A Moment in Paris (2 page)

‘That’s all right,’ Diana answered, and smiled at her, trying to see in her the future helpmeet of a haughty aristocrat, a collector of
objets d’art,
a man of numberless interests and a burning ambition. She tried to picture her as the sharer of his noble name, the mother of his heir who would one day carry on that name, his hostess at extremely formal dinner-parties and more carefree week-ends in the country at one of those grey chateaux that are so often piled upon impressive heights in France. But somehow she couldn’t see her fulfilling any of these roles. She belonged, rather, on Hollywood’s celluloid screen.

‘Philippe did mention you would be coming to see me today, but I don’t mind confessing I got rather sore and told him I didn’t want to be bossed around by a governess at my time of life,’ she said, with a strong tinge of resentment. ‘After all, I’m not exactly a kid, am I? I was nineteen last birthday.’

‘And I was twenty-two,’ Diana told her, smiling her rather gentle little half-smile.

‘Then perhaps it’s a companion he’s got in mind?’ Celeste said, brightening. ‘After all, this house is a bit like a morgue, and I expect the one in the country is worse, and we go there some time next week. And, unless he feels like letting me see something of him, Philippe’s about as companionable as a husband already!’

Diana was conscious of a slight sensation of further shock. ‘Then you are already living here in this house? I thought perhaps it was merely a kind of rendezvous for our first meeting.’

Celeste shook her head.

‘I’ve been living here for weeks, and apart from all the spending and the night-clubs and smart hotels it’s so dull sometimes I could scream my head off. But Philippe doesn’t understand,’ she complained.

‘But surely,’ Diana said gently, ‘you’re not living here alone? Just with servants, I mean,’ she explained. ‘There is some sort of a—well, chaperone—who keeps an eye on you, and is company for you?’

Celeste’s eyes glinted wickedly. ‘You mean, are we living together without being married? Oh, no, nothing of that sort, and we’re going to be married all right. Philippe’s a comte, you know, and he doesn’t do that sort of thing ... At least, not with a girl who’s going to be his wife.’ She fumbled in the pocket of her silk robe and produced a crumbled packet of American cigarettes, which she passed to Diana. ‘Being a Frenchman he probably does a lot of things on the side, but they won’t worry me if I never hear about them.’

This time Diana felt a trifle staggered.

‘But there is someone living in the house apart from yourself and the Comte?’ she insisted.

‘Oh, yes, an old aunt of his, a Lady Bembridge, who married an Englishman. But she’s crippled with arthritis and I hardly ever see her. Besides, she doesn’t approve of me. She shudders every time I open my mouth.’

‘Then she can’t be very much of a companion for you?’

‘No.’ She drew fiercely on her cigarette, and then exhaled smoke languidly. ‘I expect you wonder how all this came about. My meeting with Philippe, and how and when he fell in love with me? Well, it was when he was touring America and studying American methods of film-making. I had a small part in a not very important film, and as soon as he saw me he flew off the handle about me at once. He decided it was high time he married, and that I’d do very nicely for a wife. I wasn’t very certain at first...’

‘Then what made you become certain?’ Diana asked.

‘Oh, when he began to give me expensive presents and really take me about. He rented whole suites in hotels for me, and bought me the most heavenly jewellery and wonderful clothes!’ She indicated the dress boxes on the floor. ‘These have been made for me since I came to Paris, and if you look at the labels you’ll see that I’m now being dressed by the most exclusive fashion house of the lot. Just an exciting name to me until a few weeks ago!... And there’s a Madame Denys Armand, who designs the most fabulous things, who has been given the order for my trousseau. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really awake!’

‘And if you suddenly discovered it was all a dream would you be very upset?’

Celeste smiled strangely. ‘What do you think? Every whim granted, and a man who is so good-looking it would be a pleasure to sit and look at him for hours on end! You know, I honestly can’t believe he’s going to be my husband very soon ...
My husband
!’

‘Then you really are in love with
him,
and not just the thought that you’ll be a Comtesse?’

Celeste sent her a long look from her wonderful deep violet eyes.

