Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 24

How I missed Danforth Brumby last evening. Ida and I had no sooner arrived at the Argentines than she set off across the room in search of potato chips and left me at the mercy of a Latin with shiny hair and built-up shoes. What is one supposed to say to these people? Brumby would have struck up a conversation about silver mines or the price of beef, but I felt quite at a loss. Was finally rescued by an American press attaché called Whitlow Trilling, also married to an English girl. He knows Judson and Pips, but Wally’s name meant nothing to him. Perhaps this whole Wally business is a red herring.

Violet came in before I was dressed, wanting to discuss something called Royal Ascot. Ascot is a race track, and there’s a week of races there next month. I wouldn’t mind going. Brumby and I went to Saratoga once and it was quite fun.

Violet said, “Oh I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Maybell. Melhuish and I will be in the Royal party, you see? And I’m just not sure what best to do with you.”

I said, “You make me sound like a surplus chair. It’s very simple. I’ll join the Royal party, too.”

But she says that’s out of the question. That one cannot invite oneself along, nor even propose that one’s dearest sister, recently bereaved and newly arrived in a foreign land, be added to the invitation list.

She said, “Let me have a word with Lady Desborough. She’s always very sweet about accommodating an extra.”

That word “extra” again.

I said, “As a matter of fact, now I reconsider. I expect to be rather busy that week, so don’t give it another thought.”

She said, “Will you? Nobody’ll be in town, you know? But it’ll be a great weight off my mind. Their Majesties absolutely depend on us for Ascot, you see. Well, Melhuish has known them all his life.”

Violet never tires of displaying her tired old stock of claims to grandeur. How she met Melhuish when he was traveling with the Prince of Wales. How Melhuish’s father was equerry to two Kings, which as I understand it amounts to nothing more than being a royal errand boy. How Melhuish has known the Duchess of York since she was a baby in her bassinet.

She forgets how differently things might have turned out. If I hadn’t stayed home to represent us at Lucie Mallett’s wedding shower, I’d have been at Sulphur Springs myself. Who knows, I might have caught the Royal eye, never mind Donald Melhuish’s. Not that I’d have wanted either of them. They say that crowns are unbearably heavy to wear.

I notice anyway that the Prince of Wales seems to have dropped Melhuish. Violet says it’s not a question of “dropping.” She says friends grow apart when one of them becomes a family man and the other continues to run with a fast set.

I said, “I assume you’ll leave me with a cook at least, and a maid while you’re being indispensable to Their Majesties?”

She said, “I’ll leave you with everything but a driver. And you’ll have Flora and Doopie for company.”

So there it is. It doesn’t bother me. I’m sure Royalties must be death to the natural gaiety of friendship. Better to stay at home and be one’s true self, even if it does mean being left with a child to supervise, and an imbecile, and a staff of Bolshevik insurgents.