Carnage on the Committee by Ruth Dudley Edwards Read Free Book Online Page B

Correction. English. You remember all that Bloomsbury wankery about betraying my country rather than my friend? This crowd of neo-Bloomsberries just take it further and see betraying their country and its allies as an end in itself. They wrap up their treachery in highbrow piffle and egalitarian rhetoric.'
    'Are they as bad as she says, Robert?'
    'Well, I don't know if I'd label it "treachery" . . .'
    'What would you call it then?' demanded the baroness.
    'Virtual treachery. In practice, I doubt if they'd actually sell the country out to al-Qaida.'
    'Only because neo-Bloomsbury women don't want to be stuffed into burkas,' snarled the baroness. 'They'd sell us out to Brussels soon enough.'
    'Can't argue with that. I've been at a couple of dinners where Den raved away drunkenly over the petit fours about the awfulness of England, its blood-sucking monarchy, its corrupt and effete establishment, its ignorant plebs and its bloodstained history, and Hermione, Rosa and Wysteria and a couple of the others squealed about the only hope being to subsume ourselves in the European ideal.'
    The baroness snorted venomously. 'Of course the likes of Hermione Babcock are never happier than when engaging in a spot of intellectual S & M with rough trade like Den. With the added frisson, no doubt, in the case of those three harridans, that Den would flail them for having titles and living high on the hog.'
    'I grasp it in theory,' said Mary Lou. 'I'm just always staggered in practice. I read an issue of Rage last week and it was unbelievable. Feeble poems and a couple of angry short stories along with some third-rate polemic about the evils of everything British from the Empire to Oxbridge elitism. Hermione Babcock had a piece explaining why she refused to call herselff either English or British and demanding the government instruct everyone to call themselves European.'
    Amiss sighed. 'Ladies, we need to get a move on. It's after nine and I have to tell Jack what she needs to know about the other judges. Jack, will you please sit down, shut up and listen?'
    'Iff I must,' she said, plonking herselff down in her favourite armchair.
    'First, Professor Felix Ferriter. He's a ghastly little literary critic.'
    'Bit off a tautology, that, isn't it?'
    'I'm a literary critic. Jack,' said Mary Lou mildly.
    'Nonsense. You're a person who appreciates and writes intelligently about literature. That's different.'
    'He's obsessed with Queer Studies, of which he is a visiting professor at Yale.'
    Amiss suddenly had the baroness's full attention. 'You're pulling my leg.'
    'I wish I were, but the truth is that Queer Studies is all the rage in fashionable Eng. Lit. circles.' He raised his hand as she began to expostulate. 'Not now. Jack. There isn't time. Mary Lou will explain it to you later, no doubt. Just for now, take my word for it that Ferriter is a luminary in the world of Queer Studies and that this colours his attitude to the Warburton.'
    The baroness opened her mouth and then shut it again.
    'And he's such a little shit that Georgie, who goes in for nicknames, calls him Ferriquat.'
    'After the weedkiller?'
    'Exactly.'
    'Who's Georgie?' asked Mary Lou.
    'Georgie Perkins,' said the baroness.
    'Jack, for God's sake, it's Georgie Prothero, who, Mary Lou, looks after the Warburton. Jack, will you stop messing about. And at this rate we'll be at this all day.'
    'Why not?' said the baroness. 'I'm enjoying myself.'
    'You haven't got time to enjoy yourself. Might I remind you that today is Friday and your long-list is due in on Tuesday.'
    'And that you still have some duties as Mistress,' added Mary Lou. 'I can't stand in for you on everything.'
    'Right,' said Amiss sternly. 'Now next there's Rosa Karp, whom, I regret to say, Georgie Prothero, Prothero, Prothero refers to as Rosa Krap.'
    'Well, he's got that right anyway,' observed the baroness.
    'What do you know of Rosa?'
    'Patron saint of equality gibberish. Turns up all over the place mouthing platitudes