The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [67]
‘So, there you are,’ said the Duke of Johannesburg. ‘Hoped for, but not entirely expected.’ He came up to Pat and kissed her lightly on each cheek – a delicate gesture for a large man. Then he turned to Matthew and extended his hand.
Matthew, flustered, said: ‘Your Grace.’
‘Please!’ protested the Duke. ‘Just call me Johannesburg. We’re all very New Labour round here.’ He turned to Pat as he said this and winked. ‘Hardly,’ he added.
Pat smiled at the Duke. ‘Where exactly is Johannesburg?’ she asked.
The Duke looked at her in surprise. ‘Over there,’ he said, waving his hand out of the window. ‘A long way away, thank God.’ He paused. ‘Do I shock you? I think I do. That’s the problem these days – nobody speaks their mind. No, don’t smile. They really don’t. We’ve been browbeaten into conformity by all sorts of people who tell us what we can and cannot say. Haven’t you noticed it? The tyranny of political correctness. Don’t pass any judgement on anything. Don’t open your trap in case you offend somebody or other.’
He led them through the door into the room from which he had just emerged.
‘Everybody knows,’ he went on, ‘that there are some places which are, quite frankly, awful, but nobody says that out loud. Except some bravely spoken journalists now and then. Do let me get you a drink.’
He reached for a couple of glasses from a library shelf to his side. ‘Some years ago,’ he continued, ‘The Oldie ran a series called Great Dumps of the World – a brilliant idea. They got a rather clever friend of mine, Lance Butler, to write about Monaco, and he did a brilliant job. What a dump that place is! All those rich people busy not wanting to pay tax and living in chi-chi little apartments above glove and perfume shops. Disgusting place! And their funny wee monarchy with its clockwork soldiers and the princess who took up with a lion tamer – can you believe it? What a dump! But they didn’t like it at all. There was an awful fuss. These people take themselves so seriously.
‘Come to think of it,’ the Duke continued, ‘Johannesburg isn’t all that bad. Once they get crime under control, it’ll be rather nice, in fact. That beautiful, invigorating highveld air. Marvellous. And nice people. They put up with an awful lot in the bad old days – oppression, cruelty et cetera – but they came out smiling, which says a lot for them. So I hope things turn out well.’
He handed Pat and Matthew their glasses. ‘You may be wondering why I’m the Duke of Johannesburg. Well, the reason is that my grandfather gave an awful lot of money to a political party a long time ago on the express understanding that they would make him a duke. He had visited Jo’burg years before when he was in the Scots Greys and he rather liked the place, so he chose that as his title. And then they went and ratted on their agreement and said they didn’t go in for creating dukedoms any more and would he be satisfied with an ordinary peerage? He said no, and used the moniker thereafter, as did my old man, on the grounds that he was morally entitled to it. So that’s how it came about. There are some pedants who claim that I shouldn’t call myself what I do, but I ignore them. Pedants!’
He raised his glass. ‘Slàinte!’
45. Minimalism
But there were others in the room. Matthew and Pat had hardly noticed them, so engaged had they been by the flow of their host’s conversation. So that was the reason why there was no mention of a Duke of Johannesburg in Who’s Who in Scotland – there was no such duke, at least not in the sense that one would be recognised by the Lord Lyon. Yet what did such recognition amount to? Matthew asked himself. All that it did was to give a stamp of purely conventional authenticity; conventional in the sense of agreed, or settled, and ultimately that was merely a question of arbitrary social arrangements. There was no real difference between this duke and any other better-known