Free The Madness of July by James Naughtie Page A

the building. A new production, an atmospheric Thursday, and Francesca shared the shiver of tension that everyone around her craved. ‘Penny Jenner,’ she wrote. Then one for Paul.
    The American party had almost arranged itself, doors flying open. She knew that the visitors – one from the embassy in Grosvenor Square and the other from Washington – were aware that their host would be Paul Jenner, the mandarin of mandarins, and she’d learned from his office that they were turning up the heat with two cabinet ministers. Yet it would be a chance for Flemyng to relax, free for a while from the family troubles that were disturbing Francesca because he had told her nothing of their origin. She saw brother Mungo as one of her charges, needing a woman’s helping hand without asking for it. He had said how well she understood him and his gratitude touched her, but she knew he would never call for help. That was beyond Mungo, who with every year that passed settled more firmly into the solitary routine at Altnabuie. She made a mental note to ring him, and turned back to her plans.
    The guests would use the private staircase that ran up from the quiet side entrance in Floral Street and led straight to the dining room, from where they could enter the box in the auditorium after the lights went down, to take their places in the shadows, only noticed by those in the audience who were watching for them. They could slip in and out without fuss. She checked the cards, wrote ‘Mr Wherry’ and ‘Mr Sassi’ for the Americans, listened to the horn player doing his runs for a few moments and then walked round the horseshoe of the grand tier to start the obstacle race through the warren of corridors behind to her office high above the stage, looking out to the old market square.
    She played with the seating plan in her mind. It should be easy, although there were only two women in the eight, and she turned over the permutations as she approached her tiny office, stopping to make way for a high trolley hung with wigs that creaked past her as it wobbled towards the chorus room.
    The two ministers who were coming, neither bringing his wife, would add colour. She liked Jonathan Ruskin, known for being the tallest man in the cabinet, which was a useful identifier and had served him well, who was gently spoken and always an engaging companion. She enjoyed his bookish side, and he’d spent long evenings on their sofa in Putney chewing the fat of politics. She and Flemyng enjoyed his sense of adventure in all things – his account of a walk along the Rhine had been their holiday reading the year before, and he’d almost won a literary prize for it. Because he had to bend his elongated frame most of the time to avoid aloofness, he appeared in company to be a natural listener, always leaning towards the person who was speaking. He had no choice, but it made him seem willing. His eyes were as blue as gas jets. Francesca knew him rather better than Harry Sorley, his ministerial partner for the night, although there were tales of hidden depths.
    Physically, Sorley had none of Ruskin’s style, being porky. There was a reputation for womanizing and sexual adventure. Dark where Ruskin was fair, he exuded a mid-forties vanity, his curls well-tended and not to Francesca’s taste, because they oozed with a seducer’s oil. She knew, however, that the effect on some others was different. And he was sometimes fun, if you didn’t mind the eyes, which reminded her of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Not enticing. But the friends who clustered round her husband made a happy gang, and she enjoyed their naked relish for the game. She was a natural collector of the tales they told but protected her own sense of propriety with the promise that she would never keep a diary.
    The favourite stories clinging to friends and rivals were shadows that never lifted. ‘Everybody has a past and we all know it,’ Flemyng had told her on one of their first