‘Perhaps I would prefer to be a concubine –’
‘Very well. In that case the first rule is don’t enter a seraglio where there is a head wife already.’
‘I see your mind is still running on Charles-Edouard.’
‘All this midnight telephoning makes it run.’
‘But Fanny, if I wanted to hug Charles-Edouard I would do it in bed, not on the end of a telephone line.’
‘I don’t say you do want to hug, yet. I’m simply afraid that presently you may.’
‘I’ve often told you I’m in love with Worshipful.’
‘Yes, often, indeed! Do you think it’s true?’
‘St Expédite is covered with candles – why do you ask me that?’
‘If you want to marry Philip you’re setting about it in a very funny way.’
‘I never said I wanted to marry him. Why shouldn’t I be his concubine?’
‘Philip isn’t a Pasha, he’s an ambitious English Civil Servant. The last thing he would do would be to saddle himself with a concubine – drag her round after him from post to post, can you imagine it! He’d very soon get the sack if he did. The only thing he might do would be to marry you.’
‘Fanny – you said it was hopeless –’
‘You are making it quite hopeless by your behaviour.’
‘How ought I to behave?’
‘Be more serious. Show that you are the sort of person who would make a splendid Ambassadress – pay more attention to your work –’
‘Now I see exactly what you are getting at –’
‘Our interests happen to coincide. And go slow with the followers.’
‘I don’t understand why, as I don’t hug –’
‘I might believe that but nobody else will. With Frenchmen love leads to hugs.’
‘They’re not in love.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘They wouldn’t mind a hug or two, I must admit, and they do sometimes very kindly offer, but they’re not in love. I know, because as soon as somebody is I can’t bear him. There was somebody at home – oh, Fanny, the horror of it!’
‘Dear me, this is very inconvenient. How are we ever going to get you settled?’
‘With Worshipful of course, who you say never will be –’
Alfred came in. ‘Bouche-Bontemps seems to be on the telephone for you,’ he said to Northey, ‘in the library. They made a mistake (Katie’s day off) and put the call through to me – his secretary was very much embarrassed.’ As Northey skipped away, delighted, no doubt, at being delivered from a tiresome lecture, he shouted after her, ‘Ask him if his government will survive the debate on the national parks, will you?’
‘No. I’m not the Intelligence Service! Ask your spies – !’
‘Is that rather cheeky? Never mind. I say, Fanny, our son Basil has appeared. He is dressed [falsetto] like “O Richard, O mon Roi!” What do you think this portends?’
‘I hardly care to tell you. He has left the crammer, given up all idea of the Foreign Service and has become a travel agent.’
‘Good God,’ said Alfred, ‘Basil too?’
‘But he’s not quite as bad as poor darling David,’ I hastened to say, ‘because there is no bogus philosophy, no wife, no adopted baby involved and at least he has work and prospects of a sort. He doesn’t do nothing all the time. Oh, how I wish I knew where we went wrong with those boys – !’
‘Perhaps it’s the modern trend and not exactly our fault.’
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘Having breakfast with the Zen family in the dining-room. David has come down in his dressing-gown today – he looks ghastly. They started nagging away at each other – I couldn’t stand it, I took my coffee to the library.’
‘Nagging about what?’
‘It seems [falsetto] that Beards never get on with Teds. Well, I must go, I’m due at the Affaires Étrangères.’
‘The Eels?’
‘Oh yes indeed – the Eels, the European Army, Guinea, Arms to Arabs – I’ve got a horrible morning ahead.’
‘And the young man who pirated Dior’s designs?’
‘No, Mr Stock copes with that, thank goodness. See you presently.’
My next visitor was Basil. I saw what Alfred meant: with his loose garment, tight trousers and hair curling under at the back he had the silhouette of a troubadour. Although I vastly preferred his appearance to that of David (he was quite clean, almost soigné in fact) I wished so much that they could both be ordinary, well-dressed Englishmen. I felt thankful that we had been able to send the two youngest to Eton; presumably they at least, when grown up, would look like everybody else.
Basil plumped on to my bed. ‘I say, old David’s gone to seed, hasn’t he? Of course one knows he’s holy and all that – still – !’
‘How long since you saw him?’
‘About a year, I should think.’
‘He told me it was he who advised you to take to the road, or whatever it is you have taken to?’
‘The coffee-and-jump, did he just? What a build-up! It’s true, he used to bang out long saintly letters in that weird old Bible script of his but naturally I never read them.’
‘I worry about you boys. What are you up to, Baz?’
‘Well, it’s like this. The Spanish season is over, thanks be. I’ve brought over a flock of the bovines on the hoof – turned them out to graze in the Louvre this morning – this afternoon I shall be flogging them down to Versailles. But these little tours are peanuts; we want to keep the racket going until Grandad can get the hustle on his new phenangles. And oh boy! Is he cooking up some sleigh-rides!’
My heart sank. If I did not quite understand what Basil was saying I felt instinctively against phenangles and sleigh-rides. They were not likely to denote a kind of work that Alfred would approve of. ‘Could you talk English, darling?’
‘Yes, Mother dear,
