The Blessing (4 page)

‘A darling. Rather dull, but a darling.’

‘He’s not dull a bit,’ she said indignantly, ‘though he may be a little young for his age. It comes from living all alone with me in the country, if he is.’

‘So perhaps tomorrow I take you both home to France.’

‘Tomorrow? Oh no, Charles-Edouard, not –’

‘We can’t stay here. I’ve seen all the leaning towers and pavilions and rotundas and islands and rococo bridges, I’ve moved the furniture and rehung the pictures. There’s nothing whatever to do, and we have our new life to begin. So –?’

‘Oh darling, but tomorrow! What about the packing?’

‘Don’t bother. We’re going straight to Provence, you’ll only want cotton dresses, and you must have all new when we get to Paris, anyhow.’

‘Yes, but Nanny. What will she say?’

‘I don’t know. The plane is at twelve, giving us time to catch the night train to Marseilles. We leave here at nine. I’ve arranged everything and ordered a motor to take us. I suppose you’ve got the passports as I told you to last year?’

‘But Nanny –’ wailed poor Grace.

Charles-Edouard began to sing a song about sardines. ‘
Marinées, argentées, leurs petits corps decapités
…’

4

Charles-Edouard, Grace, Sigismond, and Nanny arrived at Marseilles in a torrid heat wave. Grace and the child were tired after the night in the train, but Charles-Edouard and Nanny were made of sterner stuff. His songs and jokes flowed like a running river, except when he was actually asleep, and so did Nanny’s complaints. These were a recitative of nursery grievance in which certain motifs constantly recurred. ‘No time to write to Daniel Neal – all those nice toys left behind – the beautiful rocking-horse Mrs O’Donovan gave us – his scooter with rubber tyres and a bell – poor little mite, grown out of his winter coat, how shall we ever get another – what shall I do without my wireless? – the Bengers never came, you know, dear, from the Army and Navy – shall we get the
Mirror
there and my
Woman and Beauty
? Oh, I say, I never took those books back to Boots, what will the girl think of me – that nice blouse I was having made in the village –’ Then the chorus, much louder than the rest. ‘Shame, really.’

They were met at the station by Charles-Edouard’s valet, Ange-Victor, in a big, rather old-fashioned Bentley. Ange-Victor was crying with joy, and it seemed as if he and Charles-Edouard would never stop hugging each other. At last they stowed the luggage into the motor, Grace and Sigi crammed into the front seats beside Charles-Edouard, with valet and nurse behind, and he drove hell for leather up the narrow, twisting, crowded road which goes from Marseilles to Aix.

‘I’m a night bomber, have no fear,’ he shouted to Grace as she cringed in her corner clasping Sigi. The hot air rushed past them, early as it was, the day was already a scorcher. Charles-Edouard was singing ‘
Malbrouck s’en va’-t-en guerre et ne reviendra pas.’

‘But I am back,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Never never did I expect to come back. Five fortune-tellers said I should be killed.’

And he turned right round, in the teeth of an enormous lorry, to ask Ange-Victor if Madame André, in the village, still told the cards.

‘Shall I tell your fortune now?’ said Grace. ‘If you don’t drive much more carefully there will soon be a widow, a widower, an orphan, and two childless parents in this family.’

‘Try and remember that I am a night bomber,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘I have driven aeroplanes over the impenetrable jungle, how should I have an accident on my old road I’ve known from a baby? Here we turn,’ he said, wrenching the motor, under the very bonnet of another lorry, across the road and down a lane to the left of it. ‘And there,’ he said a few minutes later, ‘is Bellandargues.’

The Provençal landscape, like that of Tuscany which it so much resembles, is marked by many little hills humping unexpectedly in the middle of vineyards. These often have a cluster of cottages round their lower slopes, overlooked by a castle, or the ruin of a castle, on the summit. Such was Bellandargues. The village lay at the foot of a hill, and above it, up in the blue sky, hung the castle, home, for many generations, of the Valhubert family.

As they drove into the village it presented a gay and festive appearance, all flags for the return of Charles-Edouard. A great streamer, with ‘
Vive la Libération, Hommage à M. le Maire
’, was stretched across the street; the village band was playing, and a crowd was gathered in the market-place, waving and cheering. Charles-Edouard stopped the motor. M. Mignon, the chemist, made a long speech, recalling the sad times they had lived through since Charles Edouard was last there, and saying with what deep emotion they had all heard him when he had spoken on the London radio in July 1940.

