Black Mischief (9 page)

‘I
can’t say I’ve given the matter any thought.’

‘Well,
fundamentally it is an issue between the Arabs and the christianized Sakuyu.’

‘I
see.’

‘I
think the mistake we made was to underestimate the prestige of the dynasty.’

‘Oh.’

‘As a
matter of fact, I’ve never been satisfied in my mind about the legitimacy of
the old Empress.’

‘My
dear young man, no doubt you have some particular interest in the affairs of
this place. Pray understand that I know nothing at all about it and that I feel
it is too late in the day for me to start improving my knowledge.’

The old
man shifted himself in his chair away from Basil’s scrutiny and began reading
his book. A page came in with the message: ‘No reply from either of those numbers,
sir.’

‘Don’t
you hate London?’

‘Eh?’

‘Don’t
you hate London?’

‘No, I
do not. Lived here all my life. Never get tired of it. Fellow who’s tired of
London is tired of life.’

‘Don’t
you believe it,’ said Basil.

‘I’m
going away for some time,’ lie told the hall-porter as lie left the club.

‘Very
good, sir. What shall I do about correspondence?’

‘Destroy
it.’

‘Very
good, sir. ‘ Mr Seal was a puzzle to him. He never could forget Mr Seal’s
father. He had been a member of the club. Such a different gentleman. So spick
and span, never without silk hat and an orchid in his buttonhole. Chief
Conservative Whip for twenty-five years. Who would have thought of him having a
son like Mr Seal?
Out of town until further notice. No letters forwarded
he
entered against Basil’s name in his ledger. Presently the old gentleman emerged
from the smoking-room.

‘Arthur,
is that young man a member here?’

‘Mr
Seal, sir? Oh yes, sir.’

‘What
d’you say his name is?’

‘Mr
Basil Seal.’

‘Basil
Seal, eh? Basil Seal. Not Christopher Seal’s son?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘Is he
now? Poor old Seal. ‘Pon my soul, what a sad thing. Who’d have thought of that?
Seal of all people …‘ and lie shuffled back into the smoking-room, to the
fire and his muffins, full of the comfort that glows in the hearts of old men
when they contemplate the misfortunes of their contemporaries.

Basil
walked across Piccadilly and up to Curzon Street. Lady Metroland was giving a
cocktail party.

‘Basil,
‘ she said, ‘you had no business to come. I particularly didn’t ask you.’

‘I
know. I only heard you had a party quite indirectly. What I’ve really come for
is to see if my sister is here.’

‘Barbara?
She may be. She said she was coming. How horrible you look.’

‘Dirty?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not
shaven?’

‘No.’

‘Well,
I’ve only just woken up. I haven’t been home yet.’ He looked round the room. ‘All
the same people. You don’t make many new friends, Margot.’

‘I hear
you’ve given up your constituency?’

‘Yes,
in a way. It wasn’t worth while. I told the P.M. I wasn’t prepared to fight on
the tariff issue. He had a chance to hold over the bill but the Outrage section
were too strong so I threw in my hand. Besides, I want to go abroad. I’ve been
in England too long.’

‘Cocktail,
sir.

‘No,
bring me a Pernod and water will you? … there isn’t any? Oh well, whisky.
Bring it into the study. I want to go and telephone. I’ll be back soon,
Margot.’

‘God,
what I feel about that young man,’ said Lady Metroland.

Two
girls were talking about him.

‘Such a
lovely person.’

‘Where?’

‘Just
gone out.’

‘You
don’t mean Basil Seal?’

‘Do I?’

‘Horrible
clothes, black hair over his face.’

‘Yes,
tell me about him.’

‘My
dear, he’s enchanting … Barbara Sothill’s brother, you know. He’s been in hot
water lately. He’d been adopted as candidate somewhere in the West. Father says
he was bound to get in at the next election. Angela Lyne was paying his
expenses. But they had trouble over something. You know how careful Angela is.
I never thought Basil was really her tea. They never quite made sense, I mean,
did they? So that’s all over.’

‘It’s
nice his being so dirty.’

Other
people discussed him.

‘No,
the truth about Basil is just that he’s a
bore.
No one minds him being
rude, but he’s so
teaching.
I had him next to me at dinner once and he
would talk all the time about Indian dialects. Well, what
was
one to
say? And I asked afterwards and apparently he doesn’t know anything about them
either.’

‘He’s
done all kinds of odd things.’

‘Well,
yes, and I think that’s so boring too. Always in revolutions and murders and
things, I mean, what is one to say? Poor Angela is
literally
off her
head with him. I was there yesterday and she could talk of nothing else but the
row he’s had with his committee in his constituency. He does seem to have
behaved rather oddly at the Conservative ball and then he and Alastair
Trumpington and Peter Pastmaster and some others had a five-day party up there
and left a lot of bad cheques behind and had a motor accident and one of them
got run in — you know what Basil’s parties are. I mean, that sort of thing is
all right in London, but you know what provincial towns are. So what with one
thing and another they’ve asked him to stand down. The trouble is that poor
Angela still fancies him rather.’

‘What’s
going to happen to him?’

‘I
know.
That’s the
point.
Barbara says she won’t do another thing for him.’

Someone
else was saying, ‘I’ve given up trying to be nice to Basil. He either cuts me
or corners me with an interminable lecture about Asiatic politics. It’s odd
Margot having him here — particularly after the way he’s always getting Peter
involved.’

Presently
Basil came back from telephoning. He stood in the doorway, a glass of whisky in
one hand, looking insolently round the room, his head back, chin forward,
shoulders rounded, dark hair over his forehead, contemptuous grey eyes over
grey pouches, a proud, rather childish mouth, a scar on one cheek.

‘My
word, he is a corker,’ remarked one of the girls.

