Episode 13: Sleigh Bells In The Snow

Episode 13: Sleigh Bells In The Snow

    For ever after, this trip is gonna be associated in my mind with clothes. To be specific, with Wearing The Wrong Clothes. Gee, and I thought it was gonna be associated with ye Grate Romance. Silly me. It starts that very first day, well, technically second day, when the rest of them come round to collect me and John for Amurrican Christmas shahping.

    “What are you wearing?” gasps Rupy in horror as I emerge from John’s bedroom smelling of lily of the valley.

    Glare. “Normal clothes.”

    “She looks normal to me!” agrees Matt with a cheerful laugh.

    I go on glaring. “See?” Then I direct a nice smile at Matt just to show him the glare was all for Rupy.

    “But we’re going to the nice shops, dear!”

    “It is very cold outside,” Bridget excuses my very ordinary fleecy black tracksuit pants and pale green padded parka, sorry, windcheater. (Didja know the Poms usually call them anoraks? Don’t ask me why, I’da said, best guess, that it was an Eskimo word. I mean Inuit.)

    “Pale green? With her eyes?” he croaks. –Poor guy, never knew I owned it. ’Member I said there was a branch of a big department store round in the next street from Henny Penny? Well, I did. I got it there, at a pre-Christmas sale full of grannies in raincoats.

    “They’re not blue,” I point out in a bored voice. “Grey-blue, technically.” Defiantly I produce my fuzzy woollen gloves from my pocket and put them on. Striped red and black: possibly football team gloves, they were very, very, very cheap from a tray at the front door of the same shop. (The French, who judging from that trip to Paris with Euan are about a million times more practical and organised than the Poms, have an actual name for these offerings: les soldes de l’entrée. Euan wouldn’t let me buy any.)

    Rupy chokes, because the gloves definitely don’t go with my huge fuzzy pale pink scarf. Fake mohair. It is a bit scratchy, but very warm. “Dare to put on a Royal blue fuzzy hat with that lot and I personally will tear you limb from limb!”

    I just shrug, see, because the hat matches the scarf, and put it on.

    When John hurries in smiling, smelling of lily of the valley, Rupy demands in a very high-pitched voice: “Did you approve of that gear?”

    John looks at him mildly. “It isn’t up to me to approve or disapprove.”

    “John, dear, she has some really nice clothes. Really nice clothes.”

    “Well, yes, that’s true,” Bridget admits uncomfortably.

    “I think she looks great!” says Matt, now starting to get anxious. It’s fairly obvious he didn’t imagine his first full day with us would start with an argument over my clothes in his father’s sitting-room.

    “You’re a mere boy,” Rupy informs him testily, “whose sartorial standards,” he adds, getting louder, “forgive my mentioning it, have been shaped by California!”

    “That’s an insult, Matt!” says Terence with a laugh, taking his arm.

    Matt’s trying to smile and looking uncertainly from my pale green windcheater to his own blue windcheater.

    “Ignore Rupy entirely. You and me are the normal ones here, Matt,” I inform him briskly. “We may not be sartorially desirable but at least we’ll be warm.”

    “Well, yeah. It is terribly cold out,” he says in a strange mixture of vernaculars.

    “Exactly. I don’t think the public of Washington is going to find fault, Rupy, and I don’t think, either, that there’ll be any paparazzi. The television series has been on here, but I’m afraid it rates as a curiosity, no more,” says John on an apologetic but definite note. He takes my arm. “Come along, or there won’t be anything left in the Washington shops!”

    And we go. John, Terence, Rupy and Bridget all in heavy dark greatcoats, Terence and Rupy into the bargain wearing neato black Astrakhan hats (whose, in Rupy’s case, I wouldn’t like to say), John looking ace (and between you and me, rather intimidating) in a dark, rather curly-brimmed hat which after some thought I identify as a homburg, and Bridget wearing a black fake-fur thing which doesn’t quite manage to look Russian. Matt and me may not match the rest of them but we sure match each other: he’s got a woolly hat, striped blue and yellow, and a scarf to match, too, so sucks.

    The shops are very glamorous and glitzy but not poncy boutiques, just big department stores, except for a couple that Terence insists on dragging us into, and by now I’m used, well, as much as any human being ever could be, to Harrods, so I’m not all that impressed, though admittedly the Christmas decorations are super. The crowds are just normal big-city crowds, Northern-style: rather drab but still plenty of coloured windcheaters and fuzzy hats to be seen, not all of them on beggars or street-persons, thank you, Rupy. Of course nobody identifies me or even looks twice at me, let alone looking sideways at my gear, so what was all the fuss about, you may well ask.

    We all buy loads of stuff, especially John, he’s terribly well organised and has a list, cripes. Was he saving up his Christmas shopping do it with me? I croak. Yes, or most of it. And as the So-and-So’s, the Whatsernames and the Thingamabobs have all kindly invited us to this, that, and the other, I’ll have to get something for them, he’s afraid: it’s the American way, darling. But he’ll pay—flashing the plastic. He will not! What an idea! Indignantly I get my wallet out. Critically John looks at the cards in it. This is a store card, Rosie, darling, they won’t accept— I know that! Mm, sorry. Grimly I produce my Visa card: I’ll put it on— No, really, darling. He removes it from my nerveless fingers before I’ve realised he’d have the bloody cheek to do any such thing and puts it in his own wallet!

    “John Haworth, what do you think you’re doing?”

    “Preventing you from throwing away your hard-earned on unnecessarily expensive gifts for the tartified Washington set. We’ll just choose some little tokens,” he says with complete calm.

    Tokens? Uh—oh! Like, token gifts. “Yeah, but I can p—” Apparently I can’t. I give in, and take his arm and lean on it heavily, though noting: “This is barmy.”

    “Mm.” He squeezes his arm and my hand tightly against his side.

    “Am I gonna be allowed to write on the cards, at least?” Unless the women in the gift-wrapping department insist on doing that for me, is the calm reply. Gulp.

    By lunchtime we’re all absolutely laden with packages, so the vote is to grab a taxi back to the flat and dump them. So we do that.

    Bridget has a panic at the sight of all the little tokens because of course she’s also invited by the Whosiwhatsits and the Thingummies to this, that, and t’other, but John says firmly that a little token from Rosie will be sufficient. Which is just as well, because she’s spent what looks to me like a very large proportion of her hard-earned over the last year on toys for her ruddy nieces and nephews, all of whom have affluent middle-class parents and grandparents, two sets of the latter, and in the case of one lot of nephews and nieces two sets of the former also, more than able and willing to produce great piles of presents every year. “Bridget, why didja go and—” These are all American. And they asked for them. Right: greedy little brainwashed consumerist sods. I don’t say it, she’s far too nice to say that sort of thing to. I must be looking it, though, because Matt says quickly that the American toys are great and that there does seem to be a lot more choice over here. And they compare the train set he’s bought for his best friend Jake’s little boy (aged two, Guess Who are gonna have a nice play with it while he grows up) and the train sets she’s bought for William Herlihy, aged seven, and Jonathan Herlihy, aged thirty-three. (He’s a train buff, and we hadda go to this totally obscure special shop… Never mind. At least they had what he wanted.)

    Then we go to lunch, me refusing to change into “something nice” and John remaining totally poker-face throughout Rupy's sequence of suggestion, protest, and condemnation. It’s a steakhouse, see, so nuts! …Yikes, a steakhouse frequented by a large, middle-aged, beaming Chuck Goldman in dark conservative Washington suiting, and a large, middle-aged, beaming Captain Stolz, call him Fred, Rosie, in a dark U.S. Navy uniform, really spiffy, and a large, middle-aged, beaming Senator Hicks, all silver hair and gleaming white teeth above the dark Washington suiting. I’ve taken the windcheater off, so all they get is the view of the pale pink tee-shirt above the black tracksuit pants, which Rupy has already condemned utterly but which John, Terence and Matt don’t seem to mind. Fred Stolz seems positively encouraged, and suggests he might squeeze in beside me to have a drink with us, but John just laughs and says “Off limits!” So Fred has to perch on the end of the seat in our booth next to Terence instead. When he pushes off we can see him joining some other uniforms, army and navy, no, I think those army-looking ones might be marines, actually, hazy memories of JAG come back to me at this point, but whatever they are they’re all pretty heavy in the chest-medals and gold-braided-sleeve departments and they’re all looking over at us and grinning like anything. No prizes for guessing the subject under discussion.

    “This is a lovely place,” I say happily to John.

    His arm is already round my shoulders, funnily enough, and he gives me a little squeeze and agrees: “Isn’t it?”

    “What she means is,” notes Rupy sourly, “full of macho men in uniforms.”

    “And great steaks,” I add happily.

    “Exactly,” says John placidly, squeezing me again.

    At this Bridget gives a squeak and claps her hand over her mouth and Matt and Terence collapse in helpless sniggers.

    Yes, hah, hah, very amusing. It’s got precisely what I like and John knows it, so what’s funny about either of those points? Oh, go on: laugh. But just ask yaself this: how many blokes in the so-called liberated twenty-first century would deliberately and consciously bring their girlfriend to a place full of lovely macho men in uniforms and great steaks as a treat for her? Instead of dopily choosing it for the steaks and the macho peer groups on their own account? Very few. VERY FEW. Oh, all right, laugh. But I know I’m right.

    “What are you wearing?” gasps Rupy in horror.

    It’s a little black number, and as we’re headed for the first of the threatened engagements with the So-and-So’s or possibly the Whatsernames, I’d have said it was eminently suitable. Put it like this, the lady in the shop said it was a dinner dress and when I asked John he said that tonight’s was a dinner engagement, preceded by cocktails. And I know a short dress is right for cocktails. It’s black jersey: sort of wrinkled, no, I think I mean gathered, all the way down? Well, ya get it or ya don’t get it, whichever. Form-fitting, does that clarify it for you? It hasn’t got straps, it’s got this kind of line of fluff which when the dress is adjusted properly sits just on top of the tits and goes right round the arms, but not actual sleeves. Geddit? About maybe five or six centimetres wide? If examined closely, not that any of us done that in order to understand how in God’s name it stays on the arms instead of drooping down them, the fluff may be determined to be tiny black feathers, fixed onto that very thin elastic they sometimes use in hats. Or did, in Great-Aunty Lil’s day. Well, anyway, the dress is kind of topped by a straight line of delicate black fluff and some of us thought it looked ace when I tried it on in the shop.

    John comes out of the bedroom in his dinner suit and Rupy’s face falls a mile.

    “Sorry: did you expect dress uniform?” he says mildly.

    Poor Rupy’s gone all colours of the rainbow, of course he did. “Y—I mean, but aren’t you supposed to, John, when you’re a serving officer?”

