‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘In my experience of Pauline it is impossible to deflect her from her purpose.’
‘Aha! She has a purpose?’
‘Please do not misunderstand me, Lady Wincham. Her purpose is a simple one, she wants to have a good time. She has no desire to upset you, still less to damage the embassy or embarrass the Foreign Office. It all began because she had a sudden impulse to stop the train at Orry-la-Ville and spend one last night in this house which she worships – you can have no idea what she feels about it.’
‘I quite understand, on the contrary. People do get like that about houses and this one is so very extraordinary.’
‘You are under the spell already! Then she found she was having fun. She rang up a few friends, for a joke; they came around. It started to be the thing to do; one signs your book and then one goes in to see Pauline. Excuse me, please, there’s the Nuncio – I think he’s looking for her door.’
She got out of the motor, put the prelate on his way and came back again.
‘Philip tells me that you are a very responsible person,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t you explain to her that if she goes on like this she will undo all the good she and Sir Louis have done during their brilliant embassy?’
The honest choir-boy eyes opened wide. ‘Indeed, Lady Wincham, I have told her. I’ve even pointed out that only one person, in the end, can reap an advantage from her action.’
‘And who is that?’
‘Why, Mr Khrushchev.’
I felt this was going rather far; still it was all on the right side.
‘Unfortunately Pauline has no public conscience whatever. I find many European women are like that. They do not give a thought to the great issues of our time, such as the delicate balance of East and West – they will not raise a finger to ease the path of N.A.T.O., U.N.E.S.C.O., O.E.E.C. or the World Bank. Pauline is frankly not interested.’
‘So there’s nothing you can do?’
‘Regretfully, no.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I may look rather mousy but I must tell you that I very often get my own way. Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, Lady Wincham. Awfully nice to have seen you.’
4
‘We must send for Davey,’ I said.
This uncle of mine by marriage had long filled the same role in our family as the Duke of Wellington in that of Queen Victoria. Whenever some apparently insuperable difficulty of a worldly nature arose, one consulted him. While Alfred and I had been staying with him, we had of course talked of little else than our appointment and Davey had urged me not to forget that he understood the French. He had once lived in Paris (some forty years ago), had frequented salons and been the darling of the hostesses. He understood them. He had never liked them much, ‘cross, clever things’, and indeed, before the Nazis had taken over, during the decadent days of the Weimar Republic, he had greatly preferred the Germans. It was a question of shared interests; his two chief ones, health and music, were catered for better in Germany. As soon as the healthy, musical race began to show other preoccupations, Davey left Berlin and all the delightful Bads he was so fond of and which did him so much good, never to return. He always said thereafter that he did not understand the Germans. But he continued to understand the French.
I don’t know what magic wand I expected him to wave, since Lady Leone and Mrs Jungfleisch were not French and he had never claimed to understand them. True, he was a childhood friend of Lady Leone’s but that was no reason why he should prove more persuasive than the head of the Foreign Office. It would, however, be a comfort to have him with me as I felt sure he would be on my side, more sure than I was about Philip whose loyalties must, in the nature of things, be rather divided. After my talk with Mrs Jungfleisch I had a long discussion with Alfred as a result of which I telephoned there and then to Davey.
‘It’s an S.O.S.,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’
‘You have run into storms,’ said Davey, hardly bothering to conceal his glee, ‘even sooner than I had expected. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got a place on an aeroplane.’
The next morning, one read in Mockbar’s page:
DUKES
Four French Dukes, three ex-Ministers, nine Rothschilds, and countless Countesses crossed the courtyard of the British Embassy yesterday evening. Were they going to pay their respects to our envoy, Sir Alfred Wincham? They were not.
ALONE
The former Pastoral Theologian and Lady Wincham sat alone in the great suite of reception rooms on the first floor, waiting for callers who never came. The cream of Parisian society, meanwhile, was packed into a tiny room off their back staircase.
TWO AMBASSADRESSES
It is no secret to anybody here that an unexpected and awkward situation exists at the Embassy where we now seem to have one ambassador and two ambassadresses. Lady Leone, wife of the last envoy, is still living there. Lady Wincham, though a woman of charm, cannot compete with her brilliant predecessor; she is left out in the cold. The Corps Diplomatique is wondering what the upshot will be.
I went to Orly to meet Davey. Although he was now past the middle sixties, his appearance had hardly changed since the day, nearly thirty years ago, when I first saw him with my sharp little girl’s eyes at Alconleigh looking, as I thought, unlike a captain and unlike a husband. (On the second count, at any rate, I had been completely wrong. Nobody ever had a happier marriage than my dear Aunt Emily.) If his face had become rather like a portrait by Soutine of that other younger face, his figure was perfect. Elegant and supple, waving the
