‘What are his hobbies?’ said Philip.
‘He used to be the greatest living expert on Russian genealogies.’
‘Try Père La Chaise,’ said Philip.
‘Not at all, he’s quite alive, he sent me a faire part of his granddaughter’s marriage just the other day.’
‘What address on the faire part?’
‘I lost it. I can only remember the church – St François Xavier.’
Philip rang up the Curé of St François who gave him an address in Picardy. A telegram was duly dispatched there.
‘That’s one,’ said Philip. ‘Now, what about this alleged Academician?’
‘Do you mean to say his name means nothing to you?’
‘No, and furthermore I’ll take a huge bet he’s not in the Académie Française. I know those old Forty by heart and oh how I despise them. There they are, supposed to be looking after the language, do they ever raise a finger to check ghastly misuses of it? The French wireless has started talking about Bourguiba Junior – Junior – I ask you – why not Bourguiba Fils?’
‘That’s awful, but what could the Forty do?’
‘Make a fuss. Their prestige is enormous. But they don’t care a bit. Anyway, as I was saying –’
‘But I’ve got a photograph of him in his uniform – I sent a pound to help buy his sword – I know he is a member.’
‘What’s his subject?’
‘He’s the greatest living expert on Mauretanian script.’
‘Aha!’ said Philip. ‘Then he’ll be of the Académie des Inscriptions. English people always forget there are five academies under the same cupola and mix them up.’
Davey was displeased at being thus lumped together with ignorant English people but Philip was quite right. A pneumatique was sent off to the Institut de France.
As for the doctor, he seemed to have found the perfect hideout. ‘Docteur Lecoeur,’ said Davey impatiently, ‘the greatest living expert on the vésicule bilière.’
I asked what that was. ‘It’s a French disease we don’t have in England,’ said Philip, rather too spry.
Davey shot him a look of great dislike. ‘It’s not a disease at all, it’s a part of the body. We all have it. You ought to see the stones that came out of mine.’
Philip giggled annoyingly. He then rang up several famous doctors and the École de Médecine; nobody had ever heard of this greatest living expert.
‘He used to live in the rue Neuve des Petits Champs.’
‘Doesn’t exist any more.’
‘Pulled down? Those lovely houses?’
‘Not yet, thank goodness. Only rechristened.’
‘Oh, it is too bad. What about the “Ballad of Bouillabaisse”?
“A street there is in Paris famous
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is,
The New Street of the Little Fields.”
How cruel to give it a new name. The Academicians might well have protested about that.’
‘Not they!’
‘I wonder if Docteur Lecœur isn’t still there? D’you know, I think I’ll go round and see – I must have a little walk anyhow. Where is the best chemist?’
He went off in slight dudgeon. Philip said, ‘The English so often have these unknown French friends, I’ve noticed. Collaborators one and all, mark my words. And talking of that, has it occurred to you that your uncle isn’t perfectly sound? He seems to be keenly fratting with Pauline in her entresol.’
‘The only person in Paris who isn’t is me,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling thoroughly out of it.’
Philip looked guilty. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘that’s the whole morning wasted. How thankful I shall be when Miss Mackintosh arrives.’
I was sorry that he and Davey were not quite hitting it off. I never saw my uncle again all day. Alfred and I had to lunch with the American Ambassador, who was passing through Paris between two holidays, and my evening was again taken up with ambassadresses from improbable lands which I could certainly not have pinpointed on a globe; as I discussed the disappearance of the genus footman with them I again heard those shrieks which undoubtedly meant that Davey was keenly fratting in the entresol. I began to be very downhearted indeed.
To add to my trials, the morning post brought news that good, clever, plain Jean Mackintosh, not attractive to men, unlikely to get married, whose sensible support was going to facilitate my task in such a variety of ways, was now not coming. She had married, suddenly, not sensibly at all, a member of the Chelsea Set; Louisa wrote to tell me this news, evidently thinking herself more to be pitied than I was.
‘Her godmother left her £4,000 and a tiara. It seems this Chelsea setter is always marrying or deed-polling people for little things like that. Oh Fanny!’
Jean, I knew, was her favourite child. She ended up a perfect wail of despair: ‘P.S. I am sending you Northey instead but it won’t be the same.’
I had a feeling it would not be at all the same. I racked my brains to remember what I could about Northey, whom I had not seen since the early days of the war when Louisa and I were living at Alconleigh with our babies. A flaxen-haired toddler, she used to be brought to the drawing-room at tea-time and made to sing loud, tuneless songs, ‘S’all I be p’etty, s’all I be rit?’ We all thought her tremendously sweet. Louisa once told me that she was conceived in the Great Northern Hotel – hence her curious name. My children knew her well as they often stayed with the Fort Williams in Scotland; I seemed to have noticed that their verdict was rather scornful. ‘Northey is old-fashioned.’ ‘Northey, brimming as usual.’
‘Brimming?’
‘Yes, her eyes are always brimming over with tears.’
‘What about?’
‘Everything.’
Basil could have given me an account of her, he was good at describing people. Naughty Baz, in Spain, in Spain. I had
