Don't Tell Alfred Read online

  Of course I knew that this state of mind is common among middle-aged, middle-class women whose children have gone into the world. Its causes, both psychological and physiological, are clearly understood nowadays and so is the fact that there is no remedy. What can’t be cured must be endured. But Alfred’s miraculous appointment might effect a miraculous cure. I had often longed to leave behind me a token of my existence, a shell on the seashore of eternity. Here was my chance; Alfred might become one of those plenipotentiaries whose names are ever remembered with gratitude and respect, and some of the credit might be mine. At the very least I would now have a little tiny place in history as one of the occupants of a famous house.

  All this was rather cheerful, if high-falutin’, midnight stuff. But by the early hours doubts and terrors were crowding in. I knew little enough about Paris or diplomatic life, but I did know, like everybody else, that Sir Louis and Lady Leone, whom we were to replace, held a glittering court there, reminiscent of the great embassies of olden days. Lady Leone was universally admitted to be more beautiful, charming and witty than any other woman in public life. Absurd to think that I could compete with her – how could I fill her place even adequately? Not only had I no training, not the very slightest knowledge of diplomacy, but I had certain decided disabilities. I can never remember people, for instance, either their names or their faces or anything at all about them. I am a poor housekeeper. When I first arrived in Oxford as a young bride I had resolved not to be as other dons’ wives in this respect; to begin with my dinners were decidedly better than theirs. However, my dear Mrs Heathery never improved beyond a certain point, I had four hungry boys to shovel down the vitamins and a husband who never noticed what he ate. After the end of coupons, other people’s food improved, mine did not. I had never presided over a large household or had more than three servants (one of them a daily) in my life. What would the domestic side of the Embassy be like, mismanaged by me? Visiting Ministers, or worse, visiting Royalty, would complain and this would be bad for Alfred. My clothes – better to draw a veil. So, with my absent-mindedness and ghastly food and ghastly clothes I should become the Aunt Sally of diplomatic life, a butt and a joke.

  I only wished I could go to sleep for a bit and forget the whole thing. Yes, a joke. I began to see myself in farcical situations. This silly habit of kissing everybody – quite new since the war. My ex-undergraduates and other men friends kiss when they see me; it has become an automatic gesture. Mental picture: a party In some official building, very pompous and grand. Out of pure distraction I kiss the President of the Republic.

  I suffer from weak ankles and sometimes topple over unexpectedly. When this happens in the Turl nobody minds; I am picked up by some friendly young chap, go home and change my stockings. Mental picture: The Arc de Triomphe, military music, wreaths, television cameras. Hop, down I come, extinguishing the Eternal Flame. Now I really must wake myself up properly from these half-nightmares, undermining my morale. I stood at the window and, watching the sun’s first rays as they fell upon Christ Church, I let myself get very cold. Then I went back to my warm bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  In the morning when I told Alfred some of these unnerving thoughts (not the kissing and falling-down ones however) he said, ‘I specially didn’t want you to lie in bed working yourself up, that’s why I never mentioned your side of the business last night. I’m glad to say Philip is in England and I’ve told him to come and have luncheon with you today. You’ll be able to talk it all over with him and get these worries out of your system. I must go to London for a few hours.’

  ‘Oh, of course we shall find Philip in Paris – I’d quite forgotten he was there. I say, what a comfort!’

  ‘Yes, and a great comfort to me, too. Meanwhile do remember that the social side is quite unimportant. As I told you last night mine is intended to be a serious mission – sobriety, security the keynotes. The ci-devants have had their day with the Leones, I intend to concentrate on the politicians and people of real importance. And by the way, dearest, perhaps your – shall I say – flightier relations could be discouraged from paying us too many visits?’

  ‘Yes, darling, I quite agree. But the boys –’

  ‘The boys! Why of course it will be their home whenever they want to come. Nice to have a healthy youthful element, which has been lacking there of late.’

  This was clearly not the moment to mention my worries about Basil. Anyhow, the holidays were about to begin, when he was supposed to be leaving the crammer to work on his own in some quiet place. I decided to wait and see what happened.

