“Will you have a chance to sightsee while you’re here?” Katie asks as they let go.
“No touristing for me,” Armie says. “Gotta get back to work.”
Katie nods. And life goes on.
“You’ll always be the great love of my life, you know,” he says.
Katie blinks, wondering if Armie knows how close he’s come to the last line of The Pursuit of Love. Maybe he did read it one of the fifty times she foisted it upon him.
“Oh, dulling,” Katie says, using Nancy’s words, and a poor approximation of her accent. “Great love of your life? One always thinks that. Every, every time.”
September 1944
G. Heywood Hill Ltd.
Nancy slammed down the phone. She looked at Helen, who was roosting on a stool.
“What is it this time?” Hellbags asked, not lifting her gaze from Agatha Christie.
“Harry Clifton wants six hundred copies of a letter signed. How am I supposed to accomplish that? The speedboat he asked for would’ve been easier!”
“That’s a tough one,” Hellbags agreed.
“I have so much to do between sorting invoices, returning phone calls, and cliquing approximately one thousand books.” Nancy gestured toward the towering pile. The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars. The Atrocities of the Pirates. Consider the Oyster. Interview with Mussolini, signed. “And Anne and Heywood still refuse to get near the shop without an armistice in place.”
“People can be such worriers,” Helen said. She licked her finger and turned the page.
“Meanwhile, they pay me absolutely nothing even though the business would collapse without my oversight.” Nancy sighed. “It’s all so wretched. To be in Paris, I’d give anything.”
Although liberation happened only a month before, already the victory felt like some lesser thing. The Colonel was working full-time in Paris, which should’ve been an improvement, but the situation was no better than when he’d been in Algiers.
“What about the Paris shop?” Hellbags said, and set down her book. “Have you asked Heywood about it yet? What’d he say?”
“He promised to take it under advisement, which means he ceased thinking about it the moment he hung up the phone. Oh, Hellbags.” She shuddered. “I have to do something. I must get out of this shop.”
With her fortieth birthday looming, Nancy was desperate for real life to begin. Alas, real lives required more than three pounds per week and Nancy no longer viewed her book as a sure bet. Though technically “finished,” the manuscript remained in limbo, likewise her marriage, and the sealed envelope in her desk.
I need to know, was there ever a “Greenie,” or was this Greenie really Prod?
Nancy hadn’t summoned the nerve to send the letter, because she didn’t know what answer she sought. If Peter wasn’t the father, it’d be difficult to justify a divorce, and a relocation to France. If he was, her worst fears about Prod would be confirmed, and her entire book would be a lie.
Non-cee, never mind the refugees, she could hear the Colonel say. Write a different kind of memoir—your own. Tu sais quoi faire. You know what to do.
Nancy crouched behind the counter and slipped a folder from her purse. She pulled out two letters she’d written to the Colonel some months before. “Helen, would you mind having a peek at something?” Nancy said as her eyes swept the first page.
We were always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair; our emotions were on no ordinary plane, we loved or we loathed, we laughed or we cried, we lived in a world of superlatives.
Hellbags glanced up.
“Yesterday, I received a package from Paris,” Nancy said, and passed the papers to Helen. “The Colonel mailed me an entire stack of my old correspondence. Don’t get excited! This isn’t a lovers’ spat. These letters contain little vignettes about my life, and he thinks I should work them into a book. Here are two of them.”
“Other people’s love letters!” Hellbags said. “A dream come true! Should I read them in private? I hope they’re properly steamy.”
“Sorry, but they’re about my childhood. Still, I’d love to know what you think.”
“How disappointing,” Hellbags said, and began to read.
Farve loathed clever females, but he considered that gentlewomen ought, as well as being able to ride, to know French and play the piano.
“I doubt anyone would be interested,” Nancy yammered as Hellbags flipped the page. “It’s all so obscure! Mostly it’s a lark, a way to entertain the Colonel, and unleash my long-held frustrations about Farve! I can really work myself into a lather thinking about how he deprived six intelligent girls of an education.”
