him. Trust him not to make himself uncomfortable in any way!’

  At this point Katie cut in, saying, ‘Do we take a reversed charge call from London?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘that’s always one of the boys. I’ll ring you up presently, Grace.’

  ‘Ma?’ It was Basil. ‘Look, Ma, it’s like this. Old Charles and Fabrice and Sigi are here.’

  ‘Basil, you are a faithful boy. I’ve been so worried!’

  ‘Oh, so you knew they’d left the booby-hatch, did you?’

  ‘Yes, their tutor rang up this morning and of course Sigi’s mother and I have been in the most fearful state wondering what had happened to them.’

  ‘I suppose you thought the robins had covered them with leaves! Your capacity for worry beats anything I ever heard of. Anyway, knowing you, I thought I’d better ease your mind. They are quite alive and nobody has interfered with them, not yet.’

  ‘So what are they going to do?’

  ‘Live it up here. They’ve gone to a pop show now this minute to see their idol, Yanky Fonzy.’

  ‘Have they got much money?’

  ‘There you are, being your old bourgeoise self. Money! Didn’t you know it doesn’t count in the modern world? Everybody’s got the stuff nowadays. As a matter of fact, they seem to be quite specially well fixed for it – they’ve pooled Charles’s savings, Fabrice’s camera and what Sigi’s old ancestor gave them just now.’

  ‘Where are they living?’

  ‘Me Grandad has set them up in a shack he happened to own.’

  ‘Then quickly give me the address – I’ve got a pencil. Good. Any telephone number?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to give it. They don’t want the O.C.s beefing down the line – specially Sigi doesn’t.’

  The O.C.s,
I knew, meant the old couples, in other words us and the Valhuberts. ‘Aren’t they afraid the O.C.s may arrive and beef in person?’

  ‘Not really. They reckon Father’s too busy – Sigi’s mother is pregnant – Sigi’s father wouldn’t demean himself and if you come over they can cope.’

  ‘Oh indeed! Let me tell you, Baz, I’ve seldom been so furious.’

  ‘That’s not reasonable of you, Ma. I don’t see ’ow you could expect them kids to go on wasting the best years of their lives in that ole cackle factory.’

  ‘Anyway, darling, it was awfully good of you to telephone – ’

  Alfred surprised me by taking the news very badly indeed. I said, ‘I don’t know why you should mind this more than you did about David and Baz. After all, they are intellectuals, far more brilliant than the little boys, it is dreadfully sad that they should have become so peculiar. But yesterday you said it was only a phase, growing pains. So it is with the others, probably.’

  ‘I mind less about David and Basil precisely because they are cleverer. They have got their degrees. When they see the futility of their present state they can return to more rewarding occupations. Also there is something in their heads. We may feel annoyed with them for not following the path we had hoped they would, but as human beings they are perfectly entitled to decide for themselves what they wish to do. These boys are only in the middle of their lessons – I don’t see how the gap in their education is ever to be filled. There is no philosophical basis for their conduct; it comes from sheer irresponsibility. You know what I feel about education.’

  I could see that Alfred, whatever he might say, had counted as much as I had on magic Eton to produce two ordinary, worthy, if not specially bookish young men and was disappointed as well as disturbed by this new outbreak of non-conformism.

  The Valhuberts came round and the two stricken families held a conference. Charles-Édouard was in a rage, with Grace crowing over him annoyingly, I thought.

  ‘Of course, poor Charles-Édouard is angry with me for being right all along. Such a pity to send the child to Eton, when we could have kept him here and fed him up and had him taught by the Jesuits at Sainte-Geneviève.’

  ‘My dear Grace, they would never have taken Sigi at Sainte Genevieve. That’s a school for clever boys. Franklin, perhaps – not sure. No. I sent him to Eton for the education, not for the instruction. Sigi has the brain of a bird, as even you must admit. I wanted him to be at least a well-dressed bird with good manners. Besides lean only stand a limited amount of his company. Now he’ll be back on our hands all the year round unless I can persuade them to take him at Les Roches.’

  ‘If he runs away from Eton he would never stay at Les Roches. It will have to be the Jesuits – you must go and see the Superior at Franklin.’

  ‘When you do, will you be so good as to ask him to recommend a tutor for our two?’ said Alfred. ‘I suppose we shall have to have them here where we can keep an eye on them; they can at least get a proper grounding in French before they cram for Oxford.’

  ‘Have them here?’ I said, quite as much dismayed at the prospect as Valhubert was. It seemed to me we had enough on our hands already, what with the holy Zen family, Northey’s caravan of followers and Basil’s Cheshire-cat appearances and wild-cat schemes.

  ‘What else can we do?’ said Alfred. ‘That school they call the Borstal Boys’ Eton might take them – think of the friends they would pick up there!’

  ‘Gabbitas and Thring?’

  Alfred buried his head in his hands.

  Grace now said, with perfect truth, that we were looking too far ahead. We must get them away from London and the shack found for them by my stepfather, under our own influence again, before making these elaborate plans. It was decided that we had better wait until it was reasonable to suppose that they would have run out of cash and that then one of us should go over and bring them back.

