The trouble was that no one seemed sufficiently interested, though the Duke and Duchess followed up politely.
‘Who is he?’ enquired Pamela, the resonating chambers of her (never very resonant) voice clotted with mucus.
‘I beg you pardon?’ enquired Edwin courteously.
‘The director. What’s his name? Or is that a whimsey little secret too?’ Pamela was unused to not being answered first time.
‘The director’s name is not actually a secret, but I doubt whether any of you would know it.’
‘Thought he was world famous,’ persisted Pamela spitefully. Probably she had by now something against Edwin. She added with unwelcome acumen: ‘How’s he to reach the masses now if he hasn’t done it already?’
‘I don’t think I actually described him as world-famous: only in certain informed circles.’ It was the first time Griselda had ever seen Edwin reduced to the defensive. His entire narrative, moreover, seemed to her less impressive than some of its glittering predecessors.
‘I see,’ said Pamela, ‘high hat. Tell your Princess she’d do better with Punch and Judy. More to remould society, I mean, if that’s the idea, as you say it is.’ Pamela seemed to doubt whether it was the idea. She tried to sniff, but her nose was so blocked that she failed to do so, which was much more distressing than even success would have been. The zymosis which choked her tubes seemed, none the less, somehow to have cleared her brain. She applied a minute hard ball of a handkerchief and began with the other hand to release drops from a bottle of bitters on to her pancake.
Griselda noticed that Mrs Hatch was barely even eating.
Real trouble broke out only when Brundrit brought in a large dish of medlars.
The trouble was that no one seemed to want medlars: no one except perhaps Mrs Hatch, and even she, like most people in such cases, seemed more concerned that the others should like medlars than happy that she liked them herself. She implied, with the faintest undertone of pugnacity, that these particular medlars had been preserved in exactly the recommended state of decomposition since the previous autumn, an undertaking involving much skill and difficulty, of which the present company were privileged to enjoy the benefit.
To begin with, the Duke and Duchess did not know what medlars were, and fogged themselves worse and worse with obscure Germanic polysyllables, cooing together like puzzled budgerigars. Then Edwin seemed afraid that the deliquescent fibres would damage his suit. And Griselda had experienced medlars in the past.
Pamela merely said ‘They look rotten.’
The Duke, speaking German, made some reference to their smell.
‘Not rotten at all,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘The fruit is in the finest possible condition for eating. It is properly bletted.’
‘What is bletted, Melanie?’ asked the Duchess.
‘Medlars cannot be eaten, Odile, until they mature. Then they are the most delicious of all fruit. Try one and see for yourself.’
The Duke and Duchess took one medlar each.
‘Griselda?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Don’t be narrow. Have you any first-hand experience of medlars?’ This question clearly, in the grammarians’ phrase, expected the answer No.
‘Yes. I’m afraid I don’t like them.’
‘Then you’re a silly girl. Pamela.’
‘I’m only allowed to eat food which is perfectly fresh.’
‘What about you, Edwin? You may use the table implements if you wish to preserve your appearance.’
‘Please excuse me on this occasion, Mrs Hatch. I always lunch very lightly, you know. Usually only a single quail brought to my office from the Express Dairy or somewhere like that.’ Edwin had begun to doubt whether the proposed film would regenerate the proletariat after all. This made even so perfectly balanced a man as Edwin a little standoffish. Perceiving the fact, Griselda wanted to restore his confidence, as he was so much more agreeable when confident.
But before she could think of anything to say, the Duke and Duchess had begun to misbehave. The rearrangement of the table consequent upon the departure of Mr Leech, the absence of George Goss, and the reluctance of Edwin to risk contracting a nasty cold, had brought the Duke and Duchess against all custom to adjoining seats: and the difficulty they had experienced in identifying the strange foodstuff in the Duke’s language, had amplified into intermittent and giggling exchanges of pleasantries in German. Suddenly the Duke said something very quickly to his wife under his breath; and the two of them burst into explosions of unsuitable mirth. They tilted back their chairs, roared at the ceiling, nudged one another, and gasped out confirmations of the joke which were strangled by new attacks of laughter beyond all control. It was plain what they thought of medlars, even when properly bletted.
Mrs Hatch said nothing at all, but piled up a heap of medlars on her plate, and began to devour them displaying much more appetite than earlier in the meal, and sucking rather noisily.
The Duke and Duchess went on laughing in an uncontrolled Germanic way. At first they were oblivious of their isolation; then suddenly they became over-sensitive to it and began long-windedly to apologize. The single medlars, still almost intact, were evidence of their good intentions.
‘It was something of which Gottfried said they reminded him.’ concluded the Duchess not very happily: especially as they then began both to laugh again.
‘I was spending a night once inside the Great Pyramid,’ began Edwin. He had overheard and understood the Duke’s simile and was fearful of its disclosure. ‘We had nothing to eat but dates. Not the artificially nurtured Tunis dates we buy in boxes, but the real native dates, small and packed into blocks and not very clean. The dogs, you know. Not to mention the heat and the native children. We had a little camel’s milk too in a gourd. It would have been most unwise to introduce any Western food, as we were entirely in the power of the group we had gone to meet.’
‘Was it a pleasant meeting?’ asked Griselda.
‘Very profitable indeed. It enabled me precisely to foretell the date of the rebuilding of the Temple.’
‘Which Temple?’
‘The Temple of Jerusalem. As you probably know, I adhere to British-Israel. It is to my mind the only conceivable explanation of modern British history. We are mere tools.’
‘Shall I serve coffee, madam?’ asked Monk. Mrs Hatch who was still silently assimilating the putrescent-looking heap, merely nodded.
Griselda tried to talk intelligently about the Glastonbury Thorn and to discuss the question of whether or not the Prophet Jeremiah was buried on an island off the coast of Scotland, only to be reborn as General Booth; but it was difficult going. Edwin, naturally, was eager and convincing, politely countering possible objections and clarifying dark places; but the Duke and Duchess had sunk into a state of guilty abashment, quite unlike their usual mood, and sat drinking cup after cup of cafй au lait and wringing their hands under the tablecloth; while Mrs Hatch continued simply to sulk. She had been so agreeable on and before their walk that Griselda was unable fully to understand what was the matter with her, though Austin Barnes, shaker of nations and breaker of lives, almost certainly had something to do with it, she supposed.
Ultimately the house party fell to pieces like the ten little nigger boys. Two were already missing. Then, as Edwin was explaining the mystical status of the Union Jack, Pamela abruptly remarked that her Father always insisted upon her going straight home when she was ill, and proceeded upstairs to pack, Mrs Hatch offering singularly little resistance. Five minutes later, by which time Edwin had arrived at the Biblical appointment of the site of Balmoral Castle, the Duchess, with exquisite anguish, observed that if there were to be no games in which all of them could join, she and Gottfried would like to retire for their usual afternoon rest, and departed easing the belt of her dress (she was a little flushed) and followed by her husband hard on her heels. Again Mrs Hatch stonily acquiesced, and sat glaring at the йpergne. Suddenly Edwin stopped in the middle of sentence and, exclaiming ‘The Aga Khan. I must, if you will forgive me,’ hastened away. ‘I wonder if the lines to that part of India are busy at this hour?’ he enquired absently as he carefully closed the door.