The Blessing by Nancy Mitford Page B

of her invention. ‘No wonder those five fortune-tellers said you would be killed in the war – they simply had to, to get rid of you.’
    ‘Once more, Tante Régine – do I cut in three this time?’
    ‘That’s it, flog the poor old horse till it drops.’
    ‘I passed by Madame André’s cottage this afternoon, and made her tell the cards. She is much more dramatic than you, Tante Régine – dark ladies and fair ladies – wicked ladies of all sorts about chez Madame André.’
    ‘Yes, but I am handicapped by the presence of your wife,’ said Madame Rocher, laughing.
    ‘Oh!’ said Grace, from the bridge table, ‘you mustn’t be. I’m not a bit a jealous person. I don’t know what it is to be jealous.’
    Madame Rocher raised her eyebrows, Madame de Valhubert and M. de la Bourlie looked sadly at each other across the table, and M. le Curé said, ‘I declare a little slam.’
    ‘That’s very naughty, M. le Curé,’ said Grace, ‘now we shall be two down.’

6
    ‘It’s about this Mr Labby, dear.’
    Charles-Edouard, who always got things done at once when he had decided upon them, had produced a young abbé to give Sigismond his lessons, and of course M. l’Abbé and Nanny were, from the very first, at daggers drawn. That is to say, Nanny’s dagger was drawn, but it hardly penetrated the thick, black, clerical robes of the priest, who seemed quite unaware of her existence. That was his weapon.
    ‘Oh Nan! But he seems nice, don’t you think? So gentle. And Sigi loves him.’
    Indeed that was partly the trouble. Sigi was always running off to be with M. l’Abbé, adored his lessons, had asked for longer hours, and Nanny was jealous.
    ‘That’s as may be,’ she said darkly, ‘you never can tell with these foreign clergymen, but it’s his little brain I’m thinking of. Their little brains are so easily taxed. I wish you could hear him scream of a night. He’s nothing but a bundle of nerves, all on edge – awful dreams he has, poor little fellow. I was wondering if these lessons aren’t too much for him.’
    ‘No, darling, of course not. We all learnt to read, you know. I was reading The Making of a Marchioness when Mummy died, I remember it so well.’
    It was a memory that she always found rather disturbing. The little girl, with her nose in the book, had felt that she ought to feel sad, and yet all she wanted was to get on with the story. Sir Conrad had come into the nursery, tears pouring down his cheeks, at the very moment when Emily Fox-Seaton was setting out for the fish, and Grace had been distinctly annoyed by the interruption. Later on in life she had pondered over this apparent heartlessness with some astonishment. Did little children, then, not feel sorrow, or was it that the book had provided her with a refuge from the tragic, and perhaps embarrassing, reality?
    She did not remember feeling sorrow at the loss of her mother, though she had often been seized with a physical longing for the soft lap and scented bosom of that intensely luxurious woman.
    ‘I was only six – do you admit, Nanny?’
    ‘Practically seven, and girls are always more forward.’
    ‘Besides, you know, he simply must learn French.’
    Nanny sniffed. ‘He’s learning French quick enough from that Canary. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about, when he’s with Canary and all those other little devils they go off together goodness knows where, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they bathe in the pond.’
    ‘I expect they do.’ Grace had, indeed, often seen them at it, and very pretty they looked popping naked in and out of the green water of a Renaissance fountain on the edge of the village. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Sigi’s papa says he always bathed there when he was a child. It’s perfectly safe.’
    ‘Oh, perfectly safe until the poor little chap gets poliomyelitis and spends the rest of his life in a wheel chair. I wish to goodness he’d never taken up with that Canary, he’s a perfect