Don't Tell Alfred Page 14

  ‘No, I do not.’

  The answers to all the questions we had so discreetly not asked now became available to us in the Daily Post.

  ZEN BUDDHISTS AT PARIS EMBASSY

  Bearded, sandalled, corduroyed, and piped, accompanied by wife Dawn and baby ‘Chang, David Wincham, the eldest son of our envoy to France (formerly Professor of Pastoral Theology, Sir Alfred Wincham), is staying with his parents on his way East, where he plans to join a Zen community. During a Parisian tea-ceremony yesterday David outlined his projects.

  EXPECTING

  ‘Dawn and I were married last week. We are expecting our first baby in. two months. Dawn’s father, the Bishop of Bury, disapproves. He wanted her to finish her studies and he was against our adopting little ‘Chang, the child of our Zen Master.’

  WORLD CITIZEN

  ‘Yes, ’Chang is a Chinese name; our child is a World Citizen. Dawn’s father is against World Government. He does not understand Zen nor does he realize the importance of the empty or no-abiding mind. He thinks that people ought to work; Dawn and I know that it is sufficient to exist.’

  SEVEN

  So David, Dawn, and ’Chang are existing very comfortably at the expense of the taxpayer. I asked when they expect to leave for the East. ‘In seven hours, seven days, seven weeks, or seven years. It’s all the same to us.’

  ‘If it’s seven years,’ said Philip, ‘your successor will have to give them the entresol.’

  As a matter of fact, we heard no more about going East; they settled quite contentedly into the best spare room over the Salon Vert. It seemed that the long maturing of the Sacred Unsubstantiality could come to pass quite as well in the Hotel de Charost as in a Siberian gaol – better, perhaps, because they were not certain to find a Zen Master in the gaol whereas there was this excellent one at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Dawn felt tired and was not anxious to recontemplate the wisdom of the road. David told Mildred Jungfleisch all this and she kindly passed it on. No explanations were vouchsafed to me or Alfred, but the portents seemed to indicate a good long stay. I bought an Empire cradle which I set up in the Salon Vert and banned the blue plastic one from any of the rooms inhabited by us. This was the only step I took to assert my personality.

  Chapter Thirteen

  VALHUBERT joined the throng of Northey’s suitors. No doubt this was inevitable, but it worried me since he was in quite a different category from the others: a man of the world, experienced seducer, with time on his hands; I thought he would make mincemeat of the poor child. Besides I was very fond of Grace, my most intimate friend in Paris. She was obviously changing her mind about Northey; I never seemed to hear her say ‘What a darling’ any more. The other followers were rather a nuisance; they took up far too much of Northey’s time and attention and doubled the work of our telephone exchange but I did not think them dangerous. I used to have long confabulations on the subject with Katie, who, fond of Northey and in a commanding position, was invaluable to me. She was sensible in a particularly English way in spite of having lived abroad for years. She had been at the Embassy longer than anybody else, since before the war, during which she had worked with the Free French.

  ‘Of course, I don’t listen,’ she said, ‘but sometimes I can’t help hearing.’

  ‘Do listen as hard as you can, Katie. It’s so important for me to know what she’s up to. I’m responsible for her, don’t forget.’

  ‘You needn’t worry – she doesn’t care a pin for any of them; she drags in the name of Philip whenever possible. They must be sick of being told that she worships him, poor things. Of course, the ones who can use the secret line,” but I feel it’s exactly the same. She’s so transparent, isn’t she!’

  ‘What do the French think of it all, I wonder?’

  ‘The worst, of course, but then they always do. If she had no followers at all they would say she’s a Lesbian or has got a lover in the Embassy. You can’t count what they think.’

  ‘Tell me something, Katie. Does she often speak to Phyllis McFee?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A Scotch girl who is working here in Paris – ’

  ‘Never, as far as I know.’

  ‘That’s funny. When she doesn’t want to do anything she always drags in Phyllis McFee as an excuse.’

  ‘She’s probably shut up in some office where she can’t use

  the telephone.’

  ‘Well – ’ I said, ‘I wonder!’

  I did not ask Katie about M. de Valhubert but I knew that he was constantly on the line. I also noticed that Phyllis McFee, whose name had hitherto cropped up at regular but reasonable intervals, now seemed to be Northey’s inseparable companion..

  ‘Northey, aren’t you rather behind-hand with my letters?’

  ‘Not bad – about twelve, I think.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and finish them after dinner, then they would be off your mind?’