  ‘But what about your father, Grace? If he goes on supplying them they won’t ever run out.’

  ‘I’m thankful to say he has now left London for a round of shoots and he’ll be away at least a month.’

  It then became evident, just as the little brutes had foreseen, that I should be the one deputed to go after them. The only alternative was Valhubert and he said himself that he was too angry and would be sure to lose his temper at the mere sight of them. The words ‘if you do, they can cope’ rang a mocking chime in my ears, but I had no choice; I accepted the mission.

  So we planned for our sons, hoping to undo the harm they had done themselves. It never occurred to us that they would refuse to cooperate. We were soon to learn our mistake.

  We let the rest of November go by; then I sent them a telegram, reply paid, asking them to dine with me at the Ritz the following day. They were kind enough to accept the invitation quite promptly. Alfred said this showed they were starving and should easily be caught, like animals in the snow.

  ‘The gilt will be off the gingerbread by now – they’ll have begun to see what it’s like to be alone in London with no money. It was far better not to go at once.’

  On St Andrew’s Day I arrived at the Ritz. When I had unpacked and had a bath I was still about half an hour too early for our appointment; there was nothing else to do so I went downstairs, sat on one of those little sofas below the alcove, where I have perched at intervals all my life, and ordered a glass of sherry. Never possessing a London house of my own I have always found the Ritz useful when up for the day or a couple of nights; a place where one could meet people, leave parcels, write letters, or run into out of the rain. It now remains one of the few London interiors which have never changed a scrap; the lace antimacassars are still attached to the armchairs with giant hairpins; the fountain tinkles as it has for fifty years; there is the same sound of confident footfall on thick carpet and the same delicious smell of rich women and promising food. As in the Paris Ritz the management has been clever enough not to touch the decoration designed by M. Meuwes, the excellent architect employed by M. Ritz. I have been told that the late Lady Colefax once refused a commission to redecorate the ground floor, saying that it would be wrong to alter any of it.

  I sipped my sherry and reflected on the enormous length of human life and the curious turns it takes, a train of thought always set off by a place with which I have been familiar at irregular intervals for many years. Some people, I know, feel aggrieved at the shortness of life; I, on the contrary, am amazed at how long it seems to go on. The longer the better. Paris had cured me of my middle-aged blight exactly as I had hoped it would; if I was sometimes worried there I never felt depressed, bored, and useless, as at Oxford. I managed the work far better than I had expected to. I had neither kissed the President nor extinguished the Eternal Flame nor indeed, as far as I knew, committed any major gaffe. As I am not shy, and most of the people I met were engaged in responsible, therefore interesting, work I found no difficulty in conversing with them. Philip had provided me with one or two useful gambits. (‘I suppose you are very tired, M. le Ministre’ would unloose floodgates.)

  Alfred was an undoubted success with the French, whatever Mockbar might say. He was more like their idea of an Englishman, slow, serious, rather taciturn, than the brilliant Sir Louis, who had been too much inclined to floor them on their own ground. Such worries as I had all came from the children; Alfred’s were more serious. He was obliged to press the European Army upon the French although personally convinced by now of its unacceptability. The Îles Minquiers, too, were still giving him a lot of uncongenial work. However, Mr Gravely seemed quite satisfied with the way these things were shaping. The Americans had assured him that the European Army was almost in the bag. He thought he had himself persuaded M. Bouche-Bontemps to give up the Minquiers and that it was only, now, a matter of time before they became British Isles.

  Two men coming out of the alcove and passing my sofa roused me from these thoughts. ‘When I got to the factory,’ one of them said, ‘they told me that seven of the girls wer
e knocked up – well, pregnant in fact. It’s the new German machine.’

  ‘You don’t surprise me at all,’ said his friend, ‘these new German machines are the devil.’

  I have overheard many a casual remark in my life; none has ever puzzled me more. As I pondered over it I saw three figures ambling towards me from the Arlington Street entrance. They were dressed as Teddy boys, but there was no mistaking the species. With their slouching, insouciant gait, dead-fish hands depending from, rather than forming part of, long loose-jointed arms, slightly open mouths and appearance of shivering as if their clothes, rather too small in every dimension, had no warmth in them, they would have been immediately recognizable, however disguised, on the mountains of the Moon, as Etonians. Here were the chrysalises of the elegant, urbane Englishmen I so much longed for my sons to be; this was the look which, since I was familiar with it from early youth, I found so right, and which I had missed from the tough premature manliness of the other two boys. Charlie and Fabrice had changed their clothes but not yet their personalities; what a relief!

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘WE didn’t think we were late?’

  ‘You’re not. I was early.’

  ‘Pretty dress, Mum. We’ve brought you some flowers.’

  ‘Oh, you are nice. Thanks so much – roses!’ (But this was rather sinister. Roses are expensive on St Andrew’s Day; they must still have got some money.) ‘My favourites! Give them to the porter, Charlie, will you, and ask him to have them put in a vase for me. There – let’s go and dine.’