Highland Fling (7 page)

Jane, whose partners were Admiral Wenceslaus and Mr Buggins, courted disaster by embarking on a funny story Albert had told her about a lunatic woman with a glass eye. She only remembered in the middle that the admiral was one-eyed and that Mrs Buggins languished in a lunatic asylum and had to change it quickly into a drunken man with one leg. The story
lost much of its point and nobody laughed except Walter, who choked into his soup.

Albert sat next to Lady Prague, a spinsterish woman of about forty with a fat face, thin body and the remains of a depressingly insular type of good looks. Her fuzzy brown hair was arranged in a dusty bun showing ears which were evidently intended to be hidden, but which insisted on poking their way out. Her skin was yellow with mauve powder; except for this her face was quite free from any trace of
maquillage
, and the eyebrows grew at will. Her nails were cut short and unvarnished.

Albert was seized with spasms of hatred for her even before she spoke, which she did almost immediately in a loud unpleasing voice, saying:

‘I didn’t quite hear your name when we were introduced.’

Albert looked at her frolicking eyebrows with distaste and said very distinctly:

‘Albert Memorial Gates.’

‘Oh! What?’

‘Albert Memorial Gates.’

‘Yes.
Memorial
, did you say?’

‘My name,’ said Albert with some asperity, ‘is Albert Memorial Gates. I took Memorial in addition to my baptismal Albert at my confirmation out of admiration for the Albert Memorial, a very great work of art which may be seen in a London suburb called Kensington.’

‘Oh,’ said Lady Prague crossly, ‘you might as well have called yourself Albert Hall.’

‘I entirely disagree with you.’

Lady Prague looked helplessly at her other neighbour, Admiral Wenceslaus, but he was talking across Jane to Mr Buggins and took no notice of her. She made the best of a bad job and turned again to Albert.

‘Did I hear Mr Buggins say that you are an artist?’

‘
Artiste – peintre –
yes.’

‘Oh, now do tell me, I’m so interested in art, what do you chiefly go in for?’

‘Go in where?’

‘I mean – water-colours or oils?’

‘My principal medium is what you would call oils. Gouache, tempera and prepared dung are mediums I never neglect, while my bead, straw and button pictures have aroused a great deal of criticism not by any means all unfavourable.’

‘It always seems to me a great pity to go in for oils unless you’re really good. Now Prague’s sister has a girl who draws quite nicely and she wanted to go to Paris, but I said to her parents, “Why let her learn oils. There are too many oil paintings in the world already. Let her do water-colours. They take up much less room.” Don’t you agree?’

‘I expect, in the case of your husband’s niece, that you were perfectly right.’

‘Now, do tell me, this is so interesting, what sort of things do you paint?’

‘Chiefly abstract subjects.’

‘Yes, I see, allegories and things like that. Art must be so fascinating, I always think. I have just been painted by Laszlo. By the way, did I see you at his exhibition? No? But I have seen you somewhere before, I know I have. It’s a funny thing but I
never
forget a face – names, now I can’t remember, but I never forget a face, do you?’

‘So few people have faces,’ said Albert, who was struggling to be polite. ‘Everyone seems to have a name, but only one person in ten has a face. The old man sitting next to Sally, for instance, has no face at all.’

‘That is my husband,’ said Lady Prague, rather tartly.

‘Then the fact must already have obtruded itself on your notice. But, take the general as an example. He hasn’t got one either, in my opinion.’

‘Oh, I see now what you mean,’ she said brightly, ‘that they are not paintable. But you surprise me. I have always been told that older people, especially men, were very paintable with all the wrinkles and lines – so much character. Now, you went, I suppose, to the Dutch exhibition?’

‘I did not. I wasn’t in London last spring, as a matter of fact, but even if I had been I should have avoided Burlington House as sedulously then as I should later in the summer. I regard the Dutch school as one of the many sins against art which have been perpetrated through the ages.’

‘You mean …’ She looked at him incredulously. ‘Don’t you
like
Dutch pictures?’

‘No, nor Dutch cheese, as a matter of fact!’

