‘Thank you, Charlie,’ said Mr Dexter. ‘I for one feel a lot easier in my mind. There is nothing so dangerous as a policy of laisser-aller, and I am very glad that the great American public, if I may say so, M. de Valhubert, without offending your feelings, is not hiding its head in the sand, but is looking the Bomb squarely in the eye. Very glad indeed. And now I shall call on Asp for a few words. Tell us what they are thinking in the Russian-occupied countries, Asp.’
‘Well, I have just had six very very interesting days in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, the East or Russian-occupied part of Germany, and the East or Russian-occupied part of Austria, and I’m here to tell you that these countries, if not actually preparing for war, which I think they are, are undeniably being run on a war-time basis.’
‘And did you talk with the ordinary citizens of these countries, Asp?’
‘Why, no, Heck. For reasons of which I suppose you are all cognizant I did not, but I saw the key men and key women of our embassies and missions in these countries, and I gleaned enough material for three, or two, very very long and interesting articles which I hope you will all be reading for yourselves –’
And so it went on. Fortunately some more very important people came in after dinner, so Grace and Charles-Edouard were able to slip away without looking too rude. Charles-Edouard never managed to have a word with Mrs Jungfleisch, who had settled down to a cosy chat with Mr Jorgmann about conferences, vetos, and what Joe Alsop had told her when she saw him in Washington. Pretty Mrs Jungfleisch, like Mr Dexter, was deeply concerned about the present state of the world, and had no time for frivolous Frenchmen who preferred pâte tendre to atom bombs.
Charles-Edouard was particularly nice to Grace about this dinner, and insisted on asking the Dexters back the following week. The two couples dined alone together, rather quickly, and went to Lorenzaccio. If Charles-Edouard had suffered from boredom at the Dexter dinner, he had more than his revenge on Hector, who really could hardly sit still at Lorenzaccio, and said, quite rudely, in the entr’acte, that whoever would take this play to Broadway was heading for a very very serious financial loss indeed.
‘But my dearest,’ said Albertine, ‘dinner with the wife’s best friend and the best friend’s husband is a classic. I could have warned you about that, as much a part of married life as babies, nannies, and in-laws. Of course a jolly bachelor like yourself had never envisaged such developments.’
‘I wish I understood Americans,’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘They are very strange. So good, and yet so dull.’
‘What makes you think they are so good?’
‘You can see it, shining in their eyes.’
‘That’s not goodness, that’s contact lenses – a kind of spectacle they wear next the eyeball. I had an American lover after the liberation and I used to tap his eye with my nail file. He was a very curious man. Imagine, his huge, healthy-looking body hardly functioned at all by itself. He couldn’t walk a yard; I took him to Versailles, and half-way across the Galerie des Glaces he lay on the floor and cried for his mother. He couldn’t do you know what without lavages, he could only digest yoghourt and raw carrots, he couldn’t sleep without a sleeping draught or wake up without benzedrine, and he had to have a good strong blood transfusion every morning before he could face the day. It was like having another automaton in the house.’
‘You had him in the house?’
Albertine, who hated too much intimacy, had never done this with any of her lovers.
‘For the central heating, dearest,’ she said apologetically. ‘It was that very cold winter. Americans have no circulation of their own – even their motors are artificially heated in winter and cooled in summer. I never shall forget how hot he kept this room – my little thermometer sprang in one day from “rivières glacées” to “vers à soie”, and even then he complained. Finally it reached Sénégale, all the marquetry on my Oeben began to spring, and I was obliged to divorce him. We were married, by the way.’
‘Married?’ Charles-Edouard was quite astounded.
‘Yes, he could do nothing in bed without marriage lines. I tried everything, I even got an excellent aphrodisiac from the doctor. Useless. We had to go to the Consulate together, and after that he was splendid. The result is I’ve got an American passport, which never does any harm.’
‘And what has become of him now?’
‘Oh he’s got the cutest little wife and the two loveliest kids, and he sends me boxes of cleansing tissues every Christmas.’
