The Blessing Read online

  ‘And I tell you, I, Albertine Labé, bourgeoise, that it is this power of truthfulness and of knowing truth which is needed if we are to rebuild your England, rebuild my France, and rebuild our Europe.’

  Just the stuff for the Selection Committees, he thought. There was another line of talk which ran, ‘I who loathe the bourgeoisie, I who would rather burn charcoal in the woods than buy or sell anything whatever it might be, I who would rather freeze to death out of doors in the cruel winter of my native Lorraine than sit over a warm fire in a back shop, I, Albertine Labé de Lespay, aristocrat, child of knight and warrior, whose ancestors never touched money or even carried it on their persons because they thought it the dirtiest of dirt, I tell you that I know the truth, I know it here and here and here, and it is this truth, this virtue, this hatred of gold that is needed if we are to rebuild etc. etc.’

  The second statement, actually, had more foundation in fact, since Albertine did not possess one drop of bourgeois blood, and her ancestors, a line of powerful princes, had only been timber merchants to the extent of owning vast forests in Lorraine. But the trend of the modern world had not escaped her notice, and the timber merchants were ever increasingly brought into play. Hughie was much too much dazzled by her to notice any discrepancy; both these statements had, at different times, bowled him over, as he assumed that they would bowl over the Selection Committees. He was unable to imagine anybody, even an English Conservative, standing up against the charm and brilliance of this extraordinary woman. With her by his side, to inspire and teach him, it seemed that no goal in the world would be unobtainable.

  ‘Of course I’m glad to think of her in Venice,’ he said, not gladly though, to Grace, as they sat over the little drawing-room fire, summer rain fiercely beating on the windows. ‘She loves Italy so much, she needs the beauty. Then there is the important work she does there, with the films.’

  ‘What work? She’s frightfully rich, she doesn’t need to work.’

  ‘She doesn’t need to, she does it for her country, for France. She is a moving power in the French film industry with her taste and knowledge and influence. No film is ever made there without first being submitted to her, you know. She has an infallible instinct. Yes, I love to think of her in Venice, but I do wish she would write to me. She won’t, of course. “What is writing?” she said once. “Just a scratch of metal upon paper.” Well, look at it that way and what is it?’

  Grace, whose heart was also in Venice, and who would also have welcomed a scratch of metal upon paper, or even upon a post-card, sympathized with Hughie, but did not quite enjoy his interminable eulogies of Albertine, who seemed to her one of the many causes of her own wretchedness. She wondered if he was aware that Charles-Edouard went to tea with her every day, but was too polite and tactful to mention it.

  ‘Don’t you think young people nowadays manage their lives much worse than we used to?’ Sir Conrad said to Mrs O’Donovan, who had come down for a little country air. ‘Surely you and I would have been more competent than either of those two in the same circumstances, and less gloomy? I’m tired of all the despondency in this house; it’s getting me down. Why on earth don’t they pack up and go off to Venice and have it out finally with these frogs?’

  ‘Just imagine having anything out finally with Madame Marel,’ she replied. ‘As for Grace, you mustn’t be too hard on her. I think she has received a terrible shock, and is still suffering from it. To see a thing like that with your own eyes can have really grave results, psychologically.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, Meg. She ought to have another baby, that’s all.’

  ‘Having a baby is not a sovereign cure for everything, although all men, I know, think it is.’

  ‘Anyhow, she’s in a thoroughly tiresome state of mind. I can’t find out what it is she does want – divorce or what. She says one thing one day and another the next, and it’s time something was settled, in my view.’

  ‘What does he think, do you know?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve had a long letter from him. As I’ve often told you, I never understood why he wanted to marry her in the first place, but whatever the reason may have been it still seems to hold good, and he wants her back again.’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be any use me telling her in her present mood; he must come and tell her himself. But meanwhile she goes on havering and wavering about shall she or shan’t she divorce until I’m tired of discussing it with her. She’s grown up, and she must decide for herself which it is to be.’

  ‘It really doesn’t make a pin of difference,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘They weren’t married in church, and therefore neither Charles-Edouard nor anybody else in Paris counts them as being properly married at all.’

  ‘I suppose it would only make a difference if one of them wanted to marry again. The whole thing is thoroughly tiresome and annoying. Well, after the holidays I’ll run over to Paris and have a word with Charles-Edouard, that will be best. I’ll tell him he must come and fetch her back if he wants her – I don’t believe she’d ever resist him in flesh and blood. She’d much better stick to him, this fidgeting about with husbands is no good for women, it doesn’t suit them. Hullo, Sigi, I didn’t know you were there –’

  ‘It’s too wet to go out and too early for Dick Barton, and Mummy and Mr Palgrave are talking about Madame Marel, as usual. If you go to Paris I wish you’d take me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to learn the words of A la voix du vainqueur d’Austerlitz, and nobody knows them here.’

