I thought the boys were feeling quite as much embarrassed as I was and I counted on food to unbutton us all. They ordered, as I knew they would, smoked salmon and roast chicken and then politely tried to put me at my ease.
‘Did you have a good journey?’
‘Was it a Viscount?’
‘Have you seen the new Anouilh in Paris?’
‘Have you read Pinfold?’
I said yes to everything but was too much preoccupied to enlarge on these topics. General conversation was really not possible under the circumstances; I ordered a bottle of wine and bravely plunged. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me now what this is all about?’
Charlie and Sigi looked at Fabrice who was evidently the spokesman. ‘Are you furious with us?’ he said.
‘I’m more worried than furious. Your fathers are very angry indeed. But why did you do it?’
‘The ghoulishness of the food –’ Sigi said, in a high wail.
‘It’s no good telling me about the food,’ I said firmly, ‘because I know perfectly well that had nothing to do with it. I’d like the real reason, please.’
‘You must try and put yourself in our place,’ said Fabrice, ‘wasting the best years of our lives (only three more as teenagers – every day so precious, when we ought to be hitting it up as never again), wasting them in that dark creepy one-horse place with Son et Lumière (the head beak) and all the other old weirdies yattering at us morning and night and those ghoulish kids mouldering in the same grave with us. It’s a living death, Mum; we’ve been cheesed off for months. In the end it became more than flesh and blood could stand. Do you blame us?’
I was uncertain how to say what must be said. ‘What’s that you’ve got on your jersey, Charles?’
‘Yank’s the Boy for Me. Do you like it?’
‘Only rather. Who is Yank?’
‘Who is Yank? Yanky Fonzy of course, the Birmingham-born Bomb. I should have thought even you would have heard of Yank – that lanky Yank from Brum – the toughest guy that breathes. He’s a disc star.’
‘And he’s the boy for you?’
‘Oh definitely. Of course he’s a man’s man, you might not dig him like we do, lots of girls don’t and hardly any oldsters. But we’re his fans, the screamin’ kids who follow him round the Beat Shows. Boy! does he wow us!’
‘Oh,’ I said, flummoxed.
‘You ought to come and see for yourself,’ said Sigi. ‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner!’
‘Do you think I would understand though?’
‘If you saw you would,’ said Fabrice. ‘Yank, coming right into the attack – treating the kids like a man squeezing an orange. That ole mike is putty in his hands; he rolls on the floor with it – uses it as a gun – throws it around, spins it, snarls into it. Then, sudden, dramatic, he quiets down into a religioso: “I count them over, every one apart, my Rosary.” From that it’s Schehera-jazz: “Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar.” “Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you.” Ending up with the patriotic stuff: “Shoot if you must this old grey head but spare my country’s Flag, she said.” Something for everybody, see?’
‘Oh Mum, do try and realize how it makes jolly boating weather seem like a rice pudding.’
‘Perhaps I do. But all this has no connexion with real life, which is very long, very serious and for which, at your age, you ought to be preparing.’
‘No. The whole point is that we are too old, now, to be preparing. This is life, it has begun, we want to be living.’
‘Dearest, that’s for your parents to decide. As we support you we must be allowed to have a say in your activities, I suppose?’
‘Ah! But I’m just coming to that. Teenagers are definitely commercial nowadays. It’s not like we were back in history – David Copperfield. The modern Copperfield doesn’t have to tramp to Dover and find Aunt Betsy – no – he is rich – he earns £9 a week. That’s what we are making; not bad for a start?’
‘£9 a week?’ I was very much taken aback. Starving animals in the snow, indeed! This was going to make my task difficult if not impossible. ‘For doing what, may I inquire?’
‘Packing.’
‘That’s nearly £500 a year!’
‘Definitely.’
‘What do you pack?’
‘Shavers – you know, razors.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Does anybody like work?’
I snatched at this opening.
‘Oh, indeed they do, when it’s interesting. That’s the whole point of lessons, so that one can finally have work which is more enjoyable than packing.’
‘Yes, that’s what we’ve heard. We don’t believe it. We think all work is the same and it’s during the time off that you live your life. No use wasting these precious years preparing for jobs that may be far worse than packing when we shall be old and anyway not able to feel anything, good or bad. As it is we get two days off and our evenings. In between we are inspired by Yank.’
‘But my dear children, you can’t go on packing for the rest of your lives. You must think of the future.’
‘Why must we? All you oldies thought and thought of the future and slaved and saved for the future, and where did it get you?’
‘It got your father to Paris.’
‘And what good does that do him? How many days off does he get? How does he spend his evenings? Who is his idol?’
‘In any case it’s now we want to be enjoying ourselves, not when we are rotting from the feet up at thirty or something ghoulish.’
‘Just tell me,’ I said, ‘were you unhappy at Eton? People hardly ever are, in my experience.’
They looked at each other. ‘No – not exactly unhappy. It was this feeling of waste we had.’
‘It wasn’t the Perthshire Set?’ I knew that when they first arrived they had been teased (according