‘Hm. Hm.’ Charles-Edouard had a certain face which betrayed, to those who knew him well, inward laughter tinged with a guilty feeling. His eyes laughed but his mouth turned down at the corners. He made this face now, remembering so well the speech at the B.B.C.; how he had been exchanging looks as he delivered it with the next speaker, on the other side of a glass screen. She was a pretty little Dutch girl, and he had taken her out to tea, he remembered, before going back to Grace. M. Mignon made a fine and flowery peroration, Charles-Edouard spoke in reply, the village band then struck up again while he and Grace shook hundreds of hands. Great admiration was lavished upon Sigi, pronounced to be the image of his papa; he jumped up and down on the seat, laughing and clapping, until Nanny said he was thoroughly above himself and pinned him to her lap.

‘Well,’ said Grace, when at last they drove on, ‘if you never thought you’d be son-in-law to the Allingham Commission, it certainly never occurred to me that I should marry a mayor.’ She turned round and said, ‘Wasn’t that delightful, Nan?’

‘Funny-looking lot, aren’t they? Not too fond of washing, if you ask me. Fearful smell of drains, dear.’

The road up through the village got steeper and steeper, the side alleys were all flights of steps. Charles-Edouard changed down into bottom gear. They bounced through a gateway, climbed another slope, came out on to a big, flat terrace, bordered with orange trees in tubs, and drew up at the open front door of the castle. The village was now invisible; far below them, shimmering in the heat and punctuated with umbrella pines, lay acre upon acre of vivid green landscape.

As she got out of the motor Grace thought to herself how different all this was going to look in a few weeks, when it had become familiar. Houses are entirely different when you know them well, she thought, and on first acquaintance even more different from their real selves, more deceptive about their real character than human beings. As with human beings, you can have an impression, that is all. Her impression of Bellandargues was entirely favourable, one of hot, sleepy, beautiful magnitude. She longed to be on everyday terms with it, to know the rooms that lay behind the vast windows of the first floor, to know what happened round the corner of the terrace, and where the staircase led to, just visible in the interior darkness. It is a funny feeling to visit your home for the first time and have to be taken about step by step like a blind person.

An old butler ran out of the door, saying he had not expected them for another half-hour. There was more hugging and crying, and then Charles-Edouard gave him rapid instructions about Nanny being taken straight to her rooms and a maid sent to help her unpack.

‘And Madame la Marquise?’ he said.

The butler replied that Madame la Marquise must be in the drawing-room. He said again that they had arrived before they were expected.

‘Come, then,’ Charles-Edouard said, taking Sigi by the hand. ‘Come, Grace.’

‘Go with the butler, Nan,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll be up as soon as I can.’

‘Yes, well, don’t keep Sigi too long, dear. He’s filthy after that train.’

Her words fell on air, Grace was pursuing husband and son into the shadows of the house and up the stairs. Somewhere a Chopin waltz was being played, but Grace did not consciously hear it, though she remembered it afterwards.

‘Wait, wait, Charles-Edouard,’ she cried. ‘Who is this Marquise?’

‘My grandmother.’

‘Charles-Edouard, dearest, stop one minute, I didn’t know you had a grandmother – oh, do stop and explain –’

‘There’s nothing to explain. In here.’ He held open a door for her. Grace walked into a huge room, dark and panelled, with a painted ceiling. Furniture was dotted about in it; like shrubs in a desert the pieces seemed to grow where they stood, following no plan of arrangement, and dotted about among them were human figures. There was an old man painting at an easel, an old lady at a piano playing the Chopin waltz, while another old lady, in the embrasure of a window, was deep in conversation with an ancient priest. She looked quickly round as the door opened, and then ran towards Grace.

‘So soon?’ she cried, ‘and nobody downstairs to meet you? It’s that wretched stable clock, always slow.’ She kissed Grace on both cheeks, and then again, saying, ‘A beauty! What a beauty! Well done, Charles-Edouard,’ she said, hugging him. ‘This is wonderful happiness, my child.’

Now there was a perfect hubbub of greetings and introductions. ‘Tante Régine – M. le Curé, how are you? Yes, yes, I quite realized that,’ said Charles-Edouard when M. le Curé began to explain that he had not been down in the village because M. Mignon was in charge of the welcome there. ‘Grace, this is M. de la Bourlie, and this is M. le Curé, Grace, who has been M. le Curé here – for how long?’

