splendid in black satin and appliqu jet, with one of Mrs. Portways lilac chiffons scarves to cover her
dcolletage, proposed herself a retiring role in seeing that none of the food was eaten by the servants,
Yves, superb in midnight-blue smoking, a legacy of his Italian widow, saw every opportunity to shine.
He addressed himself aggressively to Robin as they awaited the arrival of the first guests. He
was one business tycoon to another. It was not at all what Robin cared for. []
Whats your wastage, Middleton? Yves asked, and before Robin could inquire the meaning
of this somewhat cryptic question, he followed it up with a machine-gun fire of searching business
questions intended to flatten Robin out, lay him stone dead with their ruthless drive, their dead-hit
punch, their incredible grasp of detail. What do your absentee figures show? he asked. Whats your
pension load? Have you got a record of your pay-out in widows benefits? Wheres your loss in toilet
time? These and many other questions which had once so depressed him from an American colleague
in the air force he now worked off on Robin and, without waiting for a reply, he cried. Good God!
Man, a guys got to ask himself these questions. You need an efficient expert to give your place the
works. And when Robin looked dejected, he patted him on the elbow. Thats all right, he said;
your worries are over. From today youre going to be lucky. Im going to save Middletons
thousands.
Marie Hlne, tightly swathed in crimson velvet, her bosom deadly yellow as a Japanese
corpses beneath the fires of her opal necklace, held up her hand in horror. No businesstalk, Yves,
please, she cried. You will ruin my soire. And in hard, flat tones, she said: Do you think that
Anouilh is pass? I find a terrible lack of esprit in his last play. Im afraid he has quite lost his
elegance. She gave it to him as a copybook model for the evening.
Yves looked her over. Mais tu est ravissante, ma chre cousine, he said, absolument
ravissante. He took her hand, and, raising her arm, he planted small kisses all the way up its scrawny,
yellow inner side. Marie Hlne had only just time to snatch her arm away before the first guests were
announced.
Thick and vast they came, filling the Hampstead double drawing-room, covering the gold-and-
white couches, sitting bolt upright on the little Empire chairs, staring over each others shoulders into
the gilt mirrors, leaning on the two unused harpsichords and the hardly ever used grand piano,
threatening the bad Svres with their elbows, swallowing quantities of champagne, gobbling up lobster
patties and vol-au-vents from Fortnums, debouching in elegant pairs into the little garden with its
walnut tree and its iris pool. The more cultured of Robins business friends were impressed by the
representatives of British Council and Arts Council and Institut Franais and a hundred other councils
and institutes; all these bureaucrats of modern culture were equally impressed by the odd French or
English poet or sculptor or violonist. Dotted among them here and there were B.B.C. officials
programme-planners, features-producers, poetry readers and an odd publisher or two; these had a
professional appearance of not being very impressed.
(adapted from Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, 1976: 213)