The Blessing (21 page)

‘That wretched miscarriage was the beginning of all our troubles,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘She was set on having that child; disappointment I think more than the actual illness pulled her down and made her nervous. Really so unlucky. Pregnant women, after all, don’t have this tiresome mania for sight-seeing.’

‘She is in a very nervous state indeed now,’ said her father.

‘Shall I go to London and see what I can do?’

‘You can try, it would be the only way, and I suppose you’ll succeed if she consents to see you. But I’m not at all sure, in her present mood, that she will. It’s as if the whole thing had been too much for her, though presumably, in time, she’ll become more reasonable.’

‘Very well, I’ll try. I’ll say I’ve come to fetch the boy for a visit, then it will be quite natural to have a word with her between two trains. It won’t be like a formal interview, which might put her off. I think I ought to be able to persuade her of how very much I long for her, as it’s quite true.’

‘I’m sure she longs for you. What an idiotic situation, really.’

‘But in case this all goes wrong, and since you are here, perhaps we’d better begin to arrange about a divorce. It means nothing whatever to me, as I’ve certainly no intention of marrying again, but if we are to live apart I’d rather be divorced, I’m tired of people asking where my wife is. So perhaps we’ll visit my lawyer. I’ve had to make a change, such a nuisance, but the old one of all my life was a terrible collaborator and you don’t realize what that means. Two hours of self-justification before one can get down to any business. There’s no bore like a collabo in all the wide world. So, this afternoon then?

‘By the way, Tante Régine is coming to luncheon. When I told her you were here she screamed like a peacock and rushed off to buy a new hat.’

The hat was very pretty, and Madame Rocher was in a cheerful bustle between, she said, the autumn collections, which were simply perfect this season (for some forty-five seasons now they had appeared simply perfect in her eyes) and the Bal des Innouïs. This was a famous charity ball which she organized every other year in aid, not to put too fine a point on it, of her late husband’s relations. The Rocher des Innouïs were an enormous tribe, as fabulously poor as she was fabulously rich, and she had devised this way of assisting them at a minimum cost to herself. With the proceeds of the ball she had built, and now maintained, the Hospice des Innouïs which, situated on a salubrious slope of the Pyrenees, not only provided a delightful setting for the old age of the Rocher relations, but also kept them far away from the Hôtel des Innouïs. ‘If I must entertain them,’ she would say, ‘I’d much rather do so at the Hospice than at home.’ So strong are family ties in France that, had they lived within reach of Paris, Madame Rocher would have received visits from all at least once a week; as it was she descended upon them every summer laden with boxes of chocolates, kissed them tremendously several times on each cheek, and vanished away again in a cloud of dust and goodwill.

The ball was always great fun, an intensely elegant occasion, and Madame Rocher would cut the photographs of it out of
Match
and papers of that sort and send them to be pinned up on the walls of the Hospice. She often said how much she wished her dear cousins could have been there to see for themselves what they were missing.

‘We have been in despair,’ she said to Charles-Edouard and Sir Conrad, ‘to know what to have as our motif this year. We’ve already had birds, flowers, masks, wigs, moustaches, sunshades, kings, and queens. Now that darling, clever Albertine has got an entirely new idea; everybody is to suggest their own
bête noir
; not to be her, you understand, but to wear something that suggests her. It is very subtle – nobody but Albertine could have conceived it.’

‘What a pretty idea,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Who is your
bête noir
, Tante Régine?’

‘That I keep as a secret weapon. I said to M. Dior this morning “If my dress is not delivered tomorrow, Dior, it will be you”. Most efficacious. And the lovely Grace – will she be back in time for it?’

All Paris was eaten with curiosity as to the situation between Charles-Edouard and Grace. He had given out that she was paying a long visit to her father, and had never dropped the smallest hint, even to his most intimate friends, even to Albertine, that there was any sort of a breach. She was always said to be expected back in a week or two. So rumours were rife, some saying that she had eloped, and others that she had a disfiguring illness, but the great majority headed by the Tournons maintained that she must have gone into a home for persons of retarded intellect. ‘A bit late,’ they said, ‘but modern science can do wonders. And,’ they said, ‘it will need to.’

