The Ambassador (28 page)

Strether frowned. He may have hinted to Marius that he found Lisa at times hard to make out, but the Prince was often unfathomable. He was a cynic and an enthusiast at the same time. He pretended to be a lightweight, yet his remarks usually turned out to be accurate and were unsettling. Marius himself did not seem sure which side of the fence he was on, nor whether indeed he was sitting perched uneasily in the middle. And yet this handsome,
dark-eyed
man was quintessential part of the Establishment he so coolly criticised. Maybe Marius was so secure, in both birth and upbringing, that he could play the licensed jester, who had no wish to damage the system that sustained him. Or maybe, more disturbingly, Marius had the same fears as Strether. Maybe the Prince was trying to alert him, to point his attention in a particular direction. But why?
And where?

Other would-be debaters were on their feet clamouring to be noticed. The Speaker called another NT, leader of the third party. Strether felt restless and disappointed. Whatever answers he might need, they were not here.

‘Marius,’ he murmured, ‘I’m lost. In the USA, Congress holds independent powers. It can stop a President in his tracks. It can throw out his budget, tack extras on to his favoured legislation, impeach him. We expect rows between the oval office and the elected body – open warfare, sometimes. Those conflicts are the heart of American liberty. But here

The Prince shrugged. ‘Here? Maybe you hope for too much, my dear Bill.’

‘Nobody seems to have noticed. The form is maintained. It reminds me of an old tree in my yard at home, still upright and flourishing, dominating the landscape, but the trunk’s hollow and inside it’s dead. Down there,’ he pointed sadly, ‘your politicians make speeches as they’ve done for a thousand years. Oodles of fire and fury. Only what does it signify now? Almost nothing.’ 

The Prince may have been scathing about the artificial lake, but to Strether the terrace was instantly a marvel. Its broad paving stretched over two hundred metres with a waist-high balustrade in Portland stone. In the near distance fountains played, lit by coloured lights in party colours, in a sequence said to symbolise harmony between the factions. Swans flapped and honked below while a herd of flame-pink flamingoes on the far shore stepped delicately, like an outing of fastidious old ladies. On the terrace itself striped awnings provided shade; a pleasant breeze came off the waters. Orange and lemon trees in white-painted tubs separated the tables, their fruit pendulous and inviting. Along the parapet spilled hibiscus and perfumed orchids, the latter a special genus,
parliamentaria
, with blooms in the hues of each main party on the same stem. A Member’s pet monkey pestered for titbits and was shooed away, while piebald seagulls fought over scraps.

At the Prince’s request the two women guests had been met and escorted. Lisa and the Princess were already installed at a trim wooden table, fruit-filled drinks to hand. Strether bent and kissed Lisa’s cheek. She had picked two orchid blossoms and tucked them into her hair. Her close-fitting trouser suit was of amber shantung; with a start Strether realised she must have been spending some money on her clothes. Not that she needed to, but the effect was delicious. Her manner to him was warm, too, which augured well, though otherwise she seemed on edge.

The Princess rose and held out a beringed hand. She was barely the height of a young child and was dressed in a full-length brocade
cheong-sam
, fastened at the neck. Strether hesitated. He touched the fingers and bowed low, in what he hoped was an old European gesture. This woman could not possibly be – what had the surgeon said? – eighty-six. Her features were tiny and fine-boned, her jet-black hair swept back from a face that could not be more than forty years old.

‘So pleased to meet you, Ambassador,’ Princess Io cooed, as she rearranged herself in a chair stuffed with tasselled cushions. Strether could not stop himself checking whether the stitches had left any traces, but there was no sign. He mumbled inanities in reply and felt slightly foolish.

‘What did you think of our wonderful English Parliament, Ambassador?’ the Princess continued. With deft grace she forked slivers of asparagus and baby octopus into her lipsticked mouth and played with the Danish champagne.

‘I don’t think he was too impressed,’ her son suggested. ‘Reckons they do it better in the States.’

