‘It’s all so huge, isn’t it? And like being out of doors, with these great windows everywhere. Heavenly, really. Look, here’s a cupboard, darling – the size of a room, too. Hadn’t you noticed it? You can put everything here – and see, there’s a light for it. That is nice.’
‘Just smell inside, dear – horribly musty, I’m afraid. Then I was wanting to speak to you about these roofs – the little monkey will be up on them in no time. My goodness! I knew it! Come down this instant, Sigi, what did I tell you? You are not to climb on those roofs – what d’you think you’re doing? It’s most dangerous.’
‘I’m Garth on the mountains of the moon.’
Charles-Edouard reappeared, saying, ‘Oh, do be Napoleon crossing the Alps. This Garth is really too dull. The roofs are quite safe, Nanny, I lived on them when I was his age, mountaineering and exploring. I must get out my old Journal des Voyages for him, since I suppose he is rather young for Jules Verne?’
Nanny having retreated into the nursery, ‘don’t know how you can stand the glare,’ Charles-Edouard pulled at the neck of Grace’s cotton dress and implanted a kiss on her shoulder.
‘Ugh! You soppy things,’ said Sigismond, ‘I don’t like all this daft kissing stuff.’
‘You’ll like it all right one day,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘That big bell means luncheon time. Good appetite, Sigi.’
As they went back through the nursery a man-servant was laying the table on a thick, white linen tablecloth. ‘Good appetite, Nanny,’ said Charles-Edouard. Nanny did not reply. She was looking with stupefied disapproval at a bottle of wine which had just been put down in front of her.
5
Very hungry, accustomed to English post-war food, Grace thought the meal which followed the most delicious she had ever eaten. The food, the wine, the heat, and the babel of French talk, most of which was quite incomprehensible to her untuned ear, induced a half-drunk, entirely happy state of haziness. When, after nearly two hours, the party rose from the table, she was floating on air. Everybody wandered off in different directions, and Charles-Edouard announced that he was going to be shut up in the library for the afternoon with his tenants and the agent.
‘Will you be happy?’ he said, stroking Grace’s hair and laughing at her for being, as he could see, so tipsy.
‘Oh I’m sleepy and happy and hot and sleepy and drunk and happy and sleepy. It’s too too blissful being so drunk and happy.’
‘Then go to sleep, and when I’ve finished we’ll do whatever you like. Motor down to the sea if you like, and bathe. I’m sleepy myself, but the régisseur has convened all these people to see me – they’ve been waiting too long already – I must go to them, so there it is. See you presently.’
‘All right. I’ll go and have a little word with Nanny and then a lovely hot sleep. Oh the weather! Oh the bliss of everything! Oh how happy I am!’
Charles-Edouard gave her a very loving look as he went off. He thought he was going to like her even more in France than in England, and was well satisfied to have come back accompanied by this happy beauty.
Alas for the hot, tipsy sleep! Nanny sobered and woke her up all right, her expression alone was a wave of icy water. Grace did not even bother to say ‘Wasn’t the luncheon delicious? Did you enjoy it?’ She just stood and meekly waited for the wave to break over her head.
‘Well, dear, we’ve had nothing to eat since you saw us, nothing whatever. Course upon course of nasty greasy stuff smelling of garlic – a month’s ration of meat, yes, but quite raw you know – shame, really – I wasn’t going to touch it, let alone give it to Sigi, poor little mite.’
‘Nanny says the cheese was matured in manure,’ Sigi chipped in, eyes like saucers.
‘I wish you could have smelt it, dear, awful it was, and still covered with bits of straw. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Well, we just had a bite of bread and butter and a few of Mrs Crispin’s nice rock cakes I happened to have with me. Not much of a dinner, was it? Funny-looking bread here, too, all crust and holes, I don’t know how you’d make a nice bit of damp toast with that. Poor little hungry boy – never mind, it’s all right now, darling, your mummy will go to the kitchen for us and ask for some cold ham or chicken – a bit of something plain – some tomatoes, without that nasty, oily, oniony dressing, and a nice floury potato, won’t you, dear?’
These words were uttered in tones of command. An order had been issued, there was nothing of the request about them.
‘Goodness, I’ve no idea what floury potato is in French,’ said Grace, playing for time. ‘Didn’t you like the food, Sigi?’
‘It’s not a question of like it or not like it. The child will eat anything, as you know, but I’m not going to risk having him laid up with a liver attack. This heat wave is quite trying enough without that, thank you very much, not to mention typhoid fever, or worse. I only wish you could have smelt the cheese, that’s all I say.’
‘I did smell it, we had it downstairs – delicious.’
‘Well it may be all right for grown-up people, if that’s the sort of thing they go in for,’ said Nanny, with a tremendous sniff, ‘but give it to the child I will not, and personally I’d rather go hungry.’ This, however, she had no intention of doing. ‘Now, dear,’ she said briskly, ‘just go and get us a bite of something plain, that’s a good girl.’
‘I’m so dreadfully starving, Mummy, I’ve got pains in my tummy. Listen, it rumbles, just like Garth when