    “I’ve already asked—”

    “Yes, she has,” he says with a smile, “and the answer is still no. This is a private party.”

    “See? Not to private p—”

    “Yes! I’m not deaf! And private party or not, that dress won’t do!”

    John’s looking around for the others. “Did you come on ahead expressly to vet Rosie’s clothes?”—mildly amused.

    Of course he did. Nevertheless he’s gone all colours of the rainbow again. He puts his chin up, however, and makes a pretty good fist of saying: “Someone has to, John.” He gives him a brave smile, at the same time he’s trying to give me a look that means “Shut up and I want to talk to you in private.” Boy, if he thought Captain J. Haworth, R.N., was gonna miss that he had another think coming.

    “Would you two prefer to be alone?” he says sweetly.

    “Don’t be silly, of course not,” I say briskly.

    “Mm. Then in that case, Rupy, I suggest you say it, or forget about it.” –Very dry.

    “Very well, John, dear, but on your head be it.”

    “What’s WRONG with this dress?” –I’ve given up all pretence of not being totally fed up.

    “I like it,” says John mildly.

    Rupy takes a very deep breath. “In the first place,” he says austerely, “it’s rather short.”

    “It is not! And I asked the lady in the shop and she said a short dress was right for cocktails, and John said it’s cocktails first! And it is a dinner dress, I asked the lady in the—”

    “Shop,” he says tiredly. “She wanted to make a sale. Why didn’t you take me with you?”

    “Because you’d dress me up like the Captain’s Flaming Daughter! And I’m NOT HER!”

    Rupy clears his throat. “No, well, that is partly my point.”

    I can feel myself go bright scarlet, right up to the scalp. The dress makes me look too young for John.

    “Rupy, I know you mean well, old man—”

    “No, let him get through it, John,” I croak. “Too short and too young. What else?”

    “Er—and too definite,” he says on an apologetic note.

    “Eh?”

    He coughs, and glances at John.

    “My grandmother would certainly have said it was too definite,” he agrees smoothly, bless him.

    “See? Nyah!”

    Sighing heavily, Rupy grabs my arm and marches me into John’s bedroom. Being as how it’s an American bedroom it has got a full-length cheval mirror, yes. A very handsome one. “Stand sideways. Look at the bottom,” he orders.

    Standing sideways, I look at the bottom. It’s nice and firm, a couple of years’ tapping tends to do that. “Blimey O’Reilly, ya mean it gets in under the bum? Why couldn’t ya say so?”

    “All right, it gets in under the bum,” he says crossly.

    “And Great-Aunty Lil and John’s grandmother would be shocked. So?”

    He gives me an apologetic look. “Well, is it the image we want, dear, for fronting up to the puce and magenta ladies?”

    From the doorway John says in a coolly amused voice that I have an idea, oops, isn’t actually as amused as all that: “I’d have thought it was. Shall we drop the subject? I think you look wonderful, Rosie. And you’re most certainly failing to take into account the effect of the black fluffy stuff against that skin, Rupy, if you think anything in puce and magenta will have the slightest excuse for looking down its nose at her.”

    Rupy looks at me uneasily.

    “Glad to hear it. Um, I told Rupy about the puce and magenta ladies ages and ages ago, John. Um, well, I had to tell him something, when he came home to find me bawling my eyes out after tea with Miss Hammersley and the Admiral at the Ritz.”

    “Of course,” he says stiffly. Hell, that went over like a lead balloon. So much for telling the truth. It won’t set you free, it’ll land you in the poo, has always been my firm opinion, and this confirms it.

    Rupy goes uncertainly over to the door. “She does look delish, John, I’m not denying it.”

    “Good,” he says on a grim note, ouch!

    “Er—well, at least, drop the earrings?” says Rupy pleadingly. –They’re the long strips of brilliants that I wore with the red dress to Brian’s party.

    “I must say, I did have my doubts about them, Rosie,” John admits. Silly wanker, why he didn’t he say so before? “The thing is, we’ll be meeting a lot of women who wear real—”

    “All right!” I take them out of my ears and chuck them on the dressing-table. One falls off. I ignore it. John goes over to it and quietly picks it up. He opens a drawer and brings out a case. I may be a Wild Colonial Girl and wearing a too-tight, too-young dress but even I can recognise it’s a jeweller’s case. “Perhaps you'd better wear these instead,” he says mildly.

    Before I can move or breathe Rupy’s at his elbow, eyes agleam. “Ooh!” he squeaks as the box is opened.

    No, folks, if you were expecting something along the lines of that totally fab necklace that Julia Roberts got to wear in Pretty Woman for a lend, what an insult, I’d have chucked it at him, it isn’t. John’s not in that socio-economic bracket. Though I wouldn’t volunteer to ask him if he’s ever heard of Fred Joaillier, neither. It’s a nice little diamond bracelet, like just a row of small ones, and a pair of nice little diamond earrings shaped like flowers.

    “Put them on!” Rupy gasps.

    “No,” I say, going very red.

    Rupy clears his throat. “Not Julia and Richard, dear,” he warns.

    “Merry Christmas, Rosie,” says John on a resigned note. The resigned note can’t be because he’s seen the movie and is thinking what Rupy was thinking, because I know he hasn’t, I asked him and he’d never heard of it. Though he knew the song. (Work it out.) I think it’s more because—

    “Yeah, push off, Rupy, we’re gonna have this row in private,” I agree, even more resigned.

    “But darling, there can be no objection—”

    “Get OUT, Rupy!”

     He goes, poor lamb.

    “That was a bit hard, wasn’t it?”

    “Considering he came over here especially to tell me I look like a spring chicken dressed as lamb and my dress gets in under the bum, NO!”

    “What’s wrong? Don’t you like diamonds?” he says baldly.

    “Of course I like diamonds, am I unnatural?” I demand fiercely.

    “I hadn’t thought so, heretofore, no. So what’s up?”

    “It’s too much,” I say grimly.

    “Uh—oh.” He looks doubtfully at me. “Perhaps the cottage has given you the wrong idea, Rosie. I’m not a poor man. My maternal grandfather left me quite a bit, and the Navy pays its captains quite well. And I haven’t had the upkeep of a giant house all these years, much to Mother’s regret. I’ve got a fair bit in the bank, and a decent share portfolio.”

    You must have: only people that have them would ever call them a portfolio. However, it’s still too much in the circumstances, like we’re not engaged, the word marriage hasn’t even been breathed, can’t he see that?

    “According to my Great-Aunty Lil and your grandmother, nice girls don’t take expensive presents of real jewellery from blokes,” I say flatly.

    He blinks.

    “Ask any of the puce and magenta cows, if ya don’t believe me. And they’re gonna take one look at this stuff and know exactly where I got it from and why, if I wear it,” I add flatly.

    He closes the box slowly. “I’m very sorry, Rosie. I just wanted to give you something pretty. I didn’t think.”

    No, right, and the word “marriage” certainly didn’t filter through to the level of conscious thought, did it? “Yeah, well, they’re very pretty,” I say with a sigh.

    Slowly he puts the box away again. “I did think of frilly lingerie, but—um—it didn’t seem much,” he says lamely.

    “It would be to me, because I never spend money on that sort of thing myself!” –Trying to be bright. Actually I feel like a mixture of really miserable and Jane Eyre.

    “Mm. Uh—well, costume jewellery?” he says wanly.

    “Yeah. Only in that case I might as well wear—

    “No, I think Rupy’s right about those, darling.”

    “Yeah, I suppose they’ll look sideways at you, and at the Royal Navy.”

    “Is that why you agreed not to wear them?” he says with a startled look.

    Of course it is, you nana. Do I care if flocks of puce and magenta cows look sideways at me? Um, well, I do a bit, but not that much!

    “Say it, Rosie,” he says, biting his lip.

    Well, he asked for it. So I say it.

    He picks up the strips of brilliants and holds them out to me. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”

    So I put them on. I’m starting to feel better. “Rupy’s very nervous, John,” I say in an undervoice.

    “Er—Oh! I see! Yes, of course he is,” he says slowly. “Obtuse of me not to have seen it.”

    “Partly on my account, and partly because he’s gotta meet a load of diplomatic pseuds.”

    “Mm. Perhaps you could placate him by consulting him on what to wear for the next do?”

    Yeah, I might. Mind you, we gotta get through this one first. But I agree anyhow, I’ve given up my D.L. Sayers policy and gone onto my old L.R. Marshall policy, to wit, the truth shall land you in the poo.

    … Though if I’d of given up my D.L. Sayers policy entirely, I would be wearing those gorgeous little diamond flowers in my ears as of this min, yes. Ain’t life a B-I-T-C-H?

    The cocktail party’s in a large kind of ballroom in a large hotel. All gold doo-dads and pale cream paint with a plastered ceiling like something out of Old Vienna. And giant baskets of florist-designed bouquets in which gladdies, Australian silver-dollar gum leaves and dried Australian banksia feature largely. All in shades, apart from the gum leaves, of yellow, gold and maroon. Highly tasteful. Or something. Our host and hostess are Ambassador and Mrs Doleman and why they’re not having it in their own house don’t ask me. He’s not an ambassador to Washington, he’s an American, an ex-ambassador to somewhere else. Apparently in America they retain the title, quote unquote. Possibly this makes up for not being able to be knighted?

    Now, I do know some people who’ve been to America on more than your casual Disneyland and sight-seeing tour, and the word was that Americans at home are very, very kind and hospitable. And in the main I see no reason to doubt this. However, the load of Washington pseuds and super-pseuds at this bloody hotel cocktail party are not kind and hospitable or anything like it. True, Mrs Ambassador Doleman, a grandmotherly person with elaborately fluffy toffee-coloured hair and a huge diamond necklace round her fat neck, is very welcoming and doesn’t look sideways at my dress, my earrings or the bits of me that the dress reveals. She’s in a minority of one, however. John seems to know most of them: we’re favoured with couple after couple of whom the female looks sideways at me and swallows a knowing smile, looks critically at Bridget and very obviously dismisses her as a skinny English girl in an off-the-peg waif-look brown dress that’s no longer quite the In look (the one she wore at the Chipping Ditter festival, with the gauze over-dress) and leers at John and, as an afterthought, Terence, meanwhile dismissing Rupy and Matt as if they didn’t exist; and of whom the male grins hopefully at me, grins kindly at Bridget, doesn’t see Matt, Terence  or Rupy, and gives John what if this wasn’t Washington High Society would definitely be a matey leer. As it is, it just verges on it. Well, sort of halfway between matey leer and acceptable, geddit? Yeah, thoughtcha might.

