The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

as the height of eroticism, they broached the subject of Art. It appeared that once a week they had spent two hours at some atelier drawing the death mask of Beethoven, the Venus of Milo and other better known casts in smudgy charcoal. These depressing efforts were now produced from a portfolio and pinned on to the opposite seat which was unoccupied. Albert learnt from their chatter that when a drawing was finished by a pupil at the atelier, ‘Madame’ would come round and add ‘Quelques petits accents bien à leur place’; in other words, the finishing touch. The pupil would then fix it and put it carefully away in a portfolio.
Presently one of the girls said:
‘I think I must go on with my art, I might make quite a lot of money. You know, Julia once made two pounds by painting lampshades for her mother’s dining-room, and I’m quite as good as she is.’
The other one remarked that she thought Art was marvellous.
They then began to play vulgar jazz tunes on a portable gramophone, a noise which Albert found more supportable than their chatter.
As the train drew near London he felt homesick and wretched. He longed to be back in his studio in Paris surrounded by his own pictures. It was a curious and rather squalid little abode, but he had been happy there and had grown attached to it. His neighbours had all been poor and friendly, and in spite of having seen practically none of his English friends and few French people of his own class for two years, he had not for a moment felt lonely.
Now he began to wish that he had never left it; the pouring rain outside the carriage and the young artists opposite him had plunged him into a state of the deepest gloom. The idea of seeing Walter again began to terrify him. Walter! How could one tell what changes a year of matrimony may not have wrought. Considering these things, Albert fell asleep in his corner.
When the train stopped at Victoria he got out drowsily, but was only half-awake until suddenly thrown into a most refreshing rage by the confiscation, from his registered luggage, of a copy of Ulysses which Walter had particularly asked him to procure.
‘Sir!’ he cried violently to the uninterested official, ‘I am Albert Gates, an artist and seriously-minded person. I regard that work as literature of the highest order, not as pornography, and am bringing it to London for the enlightened perusal of my friend Monteath, one of your most notable, if unrecognized poets. Does this unutterable country, then, deny its citizens, not only the bodily comforts of decent food and cheap drink, but also the consolations of intellect?’
At this point, observing that his audience consisted of everybody on the platform except the one individual to whom he addressed himself, he followed his porter to a taxi and was soon on his way to Walter’s flat in Fitzroy Square.
Driving up Grosvenor Place he was struck, as people so often are when returning from an absence abroad, by the fundamental conservatism of London. Everything looked exactly the same as it had looked the very day that he left, two years before. The streets were wet and shiny, as they had been then; the rain fell in the same heart-rending drizzle, as though it had never for a moment stopped doing so, and never would again. The same Rolls-Royces contained hard-faced fashionable women in apparently the identical printed chiffon dresses and picture-hats of two years before, fashionable, but never chic.
He thought how typical it is of Englishwomen that they should always elect to dress in printed materials. A passion for fussy detail without any feeling for line or shape.
‘And those picture-hats which have been worn year after year, ever since the time of Gainsborough and which inevitably destroy all smartness, they seem still to be blossoming upon all heads, in this repulsive town. If ever I marry, God send it may be a woman of taste.’
Albert disliked women, his views on the sex coinciding with those of Weininger – he regarded them as stupid and unprincipled; but certain ones that he had met in Paris made up for this by a sort of worldly wisdom which amused him, and a talent for clothes, food and maquillage which commanded his real and ungrudging admiration.
These and other reflections continued to occupy his mind, until, looking out of the window, he saw that the taxi had already arrived in Charlotte Street. He was now seized with the miserable feeling of nervousness which always assails certain people when they are about to arrive at a strange house, even though it should belong to a dear friend of whose welcome they are inwardly assured. He began to torture himself with doubts. Suppose Walter had not received the telegram announcing the day of his arrival, and they were spending a week-end in the country? Or, worse than that – for he could easily go to an hotel if it were necessary – suppose they had really not wanted him at all, or had put off some visit on his account, or – but at this moment the taxi stopped abruptly opposite a green front door which was almost immediately opened by Walter. At the sight of his friend’s welcoming face, Albert’s doubts vanished completely.
‘My dear!’ cried Walter, ‘my dear boy, my darling Albert. How we have been looking forward to this! Oh, how nice to see you again after all these years! Quickly! quickly – a cocktail. You must be dying for one. And here’s Sally, who’s been spending the whole day arranging flowers in your bedroom.’
‘I do hope you won’t die of discomfort here,’ said Sally. ‘Did Walter prepare you in the least bit for what you’re going to suffer? There are no servants, my dear, except an idiot boy. You know, the sort that murders butlers in the evening papers, but he’s quite sweet really, and as we haven’t a butler we think it’s