  ‘Because tonight, actually, Phyllis McFee and me are going to Catch.’

  ‘Catch?’

  ‘That’s French for all-in wrestling.’

  ‘Darling, it’s really not suitable for two girls to go alone to all-in wrestling.’

  ‘We shan’t be alone. Phyllis McFee and- me have got admirers. We shall be escorted.’ ‘How can you bear to watch it?’

  ‘I adore it. I love to see horrible humans torturing each other for a change instead of sweet animals. L’Ange Blanc, the champion, has got the fingers of a doctor, he knows just where it hurts the most – ’

  ‘Funny sort of doctor. But there’s still the question of the letters. They can’t be put offindefinitely.’

  ‘I say, Fan, you know how you’re not dining out?’

  ‘You want me to do them? But what do I pay you for?’

  ‘You won’t be paying me anything at all until November 28th next year. I’ve borrowed until then. Fanny – each for each?’

  ‘Oh, very well. Bring me your little typewriter and I’ll do them in bed.’ Only young once; we did not have these boring jobs at that age. Indeed when we were that age, Polly Hampton, my cousins and I, it was as much our duty to go out with young men and enjoy ourselves as now it was Northey’s to write twelve letters. I only wished I could be certain that Phyllis McFee was really going to be of the party and that the escort was not Valhubert. As I wrote my letters I resolved that I would have to speak to Northey; the Foreign Legion policy of no questions may be quite all right with boys; girls are a very different proposition, giddy, poor things, hopelessly frivolous, wayward and short-sighted. Although I hate all forms of interference between human beings I felt, nevertheless, that I had a duty to carry out.

  I was busy just then. Mr Gravely, the Foreign Minister, came and went. I saw little of him as the dinner which Alfred gave in his honour was for men only. He seemed a dry old stick. I said to Philip, ‘I do love Grace’s idea of him being driven to the brothels because his wife didn’t come!’

  ‘She’s not far wrong. All English politicians want to do dirty things as soon as they get to Paris. Only of course they don’t want to be seen by Mockbar. It’s a nuisance that the only night club which is fairly respectable should happen to be called Le Sexy. La Tomate sounds quite all right but.we really could not let them go there – no, I couldn’t possibly tell you. Ask Mees – ’

  Contrary to all known precedent, Mr Gravely did not fall in love with Northey, in fact he hardly noticed her. He gave her various odd jobs to do for him, speaking in a dry, official, impersonal voice which so took her by surprise that she actually did them all herself, quite efficiently.

  The night he left we dined at home. Alfred seemed tired and depressed; the visit had probably added to his difficulties. I had not yet had an account of it. David and Dawn had gone to share a bowl of rice with a friend – they never could say they were dining out, like anybody else. However, when we got to the dining-room we found that my social secretary was honouring us, a very unusual occurrence.

  ‘Your cows, Northey,’said Alfred, �
�are a nuisance.’

  ‘I know – isn’t it splendid! B.B. has stopped them, Fanny, I quite forgot to tell you. You see what can be done, by making a fuss!’

  ‘Again I say, they are a nuisance. The Irish Ambassador was so friendly to me, everything seemed perfect between us. Now he has been called home by his government for consultation. It’s very serious for the Irish – one of their main exports has vanished overnight. They all think it’s due to the devilish machinations of the English.’

  ‘So it is and serve them right for being so cruel i’

  ‘All poor peasant communities are cruel to animals, I’m afraid – and not only die Irish. If they can’t export cattle to France they’ll be even poorer. It’s not the way to make them kinder. The result will probably be that they will send the unhappy beasts to other countries where the journey will be longer and the slaughter-houses more primitive.’

  ‘B.B. doesn’t think so. He says there are no other practicable markets.’

  ‘You know you should use your, apparently absolute, power to make the French eat frozen food. If they would do that these journeys could all be stopped and the beasts could be killed at home.’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Northey, ‘they call it frigo and they loathe it. B.B. says they are quite right – it’s disgusting.’

  ‘All very well – they’ll have to come to it in the end.’

  After dinner she said she was simply exhausted. ‘I must dree my weird to bed – oh the pathos of the loneliness!’ She trotted off to her entresol. We too went early to our rooms. Before I went to bed I heard a little cheeping noise, very far off, rather like a nest of baby birds, which meant that Northey was on the telephone. I could just hear her when all was quiet in the house. As I went to sleep she was still at it. I woke up again at three in the morning; she was still piping away.