‘I’m nineteen, and he’s thirty-seven,’ she remarked, studying the polished tips of her fingers. ‘It’s a big gap, isn’t it? But it doesn’t really worry me.’ She avoided the subject of love. ‘Of course I want to be a Comtesse, but that isn’t everything. I’ll have to live up to it, won’t I? And that won’t be easy. That’s why you’re here, to try and give me a little bit of polish and bring me up to top-drawer standard, like Philippe! For of course I know I’m not in the same class as he is.’

Diana tried to soften the reason why she had been offered a fabulous salary, and assured her that with a little effort on both their parts it should be easy to acquire the polish.

‘I suppose I do love him in a kind of a way,’ Celeste admitted, returning to a question she had previously ignored. ‘I love it when he makes love to me, and that’s important, isn’t it?’ She lifted the violet eyes to Diana’s face. ‘I’ve had men in my life before,’ she confessed, ‘but it’s never been quite like this ... feeling light-headed at the thought of actually
belonging
to a man, if you know what I mean?’

Diana did know—or, rather, she understood—but in the polite world in which she had been brought up, uninhibited revelations of that sort were not normally indulged in, and she looked away.

Celeste leaned forward and caught at her wrist.

‘I like you,’ she said. ‘Or I believe I could like you! You’re not a bit as I expected you would be, someone with a bun and wearing glasses, who would look down her nose at me. You’re young, and you’re not too snootily English. Between us, perhaps, if we worked hard, we could surprise Philippe ... let him see I’m not so very unlike those ancestresses of his he’s always talking to me about! The Duchesse of Somewhere-or-Other, who was a famous beauty, and the Marquise de—’

There came a sharp tap at the door, and they looked at one another. Diana, who had been quite touched by the other’s appeal—although she doubted whether even Bernard Shaw in his heyday could have brought about quite such a metamorphosis as she was asked to bring about—expected the owner of the bedroom to call “Come in”, but she didn’t do so. She looked for an instant almost afraid.

Then the tap came again, and before Celeste could even attempt to voice an inquiry, the door was swung inwards and the Comte de Chatignard stood looking in upon them.

His brow was black, and his eyes were cold.

‘I gave you to understand that we would be lunching punctually at one o’clock today, Celeste,’ he said, ‘and it is now a quarter past twelve! I expected you to bring Miss Craven down to drink an aperitif with my aunt, but you are not even dressed!’ He cast a disdainful glance at the disordered room, and although Diana would scarcely have believed it possible, his expression hardened still more.

Celeste said in a fluttering, nervous voice: ‘I’m so sorry, Philippe. I didn’t realize it was so late. But I’ll be ready in ten minutes if I can only have Hortense.’

He gazed at her with a disconcerting steadiness, but after a moment the black eyes softened.

‘I’ll give you half an hour,’ he told her. ‘I’ll telephone and put back our luncheon arrangement by half an hour.’ Then he spoke sharply to Hortense as she arrived. ‘Show Mademoiselle Craven to her room, after which you must return here and assist Mademoiselle O’Brien to dress. And restore some sort of order to this room,’ he added, ‘it’s in a revolting state!’

As Diana followed the trim figure of the maid along the thickly-carpeted corridor she heard Celeste apologizing once more.

‘I’m so sorry, Philippe!’ And she sounded abject.

Diana thought: ‘So he’s fastidious. Fastidious and hard, and cold and punctual. And not above making the girl he’s going to marry look small in front of a complete stranger to her!’

And she spared a much more sympathetic thought for Celeste.

‘It’s to be hoped she’s in love with him. Or would it be better, perhaps—from her point of view!—if she isn’t?’

CHAPTER TWO

Diana washed her hands and powdered her nose in a room that was so unlike the room she had occupied while she was governess to the Fleming children that she wished Margot could see it

Margot was an attractive, butterfly personality who entertained lavishly, but did not concern herself overmuch with the comfort of those she employed. She and Diana had had a year together at the same Swiss finishing school, and that was one reason why Diana had thought it would be pleasant to work for her. But she had overlooked the fact that it is one thing to be young and carefree in a carefree establishment, and quite another to have to seek favours from an ex-roommate.