  Philip Cliffe-Musgrave sauntered in at one o’clock. Ten years younger than me, he was by far my favourite of all the undergraduates who had passed through our hands, so to speak. Owing to the war, he had come late to Oxford, a man, not a boy. He had, I thought, been slightly in love with me and I might easily have returned this slight love had not the example of my mother, die Bolter, for ever discouraged me from such adventures which begin so cheerfully and finish so shoddily, I had noticed. However, we had trodden the pleasant path of a loving friendship and I had remained extremely fond of him. He was an elegant creature, the best-dressed man I have ever seen, and one of those people who seem to have been born with a knowledge of the world. Alfred thought him very brilliant.

  ‘Well,’ we said now, looking at each other and laughing.

  ‘Madame l’ Ambassadrice. Too interesting for words. There have been the wildest rumours about Sir Louis’s successor, but truth is certainly stranger than fiction. The dinners I shall be asked to when it gets out that I actually know you!’

  ‘Philip, I’m terrified!’

  ‘No wonder. They’ll gobble you up, all those smart women. At first, that is. I think you’ll defend yourself in the long run.’

  ‘You are horrid – Alfred said you would reassure me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m only teasing.’

  ‘Be careful – I’m in a delicate state. Such a lot of things I want to ask; where to begin? Do the Leones know?’

  ‘That they are leaving? Oh yes.’

  ‘I mean about us?’

  ‘When I came away, three days ago, he had been told it was a possibility. They’ll be pleased, I think. That is, it will kill her to leave the Embassy but if she has to hand it over she’d rather it were to someone like you.’

  ‘Oh. Dreary, d’you mean?’

  ‘Different. And above all not the wife of a colleague. You don’t know what the jealousy between wives is like, in that service. As for Sir Louis, he is a typical career diplomat. He despises the amateur and is certain that Alfred will make an unholy mess of the job. This, of course, will soften the blow of leaving quite considerably.’

  ‘Philip, do tell me – why have they chosen Alfred?’

  ‘Up to their clever tricks, you know.’

  ‘Now what’s coming?’ I said, uneasily.

  ‘Don’t be so nervous. I only mean that when the war was comfortably over, the Entente doing all right, the allies in love with each other – not the rulers but the people – everybody busy with their own internal affairs, they sent Sir Louis to captivate the French. And oh, how he succeeded – they eat out of his hand. Now that we are running into choppy seas they send Alfred to puzzle them.’

  ‘And will he puzzle them?’

  ‘As he does everybody. His whole career has been one long mystery if you come to consider it. What was he doing with Ernie Bevin during the war? Have you ever understood? Nobody else has. Did you know that he lunches at No. 10, alone with the P.M., at least once a week? Bet you didn’t. Or that the well-informed regard him as one of those people who really govern the country?’

  ‘Alfred is very secret,’ I said reflectively. ‘I often think that’s why I’m so happy with him. Plate glass is such a bore.’

  ‘I shall be very much interested to see him at work. No doubt he will keep Bouche-Bontemps and his merry men in a state of chronic perplexity which may be very useful.’

 
‘Who is Bouche-Bontemps?’

  ‘My poor Fanny, you’ll have to mug up the political situation a bit. Surely you must have heard of him – he’s the French foreign minister.’

  ‘They change so often.’

  ‘Yes, but there are a few old faithfuls who reappear like the soldiers in Faust and he is one.’

  ‘I know about M. Mendes-France.’

  ‘Only because he’s called France. Everybody in England has heard of him because the Daily Post goes on about Mr France, which makes it nice and easy.’

  ‘I know about General de Gaulle.’

  ‘Yes, well you can forget him, for the moment at any rate.’

  ‘To go back to the Leones. She minds leaving dreadfully?’

  ‘All Ambassadresses mind. They are generally carried screaming from the house – “encore un instant, M. le Bourreau” – poor Pauline, yes, she is in despair.’

  ‘And you’ll hate to lose her?’

  ‘Yes. I adore her. At the same time, Fanny, as it’s you, I shall be on your side.’

