Sigi looked so pathetic that Grace said, ‘Oh all right then. I don’t know where the kitchen is, but I’ll see what I can do. I think it’s all great rubbish,’ she added in a loud aside as she slammed the nursery door behind her.
She wandered off uncertainly, hardly able, in that big, complicated house built at so many different dates, on so many different levels, to find her way to the first-floor rooms. At last she did so, looked into the drawing-room, and was almost relieved that there was nobody there. Her mission seemed to her absurd, and really so ill-mannered, that she quite longed for it to fail. She assumed that everybody except Charles-Edouard would be happily asleep by now, and only wished that she were too. Loud French voices came from the library, apart from them the house was plunged in silence. She stood for a moment by the library door but did not dare to open it, thinking how furious Sir Conrad would be at such an interruption. The dining-room was empty; no sign of any servant. She went through it, and found a stone-flagged passage, which she followed, on and on, up and down steps, until she came to a heavy oak door. Perhaps this led to the kitchen; she opened it timidly. A strangely dark and silent kitchen, if so, with cool but not fresh air smelling of incense. She stood peering into the gloom; it was quite some moments before she realized that this must be a chapel. Then, not two yards from her, she saw Madame de Valhubert, a lace shawl over her head, praying deeply. Grace shut the door and fled, in British embarrassment, back to the nursery.
‘I can’t find the kitchen, or one single person to ask,’ she said, in a hopeless voice. Nanny gave Grace a look. ‘Where’s Papa then?’
‘At a meeting. Well Nan you do know, we should never have dared disturb my papa at a meeting, should we? I don’t see how I can. Are you sure you haven’t any food with you, to make do just for now?’
‘Nothing whatever.’
‘No groats?’
‘Groats isn’t much of a dinner. The poor little chap’s hungry after all that travelling. We didn’t get much of a dinner yesterday if you remember, in that aeroplane, expecting every moment to be our last.’
Sigismond now began to grizzle. ‘Mummy I do want my dinner, please, please Mummy.’
‘Oh all right then,’ said Grace, furiously. There was clearly nothing for it but to set forth again, to summon up all her courage and put her head round the library door. Abashed by the sudden silence that fell and the looks of surprise and interest on eight or ten strange masculine faces, she said to Charles-Edouard, who was the furthest from her so that she had to say it across the whole room, ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt, but could I possibly have a word with you?’
He came out at once, shut the door, put his arms round her, and said, ‘You were quite right to come. It was very dull in there, and now we’ll go to your room.’
‘Oh no,’ said Grace. ‘It wasn’t for that.’
‘How d’you mean? it wasn’t for that. What is “that”, anyway?’ he said, laughing.
‘Oh don’t laugh at me, it was terrible going in there. I was so terribly frightened, but I had to. It’s about Nanny.’
‘Yes, yes, I know. We must have a long talk about Nanny, but not now. First we go upstairs – what must be must be, and quickly too.’
‘No, first we go to the kitchen and ask for a floury potato for Nanny, who is waxy, in a bait, I mean, because they’ve had no luncheon.’
Grace, by now, was really rather hysterical.
‘Had no luncheon!’ cried Charles-Edouard, ‘this is too much. I must find my grandmother.’
‘Oh they had it all right, they just couldn’t eat it.’
‘What d’you mean, Grace? I’m sure they had the same as we did. You said yourself it was delicious.’
‘Yes, of course it was, and I’m furious with Nanny for complaining, but the fact is Nannies never can bear new food you know, it’s my own fault, I ought to have remembered that. Now dear, dearest Charles-Edouard, do come to the kitchen and help me to find something she can eat.’
‘Very well. And tomorrow we send her back to England.’
There. Grace’s heart sank.
‘But who would look after poor little Sigi?’
‘M. le Curé must find him a tutor. This child is quite unlettered, I had a long talk with him in the train. He knows nothing, and can’t even read.’
‘But of course not, poor little boy. He isn’t seven yet!’
‘When I was five,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘I had to read all Dumas, père.’
‘I’ve noticed everybody thinks they themselves could read when they were five.’
‘Ask M. le Curé.’
‘Anyway you must have been too sweet for words,’ said Grace. ‘I only wish I’d known you then.’
‘I was exceedingly brilliant. Now here is the kitchen, and here, by great good luck, is M. André, the head chef. Will you please explain exactly what it is that you do want?’
While some of the household slept (though sharp attacks of insomnia characterized that afternoon) and Madame de Valhubert prayed, Madame Rocher des Innouïs and M. de la Bourlie took themselves off to a little garden, deeply shaded by an ilex tree, to have a nice chat about Grace. One summer long ago they had conducted a violent love affair under the very noses of Madame de Valhubert, Madame de la Bourlie, M. Rocher, and Prince Zjebrowski, the lover of Madame Rocher. It had really been a tour de force of its kind; they had succeeded in hoodwinking all the others, none of whom had ever had the slightest suspicion of it. After that they had remained on cosy, rather conspiratorial terms.
‘We must begin by saying that she is beautiful – more beautiful, perhaps, than Priscilla.’ Madame Rocher spread out the ten yards of her Dior
