Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 29

Lunched with Pips and Wally at the Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly. I do feel a light touch is called for with mosaics, unless you’re decorating a temple of worship.

The girls were a little stiff with each other at first, but a bottle of hock wine soon got them talking about past times. Pips remembered something I’d quite forgotten: how Wally talked Homer Chute into masquerading as her cousin and picking her up from Oldfields in his Lagonda one Sunday. They were gone all day at the pleasure beach and Wally came back with a tintype portrait of herself sitting on Homer’s knee. Not that Pips was backward with the boys. She had more fraternity pins than any of us.

Wally says she doesn’t know how long she and Ernest will be in London but she’d really like to liven things up while she’s here, and leave her mark. Pips suggested costume parties, but she hasn’t seen Bryanston Court. It’s far too small for a crush. Anyway, Wally says unlimited drink is death to conversation. She prefers elegant little dinners where she can draw people out.

Wally believes the secret of success as a hostess is to mix important people with a sprinkling of interesting types from lower levels. Also, in the matter of food and presentation and entertainment to have the courage to season the expected with the unexpected. She says the King of England would be happy to come to dinner if he thought he might meet Mahatma Gandhi and be served a good, tasty hamburger on a Minton plate. Pips says Mahatma Gandhi doesn’t eat hamburger.

After lunch, Wally took us to see an adorable gramophone she’d found in Wigmore Street, completely portable, in a lizard-skin case. I couldn’t resist. But I’ve entrusted it to Wally, because if I bring it to Carlton Gardens, Flora will expect to play with it and it will soon be broken.

Pips was on the telephone the instant I got home. She said, “Minnehaha’s as slow as ever to pick up a check, I see. And I hope you’re not going to buy her every toy in the store. You’re too generous, Maybell. Always were.”

Well, what’s a little money between friends? And I’m only lending her my gramophone.