    All of the males also wring my hand very, very hard. Jesus Christ! Most of them wearing bloody rings, too. It gets to the point where one more is gonna tip me right over—

    The edge. It’s got to it. Captain Fred Stolz, U.S.N., again. In full dress uniform, so Rupy’s gonna be asking John again why he isn’t, and Mrs Stolz. I’d imagined her as something along the lines of a younger Mrs Doleman, hah, hah. She’s blonde, very slim, the rigidly-dieted look, in a bright blue sequinned dress that’s a dead ringer for the one Yvonne wore to Brian’s Christmas party, except that Yvonne’s was full-length as well as indecently tight and indecently low-cut and Mrs Fred’s, call her Bonnie, is cocktail-length. Plus and the little cocktail hat to go with it. Bright blue satin with a tiny veil and a little puff of feathers. The neck’s encased by a collar of blue and white fire: surely captains in the U.S. Navy don’t earn that much? Possibly Bonnie has private means. In fact very possibly, looking at the size of the stones in the flashing blue bracelet on that sinewy, tennis-playing wrist, she’s an heiress to something solid like Heinz baked beans or Hershey bars.

    “No,” I say as Fred Stolz holds out the meaty paw. I put both my hands behind my back to reinforce it. “That’s a class ring, is it?”

    “Uh—sure.” Groggily he turns the hand over to display it.

    “Then go and mince some other poor female’s hand with it, Fred.”

    Bonnie’s glaring, in the intervals of trying to flirt with John and Terence simultaneously, but Fred grins all over his rather nice, square, reddish face and says: “Gee, I wasn’t gonna mince your hand, honey!”

    “They all have, so far. Haven’t they, Bridget?”

    She goes rather red. “Well, um, some of them, yes!” she squeaks.

    “Well, I’m real sorry to hear it. Say, that’s a real pretty English accent you got there, Bridget, honey,” Fred approves.

    Bonnie can’t take this: not two of us he’s calling honey and grinning at and, you don’t need to be an Einstein to work out, using the down-home voice she’s told him a million times is strictly taboo at Washington cocktail parties. “Really, Fred! Anyone’d think you’d never been further abroad than Hicksville, Iowa, in your life!”

    Fred winks at me. “I’m from Iowa, I only work in outer—”

    “Outer space!” I cry simultaneously. We both collapse in delighted splutters. Fred puts an arm round me on the strength of it, since John’s momentarily stopped supporting me with his.

    Bonnie isn’t even trying to smile, she gives him a real acid look. And telling John it was lovely to see him and delightful to meet Terence, she drags poor old Fred away.

    “Are they crushing your hands?” Terence asks with interest.

    “Yes,” I report flatly.

    “Mm,” Bridget admits, biting her lip.

    “Not as sophisticated as they fondly imagine they are, then,” he concludes smoothly.

    At this Rupy, Bridget, Matt and I all collapse in delighted splutters. And John puts his arm back round my waist and says: “No, quite. Grin and bear it, I’m afraid, Rosie. There’s a few more I should speak to, then I think we can escape.”

    So we do that.

    The Whatsernames turn out to be the Lyle Hammonds. He’s an American admiral. From the outside it looks like every Washington town house you ever saw in the movies. Like, several storeys, no garden, old-fashioned, probably stone or concrete or something. Inside it’s a dead ringer for the bloody hotel we’ve just left, as far as style goes—Old Vienna, right—only in shades of mahogany, ice blue and pale cream. Like, their florist’s basket on the hall table, I kid you not, contains cream gladdies, Australian silver-dollar gum leaves, and ice-blue carnations. (Dyed: Joslynne reckons they buy them white and stand them in vases of you-name-it colour. Blue food colouring, typically. She once had a job working for a florist, it lasted until winter rolled round and then she gave up spending her working life with her hands in cold water.) The hall walls are done out in an ice-blue wallpaper with a silver brocade pattern. Plus and a few real oil paintings of fake ancestors and several mirrors with mahogany frames. We go into the drawing-room and it’s more of the same, plus a milling crowd of people all on their feet drinking cocktails again, Jesus! Doesn’t anybody ever sit down in Washington, D.C.? My high-heeled black patent sandals are killing me. There’s a giant chandelier, all cut-glass thingos, and more cut-glass thingos standing around on sideboards and like that. Boy, Mrs Admiral Hammond must be fond of cut glass.

    She’s one of the middle-aged, plumpish, upholstered ones, done out in a straight, full-length black dress dotted with tiny sparkly things, not sequins, more like the things on that black princess-length dress of mine, just as well I didn’t wear it tonight, eh? Gulp, as she walks you can see it’s split to above the knee on one side, what Mum’d say about a woman of her age and build getting around in a thing like that I shudder to think! Mind you, she has got nice legs, in sheer black tights. Otherwise the dress has got long sleeves and quite a high neckline but, when she turns round, very low cut at the back. The plumpness doesn’t indicate she’s as well-intentioned as Mrs Doleman, by any means: she gives me a very sharp look and after being introductions all round focuses entirely on John. Yeah, well, she may be fond of ice blue and cut-glass décor, and black gear, but “puce and magenta” ’ud just about cover it.

    The room’s full of more of the same, we speedily discover. Bridget and Matt and yours truly are the youngest people in it by far, that doesn’t help much. Most of the women are in black, at first I think that’s a real plus, then I realise it isn’t. Their black’s very expensive, while mine’s off the peg. Also their black is, as John warned me, being worn with real jewels. After a bit the Fred Stolzes arrive. He’s beaming all over his face and immediately joins us. Bonnie’s looking sour: probably she told him not to join us. At long last we’re allowed to go into dinner. It’s all place cards and ice-blue table napkins on top of spotless white damask, some of us by now were expecting this. With flowers in cut-glass vases, also expected. Gee, I’m not allowed to sit next to John. I had almost expected that but I will admit that I did wonder if even a gazetted puce and magenta Washington cow would go that far. I’m between Matt and a mild-looking guy who introduces himself as Clint Merriweather. With the Justice Department. Those of us who’d thought that Clint was a made-up name that only a film star would be called by even in the good ole U.S. of A. are dumbfounded. Matt leans forward and asks him with a twinkle if that means FBI, and he says seriously No, and explains. Yikes.

    Later. Crystal. Mrs Admiral Hammond collects crystal. Not cut glass, but you’d spotted that, hadn’tcha, and were waiting for me to open my great mouth and put my foot in it. Which I only did a million times in the course of the evening. Anyway, it’s all over now and we’re home at last, having dropped off a bemused Bridget and Matt, and a fuddled Rupy and Terence (Bourbon mixed with Washington pseuds) at their hotel.

    “Sorry,” he says, cuddling up.

    “Some females,” I note conversationally, “would hold tonight against you forever and a day, John Haworth, in general, that is, and specifically as of this instant would refuse to let you have it or even lay a paw on them.”

    “Isn’t it nice you’re not like that?” he replies happily, putting a paw on a tit.

    Yes, isn’t it… Mmm-mm, ooh, do that, John!

    … “They would, ya know.”

    “Uh?” he utters groggily. Dunno whether it was the fell influence of Mrs Lyle Hammond, if so we’ll go back there, but the foreplay was extra, not that he isn’t an expert in that department, and then when he got in there he did it ve-ry slow-ly, he’s discovered that turns me on like crazy, for a-ag-es, up until the point where I shrieked and clawed his back, then he did it very hard and fast while I was coming on it… Well, if you know what I mean, you know what I mean. Otherwise, just read five purple stars in the margin and conclude it was Really Good.

    “Hold it against you forever and a day,” I explain.

    Groggily he pulls me into his side and mumbles: “Yes, hold it against me forever and a day, Rosie.”

    Oh, well. I’m not like that and never was. But all the same, there’s many that would.

    “You’re not going to wear that at an American fork luncheon,” pronounces Rupy firmly.

    “Yeah? So? They eat everything with forks, haven’tcha noticed?”

    Heroically he doesn’t laugh. Forcibly he pushes me into the bedroom—John meanwhile is sitting at his desk in the sitting-room, working, apparently deaf to it all.

    … So here I am, tricked out in Miss Hammersley’s Marilyn suit—which reminds me, today I’m gonna send everybody postcards or die in the attempt—plus a little pale pink, short-sleeved, Not-Cashmere sweater that Rupy only let me buy as a solde de l’entrée because it’s got a very Today look (while still covering the waist, in case you were wondering). Plus and a graduated quadruple string of Fifties fake pearls that start off, as to the innermost strand, very, very pale pink, and shade through pale pink to pale pinkish-grey to pale grey. That I certainly didn’t put in my case, drat him.

    John looks at me with a smile. “Shouldn’t there be a pair of pale pink bobbles in the ears, Rupy?”

    “You are so right, John, dear,” he says fervently, “but we couldn’t find them!”

    “I see.” He watches neutrally as Rupy then puts the little black feather hat on my curls.

    “For God’s sake tell him that no-one wears hats to bloody American fork lunches, John!”

    “Er… I haven’t really noticed what they wear,” he admits apologetically.—I suppose that’s a plus, at any rate.—“But it looks adorable. You’d better wear Tuppence’s fur coat, Rosie.”

    “But John, dear,” I say acidly, “one cannot possibly wear a black feather hat with a brown fur coat.”

    “She’s learning,” explains Rupy, not even flickering an eyelash at the acid. “Mink is always acceptable, Rosie, and black hat, shoes and handbag are quite acceptable with it.”

    “Black handbag?” I retort nastily, giving up on the acid for the time being and lapsing into pure Edith Evans. “I haven’t got—” Yes, I have, because he packed a black patent one.

    So we go. It’s only me and Rupy and John. Terence refused point-blank to come and Matt volunteered to help Bridget find a totally obscure shop that her other brother (not the train buff) reckons she can buy a very special sort of kite at that’s gonna have to be freighted back to England. Well, Matt reckons he knows how to arrange that, or rather to see that the shop arranges it properly. He started talking about customs declarations so we all tacitly agreed he must know. And some of us were quite pleased to see him and Bridget preparing to do something together. Terence meanwhile is headed for the Embassy, don’t ask me whether that means the actual Ambassador’s actual residence or the office that the yobs are allowed to call at during normal working hours, if it’s anything like Australia House that’ll mean don’t turn up between twelve and three, anybody ya might need to see’ll be at lunch.

    … Ooh, what a good thing I wore my black suit, because all the ladies here are in business suits of the utterly creaseless American kind with chaste but smart pins on the lapels or, in the case of the narrower lapels, shoulders. Funnily enough no-one’s wearing genuine Fifties graduated paste pearls with their suits, though. And the very few ladies wearing hats are obvious wives, not businesspersons here on their own account. Never mind, I’m allowed to sit between John in his uniform, and a lovely Colonel Schneider, call him Wes, in his uniform, covered with medals and buttons and thingos on the sleeves and those neato little flaps on the shoulders… As we eat something very strange with our forks I register that poor Rupy’s between an overpowering middle-aged lady in a grey business suit with a silvery pearl thingo on the lapel and short, very well cut, very thick hair dyed a silvery pearl shade, and an overpowering younger lady in dark steel blue with a gold pin on the lapel, and shoulder-length, scraggy-cut après-waif hair (Rupy’s expression: good, isn’t it?) that in spite of the scragginess is so shiny and corn-yellow that it couldn’t be anything but American.