  ‘Oh I do,’ said Mrs O’Donovan. ‘I used to read them every morning of my life when I was a little girl with a hoop in the Tuileries Gardens. I’ll teach them to you if you come along to my bedroom before dinner.’

  2

  That night Sigi was woken up by a tinkle of breaking glass under his open window. He nipped out of bed and looked down. The pantry window was underneath his and he saw a bit of broken glass shining on the gravel beside it; there seemed to be a light on in the pantry. Nanny was snoring away undisturbed in the next room, so it must be very late he knew; well after midnight. He crept out of his room and down the back stairs, feeling his way by the banisters. Sure enough there was a light shining under the pantry door. He put his eye to the keyhole and saw a man examining the door of the silver cupboard, big and heavy like that of a safe. Now Sigi, owing to a great friendship formed in early babyhood with Atkin the butler, knew all the little ways of this silver cupboard. He opened the pantry door and walked in. The burglar, a small, fair young man, turned quickly round and pointed a revolver at him.

  ‘I don’t care for these manners,’ said Sigi, in a very governessy voice. ‘Surely you know that never never should your gun pointed be at anyone. That it may unloaded be matters not a rap to me.’

  ‘It’s not only unloaded,’ said the burglar, ‘but it’s not a gun at all. It’s a dummy. You get into a terrible mess, in my trade, if you go carrying guns about.’

  ‘Are you a burglar?’

  ‘Yes, I try to be.’

  ‘I think it’s very careless of you not to wear gloves. What about the finger-prints?’

  ‘I know. I simply cannot work in gloves – never could – can’t drive a car in them, either. I’m not very good at my work as it is – look at this wretched door, I don’t know how you’d open it.’

  ‘Why do you do it then?’

  ‘The hours suit me – can’t get up in the morning, and everything you earn, such as it is, is tax free, with no overheads. There’s a good deal to be said for it. I expect I shall improve.’

  ‘How about prison?’

  ‘Haven’t had any yet. I’m so fearfully amateurish that nobody ever thinks I can be serious, and when I get caught they simply think it must be a joke.’

  ‘Where I live it’s not a joke at all, burgling. They come with machine-guns and wearing masks and they generally kill off the whole family and the concierge before they begin.’

  �
��That must make it much easier.’

  ‘Yes. Sometimes they only sausage them.’

  ‘They what?’

  ‘Tie them up like sausages, brr round and round, and gag them and put them in a cupboard, where they are found next day more dead than alive.’

  ‘Where do you live then?’

  ‘Paris. I’m a French boy.’

  ‘You talk pretty good English for a French boy.’

  ‘Yes, and I talk pretty good French for an English boy. Would you like me to open the silver cupboard for you?’

  ‘Why? Do you know how to?’

  ‘Of course I do. Mr Atkin showed me. You blow on it, see. Like that.’ The door swung slowly open. ‘I always feel on the side of burglars because of Garth. So you go on and I’ll keep cave.’

  The burglar looked at him uncertainly. ‘I suppose I’d better make sure,’ he said, half to himself, and before Sigi realized what was happening he found himself gagged and trussed up.

  ‘There you see. English burglars sausage people too sometimes,’ said the young man, putting Sigi gently on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, old fellow, it won’t be for long, but really to leave you keeping cave would be carrying amateurishness too far.’

  Sigi was perfectly outraged. ‘All right then,’ he said to himself.

  The burglar went into the cupboard and began to examine its contents. Sigi waited a moment, then he rolled under the pantry table and kicked a certain catch he knew of. The cupboard door clanged to, and the burglar was trapped. Then Sigi began to roll and wriggle through the green baize swing-door into the dining-room, through the dining-room door, which luckily was open, into the hall, where he lay kicking the big gong until Sir Conrad appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Good gracious,’ he said, when he saw Sigi rolling and wriggling like a little eel. ‘My dear child,’ he said, untying him, ‘whatever have you been up to?’

  ‘Ugh! That tasted awful. Grandfather, grandfather, I’ve got a burglar, in the silver cupboard.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, I promise. I did it with Mr Atkin’s patent catch – he’s in there now. Come and see.’

  ‘I say! Good boy!’

  ‘And he’s got a dummy gun.’

  ‘Never mind. He won’t dare use that. Go and get Atkin for me, will you?’

