The Blessing Read online

  ‘I think they were quite right. Just look at it from the point of view of their grandchildren. Honestly now, which would you prefer as a grandmother – a clever old Jewess, who has brought brains and money and Caffieri commodes into the family, or some ass of an actress?’

  ‘I can’t understand you, Grace, you used to seem so very English at home.’

  ‘Yes, well now,’ said Grace rather sadly, ‘I’m nothing at all. But I would love to have been born a Frenchwoman, and I can’t say more, can I?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll change your tune, I bet. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you – we quite often see Hughie.’

  ‘Hughie! Does he live here too?’

  ‘He was here with a military mission, now he’s back in England, but he keeps coming over. Hector sees him at the Travellers and brings him in for a drink, most weeks. He’s terribly in love with a Frenchwoman here, a Madame Marel-Desboulles. Hector thinks it’s a disaster for him, he has heard all about this Madame Marel and says she’s no good.’

  ‘Marel – Marel-Desboulles. Don’t I know her?’ Grace said vaguely.

  The names and faces of the French people she met had not yet clicked into place, they floated round her mind separately, many names and many faces, all wonderfully romantic and new but not adding up into real people. So the name Marel-Desboulles had a familiar ring but no face, while the brilliant woman who played conversational ping-pong with Charles-Edouard, across a dinner-table, sometimes across a whole roomful of people all delighted by the speed and accuracy of the game, volley, volley, high lob with a spin, volley, cut, smash, had not yet acquired a surname. Grace only knew her as Albertine.

  ‘He wants to marry her.’

  Carolyn looked at Grace to see if she minded, but she hardly even seemed interested.

  ‘And will he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He says she is very Catholic, and talks all the time of going into a convent – poor Hughie says he’ll kill himself if she does. But Hector says nobody at the Travellers thinks there’s much danger of that. What happened about your engagement to Hughie, Grace? I never really knew.’

  ‘Oh, just that we were engaged, and he went to the war and I married Charles-Edouard instead. I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well.’

  ‘Pity, in a way.’

  ‘I can’t agree.’

  ‘I meant nothing against your husband. I hear he is charming. I only meant pity to marry a Frenchman.’

  Grace longed to retaliate with ‘well then, what about marrying an American’ but she knew that, while it is considered nowadays perfectly all right to throw any amount of aspersions on poor old France and England, one tiny word reflecting anything but exaggerated love for rich new America is thought to be in the worst of taste. She was also, by nature, more careful of people’s feelings than Carolyn. So she said, mildly, that she could not imagine any other sort of husband.

  The two nannies clung to each other like drowning men, and Sigi was now taken every day for air and exercise to the Parc Monceau instead of the Tuileries Gardens. He was very cross about this, and complained bitterly to his mother.

  ‘Pascal and I are so fond of each other. I never knew such an obliging goat, and now I never see him. It’s a shame, Mummy.’

  ‘Why don’t you meet Nanny Dexter in the Tuileries sometimes for a change?’ Grace said to her Nan.

  ‘Oh no thank you, dear. We don’t like those Tuileries. It’s the draughtiest place in Paris. I only wish you could feel the stiff neck I caught there the other day, waiting for the little monkey to finish his ride. I don’t think all those smelly animals are very nice, if you ask me, and the children there are a funny lot too. Some of them are black, dear, and one was distinctly Chinese. The Parc Monceau is a much better place for little boys.’

  ‘Oh well, Nan, it’s just as you like, of course, but when I went there I thought it fearfully depressing, such thousands of children, like a children’s market or something, and all those castor-oil plants. Hideous.’

  ‘Still you do see a little grass there,’ said Nanny, ‘and decent railings.’

  ‘I hate the silly little baby Parc Monceau,’ piped up Sigi, ‘and I loathe dear little Foster Dexter aged four. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I loathe Foss and Foss loathes me.’

  ‘Very stupid and naughty, Sigismond. Foster’s a dear little chap – so easy too. Nanny Dexter has never had one minute’s trouble with him since he was born, and they’ve been all over the place – oh, they have travelled! I must say Mrs Dexter’s a marvellous mummy.’