    Later. Rupy’s corn-yellow-haired lady’s from Iowa, but she didn’t know the joke, he reports sadly. And that mushy stuff was creamed chicken, these fork lunches are famous for it, dear. And—kindly—was that a nice uniform?

    Lovely! I report, beaming. And that was the last of John’s obligatory lunches and now we can go to the Smithsonian!

    Eh? Wot? he croaks. I can’t be serious!

    But I am, of course I am.

    So John and me end up at the Smithsonian together, him in his Royal Navy uniform, and me in the Marilyn suit. And in spite of the uniform he takes my hand, and we wander round, hand-in-hand, for the rest of the afternoon… Bliss. Even though they haven’t actually got Zefram Cochrane’s original warp-drive ship, no, because it hasn’t been invented yet.

    “John, I can’t possibly go to a cocktail party tonight, I’ve got Museum Foot! In both feet.”—But darling, I’ve just had a lovely hot shower and soaked my feet!—“Nevertheless.”—In any case it’s not a cocktail party, it’s a dinner.

    Right. A dinner. Standing around for hours making meaningless small talk, or in my case listening to it, while we wait for the more important guests, important enough to be late, to arrive. But, folks, if I refuse to go at this point, it’ll make me look real bad, won’t it, because what did I agree to come over to Washington for, if not to participate in his lifestyle? (Well, good sex, the Smithsonian, good sex, chance to get over to California, good sex… Yeah.) Rupy will help me choose what to wear, John adds helpfully. Gee, thanks, Adored Object.

    … “You can’t wear that!” –The little black number. And this is what I bought it for.

    But I wore it last night and it’ll be sure to be the same Washington crowd! We’re having this argument in the bedroom, John’s sitting quietly in the sitting-room, all ready in his dinner suit, reading the paper. Rupy marches in there and demands ratification of his edict. Mildly John agrees that it probably will be some of the same faces. Rupy smirks. But does that matter? he adds mildly. The smirk fades. YES!

    … Some time later. Every garment I brought with me and some that I didn’t realise Rupy had shoved into my suitcase are spread out on the bed and Rupy’s red-faced and furious. Someone is going to have to tell John! But won’t he realise, I say, chewing American gum—cherry-flavoured, boy it’s weird—when I go out there wearing the same garment as in I went?

    That is NOT funny! And if it was a meant to be a quote, dear—very acid—sorry, but he didn’t get it. And are you CHEWING? “You can’t come to America and not chew g—” SPIT IT OUT! Cripes, is he wild. So I spit it out and we go back into the sitting-room and Rupy says bitterly: “Look at her!”

    John looks at me dubiously. Same as in I went. (It’s the Rubaiyat, it’s the Rubaiyat, for God’s sake; didn’t youse lot read nothink at them elocution lessons ya Mum forced ya to go to at the age of fourteen because she thought ya were turning into a yob? Or in my case, turned, I used to front up for the lessons in camouflage daks, a baggy black tee-shirt and Kenny’s Rip Curl peaked cap on, you goddit, backwards.)

    “This is my only dinner dress.”

    “She left all those wonderful frocks of Miss Hammersley’s behind!”

    “I don’t think so; not unless the yards of pink hanging in my wardrobe are a figment of—”

    Rupy interrupts him—he’s wild, all right. “The dinner dresses, John!”

    “Oh. Um, well, the red one?”

    “John, dear, that would be perfectly acceptable for dinner, yes, but if she wears it tonight, what is she going to wear to that very formal reception tomorrow?”

    “The pink one?” the poor bloke suggests politely.

    I cannot possible wear the pink one because that one is slated for the White House reception. So I point out: “It’s not us that’s being re—” Will I shut up! All right, I shut up. Eventually Rupy concedes that I can wear the long, straight red dress tonight, but only on condition that tomorrow we go out immediately after breakfast and buy me something really nice for that very formal reception tomorrow night.

    “But I’ve gotta get some postcards, I never had time today!” I wail.

    John puts his paper down. “Yes. Postcards first, Rupy, then shopping,” he says firmly.

    Rupy agrees meekly, blimey, anything but an actual Stalin would have agreed meekly, the man doesn’t realise how strong he comes on when he’s using his captain’s voice. Though I am quite aware that that must’ve been the mild version of it. We retreat into the bedroom and Rupy closes the door firmly and hisses: “Did I get up his nose, Rosie?”

    “No, he just thought things needed settling,” I explain, getting out of the little black number.

    “It makes you realise how ineffectual Michael is,” he says ruefully.

    “Well, yes! Oh, do you mean when he’s being Captain Harding? Yeah. The Royal Navy wouldn’t actually appoint anything like Captain Feebleized Harding to anything remotely resembling a position of authority, Rupy, I’ve long since concluded.”

    He shudders, and nods feelingly.

    “He didn’t mean anything by it,” I try to reassure him.

    I don’t think he’s reassured, though, because when we go back into the sitting-room with me in my new red dress he says in a very, very meek voice that I can tell is not put on at all: “Does she look all right, John?”

    John gives him an extra-nice smile, so it must have sunk in that even the mildest version of the captain’s voice is ten million times too strong for poor old Rupy, and says: “Well, as you know, Rupy, I always think she looks all right! But yes, very much so. –Lovely, darling, I’m so glad you brought it with you,” he approves.

    I don’t throw a salute: John wouldn’t mind, but at this juncture I don’t think Rupy could take it. “Thanks. Um, scarlet isn’t really my colour, I suppose, but after eighteen months of little pastel suits and little pastel jumpers, I had to buy it or go mad.”

    “Perfectly understandable, Rosie, darling,” agrees Rupy hurriedly, “and now that you’re out of Henny Penny’s orbit, there’s no reason not to wear it if you feel like it! Though one has to admit, dear, it’s not a patch on Julia’s red dress,” he admits on a mournful note.

    No, well, mine wasn’t designed for me and upholstered to my form before they turned the cameras on me. And one more reference—mine or his, yep—to Pretty Woman and I’ll do something drastic, I can feel it in my bones!

    John’s looking mildly puzzled but before he can say who is Julia and what is she, the others arrive. Bridget’s in a dark grey waify slip-dress, never mind, her and Matt both look happy. Terence looks smoothly handsome but resigned, and warns it’ll be more Washington super-pseuds. Gee, that needed saying. I don’t point it out, and we go.

    More Washington super-pseuds? And a half! Tonight’s dinner is being given by Admiral Baxter, U.S.N., Rtd. (even though Rtd., he’s got a gnarled and doughy finger in every Navy pie and every defence contract pie), and of course Mrs Admiral Baxter. Gee, their house is like every Washington town house you ever saw in the movies. Mahogany, dark green, pale cream, lots of, surprise, gilding. Gilded florist’s basket on the hall table—nice touch, cream gladdies, maroon gladdies, pale green carnations. For a change the real oil paintings of fake ancestors have got gilt frames and the mirrors have got mahogany frames. Gee, the drawing-room’s more of the same. Just as I’m deciding I got through the last one so I can bear this even though Mrs Admiral (Terri) Baxter’s already smiled at me very nicely and told me that at my age I’m so right to wear “pretty costoom jewels,” a gazetted puce and magenta cow swans up to us on the arm of something smooth, fat, tuxedo-ed and Rolex-watched, and guess who it is! You got it: Mrs Wanda Makepeace Hooten in person.

    They don’t throw the “darlings” around as much in Washington as the Pommy super-pseuds do, I’ve already cottoned on to that, so when she kisses his cheek lightly and says: “John, darling! Where have you been hiding this past week?” my antennae come quiveringly alert, ya could say. Or, put it another way, I bristle all over.

    “I don’t think I’ve been hiding, have I, Rosie?” he says mildly.

    “No, you’ve been putting in far too many public appearances at fork luncheons,” I reply, trying to sound neutral and rather more English than Australian, sorry, My Country.

    The male Hooten’s looking at me with surprised interest and now he gives a jolly laugh, well, if you can imagine a stout tiger laughing, more that sort of thing, and suggests that John introduce us.

    “Why, yes, do, John!” coos Wanda. “This is such a surprise, darling!”

    From which ya might gather several points, but the main one is, John never indicated to the Hootens, whoever else he might have indicated it to, that he was expecting his girlfriend to come and stay in his flat for Christmas.

    Of course they’re delighted to meet me, delighted, except that Wanda Makepeace H. is now looking me up and down and very obviously swallowing a smile. Now, don’t get me wrong, here, she’s the sort of highly competent social lady that if she didn’t want us to see she was swallowing a smile we’d never, ever of known it, geddit? Yeah, thought you would. The cow. Then she turns her attention to Terence and is delighted to meet him, this time it’s a thousand to one it’s not a lie. In fact if he was a juicy gazelle and she was a hungry leopard the expression would probably be pretty much the same.

    Of course she’s wearing black, but you’d guessed that, huh? She’s got a very good figure even if, never mind the black hair, she must be at least forty-five (the usual age of his puce and magenta cows, yep, that helps). The neck not showing any signs of wear because the chin, which is rather square, is well held up and the actual neck is veiled by a delicate lacy collar of, you goddit, diamonds. They are all very small ones but it’s about three centimetres wide, and, get this, just one large ruby drop is allowed to hang from it right in the middle. Small rubies surrounded by little diamonds in the ears and the lot woulda set old Hooten back a fair whack. The black dress might be characterised as après-waif, in fact after the glance has flickered over Rupy and dismissed him under the practised social smile, he mouths as much at me. On her, however, a narrow black dress of, I think, two layers of georgette, with a low-cut square neckline and long tight sleeves, looks good. As a really nice touch the tiny evening bag she’s carrying isn’t black, like almost every other lady’s in the room, it’s dark ruby gathered velvet, to die for. And what I would really, really like at this moment would be two of those giant ray guns like Arnie had in Eraser, one in each hand, in real life they’d’ve been so heavy that even he woulda toppled over backwards.

    “What?” murmurs Rupy in my ear as Wanda takes one of John’s arms and one of Terence’s and gushes socially at the both of them at the same time, what time Ambassador Hooten (yeah, he is one of those, there’s a fair bit of it about in Washington, D.C.) talks in a fatherly way which is possibly not as fatherly as all that, to the shrinking Bridget.

    “Zz-zzz-pow!” I hiss. “Arnie. Eraser. Geddit?”

    Shuddering slightly, he admits the soft impeachment, dear. Right.