  ‘Need there be sides? Must we be enemies?’

  ‘It is never otherwise. You’d better know the form. By the time you arrive she’ll have had an enormous send-off at the Garc du Nord – the whole of Paris – flashlights, flowers, speeches, tears. All her world will have heard – not directly from her but by a sort of bush telegraph – what brutes you and Alfred are. I suppose I shall swim against the tide, but I shan’t exhaust myself – a few languid strokes – because it will turn so quickly. The point is that, until you arrive, Parisian society will curse upon your name and wish you dead, but from the moment you set foot in the Embassy you will become entirely delightful. Soon we shall hear that the Leones never really quite did, in Paris.’

  ‘How cynical you are.’

  ‘That’s life, I guess. Mind you their friends will continue to love them, give dinners for them when they go back and so on. But people are always attracted by power and high office; a house like the Embassy, to which the rulers of the earth gravitate, is worth more to its occupant than the prettiest face, the kindest heart, the oldest friendship. Come now, Fanny, you know enough of the world to know that, I suppose. In this case you are the beneficiary. Soon it will be as though Pauline had never been there – Pauline Leone. Pauline Borghese never leaves and she is on the side of the sitting tenant.’

  ‘Why Pauline Borghese?’

  ‘It was her house, you know. We bought it from her, furniture and all, after Waterloo.’

  ‘Oh, dear. You haven’t really reassured me very much. There’s another thing, Philip – clothes. Of course there’s always Elliston’s Petite Boutique but it’s so expensive.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry. As soon as you arrive, you’ll make an arrangement with one of the dressmakers there. Aren’t you rather rich now, Fanny?’

  ‘Richer, yes we are. My father left me quite a lot – I was surprised. But what with the boys and so on I never feel I ought to spend much on myself.’

  He then told me about the running of an embassy and calmed my fears in that direction. According to him, the comptroller and the housekeeper do the work. ‘You will only need a social secretary – some nice quiet girl who won’t get married at once.’

  ‘I’d thought of that. My cousin Louisa Fort William has got the very one, Jean Mackintosh.’

  ‘Yes, I know her. Not a ball of fire, is she? By the way, whom d’you think I saw at a cocktail party last night? Lord Alconleigh.’

  ‘No! Do tell me what he was doing?’

  ‘He was standing with his back to the wall, a large glass of water in his hand, glaring furiously into space. The rest of the company was huddled together, rather like a herd of deer with an old lion in the offing. It was impressive – not altogether cosy, you know.’

  Alfred’s appointment was well received by the responsible newspapers, partly no doubt because many of their employees had been at Oxford and known him there. It was violently opposed by the Daily Post. This little paper, once considered suitable for schoolroom reading, had been bought by a press peer known to the world as Old Grumpy and now reflected his jaundiced view of life. It fed on scandal, grief and all forms of human misery, exposing them with a sort of spiteful glee which the public evidently relished, since the more cruelly the Daily Post tortured its victims the higher the circulation rose. Its policy, if it could be said to have one, was to be against foreign countries, cultural bodies, and the existing government, whether Conservative or Labour. Above all, it abominated the Foreign Office. The burden of its song on this occasion was, what is the point of maintaining an expensive foreign service which cannot produce a trained man to be Ambassador in Paris but has to fall back on a Professor of Pastoral Theology.

  The French papers were perfectly friendly, if puzzled. The Figaro produced a leading article by a member of the Académie Francaise in which the word pastoral was wilfully misunderstood and theology left out altogether. The Knight on horseback (Alfred) coming to the Shepherdess in her orchard (Marianne) was the theme. No mention of the Knight’s wife and boys (Alfred was a Knight now; he had been to London and seen the Queen).

  I received many letters of congratulation, praising Alfred, praising me, saying how well we were suited to the work we should have to do and then going on to speak of some child or friend or protégé of the writer’s who would like to join our establishment in almost any capacity. Louisa Fort William, ever practical, cut out the praise and offered me Jean. Alfred knew this Jean, who had been up at Oxford, and did not include her among my flightier relations. With his approval I wrote and engaged her to be our social secretary.