  ‘In what way?’ Grace asked, with interest. She tried her best to be a marvellous mummy too, but her efforts never received much acknowledgement.

  ‘Well, she has tea in the nursery every day.’

  ‘But, Nanny, so do I – nearly every day.’

  ‘And gives little Foss his bath often as not, and, what’s more, every Saturday and Sunday Mr Dexter gives him his bath. He is a nice daddy, Mr Dexter.’

  Unfortunately Grace was stumped by this. Nobody could say that Charles-Edouard was that sort of nice daddy; he never went near the nursery. He liked the idea of Sigi, and was delighted when people said the child was his living image, but a few minutes of his company at a time were more than sufficient. He was such a restless man that a few minutes of almost anybody’s company at a time were more than sufficient.

  Grace said to Charles-Edouard,

  ‘You know my friend Carolyn?’

  ‘The beautiful Lesbian?’

  ‘No, no, Carolyn Dexter.’

  ‘You said she was a Lesbian at school.’

  ‘I said we were all in love with her, that’s quite different. Besides, people are all sorts of things at school – Carolyn used to be a Communist then – we used to point her out to visitors as the school Communist – and look at her now! Marshall Plan up to the eyes. Anyway, can we dine there on Thursday? – I’m to let her know.’

  ‘You keep our engagements, it’s for you to say.’

  ‘We are quite free, but I wanted to know if you’d like it.’

  ‘Who will be there?’

  ‘Well, it sounded like this, but I may have got it wrong. The Jorgmanns of Life, the Schmutzes of Time, the Jungfleisches, who are liaison between Life and Time, the Oberammergaus who have replaced the Pottses on the Un-American Activities Committee, European branch, the Rutters, who are liaison between the French Chamber of Commerce, the Radio-Diffusion Française and the Chicago Herald Tribune, and an important French couple, the Tournons. Are the Tournons important really?’

  ‘Of course they are, in their way, but it won’t be those Tournons. It will be what we call les faux Tournons – he is chef de cabinet to Salleté, very dull, but she is rather nice.’

  ‘Carolyn says these are all people you ought to meet.’

  ‘Why ought I to meet them?’

  ‘Now darling, do be serious for once. It’s all that Aid and so on. They might like you, and it’s so terribly important for them to like French people because of the Aid. Carolyn’s always saying so, and she’s very clever, as I’ve told you. She says what happens is that the important Americans who come here meet all the wrong sort of French. Then they go back to the middle of America and tell the people there, who hate foreigners anyway, that the French are undependable, and so nasty it would be better to cut the Aid and concentrate on Italy, where they are undependable too but so nice, and specially on Germany, where they are dependable and so wonderful, and leave the nasty French to rot. All because they meet the wrong sort. And all this is very discouraging to Hector Dexter, who is dying to help and aid the French more and more.’

  ‘Well of course Hector Dexter would lose his job if they cut the Aid, that’s very plain.’

  ‘There you are, being French and cynical, just like Carolyn always says. And as if it would matter to Mr Dexter whether he lost his job or not. He’s far too important.’

  Indeed the word important seemed, at that time, to have been coined only for Mr Dexter, and his name
never occurred either in print or in conversation without it. It seemed that he was one of the most, if not the most, important of living men.

  ‘My dear child, do you really think, when a great country like America has settled on a certain policy with regard to another great country like France, it can be deflected from it by the Jung-fleisches, meeting the wrong sort of French person?’

  ‘Carolyn says it can.’

  ‘And what makes you think I’m the right sort of French person for them to meet?’

  ‘Well look at what you did in the war.’

  ‘But the Americans hate the people who were on their side in the war. It’s one thing they can never forgive. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that. Never mind,’ he said, seeing her face fall. ‘We’ll go, and I’ll do my best to be nice, I promise you.’

  10

  The Dexters invited their guests at eight, but only sat down to dinner at nine. The intervening hour was spent drinking cocktails while Hector Dexter talked about the present state of France.