    And so we go into dinner. Gee! I’m not allowed to be beside John! Mrs Admiral Baxter must be Wanda Makepeace Hooten’s best friend! You couldn’t of guessed.

    As we stagger into their hotel with our poor long-suffering friends afterwards Terence is driven to say: “John, for God’s sake, couldn’t you have spared us that?”

    “On the whole, no. Terri Baxter and all her friends knew you and Matt and Rosie would be in Washington at this time. It would have look damned odd if I hadn’t brought you.”

    There’s a short and stunned silence. Because some of us had had the impression that Mrs Hooten, to name only one, was not expecting to see anything on John’s arm tonight. Then Matt says explosively: “Jesus!” Nice boy. And I thought he was too young to notice.

    Rupy is unsurprised. “Of course they all knew, dears, why else the ‘John darlings’ and the ubiquitous kisses?”

    “But—” I stop.

    John sighs. “Rosie, you do know what that sort of woman is like, surely?”

    “She does now!” says Matt with feeling.

    Bridget doesn’t say anything but she nods hard and gives John a protesting look.

    Even the great naval brain can now see that they’re all solidly lined up against him. “Yes. Well, I can only apologise.”

    “Only telling us it was the last of them would be better, Dad,” Matt suggests.

    “Would it what!” I’m agreeing feelingly before I can stop myself.

    John puts his arm round me. “You were the prettiest woman in the room, comfort yourself with the thought that they all hated you.”—Sure they did. But they’da hated me more in a Model Frock, though. Shit, I sound like Great-Aunty Lil: “model frock”? It must be getting to me.—“Don’t scowl, Rosie, darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he groans.

    “Yeah. Well, never mind, let’s try some tequila, they oughta have the real McC—”

    Funnily enough I’m not allowed to have a margarita on top of all that brandy and wine on top of all those American cocktails and he removes me firmly. It’s freezing, so we don’t walk back to the apartment, we grab a taxi and drive round and round in the one-way streets.

    “Ya wouldn’t like to tell me that was the worst of it, wouldja?” I offer as we get out.

    “Hurry in, darling, it’s freezing.”

    We hurry inside but L.R. Marshall ain’t put off, no, sirree, bob, and I repeat my remark.

    “I'd like to, but Washington is all puce and magenta cows. In amongst the suits and the uniforms,” he says with a tiny smile.

    I bash his arm. “Yeah, hah, hah!”

    We go into the flat  and he shuts the door and envelops me in a huge hug before I can even start to take off Miss Hammersley’s dead minks.

    “If you think going to bed’s gonna take my mind off—”

    Apparently he does, and it’s all he’s been able to think of for the last two hours and he’s dying for me. Gee, that’s flattering. Mostly over the last two hours all I’ve been able to think of is great big ray guns and Wanda Makepeace Hooten going down under them like a felled tree, similarly Mrs Admiral (Terri) Baxter after her. Though that’s phallic, I guess.

    He more or less carries me into the bedroom and manages to investigate what’s under the red dress (mostly not very much but what there is, is white lace, he loves that) without taking the fur coat off, so it’s all cosy and lovely and— Oo-ooh, John! Do that, do that! And after I've had a belting come on his tongue he demonstrates that he’s got something that’s pretty phallic, too. …Cripes, he musta needed that.

    “I needed that!” he pants, this is about an aeon later.

    “Yeah, me too.”

    “I noticed!” he pants.

    After quite some time he says slowly: “Rosie, you are just letting it all wash over you, are you, darling?”

    “Eh?” I croak.

    “Not this,” he says with a smile in his voice. “The bloody Washington scene.”

    I’m in such a good mood I’m practically purring. “Oh, that. ’Course,” I agree, yawning, and snuggling up.

    “Good,” he says sleepily. “Good.”

    The hotel the others are in has got a place on the ground floor that sells postcards, like, loads of other junk as well, but definitely postcards, so after breakfast and a certain amount of fooling around in the pale yellow shower, we go there. Can I possibly need this many postcards? the naval nong asks dazedly. Yes! And if he’s bored he can do the other thing! He’s not bored; he takes my pale green parka-ed elbow gently and gets very close to me. “Have you got any stamps?” he says mildly as I go on choosing postcards.

    “No. Do you think this one’s too phallic for Miss Hammersley?”

    “I don’t think she’ll realise it is, Rosie, but I think she might prefer one of the White House.”

    “But I can’t send her and Doris Winslow the same one!”

    “Then Abe Lincoln?”

    “Is that more Washingtonian than huge great monoliths?” I ask doubtfully.

    “Mm.”

    “Okay; then Gray can have the phallic one.” I sort out postcards carefully, counting on my fingers. Silently John picks up the red and back striped woolly glove I’ve dropped. After a bit he murmurs that it’s a quite a way to the post office.

    “Terence said he thought we could buy stamps in the lobby.”

    Amiably he offers to investigate. He is bored, see? But I don’t say so, I let him go off. … Bother, now I've got the same one for Gray and Maybelle, they’re bound to compare notes next time he’s down at her cottage! This is hopeless!

    He’s back. “Darling, perhaps if you—”

    “Are those the right stamps for American p—”

    Yes, and perhaps I’d better buy more postcards than I immediately need, and that will help ensure I don’t send duplicates to people who shouldn’t be sent duplicates.

    “Yes! Why didn’t I think of that!”

    His mouth twitches but he doesn’t say anything.

    “Say it!” I order loudly, bashing him in the ribs with my pale green padded elbow.

    “Er—well, not accustomed to thinking on the feet, Rosie? Not trained in tactics?” Those sky-blue eyes are twinkling like anything.

    Suddenly I love him so much I could bust out bawling in this highly efficient shiny American postcard-cum-everything-else boutique.

    “What’s up?” he hisses in alarm. “Surely you didn’t think I was getting at you?”

    “Ndo,” I say, sniffing a bit. “I love you awfully, John.”

    He’s gone very red, I don't think it’s because I said it in public, there’s a very lipsticked young lady over at the far side behind the cash register and two puzzled Japanese tourists consulting over fluffy—uh—pandas? Can’t be. Fluffy somethings, down the far end, and otherwise the place is empty.

    “Yes,” he says in a strangled voice, putting his tailored greatcoated arm right round the puffy green parka. “I love you, too, Rosie.”

    And we stand here idiotically in the midst of the postcards and fluffy pandas and small busts of Lincoln and small phallic statuettes and packets of M&M’s and Hershey bars for ages and ages and ages, with our hearts hammering like fury. Well, mine is, and I know his is because I can feel it right through my parka and his overcoat.

    I’da just headed for the post office but John points out there’s a post-box on the pavement and I can sit down and write out the postcards in the lobby.

    So we head for the bit of the giant lobby where you can sit, actually it’s a kind of writing nook because there’s lots of tables and chairs and armchairs and telephones in booths, but not a soul in it except us. He thinks we ought to sort these out into categories, Rosie. I was just gonna start writing, because after I’d done Miss Hammersley and Doris and Buster and Barbara I’d know I’d done them, if ya see what I mean, but I let him sort. We end up with the postcards categorised by picture. Yeah, that’s good so far as it goes, but now what?

    “I wasn’t gonna do it like that… Now what?” I say lamely.

    He doesn’t tell me I’m an idiot like any of my loving male relations would, he just says now I decide on the personal categories and take one postcard from each pile. Um… I geddit! Like, the flats first: okay, that’s Miss Hammersley and Miss Winslow. Only, should Imelda and the rest of the Singh family and the Wus and Raewyn and Sally from the dry-cleaner’s and Barry Machin be in this group, too? Only if they’re likely to compare postcards, darling, he says mildly.

    Yeah, he’s right. Well, Imelda’ll belt right round to Miss Hammersley’s—or she might stop off at Doris and Buster’s first, because they’re lower down. John doesn’t smile, he sees the logic of it, bless him: he just nods seriously. So I choose the White House for Miss H— No, hang on, Doris and Buster wanted a view of the White House. Um—blow. He reminds me we thought Abe Lincoln for Tuppence.

    “Oh, yes! Um, isn’t that Mount Rushmore, though?” No, darling, it’s the Lincoln Memorial, we can go to it today, if Rupy’s dress shopping leaves us time. It will, I’ll buy the first thing he suggests! Um… Blow, I was gonna send Imelda one of the White House, because it’s the only Washington thing most kids of her age would recognise. There are several views of it, he points out mildly. Well, does he think that’d be all right? I ask earnestly. Yes, he does.

    “I’ll have to write different messages on them,” I warn.

    “Yes, of course, darling. Can I address some for you?”

    I get out the list of names and addresses that thank God I remembered to print out from the laptop before I left. Cripes. “Uh—yeah, thanks, John, do.”

    He outs with the Parker and gets on with it.

    … “Who is Linda Grant?” he asks mildly.

    “From Henny Penny.” He looks blank. “John! Linda from Reception!” I say indignantly.

    “Of course,” he agrees mildly, writing.

    … “I didn’t know you’d ever been to Axminster, darling.”—I haven’t, it’s a carpet.—“Felicity and Jock McManus?” he asks mildly.

    “Oh! That place near Bournemouth. They keep a pub. They were very kind to me.”

    Axminster is nowhere near Bournemouth. He does a little map of Britain on the hotel’s notepaper, crikey, isn’t he clever, it looks real! “London—Bournemouth—Axminster,” he explains clearly. I must look as blank as I feel. “Portsmouth,” he explains, marking it. Oh, is that where— “Edinburgh,” he says, less kindly.

    “I know wh— Um, well, I know the top part’s Scotland,” I admit lamely. “Axminster’s relatively near Bournemouth, though.”

    “Yes. Why were you there?” he asks clearly.

    “I was on my way to the stupid Mountjoy Midsummer Festival. That was when I forgot to get off the bus. Um, are you sure it’s all the way over there?” Yes. He shows me where Plymouth is. I don’t ask why, I just nod.

    “Tell me about Felicity and Jock,” he urges.

    I tell him about them, as I write out messages to the Henny Penny lot. Dear Yvonne, Washington’s great, very cold, though. John’s great, I think you could’ve guessed! We’ve seen the White House from the outside, but Guess What, we’re going to a reception there!!! Merry Xmas,—getting very small and cramped—Love & kisses, Lily Rose.

    “You haven’t left me any room for a PS,” he says mildly.

    “Were you gonna put one?” I can feel myself beaming like a nong, oddly enough I have no impulse to wipe it off.

    “Mm.”

    I tear up Yvonne’s postcard and write her another one, the same picture and the same message, only smaller.

    “All the best, John” is all he writes but she’ll be thrilled. I have to blow my nose very hard. He puts his hand on top of mine as I pick up the hotel’s pen again and squeezes it. “Did you think I’d forgotten her?”

