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people! So original! Makes us all look like snobs!’ She half turned, towards a man at her side; then, as if the words made up for all the patent shortcomings of her surroundings, she intoned: ‘Darling, I’ve brought Lord Muddley!’
    Lord Muddley looked like an exceptionally stupid farmer; large, blond, ruddy, wearing a hound’s-tooth suit that gave me a jumping abscess just to glance at. He stared down at me with pale glazed eyes, as if I were a marginal pig at some unfashionable show; and on being introduced he said, ‘Delighted,’ on a note of such absolute indifference that for one wild moment I thought he might be a tremendously bad actor impersonating an English peer. (We do occasionally entertain false baronets, princes of less than noble blood, Hungarian counts whom the police later establish as absconding valets and chauffeurs; it lends to social life in South Africa a certain frontier hazard.) But after a few moments it became apparent that Lord Muddley, alas, was true.
    ‘I’m very glad you could come along,’ I said.
    ‘I knew you wouldn’t mind, darling,’ said Mrs Arkell.
    Naturally I did mind, since we had had to limit the invitations very severely indeed, and no one save Mrs Arkell would have dreamed of bringing an extra guest without at least ringing up beforehand. But there seemed no polite method of showing this.
    ‘Of course not,’ I answered insincerely. ‘Never let it be said that I invited so many people that there wasn’t room for one or two uninvited ones.’
    If Lord Muddley had been an actor or any other kind of impersonator, he would at that point have made some remark, however brief or offhand, excusing his presence. But his lordship continued to gaze at me, wordless, invincible, doing us all a favour by standing there in an agricultural trance, and I knew he must be genuine.
    I asked: ‘Are you staying in South Africa long?’
    He considered this for some time, and then, as though negotiating a very special brand of patrician, high-pitched hot potato, answered: ‘Just looking round.’
    ‘Brilliant financial brain!’ said Mrs Arkell, sotto voce . ‘Absolutely uncanny!’
    ‘Just looking round,’ said Lord Muddley again. ‘I may even – ah – settle here.’
    He was now staring at me as if I might faint or break down for very joy.
    ‘Doing what!’ I asked.
    ‘Doing?’ he repeated, as if this were a particularly foreign word.
    ‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ said Mrs Arkell. ‘Finance, of course! I told you!’
    ‘I am meeting Sir Albert Ireton in the morning,’ said Lord Muddley. Once more I had the feeling that I ought to go to pieces completely, burst into tears, kiss his ring. ‘Ireton is connected with the Anglo-African Corporation, a mining company,’ he went on, after a suitable pause. ‘Gold mines and – ah – things like that … You know Sir Albert?’
    I decided that I had had enough of this. ‘He’s on one or two of my father’s boards,’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘Actually you’ve missed him by about ten minutes. He doesn’t really like parties.’
    The predatory gleam in Lord Muddley’s eye was slow in appearing, but eventually it was there, shining like an old fashioned stable-lamp.
    ‘I would like to meet your father,’ he said.
    ‘He’s a poppet!’ said Mrs Arkell, who was my father’s least favourite woman in the whole of the English-speaking world.
    ‘He’s never here at this time of the year,’ I said, delighted to be speaking the truth. ‘He’s down at the Cape. Fishing.’
    ‘I fish,’ said Lord Muddley.
    As a loving and loyal daughter, I knew I had to close this one off.
    ‘Then he’s going on to Durban, and then to Lourenço Marques,’ I improvised swiftly. ‘He’ll be so sorry to have missed you … Well, do enjoy yourselves. I must shake a few more hands.’
    It was rude, but necessary, I assured my dear mother as I moved away.
    My wanderings had now brought me up to the buffet tables, presided over by