The similarity was from the shoulders down: expressive arms and hands, a fluid upper body in a shirt through which her pert breasts were visible, given she did not seem to be wearing a brassiere — Lieutenant Grace could barely take his eyes off them — and a tight backside that seemed to have minimal contact with her chair when pressing home an argument.
Alverson was a man who could sit bolt upright and appear to be lounging, his drawling voice hiding the speed of thought and observation that allowed him to amuse. It was as if, to him, human life was moving at the wrong pace, slightly too quickly, and was in need of a gentle application of the brakes. He wore his knowledge of the world lightly and he seemed to have been witness to quite a deal of it — Manchuria was mentioned, as well as Japan and the Balkans — and he clearly had some knowledge of South America, a knowledge Jardine shared but decided to keep to himself.
Captain Archie Peydon was a type Jardine had messed with often: bluff, opinionated with a small ‘o’ and Conservative with a large ‘C’, a career soldier in a peacetime army going nowhere fast. Aside from his views he had half a dozen well-worn anecdotes which, judging by the flash of boredom on the face of his host, he trotted out at every dinner he attended.
His naval counterpart was young and strikingly naive for a seagoing man who must surely, in his service life, have visited a few steamy fleshpots around the globe: Jardine’s memories of Portsmouth were alone quite hairy. If he had, it had not coloured him with sophistication, and, of course, Margery Mason kept putting her foot in it, and large feet they were.
They were well attended to by four servants, all young and handsome Somalis, and it was while watching them go about their tasks that something became evident, that provided by Conrad Mason. While ever the attentive host, seemingly listening to his guests with focus, his eyes kept flicking away to the moving boys as they silently flitted around on their bare feet with that grace Jardine had already noted.
It was not just the look in the eye in these rapid inspections, but the slight parting and wetting of the lips which told Jardine that to Mason these youngsters were possibly more than houseboys, which made clear the reaction to a couple of earlier remarks made by the disingenuous naval lieutenant.
‘The women of Sparta were not like the supine creatures who we have around us today,’ Corrie Littleton insisted. ‘At the beck and call of their menfolk; they ran their own lives-’
‘You know,’ Jardine gently interrupted, ‘I’ve never understood the use of the word “platonic” just to mean a non-carnal human relationship.’
‘Golly gosh,’ exclaimed M, while Peydon harrumphed and Grace blushed, but only after several seconds, when he had figured out what was being alluded to.
‘Sure,’ Alverson said, ‘the guy wrote a blueprint for the likes of Mussolini and Hitler.’
‘Not when it comes to the rights of women, he didn’t.’
‘Corrie, honey, you have such an unbiased world view.’
‘But that’s you men all over, able to read a classical text and only take out the bits that suit you.’
‘Like the Bible, really,’ said Mason, ‘full of stoning and damning and striking down dead for things we think nothing of today.’
‘Which your local episcopalian guy still preaches to the savages, I hear.’
‘They are not savages, Tyler!’
‘They don’t do irony in Boston,’ Alverson responded, as an aside to the whole table. ‘But it is still permissible, I believe, to call an Irishman a barbarian. Your holy man is not too fond of you, Mr Mason.’
‘Thinks I don’t give him the support he needs to turn all the Somalis into good Anglicans.’
‘Shall we be toasting the king?’ Peydon interjected, in a crude attempt to change the subject.
Mason nodded and made a sign his servants obviously understood, since they came to fill up the wine glasses. Corrie Littleton, still on lemonade, was about to protest, her bottom well off her chair, when Alverson cut her off. ‘When in Rome, honey.’
‘Shoot Mussolini,’ Grace responded, adding a silly grin.
‘You gotta appreciate, Mr Mason,’ Alverson said, with a lopsided grin, ‘that having kicked out one King George we are not too keen on toasting another.’
The response was dry and came with a wry smile. ‘We are drinking to his health, Mr Alverson, not to his territorial ambitions. Captain Peydon?’
‘The king,’ he croaked as he rose, everyone doing likewise.
‘I do not see you passing your wine over the water, Mr Jardine.’
‘I’m Scottish, but not rabidly so.’
‘What the hell are you two talking about?’ Corrie Littleton demanded.
‘You tell her, Mr Alverson.’
‘Well, way back, the Limeys … sorry, force of habit … the Brits fell out over who should have the keys to the palace and they got rid of the guys called Stuarts.’
‘Kings of Scotland and England,’ Mason added, getting for his trouble an arch look from someone who had studied history.
‘So, for some Scots folk, their king is exiled across the water. Caused quite a stir in 1745. Bonnie Prince Charlie …’
‘I know all this, especially that particular guy. Kinda romantic, don’t you think?’
‘Odd, Miss Littleton,’ Jardine said. ‘Everyone has that opinion and everyone sees a romantic loser. No one ever asks what would have happened if he had won.’
‘Inclined to the bottle by all account, Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ grumbled Peydon.
Jardine held up his glass, smiling. ‘A national affliction, perhaps.’
‘An international curse,’ Corrie Littleton snapped, taking a deep drink of lemonade as if that proved her point.
‘A worldwide one, Corrie,’ Alverson replied, for once in serious mien. ‘We drink bourbon, the Japs drink sake and the Chinese glug rice wine. Getting drunk for most folk sure beats the hell out of a clear view of this lousy world.’
‘I say, Mr Alverson!’ M exclaimed.
Alverson reverted to his amused drawl. ‘Sorry, Mrs Mason, we colonials are a little short on sophistication.’
‘Of course you are, poor dears,’ she replied, her cut-glass voice full of sympathetic understanding.
‘Speak for yourself, buster,’ came the Bostonian response, given with such gusto that Grace’s eyes were glued to the front of her dress.
‘A perfect example of my point,’ drawled her fellow American.
About to protest, Corrie Littleton was cut off by Mason. ‘You have been in Japan, Mr Alverson?’
‘I have, and to go back several conversations, they have definitely taken Plato to heart.’
The talk became general on the subject of racial superiority, which was, according to the American, innate in the Japanese, while the Chinese could never comprehend the inability of others to acknowledge their vastly superior civilisation. Hitler and his master race theories were derided, while Mussolini’s posturing provided much amusement.
‘Racial superiority is not something,’ Jardine proffered, ‘to which we British are immune.’
Peydon, more red-faced than previously, due to alcohol, looked deeply offended: he was a mother-of-parliaments, British-fair-play sort of chap, who would not hesitate to stick his polished size tens up the backside of one of his Somali recruits, nor think twice about slipping in some extra leave and a bit of a money present to one who had family problems, unable to see the difference between paternalism and equality.
‘And it is a stance I fear we Americans are only too ready to share,’ Alverson said.
‘Did you not kill off all your own savages, Mr Alverson?’ asked M, in her cawing voice.
‘Not personally, ma’am.’
‘I was not accusing you,’ she insisted, quite missing the irony.
‘We’re pretty damn overbearing in our own backyard.’