The Blessing (23 page)

‘I went into the dressing-room, but it was Maria, her Italian maid, who was walking up and down. I didn’t think much of this, I thought Albertine must be in her bedroom and I went through, and sure enough there she was – in bed with your husband. Never had such a shock in my life. She must have told Maria to walk to and fro to keep me quiet downstairs. You see? Not very nice, was it? But I think that kills two birds with one stone; it kills Albertine for me and it ought to kill Valhubert for you.’

Grace tried not to laugh. The story did not upset her at all. Could she possibly, she thought, be coming round to the point of view of her father and Charles-Edouard on these matters?

‘Very French,’ she said.

‘Yes, and I wish you could have heard her trying to explain it away on the telephone afterwards – very French too. “Come now, Hughie, Charles-Edouard is my foster-brother, we had the same nurse and drank the same milk, how could there be anything between him and me? We were having a little rest after luncheon.” ’Course I just rang off.’

‘Poor Hughie!’

‘Funny thing is I honestly didn’t mind, in fact it was really, after the first shock, a great relief. You see, I’m too English, just as you are, Grace, to cope with people like that. It’s unsuitable, we shouldn’t attempt it. And it showed me something else too, that it’s you I love, Grace. What I felt for Albertine was simply infatuation.’

‘I always wish I knew the difference between infatuation and love,’ said Grace.

‘You are infatuated with your husband, but it can’t last, it’s not built on anything solid and very soon you’ll begin to love me again. You like this place, don’t you, and our life here, it suits you, and you like being with me. Then if I take up politics you’ll like that; you’re used to it, with your father, and you’ll be a great help to me. You loved me all right before you met Valhubert, and I’m sure you will again, and you’ll like having some real English children with blue eyes and things, more natural for you. Besides, we’ve both had the same experience now, it makes us understand each other as an outside person never would. So, when the divorce is over, Grace –?’

‘Let’s wait a bit,’ said Grace. ‘No hurry, is there? I’m pleased and touched to have been asked, but I can’t say, yet. It all depends, very much, on Sigismond.’

‘He’ll be all for it, you’ll see,’ said Hughie with confidence. ‘I’ll think of every sort of amusing thing for him to do when he gets back.’

5

It did not take Sigi very long to notice that life in Paris alone with Charles-Edouard was a very different matter from family life there with a mummy you only saw at tea-time and a daddy you hardly ever saw at all. It was much more fun. He was with his father morning, noon, and night, and all the things they did together were delightful. They went to the antique shops and museums; Sigi learnt about marquetry and china and pictures and bronzes and was given a small cabinet to house an ivory collection of his own. They went to the Jockey Club, and though Sigi was left sitting, like a dog, in the hall, he didn’t mind that because he collected small, but regular, sums in tips from various members who thought he looked bored and wanted to see him smile.

‘Shall I belong to the Jockey Club when I’m grown up?’

‘If I remember to do for you what my father did for me,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘and get you in before you’ve made too many enemies among husbands. Husbands can be most terrible blackballers. But it’s very dull.’

‘Then why do we come so often?’

‘I don’t know.’

On the rare occasions when Charles-Edouard was at home in the evening Sigi dined downstairs with him, and this was the greatest treat of all. He was given a glass of wine, like his father, and made to guess the vintage. When he got it right Charles-Edouard gave him 100 francs.

‘In England,’ said Sigi, ‘little boys don’t have dinner.’

‘No dinner?’

‘Supper. And sometimes only high tea.’

‘What is this, high tea?’

‘Yes well, it’s tea, you know, with cocoa and scones, and eggs if you’ve got hens and bacon if you’ve killed a pig, and marmalade and Bovril and kippers, and you have it late for tea, about six.’

‘How terrible this must be!’

‘Oh no – high tea is absolutely smashing. Until you come to supper-time, and then I must say you do rather long for supper.’

Nanny sat talking with the Dexter Nanny, who had come round for her evening off. They had been obliged to put Sigi to bed in the middle of their nice chat, which they both considered an outrageous bore. He now lay in the next room, on the verge of sleep but not quite off, and a certain amount of what they were saying penetrated his consciousness. It was all mixed up with noise from the B.B.C., which ran on in that nursery whatever the programme. Young, polite, rather breathy English voices were playing some sort of paper game; their owners hardly seemed to belong to the same race as the two Nannies, so dim their personalities, so indefinite their statements.

