Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

Her arrival, although fully expected, had the same effect as an unexpected visit from royalty. The driver of the hansom, having carried her boxes indoors, bowed so low upon being paid, that she quite thought he would topple forward onto his nose. ‘How perfectly charming you are,’ she said to him, patting his arm, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.

Mme Pitt ascended the steps and entered the house in a blaze of invincible French elegance. ‘ Bonjour, tout le monde, bonjour, bonjour! ’ she cried, and, ignoring protocol bent down first to hug Esther so tightly that the child stuck her tongue out in mock strangulation. ‘ Une bise pour ta gran’mère ,’ she cried, pointing to her cheek. ‘ Encore une bise! ’ she cried, pointing to the other. ‘ Encore une bise! Encore une bise! Oh, but my! How you’ve grown! Mais comme tu es devenue belle! J’espère que tu es encore sage! Tu es sage? Mon ange! Ma petite champignonne! ’

Mme Pitt seized the stupefied Mrs McCosh by the shoulders and planted four kisses upon her cheeks in rapid succession. Rosie received the same fusillade, as did Mr McCosh, who was so delighted by such a display of affection that the smile did not leave his face for several minutes. She held out her hand to Millicent, and Millicent curtsied. ‘ Mademoiselle Millicent! How lovely that you are still here.’

‘Thank you, madam, you are very kind, madam,’ said Millicent, curtsying again.

‘Cookie’s in an awful flap,’ said Mr McCosh. ‘She says she’s prepared to cook for the Queen, but cooking for a Frenchwoman is altogether beyond her!’

‘ Ça se comprend! ’ exclaimed Mme Pitt. ‘I shall go down to the kitchen and help. But first, to business! En avant! I have come to say certain things, and when I have said them, we can all relax, and I can give Esther her little cadeau .’

‘A present?’ said Esther. ‘ Cadeau ’ had been almost the first French word she had learned.

‘No, I will change the plan! I will give it to you straight away, because life is short, non ?

She reached into her capacious bag and brought out a large brown bear. She held it out to Esther and said, ‘This bear is made in France, and its name is French Bear.’

‘French Bear,’ repeated Esther, taking it and holding it to her cheek.

‘What do you say?’ asked Rosie.

‘ Merci, Gran’mère ,’ said Esther shyly.

‘ De rien, de rien !’ said Mme Pitt, leaning down and patting her face.

‘ Gran’mère smell nice,’ said Esther.

‘Is Daniel not here yet?’ asked Mme Pitt. ‘ Bon! ’

She turned to Mrs McCosh, saying, ‘To you I will speak first.’ To Millicent she said, ‘A cup of tea, my dear, but without milk or sugar, and very weak, à la française .’

‘Oh, just like Master Daniel,’ said Millicent, hurrying away.

Mrs McCosh, feeling for the first time in years that she had no control whatsoever over events, meekly followed her into the dining room. Mme Pitt took a seat at the head of the table, obliging Mrs McCosh to sit at one side. Mme Pitt said nothing at all until her tea arrived, by which time Mrs McCosh was in a state of considerable anxiety.

‘I hope you have not come here to hector me,’ said Mrs McCosh unconvincingly. ‘I will not be hectored.’

‘Well,’ said Mme Pitt, ‘I am very disappointed, I will not hide it. How can I hide it? My son is extremely unhappy, and you do nothing about it. In fact you make him more unhappy. You provoke him! He tells me that you provoke him beyond all possible endurance, and that your provocations are always about him being French, even though he is as English as you are, as well as French. His father was in the Royal Navy! The Royal Navy, not the French Navy. His father was an officer on the Royal Yacht. Is that French? Is that a French yacht? And furthermore, you provoke him so much that he can hardly bear to come here any more, and if it were not for Esther he would not come here at all. And furthermore again, he has won a job in Ceylon which is the opportunity of a lifetime, and Rosie is refusing to go, and you are supporting her in this, even though Mr McCosh has told her to go. Now, tell me, are you crazy? What kind of mama are you that you hold on to a full-grown woman and keep her tied to the apron, when she has a husband and a daughter, eh? Tell me, tell me.’

Mrs McCosh sat with her mouth open, quite unable to respond to such obvious truths.

Mme Pitt looked at her imperiously, and continued. ‘Well, I for one will not stand for it. You will cease your provocations, immediately. You will tell Rosie that she has to go to Ceylon! You will tell Rosie that she has to be a proper wife, not switching on and off like a lamp! You will tell Rosie to find some love in here,’ she said as she thumped her chest, ‘and give it to my son. Now you will go and tell Rosie that it is her turn for me to be speaking to her.’

Mme Pitt was considerably older than Mrs McCosh, and the latter felt quite unable and unentitled to argue with her. She rose to her feet and found that she was trembling too much to walk. Supporting herself by leaning partially on the dining table, she managed to reach the door. She turned to say something, but found herself, once again, utterly wordless. She went to the morning room to recover her composure. She resolved to write a letter to His Majesty, and then go out with the airgun and see if there were any pigeons in the garden.

When Rosie came in she felt like a schoolgirl who has been hauled before a headmistress.

‘You will sit down,’ said Mme Pitt, patting the chair beside her.

Rosie sat down and folded her hands together, looking at them as they lay in her lap. Mme Pitt chucked her under the chin very lovingly, and said, ‘Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.’

‘ Gran’mère? ’

‘You know this can’t go on, you know it, don’t you?’

Rosie nodded her head miserably.

‘I will be telling you exactly what cannot be going on,’ said Mme Pitt. ‘In the first place, now you have married a living man you cannot be married in your heart to a man who is dead. There is no good dead man who has ever wished for this! Think how much you are hurting this dead man if he looks down and he sees that you are making unhappiness! If he sees your husband so unhappy that he would not come home at all if he did not love his daughter! If he sees your mother provoking, provoking, all about being French, and you do nothing to stop it! That you never say, “ Maman , this is enough! Leave my husband alone!” Do you think this dead man is happy on high, looking down and seeing that you make a grande pagaille all in his memory? Do you think this dead man is pleased about your husband who is alive and is not being with his daughter that he loves because you want to stay at home with maman and you won’t go where he works even to a beautiful place? What selfishness is this? You think this dead man is proud of a woman who is like this? Rosie, you are a saint, a veritable saint, everybody says it, but you also have the cruelty of saints. The cruelty that has no eyes. Have your eyes not seen that in this life there is one thing sacred? And this one thing sacred is the little children? And you have one of these sacred little things, and she is called Esther, and she must have a nest with a mother and a father in it? How does the bird fly with one wing only?

‘And another thing. You are a bad wife in another way. Daniel has admitted it and I believe him.’

Rosie was by now sobbing, quite unable to cope with this barrage that was forcing her to see herself from the outside.

‘Are you telling me to do my duty?’ she asked.