The Ambassador Read Online Free Page B

the maid who had served coffee no servants were in sight. Evidence abounded that cleaning staff were also in short supply: a large cobweb hung from a chandelier in the State Dining Room and gobbets of dust disturbed by their passage skittered away into corners. While the opulence was overwhelming, Strether wondered whether the King and his wife didn’t live quietly upstairs in a modest apartment.
    As if reading his mind, Marius remarked, ‘Not the most practical house these days, I’m afraid. His Majesty is determined to keep it up, though. His grandmother, the former Queen, held court in a detached property near Hampstead, but it wasn’t the same.’
    Strether remembered the open space of his own ranch-house, its extended glass wall giving breathtaking views over a lake, the brown hills hazy in the distance. That was far more to his taste than this endless red plush, the tatty edges, the faint mustiness in every corner.
    ‘We get an annual grant from the European Union,’ Marius was continuing. ‘Then the President, Herr Lammas, can make use of the state apartments when he’s in London. He brings his entire household and the palace gets a thorough spring-clean! But he prefers to stay at the Dorchester. Here we are.’
    They had entered a sumptuous blue room with marble pillars, its ceiling the most flamboyantly decorated yet. Exquisite pieces of blue and gold china – Meissen? Sèvres? Strether didn’t know – adorned every flat surface, most of which were also marble, but aquamarine in colour. Instinctively he held his hands at his sides to avoid knocking anything priceless to perdition. He did recognise Shakespeare in bas relief at one end, and paused in awe before double-life size portraits of the King’s ancestors.
    ‘The Georges were hideous,’ the King commented, ‘and several of my ancestors carried the haemophilia gene. And porphyria. So much misery – changed the course of history, too. Poor Tsar Nicholas! I’d far rather live now, when we can eliminate defects. Wouldn’t you?’ There must be an etiquette, Strether brooded. At home the subject was taboo; whenever it was raised, it provoked fierce controversy. The careers of prominent politicians who had dared to suggest genetic therapy might have its virtues had been destroyed overnight. Instead, dwarfs could still be seen on the streets of Denver, or children with ill-repaired hare lips or those bulbous foreheads that had appeared during the 2020s. Playing around with genes was anathema, even where the benefits were obvious and easily obtainable. Not that the corrective surgery wasn’t on tap, but without publicly-funded medicine it wasn’t much use, not for the poor.
    Marius had gone ahead and flung open a door into a room with a floor-to-ceiling bow window: the Music Room where, legend had it, Princess Diana had learned to tap-dance. The view out of the window was of the tranquil Thames, which was close to its widest at this point. The floor was a delicate circular marquetry of black, browns and tans; the massive columns supporting the cupola were of black marble, which shimmered in the light reflected from the water. The effect was to enhance the isolation of the palace from the bustlingmetropolis a few kilometres to the north. A table had been set for lunch; a single footman in a white jacket held a tray of drinks.
    Four men, the Lord Chamberlain and three others, glasses in hand and smartly attired in well-cut tunics, some with ribbons of office at their throats, acknowledged their entrance. Another man in army khaki stood slightly to one side. The King leapt forward eagerly to make introductions.
    ‘Do you know Sir Lyndon Everidge, our Prime Minister? And this is Maxwell Packer, one of our media tycoons and a great supporter of the monarchy. Our friend from the military is Mike Thompson, my attaché.
    ‘And lastly, this splendid chap is Sir Robin Butler-Armstrong, the Perm Sec. That stands for Permanent Secretary – he’ll be around