The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [463]
‘Did someone mention Geneva?’ asked Brooke-Popham who, at first busy with a large helping of fish, had now got the better of it and was free to enter the conversation. ‘Met a young chap only the other day who’d been a couple of years there. Said it was a deuced awful hole. What was his name now? M’memory isn’t what it was. American. Capital fellow. Very obliging. Let’s see now. Colonel … no, Captain Erinmore. No. D’you know the chap I mean, Walter? Said he knew you and your charming daughter here. Herringport. No…Now let me see …’
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Sir Robert,’ said Walter somewhat stiffly, exchanging a quick glance with Joan. The whole table, including Matthew, gazed at Brooke-Popham as if hypnotized.
‘I know …’ said Brooke-Popham. A tremor ran through his audience and Joan turned a little pale as she waited for the Commander-in-Chief to speak. There was silence, however, until it became clear that Brooke-Popham, worn out by his long day, had momentarily dozed off. However, his staff officer, the General whose name Matthew had failed to catch, now smoothly took control of the conversation in the place of his slumbering superior and launched into a lengthy reminiscence, not of Geneva but of Lake Maggiore where he had been on holiday in 1925 with his wife, who was a god-daughter of Chamberlain’s wife. And this, by the most fortunate coincidence, for he had never been to Lake Maggiore before or since, had happened to be the historic October of Locarno! What an extraordinary scene he had witnessed! The peasants, their clothes white with dust, tramping in from the surrounding hills with vast hood-shaped baskets of grapes on their backs. And Chamberlain himself, a bizarre figure among these sons of toil. Ah, the General could see him still as if it were yesterday, his monocle glinting in the autumn sunshine as he lolled among the scarlet cushions of his red Rolls-Royce whose long silver horns like trumpets occasionally cleared their metal throats to scatter the rustics from its path: this machine, once the property of a maharajah, had been hired locally, it seemed.
‘But…’ began Matthew, becoming indignant despite his good intentions.
The General, however, had not yet reached the high point of his reminiscence, which amounted to nothing less than an invitation from the Chamberlains to join them for the excursion in celebration of Mrs Chamberlain’s birthday so charmingly thought up by Briand and his friend, Loucheur: they had hired an Italian lake steamer, the Fleur d’Oranger for the occasion. On that delightful, extraordinary trip on the lake the General and his wife had mingled with all the chief delegates to the Conference, with Skrzynski and Benes, with the bearded, bespectacled, floppy-hatted Belgian, Vandervelde, with the shaven-headed, thick-necked German, Stresemann, his duelling-scarred cheeks set on fire by the sun and champagne … what a day to remember! In his mind’s eye he could still see Loucheur with his round pop-eyed face and the curling black moustaches of a Victorian waiter, chuckling as the champagne flowed. And then, to cap it all, Mussolini, ostentatious as ever, had made a dramatic dash by racing car from Milan to Stresa and from there by speedboat to Locarno!
And then, the General’s voice became solemn at the recollection, on the following day a great crowd of peasants had gathered in front of the town hall as the autumn twilight thickened. The word spread quickly through the crowd. The Treaty had been signed! Like a holy relic the document was carried to the window and