‘I like that,’ said Grace. ‘Meat can’t be too meaty, for my taste.’
‘Ugh! Anyhow, you can’t like the rudeness –’
‘Nobody’s ever rude to me. They smile when they see me, even strangers in the street.’
‘Trying to pick you up. And what about those dreadful policemen!’
‘I always think they look like young saints, in their capes.’
‘Saints! I must tell that to Hector, he’ll roar.’
‘I’ve never had anything but niceness from them – over Nanny’s identity card and so on.’
‘I expect your husband gives them enormous bribes.’
‘Of course he doesn’t.’
‘I suppose even you will admit the French would do anything for money.’
‘Perhaps they may – it’s never crossed my path, but you may be right. Perhaps they are more frank and open about it than other people.’
‘Frank and open is the word. They always frankly and openly marry for money, to begin with.’
‘Charles-Edouard didn’t.’
‘Are you – Oh well there may be exceptions, and I suppose he wouldn’t need to. But at the time when our grandfathers were marrying actresses for love their contemporaries here were all marrying Jewesses for money. I was thinking of dozens of examples last night in bed.’
‘I think they were quite right. Just look at it from the point of view of their grandchildren. Honestly now, which would you prefer as a grandmother – a clever old Jewess, who has brought brains and money and Caffieri commodes into the family, or some ass of an actress?’
‘I can’t understand you, Grace, you used to seem so very English at home.’
‘Yes, well now,’ said Grace rather sadly, ‘I’m nothing at all. But I would love to have been born a Frenchwoman, and I can’t say more, can I?’
‘Oh, you’ll change your tune, I bet. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you – we quite often see Hughie.’
‘Hughie! Does he live here too?’
‘He was here with a military mission, now he’s back in England, but he keeps coming over. Hector sees him at the Travellers and brings him in for a drink, most weeks. He’s terribly in love with a Frenchwoman here, a Madame Marel-Desboulles. Hector thinks it’s a disaster for him, he has heard all about this Madame Marel and says she’s no good.’
‘Marel – Marel-Desboulles. Don’t I know her?’ Grace said vaguely.
The names and faces of the French people she met had not yet clicked into place, they floated round her mind separately, many names and many faces, all wonderfully romantic and new but not adding up into real people. So the name Marel-Desboulles had a familiar ring but no face, while the brilliant woman who played conversational ping-pong with Charles-Edouard, across a dinner-table, sometimes across a whole roomful of people all delighted by the speed and accuracy of the game, volley, volley, high lob with a spin, volley, cut, smash, had not yet acquired a surname. Grace only knew her as Albertine.
‘He wants to marry her.’
Carolyn looked at Grace to see if she minded, but she hardly even seemed interested.
‘And will he?’
‘I don’t think so. He says she is very Catholic, and talks all the time of going into a convent – poor Hughie says he’ll kill himself if she does. But Hector says nobody at the Travellers thinks there’s much danger of that. What happened about your engagement to Hughie, Grace? I never really knew.’
‘Oh, just that we were engaged, and he went to the war and I married Charles-Edouard instead. I’m afraid I didn’t behave very well.’
‘Pity, in a way.’
‘I can’t agree.’
‘I meant nothing against your husband. I hear he is charming. I only meant pity to marry a Frenchman.’
Grace longed to retaliate with ‘well then, what about marrying an American’ but she knew that, while it is considered nowadays perfectly all right to throw any amount of aspersions on poor old France and England, one tiny word reflecting anything but exaggerated love for rich new America is thought to be in the worst of taste. She was also, by nature, more careful of people’s feelings than Carolyn. So she said, mildly, that she could not imagine any other sort of husband.
The two nannies clung to each other like drowning men, and Sigi was now taken every day for air and exercise to the Parc Monceau instead of the Tuileries Gardens. He was very cross about this, and complained bitterly to his mother.
‘Pascal and I are so fond of each other. I never knew such an obliging goat, and now I never see him. It’s a shame, Mummy.’
‘Why don’t you meet Nanny Dexter in the Tuileries sometimes for a change?’ Grace said to her Nan.
‘Oh no thank you, dear. We don’t like those Tuileries. It’s the draughtiest place in Paris. I only wish you could feel the stiff neck I caught there the other day, waiting for the little monkey to finish his ride. I don’t think all those smelly animals are very nice, if you ask me, and the children there are a funny lot too. Some of them are black, dear, and one was distinctly Chinese. The Parc Monceau is a much better place for little boys.’
‘Oh well, Nan, it’s just as you like, of course, but when I went there I thought it fearfully depressing, such thousands of children, like a children’s market or something, and all those castor-oil plants. Hideous.’
‘Still you do see a little grass there,’ said Nanny, ‘and decent railings.’
‘I hate the silly little baby Parc Monceau,’ piped up Sigi, ‘and I loathe dear little Foster Dexter aged four. Under the spreading chestnut tree, I loathe Foss and Foss loathes me.’
‘Very stupid and naughty, Sigismond. Foster’s a dear little chap – so easy too. Nanny Dexter has never had one minute’s trouble with him since he was born, and they’ve been all over the place – oh, they have travelled! I must say Mrs Dexter’s a marvellous mummy.’
‘In what way?’ Grace asked, with interest. She tried her best to be a marvellous
