‘Can you wonder they follow? The other day – it was after your luncheon party – she took Madame Meistersinger downstairs. I’d just been seeing off the Burmese and then had gone into Mrs Trott’s room to telephone. When I came out the hall was empty – the footman was putting the old woman into her motor and behind their backs, at the top of the steps, Northey was going through a sort of pantomime of ironical reverences. Oh I can’t describe how funny it was! Of course she had no idea anybody was watching. It made me realize that one might be terribly in love with that little creature.’
‘We all are,’ I said, ‘except Philip. One does so long for her to have a happy life, not like the Bolter.’
Alfred now said something extraordinary: ‘Deeply as I disapprove of your mother and her activities I don’t think she could be described as unhappy.’
I looked at him in amazement. We were all so much accustomed in my family to deploring the Bolter’s conduct that one took for granted the great unhappiness to which it must have, if only because it ought to have, led.
‘You should try and see things as they are, Fanny. Whether her behaviour has been desirable or not is a different proposition from whether it has made her unhappy. I don’t think it has; I think she is perfectly happy and always was.’
‘Perhaps. Still, you wouldn’t want that sort of happiness for Northey, I suppose. My prayer is that she will marry Philip and settle down.’
‘I agree. I don’t want it for her. But neither do I want her to marry him because, if she does, mark my words, she won’t settle down. She will bolt.’
‘Alfred, why do you say that?’
‘Philip wouldn’t hold her. Not enough fantasy, no roughage. Although vastly superior in every way to Tony Kroesig he is in some sort not the contrary of him. Just as Tony didn’t do for Linda, so Philip wouldn’t for Northey.’
‘I see in a way what you mean – they are both rich, conventional Englishmen – but really it’s very unfair to Philip.’
‘I’m extremely fond of him, I only say he’s not the husband for her.’
‘I wonder! Luckily it’s out of our hands – something they must settle for themselves. Are you beginning to be interested in people in your old age, darling?’
‘Old age?’ Falsetto.
‘Well, I really think it must be that. You used utterly to despise me when I made these sort of speculations.’
‘I’m interested in the children and I count Northey as one.’
‘I sometimes wish she was our one and only – no, of course I don’t mean that, but I could wish that David and Baz hadn’t reached these difficult stages just when you and I have our hands full. We can be of so little use to them, under the circumstances.’
‘I don’t know. We seem to be lodging David and his family, providing medical attention and everything. Basil comes and goes as he likes – what more could we do? I think it’s just as well we are busy; it takes our minds off them. Useless for us to worry and we have no cause to reproach ourselves. They are only suffering from growing pains I think – nothing very serious.’
‘I do reproach myself for not having sent them to Eton. If we had they might have turned out so differently.’
‘I don’t agree. Eton produces quite as large a percentage of oddities as other schools. In any case we weren’t rich enough, then. We did our best for them, and that’s that.’
‘We must count our blessings. How I’m looking forward to going over on St Andrew’s Day and taking out the little boys. They are perfect.’
‘Perfect?’ Falsetto again.
‘I mean like other people.’
‘Oh. So it’s perfect to be like other people, is it? Grace tells me they think of nothing but jazz.’
‘That’s a phase.’
‘So are the eccentricities of Basil and David, no doubt …’
‘My point is that going to Eton will have minimized the danger of such extreme phases in the case of Charlie and Fabrice.’
‘Unberufen,’ said Alfred, as we drove into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Doudeauville.
17
The word ‘unberufen’ rang so unaccustomed on the lips of Alfred that it stuck in my mind. Whether it was the result of old age or of having a new position in the world, he seemed to be mellowing; the Alfred of a year ago would have conducted our conversation in the motor on different, sterner lines and would not have said ‘unberufen’. However, when, the next day before luncheon, Katie told me that there was a personal call for him from Windsor, I knew that he must have unberufened in vain. He had gone to the railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne to celebrate the Armistice; I said that I would take the call. No doubt some sort of worst had occurred; I prayed, wrongly, weakmindedly, that it would prove to be a moral and not a physical worst. For a few seconds there was a muddle on the line: ‘’allo Weendzor – parlez Weendzor,’ during which time an amazing amount of horrible speculations managed to pass through my head. The moment I heard the housemaster’s voice, decidedly peevish but not sad, I was reassured: Charlie and Fabrice were obviously still with us on this earth. He did not beat about the bush or try to prepare me for bad news; he told me that the boys had left.
‘Run away?’ I said, perhaps too cheerfully, in my relief.
‘People don’t exactly run away any more. The snivelling boy dragged off the stagecoach by an usher is a thing of the past.’
I laughed hysterically at this piece of light relief, put in perhaps to steady my nerves.
‘No, you could hardly call it that. In any case, running away is a spontaneous action with which one can have a certain sympathy. This was a premeditated,
