THE FRENCH BOY

Mr. McCall seems to be a sort of bush league John Braine (i.e. modestly amusing) and his French boy, Jacques Deschamps, arrives as the au pair installation of Colonel and Mrs. Frampton, to stoke the boiler and polish the silver. Before long he's polishing up Molly Frampton, much older than he is while much much younger than the Colonel, but because of a too vigilant cook, she decides to get him a job in an antique shop. He is sacked there but not before he has been the protege of a little cluster of queers. Then, more fortunately it would seem, he meets Victoria, the young (nineteen) very rich daughter of Lord Woolpit. Lord Woolpit tries to get rid of him which makes Victoria all the more determined and she's just as unscrupulous as her father and just as successful as her name would imply. . . . Jacques, who's really been up for grabs in all these situations, discovers finally that he's been had, giving a small ironic whiplash to the generally comic intentions of the book. A modest look at modern life in Mod England.