Page 124 of The Gathering Storm

‘So what are you doing here? Working?’

‘Charity lunch at the Ritz, the Vigo girl and her set, including the American ambassador’s daughter. I was sent to have a look at her and write a paragraph or two, now she’s been presented.’

‘Which one was it, again?’

‘The second one, Kathleen. Friendly soul, very natural. Freckles, big smile. The image of her father.’

‘Oh, have you met Ambassador Kennedy? What do you think of him?’

‘Well, he’s clearly a crook, but a very genial one. His wife is terrifying, that’s all. And all his children have far too many teeth.’

‘Oh, Basil!’ She laughed. ‘How come I never see you? I never see anyone I like any more.’

‘Who do you see?’ he asked, enjoying her appreciation.

‘People Milo invites.’ She made a face. ‘Significant people.’

‘What’s he selling these days?’

‘Don’t be rude. He doesn’t sell, he brokers. And at the moment it’s arms, so it’s trips to America and Sweden. They take so long, I hardly see him. I wish they’d hurry up and start a flying service to America. It must be ten years since Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic – you’d think they’d have got it going by now.’

He shook his head. ‘Would you take the chance of flying over that big, empty ocean in a tin box?’

‘I might,’ she said defiantly. He saw the idea come to her. ‘Oh, Basil, you must come to dinner tonight. It will probably be poisonously dull, but you’ll cheer me up. I can promise you a good dinner – we have a first-rate cook at the moment.’

‘Good wine?’ he said suspiciously.

‘I can’t tell one from another, but Stuffy knows about that sort of thing, and he says Milo has an excellent cellar.’

‘Dear old Stuffy Elphinstone! Is he still hanging around you, looking like a lovesick puppy?’

‘Don’t be mean. You wouldn’t recognise him,’ she assured him. ‘He’s quite changed. He’s doing terribly well in the War Department, one of Hore-Belisha’s boys.’

‘I’ve heard Hore-Belisha isn’t much liked by the Army Council. Haven’t they nicknamed him Horeb-Elisha?’

Charlotte looked stern. ‘That’s horrid antiSemitism. Please don’t repeat it. Remember my favourite brother married a Jewish girl – oh, have you heard that they’re expecting a baby?’

‘Yes, Richard wrote to me. I sent a card. Happy news.’ He tilted his head at her. ‘Nothing in that line for you?’

‘Milo says it’s not the right time for us,’ she said, and he couldn’t for the life of him tell whether she minded or not. ‘So you’ll come tonight? Eight o’clock. You know we’re in Charles Street now?’

Milo must be doing well, Basil thought, noting the change from the modern flat in far-flung Baker Street to a handsome four-storey Georgian house right in the heart of Town, handy for Whitehall, the clubs, the Palace and everything important. Here they could really entertain ‘significant people’ and be taken seriously. Milo, he concluded, was intent on being a player in the high-stakes game.

And Basil saw at once what Charlotte had meant about Stuffy Elphinstone. He had lost a lot of weight, fined down a great deal, and with the fleshiness gone from his face he was revealed as being tolerably good-looking. But more than that, he seemed noticeably older – or, rather, more grown-up. It was as if he had suddenly moved a generation further on from Basil. Perhaps, he thought half ruefully, it was only that he, Basil, had not moved on as he should. He still didn’t feel entirely grown-up.

It was very much a grown-ups’ dinner. Charlotte was the only woman, and he watched her, half amused, half impressed, as she played the hostess with quiet confidence, as if she had been doing it for years. Perhaps she had absorbed her mother’s skills without being aware of it. The other guests were very much Milo’s invitees – people of substance, business men, financial men. A Swedish industrialist who spoke English so perfectly that he stood out among the drawling, slurring natives like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Basil hadn’t realised that Sweden was one of the world’s top manufacturers of arms, along with the United States. Political men. An army man, Brigadier Jenner, who was Deputy Military Secretary to the War Office. And along with Lord Elphinstone, another War Office man, the under-secretary, Lord Culbeath.

As they mingled before dinner, Culbeath came over to Basil and said, ‘Compton? We went to the same school – Felixkirk?’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Not at the same time, however. I left the year you joined. But you’ll have known my younger brother Fraser – he was in the year above you. Fraser Kerr-Anstruther.’

‘Oh, yes, I remember him,’ Basil said, recollecting a gawky youth with pale red-gold hair and an unfortunate tendency to blush and stammer. ‘We served on the school newspaper together.’

‘Yes, the good old Felix Culpa,’ Culbeath laughed. The paper had actually been called the Felix Dies, but the boys had changed that – unofficially. The headmaster Mr Cockburn had thrown Basil head first into editing the thing, his cunning plan to tame Basil and make him toe the line. ‘My brother had a bit of a hero-worship for you, you know. He was always telling me about your exploits. Thought you no end of a gay dog. That time you climbed up the flagpole on top of the main wing and replaced the flag with a pair of bloomers, for instance. Tell me – he’d love to know, even now – where did you get them from? Rumour had it they were Matron’s.’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’