‘I can’t understand it. I simply worship them. There was a picture of an old woman by Rembrandt. I stood in front of it for quite a while one day and I
could have sworn
she breathed!’

Albert shuddered.

‘Yes, eerie, wasn’t it? I turned to my friend and said: “Laura, it’s uncanny. I feel she might step out of the frame any moment.” Laura Pastille (Mrs Pastille, that’s my friend’s name) has copied nearly all the Dutch pictures in the National Gallery. For some she had to use a magnifying glass. She’s very artistic. But I am amazed that you don’t like them. I suppose you pretend to admire all these ugly things which are the fashion now. I expect you’ll get over it in time. Epstein, for instance, and Augustus John – what d’you think about them?’

Albert contained himself with some difficulty and answered, breathing hard and red in the face, that he regarded Epstein as one of the great men of all time and would prefer not to discuss him. (General Murgatroyd, overhearing this remark, turned to Walter and asked if that ‘fella Gates’ were an aesthete. Walter looked puzzled and said that he hoped so, he hoped they all were. The general snorted and continued telling Captain Chadlington about how he had once played a salmon for two hours.)

Lady Prague then said: ‘Why do you live in Paris? Isn’t England good enough for you?’ She said this rather offensively. It was evident that Albert’s feelings for her were heartily reciprocated.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘England is hardly a very good place for a serious artist, is it? One is not exactly encouraged to use one’s brain over here, you know. When I arrived from Paris this last time they would not even leave me my own copy of
Ulysses
. Things have come to a pretty pass when it is impossible to get decent literature to read.’

‘
In
decent literature, I suppose you mean.’

Albert felt completely out of his depth, but to his immense relief Admiral Wenceslaus now turned upon Lady Prague the conversational gambit of, ‘And where did you come from today?’ thus making it unnecessary for him to answer.

Mr Buggins and Walter were getting on like a house on fire.

‘Curious,’ observed Mr Buggins, ‘for a house party of this size in Scotland to consist entirely of Sassenachs – seven men and not one kilt among them. I have the right, of course, to wear the Forbes tartan through my maternal grandmother, but I always think it looks bad with an English name, don’t you agree?’

‘Very bad,’ said Walter. ‘But you could wear it as a fancy dress, I suppose?’

‘The kilt, my dear sir, is not a fancy dress.’

‘My wife is Scottish; her father is Lord Craigdalloch’s brother.’

‘Yes, of course, Johnnie. Such an interesting family, the Dallochs; one of the oldest in Scotland.’

‘Really?’

‘Considering that you are allied to them by marriage it surprises me that you should not be aware of that. Why, the cellars of this castle date from the tenth century. I suppose you know how it came to be built here?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Well, the first Thane of Dalloch had no castle and one day
when he was getting old he thought he would build himself a solid dwelling-place instead of the shieling or hut that had been his headquarters up to then. So he went to consult a wise woman who lived in a neighbouring shieling. He told her what was in his mind and asked where would be the best place for him to build his castle. She replied, “When you find a
bike
¹
in a
birk
,
²
busk
³
there the
bauk
.”
⁴

‘The story goes that as he was walking away from the old woman’s shieling he was stung by a wasp. He looked high and low for the
bike
, intending to destroy it, and presently found it in a
birk
. Instantly he recalled the witch’s words. The next day he
busked
the
bauk
and soon a bonnie castle rose round the
birk
, which you can see to this very day in the cellars. To me, all these old legends are so fascinating.’

He then proceeded to tell Walter the whole history of the Dalloch family down to the present generation. Walter found it extremely dull and wondered how anyone could be bothered to remember such stuff, but he thought Mr Buggins quite a nice old bore and tried to listen intelligently.

Albert was now struggling with Lady Brenda, who was far more difficult to get on with than Lady Prague. Being a duke’s daughter she was always spoken of as having so much charm. The echo of this famous charm had even reached as far as Paris, and Albert was eagerly anticipating its influence upon himself.

He was doomed to immediate disappointment, finding that besides being an unusually stupid woman she had less sex appeal than the average cauliflower; and when, in the course of conversation, he learnt that her two children were called Wendy and Christopher Robin, his last hope of being charmed vanished for ever.