‘The Marquee never used to look at him when Mummy was with us. Funny, isn’t it? It’s as much as I can do now to get him up here for the time it takes to change his shoes – thoroughly spoilt he’s getting – out of hand. More tea, dear?’

‘Thanks, dear. But it’s always like that with separated couples, in my opinion. I’ve seen it over and over. Because, you know, each one is trying to give the child a better time than the other.’ At these words Sigi woke right up and began listening with all his ears. ‘Nothing can be worse for the children.’

‘I know. Shame, really. Well I told Mummy – I don’t care for these youths on the wireless much, do you?’

‘Not at all. There seems to be nothing else nowadays, youth this and youth that. Nobody thought of it when I was young.’

‘Yes well, as we were saying. If you ask me I rather expect they’ll come together again, and I’m sure it’s to be hoped they will. I know Mummy was awfully upset about something, but I don’t suppose he’s worse than most men, except for being foreign of course, and I think it’s their plain duty to make it up for the sake of the poor little mite. That’s what I shall tell Mummy when I see her again, and I shall warn her plainly that if he goes on like this, getting his own way with both of them as he does now, he’ll become utterly spoilt and impossible. No use saying anything to the Marquee, he’s always in such a tearing hurry, though I must say I’d like to give him a piece of my mind about these dinners – the poor little chap comes to bed half drunk if you ask me.’

It was while listening to this conversation that Sigismond first made up his mind, consciously, that his father and mother must never be allowed to come together again if there was anything he could do to prevent it.

Charles-Edouard always took Sigi with him now when he went, at five o’clock, to see Albertine. She gave them an enormous tea, after which Sigi would play with her collection of old toys and automata. The most fascinating, the one of which he never tired, was a toy guillotine. It really worked, and really chopped off the victim’s head, to the accompaniment of sinister drums and the horrified gestures of the other dolls on the scaffold. Besides this there were many varieties of musical box, there were dancing bears, smoking monkeys, singing birds, and so on, and while Albertine told the cards Sigi was turned loose among them, with tremendous injunctions from Charles-Edouard to be very very careful as they were very very precious.

‘Why are they more precious than other toys?’

‘Because they are old.’

‘Are old things always precious?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case Nanny must be very precious.’

‘Always this young man between you and the blonde lady you think about so much.’

‘Could it be Hughie?’ Charles-Edouard was very much puzzled. He knew that Grace was seeing a good deal of Hughie now, but had never given the matter a serious thought. ‘Did he ever come back again, by the way, Albertine? What happened?’

‘He was furious, I’ve never known a man so angry. I rang him up twice and explained everything, but each time he rang off without even saying good-bye. These English –!’

‘How did you explain it?’ said Charles-Edouard, very much amused.

‘I told him the truth.’

‘No wonder he rang off in a rage.’

‘My dearest, you know as well as I do that there is never only one truth and always many truths. I told him that you, Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, and I, Albertine Labé de Lespay, had drunk the same milk when we were little, young babies.’

‘What milk?’

‘Come now, Charles-Edouard, we had the same nurse!’

‘Old Nanny Perkins didn’t have one drop of milk when I first knew her, and wasn’t that amount younger when she was with you!’

‘We had the same nurse, therefore, to all intents and purposes, we drank the same milk. We are foster-brother and sister – how could he think of us as anything else? The Anglo-Saxon mind reduces everything to sex, I’ve often noticed it. Cut three times. Very odd indeed – here is the young man again, keeping you apart. Surely surely she cannot love Hughie?’

‘Oh yes she does,’ Sigi piped up from his corner. ‘He is the love of her life.’

‘This is very strange,’ said Charles-Edouard, genuinely surprised that anybody in a position to be in love with him could fancy Hughie.

Albertine was not displeased. ‘Come here, Sigi, and tell us how you know.’

‘When Mr Palgrave is coming to see her, she looks like this,’ he said, and did a lifelike imitation of his mother as she had looked after the front door had slammed that morning when Charles-Edouard came to fetch him away. He opened enormous eyes and smiled as if something heavenly were about to happen. ‘She thinks the world of Mr Palgrave, and so do I. He gives me pounds and pounds.’ He was twisting his hair into curls as he spoke.

