‘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
