Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 101

I am in love! Philip Sassoon is delicious. He’s the same age as Melhuish, but you’d never think it, he’s so svelte and so vibrant. Also, he has exquisite taste. Blood-red roses arranged against a panel of black glass. Twinned pewter buckets filled with white oxeye daisies.

He dashed around, showing us everything. The drawing room—one of the drawing rooms—all pink and gilt and tapestries. The dining room azure and silver. Everything done with a very sure touch. Only the ballroom was too hectic for my taste, no surface left unpainted. Camel trains, palm trees, sheikhs of Araby.

“The problem with owning a ballroom,” he said, “is that one feels an obligation to use it.”

Lightfoot sang my praises as a dancer, but, sadly, Sir Philip doesn’t dance.

He said, “One always feels obliged to buzzz around like a bumble bee, pollinating one’s guests with gaiety, and then, when the evening’s over, the room looks horrrribly like the Battle of Culloden Moor.”

A location from his Baghdad period, I suppose.

I said, “What you need is a woman to hold your balls for you.”

“Maybell!” he said, “I think I may thrrrreaten you with an invitation to Trrrrent Park.”

I said, “Invite away! You don’t frrrrighten me.” How we laughed.

A small point of accuracy for Melhuish. Sir Philip does not have a footman serve tea. He has footmen. And why not!