The Blessing Read online

  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.

  Grace rather wondered what could have happened, but she said nothing and she was not a woman to ask for confidences. As she now felt lonely without her little boy, and as Hughie seemed to be at a loose end, they began to see a great deal of each other. Nearly every week he drove her down to his country house for a few days.

  This house, Yeotown Manor, in Hertfordshire, was like a large, rambling cottage. Part of it was really old, a little old manor, but most of the low, dark, inconvenient rooms, the huge beams, the oak doors with wooden bolts and latches, the linen-fold panelling and inglenooks, while quite genuine of their sort, had a certain false air owing to the fact that they had been added to the structure by Hughie’s mother out of old cottages which she had bought and carved up to serve her purpose. It had no beauty but a certain cosy charm, to which Grace was susceptible at that time since it was so completely English, so much the antithesis of anything she had known in France. Nothing in it reminded her of either of her French homes, or of Charles-Edouard. She was dreadfully saddened now by such memories, and only longed to put them from her.

  Hughie always had a few people at week-ends, and perpetual games of bridge went on day and night. Thump thump thump went the radiogram, thumping its way through great heaps of jazz records from breakfast to bedtime, while Hughie and his guests sat by electric light at green baize tables, drink at their elbows, ash-trays filling all round them, shuffling, dealing, playing, and scoring.

  At this time Grace was happier there than anywhere. She had always liked gambling, and now she flew to it as to a drug. Also she missed Charles-Edouard less acutely when she was with Hughie, whose masculine presence calmed her nerves. He had become very much more attentive to her of late; indeed, had she not known about Albertine, she would have supposed that he was courting her again. Onlookers, Mrs O’Donovan for instance, and Carolyn Dexter, assumed that it would only be a matter of months before they married.

  Time passed, and a morning came when Grace woke up at Yeotown feeling, if not quite happy, at least without a stifling blanket of unhappiness. This blanket had hitherto weighed upon her like something physical, so that there had been days when she had hardly been able to rise from under it and get out of bed. But on this particular morning it seemed to have gone. Through latticed windows the sun shone on a bank of beeches and on the few golden leaves which still clung to their branches. The sky was very blue, her room was warm, her bed intensely comfortable. When she rang the bell Hughie’s housekeeper herself came in with the breakfast tray, followed by a housemaid with all the Sunday papers. The servants there were very fond of Grace and spoilt her as much as they could, hoping that she would marry Hughie. The breakfast was a delight, as it always was in that house, pretty to look at, piping hot, and carefully presented. Grace thought, not for the first time, that it would be difficult for somebody who led such an intensely comfortable life as she did to be quite submerged in unhappiness. There were too many daily pleasures, of which breakfast in bed was by no means the least. Perhaps too, she thought, this English life, so much more suitable for her than a French one, would in the end bring her more happiness. Here she was within her depth, she could do the things which were expected of her, and was not always having to try to learn and understand and do new things. It would have taken her years, she knew, to be able to tell at a glance whether an object was Louis XV or Louis Philippe, First or Third Empire; years before she could bring out suitable quotations from Racine or Apollinaire, write phrases in the manner of Gide and Proust, or even make, in good French, the kind of joke, naïve and yet penetrating, that is expected from an English person. Accomplishments of this sort seemed to be a necessity in France, the small change of daily intercourse. It had all been, quite frankly, a most terrible effort. The English, on the other hand, take people as they are, they don’t expect that the last ounce of energy will be expended on them in the natural order of things, and are, indeed, pleased and flattered at the slightest attempt to entertain them.

  She often had these moments of thinking that what had happened was really all for the best, but they never lasted very long. Today the reaction came as soon as she went downstairs. Thump thump thump went the radiogram, gobbling its waxen meal. Hughie was already shuffling the cards, the Dexters, who made up the party, already had glasses in their hands, and tedium loomed. The only hope was to get quickly to the game, but even that magic did not always work.

  Hector Dexter had just made a tour of the Industrial North, and was telling, with his usual wealth of word and detail but with an unusual note of humanity, of life as it is lived in the factories. In these terrib
le, dark, Victorian buildings, he said, where daylight is never seen, the people sit at the same table going through the same motions hour after hour, day after day, with music while you work in the background. As Grace dealt the cards it occurred to her that week-ends at Yeotown were not unlike that. You sat by electric light at the same table hour after hour, going through the same motions, with music while you work, thump thump thumping in the background, life passed by, the things of the mind neglected, the beautiful weather out of doors unfelt, unseen. ‘One club, two no trumps. Three spades. Four spades. Game and rubber. I make that one a rubber of 16 – pass me the washing book, old boy.’

  ‘Luncheon is served,’ said the butler.

  A break, while you go to the canteen. Her life in Paris may have been difficult and exacting, she may have been a flustered witness ever in the box, ever trying not to give the game away to a ruthless cross-examining counsel, but it may also have been a more satisfactory existence than this. At least she had felt alive, she had been made to use whatever mind she possessed, and there had seemed to be point and purpose to each day. It had never merely been a question of getting through such hours as remain before the grave finally closes.

  During luncheon Hector Dexter went on talking about his tour. ‘I’m afraid I must be perfectly frank,’ he said, ‘and tell you that in my opinion this little old island of yours is just like some little old grandfather clock that is running down, and if you ask me why is it running down I must reply because the machinery is worn out, deteriorated, degenerated and decayed, while the men who work this machinery are demoralized, vitiated, and corrupt, and if you ask me why this should be so I will give you my viewpoint on the history of Britain during the past fifty years.’ His viewpoint on this subject was then exposed, in great detail. Hughie listened to him with rapturous interest, wondering how anybody could achieve so much knowledge and such a flow of words – oh would that he could pour out its like before the Selection Committees. He had another in front of him that week. Grace felt more than ever as if she were a factory hand, in the kind of factory where people come and chat to the workers on subjects of general interest. ‘We are lucky enough to have here today the important Mr Hector Dexter, who is going to talk to us about some of our problems, their roots in the past, and how they may be solved in the future.’