Charles-Edouard was getting tired of this ‘coming back soon’, which made him look a fool, and he knew that Sir Conrad’s visit would already have set tongues wagging. ‘The lovely Grace,’ he now told Madame Rocher, ‘wishes to divorce.’

‘Very English, and all in the best Freemason tradition,’ she said. ‘So now you will have her tied to your apron strings once more,
mon cher Vénérable
.’

Having made this excellent joke she could hardly wait to get home to her telephone and scatter the news that Charles-Edouard was a marriageable unit once more. She was going to have great fun. The little girls of all her friends and relations would have to be lined up and looked over, an occupation she would very much enjoy. Like horses, their pedigrees would have to be carefully considered; certain strains were better avoided altogether, Bourlie blood, for instance, had never been know to do a family much good, while certain others always seemed fatal in combination. A substantial dowry, while not absolutely necessary, never spoilt anything. She imagined the excitement of the various mammas, and thought how amusing it was going to be to see the discomfiture of those who had recently married their daughters to less eligible husbands. In short, Madame Rocher foresaw some very agreeable hours ahead of her.

‘Good-bye,
cher Vénérable
, all my best wishes to the Grand Orient,’ she cried, waving a pink glove from the window of her motor.

‘Well, Papa?’

‘Well, darling. Charles-Edouard was most reasonable, as I knew he would be. I like him more every time I see him.’

Grace thought her father looked old and sad, and she had a pang of conscience. This was all her fault.

‘You look tired, Papa.’

‘Yes, I am. The fact is we had a bit of a night out, last night.’

‘I see.’ Really it was too bad, at this moment of crisis in her life, that her father should regard the man she was going to divorce merely as a dog to go hunting with.

‘Naturally you never spoke about me, at all!’

‘Oh, indeed we did. We spent hours with the lawyer, we arranged all about the divorce, the money, and Sigi, every detail.’

Grace realized that she must have been entertaining, subconsciously, a hope which these words laid low, though what hope, exactly, she did not feel quite sure.

‘Sigi? What about him?’

‘You are each to have him six months of the year, to be divided up as seems most convenient, until he is ten, when he will live with his father during the term and with you during the holidays.’

‘He’s to go to school in France?’

‘He’s a French boy, my dear. I’ve got a letter for you from Charles-Edouard.’

She took it with, once more, a feeling, a flicker of hope. It was the first time she had seen Charles-Edouard’s writing on an envelope since she left him. It was very formal, ending up
affectueusement et respectueusement
, and was merely to ask whether the little boy could now go to Paris for a while. She handed it to Sir Conrad, who said, ‘Yes. If you consent, Charles-Edouard will come over himself next week to fetch him.’

‘Oh of course I do. Only I won’t see Charles-Edouard, Papa.’

‘That’s entirely for you to say, my love.’

‘No, no, no – it wouldn’t do at all.’

But she knew that if Charles-Edouard really wanted her back he would insist on seeing her, and that if he did so his cause was won. Everything would be different once they had seen each other. Life without him, here in London, had become so grey and meaningless that she was beginning to feel she would put up with almost anything, even the constant jealousy and suspicion she so much dreaded, to be with him once more in Paris. Surely, she thought, he would not bother to come himself for Sigi unless he wanted to see her, and if he wanted to see her it could only be for one reason.

The days went by. Charles-Edouard was definitely expected, Nanny’s opposition to another move had been overcome, and Grace’s will to resist was evaporating. She kept up a façade of resistance, she did not pack her things, or prepare to leave in any practical way, but the citadel was ready to surrender.

He came over in the ferry, and was to return, an hour or so later, by Golden Arrow. When he arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate, Grace (it was the last remaining gesture of independence) was still in bed. She never got up early, and, in case by some horrible chance Charles-Edouard did not ask her to go with them after all, she did not want to look as if prepared there and then to step into the train. In fact she calculated that she could easily be ready in time; her maid could bring the luggage later. She had had her bath, and was very carefully made up.

Sir Conrad’s motor had gone to the station to meet Charles-Edouard. She heard it arrive; she heard his voice, and heard the front door slam. ‘There’s Papa,’ she said to Sigismond. ‘You run downstairs and ask him if he’d like a cup of coffee in here before you go. Hurry –!’

Sigi was off in a flash. ‘Papa – Papa – are we going on the boat? Is there a storm? Can I stay on deck all the time?’

