‘Why do you always say run along, Papa?’ He dragged through the door, looking crestfallen.
‘It’s what my mother used to say to me. “Run along, Charles-Edouard.” The whole of my childhood was spent running along. I did hate it, too. Off with you! That was another.’ He shut the door and gave Grace her letters.
‘If you didn’t like it,’ she said, ‘I can’t think why you inflict it on the poor little boy. I don’t think he sees enough of us, and he never sees us together.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is that we see quite enough of him,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘There is nothing so dull as the conversation of small children.’
‘It amuses me.’
‘It does sometimes amuse women. They’ve got a childish side themselves, nature’s way of enabling them to bear the prattle. And while we are on the subject, M. l’Abbé tells me that Nanny won’t leave them alone at lesson time, she’s always fussing in with some excuse or other. It’s very annoying. Perhaps you’d speak to her about it?’
‘I do know. I was afraid you’d be cross.’
‘Well, speak.’
‘Yes, I’ll try. But you know what it is with Nanny, I’m dreadfully under her thumb. She thinks M. l’Abbé is taxing his little brain.’
‘But his little brain has got to be taxed, it’s there for that. Let Nanny wait till he’s reading for his bachot if she wants to see him taxed – going on to twelve and one at night – poor little green face – rings under his eyes – attempted suicide – breakdowns –’
‘Oh, Charles-Edouard, you are a brute,’ said Grace, quite horrified.
He laughed, and began kissing her arm and shoulder.
‘All this loony kissing again,’ Sigi appeared in the window, ‘over the pathless Himalayas, that’s where I’ve come.’
‘Yes, I wondered how long it would be before you found the way,’ said Charles-Edouard.
‘Shall I tell you something? I’ve just seen the Daily, and Garth has renounced the love of women.’
‘Oh, he’s like that, is he?’
‘He’s an Effendi now. What’s an Effendi, Papa?’
‘Talk about taxing his brain,’ said Charles-Edouard.
‘Well I know, but if it wasn’t for Garth and Dick Barton he’d never go near the nursery, and poor Nanny would have a stroke looking for him on the roof and in the vineyards all day.’
‘Now, Sigismond, just go back over those trackless paths, will you?’
‘In other words, run along and off with you. All right, if I must.’
‘M. l’Abbé talks about teaching him Latin.’
‘Yes?’ Charles-Edouard was opening his letters.
‘Seems rather a waste of time?’
‘Latin is a waste of time?’ he said, putting a letter in his pocket and looking at Grace with surprise. ‘Surely he must learn it before he goes to Eton?’
‘Well it won’t be the right pronunciation. Do we want Sigi to go to Eton?’
‘Why not, for a bit? Then he can be top in English when he goes to St Cyr.’
‘But I don’t think they can go to Eton for a bit. Oh dear, I thought the thing about being French was you had your blessing always at home.’
‘Do we always want him at home?’
‘I do. Anyway, you have to be put down for Eton before your parents are married now – long before you are conceived, so I think this dream will come to nothing.’
Charles-Edouard, who was still reading his letters, said, ‘Brighton College then, it’s all the same.’
‘Please can I come to the sea with you?’
‘Not today, darling. We’re lunching with some grown-up people.’
‘It is unfair. I want to take a photograph of a huge, frightened wave.’
‘But today it will be flat calm. Next time there’s a mistral we’ll take you.’
‘I’m so hot. I do so want to bathe.’
‘Don’t you bathe in the fountain, with Canari?’
‘I’m brouillé with le chef.’
‘Not brouillé with Canari?’
‘Yes I am. It was convenu that the maquisards should come here and be chasseurs alpins on the roof one day and the next I should spend with them doing sabotage in the village. Well, they came here, and yesterday I went down to the village and he was under the lime trees with les braves, and he said, “va-t-en. On ne veut pas de toi.”’
‘But why, Sigi?’
‘I don’t know. But I don’t care, not a bit. I want to go to the sea and swim under water and spear an octopus.’
‘When you are older.’
‘When shall I be older?’
‘All in due course. Run along now and find M. l’Abbé.’
‘He is reading his bréviaire.’
‘Well, Nanny then. Anyway, run along, darling.’
That night, at dinner, Madame de Valhubert said, ‘Do you know our poor little maquisard spent the whole afternoon by himself in the salon? He looked the picture of woe. In the end Régine and I had to play cards with him for very pity.’
‘It’s that wretched Canari,’ said Grace, ‘he has sent him packing, and nobody knows why. Oh, I do hope they’ll make it up soon, or the poor duck will have no more fun at all. I feel quite worried. Couldn’t you go down and speak to M. Mignon, Charles-Edouard, and find out what it is?’
Charles-Edouard laughed, looked round the table at the others, who were all smiling, and said, ‘Alas, my influence with Mignon is but limited, I fear.’
‘But why? He made that nice speech.’
‘That was the solidarité de la libération. It just held long enough for him to make the speech. Now we are back among all the old feuds again. A very good sign that peace is really here.’
‘M. le Curé, couldn’t you do something?’ said Grace.
At this there was a general laugh. M. le Curé lifted his hands, saying that Grace did not quite grasp the situation. M. Mignon, he said, was a Radical Socialist. If Grace had not spent the years of the war so idly, stitching dreams into an ugly carpet or leading goats to browse on blackberries, if she had taken the advice of her father and concentrated instead upon Messrs Bodley and Brogan, whose works lay among a huge heap of unopened books behind the back stairs, these words would