    “Um—yeah. You’re a Royal Navy captain and she’s a Personal Dresser with a giant crush on Sean Connery.”

    “You do have a very low opinion of the Navy,” he remarks mildly.

    Yeah, because look at the statistics! On one side, John Haworth, in a middle category Terence and other vaguely well meaning types, Duncan Cross and Jimmy Parkinson, for instance. Oh, and little pink Nevil Curtis. Then in the third category, let’s start with, just as a for instance, Father Admiral Sir Bernard. Add Corky Corcoran. Gee, there’s now a giant black bar all up that side of the page, funny, that. Admiral Hammersley can go in the middle category, he’s not bad. All the rest of the wanking Admiralty can go into—

    “Come on, don’t you want to get this lot finished before lunch?”

    Uh—right. Dear Karen, this is a view of D.C. in autumn, but all the leaves have dropped, now. It’s cold, but lots of great Xmas decorations. Monuments all pretty stuffy, I’d stick to Miami if I was you!—Her sister Wendy’s trying to make her change her mind about next summer and come on a package to D.C., instead.—The White H. pretty but nothing like Blenheim P.—I know she’s been there. Running out of room; very small: Merry Xmas, Love, Lily Rose.

    “Um, Brian’s secretary, right?”

    “Yeah, right,” I approve, beaming at him. “Have ya done all the addresses?” He has. Help. I look at the great pile of unwritten postcards.

    “I could write some, if you like.”

    “No, I’ve got to do them personally. You wanna put the stamps on?”

    He puts the stamps on. I try to write faster while not repeating myself to people who know each other. This is the theatrical, non-Henny Penny lot. Dear Coralee, You were right, Washington is very cold. Lovely Xmas decorations. We’re going to a Reception at the White House itself soon! Hope you’re keeping warm in your dear little cottage. Merry Xmas, Rosie.

    “Coals of fire,” he says mildly, putting a stamp on it.

    “Yeah, something like that.” I plug on. Dear Tony, Hope the show’s going well & L.G. not giving you all a hard time as per usual. Washington very cold but lots of ace American Xmas decorations. Rupy sends his love. Merry Xmas, Rosie.—Does he? asks John, putting a stamp on it and not even pretending to be politely not reading it. He would if he thought of it, I reply firmly. Gee, that’s all the English ones except for the village!

    The White House itself for Jack Powell. Dear Jack, Washington is great, John very well, very cheerful in spite of all the pathetic socialising he has to do. Lots of lovely American Xmas decorations everywhere. A very Merry Xmas from Rosie. John adds “And John.” Not commenting on me sending a postcard to his wood man, bless him. But he does break down and say weakly “Belinda and Murray Stout?” as I start on the next.

    “Yeah, I’m gonna do a separate one for Terry, poor kid. They’re still nagging him about that scholarship.”

    “Rosie, the silly boy slaved for a year to get it, and then—”

    “Yeah, but most of us are bloody silly at that age.” I only write: Dear Terry, Washington looks like all the movies of it you ever saw from “All the President’s Men” to “Absolute Power”. So far the inhabitants likewise! A Merry Xmas from Rosie.

    Thoughtfully John compares it with my card to Barry Machin. Dear Barry, Washington looks like all the movies of it you ever saw from “All the President’s Men” to “Absolute Power”. Haven’t yet seen the Pres. but he’ll be at a reception we’re slated for! Have a Merry Xmas! Rosie.

    “Teenage boys being victimised by their parents are much the same whether they happen to work in a shop or not,” I say, handing him the one to John Corcoran: Dear John, Here I am in Washington with your namesake & rather too much of the R.N. & U.S.N. shit. Great steakhouses! Washington itself like all the movies of it you ever saw from “All the P’s Men” to “Absolute Power”. Merry Xmas from Rosie.

    “Yes,” he says, smiling all over his face. “I see.”

    Yeah, ya do, you’re so sharp you’ll cut yaself. I start the ones to the rellies back home, sighing. Whatever I say’ll be the Wrong Thing, you betcha. Dear Mum, Here I am in Washington with John, don’t say I didn’t tell you about him. We’ve seen the White House and we’re going to a presidential reception. Merry Xmas & Love from Rosie. XXX.

    “It’s all right, you can read it,” I say, realising he’s carefully refraining. I don’t say that whatever I wrote she’d bawl over it and say I never told her, I just get on with it: Dear Dad, You were right about Washington. The “W. Post” is like the curate’s egg, you were right about that too, & the hamburgers. But we’ve been to a great steakhouse. Merry Xmas & love from Rosie. XXX.

    This time I can see he’s reading it without being prompted. Dunno what that funny little smile means, so I won’t think about it. Dear Kenny, A Merry Yankee Xmas from Washington D.C. Full of Yanks & super-pseuds of many nationalities. Great STEAKS! Love, Rosie. Whatever I wrote Kenny’d snort derisively over it, so can it matter?

    Anyway, those three were the hardest, the next one’s pure pleasure. Dear Joslynne, You were wrong. Will write more soon! Washington v. cold, bad as London. Great steaks, great uniforms including His! Merry Xmas & Love, Rosie. XXX.

    “Possibly I shouldn’t be reading this,” he notes, putting a stamp on it. “Unless she was merely wrong about the quality of the steaks?”

    “Hah, hah.” I pinch his thigh, very quickly, under the table. He gives a surprised snort of laughter and says: “You know, there are better ways of spending a morning.”

    I’m ignoring that. I’m also ignoring the fact that his big warm hand is now creeping up my thigh… “Do more stamps,” I order in a strangled voice.

    “Can’t. Done them all.”

    “Stop that,” I order in a strangled voice.

    “Can’t.”

    I collapse in smothered sniggers, dear me, this isn’t very diplomatic or Royal Navy in an empty Washington hotel lobby writing-place…

    I do manage to finish the postcards, however, and we go out and put them in a real American mailbox and then somehow instead of going back into the hotel to collect Rupy for shopping we walk briskly home to the flat. There’s two men waiting for the lift, they must be neighbours, they know him and he greets them smoothly. I’m barely capable of smiling, how can he just stand there and chat?

    “How can you just— ” He stops my mouth while he’s still shutting the front door and then wrenches my nice warm black tracksuit pants down… And etcetera and so forth: wow! Let’s hope the paranoid Yanks haven’t got a mike hidden in this Royal Navy apartment, because if so it’s gonna upset any ideas the public face of this particular senior Royal Navy captain mighta given them. Not to mention the places the said face can get to when totally carried away on its thick rug in front of its hideous brown leather sofa, or on top of same, or oops, in front of same again, or for a certain period, in the case of one, draped over the back of same, ooh, lovely, ooh, John, ooh, John! …Golly.

    “That got very daring,” I eventually manage to croak.

    He’s now lying at full length on his horrible leather sofa totally starkers except for the socks he didn’t take the time to remove. “Mm. I had the impression you liked it.”

    I’m still on the very nice, nay luxurious rug in front of the sofa, sort of propped up by some cushions that somehow got down here. I squint up at him. “I sort of thought you only fancied the missionary position. Or, well, the occasional bit of a sixty-nine.”

    “Er—oh, God. Have I been very boring, Rosie?” he says in horror.

    “No. Well, yeah!” I say with a loud, rude laugh.

    He grins that very male grin that I only get favoured with when he's really relaxed. “Not that! Have I?”

    “No, not at all. But this was nice, too. Just for a bit of a change.”

    “Mm,” he says, smiling. “Good. I’ll bear that in mind.”

    Will ya? That’s a Good Sign.

    I’m sort of thinking about putting my jersey back on or maybe getting a cuppa some time in the next millennium when the phone rings. And it’s only at this point that I remember I’d promised to go shopping with Rupy. “That’ll be Rupy! I forgot all about him!”

    John gets up without haste. “Did you? Good. I’m afraid I didn’t.” While my jaw’s still sagging—duty called, however insignificant in the scheme of things the said duty might be, and he ignored it?—he goes over to the phone and answers it. “Haworth here.” He sounds just as usual, not a stitch on, in his Goddawful brown British-look American lounge-room. “Yes, sorry, Rupy, I’m afraid I thought of something much jollier to do,” he’s saying coolly. I don’t think my jaw can sag any lower. No, well, if it was Lady Mother or a Yank opposite number he’d stood up—yeah. On an objective scale from one to ten you might only place this dereliction of duty at one point two, because after all Rupy’s my friend and he’s gay and John’s not interested in either shopping or gays. But he did say definitely that it’d be shopping after the postcards, so on the John Haworth scale, this is a seven. Definitely. Even leaving the quality of the sex out of account. Seven.

    “You can’t possibly wear that!”

    All right, I can’t. Is this gonna go on all day? That’s the fourteenth perfectly acceptable dress he’s vetoed! Thank God I told John he’d be better off going round the tourist traps with Terence and Matt and Bridget.

    “Not purple,” I say hurriedly as the sweating lady shop assistant produces something lurid.

    Rupy condemns this utterance, it isn’t purple, but also condemns the garment; and we struggle on… “Rupy,” I feel forced to say of the eventual choice, “isn’t it, um, bridal?”

    Apparently not, no, because he scowls horribly.

    “I do like it,” I add hurriedly.

    He just sniffs slightly and I subside, crushed.

    Now we gotta find the shoes, oh, no! But he lets me have a nice comfortable pair of white suede courts, they’re absolutely beautiful—irresistible—and no doubt on the first wearing, knowing me, I’ll ruin them. Never mind, at least we’ve agreed on something, and can we have lunch, please?

    Even in America they’re not still serving lunch, so he breaks down and lets me take him to a hamburger joint. With our Named shopping bags an’ all. …As I expected. The bun’s good, and not cold on the bottom like the Aussie version, the cheese and tomato are good, but the actual meat is tasteless. But there are doubtless other hamburger joints in the U.S. of A. and one of these days—  “Give it up,” he advises laconically.

    “No. Ya want that pickle?” No. I score his slice of pickle.

    John has told me what tonight’s very formal reception is in aid of, but as it wasn’t a Need To Know I’ve let it slide out the other ear. Gee, I wish I was going to the steakhouse and the flicks with Terence and Rupy and the others. Um, well, as John gets a look at me in the long white dress frosted with crystal beads, maybe I don’t.

     “It’s all Rupy,” I explain hurriedly.

    “I strongly doubt it!” he says with a chuckle.

    “The taste is. And the hairdo, he made me go to the place in their hotel.”

    “It looks lovely, darling.”

    Shit, all the woman done was wash it and trim the minutest specks off it and brush it up with some mousse, I coulda done that myself! Plus and, accept a gigantic tip that Rupy told me in a loud hiss was the norm, here.

    “He chose these Fifties screw-on pearl earrings, ya don’t think they look weird with these crystal bead thingos on the dress, do ya?”—picking at them.