Margot’s husband was some sort of junior attaché at the Embassy, and he enjoyed Paris almost as much as his wife did. Their flat had been a sort of club for their friends, both French and English, and their children had been left almost solely to the care of Diana. She had looked after them for three months, and endeavoured to get the better of a state of rowdy hoydenism which was the result of their having lived almost exclusively on the Continent without the right sort of supervision, and when Peter Fleming received an abrupt recall to London was almost relieved that she was to be deprived of a job.

Not that she hadn’t grown very fond of the children—a boy and a girl—for they had some endearing qualities, but the endless parties that went on at the flat, and the apparently incurable irresponsibility of the parents, had begun to get her down.

The one thing Margot had done for her was find her another position, and it was due to her that Diana had entered that imposing building where the Comte de Chatignard had an entire suite of offices. And now, owing to Margot, she had found her way to another imposing house that was one of the oldest in Paris, situated in a quarter that was occupied only by the cream of that fashionable world where money and elegance went hand in hand, and all-night parties were conducted in a manner that never disturbed the dignity of the atmosphere.

Somewhere—in quite a different Paris—there were theatres and night-clubs and shops and
midinettes,
and serious
vendeuses
who sold the fabulous garments that were the heart and core of a smart Parisienne’s wardrobe; but here in this leafy corner there was none of that. In the spring it was a world of tender green; in the summer the spreading branches protected it from the trying heat of the sun, and on a February day such as this it was still and cold and grey ... and dignified.

She looked out of her window at a kind of enclosed courtyard, in the middle of which a towering chestnut tree looked almost nakedly bare. And she thought how deliciously cool it would be beneath its branches in the summer.

Then she took another appraising glance at herself in the mirror and decided she had done all she could to improve her appearance. She was not at all sure that her new hat suited her, but her hair curled softly beneath it, rather like the bronze-gold petals of a tulip turning up from her neck. And the jewel-green velvet made her grey eyes look somehow a little green, too.

She left her austere but beautiful room and walked silently along the corridor. The maid had explained to her a little of the geography of the house, and it was not particularly difficult to find her way to the main salon where Lady Bembridge would be awaiting her.

Lady Bembridge was partly sitting, partly lying, on an Empire couch in the wide window. Diana hadn’t seen quite such a wide window before, and there was a certain amount of heraldic glass let into it. The deep gloom of the February day was banished by the soft shimmer of the lights that fell across wonderful examples of tapestry and chairs covered in satin damask. Tables with a delicate inlay of rare woods upheld great bowls and vases of flowers, and the warm air was spicy with their perfume.

A fire of logs burned in an enormous fireplace, and the white ash, falling soundlessly to the great hearth, added its aromatic incense to the perfume of the flowers.

‘Ah, so there you are, my dear!’ the Comte’s aunt exclaimed, and beckoned her to come nearer. She was a plump, shrewd, but thoroughly amiable-looking woman in an extremely smart outfit.

‘Do sit down,’ she said, vaguely indicating any one of the chairs near her. ‘Philippe should join us any minute now, and I suppose we shall have the pleasure of Celeste’s company as soon as she’s put on all that make-up she wears. For a young girl it seems to me a trifle excessive, but young things nowadays don’t seem to know the value of a natural complexion.’

She peered rather hard at Diana, as if she was both intrigued and surprised by what she saw.

‘You’re very attractive, my dear,’ she told her. ‘English, of course?’

Diana nodded.

Lady Bembridge clasped her be-ringed hands.

‘I always say you can tell an English girl as soon as she enters a room. It isn’t only the complexion, but something about the carriage of the head, and the way she behaves. Neither shy nor too forthcoming.’ She picked up a pearl-handled lorgnette and levelled it at Diana. ‘I’ve lived in England for years, and I speak English whenever the opportunity arises, so it will be nice to have you in the house. One of these days I shall go back to England, and it would be a pity if I were not as fluent as I used to be.’

Diana agreed, and murmured something that sounded appropriate. And then because she didn’t know quite what to say, she asked the elderly lady whether she liked England.