She told him that Lady Craigdalloch, her godmother, was improving the whole house, bit by bit.

‘This year all the oak on the staircase has been pickled. Of course, it takes time as they are not well off, but Madge has such good taste. You should have seen the drawing-room before she redecorated it: a hideous white room with nothing but Victorian furniture, bead stools and those horrible little stiff sofas. It was my mother who suggested painting it green. Of course it is really lovely now.’

‘You have known the house a long time?’ he asked, stifling a groan.

‘Oh, yes, since I was a child. We spent our honeymoon here.’

‘I hope,’ said Albert, ‘in the lovely bed which Sally is occupying at present. I thought when I saw it how perfect for a honeymoon.’

Lady Brenda looked horrified. Luckily at this moment Sally got up and the women left the dining-room.

As soon as the door was shut upon them, Admiral Wenceslaus monopolized the conversation, holding forth on his favourite subject: Blockade. Walter and Albert, who had a hazy idea that a blockade was a sort of fence behind which the white men retired when pursued by Red Indians, now learnt that, on the contrary, it is a system of keeping supplies from the enemy in times of war. The admiral explained to them, and to the table at large, that it is permissible to ration neutrals to their pre-war imports in order to prevent the enemy country from importing goods through this channel.

‘Why wasn’t it done from the beginning?’ he bawled, in a voice which Albert felt he must have acquired when addressing his men in stormy weather from the bridge, and rolling his eye round and round. ‘Was there a traitor in the Government? That’s what I should like to know.’

‘Hear, hear!’ said Lord Prague, doubtless from force of habit, as he was, in fact, unable to hear a word.

‘We had them
there
.’ The admiral screwed his thumb round and round on the table as though grinding up imaginary
Germans. ‘And all the time our poor fellows were being blown to atoms by British shells.…’

His speech, for it was virtually one, continued for about half an hour, and when it was finished they joined the ladies.

Albert felt disappointed. Other admirals he had met had provided excellent after-dinner company and he expected better things of the Silent Service than a lecture on Blockade.

After dinner the general marshalled them all into Lord Craigdalloch’s study and turned on the wireless which was playing Grieg’s suite from
Peer Gynt
. ‘This is London calling.’ (Crash! crash!) ‘The Wireless Symphony Orchestra will now play “Solveig’s Song”.’ (Crash! crash! crash!)

Albert spoke to Jane in an undertone, but he was quickly checked by a look from Lady Prague who appeared to be in a state of aesthetic rapture.

When the Grieg came to an end it was announced that Miss Sackville-West would give readings from TS Eliot.

‘Tripe!’ said the general and turned it off. He then began to arrange about the next day’s shooting.

‘If any of the non-shooters would like to come out tomorrow,’ he said, ‘it will be a good opportunity as none of the drives are very far apart and it’s all easy walking. Those who don’t want to come all day can meet us for lunch.’

‘Jane and I would love it if we shan’t be in the way,’ said Sally meekly.

The general, who had taken a fancy to her, smiled benignly:

‘Do you good, my dear.’

‘Great,’ said Albert, ‘as is my distaste for natural scenery, I feel it to be my duty, as a student of the nineteenth century, to gaze just once upon the glens and bens that so entranced Royal Victoria, both as the happy wife of that industrious and illustrious prince whose name I am so proud to bear, and as his lamenting relict. I should like to see the stag stand at bay upon its native crags, the eagle cast its great shadow over the cowering
grouse; I should like dearly to find a capercailzie’s nest. And I feel that I could choose no more suitable day on which to witness these glories of Victorian nature than the famous twelfth, when sportsmen all over the country set forth with dog and gun to see what they can catch.’

This speech was greeted by Captain Chadlington with a sort of admiring noise in his throat which can only be transcribed as ‘C-o-o-o-h.’

‘Shall you come, Monteath?’ asked the general, taking no notice of Albert.

‘I think not, sir, thank you very much. I have rather a lot of work to do for the
Literary Times
and if everyone goes out it will be a good opportunity to get on with it.’