Albert was now struggling with Lady Brenda, who was far more difficult to get on with than Lady Prague. Being a duke’s daughter she was always spoken of as having so much charm. The echo of this famous charm had even reached as far as Paris, and Albert was eagerly anticipating its influence upon himself.
He was doomed to immediate disappointment, finding that besides being an unusually stupid woman she had less sex appeal than the average cauliflower; and when, in the course of conversation, he learnt that her two children were called Wendy and Christopher Robin, his last hope of being charmed vanished for ever.
She told him that Lady Craigdalloch, her godmother, was improving the whole house, bit by bit.
‘This year all the oak on the staircase has been pickled. Of course, it takes time as they are not well off, but Madge has such good taste. You should have seen the drawing-room before she redecorated it: a hideous white room with nothing but Victorian furniture, bead stools and those horrible little stiff sofas. It was my mother who suggested painting it green. Of course it is really lovely now.’
‘You have known the house a long time?’ he asked, stifling a groan.
‘Oh, yes, since I was a child. We spent our honeymoon here.’
‘I hope,’ said Albert, ‘in the lovely bed which Sally is occupying at present. I thought when I saw it how perfect for a honeymoon.’
Lady Brenda looked horrified. Luckily at this moment Sally got up and the women left the dining-room.
As soon as the door was shut upon them, Admiral Wenceslaus monopolized the conversation, holding forth on his favourite subject: Blockade. Walter and Albert, who had a hazy idea that a blockade was a sort of fence behind which the white men retired when pursued by Red Indians, now learnt that, on the contrary, it is a system of keeping supplies from the enemy in times of war. The admiral explained to them, and to the table at large, that it is permissible to ration neutrals to their pre-war imports in order to prevent the enemy country from importing goods through this channel.
‘Why wasn’t it done from the beginning?’ he bawled, in a voice which Albert felt he must have acquired when addressing his men in stormy weather from the bridge, and rolling his eye round and round. ‘Was there a traitor in the Government? That’s what I should like to know.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Lord Prague, doubtless from force of habit, as he was, in fact, unable to hear a word.
‘We had them there.’ The admiral screwed his thumb round and round on the table as though grinding up imaginary Germans. ‘And all the time our poor fellows were being blown to atoms by British shells …’
His speech, for it was virtually one, continued for about half an hour, and when it was finished they joined the ladies.
Albert felt disappointed. Other admirals he had met had provided excellent after-dinner company and he expected better things of the Silent Service than a lecture on Blockade.
7
After dinner the general marshalled them all into Lord Craigdalloch’s study and turned on the wireless which was playing Grieg’s suite from Peer Gynt. ‘This is London calling.’ (Crash! crash!) ‘The Wireless Symphony Orchestra will now play “Solveig’s Song”.’ (Crash! crash! crash!)
Albert spoke to Jane in an undertone, but he was quickly checked by a look from Lady Prague who appeared to be in a state of aesthetic rapture.
When the Grieg came to an end it was announced that Miss Sackville-West would give readings from T. S. Eliot.
‘Tripe!’ said the general and turned it off. He then began to arrange about the next day’s shooting.
‘If any of the non-shooters would like to come out tomorrow,’ he said, ‘it will be a good opportunity as none of the drives are very far apart and it’s all easy walking. Those who don’t want to come all day can meet us for lunch.’
‘Jane and I would love it if we shan’t be in the way,’ said Sally meekly.
The general, who had taken a fancy to her, smiled benignly:
‘Do you good, my dear.’
‘Great,’ said Albert, ‘as is my distaste for natural scenery, I feel it to be my duty, as a student of the nineteenth century, to gaze just once upon the glens and bens that so entranced Royal Victoria, both as the happy wife of that industrious and illustrious prince whose name I am so proud to bear, and as his lamenting relict. I should like to see the stag stand at bay upon its native crags, the eagle cast its great shadow over the cowering grouse; I should like dearly to find a capercailzie’s nest. And I feel that I could choose no more suitable day on which to witness these glories of Victorian nature than the famous twelfth, when sportsmen all over the country set forth with dog and gun to see what they can catch.’
This speech was greeted by Captain Chadlington with a sort of admiring noise in his throat which can only be transcribed as ‘C-o-o-o-h.’
‘Shall you come, Monteath?’ asked the general, taking no notice of Albert.
‘I think not, sir, thank you very much. I have rather a lot of work to do for the Literary Times and if everyone goes out it will be a good opportunity to get on with it.’
‘Brenda and I will come, of course,’ said Lady Prague briskly, ‘so we shall be five extra beside the guns. Will you ring the bell, Mowbray?’ The general did so. She added, with a disapproving look at Albert: ‘Don’t you shoot?’
‘Excellently,’ he replied in a threatening voice. ‘With the water-pistol.’
‘Perhaps you had no chance of learning when you were young; probably you have a good
