I might have believed that also: certainly I was incredulous, as though I were observing astonishing reactions in some Amazonian Indian when I found how equable I was. True, I had my jags of resentment. As I opened the paper one morning and saw the job had been filled – it had gone to Lord Luke of Salcombe, which added a touch of irony – I pointed to the announcement and said to Margaret: ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ On the moment, I was blaming her, it was the kind of gibe which wasn’t all a gibe: but I shouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t been serene underneath. It would be a singular apotheosis for Walter Luke, making speeches from the dispatch box in the Lords. Only a few years before he had been denouncing politicians and administrators with fervent impartiality. Stuffed shirts! Those blasted uncles! Out of inquisitiveness and perhaps fellow feeling, I went along to hear his first ministerial speech. Walter’s cubical head looming over the box: the rich West-Country intonation that he had never lost.