‘Very likely you can. Where’s your mummy? I want to see her.’

But Sigismond did not favour this idea at all. He wanted to travel, as he had been told he would, alone with his papa, attention concentrated on him, Sigi. If Papa went upstairs, if he saw Mummy, that daft kissing stuff would begin, ‘Run along, Sigi’, and who knows? Grown-up people are so unaccountable, Mummy might quite well decide to come back to Paris with them, and it would be ‘Go to Nanny, darling’ all day and every day as of old. Life had become considerably more fun with Mummy and without Papa; it would be considerably more fun to go back to Paris with Papa but without Mummy.

‘Mummy’s in bed and asleep,’ he said.

‘Asleep – so late – are you sure?’

‘Quite quite sure. She went out dancing last night – she expected to be out till any hour, and strict orders are she is not to be called.’

‘And your grandfather?’

But Sir Conrad was away, shooting in the North.

Charles-Edouard considered what he should do.

Nanny appeared on the stairs, the footman was sent to fetch a taxi, Sigi’s luggage being far too much for one motor, and the footman and Nanny went off to Victoria to register the heavy things.

‘Now listen, Sigi,’ said Charles-Edouard when they had gone, ‘you run up to your mummy’s room, say I’m here (wake her up if she’s asleep) and ask if I can see her for a moment.’

‘All right.’ Sigi ran up, but not to his mother’s room. He waited on the landing for a minute and then skipped downstairs again, curling up bits of his hair with one hand, as he always did when telling lies though nobody had ever noticed the fact, and saying, ‘No good. The door’s locked and she’s written up “don’t disturb”. I tell you, she wants to sleep till luncheon.’

‘Come on then,’ said Charles-Edouard, taking Sigi by the hand, ‘we’ll walk to the station. I need a little air.’ He felt furious with Grace, deeply hurt and deeply disappointed.

The front door slammed again and Grace was left alone in the house, Sigi had not even said good-bye to her.

‘Well,’ said Charles-Edouard, settled in the train with a large English breakfast before him and Sigi opposite. ‘Come on now, what are the news? What have you been doing in England?’

‘Oh, Papa, I’ve had the whizz of a time. I caught a burglar all by myself – I cunningly trapped him in the silver cupboard – and I’ve saved up nearly £5 out of tips, and Grandfather is investing it at 21/2 per cent compound interest, and I’ve got a gun and I shot an ill thrush, it was kinder really, and I’ve got a bike wot fair mops it up.’

‘You’ve got a what which does what?’

‘
Un vélo qui marche à toute vitesse
,’ he kindly explained.

‘Good gracious! And I have to compete with all this?’

‘Yes, you have. But it’s quite easy – I only want to ride on the
chevaux de Marly
.’

‘Is that all. Which one?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Ah! But do you know the words?’

The little boy shut his mouth tight and laughed at his father with shining black eyes.

‘Sigismond. Do you?’

‘I shall say the words when I am on the horse, and not before.’

‘Then I fear,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘that these words will remain for ever unspoken.’

In the Customs shed at Dover there was quite an excitement. The woman next to them was asked to hand over a coat she was carrying on her arm. From its pockets the Customs officer drew several pound notes. He then began to search her luggage, and produced pound notes from everything he touched, like a conjurer; from books and sponge bag and hot-water-bottle cover and bags and pockets and shoes, everything capable of containing a pound note seemed to do so. The poor lady, white and sad, was then led away. Sigismond looked on, perfectly fascinated.

‘She won’t catch the boat,’ said Charles-Edouard with the smugness of one who, having an English father-in-law, was under no necessity to conduct any illicit currency operations.

‘Won’t she really, Papa? Why?’

‘She’s a silly fool, breaking a silly law in a very silly way.’

‘So will she go to prison?’

‘No, not for pound notes. Gold would have been more serious. I expect she’ll miss the boat, that’s about all,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Come come, up that gangway with you.’

4

As soon as Madame Marel was back in the rue de l’Université from her summer holiday, which had included a long visit to Vienna after Charles-Edouard’s Venetian party had broken up, Hughie rushed over to Paris. He only stayed there two days, returning to London in a thoughtful frame of mind, the very day that Sigi left with his father.