  When she came for her orders next day I said, ‘Northey, I don’t want to be indiscreet, but were you telephoning practically half the night?’

  ‘The agony of clutching the receiver all those hours! My arm is still aching!’

  ‘Who was it? M. Bouche-Bontemps?’ She looked surprised that I should ask but replied, nonchalantly, ‘No, poor duck, he is too busy nowadays. It was Charles-Édouard.’

  Just as I thought. It was evidently time that I should intervene, unless I were going weakly to let things take their course. I went on, very much against my own inclination, ‘Whatever was it all about?’

  ‘My investments.’

  ‘Indeed! Have you investments – ?’

  ‘Yes. He has forwarded me my wages until Alfred’s sixtieth birthday by which time you will retire and I shall be out of a job. Now he is advising me how to place the money. He says it’s very important because nobody else will ever employ me and I am facing a penurious old age. So I have bought Coffirep, Finarep and Rep France. You can’t imagine how they whizz. Les reps sont en pline euphorie, the Figaro said, yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t think you ought to let M. de Valhubert talk to you all night. Grace might not like it.’

  Northey’s face closed up in a mutinous expression. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do, for one. But it’s not that, darling, I worry about you. I’m so dreadfully afraid you will fall in love with Charles-Édouard.’

  ‘Fanny! Hoar antiquity!’

  ‘No hoarier than most of your followers – they all seem to be over forty and Bouche-Bontemps – ’

  ‘But I’m not in love with any of them. Is this a talking-to?’

  ‘I suppose it is a sort of one.’

  ‘Quelle horrible surprise! You never scold me. What’s come over you?’

  ‘I’m not scolding, I’m trying to advise. There are sometimes moments in people’s lives when they take a wrong direction. I feel that both Basil and David have – but men can more easily get back to the right path than women. You ought to reflect upon what you want, eventually, and steer towards that. Now, as M. de Valhubert has noticed, you don’t seem to have professional ambitions, so I suppose you are after marriage?’

  ‘Perhaps I would prefer to be a concubine – ’

  ‘Very welL In that case the first rule is don’t enter a seraglio where there is a head wife already.’

  ‘I see your mind is still running on Charles-Éidouard.’

  ‘All this midnight telephoning makes it run.’

  ‘But Fanny, if I wanted to hug Charles-Édouard I would do it in bed, not on the end of a telephone line.’

  ‘I don’t say you do want to hug, yet. I’m simply afraid that presently you may.’

  ‘I’ve often told you I’m in love with Worshipful.’

  ‘Yes, often, indeed! Do you think it’s true?’

  ‘St Expédite is covered with candles – why do you ask me that?’

  ‘If you want to marry Philip you’re setting about it in a very funny way.’

  ‘I never said I wanted to marry him. Why shouldn’t I be his concubine?’

  ‘Philip isn’t a Pasha, he’s an ambitious English Gvil Servant. The last thing he would do would be to saddle himself with a concubine – drag her round after him from post to post, can you imagine it! He’d very soon get the sack if he did. The only thing he might do would be to marry you.’

  ‘Fanny – you said it was hopeless – ’

  ‘You are making it quite hopeless by your behaviour.’

  ‘How ought I to behave?’

  ‘Be more serious. Show that you are the sort of person who would make a splendid Ambassadress – pay more attention to your work – ’

  ‘Now I see exactly what you ate getting at – ’

  ‘Our interests happen to coincide. And go slow with the followers.’

  ‘I don’t understand why, as I don’t hug – ’

  ‘I might believe that but nobody else will. With Frenchmen love leads to hugs.’

  ‘They’re not in love.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘They wouldn’t mind a hug or two, I must admit, and they do sometimes very kindly offer, but they’re not in love. I know, because as soon as somebody is I can’t bear him. There was somebody at home – oh, Fanny, the horror of it!’

  ‘Dear me, this is very inconvenient. How are we ever going to get you settled?’

  ‘With Worshipful of course, who you say never will be –’

  Alfred came in. ‘Bouche-Bontemps seems to be on the telephone for you,’ he said to Northey, ‘in the library. They made a mistake (Katie’s day off) and put the call through to me – his secretary was very much embarrassed.’ As Northey skipped away, delighted, no doubt, at being delivered from a tiresome lecture, he shouted after her, ‘Ask him if his government will survive the debate on the national parks, will you?’

  ‘No. I’m not the Intelligence Service! Ask your spies – !’

