‘Is that the sort of husband you were, Papa?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. And as I never had a quarter the bad luck of poor Charles-Edouard, and as your mother was either entirely unsuspicious or else very very clever, it was a perfect success, and we were happy. But I didn’t care to risk it again after her death, so here I am unmarried.’
‘Don’t you feel lonely sometimes?’
‘Often. That’s why I can’t help being pleased to see you and the little boy back again, though I suppose if I had any moral sense whatever I’d send you off with a flea in your ear. May I ask what you are planning next?’
‘Really, Papa, I hadn’t thought.’
‘You should try to think before you act, my dear child. Do you want a divorce?’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it now, I’m so tired. Divorce sounds so horrible.’
‘Yes, well, leaving your husband is rather horrible.’
‘But I suppose it will come to that.’
Sigi now put in an appearance, to say ‘Grandfather –’
‘Yes, Sigi?’
‘You know adultery –?’
Sir Conrad raised an eyebrow and Grace quickly intervened, saying, ‘Really Nanny is too naughty, she will teach him these dreadful words out of the Bible. Adultery is for when you’re older, darling.’
‘Oh I see. A sort of pas devant thing?’
‘Yes, that’s just it. So Nanny must be pleased to be back in her own old nursery again?’
‘Not a bit. Fluff under the carpet – she doesn’t know what the girls are coming to these days. One thing she will say for Paris, the housemaids there did know their work. And she’s just rung up her sister – offal is a thing you never see in London now. So Nanny’s in a terrible dump. Grandfather –’
‘Now what?’
‘Are there cartridges again, and can I learn to shoot?’
‘We’ll have to talk to Black about that, when we go to Bunbury.’
‘Oh good. Can you have a word with Nanny before dinner, Mum?’
Grace, who had been expecting this summons, sighed deeply and went upstairs.
PART TWO
1
The days of ‘run along, Sigismond’ were now in the past; nobody ever said it to him again. Grace, lonely and wretched, concentrated herself on the little boy, he was with her from first thing in the morning to his bedtime. He would arrive with her breakfast tray, open her letters, answer her telephone, and play with the things on her dressing-table. From time to time, in a desultory manner, she gave him reading lessons.
‘You simply must be able to read books by the time you see Papa again,’ she said.
‘And when shall I see him again?’
‘I expect it will be after the summer holidays.’
‘Shall I go and stay with him?’
‘I expect so.’
‘In Paris, or Bellandargues?’
‘Paris. He’s not going to Bellandargues this year.’
‘And you too?’
‘We’ll see when the time comes.’
‘I say, Mummy, are you divorced?’
‘Certainly not, darling. What do you know about divorce?’
‘Well I’ve told you about Georgie in the Park? His mummy and daddy are divorced and he says it’s an awfully good idea – you have a much better time all round, he says, when they are.’
‘Goodness, darling –!’
‘Actually his mummy and daddy have both married again, so he’s got two of each now, and he says the new ones are smashing, really better than the original ones. You ought to see the things they give him, they’re so lovely and rich. So shall you be marrying again, Mummy?’
‘You seem to forget that I’m married already, to Papa.’
‘Nanny told her sister she thought perhaps Mr Palgrave. She always thought it would have been better, in the first place.’
‘Don’t fidget with that necklace, Sigi, you’ll wear out the string.’
‘Do you know what Mr Palgrave gave me last time I saw him?’
‘No, what?’
‘Eleven bob.’
‘What a funny sum.’
‘Yes, well, Nanny always takes 10 per cent for her old lepers. I told him that and he very nicely made it up. I need a lot of money.’
‘Why do you?’
‘Because I’m saving up for a space ship when it’s invented. Mum, when can I have a bike?’
‘When we go to the country perhaps.’
‘And why don’t you marry Mr Palgrave?’
‘Because not.’
‘Nanny says it’s nicer for little boys to have a mummy and a daddy, but I expect it’s best of all when they have two mummies and two daddies.’
‘Shall we get on with the reading?’
They went for the summer holidays to Bunbury. At first Grace thought she would find it unbearable to be in the place so impregnated now with memories of Charles-Edouard, where they had spent their honeymoon, where she had lived all those years dreaming of him, and where he had come to find her after the war. But her father wanted to go there, it would be good for Sigismond, and it was, after all, her home, the home of her ancestors; it would belong to her when Sir Conrad died. Memories of Charles-Edouard were not the only ones connected with it. And, in any case, her thoughts were of him all day, wherever she was.
‘One thing I must ask you,’ she said to Sir Conrad. ‘Will you give orders for the Archduke to be taken out of my room?’
‘Certainly I will,’ he replied. ‘The proper place for that Archduke is the hall – I never could understand what he was doing upstairs. And while we are on the subject, I should very much like to see my Boucher back in the drawing-room, if you don’t mind.’
In the end Grace’s room became less like a corner of the Wallace Collection and more like an ordinary country-house bedroom. It was really more convenient.
Nanny, in so far as she was ever pleased by anything, was pleased to be back at Bunbury. Just as Grace had spent the war years dreaming of Charles-Edouard, so
