The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [90]
Then we heard all about Daddy (grand old character) and how he used to terrify all the children as they sat around the huge table in the Dining Hall, while he bellowed at them to recite the capitals of the European countries.
Then we got again how bad he was at his job (in the old days, as his father always said, one didn’t have to be doing things all the time, it was enough to be a gentleman).
Then we got his deep sentimental attachment to the Ballet. “Give me Swan Lake, Swan Lake, Swan Lake every time!”
Then we got his outdoor prowess. “I walk everywhere”
And then we got his school tie.
That was my fault. I was staring at him, fascinated, thinking what a curious set of credentials to present and wondering if he wasn’t just drunk, when my eyes happened to light on the weird knotted mass around his neck. It was the smallest tie I’d ever seen on a grown man, about two inches long: a miniature tie, perfectly formed. It might have been his youngest brother’s, except that it was black with age. Under the soup stains I could just make out a striped pattern of some badly matched colors. It looked like a trophy, so I asked him about it. It was his old school tie, he said, smirking modestly. Stonehenge, I think he said. The smiling modesty changed to smiling impatience when we didn’t react.
He was becoming truculent under that smile. If you happened to mention that you didn’t think the beach at Ciboure looked very good for bathing, he would say, “Oh you Americans. You’re spoiled, that’s the trouble with you. Try bathing anywhere on my salary!”
Then he would say, “You’re children, that’s what you are, children, with your ridiculous idealism! And you’re supposed to be running the world now. Well, the best of luck to you, that’s all I can say.”
It wasn’t, though.
A moment later he leaned toward me with that same grin that was beginning to make him look insane and said, “Begging your pardon and no offense meant I’m sure, but admit now, admit you don’t know how to begin organizing a World Federation!”
By now I’d had enough of this jolly old Viking. “Maybe not,” I said, rising, “but I know how to end a conversation.” And I went to the john.
A hoot of laughter followed me, and when I returned, there was Angela, still in stitches, carefully explaining to each and everyone just what he had said to me, and what I had said to him, hugely enjoying Robin’s discomfiture. “Well done. Oh, masterly,” she crowed at me. “It’s made my evening.”
It was unmade for her a few seconds later, when they let off some fireworks, and Angela, whose nerves are understandably jumpy about such noises, leaped ten feet in the air every time one went off.
That made Robin’s evening.
So, then we drove to another mountaintop, a place called Béhobie. It’s really one of the most beautiful old villages I’ve ever seen, and under most circumstances I would have been moved to tears, but as I say, it was one of those evenings.
Bax’s spirits, however, soared like an eagle at the sight of all that texture on the old walls and doors and steep winding streets, and by the time we’d found a picturesque little bar in which to have a nightcap he was his old affable, co-operative, smiling self. It was nice to have him back. It made me realize that he was probably the only genuinely nice person in the whole group. Amongst us all he stands out like a good deed in a bad world, as they say.
Missy was bored and sulky and sleepy. No one was paying any attention to her, not even Larry, who was trying so hard to put himself across with the Directors it hurt.
Angela was flinging back her nightcaps fast and furiously.
“Ouch!” she shrieked, suddenly executing another one of her leaps. “Goddammit, don’t do that!” Stefan, in a fit of abstraction, had absent-mindedly pinched her.
“What is it?” he asked, surprised. I don’t think he even realized what he’d done.
“You pinched me,” said Angela contemptuously. She turned to Bax. “I do hate being pinched