Communism, I should think they're considered old-fashioned.
The Chinese? I think they've lost their way. Too much Chairman
Mao, perhaps. I don't know who these people are who
are doing the planning. As I said before, it's why and where
and when and who.'
'Very interesting.'
'It's so frightening, this same idea that always recurs.
History repeating itself. The young hero, the golden superman
that all must follow.' She paused, then said, 'Same idea,
you know. The young Siegfried.'
57
ADVICE FROM
GREAT-AUNT MATILDA
Great-Aunt Matilda looked at him. She had a very sharp
and shrewd eye. Stafford Nye had noticed that before. He
noticed it particularly at this moment.
''So you've heard that term before,' she said. 'I see,'
'What does it mean?'
'You don't know?' She raised her eyebrows.
'Cross my heart and wish to die,' said Sir Stafford, in
nursery language.
'Yes, we always used to say that, didn't we,' said Lady
Matilda. 'Do you really mean what you're saying?'
'I don't know anything about it.'
'But you'd heard the term before,'
*Yes. Someone said it to me.'
'Anyone important?'
It could be. I suppose it could be. What do you mean
by "anyone important"?'
'Well, you've been involved in various Government missions
lately, haven't you? You've represented this poor, miserable
country as best you could, which I shouldn't wonder wasn't
rather better than many others could do, sitting round a table
and talking. I don't know whether anything's come of all that.'
'Probably not,' said Stafford Nye. 'After all, one isn't
optimistic when one goes into these things.'
'One does one's best,' said Lady Matilda correctively.
'A very Christian principle. Nowadays if one does one's
worst one often seems to get on a good deal better. What
does all this mean. Aunt Matilda?'
*I don't suppose I know,' said his aunt
'Well, you very often do know things.'
'Not exactly. I just pick up things here and there.*
'Yes?'
Tve got a few old friends left, you know. Friends who
are in the know. Of course most of them are either practically
stone deaf or half blind or a little bit gone in the
top storey or unable to walk straight. But something still
functions. Something, shall we say, up here.' She hit the
top of her neatly arranged white head. 'There's a good
deal of alarm and despondency about. More than usual That's one of the things I've picked up.'
58
'Isn't there always?'
'Yes, yes, but this is a bit more than that. Active instead
of passive, as you might say. For a long time, as I have noticed from the outside, and you, no doubt, from the
inside, we have felt that things are in a mess. A rather bad
mess. But now we've got to a point where we feel that perhaps
something might have been done about the mess.. There's
an element of danger in it. Something is going on--something
is brewing. Not just in one country. In quite a lot of
countries. They've recruited a service of their own and
the danger about that is that it's a service of young people.
And the kind of people who will go anywhere, do anything,
unfortunately believe anything, and so long as they are promised
a certain amount of pulling down, wrecking, throwing
spanners in the works, then they think the cause must be a
good one and that the world will be a different place. They're
not creative, that's the trouble--only destructive. The creative
young write poems, write books, probably compose music,
paint pictures just as they always have done. They'll be all
right--But once people learn to love destruction for its own
sake, evil leadership gets its chance.'
'You say "they" or "them". Who do you mean?'
'Wish I knew,' said Lady Matilda. 'Yes, I wish I knew.
Very much indeed. If I hear anything useful. 111 tell you. Then you can do something about it.'
'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?'
59
'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 dp 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 hor
n
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
60
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
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.
61
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. Moliere married his housemaid,
didn't lie, and made a great success of it--if it is Moliere 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
As Mrs Cortman came to meet him with outstretched hand,
Stafford Nye recalled the term his great-aunt had used. Milly
Jean Cortman was a woman of between thirty-five and forty.
She had delicate features, big blue-grey eyes, a very perfectly
shaped head with bluish-grey hair tinted to a particularly
attractive shade which fitted her with a perfection of grooming.
She was very popular in London. Her husband, Sam
Cortman, was a big, heavy man, slightly ponderous. He was
very proud of his wife. He himself was one of those slow,
rather over-emphatic talkers. People found their attention
occasionally straying when he was elucidating at some length
a point which hardly needed making.
'Back from Malaya, aren't you. Sir Stafford? It must
have been quite interesting to go out there, though it's
not the time of year I'd have chosen. But I'm sure we're
all glad to see you back. Let me see now. You know Lady
Aldborough and Sir John, and Herr von Roken, Frau von
Roken. Mr and Mrs Staggenham.'
