Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 32

We closed Ciro’s last night. There was a wonderfully droll ensemble playing with homemade banjos. The Moses Jackson Coon Band! Judson and Hattie brought along the press attaché, Whitlow Trilling, and his wife, Gladys. Ida turned up with an Argentine who smelled of brilliantine. Ernest had business papers to peruse, so cried off at the last minute. No great loss. He’s so serious. People don’t always want to be discussing Pluto’s Republic.

According to Whitlow, a new First Secretary just arrived, and it’s someone Wally knows from her Navy days in San Diego. Benny Thaw.

Pips said, “Is he an old flame?”

Wally says absolutely not, but she’s going to look him up.

The birds were singing as I arrived home, so I looked forward to a restful day in bed, but Wally was on the telephone at ten, slave-driving me to go shopping for lingerie, and then a military parade started up. Violet says it was the Major General’s Review. Men and horses tramping across Horse Guards’ Parade. Drums, bugles, shouting, all bad enough in themselves, but Doopie and Flora came back from watching and proceeded to reenact it in the corridor outside my room. Doopie always did get overexcited by military bands.

Violet is walking around with a furrowed brow, because the Rutlands are dining tonight, all the way from their castle in the country, also the terrifically von Bismarcks, but someone has chucked, leaving her with thirteen, and I’m far too tired to make up the numbers. I don’t have the strength to lift a soup spoon.

Caught my heel in the hem of my charcoal silk getting out of the car this morning, and there is apparently no girl among the overfed rabble of servants in this house who knows how to mend. Not one.

Light rain.