Madame de Valhubert said, ‘M. le Curé arrived here, a young priest, the same summer that I arrived, a young bride. We shall have seen sixty grape harvests together this year.’

Tante Régine became rather fidgety while her sister was speaking, and said to Grace in an aside, ‘But I am much younger, I was always the baby – fifteen – twenty years younger than Françoise.’

Their faces were the same, soft, white faces with black eyes, but while Madame de Valhubert’s was framed in soft white hair and her clothes were very much like those of a nun, Madame Rocher, painted and powdered, had her red hair cut in the latest way and wore such a beautiful, simple, desirable cotton dress that Grace could look at nothing else in the room.

‘Dear Tante Régine, I’m very much pleased to see you,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘And Octave?’

Octave was her late husband’s nephew, the present holder of his title, whom Madame Rocher had brought up and then, because he bored her, had pushed into the army. The old Marquis had left her every penny of the enormous fortune which came to him through his mother, so she was able to behave in a very highhanded manner with his relations.

‘Oh poor Octave, no luck at all, as usual,’ said Madame Rocher. ‘He is still with his regiment, still only a captain. Of course, if it hadn’t been for this wretched war he would be at least a colonel by now.’

‘Hm. Hm,’ said Charles-Edouard, bursting with inward laughter. ‘And I, in spite of this wretched war, am a colonel, do you know that? Grandmother, did you know that I am a colonel?’

‘Yes, yes, we know a great deal about you here. Little Béguin, who was invalided home after the Libération, was full of your exploits.’

‘Indeed I did splendidly,’ said Charles-Edouard, laughing. ‘I am a colonel and I have a son – where is this son, by the way?’

He dragged Sigi out from behind a curtain, where he was hiding in a most unusual state of shyness.

‘Sigismond, come and kiss the hand of your ancestress. Now that you are a French boy we should like to see some manners, please.’

Sigi became quite scarlet with embarrassment, but the old lady, taking two boxes of sweets from a table, held them out to him and said, ‘You can kiss my hand another time, darling, but now choose which you’ll have, a chocolate or a marron glacé. A little bribery never spoils anything,’ she said to Charles-Edouard as Sigi carefully made his choice. ‘Well?’

‘Well, I do love chocolate, certainly I do, but I suppose I ought to choose the one with the silver paper on account of the poor lepers.’

‘What, my child?’

‘You see Nanny – well you haven’t met her yet – she keeps a silver-paper ball, and when it weighs a pound she sends it up and one poor leper can live on that – oh for years, probably. They hardly need anything at all Nanny says, quite contented with a handful of rice from time to time, but it’s ages now since Nanny sent up, silver paper is so terribly rare in these days. She will be pleased.’

‘But this child has saintly thoughts!’ cried Madame de Valhubert. ‘M. le Curé, did you understand? The little one is already planning for the lepers. It is wonderful, so young. How he does look like you, Charles-Edouard, the image of what you were at that age, though I don’t remember that you had such gratifying preoccupations.’

‘Yes, isn’t he the very picture,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘but I’m afraid he’s not as brilliant as I was. Now if you will excuse us perhaps I’ll show Grace the rest of the house before luncheon, and take St François Xavier up to his nursery.’

Outside on the staircase, Nanny was hovering with a face of leaden reproach. She pounced upon Sigi and hurried him off, muttering her recitative under her breath. She was very slightly in awe of Charles-Edouard, and would only let herself go, Grace knew, when alone with her. The words ‘unbearably close, here’ were just distinguishable, a look of terrifying malice flashed in the direction of Charles-Edouard, and she was gone. Grace absolutely dreaded the day when she would be obliged to have it out with him about Nanny. She had known, as a child, that her father and mother used to have it out at intervals, until her mother, by dying, had saddled Sir Conrad with Nanny for ever. She gave Charles-Edouard a nervous, laughing look, but he did not notice it; he put his arm round her waist, and they went slowly up the stairs.

Then she went back to what she had been wondering as they came out of the drawing-room. ‘But why didn’t you tell me about your grandmother – well, really, all these people?’

‘I have one very firm rule in life,’ he said, ‘which is never to talk to people about other people they have never seen. It is very dull, since people are only interesting when you know them, and furthermore it can lead to misunderstandings. You and my grandmother, having no preconceived ideas about each other –’