Death of a Unicorn

‘Of course. If he’ll have me, I suppose. I absolutely adore being here.’

‘It may not be the same.’

‘Please stay, Tom. It certainly won’t if you go.’

He laughed, but then his eyes left me. Some of the guests had started to go but others were still arriving, so the terrible old lift was groaning up and down almost continuously. I’d been standing with my back towards it but turned to see what Tom was looking at. B was coming out of the lift, talking to a youngish man whom I recognised but couldn’t put a name to for an instant. Then it came to me. On the stage, about a fortnight before, acting in a revue called Backbites, which I hadn’t thought specially funny but was being talked about because it was different—not just gently bitchy in a revueish way, but rude about real people as though it meant it. The Lord Chamberlain had refused to pass some of the sketches. This man, Brian something, was supposed to have written the unkindest bits as well as being one of the principal actors. B brought him towards us.

‘Brian Naylor, Tom Duggan, Margaret Millett,’ he said. ‘They’re on the literary side.’

Mr Naylor was a round-faced, stupid-looking man with short gingery hair and small gold-rimmed spectacles. On stage he used a monotonous flat voice with drawling vowels—Midland, somebody had told me. His main joke was to apply this oafish-seeming approach to touchy subjects. For instance he’d done a monologue about how he didn’t mind his Jewish dentist poking around among his molars but he was disgusted by the idea of letting him hack divots out of his favourite golf-course. Part of his technique was not to smile at all. It all seemed such an act that I was surprised to hear him speak now in exactly the same voice.

‘This is a typical press day, I suppose,’ he said.

Tom was looking greyish but answered in a normal voice.

‘It’s a party to celebrate the publication of Mabs’s book.’

‘So you’ve written a book, Margaret?’

‘Only a little one,’ I said. Wrong answer. Wrong tone. I felt totally bewildered.

‘A vade-mecum to the upper reaches of the class system,’ said Tom. ‘No social climber should be without it.’

‘Is there anything to drink?’ said Mr Naylor. ‘Scotch, for preference.’

‘Find Mr Naylor some scotch, Duggan, and introduce him to the rest of the staff,’ said B.

He turned to me.

‘Congratulations,’ he said.

‘Thank you. It’s going very well.’

He was actually about to move off when I stopped him. He was furious. Nobody else would have known, but I did. He thought I was going to say something about Brian Naylor.

‘Mummy’s here,’ I muttered. ‘She wants to meet you.’ His eyes opened very slightly.

‘I don’t know how,’ I said. ‘Something to do with my account at Harrods.’

He nodded. He still wasn’t pleased, but it was better than if I’d tried to use our affair to interfere with office matters.

‘Look after me,’ I whispered. ‘Please.’

‘Out here, then.’

She was near the door in Mrs Clarke’s room and had obviously been watching for me. As soon as I appeared she came forward. She had a horrid look of triumph.

‘Some woman has just asked me to sign a photograph, darling,’ she said.

‘Oh dear. I hope you were nice to her.’

‘I made it clear that I would do no such thing.’

‘A lot of your friends have. She’s got a whole collection.’

‘I am not a stamp. Are there any more of your interesting friends you’d like me to meet, darling?’

‘One more,’ I said.

I led her back between the swing doors.

‘Is that him?’ she whispered. ‘Oh, darling, how could you?’

‘Very easily, if you want to know.’

I introduced them formally and let them get on with it.

[1] About three years later, when that U and Non-U business got going in Encounter, people remembered my book and asked me where the word ‘ponsy’ came from. I used to tell them that it was really ‘poncy’ but Petronella had spelt it wrong, and if they then said it didn’t mean that I explained that my great-great-uncle applied the word to anything he disapproved of, being a man of limited vocabulary, and that we’d picked it up and used it without knowing what a ponce was. The bit about my great-great-uncle was true, but in fact we’d adapted the word to fit poor Miss Pons, who had come to us as a governess and fully lived up to her superb references, except for insisting that we used a vocabulary my mother had absolutely forbidden. Many people assume that ‘real’ aristocrats are not snobs. This is rubbish in my experience. The truth is that they guard their exclusiveness ruthlessly, but in obscure ways. Though Miss Pons was much the nicest governess we were ever likely to get, all four of us agreed that my mother had done right to dismiss her. I couldn’t explain about Miss Pons in 1956 (was it?) because she was probably still alive.