Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [22]
‘But of course, Staffy dear, it will be lovely to have you. Take the four-thirty train. It still runs, you know, but it gets here an hour and a half later. And it leaves Paddington later–five-fifteen. That’s what they mean by improving the railways, I suppose. Stops at several most absurd stations on the way. All right. Horace will meet you at King’s Marston.’
‘He’s still there then?’
‘Of course he’s still there.’
‘I suppose he is,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
Horace, once a groom, then a coachman, had survived as a chauffeur, and apparently was still surviving. ‘He must be at least eighty,’ said Sir Stafford. He smiled to himself.
Chapter 6
Portrait Of A Lady
I
‘You look very nice and brown, dear,’ said Aunt Matilda, surveying him appreciatively. ‘That’s Malaya, I suppose. If it was Malaya you went to? Or was it Siam or Thailand? They change the names of all these places and really it makes it very difficult. Anyway, it wasn’t Vietnam, was it? You know, I don’t like the sound of Vietnam at all. It’s all very confusing, North Vietnam and South Vietnam and the Viet-Cong and the Viet–whatever the other thing is and all wanting to fight each other and nobody wanting to stop. They won’t go to Paris or wherever it is and sit round tables and talk sensibly. Don’t you think really, dear–I’ve been thinking it over and I thought it would be a very nice solution–couldn’t you make a lot of football fields and then they could all go and fight each other there, but with less lethal weapons. Not that nasty palm burning stuff. You know. Just hit each other and punch each other and all that. They’d enjoy it, everyone would enjoy it and you could charge admission for people to go and see them do it. I do think really that we don’t understand giving people the things they really want.’
‘I think it’s a very fine idea of yours, Aunt Matilda,’ said Sir Stafford Nye as he kissed a pleasantly perfumed, pale pink wrinkled cheek. ‘And how are you, my dear?’
‘Well, I’m old,’ said Lady Matilda Cleckheaton. ‘Yes, I’m old. Of course you don’t know what it is to be old. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. Rheumatism or arthritis or a nasty bit of asthma or a sore throat or an ankle you’ve turned. Always something, you know. Nothing very important. But there it is. Why have you come to see me, dear?’
Sir Stafford was slightly taken aback by the directness of the query.
‘I usually come and see you when I return from a trip abroad.’
‘You’ll have to come one chair nearer,’ said Aunt Matilda. ‘I’m just that bit deafer since you saw me last. You look different…Why do you look different?’
‘Because I’m more sunburnt. You said so.’
‘Nonsense, that’s not what I mean at all. Don’t tell me it’s a girl at last.’
‘A girl?’
‘Well, I’ve always felt it might be one some day. The trouble is you’ve got too much sense of humour.’
‘Now why should you think that?’
‘Well, it’s what people do think about you. Oh yes, they do. Your sense of humour is in the way of your career, too. You know, you’re all mixed up with all these people. Diplomatic and political. What they call younger statesmen and elder statesmen and middle statesmen too. And all those different Parties. Really I think it’s too silly to have too many Parties. First of all those awful, awful Labour people.’ She raised her Conservative nose into the air. ‘Why, when I was a girl there wasn’t such a thing as a Labour Party. Nobody would have known what you meant by it. They’d have said “nonsense”. Pity it wasn’t nonsense, too. And then there’s the Liberals, of course, but they’re terribly wet. And then there are the Tories, or the Conservatives as they call themselves again now.’
‘And what’s the matter with them?’ asked Stafford Nye, smiling slightly.
‘Too many earnest women. Makes them lack gaiety, you know.’
‘Oh well, no political party goes in for gaiety much nowadays.’
‘Just so,’ said Aunt Matilda. ‘And then of course that’s where you go wrong. You want to cheer things up. You want to have a little gaiety and so you make a little gentle fun at people and of course they don’t