  ‘Mr Atkin – Mr Atkin – Grandfather wants you – I’ve got a burglar in the silver cupboard! Mummy, Mummy, I’ve caught a burglar! Nanny, Nanny, I’ve got a burglar. I did it all by myself.’

  Nanny, hurrying into her dressing-gown, said, ‘Tut-tut, all this excitement in the middle of the night is very bad for little boys. You’re coming straight back to bed, my child.’

  But Sigi was off again in a flash, down to the pantry, where Sir Conrad was sitting on the edge of the table talking to the burglar and surrounded by quite a little crowd. Hughie now put in an appearance.

  ‘Hullo, Hughie,’ said the burglar.

  ‘Oh! Hullo, Ozzie. It’s you, is it?’

  ‘That your nipper?’

  ‘No. I wish he were.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind having him for a partner. The child’s an expert.’

  ‘I was your partner till you sausaged me,’ Sigi said furiously.

  ‘The milk train,’ said Sir Conrad, looking at the pantry clock, ‘leaves at 6.15. Perhaps you’d better be off, it’s more than an hour’s walk. Or would you suggest that I should send you in the motor?’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ said the burglar. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, rather in the manner of one who, leaving a party first, says a general good-bye in order not to break it up. He climbed out through the open window and was gone.

  ‘Grandfather! He was my burglar – I caught him, and now you’ve let him go. It is unfair.’

  ‘Yes, well you couldn’t keep him as a pet, you know.’

  ‘I wanted to see the coppers put the bracelets on and drag him off in a Black Maria.’

  ‘Sigismond, will you come back to bed this instant, please?’

  ‘You were a very good, clever boy,’ said Sir Conrad, ‘and tomorrow I’ll get you a bike with three speeds.’

  ‘I don’t want any old bike at all.’

  ‘There you are, these high jinks always end in tears. Now come along, and look sharp about it.’

  ‘Really Papa,’ said Grace, when a dejected Sigi had padded off with Nanny, ‘I’m not sure you ought to have turned him loose on the community like that, you know.’

  ‘Oh, my dear child, he hadn’t done any harm. On the contrary, he spoke very nicely of my article on Turenne in the Cornhill, before you came down.’

  3

  The long, cold, light summer came to an end. As soon as autumn began, warm, mellow, and golden, the Bunbury household removed itself to Queen Anne’s Gate.

  It was now agreed between Charles-Edouard and Grace, through the medium of Sir Conrad, that they had better be divorced. Sir Conrad told Grace that the situation must be regularized one way or the other.

  ‘You must choose,’ he said, ‘between going back to France and living with your husband – far the best solution, in my view – or divorcing the poor chap. It’s too unsatisfactory to spend the rest of your lives married and yet not married, impossible, really. Besides, I want to make certain financial arrangements for you. I know you never think about money, you’ve never had to, so far, but you might as well know that I can’t live on my income any more. I’m eating up my capital like everybody else, and before it’s all gone I propose to make some over to you and some to Sigismond, in the hopes that you’ll be able to keep Bunbury when I am dead. Now I must have a word with Charles-Edouard about all this. We had better arrange the divorce at the same time.’

  ‘Oh – oh –!’

  ‘Darling Grace, you know what I think about it, don’t you? But if you really can’t live with him you’ll have to make up your mind to it, I’m afraid. It has to be one thing or the other.’

  ‘Papa, I couldn’t just go back like that, it’s not so easy. For one thing he hasn’t asked me to.’

  ‘He didn’t ask you to go away. He assumes that you will go back when you feel like it. He wants you to, I know.’

  ‘It was he who made it impossible for me to stay. If he really wants me he must come over and ask me, beg me, in fact, show that he is serious, and promise –’

  ‘Promise what?’ Sir Conrad gave her a very unsympathetic look. How could Charles-Edouard promise what she would want him to? He thought his daughter was being utterly unreasonable.

  Grace burst into tears and left the room.

  Sir Conrad went to Paris. Charles-Edouard was most friendly, and they had long talks on many subjects of interest to them both, including the future of Sigi.

  ‘One can’t tell, of course, what things will be like by the time he inherits,’ said Sir Conrad, ‘but it seems to become increasingly difficult for anybody to live in two countries. I wonder if he’ll ever be able to keep Bellandargues and Bunbury. Oh dear, the ideal thing would have been if Grace had had this other child and I could have settled Bunbury on him, or her. Now I suppose I must wait and see if she marries again, or what happens. I would so much like to have it all tied up before I get too old. I’m quite against leaving these decisions to a woman, specially Grace, who is so unpractical.’

  ‘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 reas
onable.’

  ‘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.