The Blessing by Nancy Mitford Read Free Book Online

off. He thought he was going to like her even more in France than in England, and was well satisfied to have come back accompanied by this happy beauty.
    Alas for the hot, tipsy sleep! Nanny sobered and woke her up all right, her expression alone was a wave of icy water. Grace did not even bother to say ‘Wasn’t the luncheon delicious? Did you enjoy it?’ She just stood and meekly waited for the wave to break over her head.
    ‘Well, dear, we’ve had nothing to eat since you saw us, nothing whatever. Course upon course of nasty greasy stuff smelling of garlic – a month’s ration of meat, yes, but quite raw you know – shame, really – I wasn’t going to touch it, let alone give it to Sigi, poor little mite.’
    ‘Nanny says the cheese was matured in manure,’ Sigi chipped in, eyes like saucers.
    ‘I wish you could have smelt it, dear, awful it was, and still covered with bits of straw. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Well, we just had a bite of bread and butter and a few of Mrs Crispin’s nice rock cakes I happened to have with me. Not much of a dinner, was it? Funny-looking bread here, too, all crust and holes, I don’t know how you’d make a nice bit of damp toast with that. Poor little hungry boy – never mind, it’s all right now, darling, your mummy will go to the kitchen for us and ask for some cold ham or chicken – a bit of something plain – some tomatoes, without that nasty, oily, oniony dressing, and a nice floury potato, won’t you, dear?’
    These words were uttered in tones of command. An order had been issued, there was nothing of the request about them.
    ‘Goodness, I’ve no idea what floury potato is in French,’ said Grace, playing for time. ‘Didn’t you like the food, Sigi?’
    ‘It’s not a question of like it or not like it. The child will eat anything, as you know, but I’m not going to risk having him laid up with a liver attack. This heat wave is quite trying enough without that, thank you very much, not to mention typhoid fever, or worse. I only wish you could have smelt the cheese, that’s all I say.’
    ‘I did smell it, we had it downstairs – delicious.’
    ‘Well it may be all right for grown-up people, if that’s the sort of thing they go in for,’ said Nanny, with a tremendous sniff, ‘but give it to the child I will not, and personally I’d rather go hungry.’ This, however, she had no intention of doing. ‘Now, dear,’ she said briskly, ‘just go and get us a bite of something plain, that’s a good girl.’
    ‘I’m so dreadfully starving, Mummy, I’ve got pains in my tummy. Listen, it rumbles, just like Garth when he’d been floating for weeks on that iceberg.’
    Sigi looked so pathetic that Grace said, ‘Oh all right then. I don’t know where the kitchen is, but I’ll see what I can do. I think it’s all great rubbish,’ she added in a loud aside as she slammed the nursery door behind her.
    She wandered off uncertainly, hardly able, in that big, complicated house built at so many different dates, on so many different levels, to find her way to the first-floor rooms. At last she did so, looked into the drawing-room, and was almost relieved that there was nobody there. Her mission seemed to her absurd, and really so ill-mannered, that she quite longed for it to fail. She assumed that everybody except Charles-Edouard would be happily asleep by now, and only wished that she were too. Loud French voices came from the library, apart from them the house was plunged in silence. She stood for a moment by the library door but did not dare to open it, thinking how furious Sir Conrad would be at such an interruption. The dining-room was empty; no sign of any servant. She went through it, and found a stone-flagged passage, which she followed, on and on, up and down steps, until she came to a heavy oak door. Perhaps this led to the kitchen; she opened it timidly. A strangely dark and silent kitchen, if so, with cool but not fresh air smelling of