‘Then why didn’t you join the maquis and shoot the Germans?’
‘Oh no, my dear, one couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘For many reasons. My brother-in-law joined a maquis, dreadful people, he soon had to give that up. They weren’t possible, I assure you.’
‘Well they may not have been possible, but they were on our side, and I love them for it.’
‘Oh! my dear, we were all on your side, so you must love us all in that case.’
After dinner Charles-Edouard made a bee-line for Juliette Novembre. Grace heard him say, ‘If you were Juliette de Champeaubert how is it I don’t remember you? Jeanne Marie is one of my very greatest friends.’
‘Oh, I’ve only just been invented,’ she said gaily, ‘but before I was invented I used to hang out of the window, waiting to see you get into that pretty black motor you had in those days. My governess used to pull me back by my hair.’
‘No! But that’s awfully nice,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Come – I want to see my uncle’s Subleyras again.’
They went off together into another room. Somebody said, ‘It was quite indicated that those two would take to each other – she might be made for Charles-Edouard.’
M. de Tournon brought his wife over to Grace. He wanted her to see for herself this uncouth girl Charles-Edouard had so oddly married, in order to be able to talk about her when they got home. Madame de Tournon was Italian, more really beautiful and more elegant than Juliette Novembre but with much less sparkle.
‘I am a cousin of yours now,’ she said. ‘Let’s all sit here. So tell me what you have been doing in Paris since you arrived – there haven’t been any dinners so far, have there? We only got back ourselves last night – we came back for this.’
‘Really I’ve done very little. I’ve bought some clothes.’
‘Is that Dior? Yes, I could see. But are they making these high necks now?’
‘I had it altered – it seemed too naked.’
‘Oh no, my dear,’ said Madame de Tournon, ‘you’ve got beautiful breasts, so why hide them up like that? It spoils the line. What else?’
‘I’ve met Charles-Edouard’s aunts.’
Madame de Tournon made a little face of sympathy. ‘Any cocktail parties?’
‘There have been one or two, but I never go to them, I hate them. Charles-Edouard goes. I don’t terribly like lunching out either,’ she went on. ‘If I had my way I’d never go out before dinner-time.’
The Tournons looked at each other in growing amazement as she spoke.
‘But listen,’ cried Madame de Tournon, ‘nobody can dine out more than eight times in a week. But if one lunches every day and goes to, say, three cocktails, as well as dining out, one can go to forty houses in a week. We often have, haven’t we, Eugène?’
‘Sometimes more, in the summer. I wish you could see us in July, fit for a nursing home by the time we get to the seaside.’
‘Where do you go to the seaside as a rule?’ asked Grace, thinking of them on the sands of some French Eastbourne with their four tots.
‘Always Venice. Say what you like, it’s the only place in August.’
‘But is it fun for the children?’
They stared at her. ‘We don’t take the children to Venice – poor little things, what on earth would they do there? Besides, the children don’t need a change, they don’t have an exhausting season in Paris, they lead a perfectly healthy outdoor life in the Seine et Marne.’
Charles-Edouard and Juliette only reappeared when a general move was being made to go home. In the hall, as they were putting on their coats, Juliette flourished a hand for Charles-Edouard to kiss, saying, ‘Good-bye for the present then, wickedness, I will consider your proposition.’ She and her husband then got into the lift which took them to their own apartments.
‘What proposition?’ said Grace, in the motor.
‘No proposition.’
‘Oh dear! Need we dine out very often?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Let’s dine together, alone, in future.’
‘It would be very dull,’ said Charles-Edouard.
‘Such a terrible man I sat next to.’
‘Eugène? He’s a friendly old thing.’
‘You can’t think what he’s like when he talks about the war.’
‘I know. I saw him at a picture dealer’s the other day and we had it all. But you mustn’t be too hard on old Eugène – he joined up quite correctly in ’39 and fought quite bravely in ’40. His father was killed quite correctly in 1917. These Eugènes are not so rotten, it is the State of Denmark.’
The Tournons, meanwhile, were discussing Grace.
‘My dear, the lowest peasant of the Danube knows more than she – just fancy, she had never heard of the English order of precedence, didn’t know how many dukes there are in England, and didn’t seem to think any of it mattered.’
‘And did you hear what she said about taking the children to Venice? She must be backward, I’m afraid.’
‘Allingham. What is this name? I must write at once to Molly Waterloo and ask her if they are people one can know. Poor Charles-Edouard – I pity him really.’
‘Everything will be all right. Madame Rocher told my mother they are not married religiously.’
Madame Rocher had gone to Venice the week after Grace and Charles-Edouard left Bellandargues, and there she had managed to do quite a lot of harm to Grace, not wilfully at all, not intending mischief, but because she was utterly incapable of holding her tongue on any subject of general interest. Interest was very much centred, at the moment, on Charles-Edouard and his marriage.
Everybody thought it a pity that he, with his name and his fortune, should have married an English Protestant. When it transpired that she was the daughter of a Freemason, the general disapproval knew no bounds, a Bolshevist would have been as gladly received. Those who were informed on political subjects pointed to the dire results, for France, of the Allingham Commission, and it was freely hinted that Grace was very likely in
