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Authors: Robert Barnard
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paper fluttered to the floor and I picked it up for him. It was an old election address. It had a picture of Harry Bayle, his wife, and two little boys. The wife was sensible-looking rather than glamorous — a down-to-earth, busy, right-thinking body, a typical Labour Party wife.
‘Nice picture,’ I said, handing it back to him.
CHAPTER 6
Country Pleasures
I’d got the idea that the next day was to hold another factory visit for the Princess. When I had started on the case I had gone through the Court Circulars and ‘Social Engagements’ columns of the papers, constructing the Princess’s round of activities for the last few and the next few months. But there must have been a change of plan, because when I rang Joplin that evening I found that next day was to be the first of two days of engagements in theMidlands. The opportunity was too good to be missed. I told Joplin that both of us would be going with her, but that I would be sloping off for a time to Knightley. I had a date with the dead Bill Tredgold.
Well, we took the Royal train up to Birmingham — attended to the platform at Euston Station by all manner of station-masters and things, top-hatted and togged up to the nines, and all the more conspicuous when compared to the slovenliness and grime of all the other functionaries in sight. All the bowing and scraping was enough to make a cat laugh, but the Princess took it all in her stride — her demeanour commonsensical (didn’t everyone who went by train get this sort of treatment?) and a shade demure. I sat on the train with her and Lady Muck, in what was not so much a compartment as a large, rather plush room. Joplin patrolled the corridors, and seemed to consider himself well out of it. The Princess Helena and I talked about the day’s engagements, read the papers, commented on the news. The Princess read the Daily Grub for preference, which rather shocked me. In spite of that, though, I was beginning to revise my opinion about her intelligence. She might not have an idea in her head, not an idea of the abstract kind, but she did have a useful practical streak, a knowledge of where to draw the line, an ability to deal with people, and get them to do what she wanted. She coped admirably, for example, with Lady Dorothy Lowndes-Gore. She sat, upright and cool, in the corner of the apartment on wheels, reading one of those glossies that assumes its readers run a couple of Rolls and have more Georgian silver than they know what to do with. The Princess, in the midst of our chat, kept throwing remarks in her direction, and paid solemn attention to her drawled, inhibited replies. I could see she wished her a hundred miles away, so we could have a cosy chat about the fracas in the Wellington Club, but not by a whiskerdid she give any sign of this.
The only time Lady Dorothy made any independent remark, it was addressed to me: ‘You’re one of the Northumberland Trethowans, aren’t you?’
‘I was,’ I said.
She looked at me for a moment, as if my answer smacked of Jacobinism. Then she said: ‘I met your cousin Peter once,’ and dropped her head down once more into her glossy. I rather got the impression that much of her conversation was of this kind, that she acted as a Waugh-like ancestral voice, charting the ramifications of the Great Families, and lamenting their downfall.
The engagement for the morning was of the Princess Helena’s traditional type: we all visited an old people’s home that was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. You can imagine what it was like: product of the Depression, its aim was obviously to produce just that in anybody who had anything to do with it today. There was a smell of new paint, obviously for the visit, but through doors one caught glimpses of peeling walls, sagging ceilings and arthritic sofas in the rooms the Princess was not to be taken into. The staff seemed to be recruited from the female relatives of Methodist missionaries, and the old people themselves
‘Nice picture,’ I said, handing it back to him.
CHAPTER 6
Country Pleasures
I’d got the idea that the next day was to hold another factory visit for the Princess. When I had started on the case I had gone through the Court Circulars and ‘Social Engagements’ columns of the papers, constructing the Princess’s round of activities for the last few and the next few months. But there must have been a change of plan, because when I rang Joplin that evening I found that next day was to be the first of two days of engagements in theMidlands. The opportunity was too good to be missed. I told Joplin that both of us would be going with her, but that I would be sloping off for a time to Knightley. I had a date with the dead Bill Tredgold.
Well, we took the Royal train up to Birmingham — attended to the platform at Euston Station by all manner of station-masters and things, top-hatted and togged up to the nines, and all the more conspicuous when compared to the slovenliness and grime of all the other functionaries in sight. All the bowing and scraping was enough to make a cat laugh, but the Princess took it all in her stride — her demeanour commonsensical (didn’t everyone who went by train get this sort of treatment?) and a shade demure. I sat on the train with her and Lady Muck, in what was not so much a compartment as a large, rather plush room. Joplin patrolled the corridors, and seemed to consider himself well out of it. The Princess Helena and I talked about the day’s engagements, read the papers, commented on the news. The Princess read the Daily Grub for preference, which rather shocked me. In spite of that, though, I was beginning to revise my opinion about her intelligence. She might not have an idea in her head, not an idea of the abstract kind, but she did have a useful practical streak, a knowledge of where to draw the line, an ability to deal with people, and get them to do what she wanted. She coped admirably, for example, with Lady Dorothy Lowndes-Gore. She sat, upright and cool, in the corner of the apartment on wheels, reading one of those glossies that assumes its readers run a couple of Rolls and have more Georgian silver than they know what to do with. The Princess, in the midst of our chat, kept throwing remarks in her direction, and paid solemn attention to her drawled, inhibited replies. I could see she wished her a hundred miles away, so we could have a cosy chat about the fracas in the Wellington Club, but not by a whiskerdid she give any sign of this.
The only time Lady Dorothy made any independent remark, it was addressed to me: ‘You’re one of the Northumberland Trethowans, aren’t you?’
‘I was,’ I said.
She looked at me for a moment, as if my answer smacked of Jacobinism. Then she said: ‘I met your cousin Peter once,’ and dropped her head down once more into her glossy. I rather got the impression that much of her conversation was of this kind, that she acted as a Waugh-like ancestral voice, charting the ramifications of the Great Families, and lamenting their downfall.
The engagement for the morning was of the Princess Helena’s traditional type: we all visited an old people’s home that was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. You can imagine what it was like: product of the Depression, its aim was obviously to produce just that in anybody who had anything to do with it today. There was a smell of new paint, obviously for the visit, but through doors one caught glimpses of peeling walls, sagging ceilings and arthritic sofas in the rooms the Princess was not to be taken into. The staff seemed to be recruited from the female relatives of Methodist missionaries, and the old people themselves
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