    “Rosie, darling, you look lovely, and very ladylike.”

    Bless him, he’s found the right word. I start to cheer up, because what I didn’t wanna look like was a tart or a girl, and though I do provisionally trust Rupy’s taste I haven’t got enough taste myself, as you might’ve guessed by now, to trust my own judgement. I mean in this instance my own judgement of Rupy’s taste. Oh, got that, didja? Yeah. –Yeah, I am bloody nervous, how didja guess?

    “Don’t pick at the lovely dress, sweetheart. You’ll make all the Washington hags look like tarty hags!” he says with the grin.

    “Yeah, but are you absolutely sure the dress is right, John?”

    He’s sure, and he has been to about a million of the bloody things, remember? Funnily enough, I do. I don’t ask what sort of thing Mrs Wanda Makepeace H. might be wearing, because for one thing he’ll claim he doesn’t know and has never noticed and for another, it is recorded for all posterity in that mag: if I was that interested I coulda gone to the Library of Congress and looked it up.

    So he helps me into the dead minks—I can let a gentleman do that To The Manor Born, now—and we go. It’s at an Embassy. Gee, it’s just like Old Vienna. Their gilding and mahogany and crystal chandeliers are accompanied by a deep puce brocade wallpaper, why in God’s name didn’t he warn me? To think I might’ve worn my scarlet dress! Is anything wrong, he murmurs? No, ya nong, except that by the pure grace of God I’m wearing white in this puce nightmare of Old Vienna. Don’t say it, I only mutter: “I think you should have warned me the walls were a glowing puce, John.”

    “Aren’t they all?” he murmurs.

    Look, in five more seconds I’m gonna tread on his foot! Except that he’s in his dress uniform and he’s so lovely and he’s holding my elbow gently but firmly and giving me that almost-smile right into the eyes. Even if it has turned five thousand other women to jelly before me and he’s aware of every second of what he’s doing, which by now I don’t have much doubt of, I don’t care. I give in and hiss: “Literally! What if I’d worn the red dress?”

    “Mm? Oh! Hell. Sorry, Rosie, didn’t think.”

    No, quite. I just have time to murmur: “Think, in future. Specially, think about the W.H. décor before tomorrow,” before we’re Received.

    The Ambassador’s dame is a gazetted puce and magenta Washington hag, as ya mighta guessed from the fact she’s left the walls like that. Tall, very thin, very elegant, not a day over fifty. His generation, yep. Given that she’s that age her dress isn’t white, in fact I’ve only seen one other white dress in the giant crowd proceeding slowly up the giant puce-walled staircase to be Received, can ya guess what colour it is? Gee, ya can. But with the low-cut, elegantly narrow but not rudely tight black velvet, she’s only wearing a very small diamond tiara, aren’tcha disappointed?

    However, tonight is slated to go down in the L.R. Marshall Hall of Fame, folks, yep, right up there together with getting the Ph.D. and that interview with Mark that got me the fellowship, because she takes one look at me in my elegantly narrow but not rudely tight white silk frosted with crystal, and turns green as grass. The social smile’s absolutely rigid, it’s wonderful! Did she think she was beating the Hooten hag out in the J. Haworth Challenge, or what? Admittedly she is miles more sophisticated and, even I can see the difference, though I can’t define it, miles more elegantly, though not necessarily more expensively, dressed. And has a much more distinguished look to her face: a long, narrow oval, beautiful bones. Whereas Wanda, with her square chin and wide, rather thick-lipped mouth and long, narrow dark eyes, is more striking, I guess you’d say.

    After that I don’t much care what happens, which is probably just as well, because first we encounter Admiral and Mrs Lyle Hammond. She’s in black again, again long-sleeved but this time low-cut at the front instead of the back, is that what used to be called a sweetheart neckline back in Great-Aunty Lil’s day? Or have I got the terminology wrong? Like, the bit over the boobs is shaped like the top of a heart? Uh, well, if ya geddit ya geddit. A very pretty necklace of small, well, smallish, emeralds and diamonds, and matching earrings. She looks me up and down and doesn’t manage to smile, but she does manage to say: “Well, that’s very suitable, my dear. Well done.” I’m reaching for me twin ray guns, only John gives my elbow a little squeeze, so I don’t actually raze the cow where she stands.

    There’s no relief in sight, because next we encounter Fred and Bonnie Stolz. She’s not in black, it wouldn’t go with the sapphires, which must be her proudest possessions, she’s wearing them again. It’s a deep navy, full length velvet, this must be the Christmas In Thing in Washington, D.C., I gradually begin to realise, but you couldn’t classify it as warm, it’s very low-cut, and strapless. The hair’s different: before it was kind of a deep gold, but now it’s several shades lighter. Very pretty but with that sour, over-dieted face under it, I wouldn’t say it’s having much effect. But then, I’m prejudiced. Ya could say. She tells me I look very sweet tonight but it’s obvious it just about killed her to get it out without an actual snarl, so I don’t mind at all. However, I do mind the determined way she then talks exclusively at John, dragging in five score names that he knows and I don’t. Fred’s taken pity on me, he starts to ask me about England, meanwhile happily looking down my bodice. It isn’t actually as low-cut as his wife’s but as there’s a good deal more in it, not to say bulging gently above it, possibly there’s some excuse for him. Anyway, I don’t mind, ain’t that what it’s there for? I’m under the impression he’s not listening to a word Bonnie’s saying, but he must be, because as she flutes in a meaning voice: “Oh, by the way, John, you do know Wanda Hooten’ll be here tonight, do you?” he grabs her arm and drags her away.

    John takes a very deep breath.

    “That dress of hers is lovely, isn’t it?” I say kindly. But quite truthfully.

    “What?”

    “Bonnie’s dress. It’s lovely.”

    “Uh—I suppose so. It’d look a damn sight better on you, the woman looks anorexic.”

    “Ssh!” I hiss, hugging his arm.

    He stops scowling horribly and smiles at me. Can’t be bad, eh?

    Only as I’m thinking this, there’s a huge wave of Madame Rochas or possibly Arpège, or both, not that I have anything at all against either scent, it’s the women that seem to favour them. And gee, it’s the Baxters and the Hootens, together! (See? You didn’t believe me when I said Mrs Admiral Baxter and Wanda Bloody Hooten must be best friends, didja?) Now, no way could anyone get away with ruby-red velvet against these puce walls, so, gee, Wanda’s in black. I’d call it watered silk if I had to guess. Very heavy material, beautifully cut, narrow over the hips and thighs, then flaring gently to the floor. Strapless, boy, that Look sure must be In, or Back, or something, there’s more shoulder on display tonight than I’ve ever seen barring Bondi in midsummer. A different diamond necklace, smaller, but the stones are bigger and kind of pointed lozenges, not that I’m looking that closely. Matching earrings, natch. Maybe extraordinary and to-die-for evening bags are one of Wanda’s signature tunes: this one’s completely covered in black sequins. If only I could believe that saying: “Hullo, Wanda, you look marvellous,” would take the wind out of her sails! I don’t believe it for a moment, but I say it anyway, well, it’ll please John and possibly propitiate her slightly, and it’ll sure show I’m not one of the puce and magenta sort, and heck, it’s the truth. She thanks me graciously and with absolute loathing, ya knew she would, didn’tcha?

    Strewth, she’s had her hair re-styled and re-tinted, too, what a good thing Rupy made me go to the hairdresser. When last encountered it was solid shiny black, her hairdresser must be the most expensive in D.C.: a black dye that allows the hair to shine? Tonight it’s dark brown with lighter frostings, short around the ears but shelving out to a wavy, longer look on top. Maybe not the In Look but boy, is she right not to go near the après-waif cut! Funnily enough John looks quite pleased to see her. Oh, well. He is a hetero male: I suppose you can’t hope for the moon. Well, hope, yeah. Expect, would be silly.

    Ambassador Hooten seems quite pleased to see me, and my bodice, funny, that. Likewise Admiral Baxter. Hooten asks me if an old man is allowed to tell me I’m the prettiest woman in the room. That’s flattering but possibly not highly desirable, as I can see a little muscle at the corner of John’s mouth do the sort of hardening thing it does when something’s got right up his nose but he isn’t allowing himself to show it. Well, if this means that no more invitations to horse-riding on the Hooten country estate will be accepted— No, it bloody well doesn’t, because Hooten then reminds us that we’re expected for lunch, New Year’s Day! Some of us had planned to see the New Year in and be comatose until at least lunchtime, well, bugger! He’s explaining kindly that it’s only an hour’s run out of Washington but I can’t say I’m listening with absorbed fascination…

    Later. Fred Stolz has gravitated back to our sides without Bonnie and is telling me I’m the prettiest woman in the room. Since it’s just the three of us, John being momentarily free of gushing puce and magenta cows, John repeats his point that I’m off limits to U.S. naval personnel. Fred laughs like anything…

    “Are they always that bad?” I ask John faintly as we settle into our own taxi.

    “Yes, and you were warned!” he says, taking my hand.

    “Not receptions, you clot. Fred and Bonnie Stolz. The amount they both drank, John.”

    “Oh! Well, yes, that was pretty typical. Though in Bonnie’s case the green-eyed monster had something to do with it, tonight. Well, you did outshine every hag there, to a hag, darling,” he says, squeezing the hand. “And in Fred’s case, pardon me for blowing my own trumpet, that was the green-eyed monster, too. He—er—fancies himself as something of a ladies’ man.”

    Goddit. I squeeze his hand hard. “I see. It’s rather sad. Have they got any children?” Yes, three, the boys are at an approved military academy and the girl is at Bryn Mawr. Bonnie Stolz’s people are Old Money, darling. Goddit.

    After a bit he says cautiously that he supposes she is rather typical. “Mm?” I reply, yawning. Of, er, U.S. Navy wives, darling. “Uh-huh,” I say, swallowing another yawn.

    “Yes,” says John on a dubious note. “Though the Washington scene is as bad as it gets.”

    Ya don’t say! Um… is he trying to hint at something, here? If so, what?

    “What?” he says, as I’ve lapsed into Deep Thort.

    “Nothing. What were those utterly gorgeous uniforms, kind of cutaway black jackets but not quite, with big red cummerbunds and lots of gold braid on the collar and stuff?”—I’ve lost him, there, Rosie!—“Oh. Well, they were gorgeous.”

    “Mm. So it wasn’t all bad?”—squeezing my hand again.

    “Not entirely, no!” I admit with a laugh. “And I think the dress was all right.”

    “All right! You glowed in it, you little idiot, didn’t I just say that all the hags were quite eclipsed?”

    “Words to that effect. Well, chalk one up to Rupy,” I say with a sigh. “Can we take him to something really nice tomorrow? Lunch at a nice restaurant? He’d like that, provided I wear something suitable.”