Hellbags peered up from the papers. “I’d prefer some old-fashioned smut,” she said. “But these pages are magnificent.”
“Really?” Nancy said, and her heart lifted. “Are you sure?” Hellbags was a tough critic, this she knew. “You don’t think the antics are over-the-top? Read the part about Eddy Sackville-West. Now that the Colonel’s learned everything there is to know about Farve, his new obsession is Eddy, specifically his traveling medicine chest and unrepentant indigestion and gas.”
“Who doesn’t love Eddy? Your Colonel is a smart man.” Hellbags set the letters on the counter, atop her book. “I agree with him, about turning this into a book. Isn’t that what Evelyn’s been telling you to do?”
“Don’t you dare,” Nancy hissed, and raised a finger. “Do not inflict upon me Evelyn Waugh as a mentor.”
Just then, a cheerful Mollie waltzed into the shop. “Hullo!” she called out. “The post has arrived! Nancy, aren’t you the popular gal! Letters from Heywood, as well as Cyril Connolly and Evelyn Waugh.”
“Speak of the demon,” Nancy muttered.
After handing her the stack of mail, Mollie bent to retrieve the un-cliqued books, a huge, loopy smile slapped across her face.
“Ducky, leave those be,” Nancy said. “I haven’t had a chance to sort them. I’ll get to it, I swear.”
“Happy to take care of it myself,” Mollie said. “I’ll be in the office! Shout if you need anything!” She skipped off with the books, whistling as she went.
“Is she drunk?” Hellbags asked.
“Not that I’m aware,” Nancy said, thumbing through the mail. “Heywood hired a new fella to do the accounts, and it’s lightened her workload. I think she enjoys flirting with him, too. Oh, God.” She made a face. “Cyril is sending me an early copy of The Unquiet Grave. No, thank you.” Nancy pitched his missive onto the floor. “Let’s see what Evelyn is up to,” she said. “Hmm... Not altogether enjoying Croatia, it seems. The food is terrible, and Randolph Churchill is driving him mad. An advanced copy of his newest book is on the way. What bliss to have such prolific friends. Goodbye, Evelyn!” His letter joined Cyril’s on the ground.
“What do we have here?” Nancy said. “How lovely. Correspondence from my boss. Must be serious, if he can’t discuss it over the phone.” She paused, her eyes dashing across the page. “Excellent! He will let me open the Paris branch, if I give him five thousand pounds first. Quickly, Hellbags, hand me my passbook.” Nancy’s arms drooped, and she felt herself deflate. After skimming Heywood’s letter one more time, she ripped it in half.
“Poor Nancy,” Hellbags said. “I wish I could help, but I’m broke, too. It’s criminal how much money goes into the upkeep of a house we don’t even own. I could murder Johnny for giving everything to Jim Lees-Milne’s endowment. Perhaps I will.”
“All for the benefit of England,” Nancy sang.
“On the plus side, you’re in a situation you can get out of,” Hellbags said. “Unlike myself. Have you shown the autobiography to your publisher yet?”
“It’s quite possible publishing the thing will create more problems than it will solve,” Nancy said. “Sometimes, I’m tempted to toss the lot of it
into the fire. I probably would, too, if this book wasn’t all I had.”
“What about those?” Helen nodded toward the Colonel’s letters. “The man is onto something, and so are you.”
“Sometimes I do consider it, believe me, but just when I get the nerve, I think of Wigs on the Green. I can’t put my sisters through that again, especially with our relations still strained.”
“Your sisters? Oh, please!” Hellbags rolled her eyes. “They should be your last consideration. If any of them ever worried about what the family thought before they did something, your life would be better. Britain would be, too.”
“You have a point,” Nancy said, brow furrowed.
Hellbags leaned back. With both elbows propped on the counter, she gave Nancy a thorough up-and-down. “Let me ask you a question,” she began.
