‘You can have a glass of Bordeaux here,’ said Hughie, ‘only we call it claret, and half a crown if you can tell the vintage.’
He poured it out.
‘Quite an honourable wine,’ said Sigi, ‘but not grand cru. I can only tell when it’s grand cru.’
This remark having gone down, he saw, rather badly, Sigismond settled to a hearty meal.
Presently Hughie said to him, ‘What do you do all day in Paris, Sigi?’
‘In Paris,’ said Sigi, ‘I have two great friends. One is Madame Novembre de la Ferté, who gives me treats, allows me to drive her motor, and so on, and the other is Madame Marel, who gives me my lessons. They both give me very very expensive presents.’
‘But doesn’t M. l’Abbé give you your lessons any more?’
‘He did for a while, but he’s gone away. So now I have lessons with Madame Marel. I like it far better. I know masses of poetry by heart and we go to the jardin des plantes.’ Sigi was curling up bits of hair with one hand. ‘And what d’you think we saw the turtles doing? Yes, but it wasn’t her fault, they only do it once every three years – bad luck really. You ought to have heard them bellowing.’
‘Well,’ said Hughie, ‘that doesn’t amount to much. You’ve ridden a stone horse and driven a car – which you’ll do every day of your life when you’re grown up – and learnt poetry and heard turtles bellowing.’
‘They weren’t only bellowing,’ said Sigi. ‘Expensive presents, too – and a ball.’
He spoke very crossly. He was tired after the journey, more than half asleep, and felt that he had not done himself justice or made it sufficiently clear that nobody in Paris could think of anything from morning till night but how best to keep him amused. However he was reassured by Hughie’s next words.
‘What about learning to ride a real horse so that you can go hunting next winter?’
‘O.K. Can I begin tomorrow?’
‘No. Tomorrow is Sunday. You can begin on Monday.’
Grace left Sigi in the dining-room and went up to see Nanny.
‘High time we did get back, in my opinion. Such goings on, dear. The Marquee does spoil him – oh he does, lets him do anything he says. That Madam November too and that Madam Marel – they fill his head with the most unsuitable ideas between them. Did he tell you about the ball?’
‘He did say something. He’s half-asleep, I think.’
‘You’ll hear it all, no doubt. I never saw such an exhibition in my life, those poor little mites, in ridiculous clothes for children (though I must say Sigi looked sweet) kept up I believe, some of them, till six in the morning. Nanny Dexter and I – the servants didn’t want to let us in, but we weren’t having any of that – we went and fetched our two away quite early on. Sigi was sound asleep, but poor little Foss, oh he was sick. I wish you could have seen the stuff he kept on bringing up. She hasn’t got his little tummy right yet. The usual rush over the packing, of course, and nobody to meet us at Victoria, dear.’
‘But Nanny, nobody knew you were coming.’
‘There now. The Marquee said he’d rung up and everything was arranged – oh well, French you know!’
Sigismond was very sleepy indeed, but not too sleepy to burn his father’s letter to his mother in the empty nursery grate, with a match he had brought upstairs with him on purpose, while Nanny was running his bath.
The fact that Hughie now began to pay court to Sigismond just as, in Paris, Albertine and Juliette had paid court, and with the same end in view, that of becoming his step-parent, was clear as daylight to the little boy. Like his mother he had been quite doubtful whether the high level of amusement to which he had lately become accustomed could be maintained in England. Greatly to his surprise he found that it was positively surpassed. It so happened that Sigi had a natural aptitude for all forms of sport, and therefore very much enjoyed practising them. Hughie, an excellent athlete, gave up hours a day to coaching him; he played tennis, squash, and cricket with him, and taught him to ride. So of course Sigi loved being at Yeotown and very much approved of Hughie, whose stock, in consequence, soared with Grace. Visits to Yeotown became more and more frequent and prolonged, and very soon Sigi was quite ready to consider Hughie as an auxiliary papa. He realized that his mother could never have put on such a good show by herself.
Hughie said to Grace, ‘This child must go to Eton – I’m sure they’d make a cricketer of him. Seems waste of excellent material for him to go to some French school where they do nothing but lessons.’
‘But he was never put down for it,’ said Grace.
‘I can fix that, I’m sure. A word with Woodford. The boy is exceptional, you see.’
‘Oh dear, I wonder whether Charles-Edouard would allow it. He did once seem to think of it, I remember.’
‘It’s my opinion that child can do anything he likes with his father. If he wants to go he’ll go, it all depends on that.’
Hughie was one of those to whom Eton is bathed retrospectively in a light that never was on land or sea. He talked much of it to Sigi, who began to imagine himself as Captain and Keeper of this and that, and inclined very favourably to the idea. At last Hughie suggested that the three of them might go down for the day, take out his own nephew, Miles Boreley, and let Sigismond have a look round.
‘We’ll go down next Thursday, I’ll ring up Miles’s tutor now and arrange it. Once the child has seen it for himself the thing’s a foregone conclusion – there’ll be no holding him – he’ll be as good as there.’
Miles Boreley was a sad little boy.
