got to expect us to be jumpy about Romanovs. Even leaving Granny out theyâre an odd lot. Thereâve been some terrific scandals.â
âWould you say that an excessive sense of personal honour was an hereditary characteristic in them?â
(Piers, as usual when bed-talk turned to the Family, was trying to distance himself by adopting the tone and phraseology of the sort of don who must have been pretty well extinct even in his student days.)
âI donât know. Granny was the only one I knew well. When it suited her, I suppose ⦠Why?â
âOne could conceive of Alex deciding that since your grandmother entrusted him with her letters partly in the hope that he would use them to continue her various feuds after her death, he might regard it as his duty to do so.â
âAnd thereâd be quite a bit of money in it, too. Anyway, could he? How much is a literary executor allowed to do? If the family donât want it, I mean?â
âIt would depend on the wording of the will, I imagine. In any case Sir Savileâs office will presumably exhume some pre-Reformation statute in Norman French which empowers your father to have any subjects disembowelled who attempt to publish his motherâs correspondence against his will.â
âI can just see the headlines. Thatâs the whole point, darling. Thereâll be almost more fuss if it gets out weâre trying to put the lid on things than if we let it all come out. And it doesnât make any difference that Granny will have got it all wrong. Look at the poor old Dingwalls.â
(When, on the announcement of Louiseâs engagement to Piers, the hacks had discovered that on the groomâs side no family at all existed to be harried for childhood memories, incredible efforts had been made to excavate a hidden past. The search itself had become its own news. One line had been to hunt up doubles of the new celebrity, especially in the neighbourhood of Coventry. A foreman of an abattoir had been found living at Leamington Spa who had a definite resemblance, so his parentsâthe father had also been in the meat tradeâhad had to put up not only with several weeksâ ferocious scrutiny but with a series of ârevelationsâ, all foundationless, about one or other of them having a secret in their past, once shameful but now in the eyes of the hacks glorious beyond belief.)
âYou realise that if Alex is motivated as Sir Savile seems to fear, inviting him to supper may be interpreted by him as meaning that he has hooked his fish?â
âHe has, hasnât he? If heâs fishing. But if he is then someoneâs going to have to talk to him somehow, and if he isnât weâll just have had a nice supper-party.â
âSir Savile could send some pin-striped emissary.â
âFatherâs always dead against that, if he can help it. Next thing you know is Security have got in on the act and his phoneâs being tapped and someoneâs faked a burglary and gone through his papers, and then youâve got questions in the House and thereâs hell to pay. Perhaps I oughtnât to have told Sir Sam in the first place.â
âIâd have imagined Security had enough on their plates preventing us from living our own lives the way we want to.â
âIt wonât last much longer, darling. Itâs just another scare. Theyâll find Gormanâs brother living it up under an assumed name in New Orleans, or something. Itâll blow over. They always do.â
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1987
1
âT hat you?â
ââ¦â
âNow listen carefully. Iâve got something, might do. Got a pencil and paper?â
ââ¦â
âThereâs someone called Alex Romanovâdonât know how you spell it but itâs the same as the Russian royal family used to be. Donât know his address. The point is, heâs got hold of a lot of