Nancy quailed. “Uh-oh,” she said.
“Do you even want to publish the refugee memoir?” Hellbags asked. “It seems to me you don’t like it, or don’t believe in it, or something.”
“There are definitely elements I find unbelievable,” Nancy said.
“You were so fixated on getting Lea to cooperate, but what did that solve? Sure, you managed to finish—no small feat—but now you’re talking about chucking it into the fire. Perhaps that book is too—” Hellbags pulled her hands apart “—external. Outside of you. Those letters—they’re pure Nancy Mitford. They have your verve, and your heart, and they remind me of why I adore you so very much.”
“Aw, Hellbags,” Nancy said, eyes pooling. “I hate it when you’re sweet. But how can a few scribblings compete with an entire manuscript?”
“You tell me. You’re the writer.” Hellbags sighed. “Nancy, forget your sisters. Forget your parents, Prod, Heywood, everyone else. You have to figure out what you want. I never fully answered that question for myself, and it’s the biggest mistake of my life.”
“What do I want?” Nancy said, glancing at the letters. “A career, for one. I want the Colonel, of course. And Paris.”
“Which book will get you there?”
“Shouldn’t I put the money on the book that’s written?”
“Or you can decide to write another one,” Helen said.
“Do you have any idea how long that would take?” Nancy said. “I’ve been working on my autobiography for years. I have a job, and fire watch, and can only move so speedily.”
“Then do what the men do,” Hellbags said, shrugging, like this was the simplest act in the world. “Take a few months off.”
“A writing leave? Ducky, something has gone loose in your head.”
“I don’t see why you can’t,” Helen said. “Mollie is perfectly capable of handling the shop while you’re out, in particular if she stays on the cocaine.”
“Mollie is not taking cocaine!”
“Either way, I just witnessed her competence firsthand,” Hellbags said. “You don’t have children, and the Colonel isn’t around. Prod is—” she waved a hand “—doing whatever Prod does.”
“Leaves are for people with money, Hellbags. And penises.”
“You could do it,” Helen said. “If you really wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t last on my savings for more than a few months. There’s no way.” Nancy shook her head. “Prod would never agree to it.”
“Then you’d better work fast.” Hellbags winked. “And get a divorce if you don’t want him offering his two pence.”
“An answer for everything, I see,” Nancy said. She hardened her face, her entire body, refusing to let the idea take hold. “I’ve brought up separation a dozen times, but Peter won’t hear of it. By the by, I never would’ve expected the wife of Johnny Dashwood to be advising me to get a divorce.”
“I loathe Johnny,” Hellbags said. “But I like being married to him.”
“Even if I could get everything to line up, what would I do with the memoir? I joked about burning it but, the truth is, it kills me to think of all that effort going up in flames.”
“You’ll figure out a way to make use of it,” Hellbags said. “Just like you’ll figure out a way to pay for a leave. You’re excellent at making something out of nothing, Nancy. The main thing Jim hates about you is that you’re so adept at economizing.”
“That’s true...” Nancy said. She swallowed, feeling breathless, winded by possibility.
“Don’t wait another minute,” Hellbags said. “Everybody knows one minute turns into two, and two minutes turn into a month. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “The years are gone. Do you want to be eighty years old, still scrambling around this natty old shop, hiding Angela Thirkell books? You are meant for bigger things.”
“Don’t you reckon it’s a touch late for bigger things?” Nancy said. “I’m almost forty.”
“Wrong again,” Hellbags said, and wiggled her brows. “I’ve got five years on you, and middle age is when the fun begins. You’d better hurry, though. Otherwise, you’re apt to miss your own prime.”
Monday Afternoon
Half Moon Street
Katie is a teenager again, lying with feet on the headboard, a phone pressed to her ear. Though she prefers texting, or seeing Simon in person, he’s returned to Burwash, and Katie will soon be in the States. For now, a phone is all they have.
