I felt a glow of superiority. ‘Poor Grace,’ I said, ‘how dreadful.’
‘By the way, the old foreign lady is not to be told.’
‘Ah! Quite right – of course she mustn’t be. So is Charles-Edouard furious?’
‘Not a bit. He thinks it’s most frightfully funny and he’s delighted to have Sigi delivered into his hands. Now he’ll be obliged to go to the strict Jesuits after all?’
‘I shouldn’t think even the strictest Jesuits will do that boy much good – he’ll come to a bad end all right.’
Northey bashed me out of my complacency with: ‘Charlie and Fabrice have got the knack of it now.’
‘The knack of nicking?’
‘Yes. Sigi says he invented a foolproof method on the way over and rang them up to tell, very kindly. They’ll get lovely and rich, he says, in no time.’
19
Holy David had been looking decidedly better since Docteur Lecœur took him in hand, even slightly cleaner. His interest in secular or non-Zen affairs seemed to be reviving; he came with me to the Louvre one day and saw one or two plays with Dawn. I had become devoted to her, which shows that speech is not an essential factor in human understanding. (Northey said who ever thought it was? Think of creatures and how well we get on with them in silence.) I was very hopeful that if the improvement in David continued at this rate he would go back to his university and resume his career.
Then he told me, casually, one day, that he and Dawn were about to resume their journey to the East. I was sorry, indeed, that it should be East rather than West but to tell the truth I felt such a surge of relief that at first I hardly cared which direction they were taking. David’s presence in the house was not convenient. The servants and the whole of Alfred’s staff disliked him. English statesmen and important officials who came and went in a fairly steady stream cannot have relished the sight of his gowned form and naked feet at breakfast. He was on his father’s nerves. Whenever Mockbar was short of a story he fell back on Envoy’s Son for some spiteful little paragraph. How heavenly to think that the Zen family was on the move at last! Concealing joy, I said, ‘You’ll tell me when you would like Jérôme to take you to the station?’
‘Not the station, the road. Send us to Provins; after that we will fend for ourselves.’
‘With Dawn in her present condition? Oh no, David, that’s not possible.’
‘Pregnant women have astonishing powers of survival. That has been proved in every great exodus of history. All the same, I think I will leave little ’Chang here.’
The surge of relief subsided, the joy was extinguished. I might have guessed there would be a snag somewhere. ‘No, you can’t,’ I said, putting up what I really knew would be a perfectly ineffectual resistance. ‘Who’s going to look after him?’
‘Mrs Trott and Katie simply love him.’
‘We all simply love him; that’s not the point. Neither Mrs Trott nor anybody else here has time to nurse little ’Chang. He’s your responsibility; you adopted him; nobody asked you to! Why did you, anyway?’
‘We wanted a brother for our baby so that they can be brought up together. It was very bad for my young psychology to be three years older than Basil; Dawn and I don’t intend to repeat that mistake of yours.’
‘But if he’s here and your baby is in the East?’
‘As soon as our baby is born it must join little ’Chang. I shall send it to you at once so that they can unfold their consciousness together.’
‘So I’ve got to bring up your family?’
‘It will be a boon to you. Middle-aged women with nothing to do are one of the worst problems that face the modern psychologist.’
‘But I’ve got far, far more to do than I can manage already.’
‘Cocktail parties – trying on clothes – nothing to get your teeth into. You must try not to be so selfish. Think of poor Dawn, you really can’t ask her to carry half the cradle like she used to. ’Chang has put on pounds and pounds and she doesn’t feel very well.’
‘Leave her here. I’d love to keep her. Then she can have her baby under proper conditions, poor duck.’
‘I didn’t marry Dawn in order to leave her. I need her company all the time.’
She now appeared with the World Citizen, making furious Chinese noises, in her arms. I thought she looked very frail.
‘Dawnie, David has just told me he is on the move again. Why don’t you stay comfortably here with little ’Chang and all of us, at any rate until after the baby?’
I had forgotten about the dumbness; her huge eyes projected their gaze on her husband’s face and he spoke for her. ‘You see she has no desire whatever to stay comfortably here. Dawn has never had such a bourgeois reaction in her life.’
I went to my bedroom and rang up Davey. I begged him to come and save the situation. He was uncooperative and unsympathetic; said that it was impossible for him to move for the present. ‘My drawing-room curtains have gone wrong – much too short and skimpy. They must all be made again and I must be here to see to it. That’s the sort of thing your Aunt Emily used to do – everything in the house was perfect when she was alive. I do hate being a widower; it really was too bad of her to die.’
‘Davey, you haven’t understood how serious it is about David.’
‘My dear Fanny, I think you are being rather ungrateful to me. You asked me to get rid of him; he is going, is he not?’
‘I know – but –’
‘If he is going East and not West that is entirely your own fault for not
