The French sharply resented all these insults. Their press and wireless, which are at least as clever as ours when it comes to throwing vitriol, now revealed terrifying depths of hatred for their old crony over the way. M. Bouche-Bontemps’ government, given up for lost, came unscathed through a debate on vegetables out of season which in normal times would have annihilated it. None of the opposition parties wanted to take over in the middle of such a crisis. When the full perfidy of Albion had been exposed for a few days, French opinion was stirred, flickered, then blazed into fury. Individual citizens began to give expression to the public feeling. The shop called Old England was rechristened New England. The windows of W. H. Smith were smashed. English decorations and medals, signed photographs of King Edward VII and Northey’s kittens were deposited at the Embassy accompanied by disagreeable messages. Anglo-French sporting events were called off. Import licences for Christmas puddings were withheld. Grace was beside herself, of course. She announced that she was going to empty the English blood from her veins and have them refilled from the blood bank of the VIIth arrondissement.
Alfred sent an alarmed report to the Foreign Office but was told that these waves of ill feeling come and go and are not to be taken seriously. Philip, however, said that he had never seen the two old ladies so cross with each other.
21
At no season does Paris look more beautiful than early in December. There is a curious light, particular to the Île de France and faithfully interpreted by the painter Michel, which brings out all shades, from primrose to navy blue, implicit in the beige and grey of the landscape and buildings. The river becomes a steely flood which matches the huge clouds rolling overhead. As this is not, like harvest time or the first warm days of spring, one of those seasons that induce an almost animal craving for field and forest, you can sit by the fire, look out of the window and peacefully enjoy the prospect. I was doing exactly this in the Salon Vert one afternoon, reflecting with satisfaction that for the rest of that week we had no social engagements (they had fallen off notably of late). I had been writing to Aunt Sadie, to give her news of us all, specially of her granddaughter Northey, my pen was poised while I searched for some little titbit to end up with.
I became conscious of a clamour outside, an unidentified noise which had perhaps been going on for some time, heard by my ears but not realized by my brain. I went over to the window, looked down at the garden and was very much startled by what I saw there. A large crowd was stamping about on the lawn, pushed forward by an ever-increasing multitude milling in from the Avenue Gabriel; between it and the house, like idle maids flicking dusters, a few policemen were half-heartedly manipulating their capes. For the moment they were holding the crowd in check; one felt that a really determined push would easily submerge them. When the fishwives surged into Versailles, the Queen’s first instinct was to find her husband; so, now, was mine. Like Louis XVI on the same occasion, Alfred was frantically looking for me. We wasted several minutes missing each other in the huge house; I ran through to the Chancery – he had left it; he found the Salon Vert empty; finally we met in Northey’s office off the anteroom at the top of the stairs.
‘Go to the nursery, darling,’ I was telling her, ‘and fetch ’Chang. There’s a riot or something in the garden. We’d better all stay together.’
Alfred said, ‘The French have had enough and I don’t altogether blame them. I wrote in my last dispatch that it would end like this; now it has. Not a bad thing perhaps, it will shake both the governments into seeing sense. Meanwhile I hope these hooligans will bear in mind that the person of an Ambassador is sacred and the territory of an Embassy inviolable.’
‘They haven’t remembered about the territory. They are completely ruining all our nice new shrubs – just come and see.’
We went back to the Salon Vert and looked out at the rioters.
‘I shall lodge a complaint. The police force is inadequate, in my view. What are they shouting? It sounds like a slogan.’
‘Listen – no, I can’t make it out.’ They seemed to be shouting two words and stamping in unison.
Philip ran in, breathless, having come from his own flat. ‘The Faubourg is full of demonstrators,’ he said. ‘Good Lord – the garden too! We are completely surrounded in other words. They are shouting “Minquiers Français”, do you hear?’
‘That’s it, of course,’ said Alfred. ‘Minquiers Français, Minquiers Français. I only hope this will show the Foreign Office there are limits of ineptitude beyond which they should not go. Another time perhaps they will listen to the man on the spot.’
I said, ‘They are nearly up to the veranda now – ought you not to let Bouche-Bontemps know?’
‘All in good time,’ said Alfred, ‘no need to panic. We are his responsibility.’
Northey appeared, ’Chang in her arms, grumbling about her badger.
‘Pity we can’t all be safely down there with him,’ I said.
‘I’ve just had a word with B.B.,’ said Northey, ‘he is the absolute, utter limit. Shrieking with laughter if you please. He says we may have to stand a long siege and he hopes we’ve got plenty of Spanish champagne. He can’t get the police to do much, he says, it’s only a crowd of children.’
‘Yes, they do look young – I was thinking that. Why should these boys and girls mind about the Îles Minquiers?’
‘Agitators. You can work up a crowd on any subject.’
‘B.B. is delighted. He says the teenagers here