  At Oxford, Alfred’s colleagues and their wives took but little account of our news. This was no surprise to me. Nobody who has not lived in a university town can have any idea of its remoteness from the world. The dons live like monks in a cloister, outside time and space, occupied only with the daily round; ambassadors to Paris do not enter their ken or interest them in the very least. To be Warden or Dean would seem to them a far greater thing. At this time, it is true, there were some rich, worldly dons whose wives dressed at Dior, and who knew about Paris and embassies, a tiny minority on the fringe of the University – in every way; they did not even live in the town itself as we did. They regarded Alfred as a bore; lie disregarded them; their wives disregarded me. These Dior dons were not pleased by our appointment; they laughed long and loud, as kind friends informed us, at the idea of it and made witty jokes at our expense. No doubt they thought the honour would sit better upon them; how I agreed with them, really!

  After twenty-five years of university life my outlook was more akin to that of the monkish than to the Dior type of don, but, though I had little first-hand experience of the world, I did know what it was. My cousin Linda had been in contact with it and my mother had always been of it, even during her wildest vagaries. Lady Montdore, though she saw real life through distorting glasses, had had the world and its usage at her fingertips; I had not been a sort of lady-in-waiting to her for nothing. How I wished she were still alive to see what fate had brought to me – like the Dior dons she would have mocked and disapproved but unlike them she would have been rather impressed, no doubt.

  Our summer holidays passed as usual. Alfred and I went to stay with Davey Warbeck, in Kent, and paid one or two other visits. Our youngest boys, Charlie and Fabrice, were hardly with us at all. They were invited by a boy called Sigismond de Valhubert, who was at their house at Eton, to stay in Provence, after which all three went shooting in Scotland. Bearded David sent postcards from the Lakes – he was on a walking tour. As for Basil, he might have been dead for all I knew; I weakly told Alfred that he had gone to Barcelona to rub up his Spanish. Very soon we came to the last days of August and of our monotonous but familiar Oxford life.

  Chapter Three

  I SHALL never forget my first impression of the Embassy. After the hurly-burly of our reception at the Gare du Nord, after the drive through Paris traffic which always unnerves
those not accustomed to it, the large, beautiful, honey-coloured house, in its quiet courtyard, seemed a haven of delight. It has more the atmosphere of a country than a town house. For one thing, no town noises can be heard, only the rustle of leaves, the twittering of birds, an occasional mowing-machine, an owl. The trench windows on the garden side fill the rooms with sunshine and air in amazing quantities. They open to a vista of trees; the only solid edifice in sight is the dome of the Invalides, a purple shadow on the horizon, hardly visible through summer leaves. Except for that and the Eiffel Tower, on the extreme right hand of this prospect, there is nothing to show that the house is situated in the centre of the most prosperous and busy capital on the continent of Europe. Philip took us straight up to the first floor. At the top of the fine staircase there is an antichamber leading to the yellow drawing-room, the white and gold drawing-room, the green drawing-room (to be our private sitting-room) and Pauline Borghese’s bedroom, so recently vacated by the other Pauline. These rooms all face south and open into each other. Behind them, looking north over the courtyard, are the Ambassador’s dressing-room and library and the social secretary’s office. Well-wishers had filled the house with flowers; they made it look very beautiful, glowing in the evening light, and also reassured me. Many people seemed prepared, at any rate, to like us.

  I believe it would have been normal for me to have paid a visit to the outgoing ambassadress soon after our appointment was announced. However, the said ambassadress had set up such an uninhibited wail when she knew she was to leave, proclaiming her misery to all and sundry and refusing so furiously to look on the bright side (a happy and respected old age in a Kensington flat), that it was felt she might not be very nice to me. Her attitude seemed rather exaggerated until I saw what it was that we were usurping; then I understood. Lady Leone had reigned in this palace – the word reign is not too much, with her beauty, elegance and great funni-ness she had been like a Queen here – for five whole years; no wonder she left it all with death in her heart.