Джеймс Хилтон - Time And Time Again

Both Charles and Jane, however, were glad to leave England at the end of the extended leave, especially as Charles had been appointed Second Secretary in a city much nearer to the crossroads of world affairs than his previous post. It could be regarded as a speedy promotion, and though he wondered if Jane, through her various family connections, had pulled any strings to get it for him, he felt confident of being able to justify himself. He was very happy indeed as they crossed the Channel from Croydon to Le Bourget. It was for both of them a first trip by air.

Jane soon showed her qualifications not only as a wife but as a Second Secretary’s wife. She tackled the job with a respect for it that muted the strings of her personality without putting any of them out of tune. The Ambassador, Sir Richard Thornton (‘Papa’), was a senior diplomat who (someone once said) possessed many merits developed to a marked degree of averageness; he had married late, and for the second time, and it was his wife who set the key and pace of the Embassy. Older than he was, sharp-tongued and domineering, of an aristocratic family and twice widowed by men who had won high distinction in the Foreign Service, she had an air of making comparisons that must always be unsatisfactory. Perhaps Sir Richard guessed this. He was completely under her thumb, and therefore astute enough to pretend not to like Jane as much as he did; while Jane, sizing up the situation, knew that sooner or later Lady Thornton would have to be tackled.

The clash came over Jane’s behaviour at a reception given by a foreign Embassy to a visiting royalty. The entire diplomatic corps was present and protocol reigned heavily. Somebody, however, must have spilled the bear-pit story, for when Jane was presented to His Majesty, he mentioned it, and the result was a rather long and jovial tęte-ŕ-tęte later in the evening, which nobody failed to observe. Jane happened to have lived for a time in His Majesty’s country and to have a smattering of the language, all of which helped. When the affair was over she thought she had done quite well to give royalty such a chance to unbend, but the next day Lady Thornton made a point of snubbing her for it in Charles’s presence. ‘I suppose,’ she remarked, ‘he was your first king and he went to your head?’

Since Jane was not one to take rebukes of this sort easily, Charles jumped in with excuses for her before she could reply. But then Lady Thornton turned her guns on him, interrupting: ‘When you’ve had more experience, Mr. Anderson, you’ll perhaps be less ready to contradict me.’

‘He wasn’t contradicting you,’ Jane retorted, prompt now to defend Charles. ‘He just can’t think what I did wrong, and neither can I.’

‘Exactly,’ Charles agreed. ‘After all, it was the King who started it —I daresay he felt in the mood for a joke. Those fellows must get awfully bored with formalities—it seems rather hard if they can’t ever be allowed to relax like anybody else.’

‘Nonsense,’ Lady Thornton snapped back. ‘It’s no harder for them than it is for us. They EXPECT to be bored. They’re usually on guard about their rank, and if you forget for a moment who they are—no matter how much they’ve seemed to encourage you—they’re apt to see a slight. Of course there are exceptions, but when you’ve met as many kings as I have, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, you’ll know it’s much safer to bore them than to try to amuse them.’

‘I never like doing things that are too safe,’ Jane said, but she caught Charles’s eye and could see that he too was somewhat disarmed as well as astonished by Lady Thornton’s frankness.

‘Then you’ll run grave risks of damaging your husband’s career. And believe me, that warning is well-meant.’

Afterwards Charles exchanged a glance with Jane and burst out laughing. ‘Well, well… we’re still alive, that’s something. But what a crushing old battleaxe!’

Jane said, more seriously: ‘I wonder if she’s right—about kings. I don’t suppose we shall meet as many as she has, anyhow.’

‘There aren’t as many.’

‘Darling, that’s far more crushing than anything SHE said.’

The odd thing was that after this incident they both got along much better with Lady Thornton—indeed, it could almost be said that she showed signs of liking them. She was a remarkable woman and doubtless much could be learned from her example. The atmosphere at her parties was far too disciplined, but they were socially efficient and set a standard. She worked hard. She devoted herself to local charities. She bullied the American Minister (a poker-playing millionaire politician) into serving on committees for the care of refugee children and the restoration of ancient cathedrals. Duty was her watchword and attention to duty her prime requirement in others. In her opinion all diplomats under forty were ill-trained and bad-mannered, frivolous and deplorably slack. She considered Charles to be most of these things to an extent made worse by his pleasant disposition, and she conveyed her misgivings to Jane with the implied suggestion that Jane and she were sisters under the skin, steel-ribbed in contrast to the invertebrates all around them. Jane was amused. ‘She really thinks that,’ she told Charles. ‘And I’m afraid to disillusion her.’

‘I don’t think you’re afraid of anything and I don’t think she could be disillusioned about anything,’ Charles answered, baiting Jane affectionately. ‘And maybe you ARE a bit like her. She’s not a bad sort.’

‘Poor Papa.’

‘How do we know?’

‘She puts him in his place all the time.’

‘Perhaps that’s just exactly where he likes to be.’

One thing was certain: the rigidities of Embassy functions under Lady Thornton pointed up the fact that Jane’s parties, which she gave often and unostentatiously and with a clever mingling of seniors and juniors, became noted among the diplomatic crowd for their sparkle and general enjoyability. Nor did they lack moments at which things were said and discussed of some importance. Afterwards Jane and Charles would hold their own intimate post- mortems.

‘I thought the new Bulgarian was sweet.’

‘Battleaxe won’t approve of him. Especially that long cigarette- holder.’

‘It suits him, though. Did you talk to Madame Lesinsky?’

‘Not much. Did you?’

‘She said Delafours told her the outlook for the new German loan isn’t promising… By the way, I must teach Hélo se to make ice cream properly or else get it sent in next time. Cintara poured his wine into his. Did you notice?’

‘Maybe an old Portuguese custom… I wonder where Rampagni’s wife got those earrings?’

‘Either an heirloom or very bad taste… What did you think of Beatrice Kindersley?’

‘Perfectly delightful.’

‘She told von Ahndorf the reason her father plays poker so well is because he learned it at his mother’s knee and other joints.’

‘I’ve heard that gag before, but it sounds good about Kindersley. I rather like the old boy. Must be a headache to his staff, but he’s refreshingly out of place among all the career men. Wherever he goes there’ll be some corner of a foreign field that’s forever Texas.’

‘That’s not a bad gag either.’

‘Grandison’s was the best. He said Kindersley always made him think that perhaps a tired salesman in a china shop must sometimes just LONG for a bull.’

Those were the gay years, the gayest perhaps for centuries, perhaps also for centuries to come. The First World War had become something one did not bring up unless one had to; personal recollections of it were nearly always a bore or the mark of one. How ironical to recall, if one could, the recruiting poster that had pictured a father being asked by his son: ‘What did you do in the Great War?’ Charles hadn’t a son, but if he had, he couldn’t imagine the question, much less the answer. The only time the matter had point was if one became friendly with individual Germans… ‘Were you on the Somme?’ ‘Why, yes, so was I’—and then leave it at that, with some sort of freemasonry established. But Charles’s experience did not yield any such item. Once, however, he met a German who said he came from Ingolstadt, and Charles was able to reply: ‘Indeed? My brother died there—in a prison camp just after the war ended. The flu epidemic.’ Just the casual common denominator of a past that one hoped was on the way to oblivion.