His
glance travelled round the room. ‘I’ll tell you who I want to see, Margot. Is
Rex Monomark here?’

‘He’s
over there somewhere, but, Basil, I absolutely forbid you to tease him.’

‘I
won’t tease him.’

Lord
Monomark, owner of many newspapers, stood at the far end of the drawing-room
discussing diet. Round him in a haze of cigar smoke were ranged his ladies and
gentlemen in attendance: three almost freakish beauties, austerely smart, their
exquisite, irregular features eloquent of respect; two gross men of the world,
wheezing appreciation; a dapper elderly secretary, with pink, bald pate and in
his eyes that glazed, gin-fogged look that is common to sailors and the
secretaries of the great, and comes from too short sleep.

‘Two
raw onions and a plate of oatmeal porridge,’ said Lord Monomark. ‘That’s all
I’ve taken for luncheon in the last eight months. And I feel two hundred per
cent better —physically, intellectually and ethically.’

The
group was slightly isolated from the rest of the party. It was very rarely that
Lord Monomark consented to leave his own house and appear as a guest. The few
close friends whom he honoured in this way observed certain strict conventions
in the matter: new people were not to be introduced to him except at his own
command; politicians were to be kept at a distance; his cronies of the moment
were to be invited with him; provision had to be made for whatever health
system he happened to be following. In these conditions he liked now and then
to appear in society — an undisguised Haroun al-Rashid among his townspeople —
to survey the shadow-play of fashion, and occasionally to indulge the caprice
of singling out one of these bodiless phantoms and translating her or him into
the robust reality of his own world. His fellow guests, meanwhile, flitted in
and out as though unconscious of his presence, avoiding any appearance of
impinging on the integrity of this glittering circle.

‘If I
had my way’, said Lord Monomark, ‘I’d make it compulsory throughout the
country. I’ve had a notice drafted and sent round the office recommending the
system. Half the fellows think nothing of spending one and six or two shillings
on lunch every day — that’s out of eight or nine pounds a week.’

‘Rex,
you’re wonderful.’

‘Read
it out to Lady Everyman, Sanders.’

‘Lord
Monomark wishes forcibly to bring to the attention of his staff the advantages
to be derived from a carefully chosen diet
…‘
Basil genially intruded himself into the party.

‘Well,
Rex, I thought I’d find you here. It’s all stuff about that onion and porridge
diet, you know. Griffenbach exploded that when I was in Vienna three years ago.
But that’s not really what I came to talk about.’

‘Oh,
Seal, isn’t it? I’ve not seen you for a long time. I remember now you wrote to
me some time ago. What was it about, Sanders?’

‘Afghanistan.’

‘Yes,
of course. I turned it over to one of my editors to answer. I hope he explained.’

Once,
when Basil had been a young man of promise, Lord Monomark had considered taking
him up and invited him for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Basil at first
refused and then, after they had sailed, announced by wireless his intention
of joining the yacht at Barcelona; Lord Monomark’s party had waited there for
two sultry days without hearing news and then sailed without him. When they
next met in London Basil explained rather inadequately that he had found at the
last minute he couldn’t manage it after all. Countless incidents of this kind
had contributed to Basil’s present depreciated popularity.

‘Look
here, Rex, ‘ he said,. ‘what I want to know is what you’re going to do about
Seth.’

‘Seth?’
Lord Monomark turned an inquiring glance on Sanders. ‘What am I doing about
Seth?’

‘Seth?’

‘It
seems to me there’s an extremely tricky political situation developing there.
You’ve seen the news from Ukaka. It doesn’t tell one a thing. I want to get
some first-hand information. I’m probably sailing almost at once. It occurred
to me that I might cover it for you in the
Excess.’

Towards
the end of this speech, Lord Monomark’s bewilderment was suddenly illumined.
This was nothing unusual after all. It was simply someone after a job. ‘Oh,’ he
said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t interfere with the minor personnel of the paper.
You’d better go and see one of the editors about it. But I don’t think you’ll
find him anxious to take on new staff at the moment.’

‘I’ll
tell them you sent me.’

‘No,
no, I never interfere. You must just approach them through the normal
channels.’

‘All
right. I’ll come up and see you after I’ve fixed it up. Oh, and I’ll send you Griffenbach’s
report on the onion and porridge diet if I can find it. There’s my sister. I’ve
got to go and talk to her now, I’m afraid. See you before I sail.’

Barbara
Sothill no longer regarded her brother with the hero-worship which had coloured
the first twenty years of her life.

‘Basil,’
she said. ‘What on earth have you been doing? I was lunching at mother’s today
and she was wild about you. She’s got one of her dinner parties and you
promised to be in. She said you hadn’t been home all night and she didn’t know
whether to get another man or not.’

‘I was
on a racket. We began at Lottie Crump’s. I rather forget what happened except
that Allan got beaten up by some chaps.’

‘And
she’s just heard about the committee.’

‘Oh
that.
I meant to give up the constituency anyhow. It’s no catch being in the
Commons now. I’m thinking of going to Azania.’

‘Oh,
were you? — and what’ll you do there?’

‘Well,
Rex Monomark’ wants me to represent the
Excess,
but I think as a matter
of fact I shall be better off if I keep a perfectly free hand. The only thing
is I shall need some money. D’you think our mother will fork out five hundred
pounds?’

‘I’m sure
she won’t.’

‘Well, someone’ll
have to. To tell you the truth I can’t very well stay on in England at the
moment. Things have got into rather a crisis. I suppose you wouldn’t like to
give me some money.’

‘Oh,
Basil, what’s the good? You know I can’t do it except by getting it from
Freddy and he was furious last time.’

‘I
can’t think why. He’s got packets.’

‘Yes,
but you might try and be a little polite to him sometimes — just in public I
mean.’