‘Oh don’t! I always try not to!’
When I had finished talking to Bouche-Bontemps I went to find Northey. Her room was full of newborn wails. ‘Mélusine has had six lovely babies, clever girl.’
‘I thought you said she was old?’
‘Yes. They are miracle-children.’
‘So now what? Hadn’t somebody better bucket them at once? Before she has got fond of them?’
‘Fanny!’
‘I know. But darling duck, we can’t keep them here.’
‘In this enormous house? I saw a dead rat in the courtyard only yesterday.’
‘It was a visiting rat then. There aren’t any in the house and we’ve got a perfectly good cat in the kitchen.’
‘Sweet Minet. Very well, if you are so unwelcoming I shall give them away.’
‘Yes. You must. Did you enjoy the Return of the Cinders?’
‘It was lovely. We all shouted Vive l’Empereur – a bit late, but never mind.’
‘I hear you are going out with M. de Valhubert again?’
‘On business, Fanny. I must have a long serious talk about the porte-feuille. If the assainissement de notre place goes on like this all my profits will disappear and then what will my old age be like? Can you afford to pension me off? I’m getting seriously annoyed about it.’
‘You talk worse pidgin than Grace. Do try to keep to one language at a time. I suppose you read Mockbar this morning?’
‘Clever little soul. By the way, Davey asked me to say good-bye.’
‘Davey has buggered off?’
‘Fanny! Never mind, I won’t tell Alfred. Yes. He says he can feel himself getting cancer of the lungs at every breath he takes in Paris.’
‘What nonsense! Among all these trees! There’s no smell of petrol here.’
‘He says it’s the scentless fumes, heavier than air, which do all the damage.’
‘I must say that’s a bit too much. He turns David into a sex-maniac and then leaves us to bear the brunt.’
‘He’ll bravely come back, when he’s decarbonized, to see about David. Meanwhile Docteur Lecœur has given him a calming injection so the idea is that all our virtues are saved for the present. Katie had a ghastly time with him last night – she says it was the nearest thing – that beard and those feet, how can poor Dawnie? Why are Zen-men’s feet always so awful?’ She shuddered.
‘I wish Docteur Lecœur would give Mockbar a calming injection.’
‘No, Fanny, he’s courting. It would be too unfair.’
‘Courting whom?’
‘Phyllis McFee, for one.’
‘Tell me something, Northey. Does Phyllis McFee really exist?’
Wide-eyed, injured look. ‘How d’you mean, does she really exist?’
‘You haven’t invented her, by any chance?’
‘She’s my old friend of for ever. (The poor make no new friends – oh don’t! That wretched Bourse!) Surely I’m allowed the one?’
‘Then I can’t understand why you never bring her to see me?’
‘She works.’
‘What at?’
‘World Something.’
‘Not in the evening surely?’
‘Specially then because, you know, the World is round so it’s later in America. When that great throbbing, teeming, bustling heart of little old New York begins to beat, Phyllis McFee, relaxed, efficient, smiling (not to grin is a sin), suitably dressed in her latest Mainbocher, immaculate hair-do, neat ankles and red nails, must be on the Transatlantic line. She has no time to waste on people like you.’
‘Bring her to luncheon one day?’
‘She’s far too busy. She can’t do more than un queek dans un drog which is French for luncheon in a chemist’s shop. Just imagine, scrumptious grub all among the cotton wool – takes thinking of – admit –’
‘All right then, don’t bring her. I don’t mind. She seems to work a good deal harder than some people we know.’
‘Is that a hint? Not very kind, Fanny. As a matter of fact, Phyllis McFee has ambitions, she wants to hug her boss (which would be French for employer if it didn’t happen to mean bruise). I don’t.’
‘Another person I never see, while we are on the subject of invisible beings, is M. Cruas.’
‘He’s timid. He wouldn’t like to be seen by you. And speaking as your secretary, quite as much up to date, thorough and efficient as Phyllis, may I remind you that you and Alfred have got the National Day of the North Koreans, after which you dine early with the Italians to go to a lovely play, at the Théâtre des Nations, about refrigerators. Some people have all the luck – !’
Feeling myself dismissed, I went up to my bedroom and tried to forget my manifold worries in a long, hot, scented bath.
It took us some time to get from the North Korean to the Italian Embassy. Between the hours of seven and eight all the Americans who live in Paris bring out motor cars the size of lorries, shiny, showy and horribly cheap-looking, and sally forth to meet each other, drink whisky and rub up their accents. This also happens to be the time when the Parisians are on the move from work-place to home; the streets become almost impassable.
As we drove towards the Alma, at about one mile an hour, Alfred said, ‘You seem preoccupied, darling. Is there something on your mind?’
‘Something! About a ton of different things –’
‘Such as?’
‘Mockbar, to begin with. I suppose you didn’t see it –’
‘Yes, I did. Philip put it under my eyes. Anything sillier I have seldom read. Bouche-Bontemps says it’s quite untrue and he must know. Really – if that’s all –’
‘Oh, how I wish it were. Northey worries me dreadfully.’
‘Northey? Why?’
‘Any little girl as attractive as she is must be a worry until one has married her off. The followers –’
‘Safety in numbers, surely.’
‘There are one or two whom I don’t think safe.’ I did not want to specify Valhubert to Alfred without more proof