  ‘I have known France all my life. I came here as a kid; I came during my vacations from college; I came on my honeymoon with my first wife, the first Mrs Dexter, and I was here during World War II. So I am in some sort qualified to make my diagnosis, and I have made my diagnosis, and my diagnosis is as follows, but first I would like to tell you all a little story which I think will help me to illustrate the point I am going to try if I can to make.

  ‘Well, it was just before the Ardennes counter-offensive; we were up in this little village near the frontier of Belgium, or no, maybe it was near the frontier of Luxembourg – it makes no odds really and doesn’t affect my story. Now there was this boulanger in the village, and I think now I will if I may describe the state of the village. Well it had been bombed by the U.S. air force, precision bombed, if you see what I mean; it had then been bombed by the Luftwaffe quite regardless I am sorry to say (sorry because I am one who hopes very soon to see the Germans playing a very very important part in the family of nations), bombed, then, quite regardless of civilian property and military objectives. It had then been shelled by U.S. infantry and taken and occupied; it had then been shelled and retaken and reoccupied by the Reichswehr, and I am sorry to say that when it was reoccupied by the Reichswehr certain atrocities took place which I for one would rather forget. It had then been shelled and retaken and occupied by the U.S. infantry. And the rain was falling down day and night. I dare say you can picture the state of this village at the time of which I am telling you. But it so happened that the habitation of this boulanger was still intact. It had been damaged, of course, the windows were blown in and so on, but the walls were standing, a bit of roof was left and the big oven had suffered no impairment. So I went and asked him if he would care to have some U.S. army flour so that he could bake bread for those civilians who were left in the village. But this little old boulanger simply said what the hell, though he said it in French of course, what the hell, the Boches will be back again this evening and I don’t see much point baking bread for the Boches to eat tonight.

  ‘Now this little story is symbolical of what I see around me and of what we Americans in France are trying to fight against. There is a malaise in this country, a spirit of discontent, of nausea, of defatigation, of successlessness around us, here in this very city of Paris, which I for one find profoundly discouraging.

  ‘Now my son Heck junior is here temporarily with us, my son by the first Mrs Dexter, an independent, earning, American male of some twenty-two summers. He trained to be a psychiatrist. In my view, everybody nowadays, whatever profession they intend eventually to embrace, ought to have this training. Now he has a column.’

  Charles-Edouard, gazing all this time at Mrs Jungfleisch, who happened to be very pretty, and wondering if there were another room he could sit in after dinner with her (but he knew really that the flat was not likely to have a suite of drawing-rooms), was startled out of his reverie by the word column.

  ‘Doric?’ he asked with interest, ‘or Corinthian?’

  But Mr Dexter, in the full flood of locution, took no notice.

  ‘And my son walks in the streets of this town – he is not here with us tonight because he prefers to eat alone using his eyes and his ears in some small, but representative bistro – and he claims that he can sense, by observing the faces of the ordinary citizens, and by various small actions they perform in the course of their daily round, he claims to observe this malaise in every observable walk of life, and I am sorry to say, sorry because I am very deeply sincere in my wish and desire to help the French people, that what my son senses as he goes about this city is entirely reflected in this column.’

  And so on. Grace thought it exceedingly clever of Mr Dexter to keep up such a flow, but she could see it was not quite doing for Charles-Edouard. If only he were more serious, she thought sadly, he could be just as wonderful, or more so, but he never seemed to care a bit about the things that really matter in the world. Even during the war he had done nothing, when she was with him, anyhow, but make love, sing little snatches of songs, roar with laughter, and search for objects of art on which to feast his eyes. And yet he must have a serious side to his nature since he had been impelled to leave all these things he cared for and to fight long years in the East. She knew that he could have been demobilized much sooner if he had wished, but that he had refused to leave his squadron until they all came home. She longed for him to get up and make a speech even cleverer than Mr Dexter’s, in defence of his country, but he only sat laughing inside himself and looking at pretty Mrs Jungfleisch.

