'Unfortunately, I haven't got anyone to tell, I mean to pass it on to.'
'Yes, don't pass it on to — just anyone. You can't trust people. Don't pass it on to any one of those idiots in the Government, or connected with government or hoping to be participating in government after this lot runs out. Politicians don't have time to look at the world they're living in. They see the country they're living in and they see it as one vast electoral platform. That's quite enough to put on their plates for the time being. They do things which they honestly believe will make things better and then they're surprised when they don't make things better because they're not the things that people want to have. And one can't help coming to the conclusion that politicians have a feeling that they have a kind of divine right to tell lies in a good cause. It's not really so very long ago since Mr Baldwin made his famous remark — 'If I had spoken the truth, I should have lost the election.' Prime Ministers still feel like that. Now and again we have a great man, thank God. But it's rare.'
'Well, what do you suggest ought to be done?'
'Are you asking my advice? Mine? Do you know how old I am?'
'Getting on for ninety,' suggested her nephew.
'Not quite as old as that,' said Lady Matilda, slightly affronted. 'Do I look it, my dear boy?'
'No, darling. You look a nice, comfortable sixty-six.'
'That's better,' said Lady Matilda. 'Quite untrue. But better. If I get a tip of any kind from one of my dear old admirals or an old general or even possibly an air marshal — they do hear things, you know — they've got cronies still and the old boys get together and talk. And so it gets around. There's always been the grapevine and there still is a grapevine, no matter how elderly the people are. The young Siegfried. We want a clue to just what that means — I don't know if he's a person or a password or the name of a Club or a new Messiah or a Pop singer. But that term covers something. There's the musical motif too. I've rather forgotten my Wagnerian days.' Her aged voice croaked out a partially recognizable melody. 'Siegfried's horn call, isn't that it? Get a recorder, why don't you? Do I mean a recorder. I don't mean a record that you put on a gramophone — I mean the things that schoolchildren play. They have classes for them. Went to a talk the other day. Our vicar got it up. Quite interesting. You know, tracing the history of the recorder and the kind of recorders there were from the Elizabethan age onwards. Some big, some small, all different notes and sounds. Very interesting. Interesting hearing in two senses. The recorders themselves. Some of them give out lovely noises. And the history. Yes. Well, what was I saying?'
'You told me to get one of these instruments, I gather.'
'Yes. Get a recorder and learn to blow Siegfried's horn call on that. You're musical, you always were. You can manage that, I hope?'
'Well, it seems a very small part to play in the salvation of the world, but I dare say I could manage that.'
'And have the thing ready. Because, you see –' she tapped on the table with her spectacle case — 'you might want it to impress the wrong people some time. Might come in useful. They'd welcome you with open arms and then you might learn a bit.'
'You certainly have ideas,' said Sir Stafford admiringly.
'What else can you have when you're my age?' said his great-aunt. 'You can't get about. You can't meddle with people much, you can't do any gardening. All you can do is sit in your chair and have ideas. Remember that when you're forty years older.'
'One remark you made interested me.'
'Only one?' said Lady Matilda. 'That's rather poor measure considering how much I've been talking. What was it?'
'You suggested that I might be capable of impressing the wrong people with my recorder — did you mean that?'
'Well, it's one way, isn't it? The right people don't matter. But the wrong people — well, you've got to find out things, haven't you? You've got to permeate things. Rather like a death-watch beetle,' she said thoughtfully.
'So I should make significant noises in the night?'
'Well, that sort of thing, yes. We had death-watch beetle in the east wing here once. Very expensive it was to put it right. I dare say it will be just as expensive to put the world right.'
'In fact a good deal more expensive,' said Stafford Nye.
'That won't matter,' said Lady Matilda. 'People never mind spending a great deal of money. It impresses them. It's when you want to do things economically, they won't play. We're the same people, you know. In this country, I mean. We're the same people we always were.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'We're capable of doing big things. We were good at running an empire. We weren't good at keeping an empire running, but then you see we didn't need an empire any more And we recognized that. Too difficult to keep up. Robbie made me see that,' she added.
'Robbie?' It was faintly familiar.
'Robbie Shoreham. Robert Shoreham. He's a very old friend of mine. Paralysed down the left side. But he can talk still and he's got a moderately good hearing-aid.'
'Besides being one of the most famous physicists in the world,' said Stafford Nye. 'So he's another of your old cronies, is he?'
'Known him since he was a boy,' said Lady Matilda. 'I suppose it surprises you that we should be friends, have a lot in common and enjoy talking together?'
'Well, I shouldn't have thought that –'
'That we had much to talk about? It's true I could never do mathematics. Fortunately, when I was a girl one didn't even try. Mathematics came easily to Robbie when he was about four years old, I believe. They say nowadays that that's quite natural. He's got plenty to talk about. He liked me always because I was frivolous and made him laugh. And I'm a good listener, too. And really, he says some very interesting things sometimes.'
'So I suppose,' said Stafford Nye drily.
'Now don't be superior. Moliére married his housemaid, didn't he, and made a great success of it — if it is Moliére I mean. If a man's frantic with brains he doesn't really want a woman who's also frantic with brains to talk to. It would be exhausting. He'd much prefer a lovely nitwit who can make him laugh. I wasn't bad- looking when I was young,' said Lady Matilda complacently. 'I know I have no academic distinctions. I'm not in the least intellectual. But Robert has always said that I've got a great deal of common sense, of intelligence.'
'You're a lovely person,' said Sir Stafford Nye. 'I enjoy coming to see you and I shall go away remembering all the things you've said to me. There are a good many more things, I expect, that you could tell me but you're obviously not going to.'
'Not until the right moment comes,' said Lady Matilda, 'but I've got your interests at heart. Let me know what you're doing from time to time. You're dining at the American Embassy, aren't you, next week?'
'How did you know that? I've been asked.'
'And you've accepted, I understand.'
'Well, it's all in the course of duty.' He looked at her curiously. 'How do you manage to be so well informed?'
'Oh, Milly told me.'
'Milly?'
'Milly Jean Cortman. The American Ambassador's wife. A most attractive creature, you know. Small and rather perfect-looking.'
'Oh, you mean Mildred Cortman.'
'She was christened Mildred but she preferred Milly Jean. I was talking to her on the telephone about some Charity Matinee or other — she's what we used to call a pocket Venus.'
'A most attractive term to use,' said Stafford Nye.
Chapter 8
AN EMBASSY DINNER
