The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
see, he is to be honoured for more reasons than that he is my guest. There is no soldier in Germany with a higher reputation as a Christian champion.”
I had sense enough to look quizzical and indulgent at this, for I knew that the most popular heroes are those who take themselves lightly. I had heard this kind of rot time without count in the past few years, and knew how to receive it, but it amused me to see that the audience, as usual, took it perfectly seriously, the men looking noble and the women frankly admiring.
Having delivered her little lecture, Lola took me on a tour of introduction, presenting Baron this and Countess that, and everyone was all smirks and bows and polite as pie. I could sense that they were all scared stiff of her, for although she was her old gay self, laughing and chattering as she took me from group to group, she was still the grande dame under the happy surface, with a damned imperious eye. Oh, she had them disciplined all right.
Only when she had taken me apart, to a couch where a flunkey served us Tokay while the others stood at a respectful distance, did she let the mask drop a little, and the Irish began to creep back into her voice.
“Let me look at you comfortably now,” says she, leaning back and surveying me over her glass. “I like the moustaches, Harry, they become you splendidly. And the careless curl; oh, it’s the bonny boy still.”
“And you are still the most beautiful girl in the world,” says I, not to be outdone.
“So they say,” says she, “but I like to hear it from you. After all, when you hear it from Germans it’s no compliment—not when you consider the dumpy cows they’re comparing you with.”
“Some of ’em ain’t too bad,” says I carelessly.
“Ain’t they, though? I can see I shall have to keep an eye on you, my lad. I saw Baroness Pechman wolfing you up a moment ago when she was presented.”
“Which one was she?”
“Come, that’s better. The last one you met—over there, with the yellow hair.”
“She’s fat. Overblown.”
“Ye-es, poor soul, but some men like it, I’m told.”
“Not I, Rosanna.”
“Rosanna,” she repeated, smiling. “I like that. You know that no one ever calls me by that name now. It reminds me of England—you’ve no notion how famous it is to hear English again. In conversation, I mean, like this.”
“Was that why you sent for me—for my conversation?”
“That—and other things.”
“What other things?” says I, seeing 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