“No, the truth about Basil is just that he’s a bore. No one minds him being rude, but he’s so teaching. I had him next to me at dinner once and he would talk all the time about Indian dialects. Well, what was one to say? And I asked afterwards and appar ently he doesn’t know anything about them either.”
“He’s done all kinds of odd things.”
“Well, yes, and I think that’s so boring too. Al ways in revolutions and murders and things I mean what is one to say? Poor Angela is literally off her head with him. I was there yesterday and she could talk of nothing else but the row he’s had with his committee in his constituency. He does seem to have behaved rather oddly at the Conservative ball and then he and Alastair Trumpington and Peter Past master and some others had a five day party up there and left a lot of bad cheques behind and had a motor accident and one of them got run in—you know what Basil’s parties are. I mean that sort of thing is all right in London, but you know what provincial towns are. So what with one thing and another they’ve asked him to stand down. The trouble is that poor Angela still fancies him rather.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I know. That’s the point. Barbara says she won’t do another thing for him.”
Some one else was saying, “I’ve given up trying to be nice to Basil. He either cuts me or corners me with an interminable lecture about Asiatic politics. It’s odd Margot having him here—particularly after the way he’s always getting Peter involved.”
Presently Basil came back from telephoning. He stood in the doorway, a glass of whiskey in one hand, looking insolently round the room, his head back, chin forward, shoulders rounded, dark hair over his forehead, contemptuous grey eyes over grey pouches, a proud rather childish mouth, a scar on one cheek.
“My word, he is a corker,” remarked one of the girls.
His glance travelled round the room. ‘
‘I’ll tell you who I want to see, Margot. Is Rex Monomark here?”
“He’s over there somewhere. But, Basil, I absolutely forbid you to tease him.”
“I won’t tease him.”
Lord Monomark, owner of many newspapers, stood at the far end of the drawing room discussing diet. Round him in a haze of cigar smoke were ranged his ladies and gentlemen in attendance; three almost freakish beauties, austerely smart, their ex-quisite, irregular features eloquent of respect; two gross men of the world, wheezing appreciation; a dapper elderly secretary, with pink, bald pate and in his eyes that glazed, gin-fogged look that is common to sailors and the secretaries of the great, and comes from too short sleep.
“Two raw onions and a plate of oatmeal porridge,” said Lord Monomark. “That’s all I’ve taken for luncheon in the last eight months. And I feel two hundred per cent, better—physically, intellect-ually and ethically.”
The group was slightly isolated from the rest of the party. It was very rarely that Lord Monomark consented to leave his own houses and appear as a guest. The few close friends whom he honoured in this way observed certain strict contentions in the matter; new people were not to be introduced to him except at his own command; politicians were to be kept at a distance; his cronies of the moment were to be invited with him; provision had to be made for whatever health system he happened to be following. In these conditions he liked now and then to appear in society—an undisguised Haroun al-Raschid among his townspeople—to survey the shadow-play of fashion, and occasionally to indulge the caprice of singling out one of these bodiless phantoms and translating her or him into the robust reality of his own world. His fellow guests, meanwhile, flitted in and out as though unconscious of his presence, avoiding any appearance of impinging on the integrity of this glittering circle.
“If I had my way,” said Lord Monomark, “I’d make it compulsory throughout the country. I’ve had a notice drafted and sent round the office recommending the system. Half the fellows think nothing of spending one and six or two shillings on lunch every day—that’s out of eight or nine pounds a week.”
“Rex, you’re wonderful.”
“Read it out to Lady Everyman, Sanders.”
“Lord Monomark wishes forcibly to bring to the attention of his staff the advantages to be derived from a carefully chosen diet…” Basil genially intruded himself into the party.
“Well, Rex, I thought I’d find you here. It’s all stuff about that onion and porridge diet, you know. Griffenbach exploded that when I was in Vienna three years ago. But that’s not really what I came to talk about.”
“Oh, Seal, isn’t it? I’ve not seen you for a long time. I remember now you wrote to me some time ago. What was it about, Sanders?”
“Afghanistan.”
“Yes, of course. I turned it over to one of my editors to answer. I hope he explained.”
Once, when Basil had been a young man of promise, Lord Monomark had considered taking him up and invited him for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Basil at first refused and then, after they had sailed, announced by wireless his intention of joining the yacht at Barcelona; Lord Monomark’s party had waited there for two sultry days without hearing news and then sailed without him. When they next met in London Basil explained rather inadequately that he had found at the last minute he couldn’t manage it after all. Countless incidents of this kind had contributed to Basil’s present depreciated popularity.
“Look here, Rex,” he said, “what I want to know is what you’re going to do about Seth.”
“Seth?” Lord Monomark turned an inquiring glance at Sanders. “What am I doing about Seth?”
“Seth?”
“It seems to me there’s an extremely tricky political situation developing there. You’ve seen the news from Ukaka. It doesn’t tell one a thing. I want to get some first-hand information. I’m probably sailing almost at once. It occurred to me that I might cover it for you in the Excess”
Towards the end of this speech, Lord Monomark’s bewilderment was suddenly illumined. This was nothing unusual after all. It was simply some one after a job. “Oh,” he said, “I’m afraid I don’t interfere with the minor personnel of the paper. You’d better go and see one of the editors about it.
