Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Jeu des Sots. Toute Vie. Gala-à-go-go, without theme or message. The winged, the double bearded; the meaty, porcelain, earthy; the daubed, the powdered. A Sicilian bandit advancing towards me with glittering tray might be hired or a guest. One layer of London, at its blandest, despite a morning report of a secret, anti-socialist cabal of press-lords, generals, a royal, some doubtless present, as Tarot King, de Gaulle, Mr Punch. Don Juan in auburn, crinkled peruke was caressing hollow-cheeked black-trousered Juliette Greco. The Modern Dickens cloaked in broad Latin Quarter hat was holding his pipe like a pistol, for photographers.

I looked down at a seething forest of headgear: crowns, helmets, mitres, Sioux feathers, antlers, berets, topis, panamas, Spanish tricornes, blood-red Phrygians, toques, a floppy, rose-rimmed Tudor cap, bonnets, pork-pies, mortarboards, straw boaters, cloches, deerstalkers, school caps, cloth caps. I myself could mingle with ancient names and City moneybags, perhaps token union leaders, the Right Hons and Hons, Your Graces, club members, chief executives, proconsuls, the resplendent deposed and the unobtrusive masters. I could invite Privy Seal to explain policy, shake a bag at Solicitor-General, collect for Estonian exiles. In a manner, I had arrived. I could offer respect to a dignified, burnished memsahib, known as the Clapper from her method of summoning servants and junior officials.

A combo had started a medley of pre-war tunes, agile shifts of mood – Mercer, Cole Porter, Ellington, Coward, Gershwin – from clarinet, guttural percussion, whispering treble of a 1920s’ Swanee-whistle, a sexless voice sweeping the gardens:

Basking on false memories, Time was mischievous. A once-famous minister had resurrected as a cherished English ‘character’. Years ago, he had publicly praised the Reichsmarschall for sincerity and tolerance, then, following the Pact, reviled him as a corrupt head gardener. He was conferring with a worthy successor, lately discussed at the United Nations for supervising arms sales to assist a former colony in genocide. Displayed beneath me was what journalists were calling the Establishment, still featured in expensive monthlies with horses, gun dogs, well-dowered daughters on offer. Their titles were absurd chips of chivalry and tired romance, but they themselves were not negligible. Ribbentrop had assured his employer that they would rally against Churchill and the Jews. They had not. At the Pact, coolly, without panic, they grumbled that Hitler had sold Stalin false weight, had deceived him by what Alex called a googly. Even in the egalitarian age, ancient names retained muscle, their possessors joking about everything save cowardice and the unsporting, shrugging at terrorists as lunatic children. They still manoeuvred towards riches, with affability supercilious, guileful, or innocent, assisted inferiors as natural to their position, though positions had shrivelled with their Empire. New voices were questioning Britain’s right to Security Council status. Many, picking at fois gras , selecting a strawberry, had flinched at Munich, fought and killed in North Africa and Normandy, been side-stepped at Suez.

Behind me, new arrivals, damasked, water-silked, gauzy, fragrant, were twittering compliments, sweetly, as if to infants. ‘Precious…’ ‘But, my darling…’ In no hurry to join them or meet Dolly, did she exist, I abandoned quarterdeck, down to the operetta, to hear dialogue collegiate, clubbish, and to find the Order of Ranjitsinhji almost insulting unexplosive.

‘Lovely comment, Jonathan…’ ‘Prince Philip says…’ ‘Scarcely surprising.’

Not one of us , I was now the cabin boy seeking promotion amongst seasoned admirals. Ignored by City nabobs and young adventurers, I was ready, though not eager, to listen to Prince Philip, bump against an archimandrite and, better, win a handshake from Mr Spender.

Dolly, even if unreal, had presence. Had anyone come as Frau Simpson? Apparently not. I made no effort to reach a Labour intellectual, with whom I had briefly corresponded: I had never appreciated him declaring, a few years back, that reaching Russia from England was stepping from Hell to Heaven. ‘I say, Dick…’ A lama was embracing him. Then a skinny-eyed personage, mauve tights, crimson blouse and leggings, stopped by me.

‘You are related, sir, to Herr von Bülow.’

‘I am not related to Herr von Bülow.’

‘Exactly.’

Alex soon rejoined me, now with gold-beaked barley-sugar stick and in Judas-yellow, tasselled gown.

‘Striving for footing? Rambling agog with a notebook! Very proper. Dolly’s steaming to meet you, has talked for five weeks about nothing else.’

I had drunk well, he had drunk better, was unsteady, unpredictable, as a chimp handling a Sèvres. He pointed upwards, gave me a push less slight than he supposed, setting me to ascend another wing of the terrace where an undoubted Dolly was enthroned under a rose-clustered trellis, Great Catherine amongst courtiers.

Small, she had faded, flaxen prettiness, seen closer, was more shepherdess than Catherine, though with long lashes and black patches, one red-booted foot resting on a purple cushion, from beneath a flounced bell-skirt embroidered with multi-hued butter-flies. Some resemblance to what Mother might have become.

Her hand, ringed like a miniature Saturn, reached me, and when I introduced myself her musical-box voice enquired when I had last met dear Simon. Such largesse was withdrawn when I was displaced by an elderly grandee attired like an air vice-marshal, which he probably was.

Given congé , I butted through crowds as if through Neapolitan ice cream, making for bulging rhododendrons, azaleas, the low scarlet sun. Here, music was indistinct, voices dwindled, oblique sunlight sharpened a stone goddess reflected, like Ophelia, in a small lily pond dabbed white and mauve. In a recess, several old couples were slanted on deck chairs, sharing a champagne bottle. Severe gowns, formal shirt fronts, pearls ovalled on warped necks, combat medals. Near by, a child, belted, sworded, strained on tiptoe for what no one else could see. Voices creaked. ‘She said, Sir Mark, that she would kill herself if she failed to get it. I thought of Fleur Forsyte. She did get it, spent a fortune at Asprey’s and was found dead in the morning.’

Chuckles like a faulty tap, then a deep, comfortable tone. ‘Never trouble Trouble, until Trouble troubles you. In the Medes’ parlance.’

From the rhododendrons a laugh tinkled, fresh, happy, then abruptly, too abruptly, ceased, while, for me, sunset and champagne induced delusions of enlarged leaves, dappled air, a cockcrow unnaturally shrill, indeed operatic.

This was replaced by an actual phenomenon, a dapper, youngish television philosopher, known as Casanova, Inc., whose skilfully publicized permissiveness had not survived his daughter’s liaison with a Thai jazzman. Dressed – no, arrayed – as Fred Astaire, white tie, top hat encircled by a yellow Easter ribbon, he was accepting admiration from a sinuous Nefertiti in a single-sheeted robe. His rapid, authoritative speech belied his impersonation. ‘Dysfunctional pluralism… mere historical relativity… Genetic structuralism… in the strictest meaning of the word, Nonsense.’

‘That’s what I always say.’

In the deck chairs, the old voices continued, ‘My nephew, I shouldn’t say it myself…’ She paused, then said it herself. ‘At Alamein, he was bravest of all. Yet he’s always been scared of animals. And, after all that, what does he do? He sells furs!’

I was soothed, wandering through evening scents of phlox and rose, the beds flaring as the sun touched suburban hilltops with last brilliance.