The blue organdy was a bad choice, a mistake she instantly realized when entering the dining room, after having descended the broad, banistered stairs from the second floor. She didn't have the proper clothes for such an affair to begin with; being American and the wife of a still rising businessman, she didn't attend affairs of this caliber. The blue organdy was formal, but didn't have the polish, the sophistication, that, say the black lace Empire dress Lena was wearing possessed. The quiet, dignified grace just wasn't there — it made her seem young like a pubescent girl going to her junior-prom. She was in brief, embarrassed.
Wafto, impeccable in his black uniform, served and cleared with a subservience almost touching. It was obvious to Sharon that the little hunch-back doted on his master, lived and breathed to serve Mark Marlowe, to repay the debt of gratitude for being employed as a respectable man rather than a side-show freak. Wafto hobbled around at amazing speed, his miniature clubfoot with its built-up shoe thumping against the thick Oriental carpeting with the rapidity of a jack-hammer. He had to reach up to the table for the dishes and glasses, but in spite of his infirmities not a dish clattered, or a glass pinged.
Sharon watched Wafto, torn between her ambivalent feelings of repulsion and of pity. There was a sort of horror to the dwarf, a kind of wolfish glitter to his eyes and an evil smirk to his rubbery lips which, when he faced Sharon, made her cringe. It was — well, it was almost as if he was undressing her with his eyes, leering at her as though envisioning her stripped completely naked in bed! A cold, clammy shiver would travel the length of her spine, then, and her stomach would grow queasy.
And yet that couldn't be, she told herself. It was her imagination; it had to be. Wafto had been nothing save the beautifully trained gentleman's gentleman that he was, acting as butler, servant, and chef aplomb. And always with proper manners. Not once had spoken out of turn or made any untoward gesture to her, and he had treated her with the respect and deference that she, as a house-guest of his master, should be afforded. So Sharon felt guilty, concluding that her unwarranted fear of Wafto was nothing more than prejudice, and aversion to his unfortunate plight.
Wafto could not help what he was. It was an accident of birth, she kept reminding herself, a tragedy of sperm and ovum that was a curse to him, and one which he must surely know caused contempt and revulsion on the part of others, more normal humans. She was being unfair and as ugly in her mind as he was on the surface, she thought, and therefore she felt sorry for him as well. "The slings and arrows of outrageous misfortunes," she quoted in her mind. She watched Wafto, then; watched him with the fascination which humanity watches all great sorrows.
Poor girl. Had she but known what was burning through the hunch-backed dwarf's mind, she wouldn't have been so full of self-chastisement. Wafto went through the motions of servitude, starting from the first answering of the door, through the carrying of her bags upstairs to the guest bedroom and the serving of dinner with but one licentious flame lusting in the furnace of his sadistic brain. Soon… soon I will possess this proud beauty, this American bitch who looks at me with such coldness… yes, soon I will have her, and she'll like it. She'll love it, love me, me and my fine, huge cock worming around in her proud young belly. Soon…
The last course had been served, the dessert of Camembert cheese and ripe fruit. The last of the knives and forks which had lined each side of the place settings had been used to cut and eat, the china plates with the pits and seeds had been removed, and there was the long pause as the three of them sat back, touched their mouths with the linen napkins and slothfully contemplated the large amounts they'd just consumed.
"Shall we have coffee now?" Lena asked.
"Ah, yes," Mark replied, smiling. "Wafto!"
"Coming," Wafto said from the kitchen, and then he appeared. "You wish coffee?"
"In the living room, I think. And a little Grand Marnier, perhaps." Mark rose, placing his napkin on the table, and smiled at both Lena and Sharon. "I think we'll be more comfortable there, don't you agree?"
"I'm not sure I can move," Sharon said. "I'm so full…" There had been soup, a fine clear broth sprinkled with chives and parsley. Then the fish course. Sharon had never been one for fish, but the little fried surf-fish were in a mixture of lemon juice and butter and melted in her mouth. Fresh, Mark had assured her, caught just that morning. And then the filets, the eye of the beef broiled with garlic and the hearts of artichokes, and the side course of snow peas, and the baked potato still in its jacket, bursting with sour cream. And, of course, the final course of fruit. Never had she eaten so much or so well, and her dress was tight around her expanded stomach.
Somehow she made it to the library and was nearly in a stupor, almost uncomfortable, and she couldn't understand how her host could keep such a trim, muscular figure if he ate like that every day. Or, for that matter, how Mark and Lena could still carry on their spirited discussion, have so much energy for other things besides digestion.
Mark was expounding, "… I cannot agree that the change in our government is for the better."
"But you yourself said, my dear Mark, that you weren't for the Liberals or for Labor," Lena replied. "I would think that you'd be all for the Conservatives to be back in power."
"That's just it," Mark replied. "They aren't in power. Oh, they were voted in, Edward Heath to the Prime Minister's chair and all, but it doesn't mean one whit of difference. Not one whit."
"Why?" Sharon asked simply. She had never delved in politics much; as an American she didn't feel that she should form opinions about English politics, and she had left most of the domestic politics to her husband. Still, what Mark was saying puzzled her.
"Because the government doesn't hold the reins of power, Mrs. Court. May I call you Sharon?"
"Of course; please do, Mr. Marlowe," she blushed. "I mean Mark."
He smiled at her slip and continued. "Now in answer to your question, you must understand that in any important nation — yours, mine, Russia, France, whatever — you have a bureaucracy, a gray, anonymous world of officialdom, a growing army of civil servants, council officials, tax inspectors, and big business administrators. It is, as Balzac said, 'a giant mechanism operated by pygmies'."
"Naturally, there's the staff. But…" Lena was interrupted by Wafto, bearing a shiny silver tray of coffee and cups and liqueur and glasses. Wafto set the tray down and proceeded to pour and serve. Lena continued. "But they are controlled by the government."
"On the contrary. Ah, thank you, Wafto." Mark stirred his coffee. "It's the other way around. Consider: the incoming party have been denied information on which to base political decisions because they were formally the opposition. Without such information, all their big talk about changing ways is irrelevant."
"But they have the information when they are in power," Sharon protested. She sipped her Grand Marnier tentatively, enjoying its combination sweet stickiness and bitter fruit flavor.
"That's it, Sharon, Grand Marnier is an excellent digestive aid. I always follow my evening meal with it." Mark turned to Wafto, who had finished serving. "My Partagas, Wafto, if you please. And the ah, special cigarettes." Then he turned back to the beautiful young wife. "I'm sorry for the interruption, Sharon," he sighed. "No, I'm afraid they don't have the information. The only way a Minister could effectively challenge an already existing policy would be by going into the whole thing again from scratch, reading all the papers, tracing all the details of planning and contracting from the moment the project was conceived to the stage at which it arrived on his desk claiming an urgent decision. And that is exactly just what he can't do. He has neither the time nor the specialist knowledge. He is forced to take most of what has gone before as read."