‘Chuck!’
‘No fear. It’s a most amusing dinner.’
‘The pathos! Well, if you won’t take me out to dinner you might throw me a civil word.’
‘If you go on like this, I’ll throw something blunt and heavy. I must explain, m’lord, that my life had been made a purgatory. My work was suffering, I gave way to an uncontrollable impulse – it may have been wrong; it was inevitable. Fanny will be a witness for the defence, won’t you?’
The fact that every Frenchman who saw her fell in love made her no easier to deal with and considerably complicated my task as ambassadress. Instead of a nice, sensible, methodical secretary ever at my elbow to help and support me I had this violent little fascinator flitting about the house, bewailing her lovelorn condition to anybody who would listen, or paralysing Alfred’s private line as she wailed down it to one of her new friends. They were not spared the desperate state of her heart any more than we were. How could sobriety and security, the keynotes of our mission, be maintained under these circumstances? Northey created a circumambience of insobriety and doubtful security. Nothing could have been more unfortunate than her choice of followers. Such personages as the first Vice-President of the Chambre, the Secretary-General of the Élysée, an ex-Minister of Justice, the Ambassador of the Channel Islands, the Governor of the Bank of France, the Prefect of the Seine, not to speak of the outgoing Foreign Secretary who looked like being the next Prime Minister, could hardly be treated as ordinary young dancing partners. Difficult for Alfred to insist that they must not come to the house until they were invited or that they should at least limit themselves to the usual hours for calling on young ladies. They were all busy with the crisis, so they came when they could or else lengthily telephoned.
Perhaps unwisely, we had given Northey the entresol recently vacated by Lady Leone, with its own entrance to the courtyard. At all hours of the day and night one was apt to see French government or C.D. motors there whose owners were not transacting business with Alfred, while motor-bicyclists dressed like Martians continually roared up the Faubourg to stop at our concierge’s lodge with notes or flowers or chocolates for Northey. She had taken to the social and political life of Paris with an ease more often exhibited nowadays by pretty boys than by pretty girls. Philip, who knew that esoteric world better than anybody else in the Embassy, said it was almost incredible how quickly she was picking up its jargon and manners. While I was still feeling my way through a thick fog, not knowing who anybody was, summoning small talk with the greatest difficulty, Northey seemed completely at home with the different groups which make up French society.
In one respect, however, she remained the same little Scotch girl who had arrived on the cattle boat. Her passion for animals was in no way modified and, as might have been foreseen, she began to accumulate pets which she had rescued from some misfortune.
‘Yes, I saw this group of children in the Tuileries. Now I’ve always noticed that if you see children clustered round something and looking down at it fixedly it’s going to be a creature and they are going to be cruel to it. Sure enough, they had got hold of this sweet torty. They kept picking her up and waving her about and putting her down again. You know how it’s dread for a tortoise to be waved because she naturally thinks she is in the clutches of an eagle. So cruel, to bring them here from Greece – thousands of them – and wave them about all the summer and then leave them to die in the winter. Ninety per cent die, I read. Oh Fanny, the world! Anyway I bought her from those ghastly children for 1,000 francs, which I luckily had on me (we must have a little talk about money) and now she can be happy until the cold weather. Just look at the way she walks though, anybody can see her nerves are in ribbons.’
‘Would you like to see my cat? She’s old. She’s bandaged up like this because her abscesses keep breaking out. The Duke’s vet comes every morning when he has finished with the pugs and gives her penicillin. How d’you mean, kinder? Can’t you see she’s enjoying her life? She lies there purring, quite happy. Could I borrow a little money? Yes, well, penicillin is expensive, you know. You are kind – I’m keeping a strict account.’
Then she went for a walk on the quays and saw a badger asleep in a cage on the pavement outside an animal shop. ‘The cruelty – they hate daylight – they live all day in a sett and only come out when it’s dark. Imagine keeping it like that – why bring it here from its wood, poor little creature? So I came back for Jérôme and the Rolls-Royce and borrowed some money from Mrs Trott (darling, could you pay her for me if I promise to keep a strict account?) and together we lugged Mr Brock into the motor, huge and heavy he is, and brought him to the Avenue Gabriel, through that gate, and he’s in the garden now. Do come and look –’
‘Oh Northey, was that a good idea? As it’s broad daylight in the garden – I don’t see much difference.’
‘Oh, the dear fellow will manage somehow.’
He did. The next morning there was an enormous, banked-up hole like an air-raid shelter in the middle of the lawn.
She was wildly unrealistic about money; each for each, her favourite adage, was evidently the keynote of her faith in such matters. She borrowed from any and everybody out of whom she could wheedle the stuff and then made Alfred or me pay them back, saying, ‘I’m keeping a strict account. I’ve had my wages now until June of next
