The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ a chance to get down to business. “What’s this very delicate matter that your chamberlain talked about?”

      “Oh, that.” She put on a coy look. “That can wait a little. You must know I have a new motto since I came to Bavaria: ‘pleasure before business’.” She gave me a sleepy look from beneath those glorious black lashes that made my heart skip a little. “You wouldn’t be so ungallant as to hurry me, would you, Harry?”

      “Not where business is concerned,” says I, leering again. “Pleasure’s another matter.”

      “Wicked,” she says, smiling lazily, like a sleek black cat. “Wicked, wicked, wicked.”

      It is remarkable what fatuities you can exchange with a beautiful woman. I can think shame when I consider the way I sat babbling with Lola on that couch; I would ask you only to remember that she was as practised a seductress as ever wore out bed linen, and just to be beside her, even in a room full of people, was in itself intoxicating. She was overpowering, like some rich tropical flower, and she could draw a man like a magnet. The same Dr Windischmann, Vicar-General, whose name she had been taking in vain so recently, once said that there was not even a priest in his charge who could have been trusted with her. Liszt put it more bluntly and accurately when he observed to me: “As soon as you meet Lola, your mind leaps into bed.”

      Anyway, I mention this to explain how it was that after a few moments with her I had forgotten entirely my earlier misgivings about her possible recollection of our parting in London, and my fears that she might harbour a grudge against me for the Ranelagh affair. She had charmed me, and I use the word exactly. Laughing and talking with her over the Tokay, only one thought was in my mind: to get her bedded as swiftly as might be, and the devil with anything else.

      While we were chatting so amiably and I, poor ass, was succumbing to her spell, more people were arriving in the ante-room, and presently she had them called up, with Lauengram playing the major-domo, and talked to them in turn. These levées of hers were quite famous in Munich, apparently, and it was her habit to hold court to all sorts of folk: not just distinguished visitors and such odds and ends as artists and poets, but even statesmen and ambassadors. I don’t recall who was there that morning, for between Lola and the Tokay I was not paying much heed, but I know they scraped and fawned to her no end.

      Presently she announced that we would all go to see her cuirassiers at exercise, and there was a delay while she went off to change; when she returned it was in full Hussar rig, which showed off her curves admirably and would have caused the police to be called in London. The sycophants “Ooh-ed” and “Aah-ed” and cried “Wunderschön!”, and we all trooped after her to the stables and rode out to a nearby park where a couple of squadrons of cavalry were going through their paces.

      Lola, who was riding a little white mare, took great pleasure in the spectacle, pointing with her whip and exclaiming authoritatively on the manoeuvres. Her courtiers echoed her applause faithfully, all except Rudi Starnberg, who I noticed was watching with a critical eye, like myself. I ought to know something about cavalry, and certainly Lola’s cuirassiers were a smart lot on parade, and looked very well as they thundered past at the charge. Starnberg asked me what I thought of them; very fine, I said.

      “Better than the British?” says he, with his cocky grin.

      “I’ll tell you that when I’ve seen ’em fight,” says I, bluntly.

      “You won’t deny they’re disciplined to perfection,” cries he.

      “On parade,” says I. “No doubt they’d charge well in a body, too. But let’s see ’em in a mêlée, every man for himself; that’s where good cavalry prove themselves.”

      This is true; of course, no one would run faster from a mêlée than I, but Starnberg wasn’t to know that. For the first time he looked at me almost with respect, nodding thoughtfully, and admitted I was probably right.

Lola got bored after half an hour or so, and we returned to her palace, but then we had to turn out again because she wanted to exercise her dogs in the garden. It seemed that whatever she did, everyone else was expected to tag after her, and by God, her amusements were trivial. After the dogs, there was music indoors, with a fat bastard of a tenor sobbing his soul out, and then Lola sang herself—she had a fine contralto, as it happens—and the mob raised the roof. Then there was a reading of poetry, which was damnable, but would probably have been even more painful if I had been able to understand it fully, and then more conversation in the ante-room. The centre of it was a long-jawed, tough-looking fellow whose name meant nothing to me at the time; he talked interminably, about music and liberal politics, and everyone lionised him sickeningly, even Lola. When we went into an adjoining room for a buffet—“erfrischung” as the Germans call it—she introduced him to me as Herr Wagner, but the only conversation we had was when I passed him the ginger and he said “danke”. (I’ve dined out on that incident since, by the way, which shows how ridiculous people can be where celebrities are concerned. Of course, I usually expand the story, and let on that I told him that “Drink, puppy, drink” and “The British Grenadiers” were better music than any damned opera, but only because that is the sort of exaggeration that goes well at dinner parties, and suits my popular character.)²²

But my memories of that afternoon are necessarily vague, in view of what the night was to bring forth. Briefly, I stayed at the palace all day, being unconscionably bored, and impatient to get Lola by herself, which looked like being damned difficult, there was such a crowd always in attendance on her. From time to time we had a word or two, but always with others present, and when we dined I was halfway down the table, with the fat Baroness Pechman on one side of me, and an American whose name I’ve forgotten on the other.²³ I was pretty piqued with Lola for this; quite apart from the fact that I thought I deserved a place near her at the table top, the Yankee was the damnedest bore you ever met, and the giggling blonde butterball on my other side was infuriating in her shrieks of amusement at my halting German. She also had a tendency to let her hand stray on to my thigh beneath the table—not that I minded the compliment, and she would have been pretty enough in a baby-faced way if she had weighed about six stones less, but my mind was on the lovely Lola, and she was a long way off.

      Being bored, I was careless, and didn’t keep too close an eye on my glass. It was a magnificent dinner, and the wines followed each other in brilliant succession. Everyone else punished them tremendously, as the Germans always do, and I simply followed suit. It was understandable, but foolish; I learned in later years that the only safe place to get drunk is among friends in your own home, but that evening I made a thorough pig of myself, and the long and short of it was that “Flashy got beastly drunk”, to quote my old friend Tom Hughes.

      Not that I was alone; the talk got steadily louder, faces got redder, jokes got coarser—the fact that half those present were women made no difference—and eventually they were roaring and singing around the table, or staggering out to be sick, no doubt, and what conversation there was consisted of shouting at full pitch. I remember there was an orchestra playing incessantly at one end of the hall, and at one point my American companion got up unsteadily on to his chair, amid the cheers of the multitude, and conducted them with a knife and fork. Presently he tumbled down, and rolled under the table. This is an orgy, thinks I, but not a proper orgy. I got it into my head—quite understandably—that such a bacchanalia should be concluded in bed, and naturally looked round for Lola. She had left the table, and was standing off in an alcove at one side, talking to some people; I got up and weaved my way through such of the guests as were standing about—those who were fit to stand, that is—until I fetched up in front of her.

      I must have been heroically drunk, for I can remember her face swimming in and out of focus; she had a diamond circlet in her dark hair, and the lights from the chandelier made it glitter dazzlingly. She said something, I don’t recall what, and I mumbled:

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