‘But that’s normal, surely. He’s a patriot,’ the Princess responded. Her voice was high, tinkly, yet her entire presence had gravitas. The regard between mother and son was evident as Marius quietly removed dishes and arranged for glasses to be refilled.

‘I was a bit bothered,’ Strether ventured at last, ‘to hear that the main parties have identical policies underneath the rhetoric. They’re surely supposed to go at each other, not merely replicate line for line. And, though I can see the point, I’m alarmed that the Perm Secs will ensure that nobody does anything untoward – whatever the results of an election.’

‘Goodness! There’s nothing new in that,’ the Princess tinkled prettily. ‘Better than chaos each time a changeover occurs. But they’re all wonderful people. We are lucky to have them. I, of course, being royal, am above politics.’

Marius exchanged a flicker of private amusement with his mother. It made Strether
cross, as if once more he was being excluded from some important secret. He nudged the Prince. ‘Do they realise that inside?’ he asked. ‘And do they care?’

The Prince shrugged. ‘Yes, and no. Most of them know it, if not when they arrive as energetic new MPs full of ambition then soon after. The best are spirited upwards, particularly the awkward squad. When they’re offered a junior Minister’s job and don the striped gown, that straightens them out. Or they’re shunted off on delegations. Some remain dazzled for their entire career. Others find a niche and settle happily for some minor achievement. One could do worse with one’s life and gifts. It’s public service, and that’s drummed into us here.’

‘Do they have to be NTs to get on?’ Strether felt the Princess shift. Lisa was watching him as she sipped her drink.

‘No, not absolutely.’ Marius did not seem embarrassed at the inquiry. ‘For the highest appointed jobs, yes, obviously. But some upward mobility is still possible in the political world – new blood can be assimilated. This’ – he jerked a thumb at the edifice behind them –’is one of the few institutions where anyone can rise, still. Less and less so, though. Breeding will out.’

A green-tunicked waiter cleared trays. Effervescent ice-cream arrived in fluted glasses and caused lively comment. The Princess asked Lisa to describe her work and smiled vacantly as Lisa struggled to make sense of it to her. A second bottle of wine was opened. Strether felt the company waiting for him to proceed.

‘I’ll tell you what bothers me, if I may. Here on the terrace,’ Strether waved a hand about, at the glorious flowers with their heady fragrance, at the figures dotted at other tables, at the tourist boats near the fountain, ‘it’s hard to credit that this great Union might have a single problem. But we sat and listened most of the morning to a debate which was a parody of free expression. As if there were a deliberate conspiracy to avoid the issues of the day. I can’t accept that everybody goes along with this charade. You are too intelligent. All three of you.’

The Princess threw back her doll-like head and laughed. For a second Strether thought he spied a mark under her ear, then it had gone. Marius was grinning, as if pleased that the Ambassador had grasped an obscure but vital argument. Nobody replied.

Strether drained his glass, emboldened. ‘Doesn’t anybody object to this suffocating perfection? Is there no movement to question its underlying propositions? You, Lisa. You told me what you wanted to be the truth – that nobody misused the genetic programme. But they do, and it’s widespread. And you knew that, even if you refused to face it. You, Marius, you’re a prince and a man of the highest quality. And integrity, I hope. You’re a Member here. Dammit, you’re a member everywhere. Yet you tell me the MPs are playing convoluted games with each other and I’m sure that’s so. You, Princess, say that’s not new, as if the fact that something
slipped
generations ago is somehow satisfactory. Why doesn’t anyone stand up and shout about it?’

For several moments, as the others sat in silence and toyed with their meals, he wished he had kept his mouth shut. The breeze stirred Lisa’s hair but she kept, her eyes fixed on her plate, her movements fidgety. Then Marius answered.

‘They do. You saw that for yourself, the night of the embassy party.’

Strether sat back, startled. Lisa had turned away; he could not see her face. She had
spoken little and had barely touched her food.

‘Who are
they
!’ he demanded. The Princess began to examine her painted fingernails.

