‘They must be fed. Where are they?’
‘Sitting on bursting canvas bags at the Gare du Nord – at least I hope so. I put them into the metro, before taking a cab myself, and told them where to get out and that I’d be along. I said to meet at the bus stop of the 48 because I believe the crowds at the station are terrific and one sheep looks very much like another. I expect they’ll be there now for days – only hope this fine weather will go on.’
‘You horrify me. Can’t we do something for them?’
‘They’re all right. Singing “Roll out the Barrel” like Britons always do at waits – wish they’d learn a new tune.’
‘How many are there?’
‘In my party? About twenty-five. You don’t need to bother about them, Ma, honest.’
‘Please go straight to the Gare du Nord and bring them here. I’ll have breakfast for them in the garden, ready by the time they arrive.’
A wail from Northey. ‘No, Fanny, you’re not to – they’ll petrify my badger.’
‘Surely he’s blacked out in his air-raid shelter?’
‘He’ll smell them down there and tremble. A badger’s sense of smell is highly developed – people don’t understand about creatures.’
‘Don’t you take on,’ said Basil, ‘they smell like badgers themselves. He’ll be thrilled – he’ll think his mates have arrived.’
‘Go at once, Baz,’ I said.
‘But, Ma, this strike will probably last for days. You’ll get awfully tired of “Roll out the Barrel”.’
‘Yes. As soon as you’ve brought them there you must see about a lorry to take them to the coast.’
‘No fear. All our profit would melt away – Grandad would kill me.’
‘I’ll pay.’
‘You’re soft. Another thing – have I got to face all those posh butlers with that lot in tow?’
‘Northey can go with you and bring you in through the Avenue Gabriel. It’s nearer for the metro. Get the key of the garden, dearest, from Mrs Trott as you go out and tell Jérôme to be ready to help Baz find a lorry. Go on, Basil, twitch your mantle blue.’
I was not at all surprised when Basil’s Britons turned out to be entirely delightful, very different indeed from the furious, filthy, haggard, exhausted, sex-starved mob which anybody not knowing Basil and not knowing England might have expected from his description. They were, in fact, sensible, tidy and nicely dressed, covered with smiles and evidently enjoying this adventure in a foreign land. There were rather more women than men, but it was unimaginable that any of them could have gone to bed with customs officers or waiters or indeed that they should commit fornication or adultery under any circumstances whatever. They looked more than respectable. I was glad to be confirmed in my suspicion that Basil’s account of his own tough and unmerciful behaviour was an invention, to startle Northey and me. The Britons were full of his praises and when he explained that I was his mother they crowded round to tell me what a wonder boy or miracle child I had produced. They had no idea that they were in an embassy – not that they would have been impressed had they known it, since the English are less conscious than any other race of diplomatic status; they evidently thought I kept a hotel in Paris. ‘Nice here,’ they said, ‘we must tell our friends.’ Any strangeness in their situation they would put down to being abroad. ‘Very nice,’ they said of the breakfast, which they ate with the relish of extreme hunger.
When they had finished they told me, in detail, how splendid Basil had been. Hundreds of Britons, it seemed, many of whom had paid much more for the trip than they had, were left behind at Port-Vendres; Basil had literally forged a way through the mob, and, using his gigantic strength in conjunction with his mastery of languages, had lifted and pushed and shoved and lugged and somehow inserted every single member of his party on to a train already full to suffocation.
‘Now all the others who were on it are stifling at that horrid Gare du Nord while here we are in these nice grounds.’
‘Masterly organization,’ said an elderly man of military aspect. ‘He’ll do well in the next war – a genius for improvisation – marvellous linguist – I think you should be proud of him. I could have done with more like him in the Western Desert. Now he’s gone off to get a lorry to take us to the coast. What initiative! We are all going to subscribe for a memento when we get home.’
I said, ‘You must be so tired.’
‘Oh no.’ A cheerful woman like a W.V.S. worker spoke up. ‘After the holiday we’ve had, a night or two in the train seems nothing. Yes, forty-eight hours we’ve been since leaving. Quite an adventure!’
‘And I suppose it wasn’t too comfortable in Spain?’
‘You don’t go abroad for comfort exactly, do you? I always say, plenty of that at home. One likes to see how the foreigners live, for a change. There’s no end to what they’ll put up with. The toilet arrangements! You’d never believe!’
‘Excuse me, but is that a badger’s sett?’
‘You are clever!’ said Northey, twinkling and sparkling at the poor man whose head was turned there and then.
‘Are there many badgers in this part of Paris?’
‘I’ve never seen another but there may be. Do you have them where you live?’
‘Oh no, not in the Cromwell Road. I knew what it was from the TV. I see you have a redstart, now that’s a delightful bird.’
‘Yes, and an owl at night. But we haven’t got a TV.’
‘Shame,’ said the Briton. ‘They don’t seem to go in for them abroad we’ve noticed. Still, with so much nature about you hardly need one. That’s what I have mine for, the nature. I didn’t know Paris was like this, wouldn’t mind living here myself.’
As Northey