    John laughs and says we’ll do that, then. And Terence would enjoy it.

    “So will Bridget.’

    “Ye-es. Darling, I hadn’t realised how very young she is.”

    “Um, she’s about Matt’s age, I think. Maybe a bit younger: twenty-two? It can’t do any of them any harm to come to a nice restaurant,” I say firmly.

    Oddly enough, John goes into a helpless, wheezing paroxysm as this blameless utterance passes my lips. He has to get out his hanky but even so he can’t control himself and goes into another fit. What did I say? …John, stop it! It wasn’t funny! …Well, what did I?

    Not the Marilyn suit again, Rupy? Yes, the Marilyn suit! And the restaurant will be warm, so I won’t need a sweater with it. Not a tee-shirt: please don’t try to be funny, Rosie—gone all austere. He sorts grimly through every stitch in my wardrobe that could possibly be classed as day-wear. This. Rupy, no! It’s a slip-top thingo, John’d have ten fits if I wore it as a blouse! Rubbish: for the last year, no, two, everyone’s been— No. Honest. He gives in. …This.

    Oh, crikey. Heavy white lace, it’s an evening top of Miss Hammersley’s, meant to go with a bright green cummerbund (her mother must’ve been mad, or possibly merely spiteful), and a long black taffeta skirt. It is a nice little top, sleeveless, totally modest neckline, only somehow when I’m in it, even with a nice plain white nylon bra... I get into it.

    “What is it about you?” he demands crossly.

    “Just naturally tarty? That or this here ‘available’ tattooed on my forehead? Or both.”

    “Shut up!” He plunges into Deep Thort. Eventually he says grimly: “Put the skirt on, and the black courts, please, and we’ll get John’s reaction. Not the jacket!” he screams.

    So we go out into the lounge-room, where John and Matt are playing chess. They both look up. Matt goes bright red and grins desperately. John doesn’t go bright red but he gets that slight but definite flush along those wonderful high cheekbones that always means he’s got an instant hard-on, and his neck’s significantly redder.

    “This was Miss Hammersley’s, and she’s got a pic of her in it at about my age and it looks totally proper,” I offer without hope. Or conviction, much.

    John clears his throat. Matt grins desperately.

    “I’ll get the jacket,” says Rupy grimly.

    I would, yeah. I just wait. He comes back and helps me into it.

    “Totally proper,” says John in a strangled voice,

    Matt collapses in a wheezing fit, he may not be his biological son but it sounds just like John’s fit last night.

    “Yeah, hah, hah. All right, I won’t take the jacket off, on pain of death,” I say grimly.

    “It’s something to do with the quality of the skin. That pearly pink sort of… shimmers,” decides John, “yes, shimmers, through white lace. –Don’t look like that, Rosie, any red-blooded male would have to agree the effect’s stunning. If not totally proper.”

    “Shut up. You’re embarrassing poor Matt,” I growl, I’m as red as he is. Saying all that in front of the poor boy! Added to which any lad of twenty-three’d be embarrassed to death by getting a hard-on at the sight of his father’s girlfriend.

    All John says is, very mildly: “Wear the screw-on Fifties pearl earrings, darling, fake or not.”

    I’m about to go back into the bedroom—Rupy hasn’t done the face, yet. “Eh? I thought they were real,” I say limply.

    “Mm? …No,” he says vaguely, moving a checker. Um, sorry, whatever they are when it’s chess. “Your queen’s in danger, old man, you’re not concentrating.”

    I’m just going into the bedroom when Matt says something in a very low voice and John explodes in laughter. You know what I mean: that male-peer-group laughter that means the other bloke’s said something rude ya wouldn’t want the Womenfolk to hear.

    I shoot back in there. “Look, junior wanker, stop it! No male peer groups need set themselves up in this flat, we got enough of them in every Washington reception room or townhouse we poke our noses into! To think I was feeling sorry for you, because he was embarrassing you, not to mention Rupy’s idea of a fashion parade embarrassing you!”

    “I wasn’t embarrassed, Rosie!” Matt lies, grinning, the wanker.

    “Ya were! –And what did he say?” I demand fiercely of my lover.

    “I wouldn’t dream of repeating it,” he says primly, the Right Royal Naval wanker.

    “I thought you were a nice boy, Matt Haworth!” I stomp out, red-faced and furious, while the pair of macho cretins collapse in howls of laughter again. Wankers. Cretins. Macho tits.

    “What did he say?” asks Rupy.

    “I dunno, I couldn’t hear it, and shut up!”

    After a moment he offers: “They seem to be getting on very well, darling.”

    No, well, of course I’m glad they’re getting on so well, and are happy in each other’s company. But honestly! They’re all the same, doesn’t matter whether they went to a nayce school what taught them to speak nayce or not: once two or more are gathered together… And to think I was trying to be delicate and ladylike and spare John’s feelings!

    Later. The restaurant was ace, actually, we all had a lovely time, and Bridget wore her nice-luncheon suit, too. Dark grey waif-look, yes, only with the deep red American Christmas blouse she bought the other day under it, it made that very white skin of hers come alive. If she’d only realise it and give up the waif thing entirely and put on weight (though she ate a hearty meal, for her), and, since Matt seems to like her but not in any particularly sexual way, go back home and capture ruddy Euan once and for all! And there’s no hope that bloody Wanda Makepeace H. will bother to dredge up a suitable young man for her at the bloody New Year’s Day party. Oh, well.

    John vetoed standing around looking at tourist attractions this afternoon, I’ll be on my feet for hours this evening, so after some argument—Terence wanted bridge with Deb and another other hag from the British Embassy, the man’s mad—we all went to the flicks. John was asleep before it was a third of the way through. Oh, well, he has been getting a lot of what I bloody well hope is unaccustomed exercise, lately. As well as all those late nights at feebleized receptions and crapulous dinners.

    And now I’m all dressed and ready and both Rupy and Bridget are fussing round me, and Bridget wishes, wistfully, that she could go.

    “Ya could, for mine. And if ya think we’re gonna see anything of the actual White House, you got another think coming. It’ll be entrance lobby, one reception room, one dining-room and one ladies’ lav.”

    “Oh. That tour me and the others went on wasn’t… Well, it was nice, of course,” she says gallantly: dear Bridget, I’ve never heard her say anything nasty about anyone or anything, not even about Gaynor Grahame’s acting, “but they went through all the rooms so fast, we didn’t get time to really look at anything.”

    “Not even the plates in the plate room?” –I think I’ve seen every movie there ever was about the White House. So much so that they’ve become horribly mixed in the memory. Think that was one of the ones where the President’s gaga or kidnapped and they bring in a ringer— No, hang on, it was the Michael Douglas one. A dishy, widowered President with one cute little teenage daughter that’s prepared to like his girlfriend? Get real!

    “No, we didn’t see that at all,” she’s saying sadly.

    John’s just come in, in his dress uniform, Rupy having finally consented to let him use his own bathroom and get dressed in his own bedroom. “What? The tour of the White House was disappointing?”

    She’s gone very pink, though the uniform alone tends to do that, true. “No, um, not really, John! It was lovely, of course! But they wouldn’t let us, um, linger, at all.”

    John’s long since sized dear little Bridget up. “Rosie and I were hoping to fit in a tour tomorrow, but if they’re like that, I think we might do rather better. I’ll speak to Howie Winterbottom tonight. I’m sure we can manage something—well, possibly not before Christmas, but before we have to leave for California.”

    “With a proper look at the plates in the plate room?” I demand suspiciously.

    “The china room, I think it is,” he says mildly. “Certainly, if that’s what you’d both like?”—We nod hard.—“I’ll mention that to Howie.” And it’s apparently all settled.

    Bridget and me are now both rather pink, we look at each other with shining eyes. –Yes, she saw that movie, too! And the point isn’t that it’s the White House per se, but that it’s a beautifully preserved example of Georgian architecture, well, would be if they hadn’t kicked the Georges out. With some glorious artefacts, better than any museum. Geddit?

    I’ve been secretly afraid that for a Presidential reception John might beg me to wear the real diamond earrings, but he doesn’t, thank Christ, so I just wear the Fifties recently-revealed-as-fake, pearl screw-on bobble ones with Miss Hammersley’s lovely pale pink strapless Fifties dress, and Miss Hammersley’s mink coat over it, and we go. Bridget tells us to have a lovely time and Rupy tells me to watch my hem if there are any steps or stairs.

    Later. If you’re hoping for a glowing report of a White House reception, stop now. Entrance lobby, one reception room, and one ladies’ lav. Added to which, my feet are killing me. We had to stand round for hours making strained conversation to a load of gents in dress uniform or dinner suits and ladies in long dresses which were either black with their best jewellery, the majority, or heavily embroidered pastel satin with their best ditto. Finally they played that bloody tune, “Dah dit da-da, dit da-da, da-da, da dah da” and in he came, big deal. We weren’t there to be Received as such, only a few people were presented. It looked very casual but of course it wasn’t, they’d all been carefully positioned by a pack of slaves in tuxes. Then we all hadda stand round for hours making more strained conversation while the President spoke to another selection of the favoured few. It appeared to get more and more affable and relaxed as it went along, so it was clearly all carefully orchestrated, too.

    Since Rupy and Bridget have stayed on, playing cards and watching John’s TV, in order to hear all about it the minute we get back, we considerately admit that we could see the President from where we were standing, yes. Just like he looks on the TV. But what was the room like? asks Bridget eagerly. Uh—neutral. Quite nice, I suppose. I could hardly see it for the press of bodies. That isn’t funny! Um, but it’s true, Rupy! John agrees it’s true. Oh. Well, who did I speak to, and did I meet anyone nice? asks the kind-hearted but misguided Bridget.

    I goggle at her. “Puce and magenta cows and dress uniforms that looked down my bodice, whaddareya?”

    John gets up. “I think that’s enough, darling. –She’s very tired,” he apologises to my friends.

    I sure am, and my feet have swollen to ten times their normal size. Rupy and Bridget retreat, and John runs a nice warm footbath for me. Can I walk that far? I can hobble, yeah. I hobble…

    Funnily enough we don’t then hop energetically into bed and fuck like a pair of eager rabbits, no. He wants to, poor guy, but honestly, with the feet, not to mention the ankles throbbing, and the headache— Why didn’t I tell him I had a headache? Um, thought it would be the last straw? Don’t be silly, darling. He gets me some Panadol and a nice drink of ice-water with the chill taken off it, oh dear, he’s so lovely. “You could do it,” I offer limply, having swallowed.

    “No, no. Go to sleep,” he says, cuddling up.

    … I musta gone to sleep, because it’s morning. So much for bloody almost ex-Presidential receptions.