Her father and Mrs O’Donovan selected many books for her to read, in preparation for a French life. They told her she ought to be studying the religious writings of the seventeenth, the drama and philosophy of the eighteenth, the prose and politics of the nineteenth centuries. They sent her, as well as quantities of classics and many novels and mémoires, Michelet in sixteen morocco volumes and Sainte-Beuve in sixteen paper ones; they sent her Bodley’s France and Brogan’s Third Republic, saying she would feel a fool if she did not understand the French electoral, judicial, and municipal systems. Grace did make spasmodic efforts to get on with all this homework, but she was too mentally lazy and untrained to do more than nibble at it. In the evenings she liked to turn on the wireless, think of Charles-Edouard, and stitch away at a carpet destined to be literally laid at his feet. It was squares of petit point, in a particularly crude Victorian design of roses and lilies of the valley and blue ribbons. Grace thought it too pretty for words.
She lived in a dream of Charles-Edouard, so that as the years went on he turned, in her mind, into somebody quite divorced from all reality and quite different from the original. And the years did go on. He came back for three hectic days in July 1940 which hardly counted, so little did Grace see of him, and after that seemed to go farther and farther away, Fort Lamy, Ceylon, and finally Indo-China. When the war ended he was not immediately demobilized, his return was announced again and again, only to be put off, so that it was more than seven years after their wedding when at last the telephone bell rang and Grace heard his voice speaking from Heath Row. This time he was unannounced; she had thought him still in the East.
‘Our Ambassador was on the plane with me, and he is sending me straight down in his motor,’ he said. ‘It seems I’ll be with you in an hour or two.’
Grace felt that, whereas the seven years had gone in a flash, this hour or two would never never end. She went up to the nursery. Sigi was having his bath before bedtime.
‘Don’t let him go to sleep,’ she said to Nanny. ‘Guess what, darling – his father will be here presently.’
Nanny received this news with the air of one resigned to the inevitable fact that all things, especially good things, have their term. She gave a particularly fearful sniff and said, ‘Well, I only hope he won’t over-excite the poor little fellow. You know what it’s like getting him off, evenings, as well as I do.’
‘Oh, Nanny, just for once, darling, it wouldn’t matter if he stayed up all night.’
She left the nursery and wandered down the drive to the lodge, where she sat on one of the stone stumps that, loosely chained together, enclosed grassy mounds on either side of the gates. There was no traffic on the little road outside the park, and beyond it, bordered by clumps of wild rose bushes, the deep woods were full of song. It was high summer now, that week when cuckoo and nightingale give their best, their purest performances. The evening was warm, but she felt glad of a cardigan; she had begun to shiver like a nervous dog.
At last the motor drove up. Charles-Edouard sprang out of it and hugged her, and then she remembered exactly what he was like as a real person, and the other, dream Charles-Edouard, was chased into the back of her mind. Not quite chased away, she often thereafter remembered him with affection, but separated from reality.
They got back into the motor and drove up to the house.
‘You are looking very beautiful,’ he said, ‘and very happy. I was afraid you might have become sad, all these years and years down here, away from me.’
‘I longed terribly for you.’
‘I know. You must have.’
‘Don’t tease, Charles-Edouard. But if we had to be separated I would rather have been here than anywhere. I love the country, you know, and besides, I had plenty to do.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, goats and things.’
‘Goats must be very dull.’
‘No, really not. Then of course there was Sigi. Are you excited for him?’
‘Very very much excited.’
‘Come then, let’s go straight up to the nursery.’
But outside Grace’s bedroom Charles-Edouard caught her hand and pointed sternly to the door. ‘I must see if the archduke is still there,’ he said, and they went in.
Grace said presently, ‘If you had been killed in the war, it would have finished me off.’
‘Ah! Would you have died? That’s very nice.’
‘Yes, I couldn’t have gone on living.’
‘And would it have been a violent death by poison or a slow death by misery?’
‘Which would you prefer?’
‘Poison would be very flattering.’
‘All right then, poison. Now come on, let’s go to Sigi.’
In the day nursery Nanny’s face was a picture of disapproval. ‘Funny thing,’ she said, ‘I thought I heard a car quite half an hour ago. Time he went off to sleep, poor mite.’
They went through into the night nursery. Sigi was standing on his bed. He had black, silky curls and clever little black eyes, and he was always laughing.
‘Have you ever seen me before?’ he said to his father.
‘Never. But I can guess who you are.’
‘Sigismond de Valhubert, a great boy of nearly seven. Are you my papa?’
‘Let me present myself – Charles-Edouard de Valhubert.’ They shook hands.
‘What are you?’
‘I am a colonel in the French Air Force, retired. And what are you going to be?’
‘A superman,’ said the child.
Charles-Edouard was much gratified by this
