‘Oh yes she does,’ Sigi piped up from his corner. ‘He is the love of her life.’
‘This is very strange,’ said Charles-Edouard, genuinely surprised that anybody in a position to be in love with him could fancy Hughie.
Albertine was not displeased. ‘Come here, Sigi, and tell us how you know.’
‘When Mr Palgrave is coming to see her, she looks like this,’ he said, and did a lifelike imitation of his mother as she had looked after the front door had slammed that morning when Charles-Edouard came to fetch him away. He opened enormous eyes and smiled as if something heavenly were about to happen. ‘She thinks the world of Mr Palgrave, and so do I. He gives me pounds and pounds.’ He was twisting his hair into curls as he spoke.
‘Go on with the cards,’ said Charles-Edouard, very much put out.
‘Cut then. But why did you not have an explanation with her when you were in England?’ she said in Italian, so that Sigi would not understand.
‘She was in her room and refused to see me.’
‘Unlike you not to gallop up the stairs.’
‘In what way unlike me? I would have you observe, Albertine, that I have never forced my way into a woman’s bedroom in my life.’
‘Take four cards. What a curious thing – intrigues and misunderstandings, just like a Palais Royal farce, with this real old-fashioned villain plotting away in the background. Fancy Hughie being so wicked, it makes him more interesting, all of a sudden. I must send him a Christmas card. What do you want for Christmas, Sigi?’
‘I want to ride on the cheval de Marly.’
‘This child has an obsession.’
‘And what else?’
‘Nothing else.’
‘Be very careful, Sigismond. Consider it well. Do you really want to wake up with an empty stocking, to find a tree loaded with no presents, to spend the whole day unpacking no parcels?’
‘Well, what will you give me?’
‘You must say what you want first. It’s always like that. Then we have to consider whether we can afford it.’
Sigismond became very thoughtful and hardly spoke another word the rest of the evening.
‘M.P.’s daughter divorces French Marquis,’ Sigi, chanting this loudly, came into his father’s bathroom. Charles-Edouard was shaving at the time.
‘What do you know about this – who told you?’
‘I heard Nanny clicking her tongue at the Daily, so I went and looked over her shoulder and saw it. I can read quite well now, you see, how about a prize?’
‘You couldn’t read a word of Monte Cristo last night.’
‘I can only read if it’s in English, and printed, and I want to. At first the marriage was a happy one – who are the other women, Papa? I know, Madame Marel and Madame Novembre.’
‘Be quiet, Sigi. These are things you must not say.’
‘Pas devant?’
‘Pas du tout. If you do you’ll be punished.’
‘What sort of punishment?’
‘A bad sort. And you’ll never never be allowed to ride on the chevaux de Marly.’
‘O.K. And if I don’t speak, when can I ride?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So now you can’t be married to Mummy again, can you?’
‘Yes I can. Tomorrow, if she likes.’
‘Oh!’ His mouth went down at the corners.
‘Why, Sigi? Don’t you want us to be?’
‘It wouldn’t be the slightest good wanting, I’m afraid. My mummy is quite wrapped up in Hughie now.’ His hand went to his hair and began twisting it.
‘Mr Palgrave.’
‘He lets me call him Hughie.’
‘How very unsuitable. But is she?’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘Is she really, Sigi? He is very dull.’
‘That’s nothing. Look how dull is Mr Dexter, and yet Mrs Dexter is quite wrapped up in him, the nannies always say so.’
‘What is all this wrapping up, Sigi?’
‘Emballé. Like you are with Madame Novembre.’
‘Hm. Hm. Get ready to go out and I’ll take you to see Pascal.’
‘Well if I can’t ride on you know what, I suppose that dreary old Pascal will have to do.’
Now that Charles-Edouard’s divorce was in the papers, great efforts were made, in many directions, to marry him, and nobody tried harder than his two mistresses.
Albertine, shuffling the cards, said, ‘I have been noticing a very different trend in your fate. It seems to become more definite, more inescapable, every time I take up the pack. You have turned a corner, as one sometimes does in life, and a new landscape lies at your feet. For some days the cards have left the atmosphere of Palais Royal and have pointed to a grave decision – two grave decisions in fact – which lead to extraordinary happiness, to a journey and to advancement. Anybody who knew the rudiments of fortune-telling would see these bare facts, they repeat and repeat themselves; it now remains to interpret them, and that, of course, is more difficult. Cut the cards. There now. It looks very much like service to your country in some foreign land.’
‘Indo-China?’ Charles-Edouard looked puzzled. ‘I’m rather old, now, it’s only the regular army they want. Still, I suppose there would be something for me, though I can’t say I’m absolutely longing to go back.’
‘Oh I don’t mean that, not military service. All the same, have you never thought that now your marriage is over it might be a good thing to go away for a while? To change your ideas?’
‘But Albertine, I never go away from Paris, you know that very well. I go to Bellandargues when I must, but otherwise I can’t be got as far as St Cloud even. What are you thinking of?’
‘Let me tell you, calmly and clearly, what I see. Cut the cards. I will lay out the whole pack. Now. I see you in a foreign land, a civilized one, among white people, and I see you negotiating, treating, making terms,