  At last they went in to dinner. Grace, who was by now accustomed to an easy flow of French chat from her dinner partners, was completely paralysed when Mr Rutter opened the conversation by turning to her and saying, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ She was looking, as she always did, to see if Charles-Edouard was happy; it distressed her that he had been put as far as possible from pretty Mrs Jungfleisch. He too clearly did not admire Carolyn, who was talking to him about Nanny, a subject that did not bring out the best in him.

  ‘Myself ?’ she said, and fell dumb.

  However, Hector Dexter now tapped his plate for silence.

  ‘I’m going to call on each person here,’ he said, ‘to say a few words on a subject with which we are all deeply preoccupied. I mean, of course, the A-bomb. I think Charlie Jungfleisch can speak for the ordinary citizen of our great United States of America, as he is just back from there. Aspinall Jorgmann will tell us what they are saying behind the Iron Curtain (Asp has just done this comprehensive six-day tour and we all want to know his impressions), Wilbur Rutter can speak of it as it will, or may, affect world prosperity, M. Tournon represents the French government at this little gathering, and M. de Valhubert –’

  ‘Perhaps I will listen without joining in,’ said Charles-Edouard, much to Grace’s disappointment, ‘as an amateur of pâte tendre, you will understand, I find the whole subject really too painful. My policy with regard to atom bombs is that of the ostrich.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ said Mr Dexter. ‘Then I call on Charlie. There is one thing we here in Europe are very anxious to know, Charlie, and that is what, if any, air-raid precautions are being taken in New York?’

  ‘Well, Heck, quite some precautions are being taken. In the first place the authorities have issued a very comprehensive little pamphlet entitled “The Bomb and You” designed to bring the bomb into every home and invest it with a certain degree of cosiness. This should calm and reassure the population in case of attack. There are plenty of guidance reunions, fork lunches, and so on where the subject is treated frankly, to familiarize it, as it were, and rob it of all unpleasantness. At these gatherings the speakers stress that the observation of certain rules of atomic hygiene ought to be a matter of everyday routine. Keep a white sheet handy, for example, since white offers the best protection against gamma rays. Then the folks are told what to do after the explosion. The importance of rest can hardly be over-e
stimated; the protein contents of the diet should be increased – no harm in a glass of milk as soon as the bomb has gone off. If you feel a little queer, dissatisfied with your symptoms, send at once for the doctor. You follow me, it is elementary, of course, but these things cannot be too much emphasized. If the folks know just what they ought to do in the case of atomic explosion, such explosion is robbed of half, or one-third, its terrors.’

  ‘Thank you, Charlie,’ said Mr Dexter. ‘I for one feel a lot easier in my mind. There is nothing so dangerous as a policy of laisser-aller, and I am very glad that the great American public, if I may say so, M. de Valhubert, without offending your feelings, is not hiding its head in the sand, but is looking the Bomb squarely in the eye. Very glad indeed. And now I shall call on Asp for a few words. Tell us what they are thinking in the Russian-occupied countries, Asp.’

  ‘Well, I have just had six very very interesting days in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Roumania, Bulgaria, the East or Russian-occupied part of Germany, and the East or Russian-occupied part of Austria, and I’m here to tell you that these countries, if not actually preparing for war, which I think they are, are undeniably being run on a war-time basis.’

  ‘And did you talk with the ordinary citizens of these countries, Asp?’

  ‘Why, no, Heck. For reasons of which I suppose you are all cognizant I did not, but I saw the key men and key women of our embassies and missions in these countries, and I gleaned enough material for three, or two, very very long and interesting articles which I hope you will all be reading for yourselves –’

  And so it went on. Fortunately some more very important people came in after dinner, so Grace and Charles-Edouard were able to slip away without looking too rude. Charles-Edouard never managed to have a word with Mrs Jungfleisch, who had settled down to a cosy chat with Mr Jorgmann about conferences, vetos, and what Joe Alsop had told her when she saw him in Washington. Pretty Mrs Jungfleisch, like Mr Dexter, was deeply concerned about the present state of the world, and had no time for frivolous Frenchmen who preferred pâte tendre to atom bombs.