“Why are you trying to torture me?” Katie says. “No more questions! You’re like every book club I’ve ever visited. Even if they read something else, they want to talk about A Paris Affair. These are mostly ladies in their fifties and sixties, by the way.”
“Then I consider myself in good company,” Simon says. “And it’s more of an observation than a question. I’m dying to know what happened to June Clemente, when she got back to New York.”
Katie glares at her phone, wishing they were on FaceTime so he could register her scowl. “You’re one of those, huh?” she says. “One of those thoroughly vexing write-a-sequel types. Let me stop you right here. Although this has been suggested approximately one million times, I will never travel down that road.”
“Why not, if it’s something people want? You know who wrote a sequel, don’t you?” he says. “You know who wrote two?”
Katie narrows her eyes. “You’re not playing the Nancy Mitford card with me,” she says.
“You have to admit it’s interesting,” Simon says. “In the nearly three decades Nancy lived in France, she wrote only one more novel that wasn’t a spin-off of The Pursuit of Love.”
“Is that true?” Katie says, and tries to visualize all of Nancy’s work. For the first time, she wonders if Nancy embraced her hit in a way Katie cannot, or whether she felt compelled. “Anyway, good for Nancy,” Katie says, “but I’m not a sequel kind of gal. They’re fine, for other people, but not for me.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Simon says, and Katie grits her teeth. “But why are you so hesitant to revisit that story? You seem...scared.”
“Scared!” Katie quacks. “Ha! No. My writing isn’t so terrible that I’m actually afraid of it. A sequel does make sense, but...” She mulls this over and says the first thing that pops into her head. “Okay, let’s say I do write one, and that fails, too. What happens after I’ve used up the very last trick in my bag?”
“I knew it,” Simon says. He laughs, and Katie wishes hanging up on someone had the dramatic effect it once did. “I knew you weren’t ready to give up. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be protecting that one last trick.”
Katie rolls her eyes. “Okay, smart guy,” she says. “Maybe I’ll empty the bag, one day, but for now I’m considering a different direction. You see? I have ideas. I’m not afraid.”
He laughs again. “I’m pleased to be right in this manner, too. So what’s this new book about?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Katie says. “There’s something about the way Nancy worked out different versions of her life in The
Pursuit of Love that’s made the wheels start to turn. A retelling, maybe? Don’t worry! I won’t exploit any of your family members.”
“I remain unconvinced,” he teases. “Not that you could exploit them, even if you wanted to, seeing as how we never found the book.”
Katie sighs. “I know,” she says. “And I’m sorry we didn’t get more. I really thought we would. I guess I overestimated Felix’s willingness to help, or my skills of persuasion.”
Part of Katie still believes she can find that last thing, the final clue to explain what, if anything, Lea meant to Nancy, and what she meant to Prod, and why Nancy decided not to publish the manuscript. On the other hand, Katie understands that life is too messy, too complicated for one piece to ever explain everything.
“We may not have found the manuscript,” Katie says, “but I maintain you gave your mom something better. All that effort is a special type of love. It’s pure and uncomplicated. It doesn’t keep score. What’s more valuable than a person’s time?”
“In fairness, I did personally benefit from my endeavors,” he says, and Katie can hear him smirk through the phone. “And pure might not be the best word to describe my intentions.”
“Now I’m blushing.”
“I can see it from here,” he says. “If time is a valuable currency, you must feel very flattered that a certain gentleman followed you across full oceans. That’s time and money. Quite the statement.”
“One ocean,” Katie says. “And I’d much rather somebody find a rare book.”
“I dunno, in terms of grand gestures, transcontinental travel is hard to beat.”
“Didn’t we promise to NEVER TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN?” Katie says, glad they can joke about this, and so quickly.
Last night, over Indian food, Katie rehashed her and Armie’s relationship, beginning to end. Convincing Simon she wasn’t swooning over Armie’s “grand gesture” was easier to explain than her career. In the end, Simon trusted what he saw in Katie’s face that morning on the doorstep. Never had a person appeared less pleased.
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