Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 70

Ena Spain is quite gay, considering the circumstances of her life. Her children are all sickly, her husband goes with actresses, and last year, when the rebels drove them out of Spain, he left without her. Ran off to Paris and left her to take her chances and follow with the youngest of the brood once they were healthy enough to travel. She says there were rioters ramming the palace doors with trucks, and if it hadn’t been for two footmen helping them slip out the back way, they’d have been murdered in their beds. I wonder whether she lost her jewels. No one dresses here, so it’s impossible to know whether she’s been reduced to paste copies.

She’s especially attached to Doopie, because by an extraordinary coincidence, one of her sons is the same kind of dullard. His name is Hymie, but they spell it with a J in Spain. She said, “Hymie and Doopie get along so well. They understand each other perfectly. It’s a pity they’re not closer in age, because I think they’d have made a very happy couple.”

The very idea. I told her, they must never be allowed to breed.

She said, “I don’t see why. It’s not an inherited kind of deafness. And in every other respect, they’re just like you and me. The Greeces have an aunt with exactly the same problem and she’s led a very full life.”

Penelope Blythe agrees with me that Doopie doesn’t seem all there. George Lightfoot says she’s sharp as a tack but deaf as a post. I’m beginning to think information has been kept from me.