They were all people known to Stafford Nye in more or
less degree. There was a Dutchman and his wife whom he
had not met before, since they had only just taken up their
appointment. The Staggenhams were the Minister of Social
Security and his wife. A particularly uninteresting couple,
he harf always thought.
'And the Countess Renata Zerkowski. I think she said she'd
met you before.'
'It must be about a year ago. When I was last in England,'
said the Countess.
And there she was, the passenger from Frankfurt again.
Self-possessed, at ease, beautifully turned out in faint greyblue
with a touch of chinchilla. Her hair dressed high (a
wig?) and a ruby cross of antique design round her neck.
'Signer Gasparo, Count Reitner, Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot.'
About twenty-six in all. At dinner Stafford Nye sat between
the other side of him. Renata Zerkowski sat exactly opposite
him.
An Embassy dinner. A dinner such as he so often attended,
holding much of the same type of guests. Various members
of the Diplomatic Corps, junior ministers, one or two in63
dustrialists, a sprinkling of socialites usually included because
they were good conversationalists, natural, pleasant people
to meet, though one or two, thought Stafford Nye, one or
two were maybe different. Even while he was busy sustaining
his conversation with Signora Gasparo, a charming person
to talk to, a chatterbox, slightly flirtatious; his mind was
roving in the same way that his eye also roved, though the
latter was not very noticeable. As it roved round the dinner
table, you would not have said that he was summing up
conclusions in his own mind. He had been asked here. Why?
For any reason or for no reason in particular. Because his
name had come up automatically on the list that the secretaries
produced from time to time with checks against such members
as were due for their turn. Or as the extra man or the extra
woman required for the balancing of the table. He had always
been in request when an extra was needed.
'Oh yes,' a diplomatic hostess would say, 'Stafford Nye
will do beautifully. You will put him next to Madame Soand-so,
or Lady Somebody else.'
He had been asked perhaps to fill in for no further reason
than that. And yet, he wondered. He knew by experience that
there were certain other reasons. And so his eye with its swift
social amiability, its air of not looking really at anything in
particular, was busy,
Amongst these guests there was someone perhaps who
for some reason mattered, was important. Someone who had
been asked--not to fill in--on the contrary--someone who
had had a selection of other guests invited to fit in round
him--or her. Someone "who mattered. He wondered--he
wondered which of them it might be.
Cortman knew, of course. Milly Jean, perhaps. One never
really knew with wives. Some of them were better diplomats
than their husbands. Some of them could be relied
upon merely for their charm, for their adaptability, their
readiness to please, their lack of curiosity. Some again, he
thought ruefully to himself, were, as far as their husbands
were concerned, disasters. Hostesses who, though they may
have brought prestige or money to a diplomatic marriage,
were yet capable at any moment of saying or doing the wrong
thing, and creating an unfortunate situation. If that was to
be guarded against, it would need one of the guests, or two or
even three of the guests, to be what one might call professional
smoothers-over.
Did this dinner party this evening mean anything but a
social event? His quick and noticing eye had by now been
64
round the dinner table picking out one or two people whom
so far he had not entirely taken in. An American business
man. Pleasant, not socially brilliant. A professor from one of
the universities of the Middle West. A married couple, the
husband German, the wife predominantly, almost aggressively
American. A very beautiful woman, too. Sexually, highly
attractive. Sir Stafford thought. Was one of them important?
Initials floated through his mind. FBI. CIA. The business man
perhaps a CIA man, there for a purpose. Things were like
that nowadays. Not as they used to be. How had the formula
gone? "Big brother is watching you. Yes, well it went further
than that now. Transatlantic Cousin is watching you. High
Finance for Middle Europe is watching you. A diplomatic
difficulty has been asked here for you to watch him. Oh yes.
There was often a lot behind things nowadays. But was that
just another formula, just another fashion? Could it really
mean more than that, something vital, something real? How
did one talk of events in Europe nowadays? The Common
Market. Well, that was fair enough, that dealt with trade,
with economics, with the inter-relationships of countries.
That was the stage to set. But behind the stage. Backstage.
Waiting for the cue. Ready to prompt if prompting
were needed. What was going on? Going on in the big
world and behind the big world. He wondered.
Some things he knew, some things he guessed at, some
things, he thought to himself, I know nothing about and
nobody wants me to know anything about them.
His eyes rested for a moment on his vis-a-vis, her chin
tilted upward, her mouth just gently curved in a polite
smile, and their eyes* met. Those eyes told him nothing,
the smile told him nothing. What was she doing here? She