‘Shall I belong to the Jockey Club when I’m grown up?’
‘If I remember to do for you what my father did for me,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘and get you in before you’ve made too many enemies among husbands. Husbands can be most terrible black-ballers. But it’s very dull.’
‘Then why do we come so often?’
‘I don’t know.’
On the rare occasions when Charles-Edouard was at home in the evening Sigi dined downstairs with him, and this was the greatest treat of all. He was given a glass of wine, like his father, and made to guess the vintage. When he got it right Charles-Edouard gave him 100 francs.
‘In England,’ said Sigi, ‘little boys don’t have dinner.’
‘No dinner?’
‘Supper. And sometimes only high tea.’
‘What is this, high tea?’
‘Yes well, it’s tea, you know, with cocoa and scones, and eggs if you’ve got hens and bacon if you’ve killed a pig, and marmalade and Bovril and kippers, and you have it late for tea, about six.’
‘How terrible this must be!’
‘Oh no – high tea is absolutely smashing. Until you come to supper-time, and then I must say you do rather long for supper.’
Nanny sat talking with the Dexter nanny, who had come round for her evening off. They had been obliged to put Sigi to bed in the middle of their nice chat, which they both considered an outrageous bore. He now lay in the next room, on the verge of sleep but not quite off, and a certain amount of what they were saying penetrated his consciousness. It was all mixed up with noise from the B.B.C., which ran on in that nursery whatever the programme. Young, polite, rather breathy English voices were playing some sort of paper game; their owners hardly seemed to belong to the same race as the two nannies, so dim their personalities, so indefinite their statements.
‘The Marquee never used to look at him when Mummy was with us. Funny, isn’t it? It’s as much as I can do now to get him up here for the time it takes to change his shoes – thoroughly spoilt he’s getting – out of hand. More tea, dear?’
‘Thanks, dear. But it’s always like that with separated couples, in my opinion. I’ve seen it over and over. Because, you know, each one is trying to give the child a better time than the other.’ At these words Sigi woke right up and began listening with all his ears. ‘Nothing can be worse for the children.’
‘I know. Shame, really. Well I told Mummy – I don’t care for these youths on the wireless much, do you?’
‘Not at all. There seems to be nothing else nowadays, youth this and youth that. Nobody thought of it when I was young.’
‘Yes well, as we were saying. If you ask me I rather expect they’ll come together again, and I’m sure it’s to be hoped they will. I know Mummy was awfully upset about something, but I don’t suppose he’s worse than most men, except for being foreign of course, and I think it’s their plain duty to make it up for the sake of the poor little mite. That’s what I shall tell Mummy when I see her again, and I shall warn her plainly that if he goes on like this, getting his own way with both of them as he does now, he’ll become utterly spoilt and impossible. No use saying anything to the Marquee, he’s always in such a tearing hurry, though I must say I’d like to give him a piece of my mind about these dinners – the poor little chap comes to bed half drunk if you ask me.’
It was while listening to this conversation that Sigismond first made up his mind, consciously, that his father and mother must never be allowed to come together again if there was anything he could do to prevent it.
Charles-Edouard always took Sigi with him now when he went, at five o’clock, to see Albertine. She gave them an enormous tea, after which Sigi would play with her collection of old toys and automata. The most fascinating, the one of which he never tired, was a toy guillotine. It really worked, and really chopped off the victim’s head, to the accompaniment of sinister drums and the horrified gestures of the other dolls on the scaffold. Besides this there were many varieties of musical box, there were dancing bears, smoking monkeys, singing birds, and so on, and while Albertine told the cards Sigi was turned loose among them, with tremendous injunctions from Charles-Edouard to be very very careful as they were very very precious.
‘Why are they more precious than other toys?’
‘Because they are old.’
‘Are old things always precious?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case Nanny must be very precious.’
‘Always this young man between you and the blonde lady you think about so much.’
‘Could it be Hughie?’ Charles-Edouard was very much puzzled. He knew that Grace was seeing a good deal of Hughie now, but had never given the matter a serious thought. ‘Did he ever come back again, by the way, Albertine? What happened?’
‘He was furious, I’ve never known a man so angry. I rang him up twice and explained everything, but each time he rang off without even saying good-bye. These English –!’
‘How did you explain it?’ said Charles-Edouard, very much amused.
‘I told him the truth.’
‘No wonder he rang off in a rage.’
‘My dearest, you know as well as I do that there is never only one truth and always many truths. I told him that you, Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, and I, Albertine Labé de Lespay, had drunk the same milk when we were little, young babies.’
‘What milk?’
‘Come now, Charles-Edouard, we had the same nurse!’
‘Old Nanny Perkins didn’t have one drop of milk when I first knew her, and wasn’t that amount younger when she was with you!’
‘We had the same nurse, therefore, to all