‘Go on with the cards,’ said Charles-Edouard, very much put out.

‘Cut then. But why did you not have an explanation with her when you were in England?’ she said in Italian, so that Sigi would not understand.

‘She was in her room and refused to see me.’

‘Unlike you not to gallop up the stairs.’

‘In what way unlike me? I would have you observe, Albertine, that I have never forced my way into a woman’s bedroom in my life.’

‘Take four cards. What a curious thing – intrigues and misunderstandings, just like a Palais Royal farce, with this real old-fashioned villain plotting away in the background. Fancy Hughie being so wicked, it makes him more interesting, all of a sudden. I must send him a Christmas card. What do you want for Christmas, Sigi?’

‘I want to ride on the
cheval de Marly
.’

‘This child has an obsession.’

‘And what else?’

‘Nothing else.’

‘Be very careful, Sigismond. Consider it well. Do you really want to wake up with an empty stocking, to find a tree loaded with no presents, to spend the whole day unpacking no parcels?’

‘Well, what will you give me?’

‘You must say what you want first. It’s always like that. Then we have to consider whether we can afford it.’

Sigismond became very thoughtful and hardly spoke another word the rest of the evening.

‘M.P.’s daughter divorces French Marquis,’ Sigi, chanting this loudly, came into his father’s bathroom. Charles-Edouard was shaving at the time.

‘What do you know about this – who told you?’

‘I heard Nanny clicking her tongue at the
Daily
, so I went and looked over her shoulder and saw it. I can read quite well now, you see, how about a prize?’

‘You couldn’t read a word of
Monte Cristo
last night.’

‘I can only read if it’s in English, and printed, and I want to. At first the marriage was a happy one – who are the other women, Papa? I know, Madame Marel and Madame Novembre.’

‘Be quiet, Sigi. These are things you must not say.’

‘Pas devant?’

‘
Pas du tout
. If you do you’ll be punished.’

‘What sort of punishment?’

‘A bad sort. And you’ll never never be allowed to ride on the
chevaux de Marly
.’

‘O.K. And if I don’t speak, when can I ride?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So now you can’t be married to Mummy again, can you?’

‘Yes I can. Tomorrow, if she likes.’

‘Oh!’ His mouth went down at the corners.

‘Why, Sigi? Don’t you want us to be?’

‘It wouldn’t be the slightest good wanting, I’m afraid. My mummy is quite wrapped up in Hughie now.’ His hand went to his hair and began twisting it.

‘Mr Palgrave.’

‘He lets me call him Hughie.’

‘How very unsuitable. But is she?’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Is she really, Sigi? He is very dull.’

‘That’s nothing. Look how dull is Mr Dexter, and yet Mrs Dexter is quite wrapped up in him, the Nannies always say so.’

‘What is all this wrapping up, Sigi?’

‘
Emballé
. Like you are with Madame Novembre.’

‘Hm. Hm. Get ready to go out and I’ll take you to see Pascal.’

‘Well if I can’t ride on you know what, I suppose that dreary old Pascal will have to do.’

Now that Charles-Edouard’s divorce was in the papers, great efforts were made, in many directions, to marry him, and nobody tried harder than his two mistresses.

Albertine, shuffling the cards, said, ‘I have been noticing a very different trend in your fate. It seems to become more definite, more inescapable, every time I take up the pack. You have turned a corner, as one sometimes does in life, and a new landscape lies at your feet. For some days the cards have left the atmosphere of Palais Royal and have pointed to a grave decision – two grave decisions in fact – which lead to extraordinary happiness, to a journey and to advancement. Anybody who knew the rudiments of fortune-telling would see these bare facts, they repeat and repeat themselves; it now remains to interpret them, and that, of course, is more difficult. Cut the cards. There now. It looks very much like service to your country in some foreign land.’

‘Indo-China?’ Charles-Edouard looked puzzled. ‘I’m rather old, now, it’s only the regular army they want. Still, I suppose there would be something for me, though I can’t say I’m absolutely longing to go back.’