‘Various groups.’ Marius dropped his voice. ‘Here and in some cities on the continent. The most prominent is called “Solidarity”. Another is “1848”, though it could be a separate branch of the first.’

‘How do you know about them?’

‘I make it my business, my dear Strether.’ The Prince’s face clammed shut.

Strether grunted in irritation. Maybe the Prince could not talk with the women present. Strether remembered another tack.

‘Lisa, what’s PKU?’

‘PKU?’ She swivelled about and focused on him. ‘It stands for phenylketonuria. Used to be called Folling’s disease, after a Norwegian doctor who identified it. Why?’

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, golly. That’s a question from a twentieth-century medical exam. You don’t see it now. It’s a metabolic condition. Resulting, if I remember rightly, in a deficiency of phenylalanine hydroxylase. PAH. That’s usually found in the liver.’

‘Would you put it in somebody’s water? PKU, I mean?’

‘No, not at all. That’s the name of the condition. The stuff that’s

missing is PAH.’

‘But somebody ignorant might talk about adding PKU to the diet?’

‘They
might
. But how weird. What for?’

Strether thought hard. The other three observed him, puzzled. He tried again. ‘What causes it, Lisa?’

‘Heavens, Bill. I got my doctorate years ago and I did
not
major in the history of medicine. It’s genetic, an autosomal recessive disorder on chromosome 12, I think. Relatively common – about one in twelve thousand before the mid-twenties explosions. It could be detected at birth with a heel-prick blood test, one of the earliest employed. Later it could be corrected by gene-transfer technology – again, one of the earliest tried successfully. A chunk of liver would be excised, transduced and reinserted. Worked a treat.’

‘But what happened if people weren’t treated?’

‘Oh, they went mad. The gut without PAH is unable to tolerate normal protein. Without treatment or special diets children, though normal at birth, became severely retarded. If it developed in adults they had psychological problems, tremors, spasticity and neurological damage. Something like that.’

‘Would it kill them?’

‘No-o, I don’t think so. The main effects were developmental. But there used to be hospitals full of mentally retarded patients with PKU, until the tests and treatment. Those were so effective it vanished.’

‘Could it be reintroduced?’

Strether became conscious that Marius was leaning forward, though his expression remained inscrutable. His mother was gazing out over the lake, her exquisite nostrils flared, her eyes half closed.

Lisa frowned. ‘In principle, yes. What has been removed or repaired could be undone. Maybe in a slightly altered form. But why on earth would anybody want to?’

‘Perhaps as a form of chemical handcuffs,’ said Strether slowly. ‘For prisoners. So if
they tried to escape and were deprived of – PAH, did you say? – they would go mad.’

‘You’re crazy, Bill. No doctor would do that. It’d be deeply unethical,’ Lisa retorted. ‘Anyway, hardly anyone in the Union is sent to prison. It isn’t policy.’

Strether and Marius met each other’s eyes.

‘OK, Lisa. I’ll buy that,’ Strether said easily. Her face had become flushed: Lisa, usually so much in control of herself and her surroundings, was obviously unsettled. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the pet monkey, a jewelled red collar about its neck, was creeping timidly towards their table, attracted by the diners’ quiet demeanour. ‘But tell me, Doctor. Everything isn’t sweetness and light in your neck of the woods, is it?’

‘My results are excellent,’ she answered bluntly.

Strether might have accepted that public denial a week, even a few hours, before. But the empty shell of Parliament had left him exasperated and impatient. Lisa, he was sure, knew more than she was letting on. The sting of their spat before his trip had faded, but still he felt she owed him. ‘Really? But you’ve been working late, then suddenly you can take whole days off like today.’ He waited, then seized the moment. ‘Did you find those missing files?’

Her body sagged. Strether realised the power of cruelty. He held his breath.

‘No. I didn’t. And when I tried to repeat the experiment it failed again. Or rather it succeeded. And that data disappeared too.’

‘Failed? Succeeded?’ the Princess trilled. ‘How could it do both? What did you lose – and what are you two talking about?’