. and all the time the dusty sunlight fell in slabs over the pink bald heads—godheads from the power entrusted to them and gargoyles from the way I hated ‘em . . . and during all that morning, full of the trapped sunlight and the distant drone of traffic past the Cenotaph, there was only one clean eager thing that happened—young Drexel whispering to me during a tepid outburst of applause:  ‘See the old boy in the third row—fifth from the end—Armenia or Irak or some place . . . but did you ever see anybody more like Harry Tate?’ . . . And by Jove, he WAS like Harry Tate, and Drexel and I lived on it for the rest of the session—lived on it and on our own pathetic fancy that foreigners were strange and at best amusing creatures, rather like music-hall comedians or one’s French master at school—tolerable if they happen to be musicians or dancers or ice-cream sellers—but definitely to be snubbed if they venture on the really serious business of governing the world. . . .  Look—there’s another!”  It was a later placard, proclaiming in letters equally large, “England Now Without Hope.”  Rainier laughed.  “Maybe some fussy archaeologist of the twenty-fifth century—a relative of Macaulay’s sketching New Zealander—will dig this up from a rubbish-heap and say it establishes definite proof that we’d all been well warned in advance . . . .  Has my wife got a party tonight?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of a crowd?”

“Mostly sporting and dramatic, I think.”

“Then I’ll dine and sleep at the Club.  Borotra’s the only dramatic sportsman I care about, and he probably won’t come.”

He put his head out of the cab window, giving the change of address, and also telling the man to drive more slowly.  I could see he was nervously excited, and I was beginning to know by now that when he was in such a mood he talked a good deal in an attempt to race his thoughts—an attempt which usually failed, leaving a litter of unfinished sentences, mixed metaphors, and unpolished epigrams, with here and there some phrase worthy of one of his speeches, but flung off so carelessly that if the hearer did not catch it at the time Rainier himself could never recall it afterwards.  I have tried to give an impression of this kind of talk, but even the most faithful reportage would miss a curious excitement of voice and gesture, the orchestration of some inner emotion turbulent under the surface.  Nor, one felt, would such emotion wear out in fatigue, but rather increase to some extinguishing climax as an electric globe burns brighter before the final snapping of the filament.  It was of this I felt suddenly afraid, and he noticed the anxious look I gave him.

“Sorry to be a chatterer like this, Harrison, but it’s after a bout of public speech-making—I always feel I have to use up the words left over, or perhaps the words I couldn’t use. . . .  I suppose you’d call me a rather good speaker?”

I said I certainly should.

“And you’d guess that it comes easily to me?”

“It always sounds like it.”

He laughed.  “That’s what practice can do.  I LOATHE speaking in public—I’m always secretly afraid I’m going to break down or stammer or something.  Stammering especially . . . of course I never do. . . .  By the way, you remember that mountain in Derbyshire I thought I recognized?”

“Yes.”

“The same sort of thing happened in Lancashire, only it wasn’t quite so romantic.  Just a house in a row.  I was helping Nixon in the Browdley by-election—we held meetings at street corners, then Nixon dragged me round doing the shake-hands and baby-kissing stuff— that’s the way his father got into the Gladstone Parliaments, so Nixon still does it.  I admit I’m pretty cynical about elections— the very look of the voting results, with two rows of figures adding neatly up to a third one, gives me the same itch as a company balance-sheet, exact to the last penny . . . whose penny?  Was there ever a penny? . .