Charles-Edouard was getting tired of this ‘coming back soon’, which made him look a fool, and he knew that Sir Conrad’s visit would already have set tongues wagging. ‘The lovely Grace,’ he now told Madame Rocher, ‘wishes to divorce.’
‘Very English, and all in the best Freemason tradition,’ she said. ‘So now you will have her tied to your apron strings once more, mon cher Vénérable.’
Having made this excellent joke she could hardly wait to get home to her telephone and scatter the news that Charles-Edouard was a marriageable unit once more. She was going to have great fun. The little girls of all her friends and relations would have to be lined up and looked over, an occupation she would very much enjoy. Like horses, their pedigrees would have to be carefully considered; certain strains were better avoided altogether, Bourlie blood, for instance, had never been know to do a family much good, while certain others always seemed fatal in combination. A substantial dowry, while not absolutely necessary, never spoilt anything. She imagined the excitement of the various mammas, and thought how amusing it was going to be to see the discomfiture of those who had recently married their daughters to less eligible husbands. In short, Madame Rocher foresaw some very agreeable hours ahead of her.
‘Good-bye, cher Vénérable, all my best wishes to the Grand Orient,’ she cried, waving a pink glove from the window of her motor.
‘Well, Papa?’
‘Well, darling. Charles-Edouard was most reasonable, as I knew he would be. I like him more every time I see him.’
Grace thought her father looked old and sad, and she had a pang of conscience. This was all her fault.
‘You look tired, Papa.’
‘Yes, I am. The fact is we had a bit of a night out, last night.’
‘I see.’ Really it was too bad, at this moment of crisis in her life, that her father should regard the man she was going to divorce merely as a dog to go hunting with.
‘Naturally you never spoke about me, at all!’
‘Oh, indeed we did. We spent hours with the lawyer, we arranged all about the divorce, the money, and Sigi, every detail.’
Grace realized that she must have been entertaining, subconsciously, a hope which these words laid low, though what hope, exactly, she did not feel quite sure.
‘Sigi? What about him?’
‘You are each to have him six months of the year, to be divided up as seems most convenient, until he is ten, when he will live with his father during the term and with you during the holidays.’
‘He’s to go to school in France?’
‘He’s a French boy, my dear. I’ve got a letter for you from Charles-Edouard.’
She took it with, once more, a feeling, a flicker of hope. It was the first time she had seen Charles-Edouard’s writing on an envelope since she left him. It was very formal, ending up affectueusement et respectueusement, and was merely to ask whether the little boy could now go to Paris for a while. She handed it to Sir Conrad, who said, ‘Yes. If you consent, Charles-Edouard will come over himself next week to fetch him.’
‘Oh of course I do. Only I won’t see Charles-Edouard, Papa.’
‘That’s entirely for you to say, my love.’
‘No, no, no – it wouldn’t do at all.’
But she knew that if Charles-Edouard really wanted her back he would insist on seeing her, and that if he did so his cause was won. Everything would be different once they had seen each other. Life without him, here in London, had become so grey and meaningless that she was beginning to feel she would put up with almost anything, even the constant jealousy and suspicion she so much dreaded, to be with him once more in Paris. Surely, she thought, he would not bother to come himself for Sigi unless he wanted to see her, and if he wanted to see her it could only be for one reason.
The days went by. Charles-Edouard was definitely expected, Nanny’s opposition to another move had been overcome, and Grace’s will to resist was evaporating. She kept up a façade of resistance, she did not pack her things, or prepare to leave in any practical way, but the citadel was ready to surrender.
He came over in the ferry, and was to return, an hour or so later, by Golden Arrow. When he arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate, Grace (it was the last remaining gesture of independence) was still in bed. She never got up early, and, in case by some horrible chance Charles-Edouard did not ask her to go with them after all, she did not want to look as if prepared there and then to step into the train. In fact she calculated that she could easily be ready in time; her maid could bring the luggage later. She had had her bath, and was very carefully made up.
Sir Conrad’s motor had gone to the station to meet Charles-Edouard. She heard it arrive; she heard his voice, and heard the front door slam. ‘There’s Papa,’ she said to Sigismond. ‘You run downstairs and ask him if he’d like a cup of coffee in here before you go. Hurry –!’
Sigi was off in a flash. ‘Papa – Papa – are we going on the boat? Is there a storm? Can I stay on deck all the time?’
‘Very likely you can. Where’s your mummy? I want to see her.’
But Sigismond did not favour this idea at all. He wanted to travel, as he had been told he would, alone with his papa, attention concentrated on him, Sigi. If Papa went upstairs, if he saw Mummy, that daft kissing stuff would begin, ‘Run along, Sigi’, and who knows? Grown-up people are so unaccountable, Mummy might quite well decide to come back to Paris with them, and it would be ‘Go to Nanny, darling’ all day and every day as of old. Life had become considerably more fun with Mummy and without Papa; it