  ‘Is that rather cheeky? Never mind. I say, Fanny, our son Basil has appeared. He is dressed [falsetto] like “O Richard, O mon Roi!” What do you think this portends?’

  ‘I hardly care to tell you. He has left the crammer, given up all idea of the Foreign Service and has become a travel agent.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Alfred,’ Basil too?’

  ‘But he’s not quite as bad as poor darling David,’ I hastened to say, ‘because there is no bogus philosophy, no wife, no adopted baby involved and at least he has work and prospects of a sort. He doesn’t do nothing all the time. Oh, how I wish I knew where we went wrong with those boys – !’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the modern trend and not exactly our fault.’ ‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

  ‘Having breakfast with the Zen family in the dining-room. David has come down in his dressing-gown today – he looks ghastly. They started nagging away at each other – I couldn’t stand it, I took my coffee to the library.’

  ‘Nagging about what?’

  ‘It seems [falsetto] that Beards never get on with Teds. Well, I must go, I’m due at the Affaires Étrangéres.’

  ‘The Eels?’

  �
��Oh yes indeed – the Eels, the European Army, Guinea, Arms to Arabs – I’ve got a horrible morning ahead.’

  ‘And the young man who pirated Dior’s designs?’

  ‘No, Mr Stock copes with that, thank goodness. See you presently.’

  My next visitor was Basil. I saw what Alfred meant: with his loose garment, tight trousers and hair curling under at the back he had the silhouette of a troubadour. Although I vastly preferred his appearance to that of David (he was quite dean, almost soigné in fact) I wished so much that they could both be ordinary, well-dressed Englishmen. I felt thankful that we had been able to send the two youngest to Eton; presumably they at least, when grown up, would look like everybody else.

  Basil plumped on to my bed. ‘I say, old David’s gone to seed, hasn’t he? Of course one knows he’s holy and all that – still – !’

  ‘How long since you saw him?’

  ‘About a year, I should think.’

  ‘He told me it was he who advised you to take to the road, or whatever it is you have taken to?’

  ‘The coffce-and-jump, did he just? What a build-up! It’s true, he used to bang out long saintly letters in that weird old Bible script of his but naturally I never read them.’

  ‘I worry about you boys. What are you up to, Baz?’

  ‘Well, it’s like this. The Spanish season is over, thanks be. I’ve brought over a flock of the bovines on the hoof – turned them out to graze in the Louvre this morning – this afternoon I shall be flogging them down to Versailles. But these little tours are peanuts; we want to keep, the racket going until Grandad can get the hustle on his new phenangles. And oh boy! Is he cooking up some sleigh-rides!’

  My heart sank. If I did not quite understand what Basil was saying I felt instinctively against phenangles and sleigh-rides. They were not likely to denote a kind of work that Alfred would approve of. ‘Could you talk English, darling?’

  ‘Yes, Mother dear, I will. I gets carried away when I thinks of me ole Grandad. Well then, with Granny Bolter’s capital (she sends her love incidentally) he is building a fleet of telly-rest coaches. Get the idea? The occupational disease of the British tourist is foot and mouth. Their feet are terrible, it makes even my hard heart bleed when I see what they suffer after an hour or two in a museum. By this evening several of them will be in tears. There are always some old bags who flatly refuse to get out of the bus towards the end of a day; they just sit in the car-park while their mates trail round the gilded saloons to see where the sneering aristocrats of olden times used to hit it up. Sometimes gangrene sets in – we had two amputations at Port Bou – very bad for trade – just the sort of thing that puts people off lovely holidays in Latin lands. The other trouble, mouth, is worse. Britons literally cannot digest Continental provender – it brings on diarrhoea and black vomit as surely as hemlock would. The heads I’ve held – I ought to know. After a bit they collapse and die in agony – no more foreign travel for them. So I reports all this to ole Grandad and ‘e strikes ‘is forehead and says, “Now I’ve got a wizard wheeze” and just like that, in a flash, this man of genius has invented the telly-rest coach. When they gets to the place they’ve come to see – the Prado, say, or some old-world hill town in Tuscany, they just sits on in the coach and views the ‘ole thing comfortable on TV while eating honest grub, frozen up in Britain, and drinking wholesome Kia-ora, all off plastic trays like in aeroplanes. If they wants a bit of local atmosphere, the driver can spray about with a garlic gun. You wait, Ma, this is going to revolutionize the tourist trade. Grandad has got a board of experts working out the technical details and we hope to have the first coaches ready by next summer. We reckon it will save many a British life – mine among others, because they will no longer need a courier.’