The Last Houseparty Read Online Free PDF Page A

every Arab friend we’ve got between Persia and Gib. Lose them, lose our oil supplies, lose the supply line to India—how do you think we’re going to fight a war with Germany on that basis? I’ll lay you five to one in fivers that we let the Grand Mufti back into Jerusalem by this time next year. Now, a young officer who showed himself, however unwillingly, aware that this is the true situation might do himself a power of good in certain quarters.”
    â€œAnd a power of harm in others.”
    â€œA young officer who already has an entry into the councils of the ruling family of Sorah. The Emir …”
    â€œLook, I hardly know the blighter. I hardly even played cricket with him because he wasn’t at the wicket for more than five minutes. I got him l.b.w. almost at once in both innings.”
    â€œAll the better. He’ll be eager …”
    â€œLay off, Hal. I don’t want to get involved in the politics of it. I’m a soldier, pure and simple. My job is to do what I’m told by the politicians. Matter of fact, our second battalion was in Palestine till ’thirty-five, so I could keep my end up if I had to, but this week-end I don’t propose to make any noises, right or wrong, while the statesmen are holding forth.”
    â€œOkey-doke. I’ll tell you my own views some time. I’m really looking forward to meeting Blech. We might get a book out of him—provided, that is, I can persuade bloody old Throck it’s his own idea and not mine. I wonder who else she’s roped in.”
    â€œPush off and look at Mrs Dubigny’s list. I’m going to hang around here, I think. I don’t feel like facing Zena till I’ve cooled off.”
    â€œSee you at tea, then. Don’t let her get your goat, Vince—she’s sure to give it a go.”
    â€œI can cope.”
    â€œGood man.”
    When Harry had left Vincent finished putting his clothes away, re-folding every article, even those which would not spoil by creasing, and then placing it with great exactitude in the drawer. When he had finished he slid his case under his bed and did the sane for the one Harry had left lying open on the floor. He went to the window and glanced out as if to check that the garden was also in its proper location, the series of long narrow terraces descending in steps westward along the slant of the hill, all planted out with hybrid tea roses in geometric beds, making a strong but at the same time strangely dead effect with their rather meaty shades—meaty at least when seen from above, en masse, however individually perfect and subtle each single bloom might have proved on closer inspection. Lord Snailwood was visible on the second terrace, personally selecting and cutting the flowers that would greet his week-end visitors in stunning masses all around the house. Thring, the rose gardener, was with him, but only to pull the peculiar trolley built by McGrigor for the special purpose of cradling the cut flowers unblemished. Vincent watched for a couple of minutes, seeming to relax slightly from the stance of soldier pure and simple, as though the sight of his uncle engaged in this familiar ritual allowed him to make contact with the period of his life before his military training had begun. Then he turned, looked round the room, grunted approvingly and went out.
    The upper floors of Snailwood—that is those above the levels complicated by the need to accommodate the Great Hall and other high, romantic vaults—were very simple in lay-out. A corridor ran the whole way round, its windows looking out over the cloister roof and the courtyard. Doors in the opposite wall led into the various bedrooms. At each corner where the east and west wings met the south front another passage, dark and windowless, slanted off to serve the room that filled that level of one of the two massive corner towers. What had been known for the last twenty years as “The